Read Online Undead Rain (Book 3): Lightning (Fighting the Living Dead) by Shaun Harbinger - Free Book Online Page A

A recorded female voice said, “Going up.”
    Sam hit the button for the fourth floor. The doors slid closed.
    “Tanya,” I said into the walkie-talkie, “we’re going up to the fourth floor. Is it clear?” I had wanted to ask her that question before we were on our way—that was the idea of having them check the camera feeds, after all—but Sam had pressed the button without thinking.
    “I think so,” she said. “Johnny, check the level four elevators.” Then she said, “Shit. No, it’s not clear. There are nasties in the corridor.”
    I looked at the illuminated numbers over the door. The third floor came and went quickly. The next floor was the fourth. I hit the button for the fifth floor, knowing the elevator was going to stop at the fourth, but hoping it would proceed faster if it had another floor to go to.
    Sam leveled the MP5 at the closed doors. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
    “Don’t shoot if you don’t have to,” I said. “We don’t want to make any noise that will attract that thing in the vents.”
    He nodded but didn’t lower the weapon. “I’ll only shoot if I have to.”
    The recorded voice said, “Fourth floor,” and the doors slid apart. The corridor, which had been empty when we’d left the guard station, was teeming with zombies. Even though they were a few yards from the elevator, the stench of their rotting flesh hit me like a putrid fist.
    They turned to face us, a collective moan rising from their hideous dead mouths as they sensed living prey. As I repeatedly hit the button to close the doors, I estimated there to be at least twenty nasties. Where had they come from so quickly, and why were they here?
    I realized then that the stench was not only coming from the zombies; the dead, eviscerated security guards lay on the floor a few feet from the elevator door. The scene had looked bad enough in black and white on a screen; it looked a thousand times worse up close and personal.
    It looked like the guards’ spines had been ripped from their bodies. Their uniforms and the flesh beneath were torn open in a ragged line from the backs of their necks to their buttocks. The bodies sagged unnaturally, making me sure that the spine was gone. But with all the blood and organs everywhere, it was impossible to tell for sure.
    The zombies lurched toward us.
    “Get us out of here, man,” Sam said.
    I jabbed at the button marked “5” over and over. “The elevator’s too fucking slow,” I said.
    Sam began shooting. In the steel elevator car, the noise was deafening. Every sound in my ears became muffled except for a sudden high-pitched ringing. Sam continued to fire, the MP5 jerking in his hand as it shot bullet after bullet into the mass of advancing, rotting flesh. A mottled blue hand reached in through the door. I hit it with my baseball bat but the lack of space to swing the bat meant I had to jerk the bat at the hand as if I was playing cricket, slamming the fingers into the steel wall above the elevator’s control panel.
    Jax used her own bat to push the zombies’ face out of the elevator as the doors began to slide shut.
    We went up to the fifth floor.
    “Tanya, what’s the fifth floor like?” I asked quickly into the walkie-talkie.
    “Clear,” she said as the doors opened and the disembodied female voice, sounding muffled in my ringing ears, announced, “Fifth floor.”
    We stepped out into the corridor, weapons ready. The rooms on this level appeared to be offices. Some of the doors had metallic nameplates on them. I saw one that said, “Administration”, and another that read, “Personnel”.
    “We need to find somewhere safe where we can discuss what to do next,” I said. There was no way we were going down to the labs on the floor below until that zombie horde moved somewhere else. I wondered if they had been attracted by the smell of the dead bodies by the elevator. If so, they would feed, and then hang around the area until something stimulated them