“Alright everyone. I need a dozen volunteers to help me scope out the hospital before we head over there. A military background is preferred. Chances are we’re going to run into some trouble in there, and I don’t want inexperienced people with me shooting themselves in the foot. So, who’s in?”
Two dozen hands rose among the crowd recently cured, and a few of the original survivors volunteered as well.
“Everyone with a military background keep your hands up. Everyone without, put your hands down.”
Still more than a dozen remained.
“If your hand is still up, you’ve got ten minutes to prepare. You’re each going to need firearms, flashlights, Molotov cocktails, and a lighter. Bring a snack if you get hangry.”
No one laughed.
Max glanced at John, who was at least smirking.
“Tough crowd,” John said with a shrug.
“Let’s hope so,” said Max. “Alright, get to it. Now you’ve got nine minutes!”
Piper was out of bed again, which was no surprise. Max found her in the makeshift infirmary that the other half of the dining room had been turned into, tending to a young man who lay unconscious. His head and neck were bandaged, and his foot had been amputated at the ankle. Piper rose from her chair when she saw Max coming and studied his eyes.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“I’m fine. But I’ll be better once we get the hospital locked down.”
“There are a few RNs in the cured group, and a couple doctors as well. Seems there was an office party the other night at the local clinic.”
“Well that’s lucky. They’re going to be needed.”
“You be careful out there,” said Piper, kissing him.
“Always. We should be back in an hour or so.”
A few minutes later, the volunteers loaded onto the bus. There were four women and ten men, including Max and John. A few of the volunteers wore hockey equipment and jerseys, and Max recognized them from the battle on the ice. Their presence eased his mind a bit, for they had fought like men possessed against the screamers, and he knew they could handle whatever they found in the hospital.
He pulled out of the lodge parking lot and headed for Main Street. With any luck, they wouldn’t find any howlers in the hospital at all. But Max didn’t count on it. His luck had been a volatile thing as of late. He had rescued Piper only to lose Stefan, and now the screamers had all changed into something inhuman.
There was no saving them now.
The hospital shone bright in the sunlight, all shiny steal and reflective windows. The five-story oblong building looked more like an alien mother ship than a place of healing, and Max thought it fitting. In truth, the hospital and the medical supplies stored away there made it one of the most valuable places in the county. If there was going to be a future for the human race, they would need the medical knowledge of the old world.
Max pulled into the roundabout and drove around to park facing the road. If they had to haul ass out of there suddenly, Max wanted to be prepared. The soldiers piled out of the bus and took up defensive positions.
“You and you,” said Max, pointing at a man and a woman. “Stay with the bus.” He tossed a radio to the woman before handing out the other four. One he kept for himself. “Keep them on channel twenty-seven and keep the chatter down. We’ll break up into groups. John, you’re with me. You, what’s your name?”
The young women he was pointing at straightened and sounded off. “Private Valentine, sir.”
“You just back from service?”
“Was on leave, sir.”
“Alright, Valentine, you’re with me. Who’re my officers?” Max asked the group.
Three of the men and one woman raised their hands.
“Everyone else break into four equal groups around the officers.”
They did so, shuffling around each other until they had settled into four groups of three. Max assigned them each callsigns consisting of animal names and sent them all in different directions. As the others went around the building or moved toward the parking garage, Max and his team went in through the main entrance. The electric doors were as dead as everything else and had to be pulled apart, but they gained entry easy enough. Flashlight beams swept over a waiting area, a reception desk, and a hallway leading to the ER. Max signaled to John and Valentine before starting down the hall. He checked the bathrooms on the way and gave the all-clear in the ER waiting room. John went ahead, flashlight beam sweeping toward the door. He pulled it open and Valentine moved through, crouching just inside the door and sweeping her light left to right. She gave the all-clear signal, and Max moved through while John backed into the room, covering the hall behind them.
Another reception desk sat in a semicircle at the center of the ER, and rooms stretched out behind it, ten in all. Max, John, and Valentine searched the rooms. Finding nothing, they continued through the first floor.
Fifteen minutes later, Max reported the first floor clear. The other captains reported the parking garage and the basement clear, but then a shaky voice came over the radio. “Sheriff, this is bear team. You’re going to want to see this.”
“Where are you?”
“The morgue.”
Chapter 6
The Unholy Dead
Gunfire erupted at the end of the hall, and Max burst through the swinging doors with John and Valentine close behind. He skidded to a stop when he found bear team hunkered down behind overturned gurneys. At the end of the hall, a writhing mass of veiny green flesh took up the entire doorway, bulging like dough left too long to rise.
“Hold your fire!” said Max.
“The hell with that,” said one man. “Look at that thing!”
“If it’s anything like the other screamer cocoons, it won’t hatch if it’s left alone. We’re abandoning the mission; we’ve got to burn this place to the ground. Move out!”
The soldiers began to retreat, but it was too late, the gunfire had awakened the morbid mass. It exploded like a bug beneath a shoe, spewing forth blood and ichor and other unrecognizable gore that was altogether unholy. The smell was horrid, and Max choked down his gorge even as he leapt behind the wall of gurneys.
“Fire at will!” he cried, popping up and unloading a clip into the mass.
The black eggs shot out into the hall, and the soldiers started to retreat. Max grabbed John when he slipped in the slick gore and pushed him through the swinging doors. He urged the others on and frantically lit his Molotov cocktail, kicked the door, and tossed it into the room. Max caught a glimpse of the three-headed howlers emerging from their black-shelled eggs. They were comprised of the dead that had been stored in the morgue, that much was apparent, for stitches ran the length of their torsos, and their skin was pale gray and ashen. Max charged through the hall, covered by John and Valentine. Once he was through, they let loose their own cocktails and bolted after him.
The soldiers scrambled out of the hospital and made a beeline for the bus. Max took up the rear, followed closely by the tortured howls of the newborn monstrosities. He watched in horror as howlers began to crash through windows by the dozens, landing on six feet and springing toward the bus. The soldiers cut them down in midair, but the thrashing beasts took dozens of rounds without going down. Even when their three heads were destroyed, the bodies kept on coming.
“The worms,” said Max under his breath.
“What?” said John.
“The worms—we’ve got to kill the worms to kill the howlers.”
“Great idea,” said John between bursts of gunfire. “But where are the little bastards?”
Max wondered the same. They weren’t in any of the many heads, that much was apparent, and riddling the wide misshapen torsos didn’t seem to have much effect either. The electric tendrils, however, must have been attached to the alien host.
“Shoot them in the back!” said Max. “Where the tendrils attach to the body!”
“That’s easier said than done,�
�� said Valentine as she fired her dual pistols into the chest of an approaching howler.
She was right; the howlers were coming at them head-on, and there was no getting behind them. Smoke had begun to issue from the hospital windows, and soon dozens of howlers were pouring forth.
“Shit! Retreat!” said Max, laying cover as the soldiers filed back into the bus.
Someone tossed a cocktail on the ground between them and the howlers, and Max sprinted to the bus. He leapt into the driver seat and yanked the door lever. Five seconds later, the bus was in gear. He tried to floor it, but busses weren’t known forburning rubber. It got up to speed painfully slow, and howlers began leaping onto the roof and clinging to the sides, electric tendrils smashing through windows and electrocuting the soldiers.
Max turned a corner too fast, and the back end swung out across the snow and ice. He steered for the retaining wall, and metal grated against stone as the impact scraped the howlers off the right side of the bus like bugs off a windshield. He turned left and floored it, cursing when he glanced at the side mirror; dozens of the deformed demons were racing down the road after them.
“Where are we going?” said John from the bench seat behind Max. “What’s the plan?”
“Our only chance is to outrun them.”
Max pulled onto the main road and gunned it down the short straightaway. The roads around Lake Placid were winding and treacherous even when the snow plows were out, but the howlers were already falling behind at twenty miles an hour. Soon they were specks in the rearview. Max was about to give the all-clear, when a howler dropped down from the roof and spread itself like an octopus across the windshield. There had been a turn coming, and Max hit the breaks to dislodge the beast with momentum. But the thing held on, shooting its pointed tendrils through the window and puncturing the headrest an inch from Max’s face. Valentine unloaded a clip each from her two pistols, and glass flew. Electricity suddenly coursed through Max, and he froze up. He watched, horrified, as he spied the turn coming. They were sliding down the road sideways now, and by the time he regained control of his arms it was too late. The back end hit a building and shot to the right, careening down a hotel driveway, taking out a gazebo, and rocketing down the lawn toward the lake. The howler on the windshield was finally jolted free, and Max and his passengers screamed as the bus slid sideways across the lawn and hit the retaining wall near the shoreline. The bus groaned, and tires spun as it went up on three wheels and crashed over the wall, sliding across the ice on its right side.
Max was tossed around the cockpit like a ragdoll before being launched into the door like a crash test dummy.
Chapter 7
Up Shit Creek Without a Boat
“Max, wake up…Max.” Someone was slapping his face, but Max didn’t want to get up yet. He didn’t want to go to work. Piper had the day off, and there were supposed to have a picnic by the lake that afternoon.
“Sheriff!”
Max jolted awake and blinked at John with startled confusion. From his angle, the bus looked like it was upside down. Then he remembered the accident.
“Is everyone alright?” he asked as John helped him up.
“A few broken bones, but everyone’s alive. Come on.”
They crawled out of the busted windshield and staggered out onto the ice. They had gone off the road near the beach, and the lodge could be seen far down the north shore. Max turned back and listened. The howlers were coming, and they sounded pissed.
“Come on, we’ve got to go,” said John.
“Go ahead, get the others out of here.”
“Sheriff, you’re in no condition to take them on by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine. Go on, hurry up.”
John looked to have more to say, but instead he nodded and gathered the soldiers, helping a man along who was nursing his right ankle.
The sounds of the howlers were getting closer. Max sprang into action, ignoring his cuts and bruises and retrieving the flare kit from the bus. He moved around the underside and inspected the gas tank. There were no leaks, but he could remedy that easy enough. Three shots with the pistol and the gas was flowing, spreading out across the ice and along the side of the bus. He glanced up at the hill they had careened down, seeing the first of the lurching howlers coming toward him.
Max climbed up onto the bus and reloaded his semiauto, letting off a few shots when the howlers steered toward the retreating soldiers.
“Hey, you ugly sonsabitches, come and get me!”
Three howlers changed course as more began to pour down the hillside. He needed to wait until they were all near the bus before igniting the gas, but that was easier said than done. The first of the howlers reached the bus and leapt up onto the side. Max went for the legs, riddling them with bullets in hopes of slowing them down. It worked for a time, as two of the howlers dropped to the window glass and pulled themselves along with their many arms. Others rushed over them, their jaws snapping and milky eyes bulging. Max reloaded and backed toward the front of the bus. Dozens of screamers were coming for him now. Dread filled him as he fought them off with the rifle. When it clicked empty again, Max flung it back over his shoulder and pulled Stefan’s sword from its sheath, slicing three reaching tendrils in half and blasting the closest howler with the pistol.
With nowhere left to go and with nearly two dozen howlers coming at him across and through the overturned bus, he lit the flare and tossed it over his enemies’ heads before turning and leaping away. The flare hit the gas as he sailed through the air. The explosion that followed hit his back like hurricane winds from hell, sending him flying end over end onto the ice, where he skipped like a pebble on a placid lake.
Max came to a stop and panted in the snow. His nostrils burned with the smell of gas and burnt hair, his ears rang maddeningly, and his body screamed for the abuse to stop. But he couldn’t stop now. He had to get up; he had to fight. He pulled himself to his feet and found the sword five feet away in the snow. Behind him, the bus was a pyre. Howlers were scattered around the ice, writhing and twitching in their death throes as the fires consumed them. The heat was unbearable, and Max grabbed the sword and staggered back.
A burning howler leapt from the wreckage and landed three feet in front of Max. His instincts took over as the tendrils shot toward him blindly. He leapt and rolled to the side, coming up behind the monster and stabbing it through with a war cry that echoed through the mountains. A cry of pain and terror issued from inside the monstrosity as the tendrils zapped and flared. Max twisted the blade and yanked it free, watching with satisfaction as the burning howler fell to its knees and toppled over.
He turned and staggered toward the lodge, glancing back every other second to check that there was nothing after him. The fire hadn’t yet killed all the howlers, and as he hurried across the ice, three of the half-dead smoldering nightmares pursued him.
A familiar sound snapped his head back to the lodge, and he was relieved to see a black Hummer explode over the bank and peel out across the lake, heading in his direction. A Jeep Cherokee came after it, followed by two half-ton pickup trucks. Max ran toward the oncoming cars like a suicidal man on the freeway as the howlers were closing in behind him. He checked his jacket pockets for another clip as he ran, but he had spent the last of the semiauto’s bullets on top of the bus. His pistol was empty as well, which only left the sword. He glanced back; the howlers were twenty feet away and closing fast. The trucks were more than a hundred.
It was going to be close.
Max pushed himself harder, digging into the snow and pumping his arms, ready to whirl around and hack the monsters to death if they got too close. He glanced back again and let out a cry of alarm as a howler barreled into him, knocking him into the snow and sending him sliding across the ice. Max turned as he slid, bringing the sword to bear. The howler leapt again, coming down on Max with tendrils flaring and its thirty fingers twitching with the excitement of the kill.
“Die, you ugly fu—”
The Hummer slammed into the howler as it descended on Max, the tires coming within inches of his legs. The howler bounced off the roof and spun a full circle in the air before landing with a thud ten feet away. A truck slammed into it, driving it straight at the bus. Whoever was driving leapt out at the last minute and rolled on the ice as the truck careened into the pyre.
The Hummer spun a one-eighty as the other vehicles committed aggravated howler-slaughter. The passenger door opened, and John yelled to Max.
“Need a ride?”
Max sheathed his sword, limped over to the Hummer, and got in. He pulled the door closed and John spun out, heading back toward the lodge.
“I’ve got bad news,” said John, and at first Max thought he was kidding.
How could things get any worse?
“What happened?” said Max, seeing John’s somber expression.
“Everyone’s gone.”
Max looked to the lodge. “What do you mean, everyone’s gone? Where’d they go?”
“My guess is it was military, judging by the tire tracks.”
“Sonofabitch!” Max punched the dash, which didn’t help his sore shoulder. “Which way do the tracks lead?”
“West out of town.”
“Must be the National Guard. And if they went west, then they’re most likely headed to Fort Drum.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Fort Drum is what, two hours from here?”
“Two and a half,” said Max.
“Then I guess we know our next move,” said John.
Max nodded. “I should have thought of it sooner. Fort Drum is probably the most secure place in Northern New York right now. I just didn’t assume that anyone would have survived. But if the National Guard is headed there, they must have gotten word that it was secure.”
“Or they’re taking a shot in the dark.”
“Either way, that’s where we need to be.”
Chapter 8
Doomsday Sheriff_Day 2_A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Adventure Page 3