“Look, we’ll give you everything we’ve taken from the hospital here and you let us go,” Travis offered.
“No!” Veronica cried out and the man holding her tightened his grip but she fought against it. “I found what we needed, we can’t--”
The man cut off her words and her air supply, giving her a shake. “Shut up, bitch!”
“Stop it,” Travis cried out, taking a step forward but the man dug the muzzle harder into her temple and Travis stopped.
The man eased up his grip on her throat so she could suck in a shaky breath. The repeated lack of oxygen starting to affect, her legs starting to shake.
“We’ll leave everything in the hospital for you if you just let us go,” Malcolm tried to negotiate. “We’ll leave and never come back this way. There’s no reason for us to fight each other and risk any of our people.”
“I don’t think you fully understand the situation here,” the short man said. “We don’t care about what you’ve taken. We’ll take that back no matter what. What we care about is that you’ve trespassed in our territory and we can’t let that go.”
“You do that and you all die,” Malcolm warned him but the man just laughed.
“I told you that we’re in control here and it’s not just because we’ve got your cooze at gunpoint. We outnumber you.”
The stairwell door behind Malcolm opened and two more men appeared, their guns pointed at Malcolm but he didn’t look at them. His wide eyes were staring over the shoulder of the man who held Veronica.
From the corner of her eye, Veronica caught sight of four men who stepped forward to flank her captor. They sure as hell were outnumbered.
Malcolm lowered his gun and Travis and Nas followed suit. As soon as their weapons hit the ground, the men were on them, hauling their arms behind their backs. Her own captor let her drop and she put out her hands to stop her fall but one of them came down in the growing blood pool from the dead man and slipped out from under her.
She cracked her chin on the floor and lay there dazed for a moment. A boot came down on the centre of her back, reminding her where she was and clearing her head.
As he grabbed one of her arms to pull it behind her, she quickly drew on the floor with a bloody finger. It was a last ditch effort, the only thing she could think to do as the man grabbed her other hand to tie her up. She just prayed Claudia would see the markings.
Subject File #745
Subject: Hate seein’ the freaks now.
Administrator: That’s natural. They are a threat.
Subject: Ain’t that. I’m startin’ to feel sorry for ‘em. I see ‘em and all I can see now is the person they used to be. Damn girl changes up my head by wantin’ to give ‘em mercy.
“That doesn’t look pleasant.”
Banks wasn’t wrong. Hell, Jackson had thought the same thing when the hospital had appeared up ahead. Though he would’ve used a few more colourful words.
The three storey building was in a cross shape and the red brick was burned black on two ends. A fire had taken out two of the wings at some point and Jackson could see the way the roof of the north wing sagged where it had collapsed.
“The other wings look okay,” Mendez said from the backseat. “As long as the ICU is in them, we should be able to find what we need.”
“I’ll radio Elaine and tell her we’re here,” Claudia said and took the sat phone from the centre console and hailed Elaine.
“The others have arrived at their hospital,” Elaine replied. “Radio back when you have the package and are ready to move out.”
“Roger that,” Claudia said. “Well, we better get moving.”
There was a laneway that ran in front of the hospital, with a fire truck blocking it. They parked the SUV behind the truck and did one last check of their weapons and put their masks on before they climbed out.
There were two more fire trucks parked in front of the other one, hoses still connected to the trucks and the fire hydrants. The hospital must have caught fire when things were still up and running and the local fire department had rushed to their aid. It wasn’t too hard to figure out what had happened after that.
Even though the bodies around the trucks were badly decomposed after months of exposure, the yellow fire jackets and helmets were easy to spot. Infected people would have been brought to the hospital and when they turned, they would have wreaked havoc inside. A fire had started and spread and when the firemen had showed up to put it out, they had fallen victim to the freaks fleeing the burning building.
Jackson turned away from the bodies, trying to steel his stomach. There were bound to be more inside. He needed to get used to the sight.
The automatic doors to the emergency entrance had been smashed open, glass shards scattered on the ground. The rest of the building beyond was dark, no windows in the brick walls to let in sunlight.
“Stay tight,” Mendez said as they clicked on their flashlights. “Anything comes at us, go for your hand weapons first. We got no idea if that place is full of them. One gunshot and it could bring them down on us.”
Jackson clenched his fist around his crowbar as they headed inside the emergency bay. He was more comfortable with the idea of being able to shoot any freaks long before they got within arm’s reach but he knew Mendez was right.
He remembered it had happened at the auto shop when Audrey had tried to shoot a freak. The gunshots had brought down a group of freaks only minutes later. It had been luck and fast thinking that had got them out of there in time.
He didn’t want to deal with that again. If they had to flee before they got the meds, they were in trouble. The next hospital was three hours away and three hours was a lifetime to those sick kids.
Their flashlights cut through the gloom, lighting on a lines of chairs of a waiting area. The stench of death hung in the air and Jackson spotted a few bodies lying between the chairs. Flies swarmed around them and Jackson didn’t bother to go in for a closer look.
Mendez waved to get their attention and pointed past the reception desk that sat where the four wings of the hospital met.
A bank of elevator doors stood open and they checked inside the cabs to make sure there weren’t any surprises hiding in there. They were empty except for what remained of a body in dirty scrubs, old blood spattered over the inside of the elevator cab. There wasn’t enough of the body left to tell if it had been a man or a woman, most of the flesh stripped off the bones.
“Christ,” Jackson hissed out, turning away from the carnage.
He spotted a department listing on the wall beside the elevator. He scanned over it, finding the Intensive Care Unit bolded on the list for the second floor of the west wing. Good, it wasn’t in one of the burned out wings.
“Second floor, west side,” Jackson whispered to them. “Stairs are behind the door over there.”
The door stood half open, a fire axe jammed between the door and the wall to keep it open. It must have been rigged up during the fire to make evacuation easier.
Mendez led them inside the stairwell, directing her flashlight up the stairs to look for any sign of movement. She knocked her machete against the railing, the ringing of metal on metal echoing up the stairwell. Jackson held his breath as the sound died out and he strained to hear any other sounds in the stairwell.
Silence greeted them and Jackson let out his breath, moving the crowbar to his other hand so he could wipe his sweaty palm on the front of his shirt.
Jesus, he was nervous. He’d become used to the relaxed life on the island. Even when he was sitting watch, his muscles never knotted up like this and his palms were always bone dry.
Mendez led them up the stairs, Banks guarding their backs for any surprise attack. The door on the second floor landing was closed, the narrow window in it allowing in the faintest grey light. Mendez pressed her flashlight against the glass so she could look through it.
“Looks clear,” she whispered. “Claudia, cover me.”
Claudia moved bes
ide the door, her baseball bat at the ready as Mendez pushed the door open. The two women peered down the opposite ends of the hallway, their beams dancing around as they checked it out.
Mendez gave Claudia the go ahead and she tapped her bat against the door frame to see if the sound drew anyone or anything. When nothing appeared, Mendez nodded for them to go through the door.
A few stretchers were in the hallway, some lined up against the walls, a couple at odd angles in the centre. A supply cart had been upended, half the drawers pulled open and medical supplies scattered across the floor.
There were four doors lining the hall, glass walls set between the doors to give a view into the patient rooms. Jackson pointed his flashlight at one of them, squinting to see through the glass.
There were three hospital beds lined up against the wall, machines surrounding them. Blue sheets were pulled over the beds, stained where the liquids from the decomposing bodies beneath had soaked through. He was thankful that the door to the room was closed and the glass walls had stayed intact. He could just imagine the stench in there.
Thank god they didn’t have to go into any of the patient rooms. Quinton had told them they’d find what they were looking for in the pharmacy or a supply room.
Claudia was peering through the glass, a deep frown on her face.
“What is it?” he asked in a low voice as he moved around the stretcher that had been pushed up against the door to stand beside her.
“The bodies on the beds,” she told him. “They’re...skeletons.”
She was right. There were two bodies on the beds, no sheets to cover their remains though there wasn’t much on that account. They were skeletons but not even full skeletons at that.
One bed held a ribcage and pelvis, the limbs and head missing. The other was a bit more intact, its skull still on its neck, a chunk of scalp and hair still attached. The limbs were missing like the other one though and half its pelvis dangled off the side of the bed.
He directed his flashlight around the room, pointing it at the floor where it showed a long length of bone. Probably one of their legs, the entire thing stripped clean of skin and muscle. A freak must have got to them or maybe the third bed had once had an occupant that had been infected. Either way, they must have had a hell of a feast in there.
“Something is moving in there.”
Jackson looked to where Claudia had directed her beam of light and he saw the sheets at the foot of the bed moving.
“Rats?” he offered but then a hand shot up into the beam of light. Nope, definitely not a rat.
The hand gripped onto the edge of the bed, its thin, gnarled fingers fisting into the mattress. Tendons popped out of the emaciated hand and up the bony arm as it pulled itself up, a face coming up into the light. Its skin was plastered to its hollow cheeks and it blinked rapidly as the light shone into its sunken milky eyes. Chunks of its hair had fallen out, revealing milky bald spots on its scalp. Dried brown spittle coated its drawn lips as it gnashed its teeth at them.
It tried to stand up, revealing a bare chest and Jackson could count each rib. It must have been locked up in this room since the beginning, surviving on the bodies from the other beds. Now with the bodies stripped, it had been starving inside that room.
“My God,” Claudia gasped as it limped forward but then its weak legs gave out and it toppled back to the floor.
Mendez and Banks had joined them and Banks made an exaggerated gagging noise before he continued up the hall to check on the next room.
“Make sure the door is secure,” Mendez ordered and then followed Banks.
Jackson checked the stretcher in front of the door, the brakes keeping it in place. If it hadn’t been able to get out in peak condition, there was no way that pathetic thing was getting out now.
“We should put it down,” Claudia said.
“Why bother?” Jackson asked. “The poor bastard’s locked up tight. No way it can get outta there now.”
“It’s starving in there,” she said, her brow furrowed as she stared at the freak. It had managed to drag itself close enough to the window that its thin fingers could claw at the glass. “That’s a horrible way to die.”
She had a point. Hell, as far as he was concerned, if he got infected, he wanted a bullet right to the brain. No waiting around to see if things worked out, just a quick death, over before he suffered.
The least he could do was offer the poor bastard the same mercy.
“Alright, I’ll get the stretcher,” he said and flipped off the brakes so he could push it out of the way.
The air in the room was stale, the odor of rot still there but not as bad as he had anticipated. The sound of their footsteps excited the freak, its fingernails dragging along the floor as its growls grew louder. It was trying to get itself to its feet, the chance at fresh meat giving in strength to rise to its knees.
Claudia didn’t let it get any further, swinging her bat in a wide arc and clocking the freak in the side of the head. It crumpled to the floor and Jackson moved swiftly, driving the sharp end of the crowbar into the freak’s eye socket.
It spasmed twice and then grew still, blood seeping out around the crowbar. Jackson waited a few moments to make sure the heart wasn’t pumping blood anymore and then pulled the crowbar from it. Blood bubbled up from the wound but didn’t spurt out. Jackson used one of the sheets to wipe the crowbar clean, careful not to get any of the infected blood on him.
Claudia stared down at the body, her eyes pained above her mask and he understood. Now that it was no threat to them, Jackson could see how sad it was. He had to have been a healthy man at some point but now he was a husk of a human. Jackson took the sheet and covered the man, the closest to a burial he would get.
“C’mon,” he said and they left the room, closing the door behind them.
They continued up the hallway, past the other rooms that Mendez and Banks had checked. A bank of elevators appeared and they found the nurse’s station across from them. Beyond it, the hallway continued to the rest of the wing and Jackson could see more ICU rooms beyond. A glass walled waiting room was on the other side of the nurse’s station and Mendez came out of it, nodding that it was clear.
“Found it!” came Banks’ voice from down the hallway that led to the rest of the wing.
They headed down past two more rooms to find Banks standing in front of a glass door. On the other side Jackson could see shelves lined with medical supplies. Bingo.
“It’s locked,” Banks said, pulling on the handle and rattling the door in the frame as the lock held tight. “Electronic swipe card.”
“Good thing I’ve got a key,” Claudia grinned, pulling a hammer from her belt. “Stand back.”
Two quick strikes at the top corners had the glass falling from the door to shatter in pieces across the floor.
The sound of the breaking glass echoed in the hallway for a moment and they all stood still, waiting for any response to the noise. Nothing stirred in the cavernous hallway and so Claudia stepped through the doorframe. It didn’t take her long before she found what they needed.
The relief that swamped him almost made his knees buckle. They had what Hannah needed to get better. She’d be okay. All of them would be okay. It didn’t matter that they still had to get back to the island. That was just a minor obstacle. Now that he had the meds, he’d plow straight through that obstacle without hesitating.
“Alright, let’s get goin’,” Jackson said, starting back down the hallway.
“Seems stupid to leave the rest of this here,” Banks said, halting Jackson’s steps. “For all we know, we’re gonna need some of these next week and we’ll be right back here. We should find some bags and clear this whole place out.”
His instinct told him to refuse, to urge them to get back on the road ASAP. He wanted to get back to the girls but that practical voice that had started to grow in his brain for the past few months told him to wait and consider.
Their clinic wasn’t the be all
and end all of medicine. The meningitis breakout had taught him that. For all they knew, there was tons of stuff in there that Quinton didn’t have.
“We’ll do it fast,” Mendez said. “There were a couple used scrub bins back down the hall. We can use the laundry bags. He’s right, we may need this stuff soon. Better to take an extra fifteen minutes now than have to come back.”
“Alright,” Jackson agreed. “Let’s get those bags.”
It didn’t take the full fifteen minutes for them to pack up the room. They weren’t exactly neat about it, just sweeping their arms along the shelves so it all went into the bags in a disorganized pile. The path out of the hospital was still clear, their presence here not drawing any attention. The SUV was still where they parked it and they loaded up and headed back in the direction they had come.
“Did this seem a bit too easy?” Banks said as they passed the town line.
“Shut up,” Claudia hissed, “You’re gonna jinx it.”
“I swear, Banks, if anything bad happens I’m going to kick your ass,” Mendez said, glaring at him.
“Oh come on,” Banks pleaded with them, “You can’t blame me. The world doesn’t work like that.”
“You better hope you’re right,” Mendez said with a shake of her head at him and then she grabbed up the sat phone. “This is Group Two reporting in. We’ve secured the package and are heading to the rendezvous point.”
“Roger that. We’ll be waiting. Radio in at your next contact time and provide your position.”
“Will do. Over and out,” Mendez replied. “Alright, Jinx Boy, get us back to the marina without any problems.”
Jackson settled back in his seat, staring out the window at the rural fields surrounding the road.
They were filled with wheat and corn, the fields allowed to follow their natural cycle without any human intervention over the summer. With autumn coming, the plants would die and their yield would rot in the fields.
But without a proper harvest there was every chance that in the spring the seeds that had fallen from the crops would grow again. Nature was strong like that. It could always come back no matter what happened.
The Complex (The Omega Protocol Chronicles Book 3) Page 28