I got up and ran. Blood kept running into my eyes. It turned the fog red, then pink as I blinked it away, then clear. Repeat every few seconds. I vaulted a low iron fence. Hitting the ground hurt so bad it nearly made my legs buckle. The wall of the hotel came into view. I was right under Julie. She must not have realized she was still transmitting. “Edward, hold onto my belt. I’ve got to lean over to see. Don’t let me fall.” I had a sudden vision of Julie toppling over the edge of a twenty-story building while trying to keep the demons off my back. There was a sudden impact off to the side and my heart jumped into my throat, but it was only another monster catching a .308 round right through the top of its bulbous skull. “Door should be straight ahead of you. Two dozen monsters coming your way.”

There was the door. I tried the handle but it was locked. It was a fire exit. Of course it was locked. It opened outward so I couldn’t kick it. I didn’t have any breaching rounds, so being really hopeful that I wouldn’t kill myself with a ricochet, I stuck Abomination’s muzzle next to the frame and blasted the lock into shrapnel. There was enough metal still engaged that it still wouldn’t open. So I overreacted and jerked the trigger twice more. That did the trick, but a chunk of metal ripped a tear in my armored sleeve and drew more blood. The movies always made it look so easy.

“Going in,” I said as Julie killed a few more of the demons chasing me. The interior of the fire-escape stairwell was nothing but plain concrete walls and metal stairs. I looked up. They seemed to go up forever.

“Climb fast. Ed, get ready to toss that black backpack over the side…Yes. That one. Careful. It’ll go off on impact…Yes, boom…Yes, it is heavy…Owen, climb really fast.”

“Crap.” Each step felt like taking a hammer to my foot as I put my weight down, but it sounded like Julie was throwing down something nasty, so I gritted my teeth and hauled ass up the stairs. Behind me, bullets fell like rain as Julie kept the monsters off the door. “Second floor.” Pain. Pain. Son of a bitch. Pain. Two steps at a time. Not fast enough. Three steps at a time. “Third floor!”

“Reloading,” Julie said. “Keep going, Owen.”

My leg hurt so bad I could taste it. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. One of the bomb nuts made it out of chemicals from the nail salon.”

There was a crash below me as one of the demons thrashed its way through the broken door. “Fourth floor,” I gasped.

“Let it go, Ed. Ahhhh!” Julie screamed. “Not me! The bag! The bag! Drop the bag. Hold onto me!”

“You okay?”