Catalyst (Book 1): Decay Chains Read Free Page B

feet left the ground. The arm raked her halfway out of the elevator. Once her hands reached the edge, she pushed back. This stalled, but failed to stop, the arm. The grip tightened around her middle and the arm yanked harder.
    She clung to the lip of the second floor, but lost her grip the minute she saw the state of the hallway. Crumpled bodies lay strewn about, half devoured. Mangled furniture, ruined machines, and overturned medical carts claimed the spaces between the dead. Injured and trapped people cried out for mercy. The few who ran past the elevator were frenzied, but still breathing, and still clinging to life. Those who walked around weren’t alive anymore. They weren’t even human. They were something else. Something that delighted in chewing on the bodies that littered the floor.
    A face flashed into view and settled inches from her own. An empty scream escaped her lungs and her reflexes kicked into overdrive. Her punch landed on an open jaw, and it hurt like hell when teeth chipped against her knuckles. A face marred with holes that spilled out charred flesh absorbed the hit. He grunted and lashed out at her again. She put all her weight behind an elbow jab to his gut. His burned fingers lost their grip on her as he fell backward. She rolled all the way out of the elevator just in time to see him lunge and snap at her again. He took erratic swipes in all directions, but his haunted eyes never left her face.
    Another body collided with Stormy before she untucked from her roll. She packed her fists and kicked, but stopped when she heard the woman cry out. Stormy only got a side-glance in before the woman pushed past. The woman wasn’t dead yet and didn’t want to be. Face first, she dove into the elevator. On impact, the woman’s scream cut short and her body broke. The man with what looked like chemical burns along his face and body made a move. He was faster than he looked and headed back for round two. Stormy sprang up and sprinted down the hall, bobbing and weaving between debris and bodies that looked like they had just come out of a vat of boiling water. Holy shit.
    She didn’t know where the hallway led. Every time she tried to formulate a plan something happened. She spotted an open door, and cut across the hall to enter it. Before she reached the handle, someone sailed past her and locked the room from the inside.
    Pissed, she banged on the door. “Wait. Open the fucking door.”
    Screams and thuds answered her. Seconds later, the door handle jerked from the inside. Blood spurted across the frosted glass window, and then the door handle quit moving. She backed up and tripped over a body. The back of her head hit the tile first. She rolled to her side and was up on her hands and knees before the floor quit moving and the walls straightened out. A severely burned woman low crawled toward her at a break neck pace. Her eyes flashed at Stormy as she zigzagged around an upturned wheelchair and a devastated potted plant. A gurgle, followed by a moan, signaled her incoming.
    Stormy scrambled up off the floor, but wasn’t thinking when she flattened against a wall and froze. Imps and pleas flowed from her mouth as the woman’s fingers wound around her sneakers. She winced as she imagined how this was going to go. Once she felt a hand close around her ankle and jerk, she found the impulse necessary to make a move. She ripped her leg away and sailed overtop the woman, who promptly hissed and refocused her interest.
    The woman sunk her teeth into the body that had posed a tripping hazard a minute ago. Her mind wanted to look away, but Stormy’s eyes couldn’t comply. Blood smeared along the woman’s face as her teeth embedded into the man’s cheek. She didn’t stop to chew. She didn’t stop when the man twitched. When his arms began flailing about, her teeth moved down his neck. Stormy thought him dead. He wasn’t.
    The man convulsed. The woman ignored his reactions and dug deeper. The banging started