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    Vertical City: A Zombie Thriller (Book 1 of 4)
    Vertical City: A Zombie Thriller (Book 1 of 4)
    Vertical City: A Zombie Thriller (Book 1 of 4)
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Vertical City: A Zombie Thriller (Book 1 of 4)

    By George Mahaffey

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    About this ebook

    In the midst of a global pandemic, a group of evacuees are marooned atop a skyscraper in a major city after a terrible helicopter crash. Abandoning the streets to millions of hungry infected, the survivors seal off the structure at the 10th floor and string wires between it and other buildings to avoid being eaten alive by the hordes rampaging below. But dwindling supplies force those still alive to take greater risks as they struggle to survive hundreds of feet off the ground.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGeorge Mahaffey
    Release dateFeb 4, 2016
    ISBN9781311167064
    Vertical City: A Zombie Thriller (Book 1 of 4)
    Author

    George Mahaffey

    George S. Mahaffey Jr. is a lawyer, screenwriter, and author. His script Heatseekers was bought by Paramount Pictures with Michael Bay producing and Timur Bekmambetov attached to direct. In addition, he's sold or written scripts for Arnold Kopelson, Jason Blum, Benderspink, director Louis Leterrier, and is the creator of In The Dust, an action-horror graphic novel in the vein of 30 Days of Night to be published by Top Cow with art by Christian Duce. He has also written the first two books of the Blood Runners Trilogy, and is the author of the horror novellas Amityville: Origins, Amityville: Revenants, Razorbacks, Razorbacks II, The Pact, the Vertical City zombie thriller series, and the action series Thunder Road. He lives in the Washington D.C. area with his wife and young son.

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      Book preview

      Vertical City - George Mahaffey

      Vertical City

      A Zombie Thriller

      Part 1

      By

      George S. Mahaffey, Jr.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      About The Author

      www.georgemahaffey.com

      Copyright 2015 by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

      Cover design by: Exclamation Innovations

      This is a work of fiction and all rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

      OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

      BLOOD RUNNERS: ABSOLUTION (Book 1 of 3)

      BLOOD RUNNERS: DESIGNATED SURVIVORS (Book 2 of 3)

      AMITYVILLE: ORIGINS (Book 1 of 2)

      RAZORBACKS I

      RAZORBACKS II

      THE PACT

      THUNDER ROAD (Books 1)

      THUNDER ROAD (Books 2)

      Then they said, Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

      - Genesis 11:4

      Prologue

      Wherever people gather there’s a story about how things began. A creation myth. Most seem to involve lots of semi-darkness and swirling mists and a celestial tinkerer who swoops down to get the party started with great sound and fury. For those of us who survived The Awakening, I guess you could say it was pretty much the same. It began with a bang alright, the crash of a helicopter.

      I was a little over three years old when Mom and Dad rushed into my room and roused me awake. They were out of breath, faces flushed, bags slung over their shoulders. Mom’s eyes were wet and the smell of her sweat tanged the air as she leaned down into my crib.

      Wyatt, sweetie, it’s time… time to go.

      Reaching up, Mom took me into her arms and jimmied a pacifier into my mouth marked Heartbreaker which I thought was weird since I’d kicked my binky addiction nearly six months before.

      We were living on the sixteenth floor in a high-rise in the middle of the city. A sleek twenty-storey steel and stone silo birthed by the latest and hottest real estate development concern, perfectly positioned for transport and easy access to the city’s most desirable districts.

      My folks bought their coop before I was born and kept it even as they made plans to retreat to the suburbs. It was close to work after all, which was important to Dad who massaged money for members of what passed for the American nobility. I rarely saw him, but Mom seemed happy and we’d wanted for very little.

      I knew something was wrong that night because my folks were together, side-by-side even, which was highly unusual. They’d also left a bag of Mom’s low-fat popcorn popping in the microwave near our dog Shemp who barked at a flatscreen as we made for the front door.

      Mom tried to keep me from looking back, but I broke free of her grip and stared at the screen. There was yet another breathless story about the ancient mass grave unearthed after the ice sheets receded somewhere in the wilds of Russia. I watched a few talking heads sputtering about this and that before the story was interrupted for Breaking News.

      Shaky, handheld footage splashed across the screen. A female reporter on a street appeared and pointed and then the camera spun to reveal a mob of men and women who were moving spastically like the apes I’d seen when Mom took me to the zoo. Everyone on the screen looked incredibly angry (or hungry, I couldn’t tell which) and a few seemed to be missing parts. In seconds they rolled right over the reporter as spurts of red speckled the camera. I thought it was all make-believe of course, but then the screen went to snow and starting beeping out emergency tones.

      Turning back, we pushed out through the front door, greeted by a phalanx of big men clutching weapons. Dad whispered and handed them a folder of money and they ushered us down the hallway, using hand gestures to communicate. The power winked out and red emergency lights flashed.

      I rubbed my rheumy little eyes as screams and thumps echoed from somewhere under us. Mom covered my ears, but I heard everything, including the piercing wail of what sounded like a woman on a floor directly below us shrieking, WHA – WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY?!

      Mom’s chest rose and fell as she followed my father and some of our neighbors down the long, twisty corridor that ended at a steel door. My folks stopped to catch their breath, flinching at the sounds of things popping – gunshots, I soon surmised – from somewhere below. This went on for a few seconds and then I heard the sustained echo of automatic weapons fire interspersed with concussive blasts and then… silence, followed by the triumphant, angry roar of what I thought were animals.

      You know what that is, baby? Mom asked, pointing toward the door at the end of the hall.

      Do – door, I said.

      We’re going through that door, Wyatt, okay?

      I nodded.

      Can you do something for me when we go through that door?

      Another nod from me.

      Whatever you do, do not look down, okay? Keep your eyes on mommy. Do. Not. Look. Down.

      For the first time real fear panged me and my eyes began to get misty as I caught sight of my father, a broad-shouldered man who’d never shown a modicum of emotion in all the time I’d known him, begin to weep. Whether he was crying for himself or us, or simply because the mini-empire he’d built was likely on the verge of collapse, I didn’t know, but it hardly mattered. There’s nothing worse than seeing your old man wilting when you’re a kid.

      Dad wiped his tears and set his jaw and then we were on the move again, following our bulky guards who stopped at the steel door. They traded looks and checked their weapons before looking back at us. I saw one of them, a bearded brute who resembled a black bear, mouth "one,

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