I grabbed my bag and bolted out into the corridor. My brain had finally decided to cooperate with me and I remembered a staircase that would lead to the garage and my only decent chance at route.
I tore past the long rows of rooms, wishing I'd had more time to remember what had happened here. Oh well. Survival now, nostalgia later.
The door at the end of the hall dented outward and I heard the frustrated moans of the infected beyond the metal surface.
Shit. That door was the most direct route to the garage. I switched back and sprinted towards the other end of the hall. I avoided the elevator—I'd had too many bad experiences with those to try my luck with that death trap. I skidded to a halt in front of the door and jerked it open—right into the face of an infected.
I backpedaled until my back hit the wall behind me, whipping out my handguns guns as I went. He would have been an attractive business exec, I noted dispassionately as he charged through the door. Even with the deterioration of flesh you could see his clean bone structure. It ran towards me, hands reaching towards my throat. I waited until the last possible second to empty a clip into his head and he crumpled to the ground.
I stepped over him, surveying the mangled mess of blood and bone.
"So much for bone structure," I said. A crash beyond drew my attention to the hallway beyond the door and the downed infected. Heavy footfalls drew my attention to the stairs beyond the door. I leaned over the edge of the stairwell and saw a horde of infected stumbling up the stairs.
"Shit shit shit," I half-sung to myself as I kicked the body of the infected out of the way of the door. I grabbed a chair from the other room and wedged it under the handle of the door, but I knew that wouldn't last long. At the other end of the hall I heard metal groan under the pressure of the infected and watched as one filthy hand shoved itself through a tiny opening between the door and wall, scraping what little was left of its flesh off in the process.
Damn it, why couldn't they make doors outlast undead attacks these days?
"Think Alice, think," I muttered. Behind me the chair holding the door closed shattered and infected streamed through the opening. I nailed two in the head before scrambling into the room I'd gotten the chair from and locked flicked the lock shut behind me.
If I'd been hoping there would some sort of magical secret passage to safety, a glance proved me wrong. There were no vents, no doors, only a window with a shiny metal grille, mocking me. The groans of the infected grew louder behind me as I shoved the generic furniture aside, trying desperately to find any way out. I pulled ineffectually at the grille.
I heard a crunch as the door behind me wavered under the pressure of twenty dead weights at once. I yanked at the grille and realized that it wasn't made of iron as I'd been expecting, but a lighter metal—something mixed with aluminum. Whoever built this place must have thought that there wasn't much chance of a break-in from the seventh floor.
Grasping at this new chance, I grabbed hold of an edge of the fencing and yanked, glad for once that these experiments had given me more skills than melting someone's brain out their ears.
The metal cut into my fingers. The blood made it more difficult to hold onto the grille, but adrenaline and desperation gave me enough strength to peel off a small corner at the bottom of the window. I used the butt of my short sword to smash the glass, clearing away as much of it as possible.
The opening was only just large enough to wedge my shoulders through, and I felt glass and metal cut into my shoulders. The ground was too far away for even me to make a safe landing, even if it wasn't littered with the infected.
I looked up. The side of the wall had a decorative paneling that ran up the outside of the window, just a small ledge with geometric shapes cut into it, but it was enough for me to rest my weight on.
I wriggled my hips through and pulled my legs out , earning me more scratches. I almost fell of the ledge when I reached my arm back through the window to pull my pack out, but I grabbed onto the fencing and righted myself. I yanked my bag through just as the first of the infected filtered into the room. Their hands reached through the small opening I had created, and I edged as far away from them as the ledge would allow.
I looked down again. Since that wasn't an answer, then the only place to go...was up.