Fathers Day Inspiration
Contemporary Escape
The lights flickered as screams echoed through the cavernous main concourse. The Reynolds huddled together, holding each other, praying that what was happening outside their hotel suite didn't match what was happening in their imaginations.
Rachel, a retired army front line medic, tried to calm her autistic son Miles. He was wearing his noise-canceling headphones hoping that would help his sensitivity to the sounds that were happening around them. Jordan, ever the comedian tried his best to be upbeat by using jokes to cut the tension. Only to catch, looks from Rachel who was fraying under the stress. Their preteen daughter, Lexi, laid in the other room desperately connected to her cell phone trying to piece together what was happening from posts from the outside world. She'd always been the tech-savvy one in the family, but her recent obsession with amateur radio and Morse code—a project for her advanced STEM class—had driven Jordan crazy with all the beeping practice sessions.
They had been holed up in their two-bedroom suite since the outbreak started. At first unaware of the chaos around them. It was only when they left their room to head down to Chef Mickey's for dinner that afternoon did they see the nightmare unfolding. As soon as they stepped out into the main hallway on the top floor, they were met with an infected guest that suddenly rushed them. With the ease of a trained soldier, Rachel side stepped and in one motion threw the threat over the rail, falling 14 floors below. Stunned, they watched as what was left of the human creature, slowly get up again driven by blind rage to find anything that moved.
"How is that possible?" a stunned Jordan asked his wife, but she was already assessing the threats around them. Before he could say anything else she had her family back inside their suite with the door barricaded.
The next few hours were a whirlwind of resource gathering and planning. By the time they emerged from their room again, Camila and the other survivors just arrived at the monorail platform within the hotel.
"There," Dr. Chen whispered, pointing across the atrium up to the 14th floor. "There is a family, they aren't infected!"
They hesitated to yell up, not wanting to draw attention to their location to what was possibly hundreds of infected within the hotel.
"What do we do," Maya whispered, "We have to help them"
But all they could do is watch in silence as the family slowly but methodically made their way to the emergency staircase at the end of the hall. They disappeared within, the only way they could go was down. Each floor brought the possibility of running into infected. They made it halfway down when they heard it… thud, Thud, THUD.
Movement below them, maybe three floors down, maybe less. Sensing the danger, they emerged to the 7th floor to find another escape route.
They found themselves at the end of the hallway with hundreds of infected below and between them. They hallway seemed clear for the moment, but they knew that just because they couldn't see them, didn't mean the infected weren't there. There were dozens of rooms with the doors open down the hall. Each one could be a means of escape or death depending on what was inside.
They surveyed their options when Miles started to point in the direction of the monorail. At first, no one noticed. Miles continued to point, silently in the direction of the survivors watching from the monorail platform a few floors down and a lobby away.
Lexi noticed next. Survivors! She stood up and silently waved her arms in their direction. Rachel and Jordan stopped what they were doing and looked at the direction their children were waving. And for a moment, everything paused. There was Hope.
In the mist of chaos, two groups separated by death exchanged silent waves to each other, hoping to find a way to contact each other. Lexi grabbed her phone and began flashing her flashlight in deliberate patterns—short flashes, long flashes, pauses. Morse code. Her hours of STEM class practice suddenly became a lifeline.
Maya squinted at the flashing light from across the atrium. "Wait," she whispered to the others. "That's... that's Morse code."
Dr. Chen, who'd served in the Navy years ago, watched intently. "She's spelling out numbers," he said quietly. "It's a phone number."
Maya quickly entered the digits as Dr. Chen translated each flashed sequence into her Disney issued phone.
Maya sent the following message "Lobby, not safe. Infected are on all floors. Find laundry chute. We are going to EPCOT."
Suddenly, the rhythmic thud echoed through the hotel lobby below. Hundreds of infected were suddenly awakened to the sound of Lexi's cell phone message going off. The collective scream from the hoard reverberated through the walls and sent a shiver down the spine of everyone. Ever on the ready, Rachel grabbed her daughters cellphone read the message and threw it over the balcony hall to the mass below, causing a frenzy of violence as they reacted to the ringing phone landing in the mass of them. ENRAGED, the infected charged looking for any way up to find their new victims.
The swarm in the lobby alerting what seemed like every other infected on all the other floors like some evil form of communication. Watching from the monorail platform, there was nothing the other survivors could do to help. Any sound would alert the infected and give away their position.
The Reynolds had a brief moment to respond as infected guests emerged from their rooms, seeking and pursuing whatever was leading them. Jordan grabbed his children and rushed them into the laundry and storage room a few feet away. Rachel was already there scanning for anything she could use as a weapon to protect her family.
They blocked the door with racks of supplies, Jordan using his body weight to keep the door from collapsing in from pressure of the infected trying to get inside. Rachel gripped Jordan's forearm, forcing him to meet her gaze. "We have to move. Fast."
"Get the kids down the laundry chute, I'll hold the door. Once you are down, I'll dive in and follow" Jordan ordered. The door started to buckle and they knew they didn't have long. Rachel grabbed a dozen towels and threw them down the chute hoping to create a softer landing spot for her children.
She wrapped Miles and Lexi each in a towel, the children held each other as they climbed in and slide down in the dark chute into the unknow. Rachel went next, looking back at her husband she mouthed "I love you" and he responded "I know" as she descended the chute after her children.
Alone, Jordan braced the door with everything he had left. His palms bled from gripping splintered wood. His body shook—not from fear, but from the raw exhaustion of holding back the chaos just inches beyond the threshold. On the other side, rage made flesh pounded against the frame. A guttural, inhuman chorus filled the hallway. He had seconds.
The hinges gave first, shrieking like wounded metal before snapping loose. The frame splintered. The door buckled.
Jordan stumbled backward, falling hard over the makeshift barricade of towel racks and housekeeping carts.
The infected came pouring in, mindless and ravenous. One leapt over the debris, snarling, its fingers curled like claws. Another tripped, crashing into a rolling laundry bin. A third crawled across the ceiling tiles dislodged in the chaos, dropping down just feet from him.
Hidden beneath an overturned cart, He froze. One heartbeat. Two.
Then instinct took over.
He exploded upward with a grunt, swinging the mop handle like a bat forged in desperation. The wood cracked against the skull of the nearest attacker. The infected dropped instantly—neck twisted at an unnatural angle, its body spasming once before going still.
He pivoted, gritted his teeth, and swung again.
CRACK.
The handle shattered on impact, splinters spraying the room. The next infected barely slowed.
They collided.
He roared, not in fear—but in fury. Fury for his kids. For his wife. For the world collapsing around them.
He drove his shoulder into the second infected, slamming them both into the wall with a crunch of bone. He grabbed at its throat, pummeling with his fists, elbows, anything. Teeth tore at his forearm. He didn't care.
The third tackled him from behind. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs and blood.
Fists flew. Nails gouged. Jordan bit down on a face and spit out blood. It was a slaughter.
He didn't think. He just fought. Guttural, animalistic. Survival stripped of reason.
By the time the two infected stopped moving, Jordan was barely standing, swaying like a drunk in a storm. One arm hung loose—dislocated, useless. His chest was soaked in red. More shrieks echoed from down the hall.
More infected. Dozens. He looked at the broken mop handle—no, a stake now—and grinned through the blood in his teeth.
He stepped forward. Looked over at the survivors watching him from below. He charged… Not because he thought he'd win. But because he refused to die on his knees.
They heard it before they saw it.
A deep, sickening crunch echoed through the open atrium of the Contemporary, followed by guttural screams—both human and something else. Camila gripped the railing, eyes darting toward the seventh floor just above.
Through the geometric void of the inner concourse, she caught movement—a man, bloodied, staggering, swinging a broken mop handle like a sword.
"Is that—?" Maya gasped.
Dr. Chen raised the binoculars they'd scavenged from a PhotoPass cart. "Yes. It's the man. The father. Seventh floor. He's… he's fighting them."
They all turned to look. Through the open hallway above, lit by flickering emergency lights, they watched Jordan take on the infected alone.
He moved with wild determination. Not trained. Not precise. Just raw, exhausted rage. He smashed one of them straight into the wall, the impact loud enough to make Ethan flinch beside Camila.
Another tackled him, and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Blood sprayed the beige walls. His own. Theirs. It didn't matter.
Camila's throat tightened. "We have to do something."
"We can't!" Maya hissed. "We're exposed here. If we make noise—if we try to run up there—"
"He's not going to make it," Dr. Chen whispered, lowering the binoculars. "But he knows that."
The group fell silent. From below, they saw Jordan rise again—barely. His left arm hung like dead weight, shoulder pulled free from its socket. He staggered, shirt torn, chest heaving, and turned toward the hallway where more infected were spilling in like a flood. He didn't run. Instead, he stood his ground. He raised what remained of the mop handle, gripped it like a spear, and let out a roar so loud it made even the infected pause. Then he charged.
It was the last they saw of him. The infected swarmed, and he disappeared in a blur of limbs and shrieks and blood.
Camila turned away first, eyes brimming, jaw tight. Ethan clung to her arm, silent. Maya wiped at her face with her sleeve.
"Who was he?" someone behind them asked. Camila didn't answer. She just stared up at the spot where Jordan had vanished. "A father," she said quietly. "Trying to hold the world together long enough for his family to survive."
Copyright © Jason Pfaff
All Rights Reserved
