loathing las vegas: part 9

The elevator doors opened, and Martin and I shuffled into the corridor, guns drawn. The passageway ahead of us was about eight feet wide and we could see several hundred feet down the well-lit hallway, which ended at a set of double doors. Piping, conduit and air ducts ran along the ceiling of the corridor and through the wall above the double doors, presumably into the next room.

The masonry walls were painted white, easily reflecting the ample fluorescent lighting in the hallway, so it only took Martin and myself several seconds to confirm the area was clear.

Martin walked back into the elevator and flipped the red switch labeled ‘Emergency’. “At least we know the elevator will be here waiting if we need to retreat in a hurry,” Martin said, walking back into the corridor.

“Same as last time, people,” Martin instructed. “Kevin and Holly at the back; Wil, you’re with me.”

Fear flashed across the face of Sheri and Diana, who obviously remembered that this formation had not exactly worked out for one member of the group in the past. “Don’t worry,” Holly said, cocking her shotgun to load a round, “we’re much better armed this time.”

The group moved down the corridor and stopped at the closed double doors. A small window had been cut into one of the doors and Martin pressed his face against the glass to get a good look at the next room before opening the door. “Someone’s been in here,” Martin quietly reported to Wil, “there’s a blood smear on the floor.”

Martin pushed the door open and led the group into a large storage area. The room was stacked with old slot machines, aging blackjack tables that were sloppily leaned against walls, and hundreds of non-powered neon signs. It was like a casino graveyard.

“Hey look, a Wild Cherry machine,” Holly whispered so only I could hear. It had been her favorite slot machine back before Vegas went to hell. “I wish I could sneak that thing out of here,” she said with a wink.

Once we neared the opposite end of the warehouse, we could clearly see another set of double doors, in front of which, a man in blue coveralls plainly stood. His back was to us, as he was intently peering through the window in the double door. The man apparently hadn’t heard us approach, so Martin waived the group behind a pile of slot machines where we crouched for cover.

“Is he one of them?” Diana whispered to Sheri, who only shrugged.

“I can’t tell,” Martin quietly answered, overhearing Diana’s question, “but I’m going to find out.”

Martin walked out from behind our slot machine cover and shouted, “Excuse me sir, could you point me in the direction of the pool!?”

The man in the blue coveralls slowly turned his body to face Martin. Martin’s assumption turned out to be correct: the man’s lips had been completely ripped off his face and the front of his coveralls were covered in blood. He also had a clear bite mark on the front of his neck from which several pieces of flesh hung. The man, upon seeing Martin, let out a gasp and slowly began stumbling towards him. Martin lifted his pistol, waited a few moments for a clear shot, and fired. The man slumped to the ground in a heap.

The group passed through the new set of double doors and into another long stretch of corridor. The passageway occasionally turned here and there, but Martin confidently kept the group at a steady pace. The hallway contained very few doorways, and the doors we did pass were either locked or just small utility substations. The hallway was obviously built primarily for underground transportation between the casinos. I wondered how many politicians or celebrities had passed through these corridors during their existence. After what felt like miles of walking, the corridor finally ended at a spiral stairwell where we stopped to rest.

“These stairs lead up to the shopping area surveillance room of the Planet Hollywood,” Martin said. “If we can get outside, the Belagio is right across the street.”

“How many of them are up there do you think,” Wil asked.

“Hundreds, probably,” Martin answered, “but we can check if the surveillance cameras up there are still working.”

…

After a short break, we single-filed up the narrow spiral stairway towards the security room. Martin, leading the way, was the first to reach the top of the stairwell where a steel pad-locked door was there to greet them. Martin futilely jiggled the pad-lock in frustration.

“I knew it wouldn’t be that easy,” Martin said.

His frustration turned to resolve as he pulled the sniper rifle from his back and slammed the butt of the rifle down on the lock. The noise created by the impact was impressive, but did little to dissuade the lock from relaxing its grip.

“That always works in the movies,” Wil commented.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got the key,” Martin said as he slung the rifle back over his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. The noise of three discharging handgun rounds echoed down the hallway, and everyone but Martin reflexively covered their ears. The lock was dented and deformed, but remained intact. A final smack from the butt of Martin’s sniper rifle sent the lock crashing to the floor.

Martin removed the remainder of the lock and grabbed the handle. He paused for a moment before opening, however, and put his ear up to the door.

“C’mon, lets get off these stairs,” Wil complained, resulting in a shoosh from the rest of the group.

After a moment, I finally whispered, “What do you hear?”

Martin, with a grim expression, turned to look at me and replied, “Scratching.”

To be continued…

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loathing las vegas: part 8

“I’m not going to be able to hold it!” I shouted.

Wil pressed his body up against the door next to me while Holly and Martin frantically searched for something to bar the door.

Unfortunately a desk, a filing cabinet and a couple of chairs were the only objects in the area. “Help me with this,” Martin said to Holly as he strained to pull the huge filing cabinet away from the wall.

A mass of monsters had collected outside the security room door, and Wil and I were losing ground. Several hands and fingers began protruding into the security room and I had to move away from the edge of the door to avoid being scratched. I could feel myself slowly sliding across the linoleum floor and knew it would only be a matter of time before we were overrun.

“Get ready to move!” came a shout from across the room. Martin and Holly had managed to move the filing cabinet into the center of the room and were ready to push it against the door.

“Now,” Martin said to Holly as the two of them began pushing the cabinet across the room. A moment before impact, Wil and I dove out of the way in opposite directions. Just as the door began to burst open, the cabinet rammed it, severing several unfortunate fingers and hands in the process.

The cabinet appeared heavy enough to stop the door from being opened from the other side, but Martin and I pushed the desk up against it too for good measure. For now, it appeared we were out of harms way.

…

Several bodies littered the floor as we followed Martin through the security offices. “This area should be clear,” Martin assured the still weeping Sheri and her friend, “I had to shoot my way out of here yesterday.”

Martin led us into the break room where a veritable oasis was there to greet us. As soon as we saw the fridge stocked with drinks and snacks, we suddenly remembered that it had been more than 24 hours since any of us ate. For the next twenty minutes, Holly and I felt human again, using the microwave to heat up some frozen burritos and finishing off half a pizza that, at some point, was probably a security guard’s lunch. I’d never been so happy to see leftovers in my life. Each of also made sure to drink as much water from the water cooler as we could stomach.

“Okay, when everyone’s ready we’ll keep moving,” Martin said, finally breaking the silence. “The armory is just down the hall and the elevator down to the passageways is just beyond that. Please tell me I’m not the only one here who can shoot a gun.”

“My brother is a cop,” Holly volunteered, “Kevin and I have gone to the range with him a couple times.”

“Mostly from his standard issue or his shotgun,” I added.

“I had a 22 when I was a kid,” Wil said when Martin turned his attention towards him, “but it’s been years since I’ve touched a gun.”

Sheri and her friend only shook their heads.

…

The armory of the security offices was a gun-nut’s wet dream. The room was wall-to-wall with pistols, shotguns and automatic rifles. The top rack of one of the walls even contained a sniper rifle with a large scope. Martin opened the first of two cabinets, revealing body armor, helmets and riot shields, items I realized were worthless to a group who needed to stay quick and highly mobile. The second cabinet contained exactly what Martin was looking for, boxes and boxes of ammunition.

Martin tossed me a box of shotgun shells and began passing out different types of ammunition to the group. All that could be heard for the next several minutes was the clicking sound of bullets and shells being loaded into various firearms and clips. Holly and I each had a shotgun and pockets stuffed with shells. Martin reloaded his pistol and filled several extra clips with bullets. He then pulled the sniper rifle down from the shelf, loaded it with a round and used the strap to hang it over his shoulder. After some further searching through the cabinets, I also found a large bottle of kerosene, which I used to fill the flask I had found in my luggage.

Wil had been unsuccessfully trying to load one of the M16’s when Martin grabbed it from him and hung it back on the rack. “Only one shot to the head will take one of them down,” Martin said, “and we don’t need any accidents either.”

Wil seemed to accept the explanation and grabbed a couple of pistols from the wall.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to put a gun in the hands of Sheri or Diana,” Holly said to me quietly. Martin seemed to draw the same conclusion since he handed each of them duffle bags filled with boxes of bullets and shells. Although the bags must have weighed more than either of them, they slung them over their shoulders with no complaint. Once everyone had just about all they could carry, Martin led us out of the armory and down the hallway towards the elevator.

Half a dozen more bodies were strewn about the area near the elevator, each wearing security uniforms and each with obvious bullet wounds to their head. Martin obviously wasn’t kidding when he said he blasted his way out of the security office. We carefully stepped over each prone corpse as Martin double checked them, one-by-one, for a head wound before continuing. We eventually made our way to the elevator doors which opened with a ‘ding’ when Martin pressed the button.

“Alright, the passageways should be on the second basement level,” Martin said, pressing the ‘B2’ button once everyone was inside the elevator. The elevator doors slid together and we descended into the bowels of Vegas.

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loathing las vegas: part 7

For a lounge with no entertainment or drinks, the Celebration Lounge at the Tropicana was bustling. The ruckus coming out of the stairwell behind us instantly garnered the attention of the entire lounge. Bloody cocktail waitresses and dismembered tourists alike, turned to watch our group force our way into the casino.

Knocking over tables as a barrier, Martin led the group through the lounge, aiming his pistol whenever a monster approached. A middle-aged man in a brown sport coat was the first to cut us off and Martin gave the order, “Wil, your axe!”

Swinging with all his might, Wil swung the axe over his head and buried it into the shoulder of the creature. Blood clots and red powder burst from the wound and Wil paused for a moment, as if waiting for the creature to collapse, hands still on the axe handle. Instead, the man grabbed Wil’s arm by the wrist, pulled it from the axe handle and brought it towards his mouth.

A blast rang through the air and the man in the brown sport coat crumbled to the ground. “No, you have to hit them in the head!” Martin screamed, probably furious that he had to waist half of his firepower in the first few seconds.

Martin glanced over his shoulder and saw the three women behind him frozen in terror. “Ladies, where is my smoke screen!”

Sheri and her friends snapped back to reality. “Now!” Martin yelled as they began to fill the area around us with white fog.

Wil, hands trembling, retrieved his axe as Martin continued the trek towards the security door. The smoke screen didn’t turn out to be nearly as effective a deterrent as the knocked over tables, so Holly and I began throwing any loose objects we could find behind us to prevent an attack from the rear.

As we entered the casino, Holly picked up a slot machine chair and hurled it into a group of creatures who were attempting to climb the prone tables. The chair had the desired effect, hitting a former cocktail waitress, who flung backwards knocking down four or five creatures behind her. When Holly turned back to catch up with the group, a remarkably familiar old woman with a Heineken sized dent in her head, blocked Holly’s path. Holly tried to bring the axe up to defend herself, but the woman had taken her by surprise and grasped the axe handle before Holly could bring it to bear. The old woman snarled and leaned her head in towards Holly’s neck.

A slight crack and a thud was all that was heard as I brought the axe head down into the old woman’s skull.

“We’re almost there!” Martin shouted as Wil brought down an armless woman with his axe.

We turned the corner around the edge of the casino and the fog from the fire extinguishers was really staring to accumulate. Monsters who had been following us unhindered began walking into the sides of slot machines and tripping over seats. Amazingly, we arrived at the security room door with a little bit of breathing room.

Martin, card key in hand, ran up to the door and slid his card through the scanner. A red light lit on the scanner and the door handle didn’t budge. “Shit!” Martin yelled as he slid his card again, yielding the same results.

The delay gave the approaching creatures all the time they needed. The fire extinguishers had finally run out of fuel and Sheri screamed, “Now what’re we going to do!”

Sheri’s slender blond friend took this as her cue to completely lose her shit. The woman hurled her empty red canister into the crowd of hungry-looking onlookers and sprinted off towards the casino entrance.

“Julie, come back!” Sheri yelled as her friend’s hair snagged on the outstretched hand of a nearby monster. The sudden jolt of her head snapping back dropped Julie to the ground. She attempted to make it back to her feet to continue her escape, but several creatures were already mere steps away.

Holly looked back at me with a ‘we have to do something’ look on her face and all I could do was shake my head. As Julie made it to her feet, an elderly man sunk his teeth into the tender flesh of her shoulder. At the same time, a woman about Julie’s age who had been crawling along the ground, found open access to Julie’s exposed thigh and used her teeth to rip a chunk out of it. Julie, bloodied and screaming, collapsed under a pile of assaulting creatures. The screaming only lasted a few seconds.

Sheri burst into tears while Holly and I knocked down two more monsters with our axes. “Fuck this,” Martin said while he aimed his pistol at the security door handle and pulled the trigger. His last bullet burst the handle into pieces and a swift kick swung the door open. “Alright, everyone inside!”

I was the last one into the security offices so I slammed the door shut behind me. The handle was destroyed, so even a slight breeze would push the door open. I sat on the ground with my back to the door as creatures began to bang and push from the other side.

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loathing las vegas: part 6

I carefully untied the steel cable while Martin covered the doorway with his pistol. We were pretty sure the entrance Holly and I came through wouldn’t be clear, so we decided to take our chances with the second stairwell. Martin said he did his best to secure each door on his way to the roof, but fire access doorways are designed to be easily opened. If we weren’t careful we could have a group of these creatures both above and below us in no time.

I threw the door open and jumped out of the way while Martin scanned the stairwell. As far as we could tell, the stairwell was clear, so the group slowly and quietly began the long decent to the ground floor.

Since Martin was the only one of us who was armed, he took the lead position and maintained a fairly quick pace down the stairwell. He wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of making his way across open ground to the airport, but after the announcement from the military helicopter, I had noticed a gleam of hope return to Martin’s eye. He told me there were miles of underground pathways under the strip, many of which were barricaded from public access. In fact, a passageway from his own security office at the Tropicana led directly underneath the MGM and ended in the shopping area of the Planet Hollywood Casino. The Planet Hollywood was right across the strip from the Belagio.

At the request of Wil, who was so heavily winded he was starting to stumble, we stopped for a break next to the 10th floor doorway.

“How far away from the end of the stairwell is the security office?” I asked Martin as I collapsed down next to Holly on a step.

“That’s the tricky part,” Martin answered while checking his gun. “The stairwell ends on the south side of the building near the Celebration Lounge. We’ll need to make it through the lounge, past a small section of the casino and into the security door.”

He paused for a moment and pulled a white credit-card-sized object from his shirt pocket, “I’ll also need a few extra seconds to get the door open with my badge.”

“The casino was crawling with those things,” I said bleakly, “I think we’re going to need more than two bullets.”

Holly stood and walked over to the red fire box hanging on the wall of the stairwell, “How about this?”

One rap from the butt of his gun and the glass covering the fire box exploded. Martin pulled out a three foot long fire axe and handed it to me. “Axe and you shall receive,” he said, smiling.

Holly also retrieved the fire extinguisher, “If we spray enough of this stuff it may distract those things long enough to reach the security room.”

“And blind us in the process,” Wil volunteered, joining the conversation.

Martin shook his head, “No, she’s right. Those things are slow and awkward. If we can blind them enough, they might spend more time bumping into shit and falling over each other than following us. There should be more of these extinguishers further down the stairwell.”

“I’m pretty sure bashing a few of them over the head with the tank couldn’t hurt either,” I added, suddenly remembering the fate of my Heineken the previous morning.

Wil’s breathing had finally slowed so the group decided to keep moving. “C’mon guys,” Holly said to the three women, who still looked as terrified as ever. “Sheri, do you think you can carry a fire extinguisher?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Sheri nodded and hoisted the red canister under her arm.

Two floors down we found another extinguisher and another two floors below that. By this time, Sheri and her friends each had an extinguisher and Holly, Wil and myself each wielded a heavy fire axe. It was around the fourth floor when we heard the commotion.

It was hard to tell how many floors above us, but we heard what sounded like a door banging open, shortly followed by the thumping sound of many heavy footsteps making their way down the stairwell. The group froze in place for a moment, everyone looking upwards, listening to the noise.

“Move!” I suddenly shouted, ushering everyone down the stairwell. They snapped to attention and we clumsily rushed down to the bottom floor.

The echo of stampeding feet was deafening by the time we reached the closed ground level door. Martin reached the door first and turned to address the group. “I’ll lead the way,” he shouted over the noise of the stairwell. “Wil, you’re up front with me. Extinguishers behind us…you guys will need to lay down a fog on each side of us as we move. Wil and I will take care of anything from the front.”

“Kevin,” Martin said, and I nodded my head in acknowledgment, “you and Holly bring up the rear. Let’s do it!”

Martin kicked the door open and the group hurriedly ran into the Celebration Lounge.

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Loathing Las Vegas: Part 5

The sun had finally set behind the mountain, but Las Vegas wasn’t a city that dulled at night. Whatever disaster that had befallen the city apparently had no effect on the power grid, as neon and LED lights brightened the strip. Even most of the lights on the Excalibur, which was still smoking from various fires, were lit.

The group sat quietly on the rooftop, unsure of what move to make next.

“So a are we going to wait here for help?” said Wil, breaking the silence. “Or are we going to try to get ourselves out of the city. The airport isn’t very far…”

“Do you know how to fly?” asked Martin, the obvious question.

“No,” replied Wil, “but I think I’d still prefer a plane crash to getting eaten alive.”

It wasn’t intended as a joke, but Martin and I couldn’t help bursting out in laughter. Holly, noticing the mood was starting to lighten, waived me over to meet her at the edge of the roof that was out of earshot of the rest of the group.

“So what’s going on?” she asked.

“Wil’s idea is to make a break for the airport and take our chances trying to fly out of here. He hasn’t said so, but I get the feeling Martin wants to wait here for help and I’m inclined to agree. Considering what I’ve seen so far, I don’t know how we’d have a chance of making it to McCarran.”

After a pause, I asked, “What’s with the girls?”

“It took me awhile, but they’ve finally calmed down,” Holly explained, “I guess the three of them are from California, too. Sheri, the one with the bridal hat, is getting married next week and the three of them drove out here for a bachelorette trip. I think it’s a safe bet that they’ll follow whatever the group wants to do.”

“How’s your arm?” Holly added.

“Sore, but I’ll survive,” I said with a smile.

“Please do,” she replied, grimly.

…

A few minutes later the group met back up near the strip side of the rooftop. Wil was pretty adamant about his plan to make it to the airport, but quickly changed his mind when Martin showed him the two remaining rounds left in his pistol. We were all in agreement that we’d need more than two bullets to make it to McCarran.

“We have an armory down in the security offices,” Martin explained, “but I was barely able to get out of there the last time. There’s enough rifles, shotguns and riot gear down there for a small army, if we could get to it.”

“That’s it,” Wil said, excitedly, “we’ll go down, get the guns and fight our way to the airport.”

“It sounds risky,” I said to Martin, “but I’d say it’s the best plan we have. There isn’t any food or water up here and it’s the middle of summer. We won’t last more than a few more days up here.”

Martin seemed to come around, “Alright, but we’re going to need to come up with something to get into those offices. I’m telling you, the place was crawling with those fuckers.”

The girls seemed nervous about the plan, but everyone eventually agreed that there was no other reasonable option. We decided to make the attempt first thing in the morning after everyone had a chance to rest.

…

The peaceful silence of the early morning was broken by the sound of approaching aircraft. The noise jolted me from an uneasy sleep and I wiped the gravel from my clothing as I stood. Martin was already awake and standing at the rooftop ledge, looking into the distance towards the sound.

“It’s a military chopper,” he said calmly as he heard me approach. “It’s sweeping the city like it’s looking for something.”

In the distance, a black helicopter slowly made its way, back and forth, over the city. The rest of the group had awaken and joined us at the ledge. The three girls from the bachelorette party fruitlessly waived their arms in the air, trying to get the chopper’s attention. No one had the heart to tell them they were much too far away to be noticed.

“He’s been making his way towards the center of the city all morning,” said Martin, “he should be right over us within an hour.”

“Thank god,” said one of the three women who all began to excitedly hug each other.

I looked over at WIl, “Looks like you won’t be earning your pilot’s license today.”

Wil nodded and smiled back. He didn’t look disappointed.

…

Just as the sun cleared the edge of the eastern mountains, the helicopter began to make its way down the northern end of the strip. As it approached us, we could hear the sound of a muffled loud speaker booming down the corridor created by the hotels. It was almost right above us before we could understand the message it was broadcasting:

“Attention survivors: please rendezvous with rescuers at the rooftop of the Bellagio. The Bellagio has the only rooftop helicopter pad in the city. We will not land at any other point. Make your way to the Bellagio rooftop within 72 hours for airlift rescue.”

The message continuously repeated as the chopper flew past us and continued down the strip.

Martin pulled his pistol from its holster, loaded a bullet into the chamber and said, “Alright everyone, lets move.”

To be continued…

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Loathing Las Vegas: Part 4

Unfortunately, the rooftop door had no outer locking mechanism and could easily be opened by a firm push on the door.

“Here!” Holly shouted, handing me a section of metal cable she had pulled from the ground. I wrapped the door handle with the cable and tied it to a thick, steel pipe that ran vertically, just around the corner of the rooftop doorway. I looped it around a few extra times, just to make sure it wouldn’t come loose, when a force impacted the door from the inside. The cable held as the monster inside desperately tried to beat down the door.

After a few minutes, the beating stopped and we decided it must have given up.

“How’s your arm?” Holly asked, reminding me the intense grip the monster had on my arm. There were no cuts or bleeding, but a nasty bruise did seem eminent.

“Oh god, your other arm is bleeding,” Holly gasped.

I examined my right arm. It was completely uninjured, but quite a bit of my attacker’s blood had smeared onto me during the knife assault.

“No, it’s ok…it’s not my blood,” I said as I wiped as much as I could off with my shirt.

“Are you sure you’re ok? That guy looked like he wanted to bite your head off.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured her, “I’d say he got the worse end of the deal. Anyway, I’m more concerned that we might have just lost our only way off this rooftop.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I saw another stairwell on the far side of the roof,” Holly said, pointing in the distance to another boxy structure emerging from the ground.

“We should go tie that one off too or get the hell off of this roof before it’s too late,” She finished, grabbing another length of cable from the remnants left on the ground.

Not sure which we should do, we began walking towards the other stairwell. Should we dehydrate to death on this roof, under the intense heat of the sun or should we risk getting mauled to death by the occupants of the hotel. Neither seemed a promising choice.

As we approached the second stairwell door, it burst open, and five people stumbled into the sunlight.

“Holy shit, I thought I was going to suffocate in that damn thing,” complained a large, portly man wearing a poker themed shirt.

“We should be able to…freeze!” the second man, in the uniform of a security guard, interrupted himself as he saw us, raising a pistol. As he did so, the other three members of his group, three women in their twenties, screamed and ran back into the stairwell.

We both froze in place with our hands up in front of us. We were more relieved to see normal, talking human beings than fearful of having a gun pointed at us.

“Hang on, man, we’re not one of them,” I said, dropping my hands. “We thought we were the only normal people left.”

The security guard relaxed, dropped his pistol and announced, “It’s ok, they’re just more survivors.”

The young women re-emerged from the doorway and cautiously evaluated us from behind the security guard. One of them had an interesting hat, like a mini-bridal veil, on her head and I assumed they must be in town for a wedding.

“I’m Kevin and this is my girlfriend, Holly,” I said, extending my arm for a hand shake.

“The name’s Martin,” the security guard said, grasping my hand. When he glanced down and noticed the remaining blood on my arm he alarmingly pulled his arm back and re-aimed his weapon. “Where have you been bitten!”

“It’s not a bite,” I responded, nervously, “I stabbed one of those creatures over at the other stairwell and got his blood all over me.”

Martin lowered the gun and roughly grabbed my arm, carefully inspecting the area for any injuries. Holly had enough, “What the fuck is your problem? Why are you so worried about a bite anyway?”

Martin, apparently satisfied that I wasn’t injured, holstered his gun and answered Holly, “If one of those things bites you, you eventually turn into one of them.”

“That was back when there were six of us,” chimed in the man wearing the poker shirt.

The security guard finished the story for him, “An old man was bitten by his wife and found us down on ten. He lasted for about twenty minutes before he finally turned.”

“What are these things?” Holly asked.

Martin shook his head, “I don’t know, but we have to get out of the city. Bullets don’t even put these things down unless you shoot them in the head. Wil, here, thinks it’s some kind of virus.”

“What else could it be?” said Wil, the man in the poker shirt. “It’s like some kind of brain eating form of rabies or something.”

The three woman standing behind Martin were still visibly shaking. Despite the sweltering heat of the rooftop, they were huddled next to each other as if trying to get warm. It didn’t seem like any of them had taken this disaster very well.

One of them finally managed to gather enough courage to yell, “How are we going to get out of here!”

“I’m working on it,” Martin replied, as if annoyed. He leaned closer to Holly and myself and whispered, “I haven’t been able to get any of their names, so far. They’ve kind of just been following me since I shot my way out of the casino.”

He nodded towards Holly, “Maybe she can talk to them…”

Holly accepted and sat the three women against the ledge wall, while Martin, Wil and I secured the stairwell door and discussed our situation. Wil had been in town for a poker tournament at the Rio, but busted out on the first day. His flight was scheduled to leave later tonight and return to San Diego, where he worked in IT consulting. Martin was a Las Vegas resident and the afternoon security manager for the Tropicana. His wife had recently kicked him out of the house, so he had been staying at the hotel. He woke that morning, ready for work, and walked into the same disaster Holly and I had.

“It took me half a clip,” Martin explained, “before I finally dropped one with a head shot. After that I could bring them down in one shot every time. Had to take out half my department just trying to get back to the elevator.”

Hours passed and we made little progress towards a plan on getting us out of the city. The sun has started to set behind the mountains and everyone was getting hungry.

To be continued…

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Loathing Las Vegas: Part 3

As we cautiously exited the hotel room, Holly turned left to head toward the elevators.

“Uh-uh,” I signaled her in my direction as I turned to the right, “I think I’ll take the stairs this time.”

Removing my knife from its pocket and opening the blade, I led Holly down the hallway. There were doors on both sides, so I fully expected a bloodthirsty mob to jump out of each one we passed. The hallway was eerily quiet and I got the feeling that we were the only people still on the floor.

The last door at the end of the hallway had an icon of a staircase painted on it, and I paused as I put my hand on the push bar.

“What’s wrong?” Holly inquired upon my hesitation.

“I’m just trying to decide if opening this door is such a great idea.”

“It can’t be any worse than hanging out here in this exposed hallway,” Holly rationalized.

“Good point,” I said as I pushed the door open, baring the pocket knife ahead of me.

The stairwell was well-lit and in good condition, but more importantly, it was empty. I wasn’t sure how far it was to the top of the hotel, but I knew from see the hotel outside, that it was at least twenty stories tall. Luckily, our room was already on the 17th.

Holly closed the door behind her as she entered the stairwell and we both paused for a long moment to listen. Off in the distance we could hear loud thumping and banging. The noises were definitely originating at least several floors below us, but we decided against going down to investigate. We couldn’t hear anything from above our position, so we started to climb.

…

The staircase leading to the 23rd floor dead-ended at a shut door with sunlight trickling around the edges. Along the push bar of the door was labeled ‘Authorized Personnel Only’, but at this point neither of us were worried about violating hotel policy. I opened the door a crack and peeked through, allowing my eyes to adjust to the sunlight. It was August in the desert, and I could feel the stifling heat pouring through the crack and into the well air-conditioned stairwell.

“What’s out there?” Holly asked, trying to look past me.

From this vantage point, I could only see a small portion of the roof, but everything seemed quiet and undisturbed, so I pushed the door open the rest of the way. It swung wide and we both stepped out onto the gravel covered rooftop.

As soon as Holly could get past me, she ran over to the ledge closest to the strip. I cautiously followed after her while surveying the roof for any sign of movement. After deciding the roof was clear, I put my knife back in its pocket and joined Holly at the ledge.

“Look, the cop is gone,” Holly said, pointing at the blood stained asphalt where he fell. “Where did he go?”

I glanced around the street, but didn’t see him anywhere. There’s no way he could have walked away with those injuries. The street was still filled with those insane people, so it’s unlikely an ambulance would have been able to get to him without meeting the same fate.

I suddenly blurted out the only possibility I couldn’t eliminate, “Maybe they ate him?”

Holly snapped her head back and gave me a look as if she couldn’t believe what had just come out of my mouth. Holly’s brother was a police officer back in California, so I think she took my comment personally. Her eyes welled up and she looked back down at the street, ashamed to admit she was thinking the same thing herself.

I put my arm over her shoulder and visually scanned the area surrounding the hotel. The Excalibur, the castle themed hotel across the street, was on fire and smoke was pouring out of broken windows on several floors. The streets were still full of wandering pedestrians and I could now see quite a few abandoned cars further down the strip. McCarran airport was right behind us and was void of activity; highly unusual for one of the highest volume airports on the planet. Something horrible had happened here.

I could also hear screaming in the distance, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

Despite the obvious disaster that had befallen the city, Las Vegas still appeared to be in pretty good shape. Electricity was still functioning properly on almost every casino, and, aside from the smoldering Excalibur, everything appeared normal.

It was the eerie silence that was getting to me. Vegas was always a town hopped up on alcohol, drugs, sex and excitement. Seeing it like this was like looking at it in a painting or a photo. Sure, it looks exactly the same, but you can’t feel the life or energy of actually being in the middle of it. Well, I was certainly in the middle of it and the only life I felt was the one standing next to me on the ledge of the Tropicana’s roof.

…

A metallic bang startled both of us and we looked back at the roof. The stairwell door slowly swung back and forth in the breeze.

“It’s ok,” I told Holly who was visibly rattled, “it was just the wind.”

A blood stained arm reached out of the shadowed stairwell opening and grabbed the edge of the doorway. A bald, middle aged man with glasses poked his head outside and lazily looked around the roof top. His glasses were askew on his face and his white t-shirt was stained red with blood. He froze when he noticed the two of us standing next to the ledge.

I pulled my knife out and flipped open the blade. We had carelessly left the rooftop door open, giving these monsters full access to our only area of safety. I had to get that door closed before more could make their way through.

Knife in hand, I ran at the man, who growled and mashed his teeth as I approached. When I was close enough to strike, the man grabbed a hold of my free forearm and squeezed it painfully. I reactively brought the knife down into the top of his skull.

His grip on my arm relaxed and he stood there for a moment, as if confused. He then collapsed backward under his own weight, the knife still in his head, and tumbled down the stairwell. On his way down to the next floor, his limp body impacted two other blood soaked individuals who were making their way up the stairs. I slammed the rooftop door shut and desperately searched for a way to bar it.

To be continued…

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Loathing Las Vegas: Part 2

I stumbled down the hallway in a frantic attempt to retreat to the safety of my hotel room. My hands were shaking so much it took several attempts to successfully aim the card key into the slot. With a click, the door unlocked and I forced my way into the darkened room, slamming the heavy door shut behind me and locking the deadbolt.

Sprinting across the room to the window, I grabbed the curtains and threw them open, filling the room with blinding sunlight. I nearly jumped through window when an angry voice growled from under the covers of the bed, “What the fuck, Kev!?”

“Holly, get up,” the sense of urgency was clear in my tone.

“Close the blinds and give me a minute,” she begged, too hungover to really care what I was in such a hurry for.

“Holly, get up now,” I said sternly while pulling the covers off the bed. “Something fucked-up is going on right now. Get dressed.”

She curled her naked body into the fetal position and finally lifted her head to look at me, “Assho…” Her anger instantly subsided when she saw the look on my face. That look told her to get the hell out of bed and get dressed. “What’s going on?”

“I was just attacked in the casino. An old lady was bleeding from her neck and I think she was trying to bite me. I smashed my Heineken over her head…”

“You did what!?!” she yelled as she pulled her shirt on over her head.

“It wasn’t just her…a security guard was missing his arm…everyone in the casino had this weird look in their eyes,” I said, stuttering.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She pulled on her jeans and walked over to the window, “Christ, you hit an old woman…”

We both stopped talking as we witnessed the spectacle unfolding on the Las Vegas strip below. A police car raced down the strip, swerving in and out of pedestrians who apparently weren’t restricting themselves to the sidewalk. As the car passed through the Tropicana Blvd intersection, several dozen people flung themselves from the overhead walkway and down onto the street. The officer swerved to avoid the falling bodies, jumped the curb and hit the streetlight head-on with his car. Swirls of smoke poured out from under the hood.

Holly gasped at the sight of the collision, but relaxed when the officer opened his door and stumbled out onto the street. Several of the bridge jumpers had risen to their feet and began to slowly make their way towards the officer. Bystanders surrounding the collision also noticed the commotion and also began approaching the scene.

We could see the officer yelling something, then he pulled his revolver and began randomly shooting anyone around him. “What the hell is he doing,” Holly cried as a woman took a shot to the head and crumbled to the pavement.

We couldn’t hear the shots through the closed hotel window, but we assumed he was out of ammunition when he hurled his gun at the crowd. He had only managed to drop the woman and his barrage did little to effect the crowd’s determination to reach him. The officer fell to his knees as two men grabbed each of his arms…and ripped them from his body. He fell on his face in a heap as the crowd pounced on top of him.

Holly took several steps backward from the window, her eyes wet with tears. She looked at me for some kind of an explanation, but all I could do was turn away from her and look back out the window.

“Kev…what the fuck is going on…did they just kill that cop? Why are people jumping from bridges…why did he shoot those people…” She burst into tears and I grabbed her in my arms.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think we need to get the fuck out of here.”

…

Holly calmed down after a few minutes and I sat on the edge of the bed, racking my brain. There was no way in hell I was going back down to that casino, but as far as I knew, that was the only way back to the ground floor. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go anyway…the Valet had our car and keys, and somehow I doubt there was anyone working the Valet at the moment.

Holly grabbed the hotel room phone and put the receiver to her ear. She hit a few buttons on the keypad and slammed the phone back in place, “It’s dead. My cell phone!”

She grabbed her purse from the nightstand and dumped its contents onto the bed. As she flipped open her phone, I used the remote to turn on the TV.

“It’s no use…I have service, but it just keeps coming up busy.”

“Holly,” I said, calmly.

“Maybe a text message will work…”

“Holly,” I said, firmly this time. She turned at looked at the TV as I flipped from channel to channel, seeing nothing but static. “We have to get the fuck out of here.”

…

We both frantically searched our bags for anything we could use in a survival situation. I generally preferred to pack light, so other than several fresh changes of clothes, the only other items in my suitcase were a flask, a lighter, a cigar cutter and my four-inch pocket knife, all of which I jammed into my jean’s pockets. Holly, on the other hand, packed practically two weeks of necessities, in two bags, for a mere weekend trip. Unfortunately her dedication to ‘being prepared’ was useless, since having an outfit for any occasion wouldn’t do much against a rabid mob. The only potentially useful item we found was a can of mace from her purse, which she pocketed.

“Keep trying the cell phone,” I knew where I was going, I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do once I got there. “Maybe we’ll get a better signal from the roof.”

To be continued…

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Loathing Las Vegas: Part 1

I awoke with a start, covered from head to toe in a cold sweat. My heaving chest began to slow and I sat up in the darkness. Did I have a nightmare? Whatever caused me to awake in such a panic was lost in the haze of consciousness. I couldn’t remember dreaming anything at all…let alone a nightmare.

My head began to clear and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, allowing me to notice a small crack of light peaking through the curtains from across the room. It came back to me in a flash and I remembered where I was. I was in Las Vegas. To be specific, I was in my hotel room at the Tropicana.

I suddenly became aware of the body next to me, my girlfriend Holly, whose long, deep breaths assured me that my sudden arousal had not woken her too. Since she was sleeping face down, I placed my hand on her back and felt the warmth of her body seep into my cold fingers. She began to slightly stir at the touch, so I pulled my hand away and slowly crept out of bed.

I quietly walked over to the curtains and pulled them open just enough to poke my head through. The sudden intense sunlight stung my eyes and minutes seemed to pass before they were able to refocus. It had been quite a marathon of irresponsible alcohol consumption the night before and my eyes obviously hadn’t fully recovered.

It was daytime in Vegas, the ugly half of the city’s facade, and our room’s 17th floor location facilitated quite a view of the city and the desert beyond. Thousands of people could be seen meandering about the strip below, but traffic on Las Vegas Blvd was surprisingly light. In fact, I couldn’t see any cars on the strip at all. Maybe they closed it down for an event?

My mind soon wandered and my eyes fell upon a flashing electronic billboard hung above the entrance of the MGM Grand. The sign scrolled, “All-you-can-eat Fried Shrimp and Steak: $8.99”. My stomach rumbled…I could already taste the shrimp.

I reclosed the curtain and stumbled back into the room. Fumbling through my suitcase in the darkness, I somehow managed to properly dress myself and put on my flip-flops. Grabbing my wallet and room key from the night stand, I momentarily considered waking Holly and asking her to join me for breakfast. The mental image of the two of us at breakfast was quickly replaced with the Patron shot glass pyramid she had built the night before and I smartly changed my mind. Maybe in a few hours.

I hadn’t exactly escaped hangover free either; I wasn’t feeling sick, but a slightly throbbing headache reminded me that a hundred ounce fruity drink from Fat Tuesday’s costs more than the $30 they advertise it for.

Deciding to stick with beer for the rest of the day, I grabbed a Heineken from my cooler. I didn’t normally drink first thing in the morning, but cliches of ‘hey I’m on vacation’, ‘this is Vegas baby’ and ‘drinking is the best cure for a hangover’ ran through my mind. I was always good at rationalizing a drunken stupor.

I opened the door and headed down the hallway towards unlimited mounds of shrimp and steak.

…

A few minutes and a short elevator ride away, I was on the casino floor. It only took a few steps out of the elevator for me to realize something wasn’t right. I could see plenty of people and the sounds of music and slot machines chimed through the casino. It wasn’t so much that something was out of place as the pace of everything was just off. As if the life has been drained from the casino. No one was cheering, no one was talking. There wasn’t any kids hurrying past security guards or middle-aged women screaming into their cell phones. There were no drink waitresses working their way around the machines. In fact, no one was sitting at a machine at all. As if time were stopped, they were all just standing there.

This all happened in a split second so my mind was reeling to make sense out of the scenario. What the hell was everyone doing? A moment later, I had the answer. What was the one thing every single individual on the casino floor had in common? They were all looking at me.

In a dazed confusion I took a half step back. A short, elderly lady was only about 20 feet away from me and my attention snapped towards her as she began to move towards me. Her red shirt glistened in the light of the well-lit casino and something was hanging from her neck. As she took another step closer, I realized to my horror that her neck had been ripped open and a wad of flesh drooped from it. Her shirt wasn’t red, the sleeves were green; it was stained by the wave of blood that had erupted from her neck.

I desperately looked around for help. A security guard stumbled around some machines, tripping and falling in front of the old woman. Torn flesh and damaged veins hung from the stump where his arm used to be, but the injury didn’t seem to bother him. He turned his head to look at me and stared at me for a moment with lifeless, glazed-over eyes. His nose wrinkled as if sniffing the air and he bared his teeth at me while emitting a horrible, guttural scream.

My eyes began to tear with shock and I stumbled back into the closed elevator doors. The old woman tried to take another step, but the security guard had fallen in her path and she lost her balance, dropping on top of him. They each tried to climb each other in an attempt to get back on their feet, both of them, eyes intently on me.

I again visually searched the casino for some shred of sanity, but there was no help there. Dozens of people slowly approached me, each with the same dead, glassy look in their eyes. Some were missing arms, some were simply bleeding profusely from wounds. One woman was missing both her legs and was managing to drag herself towards me by her arms.

Like a rat trapped in a corner, I frantically searched for an escape route. Before I knew what I was doing, my hand painfully slapped the elevator button and the doors slowly pulled open. I darted inside and pushed the ‘17’ button as quickly as I possibly could. I hit the ‘close doors’ button and looked back out towards the casino as the doors began to slowly shut. To my horror, the old woman had apparently managed to regain her footing and was close enough to stick her arm between the closing elevator doors. As soon as the doors detected the object, they swung back open, putting me face to face with an 80 year-old woman who was mashing her teeth.

Using the only object I brought with me, the unopened Heineken bottle, I instinctively smashed the woman on the forehead, sending shards of broken glass and foamy beer across her face. Although a terrible waste of beer, the action had the desired effect, and the force sent the woman tumbling backwards. I repressed the ‘close door’ button and the last thing I saw as the doors slid shut was the woman again rising to her feet.

I slumped to the floor as classical music filled the elevator. The trip to the 17th floor felt like hours.

To be continued…

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