“There we go,” Nas said from the passenger seat and she looked ahead to see the sign marking Midland as the next exit. “Take this exit and turn left. The town is ten miles down that road”
Guess it was time to put that self-control into action.
Malcolm eased them off the highway and made the turn onto the road into town.
There was a husk of a burned out building and the sign nearby marked it as a gas station. There were other signs of desolation as they headed into town, Nas calling out the turns to take. More burned out buildings, abandoned cars and several skeletal remains around them. As they turned onto the street lined with houses, Veronica spotted movement from one of the open garages attached to a house up ahead.
Malcolm spotted it too and slowed down, cautious when three figures emerged from the garage and started to run towards them.
For a moment Veronica thought they were people looking for help, but as they got closer, she saw the white foam that was spewing from their mouths.
Malcolm hit the gas and they sped away, the freaks shrinking in their rear view until they turned a corner and they disappeared entirely.
“Probably best we park a couple blocks from the hospital and go the rest of the way on foot,” Malcolm said as he took another turn, wanting to ensure they lost the pursuing freaks. “Last thing we need is to have the engine draw any of them towards the hospital.”
“There’s a residential street two blocks south of the hospital,” Nas said as he read over the map. “We can find a house with a garage, park inside to hide the SUV. We won’t have to worry about someone taking it before we get back from the hospital.”
She stopped worrying at the loose threads on her jeans, her hand moving to rest on the butt of the gun on her hip. Now that they were here, her previous impatience had evaporated, apprehension taking its place.
When they turned onto the street, they slowed down to scan the houses on either side. They were all split levels with overgrown lawns and empty driveways. Malcolm turned into the drive of the first house that had an open and empty garage. She was the first out of the SUV when Malcolm put it into park, shouldering her pack and snapping her face mask into place.
She moved to the door and swept her gaze over the street, searching for any threat that might derail their plan. Some of the houses had their front doors wide open, others were shut with windows boarded up, but there was no sign that anyone was in there watching them.
“We’ll head north up this street then take a right,” Malcolm said as he and the others came to join her at the door, their masks firmly in place. “Two blocks up will be the hospital. If we see anything, we hide. We don’t want to engage unless absolutely necessary.”
They shut up the garage to conceal the SUV and headed out at a clipped pace, sticking close to the houses in case they had to dart between them for cover. They cut across a lawn to round the house on the corner, moving along the row of hedges that separated this lawn from the neighbour's. Malcolm came to a quick stop, waving the rest of them to crouch down behind the hedges. Her heart skipped a beat as she dropped to her knees with the rest of them.
“There are a couple freaks on the street up ahead,” he whispered.
“You sure they’re freaks?” Travis asked. “They could be people.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Not unless people have taken to eating whatever dead thing is in the middle of the street.”
“Can we get around them?” Nas asked and Malcolm crept forward to peek around the last hedge.
“No, they’re right in the middle of the street. No matter which way we go, we’ll get their attention.”
“Alright, we can go left instead, loop around,” Nas began, looking up in that direction and he let out a low curse.
It only took a moment for her to see the four freaks that had exited the front door of a house up the street. They vaulted over the porch railing and hit the lawn at a dead run. Veronica thought they had been spotted and she lifted her gun but Malcolm let out a sharp hiss to stop her from pulling the trigger.
The four freaks ran down the street and past the corner where they were crouched, without even a glance in their direction.
Malcolm moved to peek around the hedge again. “They’re fighting each other over whatever they’re eating. Let’s make use of the distraction and get out of here.”
They crossed the lawn and headed in the opposite direction of the fight. She took the chance to glance over her shoulder and felt her stomach flip as she saw the freaks attacking each other. They were covered in bloody gore, screaming and grappling with each other on top of the carcass they had been eating. She hoped that it had been an animal of some sort and not a person.
She turned her attention back to Nas, who was pointing out the directions to take as they made their way in a large loop to their original target. They didn’t come across any more freaks and she hoped that was a good sign for the hospital that was looming up ahead.
The six storey L-shaped building towered over the surrounding area. A barricade topped with razor wire had been erected around the hospital, blocking off the entrance to the parking lot. Several military vehicles were in the lot next to three large green canvas tents and one white plastic tent marked QUARANTINE on the side.
Malcolm called a halt, pulling out his binoculars to survey the building. Travis moved up beside him.
“When we were here, we went through the main entrance there.” Travis pointed towards the doors set in the corner of the L. “There’s a pharmacy and the main desk for check in. There should be a map of the hospital there.”
Malcolm surveyed the situation and turned to Travis. “Did you check out the tents?”
“Yeah, after we got the meds,” he said. “It had been cleared out of anything useful. No weapons or food but plenty of electronics. Laptops, radios, that sort of thing. I figured it had been the command post. The white tent is filled with bodies.”
Veronica figured the scene was probably the same at hospitals around the country. When the infection had started, the hospitals had been inundated with sick people and their loved ones. They’d been the first sites that had been put under full quarantine and the news had warned people to stay away. But that had done nothing to stop them from falling.
It seemed like no matter what, things were meant to fall apart in this world. If it wasn’t the freaks trying to eat them or people trying to rob them, it was some other infection trying to bring them down.
No, she wasn’t going to let those kinds of thoughts pull her down. If she let her fear for Hannah take hold, she risked losing her control like before. Today she needed to think clearly, any rash decision put Hannah and the others at risk. Just up ahead was their potential survival and she wouldn’t fuck that up.
“I want us to move quickly but carefully,” Malcolm instructed. “We’ll use the truck there for cover while we slip under the barricade. We’ll cross the courtyard one at a time and go in the main entrance.”
They all fell into line behind Malcolm as he led them to the truck. He took a moment to line up his rifle with the hospital windows before nodding for the others to begin slipping carefully under the barricades.
Once they were all under, Malcolm motioned for Nas to go first across the courtyard. He moved at a swift pace as the rest of them kept their weapons up, ready for anyone who would want to defend the hospital from intruders.
No shots or movement came from the hospital as Nas reached the entrance and she and Travis were quick to follow his path across the courtyard. The three of them provided cover for Malcolm to join them, though it seemed unneeded. If there was anyone in the hospital, they didn’t seem interested in sniping them before they got inside.
The main doors had been glass but they had been broken long ago, a few pieces of glass still hanging in the door frames, catching the sunlight. Beyond the doors, the lobby was dim, lit only by the sunlight that filtered through the doors and windows. Veronica could see a large reception desk in the centr
e of the lobby with a bank of elevators behind it. A waiting area was off to the left, the pharmacy and a gift shop behind it.
Malcolm gestured for them to fan out, cautious about anyone that might be hiding inside the building. It was eerily silent inside, the only sound their soft footsteps on the floor.
Once upon a time this place had probably never been silent. Doctors and nurses rushing to treat their patients, visitors waiting impatiently to hear about their loved ones. Now it was as dead as a graveyard.
Veronica moved to a wide corridor with a set of double doors that had Emergency Room written across it. The doors had been chained and barricaded with several chairs and gurneys. She could see brown stains around the edges, dried blood where fingers had tried to pry open the doors. She wondered if the blood had come from freaks trying to get out or people trying to flee from them.
She turned away from the doors, not wanting to see it anymore, and joined the others at the elevator bank. A large map was posted on the wall, the various wards all labelled.
“Quinton said we’d be likely to find the meds we need in the ICU,” Malcolm said, his eyes scanning the list of wards. “Third floor.”
“Emergency stairwell is around behind the gift shop,” Nas said, nodding in the direction.
Malcolm led them towards the door with the small window in the top corner but it was black, revealing nothing of the stairwell behind it. He pulled the door open and the stench of decomposing bodies slammed into them. The masks they wore did nothing to stop them from coughing and gagging.
Malcolm closed the door and the smell cut in half, though it took Veronica a minute to get her stomach under control.
“Best we switch to respirators for this,” Malcolm said as he unshouldered his pack. Veronica and the others followed suit, getting out the respirator they each carried. She was grateful Malcolm had insisted they bring them, just in case. The surgical masks they wore to prevent infection weren’t enough.
This time when they opened the door, they were all able to breathe, the full face masks protecting them from the gases the dead bodies had released into the stairwell. They began their ascent, flashlights cutting through the pitch black and it didn’t take long before they located the source of the smell.
On the first landing three bodies were piled on top of each other. It was hard to tell if they had been put there or this was simply where they had fallen. What was obvious was that they had been there for a while. The bodies glistened under their flashlights, the flesh and muscle already beginning to liquefy.
She fought to keep down the protein bar she’d eaten earlier, staying as far away from the bodies as she could as they climbed to the third floor. She kept her eyes on the stairs, not wanting to see another flash of the bodies caught in the beams of their flashlights.
The third floor hallway was as dark as the stairwell, no windows to let daylight in, but at least it was clear of dead bodies.
"Nas, Veronica, take the right hall," Malcolm said. "Travis and I will take the left."
She and Nas split off and walked down the hall, passing the nurse’s station. Charts were piled high on the desk, the last vestiges of the patients who had been here during the outbreak.
They rounded a corner and the hallway continued, doors lining both sides. She let Nas take the left side of the hallway as she moved to the right, each of them looking through the windows in each door to check inside. She spotted empty hospital beds surrounded by monitoring equipment but no bodies.
“Anything?” she asked Nas and he shook his head.
“They likely evacuated the ICU when the power went down,” Nas said.
Well, that was a blessing, she supposed. The likelihood that anyone who had been in the ICU during the outbreak survived was low, but at least they hadn’t been left here to die slowly.
“Look what we have here,” Nas said and she followed the beam of his flashlight where it was dancing over a sign up ahead.
Pharmacy.
It hung above a Plexiglas service window, a door with an electronic keypad next to it. Nas tried to open it but it was locked tight. Without power, they weren’t going to be able to open it and there was no key lock to pick. Nas pushed open the sliding Plexiglas window and leaned inside to check it out.
“Shelves are still stocked,” he said, twisting around in the tight opening that was too narrow for his shoulders. “You’re going to have to go in. I don’t think I’ll fit.”
She took off her pack and handed it to Nas before she pulled herself up onto the counter and squeezed through the narrow opening.
Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, filled with various sized boxes and bottles. There was a large refrigeration unit in the corner but it was dark and silent, all the vials inside it useless after so long.
It didn’t matter though. Quinton had said the meds they needed had a long shelf life.
She began to scan the contents of the shelves. The names were Greek to her but she knew what she was looking for and found it on the second shelf.
“Got it,” she said, grabbing the two large bottles off the shelf, holding them tight as if they were the most precious thing in the world. And they were. This was the cure that Hannah needed.
She pushed them through the service window to Nas, who scanned the labels and smiled. “Good job. Let’s get going.”
She glanced back at the shelves filled with medication and considered them. They had been so worried about the infection that turned them into freaks, they’d forgotten that there were other deadly infections out there. There were all sorts of things that could happen to them and they had discovered that, as good as the island clinic was, it wasn’t the same as a modern hospital. What if the next sickness that hit the island was fast acting and they didn’t have time to send people out to find medicine?
“Hold up,” she told Nas as he was putting the bottles in her pack. “There’s lots of meds in here. I’m not exactly sure what they all do but most of them should be useful if they’re here in the ICU. We’re already here; we might as well take everything we can carry.”
“Smart idea. Here.” He pulled a folded up backpack out of his pack and handed it to her. “Malcolm has an empty duffel bag in his pack. I’ll go get it.”
He headed down the hall as she turned back into the room and began to clear the shelves. She crammed as many of the bottles and boxes into the backpack as she could. It took a couple rearrangements before she was able to get the zipper closed. She hefted the pack up to the window and struggled to cram it through, wincing when it hit the ground with a loud thud.
She looked through the small window into the hallway for the others but they weren’t back yet. Odd, it shouldn’t have taken this long to find them.
The sound of gunshots echoed up the hallway, causing her to jump from the sound. Shit, there must be freaks.
She pulled herself up to the window and as she began to shimmy out of the opening she spotted a man pressed up against the wall next to the window.
Before she could react, he put her in a headlock, his arm banding tight around her neck. She tried to scream but he had cut off her air supply and nothing came out. She grabbed the arm, fingernails digging into the flesh and hitting steel muscle, but his hold only tightened.
He yanked her forward, one of her legs striking the window frame. Pain radiated through her knee as she was dragged through the window.
She struggled to get her feet under her as he hauled her up against his side, half bent over as he kept her in the headlock. She fought the hold but the vice grip didn’t ease up and she could already see black spots in her vision as the lack of oxygen began to affect her.
Her hand dropped to the gun on her belt and she pulled it from the holster but he grabbed her wrist. Pain flared up her arm as it was twisted and her fingers went slack, the gun clattering to the ground.
“Stop fighting, you dumb bitch, or I’ll kill you,” the man hissed in her ear, the forearm pressing against her throat even harder.
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She pushed back the primal instinct to fight and let her muscles go slack, more desperate for oxygen than her freedom.
The arm around her neck eased up and she gasped for breath, coughing and gagging as she struggled to breathe. He let go of her wrist but it was only to pull out his own gun and put it to her temple.
“If you don’t want your brains all over the floor, you start walking.”
He dragged her down the hall, the gun imprinting into her skin as he kept it pressed against her head. She tried to think of a way out of this but it was hard to do that after the lack of oxygen and her knee throbbing with every step.
They rounded the corner and she saw a young man sprawled on the ground, blood pooling around his head from the gunshot wound there. On the other side of the hallway, Malcolm was on the ground, his gun pointed up at a short, burly man who was aiming his own gun back at him. Travis and Nas were both still standing, guns aimed at the short man.
“You better put your guns down or I’ll kill her,” the man who held her called out. The others glanced in their direction and Travis let out a curse when he saw her.
Nas switched his aim from the short man to her own captor, his gun steady in his practiced hand.
“I’ll drop you before you can pull the trigger,” Nas said.
“You so sure about that?” her captor said, tightening his hold around her neck. She let out a cry and tried to pull his arm off but it was like trying to bend steel.
“The second you shoot him, I’ll shoot you,” the short man told Nas.
“Then I shoot you,” Malcolm said, glancing between the two men. “I already killed one of you. It's nothing to kill the rest of you. Is this really worth all your lives?”
The short man laughed. “You seem to be under the impression that you’re in control here. You’re not. We are.”
“Your friend there thought he was in control,” Malcolm replied. “He tried to get the jump on me but that didn’t work out the way he thought.”
“He was an idiot,” the short man said. “Doesn’t know when to play it close to your chest. He got eager and he paid for it.”
The Complex (The Omega Protocol Chronicles Book 3) Page 27