Carlie Simmons (Book 1): Until Morning Comes by JT Sawyer Read Free Book Online

option.”
    As they entered the hallway, Carlie led
them back to the stairwell and slowly pushed open the heavy steel door. She covered
her mouth and nose with her sleeve in case any wisps of tear gas had floated up
from the lobby, but all she saw was the gray plume below cloaking the final
resting place of her friends. A subtle lilt of breeze in the lobby was swirling
grit and airborne glitter upward, and she could hear the sound of footsteps
coming from below. She motioned everyone to enter the stairwell and begin
moving up to the roof. As she did, she peered over the edge of the handrail and
could see a harried group of blood-soaked, infected humans, including two
former agents, leaping up the stairs towards them.

Chapter 11
     
    Carlie looked up at the door to the roof
and then back down the hallway to her right beside the open door. “This way;
we’re going to Plan C, D, and E until we are out of here.”
    As they ran to the elevator, Carlie
yelled back to Phillip, “Secure the door with the fire hose on the opposite
wall. I have to pry open the elevator so we can climb down.”
    “You got it,” he said, slinging his
weapons and smashing out the glass on the wall compartment. Then he unraveled
the thick canvas hose and pulled it across the floor, attaching it to the door
handle on the stairs with a series of half-hitches. By the time he was finished,
a dozen creatures were pawing at the narrow window and slamming their contorted
bodies against the thick metal.
    Carlie stood in the middle of the
elevator and began prying the silver doors apart. “Get down here, both of you,
and help me. This is too heavy to do alone.”
    Eliza and the professor lent their hands
until the doors were peeled back eighteen inches. “Phillip, can you find
something to jam in between the doors?” she shouted under heavy breathing.
    He kicked open a door to a nearby office
and quickly returned with a metal chair. Once it was wedged inside, Carlie
removed her grip and pulled out her flashlight, aiming its beam into the shaft
below.
    “We’re going down there—are you kidding
me?” said Eliza.
    “Unless you want to stay here and be
ripped apart by those piranhas, you’re going to follow Phillip down the service
ladder. Once we’re all inside, I’ll release the door. That should buy us some
time.”
    “What about you, Carlie?” said Eliza,
whose face was still pale.
    “I’ll be right on your heels after I
slow these things down.”
    They could hear the metal door of the
stairwell being yanked violently, followed by the sound of the small glass
window shattering. Raw, yellow hands pawed through the opening, attempting to scrabble
their way through.
    “Down the ladder you all go,” snapped
Carlie as she ran forward to procure the remaining weapons off the dead agents
on the floor. She ran back to the elevator shaft while Phillip led the others
down the dark passage. Carlie laid three rifles from the fallen agents on the
ground and then readied her own MP-7s. She steadied the barrels on the
now-rickety stairwell door.
    As the fire hose gave way from its wall
mount, the door broke away from its shattered hinges. Creatures began flooding
through the entrance. Carlie unleashed a volley of fire from both weapons,
spraying the mass with head and neck shots as best as the fully automatic weapons
allowed. Seven of them went down in the first volley but were quickly replaced
by a dozen more ravenous ghouls. Again, she fired repeatedly, dropping more
creatures until both weapons were dry, then grabbed the replacements off the
floor and continued the deafening spray of bullets, clenching her jaw with the
release of each hail of gunfire.
    A shroud of gunsmoke roiled into the
corridor before her, eventually coalescing into a veil of red mist where the
bullets impacted the unending wave of attackers. The entrance and hallway grew
choked with bodies but more creatures struggled to climb over the mangled
carcasses. Carlie kept waiting for the