Zournal (Book 5): Feeling Lucky? Read online

  I had envisioned us running in and going room to room freeing prisoners who then ran out and got guns from somewhere and started killing the Koreans. That vision wasn’t panning out since the ‘QRF’ (Quick Reactionary Force, Reeves was full of all kinds of neat military trivia and acronyms) had gone past us we hadn’t really seen anyone else. The huge casino floor was empty. I was thinking they maybe had it vacant to protect against a Zombie incursion. Or, maybe there just wasn’t enough Koreans here that they needed to use anything besides the rooms upstairs. We had no idea what was going on and I really hoped that complete lack of knowledge didn’t get us all killed. We’d made it so far on luck and guts and lady luck can be a fickle bitch.

  I was taking us to the far corner of the casino away from the doors we had come through. This took us within site of the front doors. We could see through the front doors where the mass of Zombies was crammed up onto the glass. If we had time that would probably be a great door to figure out how to open. Assuming we could ride the wave that would come through it and get off in time for it to crash down on the Koreans. Except for some sporadic gunshots in the distance we weren’t hearing much more from them at this point. I guess all they really had to do was get those bodies out of the way and shut the doors and they were good to go over there other than trying to find and kill us.

  We kept moving. We were running now while keeping our heads low. I was in the lead. I saw the exit signs pointing over towards the stairs and headed that way. Then I realized we didn’t want to exit the building we wanted to get to the hotel rooms. We also wanted to avoid the monorail level where I figured most of the Koreans were hanging out since that was the easiest way to get between the buildings. I saw a sign for the elevators and headed that way. I felt vaguely uneasy about taking elevators but figured it was just leftover brainwashing from early days of school when you’re always told to never get in an elevator during a fire.

  We made it over to the little corridor with the elevators in it and I was reaching for the up arrow when the elevator doors for one of the elevators started opening. We started shooting as soon as it was open enough to show Korean uniform colors inside. Two other elevators started opening and we lit into them as well. Then we pulled the bodies out of the original elevator and jumped into it. I hit the button for floor five. The elevators started sliding up the incline inside the pyramid. We were passing floor three when a couple bullets pinged off the elevator we were in. We made it to the fifth floor and jumped out as soon as the elevator stopped. I had already pressed the buttons to send it to every other floor as a distraction.

  Not getting shot as the doors had opened had been a great feeling. We got out and walked around the corner and saw two soldiers bent over the ledge looking down into the lobby with their guns out. Trying to avoid using our guns and signaling what floor we were on Catori, Reeves and I drew knives and charged the two. They gurgled to death through slashed windpipes a few seconds later. We left the bodies there and moved down the hallway. All of the doors required a key card to open. With the power on the system was up and running.

  I started knocking on doors. I’d knock, wait a few seconds then go to the next door. Reeves was following behind me with his pistol and he’d bum rush the person who opened the door and put a few bullets in him once he was in the room. It was loud and barbaric but efficient. I figured we’d do it for a few rooms then try and go up a floor and try it there. My working theory on this one was that the pyramid had been established when there wasn’t power. With no power, a bunch of stairs would suck. I figured anyone important was on level two where the monorail and the connections were. Not important people were on level three. Level four would be a buffer floor. Level five would be prisoners. It was a complete guess but with no intel to go on I figured we might as well try out the hunch since no one else had any better ideas.

  The third room was the charm. The second room had actually been empty. In the third room, after Reeves killed the half-naked Korean officer who opened the door with a pistol in his hand but no intent to actually use it. We found our first woman prisoner. Although, it turned out she wasn’t so much a prisoner as a guest. She also wasn’t happy with us ‘liberating’ her. As soon as she saw the dead Korean she had flown at Reeves and punched him and tried to run around him. Ann had shoved her back against the wall and put a knife to her throat to shut her up.

  “Are you guys fucking crazy? Where’d you come from? You need to let me go now so I can get the hell away from you before they come up here to wipe you out.” The woman was freaking out. Ann pushed her harder and told her to shut up. I started in on her.

  “Where are the rest of the women and children prisoners kept? Tell us what we need to know and we’ll let you go.”

  “I think the people they bring in are up a floor but they don’t keep them there for long. I’m not a prisoner. I have my own room on the second floor. I was a working girl before all this shut started and I’m still doing the same damn thing at the end of the world to make ends meet. Now let me go. You already killed one of my best damned customers.”

  We quizzed her for another minute but all she seemed to know was her way around the Luxor and despite her claiming to not be a prisoner she seemed pretty limited to a few floors in the hotel. She only knew about the prisoners since you could see them getting marched around every once in a while, up on the sixth floor. She confirmed the power had only been back on for a couple months but they had been some of the best months of her life after living through no power and Zombies everywhere. The Koreans had a pretty easy time taking this hotel since they just made noise in the middle and the Zombies had all jumped over the ledges to try and get at them. Then it had just been a matter of cleaning up. The whole moat of death thing seemed like more of an accident than a coherent plan and she was looking forward to it going away.

  We were fixing to wrap up with her when Ginny motioned us all to be quiet. There was a couple Koreans walking by she told us. The hooker jumped up and started yelling to let her go and that we were in here. Ann stuck her and she bled out on the cheap, moldy cigarette scarred carpet of the discount resort on the strip.

  Ginny opened the door and we left. As I expected, there was no one in the hallway.

  Entry 36: The Sixth Floor

  We stayed low as we ran along the hallway towards the elevators. At this point we were definitely not planning on jumping in the elevators to go up to the sixth floor. I figured the stairs were over by the elevators somewhere.

  If the stairs were by the elevator we couldn’t find them. Against all common sense and our better judgment, we hopped in the elevator and hit the button for the next floor up. I prayed to lady luck from the door opening to the door closing that we’d make it up with no issues. I prayed as hard and fervently as any of a thousand other desperate men had prayed in this elevator. Them praying they could turn their mortgage money into a fortune that would make their kids and wives love and respect them again. Praying to regain their self-respect.

  I wasn’t worried about self-respect. I could care less about appearances or any of that. I had no idea what clothes I was even wearing right now. I was willing to bet I was already covered in blood though. I prayed for my friends to make it out alive. My friends who were as close and tight as any of my family had ever been. Catori was relatively new to the group so he was kind of like a long-lost cousin in the family department right now but I threw him into the prayer too. Even Daisy got a brief mention as I exerted all my will to removing any guards who may be standing on the sixth floor with fingers on their triggers waiting to see who was in the elevator.

  The elevator stopped at the sixth floor and the doors slid open. We stepped out of the elevator and saw a desk setup on the right side of us when we moved out. A Korean was sitting at the desk smoking some kind of nasty cigarette while two others stood behind him looking down over the ledge. They were probably trying to figure out what the gunshots below them were from. The Korean soldier sitting at the desk looked up
at us and we all saw his eyes open and his mouth drop. He was reaching under the desk for something when Reeves went ahead and shot him in the forehead.

  His brains and blood splattered the other guards who were spinning around to face us as Reeves and Ann put rounds into both of them as well. One of them did manage to shoot a bunch of holes in the ceiling as he was going down. We ran forward and confiscated all the easy to grab stuff out of their rigs. Then we started moving down to the rooms behind the guard desk.

  The doors had chains screwed into them on the outside so you needed a key card to open the door plus you needed to undo the chain bolt. It wouldn’t have passed a fire marshals inspection but it made me optimistic we may finally be in the right place. Yelling from the floor below drifted up to us and reminded us all that we were definitely on the clock. Catori had a big fire ax he had found in one of the hallways and he used that to bash down the first door. Once he had it beaten down enough he went in and a few minutes later he came out followed by six girls in their early teens.

  They all looked traumatized and had some bruises and a few of them had the glassy expressions of habitual drug users but they followed us with no complaints. They actually seemed happy to be getting out of there and cautiously optimistic about being able to make it out of here alive. Two of them said they’d be willing to hold the AK-47s we had taken off the dead guards so we handed those over as well as giving two of the other girls the pistols we’d snagged off the bodies.

  We hit the second and third rooms and added to our collection of young battered women. A couple of them refused to come out of the rooms so we left them there for now. We kept moving, I was determined to try and free as many as we could. I was hoping there wasn’t a lot more though as I already had no clue how we were getting the hell out of here.

  We were working on door ten when I noticed Catori had two young Indian girls with him. He’d found his sister and Marg’s daughter at some point along the way. I let myself be happy for him for a second before getting back to work. There’d be plenty of time to celebrate if we somehow managed to make it out of here alive. We kept moving until we had opened about sixteen doors. We had about fifty girls roaming the hallway with us now. They looked to all be in the ten to twenty age range. Most of them were visibly bruised up and a large percentage of them looked pretty high.

  I heard yelling from the end of the group. Ann and Ginny had been hiding out with the girls at that end to catch any Koreans that caught up with us. I shoved my way through the crowded aisle as I heard gunshots erupting from that end of the hall. The girls around me were all screaming and trying to run the other way. I got through them and saw a handful of dead Koreans and two dead girls laying in the hall outside the room Ann and Ginny had been waiting to ambush them from. I saw more getting off the elevators up ahead and starting to move in this direction. I reached down and heaved one of the dead Koreans on top of the other one and laid down to use them as a shield and as a shooting platform to prop my AK-47 barrel on.

  “Ann, take the girls and go down the hall and try to find the stairs to get out of here. You and Ginny talk while you run and try to figure something out. I’ll hang out here for a while and keep them off your ass. Click twice when you have a plan and I should come to join you.”

  Ann bent down and gave me a kiss then her and Ginny started jogging in the direction the terrified girls had run. I settled into my corpse pillow and lined up my sights on the first soldier venturing in my direction. I took the shot and then started putting shots into the wall the other ones were hiding behind. I knew once they decided to come out and charge me I was more than likely dead. Especially if they had some grenades to lob at me. If they continued to come at me the way they had been then all would be good.

  I was focused on the ones behind the wall and almost didn’t notice four more guys walking out from the hallway leading to the elevator. It took their buddies a second or two to get across to them they should not be where they were. That second was all I needed to drill one of them through the head and I think I got another one or two of them somewhere in their bodies as well. The Koreans started tossing grenade looking objects and I put my face into the crotch of the dead body on the bottom of my little corpse pile and held my breath.

  I held my breath because I was waiting for a grenade to explode and also because I had no desire to find out what the dead soldiers crotch smelled like. I heard a hissing noise and took a peek and saw that they had been tossing smoke. I guessed that was smart since now they could rush me and I couldn’t see them. Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t trying to be cute. I went ahead and threw one of the four frag grenades I had collected while battling our way to this point. I figured they’d be rushing right as the smoke got the thickest. I didn’t really need to see very good to throw a grenade in the general direction of the enemy.

  I stuck my head back down in the dead dude’s junk as the grenade exploded. I felt the body I was hiding behind jerk a few times as shrapnel hit it. I looked up and saw the grenade had caused all kinds of damage to the hallway and to the soldiers who had been charging me. It didn’t look like it would be super safe to even walk down that hallway anymore. I felt like the people who would have been sent into the smoke first were the lower ranked guys and since I believed in inclusivity and strength through diversity I decided to try and include the officers in this fun as well. I got up and ran forward to the edge of destruction and tossed another grenade through the smoke towards where I suspected the elevators to be. I was hoping a bunch of officers had gathered there.

  I turned around and took off running. With impeccable timing my radio clicked twice. Just for the hell of it I stopped and tossed a grenade down towards the lobby where the elevators would be at. If a group of soldiers was down there waiting to come up that should do a good job of ruining their day. I kept one grenade as I had plans for using it on the front door to this place if I got the chance. Letting in a few hundred thousand Zombies should be a decent distraction if we could pull it off.

  I heard shots and sensed bullets hitting the walls and traveling though the air around me. I hugged the side of the hallway and started running for all I was worth. Up ahead I saw a large group of girls gathered in front of one of the rooms. Ginny saw me coming and jogged over to talk to me.

  “We shot out one of the windows in this room and we’re going to slide down the side of the pyramid and then go in through another window.”

  Ok. Sure. Why not.

  I went ahead and set myself up outside the door to take shots at any Koreans that showed up. I figured Reeves was doing the same thing on the other side. I wondered if this whole exercise was just an excuse for Ann to finally use the rope she had been carrying around for like a month now. She kept saying you always could use rope. I guess she came from a reality where needing to slide down the face of giant glass pyramids to escape angry soldiers and Zombies was the norm.

  I sent some shots in the direction the bad guys would be coming from. Two of the girls with weapons were also standing there with me. One had the AK-47 and the other had some kind of weird looking machine pistol. It looked kind of like an Uzi. It might have been an Uzi. I had no idea what an Uzi looked like other than what I remembered from some old Bruce Willis movies so your guess is as good as mine on that one. Within a few minutes all the girls were in the room so the slide plan must be working out.

  A group of Koreans came our direction shooting as they ran. The girl next to me caught a round directly in her face and went over backwards. I grabbed the girl with the thing that might have been an Uzi and drug her in the room with me. Behind me I heard Reeves doing the same with the girls he’d been working with. I asked Reeves how many grenades he had and he said five. I told him to throw one down his side and hand me one to throw down my side. We did that and then ducked back inside to avoid the backlash. I half expected one of us to join the hole in my hand club that was currently only counting Ginny as a member.

  Grenades thrown and the bad guys think
ing they had us cornered we pulled back and focused on trying to secure the door to the room. Reeves brought up catching the room on fire but Ginny nixed that by reminding us there were still rooms full of innocent girls in the building that were locked up and we weren’t going to be able to get to. Setting a fire would very likely cause them to all die.

  The dead bolt mechanism on the inside had been removed so we settled for wiring up a grenade booby trap that would take out the first few guys who came in here after us. It should slow down the rest of them to as most people didn’t want to rush into a room they’d just seen a bunch of guys get blown up in. With luck, they’d consider us cornered and try waiting us out while we were busy sliding down the side of their pyramid.

  The last of the girls made it out and I went over with Reeves to take a look down. It was a good thirty feet down to where I saw another jagged hole in the glass. From a distance, the slope looks pretty easy going on the Luxor. When you’re looking down it from my vantage point it looks like it goes straight down. We’re talking five black diamonds with a picture of a dead skier on it.

  Considering a bunch of girls had just done it I figured me and Reeves shouldn’t hesitate too long or there’s be lots of snide comments to endure later. I just didn’t like heights. Reeves didn’t look too thrilled either.