Amid the Clouds (Brave New World Book 1)

Chapter 3

One escape option after another raced through my mind while I was sprinting through the dark corridor. Thankfully, I already knew the locations of tripping hazards.

I rejected every single idea as quickly as it popped up. With the super fast and strong vamps hot on my heals and with the building's security features, there would be no escape for me on the ground floor.

My chances lay with the fire escape ladder from another level. The stairwell offering access to the upper floors was, in fact, right in front of me. As an added bonus, it let natural light through a glass roof and some complex system with reflective panels on the landings.

I felt a claw scrape the back of my tank top just as I reached the stairwell. I dove into the daylight and just like that, the sound of running feet behind me stopped. To be replaced by hissing of what I imagined was disappointment at an afternoon snack missed.

I didn't waste time looking back, as tempted as I was to flip the bird at the vamps. I started climbing the stairs as fast as I could, and slowed down only when I reached the landing on the sixth floor.

Since the vampiric call from earlier couldn't have come from so high up, I figured this level was potentially safe. I just had to reach the emergency exit at the far end and from there, the fire escape ladder to the vampire-free ground.

I placed my ear against the grey fire-proof door to the sixth floor. I heard nothing - a good sign. Next, I took a peek inside. A short dark corridor lay ahead that the light from behind my back showed was empty - another good sign. The corridor led to another door, this one made of tinted glass.

If memory from presentations given on this floor served me right, beyond lay an open space with office cubicles and several glass-walled meeting rooms. Which meant there would be daylight inside, as muted by tinted windows as it might be; I would see clearly what dangers lay ahead, if any.

I could do this.

I got to the glass door without hearing a single sound from the other side. I opened the door – which turned out to be quite heavy and thick – wide enough for a cautious peek inside.

That was when a cacophony of sounds and a variety of moving figures flooded my senses.

It took me several seconds to process what I was hearing: the hisses, snarls and growls of fighting animals. Combined with the sounds of bones breaking, blood splashing and... blades cutting through flesh?

No wonder I didn't shut the door and run off but just stood there dumbstruck, eyes as wide as a loris'. It wasn't every post-apocalyptic day that you saw vamps and zombies side by side.

And fighting huge sword-wielding humanoid creatures with wings.

I could see the battlefield more or less clearly thanks to the light seeping through the tinted windows, barricaded with what had once been cubicles. Those creatures with the swords – a species I had never seen before - were big as bodybuilders in the making. Their skin was a dark shade of blue, the wings protruding from their backs huge and bat-like. I didn't know what was more bizarre about these beings: that they were dressed in loincloths or that they were wielding swords.

Actually, the first prize for bizarreness had to go to the battle scene as a whole. I had never seen or heard of the apocalyptic monsters hunting together and sharing food. Not to mention it made no freaking sense for two species of predators competing for a limited number of prey, to live in symbiosis.

And yet, the two vamps and one zombie to my left were jointly cornering a bat-man. Then there was that fallen bat-man in the right corner of the room who was serving as a shared platter for three zombies and one vamp.

Insanity.

While I was trying to determine whether I was hallucinating, three zombies munching on a dead bat-man suddenly lifted their heads all at the same time. And turned back to look right at me. Their eyes - seemingly blind and nothing like the ruby-red eyes of Zombie 007 - fixated my partially visible body.

Those rotting faces and blackish teeth with pieces of flesh stuck in between jump-started my brain.

I shut the glass door and run for the stairwell, praying the monsters wouldn't abandon their buffet to give chase. Because the daylight in the stairwell offered no protection against zombies and when it came to speed, they were World-War-Z fast.

I didn't hear the crashbar door open behind me. Still, I kept climbing the stairs as quickly as possible, desperate to put more distance between me and the freak show on the sixth floor.

I was trying to decide on which floor to try my luck again, when a door on the landing I had just bypassed burst open. A bat-man emerged, all covered in blood and guts and breathing heavily.

I froze in the face of this unknown threat.

Sure, I knew that all the creatures responsible for the second apocalypse - at least those encountered by people who had lived to tell the tale before the radios had gone silent - all killed humans. Be it for food, sport or parasitism. But with those wings the bat-man could get to me in a second, regardless of whether I was standing in one place or running. Better to stay immobile so as not to attract the monster's attention–

A set of black eyes devoid of pupils fixated me.

I stopped breathing.

The bat-man sniffed the air in my direction... then spread its wings and took off.

I crouched, knife ready.

The creature flew downwards, quickly disappearing from sight.

I let out the breath I had been holding and took several deep ones to steady my nerves.

That was when the door burst open again and zombies came pouring out into the stairwell.

This time there was no point in remaining in place. I made myself scarce immediately, following the example of the impressive-looking bat-man.

As expected, the whole bunch of zombies started after me. The already tired from all the climbing me. The me wielding a knife only. The me not knowing where I was going–

The roof! It was my best chance of salvation now, just like five months ago. With so many of the floors infested and those things right behind me, I could easily get trapped with no escape route. I had to get to the roof. There I would be safe from vampires and be able to outrun my reanimated pursuers down the fire escape ladder.

By the time I reached the nineteenth floor, the zombies were less than two flights of stairs behind me, breathless like me only because they weren't breathing at all. I could barely feel my legs at this point. Even my arms were tired from me pulling myself up with the help of the railings. At this rate I would be too tired to even push the heavy fire-proof door to the roof open and–

The door to the roof! In my haste I had forgotten the most important thing – as in, a flaw in my plan that also made it entirely useless. Because the last time I had been here, I had made sure to bar the door to the roof behind me, that sturdy mop finally coming in good use.

I was left with a single option.

I made a dash for the door to the top floor. And then immediately for the entrance to the single room up here. A conference hall, which at my last visit had had its fancy curtains opened to let the early spring sun in and its furniture removed to make space for cocktail tables.

Talk about my life coming full circle.

But forget about my nth dose of déjà vu today – the monsters were right behind me! I'd barely managed to rush into the conference hall and whirl around to close the door, when two sets of decomposing hands reached for me.

I shut the heavy black door in the last second. One turn of the available lock and no more zombies. The thick door blocked out even their blood-chilling snarls.

Then why was I suddenly hearing the sounds of munching and flesh being torn?