Not often would any of these men take the risk of climbing the rails, risking serious injury or worse, especially considering they were in this place to acquire items to help with injuries. Climbing up, each man would sit astride the topmost rail and lean forward, pulling themselves along until he rose up and past the bodies.
Only once was there a moment of genuine fear. As Mike braced his foot to climb up his back shot a fiery bullet of pain down his leg. His foot slipped, and he tilted sideways, nearly falling not to his death, but into a pile of dead. He would have preferred to fall to his death.
“We need to see if there’s a better way to go back down. Especially if we’re going to be bringing arm-loads of stuff with us,” Dean said to the group.
Bunching up behind the door leading onto the second floor, the men waited while Rick watched through the slit window. “I can’t see shit from this angle. According to the map the labs are off the second hall to the right. Surgery is down one hall from that.”
“We doing two groups or one, Rick?” Alex asked.
Rick stared out through the window slit, thinking. “Ok, we can do two. Jimmy, Alex, and Cal, you guys handle the labs. The rest of us will head for surgery. You guys know what we’re here for, let’s be quick. Meet back here.”
The first thing they noticed on opening the door was the rank, fetid air. It felt thick and heavy, instantly making it difficult to draw a deep breath without feeling as if they were choking. The second thing they noticed was the complete emptiness of the area, a blank stillness that inexplicably frightened the scavengers.
Putting their uneasy feelings aside the two groups headed for their destinations, moving as fast as they could while still staying quiet.
Ducking into the first lab room they came to, Jimmy’s crew quickly went to work grabbing everything they could fit into pillowcases taken from the laundry room. They spent little time examining items, looking at them only long enough to wonder whether an item was useful or not.
“Next lab guys,” Jimmy said, moving to the door. Alex and Calvin stayed close, gripping their sacks of loot tightly. The next room was a storage room, which they skipped.
“We clean this lab out and we’re done. We can go find the other guys and help them, or we ca…” He bit the words off as soon as they rounded the corner leading to the next lab. At the far end of the corridor, facing away from the group stood a mass of undead, shuffling in place as if anxious to move but having nowhere to go.
All three men saw the zombies, fifty or more, at the same time and stopped in their tracks. As they began to back away, something inside the bag of lab supplies Jimmy carried shifted, making a faint clink as it came to rest.
One of the creatures in back of the huge pack turned, moaning loudly as it laid eyes on fresh meat. The rest of the pack began to turn, shuffling away from the wall, exposing the stripped body of what had to have been a nurse at one time, though only tattered white pieces of cloth and sensible nurse’s shoes remained scattered around a pile of bones.
The underfed horde of undead surged forward, the moans becoming a collective sound that seemed to vibrate the very floor they stood on.
Jimmy turned on his heel, “Run… just fucking run!”
Gripping their bags of lab loot the three men charged toward the end of the hall, heading for the stairwell.
The zombie mass rounded the corner, the concussive group moan growing ever louder as their dinner pulled away.
“Pack! Pack!” Jimmy shouted as he neared the door to the stairwell, alerting the other group to the small horde now pursuing them. Reaching the door, he looked back to see the horde closing rapidly on his group. “Into the stairwell, go!” Jimmy yelled even as Calvin and Alex went around him. “Mike, Dean, Rick!” He was nearly screaming, his voice cracking with effort.
The other team came into sight far down a connecting hall, bulging white pillowcases clutched in their hands, wearing puzzled looks. “What the hell, Jimbo?” Mike called as the group started jogging toward the stairs door. They stopped, nearly tumbling over each other as the horde came into sight, shuffling rapidly toward Jimmy who stood with the door open.
Jimmy looked from the horde to his friends and back. He knew they would never make the door before the mass of gnashing teeth and reeking death reached him. “Hide, we’ll go back down, figure a way out!” He shouted, ducking behind the door into the stairwell. The door closed slowly, thumping shut just as the huge pack reached it. Unable to lock the door, the men hoped that the crush of zombies would keep it closed.
Jimmy stared at the slit window, at the peeling, rotting faces now pressing against the glass. “They’re trapped up here with that. We have to go back down and find a way to get them out.”
“What do mean trapped?” Calvin’s voice rose, fear squeezing his throat. “My brother’s in there, we can’t just leave him!”
Jimmy turned, glaring at Calvin. “Don’t flake out now, damn it! All our brothers are in there. We can stand here and talk about it or we can do something to get them out.”
Calvin stared back for a moment before taking a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah, ok.”
Jimmy glanced up the stairs leading to the third floor, quickly discarding the idea of going up.
Alex led the way down, quickly making his way over the rail and around the putrid mound of liquefying bodies. Alex reached the door out to the main floor and stopped, his hand on the lever handle.
Calvin and Jimmy stood behind him, waiting for Alex to throw the door open. “What the hell, Alex? Let’s go, man!”
Alex turned to his friends, “Look.” He stepped back from the door so they could see through the slit window.
“Oh hell no.” An instant feeling of crushing defeat seemed to push down on Jimmy’s shoulders, causing them to sag.
Zombies shambled past the window, one after another. A gap revealed to the men that the entire lobby area of the hospital was now teeming with undead.
Chapter 23
Mike, Rick and Dean backpedaled, slipping into the nearest door. Rick poked his head out slowly, peering around the doorjamb. The large pack of zombies was knotted up around the stairs, scratching at the door that now hid their prize.
“Did Jimmy just leave us behind?”
Mike shot Dean a burning glare. “What, was he supposed to stand there and wait? Or stay up here just to get trapped with us?”
“No, I guess not,” Dean said. “So how the hell are we going to get off this floor?”
“Should be a service elevator and stairs somewhere,” Rick said, slipping the folded campus map from a pocket. “Yeah, right here.” He tapped the paper, pointing out the location of the service units.
“Let me see that.” Rick held out the map to Mike, who took it, orienting the map to match the floor plan. “Shit, that little hall is just for the service crap; there’s no connecting hallway.”
“So it’s a dead end?” Dean asked with a smirk.
“Yeah, look,” Mike said, holding out the map for the others to see, not responding to Dean’s comment. “We would have to go all the way down this hall, or we could backtrack, go around to this one, either way we’ll be exposed to that pack. If we take that second route the exposure will be shorter, but we still have to pass that area to get down the short service hall.”
“Damn it. Jimmy said he would find a way to get us out. You guys want to wait a bit or try going now?” Rick was uncomfortable with either choice.
“I say we go now, while they’re distracted,” Mike said. Dean and Rick agreed.
Rick watched around the door for a second, ensuring that the zombies were still facing away from his group. Silently he beckoned them to follow. They stayed low and took careful steps, taking the second route that would lead around to another long hallway that also connected to the front area where the undead now clustered, only twenty-five feet further down.
The trip back and around took only minutes. Watching from around the corner, Dean gave a sign to move and the men mov
ed to the right and down the short corridor leading to the service stairs and elevator.
They had gone unseen by the horde and proceeded rapidly down the hall, wanting nothing more than to get off this floor and away from the gut-suckers banging at the stairs door.
Rick grabbed the door lever, shoving it down and yanking. The door latch clacked loudly inside the striker plate, not releasing when the handle was turned. Rick tried again, desperation now flooding his system with adrenaline. “Fuck me,” he swore. He glanced at his friends, “It won’t open. There’s no lock on the service doors, I don’t know what the deal is.”
From around the corner of the short hall the crowd of zombies increased their moaning. “I think they may have heard us,” Dean said.
Rick and Mike simultaneously turned to the elevator, hoping for some way to put themselves out of arm and tooth reach of the pack of zombies. They began to pull on the doors, both straining, beads of oily sweat popping out on their faces.
The doors shifted, sliding apart several inches. They kept pulling, the doors spreading open to a gap of nearly a foot. A hand partially peeled of flesh shot through the gap, followed by a gruesome face, teeth snapping. The grasping hand ran cold fingers across the back of Mike’s hand, sending chills up his arm, even as both men jumped back from elevator.
The elevator had stopped between floors, with the bottom of the car hanging about 2 feet from the top of the doors. Several pairs of legs could be seen through the narrow gap, each zombie dropping to the floor to reach for and grab at the men that had cracked the door.
“Damn it! Fuck this place!” Tension showed in the bright red shading high on Mike’s cheeks.
“They must have been caught in there when the EMP killed everything,” Rick said.
“Doesn’t matter now, we’re about to be killed right friggin’ here,” Dean said. His companions turned to see the horde coming around the corner, separated by thirty feet of hallway they knew it was only a matter of seconds before the undead descended on them.
Rick ran back to the door, yanking hard, nearly pulling his shoulder from the socket. “Open you bitch!” He shoved a hand into a pocket on his camo pants, grabbed the multi-tool and pulled out the long blade folded inside. “Give me second!”
“We don’t have a second,” Mike said, shouldering his rifle. Dean drew his pistol, and the two men began to fire slow controlled shots into one zombie head after another.
Zombies fell to the floor, causing some behind them to stumble and fall, hardly slowing the ravening pack.
Rick slipped the blade between the door and the jamb, grabbing the latch with the tip of the blade and angling it back, attempting to jimmy the lock. He glanced up to his friends, then to the slit window in the door.
Rick nearly dropped the multi-tool at the sight of a leering, bloated face glaring back at him through the window. His shock could not have been greater when the head swiveled on its fat-wattled neck. Behind the glass was a living person, and they were refusing to open the door.
“Open this door you fat fuck! NOW!”
“Who the hell are you screaming at, Rick?”
Rick dug back into the door latch with the tool, ignoring Mike’s question.
“If you’re gonna do something, Rick, you might want to hurry!” Dean called over his shoulder. The horde had progressed beyond the halfway point of the hall, closing quickly on the door. The moaning of the pack consolidated into one teeth-vibrating roar.
Rick worked the latch, using the tip of the blade to push it backward, then pulling the door tight to hold it in place, performing the same action several times. Finally the latch slid free of the strike plate and he yanked but the door stopped abruptly. “What the hell!” Looking inside the gap rick saw a piece of wire tied to the inner lever, its opposite end tied around a handrail.
The obese man turned, making a short squawking noise as he waddled away up the stairs to the third floor. Rick reached into the gap and sliced through the wire easily.
Dean and Mike had continued to back up as they fired on the large pack. They now stood just in front of the door, the first of the hungry creatures less than an arm's-length away.
“In, in, it’s open!” The men jumped away from the grasping hands and through the door. Rick hopped through, pulling the door behind him, forcing the door closer to hiss softly as he put pressure on it.
Standing in the stairwell, watching zombies push against the glass, the men sucked air, trying to calm hammering hearts.
“Who the hell were you yelling at, Rick?” Dean asked, using a red handkerchief to wipe sweat from his eyes.
“There’s someone up there. Big fat guy. He was standing behind the door shaking his head.”
“Shaking his head? As in, he wasn’t going to open the door?”
“Yeah Mike, I popped the lock, it wasn’t him.”
“Son of a bitch,” Mike growled.
“Up or down?” Dean asked.
“Down. As soon as we find the other guys I want to come back up here and find out who this jackass is.”
Mike and Dean followed Rick down the stairs to the first floor landing. They discovered the same thing their fellow scavengers had. The first floor was now swarming with undead.
“This shit just gets better at every fucking turn,” Mike said, his face shadowed and grim.
“Back upstairs, I guess,” Rick said. “The other guys are either out there in that mess, or they went up to the third floor.”
All three men felt a deep sickness in their guts, the fear that their friends had been caught out in the horde now inhabiting the first floor.
Dean led the way back up, Mike bringing up the rear of the group, stinging pains occasionally firing through his back and down his leg. He took each step gingerly, fearing the jab of pain.
At the top of the stairs they found the door blocked, only able to open a few inches. Together they pushed, shoving the door open, something on the other side grating loudly across the floor.
Once through they found an old metal desk had been pushed in front of the door. “Seems fat-boy didn’t want visitors,” Rick said with bitter sarcasm.
They stood near the open door, waiting for zombies they were certain would be drawn to their loud entrance. After several minutes of disturbing silence they could wait no longer.
“Well, if that asshat lives up here then it’s possible the floor has been cleared out,” Dean said.
“It’s clear; we’ve searched the entire floor.”
Rick’s group turned to find Jimmy and Calvin leaning on the counter at the vacant nurse’s station. Rushing over they greeted their friends warmly, unabashed joy spreading through the group.
“Where’s Alex?” Mike asked, fearing the worst. Just then they heard a plaintive cry from far down a hall of patient rooms.
“I live here; you people need to leave!”
“Uh, he’s tending to our host,” Jimmy told the others.
Chapter 24
Jimmy led the others to the farthest room down the west corridor. Inside they found Alex sitting in a hospital reclining chair, the kind that visitors often slept in when staying with sick loved ones. Sitting on a bed covered in filthy sheets was a grossly obese man, who could have been thirty or fifty; it was hard to tell from the grime on his face and in his hair.
Rick took two long strides to the bed and slapped the man with an open hand. “You left my people to die down there you fat fucking piece of shit!” Rick’s hand stung from the blow, but he took a grim satisfaction from the man’s tears.
“I…I couldn’t take a ch-chance.”
“Fuck you!” The tension that had been building in Rick through the day came out in spittle-flecked curses. Close calls and thoughts of his friends devoured by a horde of undead had drawn his emotions tight. The blubbering coward on the bed was the catalyst that Rick’s explosive anger needed to release its violent payload. Rick drew his hand back again, this time in a tightly closed fist.
“Easy Rick,” M
ike said, gently placing a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “I want to hear how this guy has survived here this long.” Mike looked into the man’s eyes when he said, “Then you can beat the shit out of him.”
“Please, Please, I’m sorry, Please…” The man began to sob, his corpulent body shuddering obscenely with each hitching breath.
“Just stop, damn it,” Alex said, disgusted by the display of weakness in someone who had survived so long.
Dean, though appalled that the man would leave them to die, was stunned by the violence and vitriol from his friends. “Guys, ease up. He’s survived this long by doing what he had to do. Shit, just leave the guy alone for a second.” Turning to the big man he asked, “What’s your name?”
The obese man cast shimmering eyes at Dean, hesitating. “Uh, Andy, Andy Marsh.”
“Andy, we’re all going to take a second here and catch our breath, right guys?” Dean looked at each one of his companions, silently compelling them to back off. “It’s been one hell of a morning for all of us.”
“We need to figure a way out of this place,” Jimmy stated, leaning against the narrow wall mounted air conditioner.
Rick backed away from the bed, casting another disgusted glance before leaning against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. Exhaustion made his eyes feel heavy and gritty. He thought he might take a moment to close them, rest them.
Mike and Calvin followed Rick’s lead, sitting on the floor, backs to the wall, though Mike found it painful to squat so low. Once he was sitting, Mike shifted every so often, repositioning his back to alleviate the constant discomfort.
Dean watched Andy for a moment, taking in his sallow skin, the sores around his mouth, and the constant twitch that made his thick left eyebrow look like a woolly-worm attempting to escape his forehead. “We’re all pretty curious how you survived alone out here for so long, Andy.”
Andy cast red watery eyes around the newcomers to his room, silently debating whether or not he should tell them. When he caught Rick’s eye Andy visibly flinched, immediately turning back to Dean. “There were fourteen of us to start with,” Andy began. “We were able to raid the kitchen early on, when everything went crazy. Also the vending machines, except for the ones in the ER lobby. We couldn’t go in there at all.”
American Revenant (Book 3): The Monster In Man Page 12