And here we are. Once again, I was to protect the life of someone else, a duty I would've gladly handed off. Had it just been me separated from the group then it wouldn't have been a big deal. I've grown accustom over the years to looking out for myself. However, with Lexi here and her being so young, I had to watch out for both of us. Even with Jane and Tim, they were both experienced hunters and we were never confined in such a tight space. There was always room to run or backup. What's worse, the ceiling collapse was loud enough to catch the attention of many of the soulless in the area so a great number of them were already on the first floor moving upward. Also, the second stairwell was on the other side of the building and we originally came up the other one so we didn't know the condition of it.
"Come on," I told her.
I took the lead and looked into each room to make sure nothing was moving. I didn't want to get cornered if a soulless should decide to come out of a room for a snack. We only came across one and I bashed it's head in. Just before we reached the stairwell, Lexi asked me, "We're going to make it out of here, right?"
I know I should've said something, but it wouldn't have meant anything. Better that she knows what can happen. I tried opening the door to the stairwell, but it was chained shut. Unlike the building, the chain and lock were in decent shape so brute force wasn't going to break it. I remembered I still had the bolt cutters with me. They were a pretty cheap pair of bolt cutters and the chain was thick, but I managed to break through. While I was working, Lexi alerted me to a soulless walking down the hall toward us. I turned around, shot it in the head from a distance, and went back to work.
I realized why the door was chained after seeing the stairwell. Either it was never finished or something really bizarre happened because there were large sections and chumps of the stairs missing. We also couldn't get off at one of the next floors since nearly all of the stairwell doors were chained shut from the other side. The only hope was that the exit door at the ground floor could be opened. About one floor down after walking around the broken stair sections, we saw a soulless with swords for arms (Lexi called it a cutter). It was jumping over the missing segments and climbing towards us. When it was one set of stairs below us, I shot for its head three times, two of which were a hit. The last one it blocked with one of its swords. This was one of the first times I'd ever seen a soulless learn from experience. It continued to come toward us, covering its head with the sword whenever I pointed my gun at it. Its body looked like it had a thick outer layer to it so shooting at the abdomen wouldn't have done much good without bullet piercing rounds.
"Shoot at the legs!" I told Lexi.
We both shot and it fell backwards down the stairs. I jumped down hoping to finish it off without making more noise. As it got up, I smashed it in the head with the baseball bat, knocking it into the wall. It quickly recovered and charged at me. I ducked and it ended up stabbing the wall. I smashed it's head again and I tried again, but it swung its sword hand and cut through the baseball. It charged and swung at me again and I dodged as I took out a knife and my handgun. As it turned around, I shot it in the head and then ran behind it, jumped up on its back, and started stabbing its neck. It slowed weakened to the point where it could only stand, at which point I jumped off its back and kicked it down the stair. It didn't get up. I looked back at Lexi and her eyes were wide and she had a frightened look on her face. I would've asked why she looked that way, but I already knew. I was much more of a monster than that thing was. We continued on, encountering regular soulless and quickly killing them. Sometimes, if they were close enough to the railing, I'd just knock them over it (gravity is a close friend of mine).
We came to the third floor and the rest of the stairwell was for the most part, not there. I was dumbfounded as to how so many of the soulless could reach us without the stairs until I turned around and realized that the door on the stairwell wasn't chained shut. We could've just went through the corridor and found the other stairwell, but there was too much risk. Also, there were already soulless heading toward us. I decided that I'd try and make it to the bottom floor by climbing down. There were a number of bricks and mortar sections missing so I could use them as footholds. I needed to bring Lexi with me though.
"Climb on my back. We're going to climb down to the bottom floor," I said.
"Okay," she said, though somewhat skeptically.
Once she was ready, I started climbing down slowly.
"Hold on tight and don't look down," I told her.
It began to get tougher as we were half way down when my hands were starting to sweat. I lost my grip and fell with Lexi screaming into my ear, but I made sure to land on my feet and arms and not on my back. It hurt, but I was okay for the most part. I instinctively looked around and saw the door to the main floor open. We went through looking for kitchen where Mike said he'd meet us. I was limping a little now. It was then that I saw a large group of soulless heading toward us. We began darting down corridors, away from the many large groups approaching us. I was worried we might come to a dead end. It turned out that that fear came to be a reality in a way. Two groups of soulless approached us, one on each side of the hallway. There were too many in each group for our guns to take down so we ran down to the only door left to go through. By luck, it happen to be the kitchen, but there were already soulless in there as well. I pulled Lexi over to the only window in the room and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge so I tried breaking it open by kicking it, but it was too thick. I was about to take out my gun to shoot through the glass when it opened and I saw Mike and Jess. I grabbed Lexi and pushed her through the window and then jumped out myself with Mike shutting the window and prompting a pipe in-between the window screen and the inner wall of the window, keeping it from sliding open. Lexi hugged Mike who said, "Sorry, but we couldn't stay in there any longer with the craze in there. They had us cornered too."
"It's fine. Let's just go," I said.
We headed back to the original outpost. The day was taxing enough, physically and emotionally. Although it was a close call, I was able to protect Lexi. I felt like I had purpose. It felt nice. It was almost good enough to make me forget about my sprained leg.
- Jack's Diary
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