The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF Page B

back of his skull as his face struck the floor.
    Another figure rushed her, but she recognized Martin and lowered her gun.
    “Where are the stairs?” he shouted. Several others rushed to the sound of his voice, and Kayla abruptly found herself in the center of a circle of people.
    Before she could shout that she couldn’t see shit, her eyes fell on a small metal sign above a set of double doors: S-316. How long she had struggled to find that lecture hall on her first day, late for her psychology class? The years fell away and she remembered Atherley College before the rippers, the way she sometimes had happy memories of a dead friends. Now she understood why the ripper was trying to get past her.
    “Two sets!” Kayla shouted in her excitement. “One is just to the left here, and the other is about two hundred feet that way on the same wall.”
    The gunfire had diminished significantly, the rippers running for the basements in order to escape the sunlight, and that meant that Joyce and her other raiders were about to take the full brunt of an attack.
    “We have to go after them!” she shouted. “Follow me!”
    At first she thought she was running alone, but she heard a shout from Martin and found him beside her as she reached the metal double-doors. They yanked them open together, the hinges creaking but well-used. The light spilling from the main floor illuminated more bones scattered to either side of the stairwell as they charged down, but when they turned the first corner, the darkness closed in and hid both stairs and the obstructions. Kayla slowed in order not to trip, doubting now the wisdom of rushing into the dark, but Martin switched on a Maglite, holding the little flashlight close to his shotgun as he aimed it down the stairs.
    The flashlights of Basil and other members of Martin’s troops snapped on. Kayla owned a flashlight but didn’t have any working batteries, because they were way too expensive. Now she vowed to find a way to pay. Her eyes couldn’t go where she wanted them too, but instead had to follow the beam of someone else’s light. It was distracting and infuriating, because the spot of light might change direction without warning, forcing her to either chase it or latch onto someone else’s spot of light.
    The fire doors at the bottom of the stairs stood open, allowing them easy access into the first basement corridor. They spilled out, fanning to either side along the walls. Kayla got her back to the concrete and forced a deep breath. She had to remember, had to picture the day she had turned the wrong way down here when she was late for her chem lab. For a moment, she remembered the corridor in fluorescent glory.
    “That way to the loading docks,” she called to Martin, pointing to the right. “That way to the labs.” She pointed left.
    “Loading docks first.” Martin stepped into the hall, waving to his troops. “Gabe, cover the rear. Andreas hold this stairwell. Everyone else, Go!”
    Kayla wasn’t sure where she fit into all this since Martin’s troops seemed to already know who should be with Gabe and who with Andreas, so she went with Martin, running beside the big man toward the sound of screams and gunfire. At least down here there was little of the fog of dust that had been generated upstairs by the C4.
    They turned a corner to find a crowd of rippers running in panic down the wide corridor, heading straight for them, practically fighting one another to get away from the loading dock area. Their clothes were often little more than rags hanging from sunlight-deprived skin, which sometimes hung loose where fat had melted away. Grime and filth coated many, as if they had at times been buried and dug up.
    Kayla had no time for fear or anger. She slid to a halt and put a bullet through the chest of the one closest to her. There were enough flashlights now concentrated in this area that she could dimly see even if she wasn’t focused on a single spot of light.
    “No!”