Crack!
Charlotte looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. She looked around at the room’s door and started hyperventilating. There was a jagged hole at the top of the door where a probing arm hung through, groping and clawing at the air with its bloody fingernails and trying to get inside. There was only moments left before the door would give way completely.
“Just go,” Annaliese urged her. “Before it’s too late.”
Charlotte climbed up onto the ledge tentatively. Annaliese placed a hand on the girl’s back to steady her.
Then, without pause, Charlotte jumped. It seemed that, once the girl had made up her mind, she wanted to get it over and done with. Annaliese watched her hit the mattress and rebound off into the grass. She stood up quickly and made it clear she was alright.
Crack!
My turn, Annaliese thought as she placed one of her wellington boots onto the ledge. Her hamstrings were painfully tight from her desperate sprint through the hallway and it was a real struggle to push herself up onto the ledge. Every time she tried to climb up, her legs went numb and she fell back down. It took a couple of attempts before she was finally able to get up onto the ledge. Then she found herself looking down at the mattress below, suddenly feeling that the drop was more like twenty feet than twelve. She knew it was just her imagination – a built-in safety device that every person had to keep them from taking risky falls – but the thought of jumping was still terrifying. The hardest part of the jump would be fighting her instincts and stepping out into nothing but thin air.
Crack!
The room’s door continued to splinter and come away as the infected threw themselves at it.
Right, Annaliese told herself. Let’s do this.
I’ll count to three.
One…
Two…
Thr-
She stopped herself just as her body was about to take flight. She quickly realised that she had forgotten something.
Mike’s wallet.
She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t leave without even having looked for it. She hopped back down off the window ledge and glance frantically around the room. The wallet was in clear sight; right on the bedside table where Mike had said it would be.
I can grab it. There’s time.
She eyed the brown leather wallet and then the room’s battered door. The hole at the top was now the size of a person’s head and several of the infected peered through at her with their swollen eyes.
I can make it. I can get the wallet.
She made up her mind. She dodged back around the bedframe and headed over to the bedside cabinet. She placed her hand around the wallet and was surprised by how heavy it was. She just about managed to force it into her pocket when—
There was an almighty crash! The cracking of wood and the sound of a door being busted wide open.
Annaliese hurried back to the end of the bedframe, but was cut off by a large man with a torn cheek and a flap of skin hanging loose.
She let out a scream, and so did the man, screeching at the top of his lungs.
She leapt onto the exposed box springs of the bedframe and used it as a springboard to hop towards the window. More infected people flooded into the room and headed right for her, all of them screeching like banshees.
With a fresh surge of adrenaline, she was able to leap up onto the window frame with a single attempt. She stared down at Clark and Charlotte below. Both of them stared back at her anxiously.
Annaliese prepared to jump.