A World Reborn: The First Outbreak by Chris Thompson Page A

rounding the corner. She had maybe fifteen seconds at most before
he or she came through the door above. She needed to put as much distance as
possible between her hunter and herself as she could by then.
    It didn’t even register that she was
running away from one danger into a more unknown kind of danger. If there were
infected people waiting on any of the guest room floors then she’d be amongst
them before she could react. However, certain death was behind her, so Melissa
surged forward, dropping down floor after floor. She heard the door above open
and decided to hug the wall as close as she could, to avoid being visible if
someone looked down the stairwell.
    “Melissa? How’s it going?” She heard Roy
ask over the radio, but ignored it. The person pursuing her didn’t though; a
series of gunshots rang down from above, fired blindly down the exposed centre
of the staircase in the hope of getting a lucky shot. A couple of bullets
slammed into the concrete near the steps Melissa was standing on, sending
little chunks of stone flying around, but neither the bullets nor the debris
connected with her. Melissa was now more than a little afraid of being hit a by
ricochet, but she determinedly pushed this fresh concern aside and kept moving
as fast as she could. She knew she needed to reload the gun but was afraid
she’d make a mistake in her haste if she did it while running. However, she
didn’t want to stop and take the chance of getting caught in the line of fire.
It was one of those situations where you were hung if you did and hung if you
didn’t.
    “Melissa? What’s happening?” Roy quizzed
urgently over the radio, but again, Melissa didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She
glanced and saw she’d made it to the forty-eighth floor. It wasn’t quite low
enough, and for all she knew they were also coming down the staircase she’d
abandoned.
    “She’s on forty-eight!” She heard a rough,
male voice call out; presumably the man chasing her, probably speaking into a
radio.
    “Damn it!” Melissa snapped; her voice
filled with confusion, frustration and anger at her current situation. Melissa
hugged the wall again as a second barrage of gunfire came her way. Once more,
her luck held. While still rounding each corner of the staircase as fast as she
could, she fumbled in her jeans pocket and eventually managed to retrieve one
of the spare ammunition clips she’d taken from the woman. Melissa pressed the
eject catch on the clip and let it fall skittering to the floor, slamming in
the replacement as soon as she could. She yanked back on the barrel and cocked
a fresh round, just as a third barrage impacted around her. Floors forty-seven
and forty-six had sped past all within the past few moments, and before she
knew it, Melissa was breathlessly looking at the forty-fourth floor.
    Melissa didn’t have a clear plan, but she
knew she couldn’t keep running at this pace indefinitely. She tore through the
door and slammed it shut behind her, and then she pelted down the corridor and
hurried towards the west elevators. Melissa knew she had a scant lead, if it
was a lead at all, and was hesitant to give it up, but she needed to know where
the elevators currently were. She darted down the passage on her right, and
looked quickly at the LED displays to discover which floors the elevators had
stopped on. One said twenty-two; one said twelve, both equally useless to her.
She wheeled around to the other bank and saw that one was on the thirty-eighth
floor, ticking over to thirty-nine. If she was lucky, and hurried, she could
just make it in time. She only hoped it wasn’t full of the infected. Briefly,
Melissa considered taking the west stairs down, but quickly decided against it;
she didn’t want the soldiers following her down that staircase as it would give
her less time to board the elevator if they were in close pursuit. She darted
out of the corridor and ran flat out towards the other staircase, on the south
side of the