Apocalyptic Series:
The Lord Of The Hoard
Part 2
Slowly the buzz wore off from the Zombie-Bear incident, and we drove through the city silently. Broken screens and smashed bulbs were the only reminders of the once beautiful light shows of Times Square. The concentration of Zombies was considerably denser the further we got into the city. The spotlights helped to keep the crowds dispersed, but every now and then an undead creature or two would be hurtled onto the reinforced windscreen with a distinct SPLAT sound. I couldn't help myself but laugh each time I heard it.
"Here we are!" he proclaimed, when we were outside the great Trump Tower of New York. "You coming in kid, or have you got somewhere else to be?"
"Well seeing as I've got no car…"
"In we go then"
We pulled into the huge car park, and got out of the car. The man strapped knives and handguns to his belt; two long-barrelled guns to his back and slammed a baseball bat in his right hand.
"Get your guns kid"
I opened the trunk and pulled my: assault riffle; shotgun; two handguns; knife assortments and my trusty samurai sword (stolen from the Caradine residence) and lashed them to myself.
We trudged through the silent floors of the tower. The elevator was broken forcing us to use the dark staircase. Our only light was a held out petrol lighter.
"The control room is just down here"
"How do you know that?" I asked curiously.
"I looked this place up. You need to be prepared in a fucking invasion kid"
We swung our weapons over our shoulders and opened the control room door. The room was filled with flashing lights and buttons and levers.
"By the way, my name's Alcander, Alcander Everett…Just call me Al" he laughed.
Al searched for a few moments then pulled a large red lever downwards. Suddenly the lights sprang into action.
"That's better, and my name's Benjamin" I smiled.
"Nice to meet you Benjie"
The building was plated with gold, the only thing in the whole tower that didn't have gold on or in it was us!
We walked further up the gorgeous hotel until we reached the top floor.
"Here we are! The penthouse condominium, two floors worth nearly fifteen million dollars" giggled Alcander.
"Wow you really did look this place up!" I laughed.
As we walked in, the sheer beauty and futuristic technological breakthroughs completely awestruck me. At the far end of the room was a huge floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Central Park. Everything was perfect and neat and tidy, it almost made me forget the horrors that awaited us outside.
"Right I've got the master bedroom upstairs, you can have the couch" he smiled "Look around for some covers, I'm sure a place like this has some extra blankets, night kid" Al said as he walked up the winding staircase.
"Night" I took a quilt and a pillow from a cupboard in the luxurious bathroom, tossed them on the long couch and sat on the floor staring out over Central Park. Small fires were scattered across the massive greenery. Bigger fires could be seen throughout the city; most likely with tens of people huddled around them for warmth and light, because of the lack of electricity. The power stations were shut down and the exits from New York were all blow apart: Brooklyn Bridge and Kings Bridge to name a couple were blown up by the military the day after it was proclaimed as an "Invasion". I'm guessing the electricity in the Tower was coming from an internal generator of some kind.
I felt guilty as I thought of the hundreds of people all around the city sat around a fire fearing for their lives while I was sat in a nice, warm, well lit palace, for want of a better word. Suddenly as I was immersed in my thoughts a shrill scream of pure terror, from the streets below, brought me back into the realisation of how bad life had really become. I wasn't even sure if the virus had spread to the mainland, I wasn't even sure if my parents, family, friends and just general loved ones were still alive. That was the thing that scared me the most.
My story of why I'm in New York, on my own is a simple one: I had come to The Big Apple to find fame and fortune, I was on a year long pursuit, if I failed to earn a living within that year I would go home and forget all about it. Unfortunately for me, not a week after I got to this shit hole were the bridges blasted and I was forced to fend for myself, it was as though I was living in a nightmare. Every day I contemplated suicide, but if I did so I'd be eaten and/or turned by those undead freaks, sooner or later, and that thought was the only thing that had kept me alive up until then, the thought of being turned into a mindless drone hell-bent on curing an insatiable hunger.
After a long time sat, thinking, the sun began to spill across the city aver the famous skyline. I was becoming used to having little sleep. I lay on the comfortable couch, stared at the ceiling and slowly drifted off to sleep.
"Wakey wakey, sleepin' beauty!" shouted Al. I pulled up my sleeve and looked at my watch, it read: "12:54pm"
"You hear all that screaming last night?" I asked. Alcander's face became solemn.
"Yeah, barely slept a wink…"
"Me either" It became silent for a moment or two as we remembered the terrible screams we had grown accustomed to hearing.
"Right, I've turned this place upside-down; there's no food, looks like we're going to the kitchen!"
I picked up my two handguns, strapped them to my belt and followed Al down to the kitchen. Holding one of my guns at face height the entire time.
We ate everything we could possibly stomach. We turned to leave, when suddenly a Zombie appeared in the doorway, holding a young girl's severed head in its right hand. It slowly lifted the head. The gruesome glazed eyes stared all about the room, her lip quivered, blood trickled down her face; I could barely stand it, I stood unblinkingly, frozen to the spot. Alcander fired round after round at the zombie until it heaped on the floor and became still.
"That was NOT fucking right! Zombies don't do that!" Al roared, a sliver of fear echoed in his throat. That shred of terror sent shivers down my spine.
"What are you so scared of? It just killed someone, that's normal!"
"NO! It didn't attack, it used the child to taunt us! They understand the concept of remorse! They're beginning to get to grips with how we tick…they're beginning to become intelligent. Break some shit we need to make a barricade!" he was terrified by this point.
We blocked the small entrances with timber and incredibly heavy bricks that we found in the basement. We barricaded the downstairs windows with thick wood barbed with 6 inch nails. We gathered all our guns and equipment from the car, then we started on the main entrance.
" Ok kid, smash those worktops from the kitchen and bring 'em here. I'll get started on booby-trapping the outside" Al grabbed a hammer, a shit load of nails, some gunpowder he brought from the car and a backpack full to bursting, with God-knows-what.
I hauled the long, heavy, marble worktops from their normal position to the ground, then began to drag them to the door. I got half way, then had to stop.
Alcander strutted in, with a grin on his face.
"Wait 'til them cunts get a load of that!" he laughed. For the next twenty minutes, we secured the marble to the front door, leaving 3 small gaps to shoot from.
"That should do it, now lets grab some food and head out" sighed Al.
"Head out?"
"Yeah, we cant stay here for the rest of our lives, lets head out and find survivors"
…
To Be Continued
