We ran down the stairs. Kenji was taking four steps at a time. I was struggling to keep up without falling flat on my face. We had no idea what floor they were on, but we’d agreed earlier that if anything was to happen we’d meet up at the security room. So that’s where we decided to go first. If they weren’t there we would have to check every room on every floor, which would take forever. So I was really hoping they’d made it back to the security room.

Kenji checked the radio one more time but it still didn’t work. We finally made it to the bottom of the stairs. We stepped out on to the gaming floor and froze.

“Oh no,” Kenji whispered under his breath as he held me back.

They were everywhere. The gaming floor was full of infected people, or zombies, or whatever they were. I’d never seen so many of them. I held my hands up to my mouth to stop myself from screaming. It was hard to imagine that a virus could do that to a human being. They looked like walking, living corpses.

“How did they get in?” I whispered.

“Not sure,” Kenji said as he motioned for us to move back into the stairwell. None of them had seen us yet, but I sure as hell didn’t want to hang around to see how long we could stand there unnoticed. If we could at least get to the first floor, we could shut the door and barricade it.

We had almost made it out of sight, but then the radio came to life again with Kim’s voice. “Kenji, if you can hear me, do not go back to the gaming floor. Meet back at our room. Repeat. Do not go to the gaming floor!”

There must have been hundreds of them and at that moment they all turned towards us. I didn’t stop to see if they were chasing, I just assumed they were. We sprinted back up the stairs. Adrenalin and fear gave me a burst of speed and energy. We made it to the first floor in world record time and slammed the door shut.

“We need to barricade this,” Kenji said. “It’s not strong enough.”

I could hear screams coming from the stairwell. There wasn’t much time.

“Go to the rooms,” he said. “Get whatever you can to brace the door.”

The screaming from the stairwell was getting louder, closer.

“Hurry!”

Kenji had his full weight against the door when they crashed into it from the other side. The door seemed to bulge and Kenji was nearly pushed back. But it held.

I ran to the nearest room and dragged both beds out into the hallway. We ended up putting three beds and three small couches in front of the door. It wasn’t the greatest barricade but it was a start.

“Do you think it will hold?” I asked.

“Not for long. We should make our way to a higher floor as soon as possible.”

“How do we do that when they’re in the stairwell?”

“There should be another fire escape on the other side of the building. If not, we’ll have to climb up the elevator shaft.”

“Do you think the others made it back to our room?”

The door was rocked by a huge force before Kenji could answer. We both instinctively threw our weight against the barricade. “We need more weight,” he said.

The infected were banging on the door, bashing their fists and probably their heads into the solid wood.

We moved quickly. We emptied the four closest rooms of all the furniture we could find. Beds, couches and even mini-fridges. We jammed it all into the hallway so the doors physically couldn’t swing open. Once we were satisfied they couldn’t get in for the time being, we went looking for the others.

We found them in our room, which suddenly didn’t feel so safe anymore. There was no way we were spending another night in here. When Kim saw us she jumped up and hugged us both. “Thank god you made it! I didn’t know if the radio was working. I didn’t know what to do.”

Jack was standing at the foot of the bed with his head lowered. Maria was lying down on her back with her eyes closed. There was blood on one of her legs, down near her ankle. She looked so pale. Doctor West was there but he was keeping a safe distance.

“What happened?” I asked.

Kim still had the walkie talkie in her hand. She was bending the antenna back and forth nervously. “We were on the second floor. We found a security guard hiding in one of the bathrooms. We thought he was asleep. We tried to wake him.” She was shaking her head. “We should’ve been more careful, we should’ve known. He grabbed Maria’s leg and bit her.”

I looked at Maria’s ankle. The blood from the wound had stained the bed sheets. Her forehead was sweaty and her breathing was rapid.

“She was able to kick free,” Kim continued. “We were on our way back to the security room when we heard glass smashing. I went to check it out. There were thousands of them just outside the main entrance. They had only smashed open a small gap. Most of them were tearing themselves to shreds as they squeezed through. We only just made it back here.”

Doctor West spoke from the far corner of the room. “We should quarantine her immediately. Killing her now would be best.”

Jack lunged at the doctor and pushed him up against the wall. “We’re not killing her!”

The doctor remained calm. “In a couple of minutes, she will turn. There is no stopping it. Soon her body will work for the virus. She will become a host. And her one goal in life will be to spread the virus to another person. She will attack you. With unimaginable ferocity, she will attack you. And everyone else.”

“How do we know she’s even infected?” Jack asked.

“Trust me, I’ve seen it all before. And trust me when I say you do not want to be in this room when she turns.”

Looking at the wound, looking at how pale she was, it was obvious. But Jack was in complete denial. He was desperate.

“We need to seal this room off,” Doctor West said. “We need to take care of her now.”

Jack let the doctor go and punched the wall so hard I thought he’d broken his hand. “You guys go,” Jack said. “I’ll stay. I’ll do it. I just need some time alone.”

Kim gave Jack her gun. She hugged her brother and burst into tears.

Kenji patted him on the shoulder. “Be careful,” he said. “You don’t have long.”

We moved into the adjoining room and locked the door. Kim was still crying uncontrollably. I wanted to cry as well but I was unnaturally calm. I was numb. I moved as far away from the door as possible. I shut my eyes tight and put my hands over my ears and waited for the gunshot that would kill one of my best friends.