Wings of Death

Seek and you shall find

 Joshua had managed to collect the necessary equipment within half an hour and Alex was now ready to leave. Mr. Smith checked the transmitters and radios, they were working just fine.

“Remember Alex, you need to get it done as fast as possible. Don’t loiter around. Good luck”, Mr. Smith sounded just like Alex’s father. He had lost his dad when he was just 7.

“Alright, I got it. Be back in a jiffy”, replied Alex.

It was cloudy outside and the drizzle gradually turned into a heavy downpour. He went back inside and grabbed a raincoat from the clothing rack on the first floor. Alex remembered how he used to hate the rains because it prevented him from playing outside with his friends. Everything had changed now. He was relieved at the sight of the raindrops trickling down his clothes. He navigated his way through a by lane and emerged on the main road. Many of the cars had crashed and there were decaying corpses scattered all around. The Bloodwings hadn’t even spared the dogs and cats. Before moving on he decided to examine one of the corpses to see if the Bloodwings had touched it. There weren’t any bite marks. Then something strange caught his eye, there was a hole in the neck and there was dried blood all around it. He took a look at a few more corpses and each of them had the same hole in the exact same location.

His thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Smith’s voice on the radio, “Come in Alex. Come in. Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you loud and clear. I am on the main road that leads to West Allenton”, replied Alex.

“Okay. Now walk towards the City Square. Contact me when you reach the spot”, there was a sense of urgency in Mr. Smith’s voice.

Alex kept walking towards the City Square. He was trying to walk as fast as possible while remaining alert.  He had not seen or heard anything strange so far but he knew he could not lose focus. After walking for almost fifteen minutes he finally managed to reach the Square.

“I am here Mr. Smith,” said Alex while gasping for air.

“Great! Now just catch your breath. The building should be on your left. There is a large satellite dish on top of it. It is a tall building, you can’t miss it”, said the voice on the other end of the radio.

Alex looked around him and examined his surroundings carefully. He took a few steps towards the right of the City Square and there it was; the network and communications office.  The doors were wide open and the security guards lay dead on the floor. He knew there were going to be more corpses inside and the rotting odor would be more intense inside the building. He could not go back from here so he tied his handkerchief around his face and pressed on.

As he entered the building he noticed there was shattered glass everywhere and several dead bodies were scattered on the stairs.  The people who used to work here were lying dead on the floor and there were pools of blood around all the bodies. The elevators weren’t working since the power was out. There must be a backup generator somewhere he thought. He had to get the power back on before fixing the network problem.

“Mr. Smith, do you know where I can find the backup generator for this building?” he asked.

“Most large offices keep their backup generators at the basement level. The door to the basement usually stays locked so you will have to think of something”, replied Mr. Smith.

Alex looked around him for something he could use to break the door. He spotted an axe inside the case with the ‘Emergency’ sign. This would surely do the trick. He took out the axe and headed towards the basement. To his great surprise the door wasn’t a wooden one. It was a steel door which had to be opened using a keycard. He was so infuriated that he felt like throwing the axe at the door. “Think Alex,” he said to himself. He knew there had to be some way of solving this problem. He remembered that most electronic doors had a manual override system in case there is a power cut. There must be a lever on the hinge of the door. Surely enough there was a small lever on the left hinge. The problem was he needed a small screwdriver or nail in order to press it and he had neither of them.

“Alex, are you there? Come in Alex”, the radio echoed in the empty building.

“There is a steel door in front of me. It opens with a key-card but there is a safety lever on its hinge. I need a small sharp object to press it with. The lever is located in a small opening and I don’t have anything that small.”

There was a long pause at the end of which Mr. Smith replied, “There must be a maintenance room. I am sure you will find a screwdriver in there”.

“Okay, I will look for it”, said Alex.

The building had eight floors; Alex understood that finding a small maintenance room would be very difficult for an outsider. He started scouring every floor trying to find the room. It took him about twenty minutes to find the maintenance room. It was on the sixth floor. He started ransacking the shelves and drawers to find the screwdriver. He found it at last in the topmost shelf. With the tool in his hand he rushed down to the basement. As soon as he pressed the lever with the screwdriver there was a metallic ‘clink’ sound and the door was flung open. The generator room lay in front of him.

“I did it guys. I am inside”, he relayed his achievement on the radio. Joshua and Mr. Smith could finally breathe easy now.

Alex went inside and started examining the generators. They had enough fuel and seemed to be in perfect condition. After switching the generators on, he went over to the control panel and re-directed power to the server room on the seventh floor and the elevators. He was too tired to climb the stairs all over again. He kept the screwdriver with him, just in case he needed it again and stepped inside the elevator.

 Within a few seconds he was standing in front of the server room. It was a large concrete room with no windows and just one door. The room had a total of sixty computers and three core storage units. Even though the main computer was password protected Alex had no trouble logging in thanks to his hacking skills. He rebooted the servers and then ran a scan to assess any software problems and hardware malfunctions. Everything was working just fine. The cell phone towers were still functional and the server had no technical glitches. He concluded that the servers must have shut down due to the power cut. It was time for him to leave, the servers were back online now and the generator could keep them running for about four weeks. Alex thought to himself, if only the people had locked themselves inside the server room instead of trying to run in panic, they might have still been alive. Before leaving the building he decided to call Joshua using his cell phone to check if the network was stable.

“Hey bro, the servers are back online and we should be able to make calls without any problem”, he stepped out of the building while still on call and started walking towards the Square.

Alex was so proud of his own achievement that he could not stop smiling. He had done a great service to all the survivors in the area.

“Alex, come back. It is not safe out there”, exclaimed Joshua on the radio.

Alex was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn’t even notice that it had stopped raining. He looked up; the clouds were beginning to clear up. The sight of the sun peeping from behind the clouds sent a cold shudder down his spine. His heart began to race and he started perspiring. Soon enough he could hear a faint screaming noise. He knew he should have stayed alert. There was no point in trying to go back to the server room. He had already come too far. The voice on the radio kept shouting, “Alex, where are you? It has stopped raining! Come back Alex!” He was so terrified that he forgot all about his radio and started running frantically towards the City Square. He was panting badly and his mouth felt as dry as sandpaper. The screams started growing more and more intense. Alex kept on running without looking back.