by Ben Reeder
Infected wandered a few stories below us, strangely silent. He started moving forward slowly, careful to keep any sound to a minimum. The first flight of steps took us halfway to the next floor, and as we started down the next flight, I heard the sound of a shoe hitting tile hard, then the slap of a hand against metal. I looked over my shoulder to see Amy holding herself up on the railing, her face stricken. Below us we heard a moan and feet shuffling. I held up a hand to forestall any more movement, and she froze. Below us, Kaplan moved to the landing and aimed his gun down the stairs. The shuffling continued, then stopped, followed by a moan. When it started again, it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Kaplan leaned forward and looked over the rail, then pulled back. A few seconds later, he leaned forward again and took a longer look. A perplexed grin had spread across his face when he finally gestured for us to move again. When I drew even with him I looked down to see what he’d seen.
A zombie was staring at the steps, just a few feet away from me. It shuffled forward until its feet hit the first step and then it stopped and looked down. When its head came back up again, it turned and walked away from the steps. I looked at Kaplan and shrugged. Evidently steps confused it. He returned the gesture in eloquent silence and made his way slowly across the landing. We got to the door, and he peered through the safety glass, then opened it and waved us past him. The door clicked shut the second Hernandez was through.
Like the floor above us, this one had three hallways. I swept my pistol right to cover the hallway while Hernandez came in with her gun up. I checked the mirrors at the middle, but the image was too small to get a good look much beyond the corner. At least I knew no one was lying in wait there. I moved forward until I was next to the middle hallway and stuck my head around the corner. Two infected wandered the hall further down, but they seemed blissfully unaware of me, so I backed up and turned to Kaplan and Amy, holding up two fingers. He nodded and tapped his finger to his forehead, then pointed at my pistol. With a sinking feeling, I nodded and put my finger on the trigger.
I took a deep breath and stepped around the corner. The gun came up in slow motion, and I traced the green dot up the body of the one closest to me until it came to rest on her ear. The SOCOM coughed and bucked in my hand, and she went down. The other one turned his head, either following the movement or the sound of the gun, and I moved the gun to cover his nose. A trigger stroke later he was on the floor, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. Before I turned to signal Kaplan the coast was clear, something made me look to my right. Movement in the corner mirror caught my attention and gave me a split second warning before the ghoul in purple scrubs came barreling around the corner. My finger tightened on the trigger the second I got the barrel on him, and before I knew it I’d fired three more rounds at him. I must have hit him with at least one shot because it’s body slid to a stop a few feet from me, and I kept the gun up. No movement in the mirror, so I put a round in the ghoul’s head and walked up to the far corner. When I stuck my head around the corner the coast looked pretty clear.
Only then did I look back. Hernandez and Kaplan had their guns up and were firing. I ran back toward them, but before I made it halfway, the guns were coming down.
“Clear,” Hernandez said.
“So, what’s the plan now?” I asked when I got to the corner.
“Why don’t we just take out the infected in the stairwells,” Hernandez said.
“We don’t have enough ammo,” Kaplan said. “There are four floors between us and the ground. If some of them hear us, we’d have to shoot them all. I say we check the other stairwell. Maybe it’s clear.”
“Too bad we can’t just take the elevator down,” Amy said. Kaplan rolled his eyes and Hernandez muttered a heartfelt “I wish.” The discussion continued around me, but my brain was already somewhere else.
“I need a wire coat hanger,” I said after a little thinking. All three looked at me like I’d just asked for a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. “Amy’s right, we should take the elevator.”
“The elevators would’ve been the first thing they shut down when they started losing the building,” Hernandez said.
“Good,” I said as I headed for the nurses station. Hernandez started to say something but Kaplan put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“I know that look,” he said. “Let’s see where he’s going with this.” By the nurses station I found what I was looking for: the locker room where the floor nurses stored their stuff when they were on duty. The door was open, the inside dark. Kaplan brought his gun up and nodded to me. Warily, I reached around the corner and felt for the light switch. As soon as the lights came on we heard a whimper inside. I raised the SOCOM as Hernandez swept into the room behind the lieutenant, both of their gun barrels moving. Kaplan moved past the lockers in the middle of the room and brought his weapon to bear on something I couldn’t see. He gestured to Hernandez, and she moved to the left, out of my line of sight.
“Ma’am,” I heard her say. “Shit!” she cried a second later. On the heels of her exclamation I heard a split second of noise scrape across the inside of my head before the harsh pops of their weapons cut it off.
“You okay?” Kaplan called out. I came in to the room to find them in opposite corners, guns pointing at the corner opposite the one I was in.
“I’m good, sir,” she responded. “God I hate screamers. Wake up the goddamn neighbors.”
“Not asking, corporal,” Kaplan said with a shaky looking grin.
“Not telling, sir,” she said as she gave me a wink. I nodded to the hanger rack beside Kaplan and reached for the paper wrapped wire hanger dangling at the far end. With my prize in hand, I headed for the nurses station.
“So, what do you need a wire coat hanger for?” Kaplan asked as I pulled my multi-tool from my belt. “Rule eighteen?”
“Rule eighteen,” I said as I bent a piece of the hanger back and forth. “Back when I worked security for the university, we had a group of kids who would sneak out onto the roof of one of the dorms during baseball season to watch the fireworks at the end of the Cardinals games.” The wire snapped, and I went to work on a shorter piece. “We tried everything to catch them in the act. We set guys on the stairs, turned off the elevators, everything. Finally, we set someone up on the roof and caught them when they came out. Turns out, they were elevator surfing. They’d get into the elevator shaft, get up on top of one of the cars and use the maintenance controls up there to ride the elevator to the top of the shaft so they could crawl out a maintenance hatch.” The shorter piece broke off, and I bent a small loop in it, then stuck the longer piece through it and bent it tight around the loop in the smaller piece before I bent the longer piece into an L shape. “They used one of these to get into the elevator shaft.” I held my little creation up. The shorter end dangled loosely until I turned the whole thing ninety degrees. Then it caught on the loop and turned with it. Satisfied it would work, I headed for the elevators on the far side of the nurses station.
“We need a crowbar, not a little piece of wire,” Hernandez said. At the reflective steel door I put the end of my improvised tool up to the small hole mounted near the top of the door and pushed it in until I heard the short end fall against the other side of the door. Then I slowly turned it until I felt resistance. Another ounce of pressure, and the door slid to one side, revealing the darkness of an open elevator shaft. Kaplan leaned in and shone his flashlight down into it.
“The elevator is on the ground floor. We can probably get into it from the access hatch on the roof. But once we get down to the first floor, we still have to get past all the infected and the cordon.”
“What cordon?” Amy asked.
“It’s easier to show you,” Kaplan said as he headed for the east side of the building. He led us into one of the patient rooms and checked to make sure there were no infected waiting. Once he was sure the room was clear, he went to the window and pulled the blinds up. Below, we could see prefab barriers set up near one
of the hospital entrances. Infected were shuffling around inside it, while even more were wandering in the street outside. “When we lost a facility, the entrances were blocked off like that to try to slow the spread of the outbreak.”
“It didn’t work,” Amy said. “So, how do we get out?”
“Through that,” I said as I pointed. A catwalk stretched from the building to an elevated landing pad about sixty yards away in the middle of a parking lot. “We only have to get to the second floor. And it takes us out past the worst of the crowd trying to get in.”
“Looks good. There’s only one problem,” Kaplan said. “Hernandez has a wounded arm. There’s no way she’s going to be able to climb down that shaft safely.”
“We’re in a hospital, duh,” Amy said as she grabbed one of the sheets from the overturned bed. “There’s whole closets marked ‘linen’ on every floor. Tie a few sheets together and lower her down. Seriously, have none of you ever had to sneak out of a second story window before?” She grabbed another sheet and tied the two ends together and held them out, somehow adding a shrug and head tilt to up the difficulty level.
“I’m just trying to ignore the fact that you know how,” I said as I took the sheets from her.
“Just add it to the list of things you’re never telling Mom.” We left the room with the Marines in tow.
“When did I lose control of this situation?” Kaplan asked Hernandez when we opened the door of the linen closet down the hallway.
“Right about the time they got on your boat, sir,” she said.
“That sounds about right. Okay then, let’s get you down to the second floor so we can get our asses out of this hell hole.” We added a few sheets to the line, and Kaplan tied the end in a bowline hitch that made a loop big enough to fit over Hernandez.
“For the record, sir, I hate this idea,” she said as we went back to the elevator shaft.
“Duly noted, corporal. Now stop your bitching and get your ass down that shaft.” She stepped into the improvised harness and pulled it up to her chest, then backed up to the elevator shaft. Kaplan and I grabbed the other end and pulled it tight, then let it out until she was leaning back into the opening. We let the cloth slide through our hands slowly as she descended into the hoistway, until finally the line went slack.
“Okay, now, if I remember right, most elevators have a ladder in the hoistway,” I said as I leaned inside. Sure enough, there was a ladder that ran between the two doors. I went first, then Kaplan sent Amy down before he followed her. Once my boots hit the top of the elevator car, I pulled out my flashlight and played it on the door in front of us. From this side, the latch to open the door was easier to find. With Kaplan and Hernandez covering the door, I released the latch and let the two doors part about an inch. The sight of unmoving bodies on the floor greeted me, which was a damn site better than the all too plentiful kind that were up and walking around. The low moan coming from outside the doors was a little less comforting. I let the doors open a little further and saw that the area in front of them was pretty clear. The door we needed was to our right, though, and there were dozens of infected between us and it. There were only a couple on the left. Moving slowly, I leaned out into the hallway and looked at the wall between the two elevator doors. Just like I’d seen on the floor above, there was an evacuation map in a clear plastic frame that was nothing more than two layers sandwiched together. The knife blade on my multi-tool fit into the open space and nudged the map out far enough to get ahold of it. Agonizing seconds later, I had it free. I let the doors slide back together and turned back to face everyone else.
“We need to get those infected away from that door,” Kaplan whispered as I shined my light on my prize. The map showed the triage area to our left, a narrow section of exam rooms, and a nurses station taking up the central part of the building. Further north and south though, it looked like admin country.
“Anyone have an MP3 player?” I asked.
“Mine got confiscated back in Nevada,” Amy groused. Hernandez and Kaplan both pulled one out. I held my hand out to Kaplan.
“What are you going to do, make them fight over the earphones?” he asked as he handed his over.
“Not exactly. Plan A: We need to find an office with a computer. Preferably one with speakers.”
“What’s Plan B?” Amy asked.
“Xanatos Speedchess,” I answered.
“What the hell is that?” Hernandez said.
“It’s a geek thing,” Amy said. “It means he makes shit up like crazy.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Kaplan muttered.
“Got a better idea?” Amy challenged. He shook his head.
“Stay quiet, move slow, and stay low,” Kaplan said. “Their own noise should keep them from hearing us.” He nodded to me, and I pushed the doors open slowly. Hernandez moved into the hall first, with Amy right behind her. Kaplan tapped my shoulder and gestured for me to go, so I drew the SOCOM and went out into the hallway, fighting the urge to put my finger on the trigger every step of the way. The incessant moaning covered most of the noise we made, and distance seemed to absorb the rest. Ahead of me, Hernandez had ducked into the cover of the large nurse’s station that took up the bulk of the middle section. Exam rooms were on the far side from us, with another set on the west wall. I followed her, but Kaplan gestured for her to keep going. She nodded and crept forward, out of the station and into the hallway. Ahead of us was a set of double doors that would normally have been closed, but a bloody torso blocked it open.
Hernandez pushed it open slowly, then stepped over the body. Behind her, Amy tried to avoid looking at it while she gingerly stepped around it. I slipped past it, and let Kaplan catch the door. He let it come to rest against the corpse with a slightly squishy sound, then stepped past me. The sound of moaning dropped off. Overhead, a sign pointed to the chief of surgery’s office, Human Resources, and the Business Offices straight ahead, with the Oncology unit to the right. The two Marines took the lead, guns up, fingers still outside the trigger guards. They paused at the hallway that led to oncology, and Kaplan poked his head around the corner. He turned back to us and gave the all clear, and we started forward again. As I came even with the opening, I stuck my head around the corner just like Kaplan had, almost out of habit.
I yelled in surprise and jumped back as something smashed into the wall inches from my face. Instinctively, my hand went out and shoved Amy back as a metal cart flew past us. Kaplan and Hernandez turned back to us and I could see both of them go wide eyed. The sound of heavy footsteps pounded my ears, and then all other sounds were drowned out in a roar that shook the walls. Something huge thundered out of the hallway and slid across the floor before smashing into the wall. All I could make out was a tangle of limbs sprawled on the tile between us, and then fear took over.
“Go!” I yelled at the still shaken Marines. Hernandez recovered first and grabbed the lieutenant. I turned, grabbed Amy’s hand, and went the other way.
Chapter 3
The Labyrinth & The Minotaur
~ The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." ~ Thucydides
We ran. Whatever it was that we’d left on the floor behind us roared again, and my vision danced from the vibration that set up in my skull. We hit the door at a run and found ourselves face to face with a mob of infected, all wandering our way. Except some didn’t wander. Half of them broke into a sprint as soon as they saw us. I didn’t even think about shooting at them. We skidded to stop by the first opening we could find and bolted that way. Behind us, we heard the sound of wood splintering as the thing chasing us broke through the door. Finally, I thought, one of the bastards figured out how to deal with doorknobs. We hit the far end and I found myself with three choices. Would I find myself in a dead end if I went right or left? Forward?
A scream ripped through the air before I could make a decision and drew my atte
ntion back behind us. A ghoul in scrubs was crouched in front of the big monstrosity that had chased us, arms spread, fists balled, its head thrust forward as it screamed at the bigger infected. Every zombie and ghoul behind it faced the towering mega-ghoul. Even from across the room, that thing was ugly all over. Enormous tumors covered its body, including one huge mass that dangled from its right leg. As if the growths themselves weren’t deformities enough, I could see extra body parts protruding from rips in the thing’s flesh. Hands, ears, noses, an eye, even a skeletal arm that hung from one of the burst tumors on its right biceps. The thing rose up to its full height and let out a roar that brought down ceiling tiles as it lowered its deformed head. The screamer ghoul answered it with another ear-splitting howl of its own.
Amy’s frightened whimper got my attention, and I decided zombie anthropology could wait until she was safe. The tumor ghoul bellowed another challenge, and we used the wall of noise to cover our escape through the door.
“What were they doing?” Amy asked as we jogged down the corridor. To our right, I could see supply rooms, linen closets, and equipment rooms.
“Not sure,” I said as another exchange rattled the ceiling. “Trying to establish dominance? Gossiping? Hell, I have no clue. I just know we need to get ourselves scarce before they figure out we left.” Ahead of us, the wooden door to admin country loomed, and we wasted no time getting ourselves behind it. The sight that waited for us on the other side made me reconsider that decision, and the coppery smell made me seriously debate again how attached I was to the meatloaf I’d eaten a few hours ago. The walls were covered liberally in someone, probably more than one someone if the different kinds of fabric stuck to the wall and floor were any clue. Whoever it had been, it looked like they had tried to make a good fight of it. A length of pipe longer than I was tall lay on the floor with a pair of bent scalpels duct taped to one end. Like everything in that section of the hall, it was covered in dried blood. I bent down and picked it up, then grabbed the thick bone beside it. Turning it, I could make out tooth marks on the sides, and clean breaks among the splintered ends. The door to one of the supply rooms was open, and I saw a roll of duct tape laying on a shelf. Grabbing it, I tossed the pole to Amy and gestured for her to follow me. She looked a little green around the gills, but she kept from hurling.