Capital Falling | Book 4 | Sever Winkless, Lance (most popular ebook readers TXT) 📖

If I ever had pressed their case to Sir Malcolm and he had come here for a business meeting, I doubt he would have walked through these garish doors. Funky and over the top was not in his style, apart from the red and yellow stripes of his beloved MCC cricket club of course.

As I close in on the bright doors, a sudden rattling sounding behind me stops me in my tracks. I turn instantly, back to the tied-up doors, the M4 poised and my heart racing. Plastic leaves sway on the branches of the tree for a moment, even as the rattling of the doors ceases. I stand rooted to the spot, waiting to see if the noise starts up again.

A minute or so passes and the sound isn’t repeated. Whoever, or whatever tried the doors must have lost interest, at least for now. Wishing that Josh or Alice was here to cover the doors is pointless and I turn my back, ready to finally find Karen and Jim.

My left hand closes around the red handle and I carefully pull the door ajar, just enough for me to peak through so that I can listen. I see nothing and all is quiet, so I continue to pull the door open. I release the door handle as soon as my right foot and leg can take charge, to allow me to get both hands back on the M4.

Inside the main entrance, is the reception area just as described, the bright and funky colour scheme is embellished to make my eyes hurt even more. The lime green is transferred to the carpet, whilst the red and blue is transferred to the furniture. More bright colours are added to the collection, with pink and yellow seeming to be another favourite of the wacky designer. I wish I’d bought a pair of sunglasses with me, I joke to myself, as I look for targets in the reception.

There are no targets in amongst the upside-down furniture and other debris scattered around the reception. Splattering’s of blood break up the lime green carpet, matching the layout almost perfectly, blood also pooled on the carpet around the reception desk to raise my guard even further, not that it needed it.

I step inside Cole & Co’s reception; the sprung door closes slowly behind me. The carpet beneath my boots cushions my move forward, towards the opening beside the reception desk, that I’m sure leads into the main offices. A low Rabid gargling sound travels to me as I near the reception desk and the M4 eases over the top of it to check behind it.

My shock is instant as my eyes fall on the ripped apart remains of the woman, whose responsibility must have been the reception area. The woman’s torso, who appears to be little more than a girl, has all but disappeared. Her flesh is eaten away, down to the rack of bones that make up her ribcage. Below that, grotesque horror, her stomach and the innards that were once housed there has also been fed upon, only tattered flesh from her body organs remains around the sides of the carnage. The gluttony went so deep that a quivering spine glistens with blood at the bottom of the torrid scene.

My focus moves away, it has to, and I look at the face of the girl, whose once pretty face, which is now ragged and horrific, stares straight at me. I wonder if the sorry look she is giving me would change instantly if I were anyone else, if I were a ‘normal’ human being. I am sure that it would be a look of feverish hate and hunger and she would go into a feeding frenzy, even though there are no stomach muscles to lift her up and no body organs to welcome the flesh.

A new dose of blood and brains decorates the lime green carpet when, with a heavy heart, I put a bullet through the receptionist’s head to put her out of her eternal misery.

I pull my M4 back from over the desk in sadness, but with new vigour, a vigour to get the fuck out of here as quickly as possible, and get back to my girls, Catherine, and Emily.

The opening into the main office stands over me and I step towards it, ready for the fight that surely waits inside.

There will be no hiding I see as my head peeks around the opening and into the large open-plan office, even the forest of desks and computer screens will offer little cover for me to make my retreat with Karen and Jim. Couldn’t the designer at least have had the subtlety to end the garish colour scheme at the reception, I think as I scan the colourful room? Perhaps I should give them a break, I then think, perhaps I am not their target audience.

The main office is abundant with desks, grouped together in islands, that are dotted here and there with no symmetry that I can see. Some of the islands have been broken up, their desks and chairs smashed into and scattered, their computer screens toppled or on the floor. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the chaos that took place in this office, if nothing else, the blood on the floor tells me it was catastrophic.

There is a line of enclosed ‘normal’ offices away to the right, each door decorated in a different colour. One of those offices is where Karen and Jim are hiding, and I strain to read the nameplates mounted on the front of the doors. I can’t read them from my distance away, though, my eyes aren’t as good as they once were. My M4 moves away from the row of offices and I see another sister row of offices away to the left. At the back of the room, past the islands of desks is a glass-walled meeting room, complete with obligatory funky furniture.

Where are