LZR-1143: Within by Bryan James Page A

shattered and she flung her hands to her face, showered by shards and small pieces of dirty window.
    “You have to go first,” she said quickly, crouching down on the table, and looking over his shoulder at the opening stairwell door, head whipping to the side as the second smaller group started to shamble toward the room.
    He was leaning over, gasping for breath and struggling for air. She punched him hard on the shoulder, and he stood up.
    “What? Why?”
    She grimaced and grabbed his arm, pulling him up after her.
    “Because, fuck-tard, I don’t have enough strength to pull myself up or help you up. I can help boost you, and you can pull me up. Don’t argue, just get up there.” She webbed her two hands together and crouched down, signaling to him to step in her clasped hands.
    Louis looked up, noting the distance and taking a breath. It wasn’t impossible, if she helped. If she pushed him up, he could probably do it.
    He had never been an upper body strength kind of guy. He couldn’t even do ten pushups. Shit, he could barely hold himself up while making love to his girlfriend.
    Not that that happened that often anymore.
    “Louis! God damn it! We…are…going…to.. . di e !” She screamed each word, emphasizing the last, and he looked over her shoulder. The creatures were barely fifteen feet away.
    There were so many. So much blood.
    Some carried pieces of other human bodies. Others bore gaping wounds where their limbs—or organs—had once been.
    So much blood.
    He stepped into her hands and he flew upward.
    His hands grasped broken shards of glass and he screamed, but held on, blood running down his arms immediately. He cringed as he felt it run in rivulets into his armpits, following the contours of his upraised arms.
    Below him, Bridget screamed and pushed, giving him the inertia he needed to do a single, life saving pull-up. He scrambled to the gravel surface of the roof, and turned around quickly, the small of tar and asphalt thick in his nose as he lay stomach down on the already warm black rooftop.
    Below, Bridget’s blue hair flashed as she whipped her head around, facing a threat yet unseen from his vantage point and screaming. From directly below him, a head lashed forward, teeth flashing and arms pulling. The creature took her leg out from under her and she tumbled to the table top. She thrashed, legs kicking and slamming into the face of a man in a bloody suit. Her foot connected with the jaw, and she stood quickly. He reached down, and she jumped, her hands grasping his wrists in an iron grip. A grip that was clearly informed by the fear of impending death.
    The creature surged forward, even as three more staggered through the doorway, stumbling against one another in their urge to find their prey.
    He started to pull her up, and she thrashed about, struggling to keep her legs from being grasped by the many hands below. She swung in his arms and he yelled, unable to make his arms pull the moving weight. He felt himself move forward slightly, as the faint incline of the roof began to betray him. Louis was slipping toward the opening.
    Below him, Bridget screamed suddenly, her voice betraying an agony not contained to physical pain. He watched as the man in the suit bit into her captured calf, her pants affording no protection as he pulled the thick chunk of flesh from her bone, seeming to detach from the body in slow motion. Trailing streams of blood, the creature leaned its head back and saw Louis, opening his mouth as he did so and giving Louis a view of Bridget’s death knell.
    Bridget had never known such pain. Never in her life had she imagined that she could be hurt like this. So primitively, so primal. She screamed in pain, and in fear. She watched Louis’ eyes change. She watched his face as his eyes pronounced her death sentence. She heard him whisper the last human words she would ever hear.
    “I’m so sorry.”
    His fingers released her forearms and she grasped for the last few