Aberdeen

by James Bierce

  One of the men, who has long, gray hair and a thick beard, is obviously the brother of the man she just killed — although he appears from this distance to be the younger of the siblings. The other is much younger, a young man probably in his late teens or early twenties. The younger of the two is carrying a rifle in his hand, and has two very visible pistols strapped to his hips — while the older one is holding a single handgun in his hand as he opens the door to a wall of smoke and flames. Falling back onto the ground, the brother screams something that Sarah can't quite understand, then picks up a rock and throws it against the building as he continues yelling at the top of his lungs. He stares at the ground for a few minutes, clearly upset from the way his right hand keeps tugging obsessively at his beard, as if he's trying to rip it out — then he stands up and yanks the rifle out of the other guy's hand. At first he simply looks around at the surrounding area, focusing mostly on the pathway through the woods — then he brings the gun up to his chin and looks through the scope, aiming it toward the pathway, and then directly at the shack.

  "Does that door have a lock?" Sarah asks quietly, backing away from the window for a moment.

  "No, I don't think so — I can't feel one," Rachel answers back, having trouble seeing anything in the darkened space. "What's going on?"

  "I think they're coming this way…"

  She peeks out of the window again, just long enough to see the two men running up the pathway toward the hospital — and the shack. With her flashlight aimed low, she looks around at the interior, which has little in the way of furniture besides a small twin bed and a couple of old wooden chairs in the corner — and she finally comes to the determination that it's futile to try to hide here. She takes out her gun instead, motioning for the others to stand clear as she steps into the far corner and aims the pistol at the door.

  "Check that building, I'm gonna check up the hill…" they hear a voice say from right outside the door, along with a set of footsteps that slowly disappear.

  Sarah's hands are shaking horribly as the doorknob slowly turns, and when the door opens and floods most of the shack with light, she notices that the others are still hidden in the shadows, and it's obvious that he doesn't see any of them as he shines his light around the middle of the room. When the light finally reaches her, he calmly points his gun at her head and closes the door behind him — glancing briefly at the others before returning his attention to Sarah.

  "If you shoot me, Sam will hear the gunshot, and I can guarantee that you don't want that to happen…" the young man says quietly. He slowly lowers his gun, placing it into one of the holsters on his hip, then he aims the flashlight back at Rachel and the boys. "Listen, we don't have much time, we have to get back to the dock before the others take off without us — but you need to stay quiet until we're gone, otherwise Sam could get all kinds of fucked up ideas in his head."

  "We didn't kill him, the dogs killed him…" Sarah says, her voice shaking with fear.

  "Frankly, I couldn't give a rat's ass whether you killed him or not, he was an asshole who took up too much room on the boat — but he was also Sam's brother." He opens the door just a crack and looks outside, then turns around again and faces Sarah. "Like I said, stay quiet…" With a quick jerk of the handle, he vanishes through the doorway and slams the door behind him. "Find anything? Yeah, me neither."

  The others stay motionless, hearing two sets of footprints on the gravel pathway as they disappear into the distance once again — this time down the hill instead. When the sound is completely gone, Sarah carefully moves over a couple of steps and peeks out of the window again, seeing the two of them rounding the corner of the complex below and out of sight.

  "I think they're gone," she whispers. "We should stay here for a while though, just in case they come back again."

  "What if he was lying? What if they're planning on coming back?" Rachel asks.

  "He wasn't lying, they clearly had us outgunned."

  "Where are we gonna go?" Matt asks.

  "We'll head up the hill through the woods — I think there's some houses across the street from the hospital."

  "Will we be able to see Dad when he comes out?"

  "Of course we will, sweetheart," she answers back, hoping that her words sounded more convincing than they felt.

  CHAPTER 22

  Aberdeen: March 31st

  The hallway ahead of Larry is getting darker — partly because of his dimming flashlight, but mostly because the sun outside is already beginning to sink lower into the sky, shading the already limited amount of light coming through the windows. With Christine walking silently behind him, he can hear footsteps and voices coming from somewhere ahead of them, all of them moving in the same general direction — the main staircase that connects all six floors of the hospital.

  "We're going upstairs?" Christine whispers.

  "I can't leave him behind," Larry answers, stopping suddenly when he sees a flash of movement in the next corridor. Muttering a few word of encouragement to himself, he starts walking again, more swiftly than before. When they reach an intersection in the hall, Christine points to the left when Larry stands there for a moment, confused and turned around by the multiple similar hallways surrounding him — but when he begins walking down that path, seeing the stairs and elevator signs just up ahead of them, he also sees a man standing in front of the stairwell door and staring straight ahead toward them.

  "Larry…" Christine says quietly, pulling firmly at his coat. "I think he sees us…"

  "Yeah, I know he does."

  They slow their approach to the man, both of them aiming their guns at him as they creep ahead steadily. Larry is trying to avoid most of the wet blood spilled over the floor, and the obvious drag marks that are leading to the end of the corridor, but he's also trying to keep a close eye on the man in front of them, who still isn't moving aside from the exaggerated chest heaves from his congested breathing.

  "Cover your ears," Larry says to Christine, stopping momentarily to aim carefully at the man's head. Standing only about twenty feet away from him, he nearly fires a shot at the man before seeing something in his gaze that Larry finds unsettling. Although he's facing two people, each with a gun pointed right at his head, the man doesn't look the least bit nervous or afraid. In fact, his eyes aren't even looking at either of them — they're focused on something behind them. He turns his head quickly and glances back down the corridor, seeing the outline of someone sneaking up from behind, then he hears Christine screaming as the man in front of the door starts running at the two of them, tackling Larry to the ground just as two quick gunshots go off right next to him. At first he isn't even certain whether it was his own gun that fired the deadly shot, which sends the man to the floor right next to Larry — but when three more shots ring out, he looks up to see Christine firing her gun at the vague outline that's now closing in on them.

  Feeling the blood pour down his face from the wound in the man's head, Larry pushes his lifeless corpse away from him and struggles back to his feet, then fires his own gun just once at the approaching figure — slowing him down only slightly as Christine continues to fire rounds into his chest. Finally, after at least seven bullets enter his body, he drops to his knees and starts crawling instead.

  "Come on, they're not going anywhere," Larry tells her, as he reaches his hand out and lowers her gun back down to her side, feeling her arms quivering from the fear and adrenaline. "You did good, but we have to save our ammo, okay?"

  Seeing her simply nod her head in agreement, Larry turns around and hobbles to the end of the hallway, stopping at the entrance to the stairs where he takes a moment to look through the bloodstained glass at the stairwell beyond it. At first he doesn't see anything but the wall on the other side, but then something streaks past him as he hears loud footsteps coming from the other side of the door. Just a few seconds later, something else passes by, this time slowing down just long enough for Larry to recognize the dark figure as human.


  "What're you waiting for?" Christine asks from behind him.

  "There's people on the stairs — a lot of them I think."

  "How many bullets do we still have?"

  "You should have six or seven in the clip," he answers, ejecting the clip from his own gun as he sees yet another person walk by. "I have four more in this one, and then another thirteen in my pocket."

  "That's not a lot, is it?"

  "Not when it takes seven to take a single man down — no." He shines the light back down the hallway, and sees the man still crawling slowly toward them. "One of us is gonna have to keep an eye on the people coming up the stairs, and the other has to take care of the people ahead of us."

  "I guess I'm watching the people behind us?"

  "Yeah, it's the least dangerous — are you ready?"

  With Christine nodding again, Larry opens the door just a crack and shines his light through the doorway, seeing nobody in either direction, but hearing a lot of commotion from up above. Feeling the cold breeze of fresh air rushing up the steps from below again, Larry steps through the door and starts climbing the first few stairs — then hears the door behind them slam shut, and then a click as the lock traps them on the other side. After another few steps, he sees the bare feet of someone lying down, their body twitching slightly as the people ahead of them trip over the nearly lifeless body in their haste to climb the stairs. By the time Larry realizes how many are packed onto the steps ahead of them, blocking any possible way forward, the closest man turns around and notices him, then reaches out with his right arm and takes a swipe at Larry's head — but misses him by a wide margin. Seeing the man trying to steady himself against the railing, Larry backs up and motions for Christine to do the same, until both of them are standing in front of the fifth floor entrance once again.

  He hears keys jingling, and looks down to see Christine fumbling through a large set of them. "Forget it, there's no time," he whispers. "We need to get as far down the stairs as we can."

  "Why don't you just shoot him?" she asks, seeing the man rounding the corner and stumbling with nearly every step.

  "The whole fucking staircase up there is full of them. If we fire a gun in here we'll have the entire building chasing us…"

  With only a few steps separating them from the guy, Larry motions for Christine to keep going down, trying the fourth and third floors and finding them locked as well — until they finally reach the second floor landing. As soon as he grabs hold of the handle and turns it, feeling the mechanism open up and release the door from the jam, Larry breathes in a deep sigh of relief as the door swings open and reveals another dark hallway in front of him. The feeling of relief, however, turns out to be short lived — and as sound of a metal object is heard falling from somewhere ahead of him, and then the intense heat and deafening roar of an explosion quickly fills the corridor around him, sending his body through the air and back into the staircase behind him.

  For a moment, the only thing he can sense is a quick flashing of lights in front of his face, and the sickening smell of human flesh burning — a scent that he's become all too accustomed to smelling.

  "Larry — please wake up…"

  Feeling a light slap on his face, Larry opens his eyes to the worst headache of his life, and sees a bright beam of light aimed directly at his face — something that doesn't necessarily help the pain.

  "Come on, we have to get some of this stuff out of the way…" Christine says, shining the light at a mess of various objects surrounding them.

  When he sees the chairs and oxygen bottles stacked up in front of the door next to them, Larry immediately recognizes the doorway as the exit to the main lobby of the hospital — the one that he and Curtis couldn't get through when they first arrived. As Christine starts pitching chairs onto the steps behind them, he grabs onto the bottom step and tries to lift himself to his feet, feeling every muscle in his body screaming in pain as he struggles to a sitting position. Compared to the floor, the air even a few feet up is filled with strange-smelling fumes that cause him to cough, which only exacerbates the pain in his chest, and sends a series of loud sounds up the otherwise silent staircase.

  "Try not to breath too deeply — I think the air is pretty toxic," Christine says quietly. She's still trying to clear the landing in front of the door, doing her best to throw the objects as far up the steps as possible.

  "Where's the guy?"

  "He's dead — the flames caught him on fire."

  "How did I get down here?"

  "I dragged you down. Can you walk?"

  "I think so — I'm kind of light-headed."

  He looks up and sees her jerking on the door, opening it a foot or so, and then chucking oxygen bottles through the doorway to make more room around them.

  "You might wanna be careful with those bottles, or we'll end up with another explosion," Larry says, as he manages to get to his feet and step clumsily through the remaining debris, until he's standing behind Christine next to the door. She pushes against it with all of her weight, and the mess of junk behind it slowly gives way to the effort — allowing the two of them to squeeze through it and into the crisp, clean air of the ground-floor hospital lobby. Christine holds onto his arm and tries her best to help him along toward the exit doors, but as soon as they reach the first set of chairs, Larry pulls away from her and collapses into one of them.

  "Larry, we have to get out of here," Christine says in an almost panicked tone.

  "Curtis is still in here somewhere, I'm not leaving without him."

  "The hospital is on fire, Larry — and Curtis is dead, we both heard those screams."

  "That doesn't prove that he's dead…"

  "Maybe not — but this entire building is going up in flames, and we're both gonna end up dead if we stay here."

  He closes his eyes for a moment, attempting to control the throbbing pains in his head every time his heart pounds in his chest. Besides his own pulse, and the heavy breathing of Christine next to him, he begins hearing other sounds as well, coming from elsewhere in the hospital. There's a low rumble, and sounds of distressed steel and wood as the building creaks and moans above them. In his mind, he retraces the steps that he and Curtis took to get to the top floor, weaving through the dark hallways and twisting stairwells — and his heart sinks as he comes to the realization that it's impossible to make it through before the fire fully engulfs at least one of the floors, making their safe return completely impossible. He opens his eyes again and sees Christine standing over him, pleading with him to stand up.

  "Do you need help? I can get a wheelchair if you need one," she says, pointing to a row of them beside the exit.

  "No, I'm fine." Feeling his hips and back giving out as he gets to his feet, he manages to slowly make his way to the open doors, with Christine walking next to him and helping to hold him upright. The air outside feels good against his skin, but it also causes him to cough deeply, which drops him to his knees when they reach the sidewalk next to the parking lot. Christine kneels down and looks him in the eyes, placing her hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Then she rises up again, pulling her gun out of her pocket and aiming it across the parking lot as his breathing normalizes again. He turns his head and sees someone running in their direction, and he grabs onto Christine's pants and tugs on them gently as soon as he realizes who the person is. "Wait, don't shoot…"

  "Who is that?" she responds, still aiming the gun.

  "It's Sarah, Curtis' wife…"

  CHAPTER 23

  Aberdeen: March 31st

  Feeling the sharp tip of Amanda's blade against his side, Curtis freezes for a moment as the young girl slowly applies more pressure, expecting at any moment for her to thrust it deep into his kidney — but then he hears something hit the wall next to him, thrown by someone on the other side of the room. He feels the blade ease up just a bit as Amanda ducks away from the flying object, and Curtis uses the distraction as an opportunity to knock her hand away and then ju
mp back, firing his gun twice in her direction. He still can't see anything unless it's right in front of him, but right after he fires the pistol, he hears a swishing sound as her knife cuts through the air, the steel coming so close to his face that he can feel the rush of wind. On the very last swing, which he partially blocks with his forearm, she finally makes contact with his right cheek, slicing it open as he falls backward onto the floor with the hallway and waiting room directly behind him. Not knowing where she is, and now sitting on the cold floor with only a gun and no flashlight, he crawls backward into the hallway where he can see a small amount of light coming through the windows, then climbs back to his feet and stares into the darkness.

  With the hall ahead of him faintly illuminated, he takes another step back, then lightly touches his face where the blood is beginning to run down to his chin. He doesn't see any sign of Amanda in the room ahead of him, but he does see someone else struggling to crawl across the floor toward him, the older woman's face and arms barely visible in the darkness — but then she stops suddenly and gasps for air, looking up at Curtis with a desperate look in her eyes. In only a few seconds the expression on her face goes completely blank, and Curtis sees the life disappear from her completely as her body is slowly dragged back into the darkness.

  He hears a sickening noise from that direction, and he can only assume that it's Amanda plunging her knife repeatedly into the woman's lifeless body — but when he aims his gun at the sound and starts to squeeze the trigger, he stops himself at the last second, figuring that any blind shot is only a waste of ammunition. Instead, he keeps walking backward toward the outside light of the waiting room, forgetting about the person tied to a chair in the middle of the corridor until he trips over them and sends them both crashing to the floor. He immediately scrambles to get up, then realizes when he gets to his knees that the gun was thrown from his hand. Looking at the floor around him, he glances quickly at the person who's tied up — an extremely old-looking man that's very near death, virus or otherwise. Then he spots the gun, which is lying underneath a chair about ten feet away. He starts to quickly crawl in that direction, over a rain-soaked carpet that has pieces of glass covering it, then he hears a noise from behind him just as he reaches for the pistol — but as soon as his skin makes contact with the rubber grip, he feels a sharp pain in his hand as Amanda's blade pierces through the top of his wrist and into the tendons and ligaments, causing Curtis to scream out in agony. He rips his arm away and grabs for the knife with his other hand, but she pulls it out too quickly and slices it against the side of his head just above the ear. After yelling out in pain again, he curls over onto his back in a defensive position, then watches as Amanda backs off for a moment, taking the time instead to bend down and pick the gun up — aiming it at him for just a moment before lowering it back down to her side.