Free The Harvest Cycle by David Dunwoody

beside Gayle. Her face was expressionless, her lips whispering sweet nothings over the cold body of her child. He touched her arm. “Gayle...”
        “We’re not going,” she said calmly. “We’re staying with Neil.”
        “Neil?” Rafe shook his head furiously. “Gayle, you need to come with us!”
        “My baby is here,” she replied. “She can’t leave. She lives here now.”
        Rafe spun to face Peter, his hands clenched in white-knuckle fists.
        Peter looked him right in the eye and said, “She needs to stay with her family.”
        “The elevator might be safer, but I really think we have a better chance on the stairs,” Abe said. “That way they won’t know we’re coming.”
        Erika nodded and pulled the last table away from the door. “There are two sets of stairs. Let’s split up. We’ll get down quicker.”
        “All right. Who’s coming with me?” Abe placed his hand on the doorknob and looked back.
        Rafe still couldn’t believe things were unfolding like this. He was the only one still acknowledging Gayle’s existence. Erika approached Abe and said, “I’m with you.”
        “That makes us buddies,” Peter said to Rafe. “Think you can keep up?”
        “I hope they eat you alive,” Rafe growled.
        Peter was unfazed. “What makes you think they eat people?”
        “Oh, they do,” Rafe whispered, closing the distance between himself and the other until they were nose-to-nose. “What do you dream, Peter?”
        Abe put his hand between them. “Let’s go. Me and Erika first. We’ll take the stairs off to the right, you guys go left.”
        Together, he and Erika unlocked the door and pulled it open a fraction of an inch. They stared and listened for several moments, then pulled the door open enough for Abe to stick his head out and get a look at the entire hallway.
        “Let’s go,” he whispered. Then he was gone.
        Erika ducked out after him. Peter stretched his arms and rolled his head. “I’m not gonna wait up for you, Castillo.”
        Rafe looked back at Gayle. She had settled in one of the chair, still cradling Emma, and offered him a vacant smile. “You’d better run.”
        He turned back. Peter was gone.
        Rafe tensed his legs, lowered his head and broke into a sprint.
        
    ***
        
        The stair access door was wide open. Rafe ignored the blood on the walls and floor, all of it a crimson blur as he leapt into the stairwell and took the concrete steps three at a time.
        There was a faint echo below him, Peter in the lead. It occurred to him that if there were creatures in the lobby or on the stairs, Peter would reach them first. Maybe it would give Rafe a fighting chance.
        Or maybe he’d stop to watch Peter die.
        He had all but given up on thoughts of survival, even as he raced down the stairs. He knew that this was bigger than Fevgos. He knew that there were greater monstrosities behind the razor-fingered harvesters. Regardless of where he fled, Rafe was unlikely to “make it” in any sense of the word - but at least he’d get away from here, away from the others with their liquor-stained breath and Gayle with her dead baby and the creatures perched on the rooftops just outside the windows.
        He grabbed the railing and swung himself over a landing without touching the floor, avoiding a puddle of blood. He began skimming every landing this way, taking the steps four at a time now, seeing Peter just a couple of floors below him. He could hear the other man’s ragged panting. Too bad Peter didn’t have his steroids. They were probably back in his room.
        Rafe overtook Peter at the bottom of the stairwell. He grabbed the door leading to the lobby and glanced through it, then took off.
        The lobby was every bit the charnel house that Erika had described. Unrecognizable body parts littered