Chapter 492 The Locked Floors

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    Its face looked as if it had been smashed t by a blunt weapon. The nose was caved deep into the bone, and the left eyeball was shattered, streaking the entire socket in bloody red so that even the usual zombie- gray iris was gone. The right eye, still intact, stared unblinkingly at the people outside.

    The moment it lunged, seven or eight more zombies rushed forward. Through the crack of the locked fire door, wed hands reached and scraped madly, their sharp nails screeching over the painted metal, sending a teeth–on–edge sound that made scalp prickle.

    The zombies‘ frenzy only grew as they stared at the fresh meating down toward them.

    “Theresa, boss–this one’s locked,” Graham called over his shoulder, eyeing the secured door.

    From the rooftop down to this floor, every door they’d passed had been open. This was the first that

    wasn’t.

    Theresa stepped forward, her eyes scanning the blood sttered on both sides of the door. Through the snarling zombies, she could just make out the messy corridor beyond, streaked with long drag marks and littered with debris.

    The smelling from inside was foul and heavy. It looked like this floor had been crowded when the outbreak hit, and some survivors had managed to grab the guard’s keys, lock the ce behind them, and

    run.

    She drove her boot into the already–loosened door. The heavy b crashed down, pinning all seven or eight zombies beneath it. She put her weight on top, and the sound of skulls cracking filled the hall. With that, gleamstones popped free from their heads and rolled onto the floor.

    One straggler twitched; she silenced it with another stomp.

    No one batted an ieye/i–Theresa’s blunt, direct style was nothing new to her crew. Following her, they stepped into the corridor over the heap of bodies.

    The next second, they froze at the sight before them.

    A man’s corpse was kneeling with both hands braced against the elevator doors. Inside the shaft, the floor was covered in a tangle of bodies, rotted beyond recognition. Flesh, limbs, skulls–all fused together into one foul mass.

    Summer heat had brought the temperature up, and the air inside buzzed. A ck cloud of flies at least a meter thick hovered over the corpses, the sound a constant, sickening drone.

    Their steps disturbed the swarm. With a collective hum, the flies poured out of the shaft like a moving shadow.

    Theresa lifted her hand, raising an invisible wall of air that held the swarm back. The others watched the dark, seething cloud skim past them, the sight enough to raise goosebumps from head to toe.

    When the flies finally moved on, the maggot–covered remains beneath were enough to turn stomachs.

    Theresa’s gaze returned to the man holding the elevator doors. He was the most intact corpse in sight, though his head was dusted with eggs and his dried brain matter was cracked and brittle.

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    11:05 Mon, 25 Aug 5.

    Chapter 492 The Locked Floors

    Beside himy a work badge.

    “Quentin. Pick it up.

    “On it!” Quentin stepped forward, wiped it clean with a scrap of paper, and handed it to her.

    The tag read, ‘Project Manager – Ronald Lorik.‘

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    Theresa studied the name, one brow lifting, then swept her eyes across the floor. Aside from the flies, it was dead silent. She led the group onward.

    The next floor–locked.

    The one after–locked.

    And empty. No zombies anywhere, yet every door secured tight.

    By the time they reached the eighth floor, the same pattern repeated itself.

    It didn’t add up. People escaping a building had no reason to lock every floor behind them. In a real panic, most wouldn’t even remember to shut a door, let alone secure it. Locking floor after floor with no zombies inside could only mean one thing: someone had locked them afterward.

    “Theresa, someone’s been living here,” Lucas said.

    She nodded.

    Exactly.

    Only people actively upying the ce would have the time to clear each floor and lock it up. The fact that nothing above the 15th was secured suggested they’d been too afraid of the zombies she’d killed earlier to go higher.

    That suspicion was confirmed almost immediately.

    “Who are you?!” shouted a voice from below.

    On the seventh floor, the stairwell had been smashed out midway, and a group of people stood there, eyes sharp and full of suspicion as they stared up at the strangers descending toward them.