At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (19 page)

He fell in behind me as we ran for the
staircase. The spacious Pharmaceutical Lab on the tenth floor
stored twenty times more bottles of pills. “This is going to take
forever,” Tortilla remarked, staring at the rows upon rows that
seemed to never end. The floors were layered in empty bottles and
scattered pills of all different colors and shapes.

I picked up a bottle and read the label. “He
could develop pneumonia if we don’t find those pills.”

Tortilla reluctantly gave in. We piled the
inapplicable bottles and pills in the corners, away from the door.
Mounds became hills and hills became mountains. “Time?”

“We’ve been at it for over an hour,”
Tortilla said, checking his wristwatch.

I started whispering romycin to remind
myself what I was looking for, as all the labels jumbled together
in my head after a while. Ten minutes later, I threw up my arms
with glee. “Found it!”

Tortilla looked up. “Found what?”

“Er Ery—thro—my—cin. Erythromycin. I
don’t know if that’s right, but who cares, probably no one alive
knows how to say it.” The words hurt us both. They reminded us of
the situation of survival more than creeping around the empty
hospital campus did. They reminded us that we were on the brink of
extinction. “There are tons in here, though, so it should be
enough.” The label had directions concerning dosage. “Now we just
need prednisone.” Hesitation layered my voice. Slowly, we worked
through the remaining bottles.

Near the end of the last row, Tortilla found
a bottle labeled prednisone, but it only contained four pills.
“Look.” He pointed at the ground to a pile of soft pink pills.
“Those are the same pills.” He bent down and examined the numbers
to see if they matched. “Yep, same pill.”

I knelt down beside him and shoveled the
pills into the bottle.

A crunch sounded by the door.

“Shh!” I threw out my arms and stopped
Tortilla. We crouched in silence for a minute, listening with sharp
ears, focused on the possibility of crushing steps.

Tortilla stood up. “Goddamn, this is getting
old, bramiga. If they don’t kill us, fear will.”

I rose, wiped exhaustion away from my eyes,
and stared. “Fear might be a better death, though,” I said.

“An alion’s claws would be faster,” he
joked.

As we approached the door, Tortilla scanned
out the large windows to our left. He grabbed my elbow. “Maggy,
down below.”

When I peeped out the window, down on the
street in front of the facility, I spotted an alion rushing away
with something green clutched in its mouth, bleeding from one end,
round like a ham with a white bone at its center. “Is that . . . a
leg?”

“Looks like it’s from an army soldier,” he
said.

The alion galloped off out of sight.

I turned for the door. “We have to get back
to I-5.”

“No argument here.” Tortilla fell in behind
me, at a dead sprint.

We were huffing by the time we planted a
foot on the first floor. Jacob sat hunched over, elbows on knees,
guns against his cheeks, and his eyes dozing. Jane rested against
his back, eyes closed.

“We have to go! Get up, we have to go!” I
shouted.

They jolted awake, puzzled and woozy. “You
find anything?” Jacob asked, squinting at us. Jane slid off the
chair to help Jacob to his feet, but she was small, and her
strength did little.

“Yeah, bromigo. We found what you need.”
Tortilla rattled the bottles. “We also found what you don’t need,
an alion outside, running with a human leg in its mouth. We have to
get out of here, now.” His severe voice carried a weight to it that
bordered on eerie. Tortilla didn’t have much heart for taking
charge. Yet, no one could help but comply.

Jacob took the recommended dosage, though
who was the standard it was set to, we didn’t know. “If it kills
me, it kills me,” he said as we ran through the halls, heading
towards the northwest entrance. “It seems like everything wants to
kill me these days . . .”

It did seem that way. There were no breaks
for the living, no comfort to be found, no assurances of a better
tomorrow, just more fear, running, sweating, puking, and exhaustion
waiting at the next sunrise. Sleep was the one thing I wanted to do
most, but it was also the one thing I wanted to do least, out of
terror that we would be caught off guard.

Jane’s feet became tangled as her worn out
legs clashed. She tumbled elbows first to the white-tiled
floor.

Amanda offered her sister a steady hand. “No
time for weakness now,” she whispered to Jane.

“I’m not tough like you . . . I’m tired,”
Jane whined.

“We share blood, so you’re tough enough.
Come on!” Amanda yanked her sister up with a sore arm.

We had stopped to catch our breath as the
sisters regrouped. Jane was growing paler as Amanda was turning as
gray as steel, shiny, resistant, and sturdy. The entrance doors
fought against our ten arms when we tried to push them apart, but
they would not slide.

“Should we break them?” Jacob asked.

“Too loud,” Tortilla responded.

I stared at them. “There’s no power, they
should be easier to open . . . I don’t understand.”

Amanda went up to the seam where the doors
met. “It’s locked.” From her pocket, she pulled out a switchblade
with a bright blue handle, jamming it between the doors underneath
the lock. Pushing up, the lock unlatched with a click. “See, no
problem.” Her black hair swished as she heaved the doors open.

The muggy air outside closed in around us as
we swept by the doors and out into a parking lot. The sweat pouring
down my back made me even more uncomfortable and tense. If only
something would go right . . . just one thing. We found the main
road again and ran down the hill, resting at a bistro midway, after
the tree-tunnel.

Sounds of digging claws echoed in an
alley.

“Amanda,” Jane cried, nervous. She clutched
her sister’s arm in tortuous, eye-blurring, heart-bursting fear.
Her trepidation coiled in the rest of us, ready to spring in an
explosion of screams, tears, and spit.

An alion jumped from a balcony three stories
up. The beast landed nimbly on four burly legs of corded muscle,
coated in silky fur, armored in a thick hide of anger. A roar
churned our stomachs, the acid promising to eject in full
force.

Jacob fired his OMP2s. The bullets barreled
towards the alion in an implacable stream.

Jane shrieked, on the verge of
deafening.

A second alion sprung over a fence to the
side of the bistro, finding the ground near Tortilla. He squeezed
the triggers in rapid pulses. The beast was a hard target, but
finally Amanda and I added a few rounds.

Both of the alions collapsed in an ugly mess
of dark blood. A third sprinted down the street, full bore. The
alion differed from the others. Reflective green armor protected
its chest and back region. A green helmet covered its head, with a
yellow and red visor across the eyes. In its humanlike hands, it
carried two objects that resembled guns, but with large soda cans
for barrels. Suddenly, black dots peppered the concrete in front of
us.

Jacob retaliated with bullets of his own.
Yet, we were forced to retreat behind a dead car to shield the
incoming fire. Black bullets sprayed the area, penetrating
everything but our skins, almost as if it meant to scare more than
kill us. We huddled together. I couldn’t bring myself to shoot
under such heavy fire.

Down the hill, an explosion boomed, and more
gunfire echoed in the street. Without warning, the alion burst
apart in an array of blood, guts, and metal. I peeked over and saw
nothing where it had stood.

Voices carried past, voices of men and women
yelling curses. The clatter of boots filled my ears. Military
soldiers, clad in camouflage and nifty black sunglasses, rushed by
us.

“Secure those two points!” a woman shouted.
Four soldiers ran off.

I was studying them when, with a start, I
whipped to my left and saw a woman standing tall before us. She had
medium-length caramel hair tucked back in a ponytail.

“You kids okay?” she asked, gazing down at
us with brilliant blue eyes. Her smooth, milky skin was attractive,
but toughness emanated from her austere appearance, with a straight
back and chiseled jaw.

No one answered.

She knelt down. “Are you okay?” Her speech
was directed more at Jane and Amanda.

Amanda nodded. “Are you here to save
us?”

“That’s right, kiddo. I am. We have to move,
there are more of those things in the city. Can you run?” She
stood, hefting up a long rifle.

The woman who had shouted orders ran up
beside us. “Private Burnhammer, are we ready to move out?”

Burnhammer nodded. “Yes, sir. All civvies
are capable.”

A man bolted up the hill and halted at the
commander’s side. “Sir, we have multiple targets heading this
way.”

She nodded. “Assistant, move the squad out,
we’ll head up the hill and cross west at Gibbs Street.” The man
took his leave, ordering others to their positions. As we stood up,
she examined us. “I see that you’re armed, that’s good. If you need
new weapons, just ask someone in the squad and we’ll do our best to
give you one.”

Amanda stuck out her hand. “I’m Amanda.”

The woman smiled and took Amanda’s hand in
hers. “Hello, Amanda. I’m Staff Sergeant Henderson. It’s nice to
meet you all, but we have to get you out of here. If I seem harsh,
I apologize in advance; it’s just how we were trained. I want all
of you to stick to Burnhammer here. She’ll protect you and get you
to where you need to be.” She locked eyes with Burnhammer.
“Private, congratulations, you’ve been field promoted to corporal.
Keep them in sight at all times. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!” Burnhammer said. “Thank you,
sir.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” At that,
Henderson went to the head of the squad as we started up the hill
again. Two men filed in after us. They glanced back constantly. One
of them almost seemed to run backwards, and he did it as well as
running forwards.

The road leveled out. An excited voice
shouted over the radio attached to Burhammer’s arm. “Three tangos
on approach. Check your six.” Then static.

“Inside! Inside!” Burnhammer shoved us into
a medical building to our right.

Six soldiers took up positions within. More
set up outside. I scanned and counted four. Then a fifth ran up
behind an SUV.

Henderson spied the hill, then she grabbed
her radio. “Engage, engage.” Her voice was twice as sharp as it had
been a few minutes ago.

The soldiers outside let loose a shower of
death. The guns kicked out bullets at amazing speeds. A soldier
hand signaled to Henderson, who replied by making a loop with her
index. The man dashed inside, breathing heavily, almost gasping. He
whisked an inhaler from one of his many pockets. After, he reloaded
his rifle.

The firing ceased and the rest joined us in
the building. “They retreated, sir,” a man reported.

Henderson gave him a pleased smile. “So they
have some sense after all. All right, let’s get our legs going,
mine are getting stiff just looking at your idle asses. Move, move,
move.”

As Burnhammer pushed us out the door, I
turned to Jacob, who was plodding along, with a face even more
exhausted than he had shown over the last few days. “We’re gonna
make it, see. Those pills will kick in and you’ll feel better,” I
encouraged him.

He gave me the weakest smile. His lungs
struggled to suck in air as he wheezed and wheezed. “I might
faint.”

I gave him the inhaler from my pocket. “Use
it.”

He complied.

The road curved left and finally we hit
Gibbs Street. “Hold!” Henderson ordered as we came to a cross
street. “The Connor Trail is at the end of this road, we can sweep
back to the city through the woods.”

North we went, along SW 9
^th
Street.

My legs grew tighter with every step, but
the sergeant wouldn’t let us rest. These soldiers had more
endurance than the ones I pretended to be online. I was astonished
by how they worked as a team, moving around, positioning themselves
without voice commands. At the end of the road a narrow dirt path
continued on, part of a giant maze of trails. Dense clusters of
trees protected our sides, or so I hoped.

Yelling came over the radios: “Requesting
backup—dentist—high—Terrance Drive.” Static overtook the line.

Henderson pressed a button on the side of
her radio. “Repeat transmission. I say again, repeat transmission.”
She released the button and a beep followed.

“This is Sergeant Loritz requesting backup
from anyone near SW Terrace Drive. We are pinned down in a dentist
office. Crossroad is SW High Street. We have civilians. Repeat, we
have civilians.” A beep came a second later.

“Sergeant Loritz, this is Sergeant
Henderson, we’re a few klicks south of there. Hold on tight, we’re
coming for ya.” She released the button. “Let’s move.”

“Candy bar waiting,” Sergeant Loritz said,
static cutting out most of his words.

“God only knows what that means,” Burnhammer
commented.

The trail was soggy, too slippery for my
shoes to do much for stability.

The wide, thick-treaded boots of the
soldiers dug into the wet earth, giving them superior traction and
maneuverability.

They kept us going at a quick pace, even
after Jane fell several times. She hadn’t said a word since the
soldiers’ arrival. Her eyes seemed distant. She fell again.
Burnhammer clutched Jane by her arms and yanked to her feet,
guiding her forward.

The quiet of the woodland disturbed me even
more than the quiet of the city. Complete, overwhelming silence
that engulfed my senses. Fear kept me from focusing on anything in
particular. My head swam.

“You all right?” Tortilla touched my hand.
“You’re not looking so hot.”