Allen put down a large box of canned food and approached Jenny. I could see that his equally tall and wide stature was somewhat intimidating to her. She tightened her grip on the M4 and took the smallest of steps backward. She was ready to react before Allen could even blink, let alone try to harm her.
“I know you don’t trust us, but it sounds like you’ll need another gun in that hospital. I can shoot, and one more person could make a real difference.”
Jenny was hesitant, but I was convinced we could trust them. Especially since Allen was given the opportunity to remain here and steal some of the supplies and guns using the other car we’d leave behind in case they needed it.
There was also one very important aspect of him that let me know he was willing to risk his life for others. He’s living with the guilt of being forced to kill his own wife to save his sister. I knew from my own guilt that it just makes a person want to fight even harder to atone for their mistakes.
“Jenny, I trust him. We need them.”
“We all trusted Naya too, James.”
“Why would he volunteer to go? They could just wait for us to leave and take off with the other car and half of our shit. His want to help us is obviously genuine…. And again, we need as many guns around as possible.”
Jenny’s eyes suggested she was still skeptical. She looked Allen up and down, then looked off to the side for a few moments and mumbled something to herself that escaped my ears. She turned to Veronica. “Can you shoot?”
Veronica’s eyes widened. Her delicate features hardened from the fear brought about by the idea of having to run in a hospital that could possibly be packed with shredders. “I, I’ve never even held a gun before.”
Jenny shook her head. “She’s just as liable to shoot one of us… Once this is over, we’ll teach you.”
“I don’t want to stay here by myself.”
Walt said “We can’t leave her here alone… And Clara…”
“So, what? We take two cars? That’ll just make everything more difficult.” Jenny pointed out.
Fuck…
Jenny looked up at Allen. “Sorry if you’re insulted, but” She turned to Walt. “I’m not leaving Clara with strangers… Allen goes, you stay.”
I could instantly see an explosion of anger on Walt’s face as he began walking toward Jenny. He was just about to start arguing, but logic seemed to take over and tell him there was no other choice. He came to a stop, tightly gripped his face and groaned out “Fuck… I’ll stay.”
“I know Walt. This is just the way it has to be.”
Brian said “I don’t like this” through a shallow exhale.
She ignored Brian and began trying to help him to his feet. Allen rushed over and assisted her. I told Walt to get Veronica a rifle anyway… Melanie saved him that night and she didn’t have any experience shooting either…
After they helped Brian into the car, Allen went back inside to have a few words with Veronica before we left. Once he was out of sight, Jenny whispered in my ear “He sits upfront with me. You sit behind him and keep that 9mm I gave you pointed at the back of the seat.”
“I will.” Can’t blame her for being so paranoid. Hopefully, she wrong…
Chapter 11
I assumed we were just going to drive around Hinesville in a panic until we found a hospital. Unlike me, Jenny had been paying attention when we first arrived and noticed a hospital near the highway we used to get there.
“It’s a small hospital, which should work in our favor, but we still have to assume the inside is going to be packed… The only thing we can hope for is that a good majority wandered off and the rest have been eating each other.”
“If there’re too many of them we’re turning the fuck around.” Brain said with exhaustion.
As Jenny directed, I kept the 9mm rested on my knee and pointed at Allen’s back. Brian was having to keep his eyes closed and shy away from the sunlight coming through the un-tinted window. His shirt was completely soaked, and as he let out a breath and then coughed, the sweat that had run down to his lips sprayed on the back of the seat.
“Do we have enough gas to turn on the air for Brian?”
Jenny switch on the AC and adjusted the vents so they were blowing toward Brian. “How’s he doing?”
“His breathing is getting worse.”
Jenny looked back at him in the rearview mirror. “Just a few more minutes and we’ll be there.”
Even though Hinesville was teeming with shredders, Savannah was the only other nearby location that would definitely have a hospital, and there was no doubt in our minds that it would be even worse. It was our one and only option.
It wasn’t long before I saw the large sign for the “Liberty Regional Medical Center”. I was relieved to see that it wasn’t even as big as a Walmart. The number of cars in the parking lot presented the likelihood of at least thirty shredders, though it was still only a shadow of what I had envisioned… This might work…
The hospital was somewhat on the outskirts of town, right near the entrance to the highway. It was almost in its own little world, far away from the road on a massive plot of land, mainly surrounded by trees. To my disbelief, I only saw four shredders standing by the front door under the roof overhang.
Allen said “I don’t think this is going to be too bad.”
As Jenny came to a stop at the beginning of the parking lot, she said “We haven’t gone inside yet. Don’t assume anything… Let’s take them out from here.”
Allen hopped out, raised his rifle and fired before I would even think he’d have time to line up a shot. When one of the shredder’s head’s blew out on the wall behind it, Jenny and I both glanced over at each other and she said “Nice shot, Allen. But hold off for now and let us take care of it. That AK is quite a bit louder than our rifles.”
He lightly smiled and lowered the rifle. “I told you I can shoot.”
“I see that.” Jenny replied before we both took down the remaining three by the front entrance. “I’ve been wondering. Are you ex-military?”
I was just starting to wonder about that…
“A lot of people think that, but no. Two of the guys I used to work with were really into going to the range, so they eventually got me into it too... We used to use a stopwatch and see who could aim and hit the target in the least amount of time.” Allen chuckled. “I’m an electrician… I didn’t even own my own gun. I always used to just rent one from the range.”
“Well, you’re definitely a better shot than I am.” I remarked as we all climbed back in the car.
Brian struggled to smile as he said “You probably got me beat too. That was fast as shit... You’re like one of those speed shooters on ESPN.”
Allen’s face showed the pain of recalling his friends who he knew were most likely dead. His voice went flat. “I pretty much always used to win.”
Jenny pulled up right to the front of the building so we’d have an easy escape if need be. “Emergency Room” was scrolled on the front of the small roof overhang. I could see into the lobby through the glass doors, and spotted several more shredders slowly walking toward us.
Jenny said “This is exactly where we need to be.” She looked back to Brian. “Stay low so if any wander around the car while we’re inside they won’t even know you’re there… Don’t fire your gun unless you have to, understand me?”
“You got it.” Brian said sarcastically, as if to suggest he didn’t need to be babied.
Jenny stepped out and took a few moments to spin around and scan every direction. “Okay, Allen. Looks like there aren’t any around close enough to care about the noise… We need to shoot through those doors anyway. Let’s take down the ones in the lobby and make some noise so we can draw them out from the rooms. We don’t want any more surprises.”
We stepped forward, each chose a target and began to fire through the glass. Due to the small size of the hospital and the abnormally high amount of windows, the shredders inside weren’t
getting much shade. They were almost as slow as they’d be in direct sunlight.
There was a wide, long hall leading straight ahead, and a narrower one leading to the right. When we walked into the lobby, more were already staggering out of the rooms. Allen stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a high-pitched whistle.
Jenny said “Look how bloody and thin they are. They’ve definitely been having to eat each other.”
There was blood everywhere I looked. When I glanced over at the waiting area and saw the stained and tossed about chairs, I was able to picture the people suddenly turning and going wild in the lobby. There were a few barely visible pools and smears near the front entrance, but I could tell that no one actually made it through the front doors… The shredders do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.
When we reached the convergence of the two hallways, Jenny said “You two go straight, I’ll go right.”
As Allen and I slowly moved through the hallway, shooting everything in sight, I could hear Jenny firing as well. Every time she stopped, I worried it was because one of them got ahold of her. I was so distracted by waiting for her to begin firing again that I missed an easy shot and almost allowed one of the shredders to grab on to me.
Most had wandered out of the rooms, but it seemed like every other one would house a straggler waiting to lunge out when we stepped in front of the door way. It was rather disturbing to be walking through a hospital and shooting mainly elderly people in white gowns who were dragging IVs and machines behind them. They all looked so harmless and innocent in their weakened states. It made me feel like some nut-job who decided to shoot up a hospital for no reason.
By the time we reached the end of the long hall and cleared the last two rooms I could still hear Jenny firing, so we rushed back to the lobby. She was slowly retreating, stepping backward toward us and trying her best to conserve ammo. “Get ready! About twenty of them are coming from the cafeteria!”
Allen and I raised our rifles and waited for Jenny to make it to the lobby. They bulk of them began pouring out into the hallway, tripping and falling over one another as they desperately followed after her. They became even more excited when they realized there were three of us.
Taking them all down was no more difficult than hitting a stationary target from less than fifty feet away.
I can’t believe how well this is going… I could only imagine if we had ten or twenty more people. We could clear out a building with two hundred of them inside and probably not lose a single person…
“So that hallway is all clear?” Jenny asked.
Before I could reply, Allen said “We didn’t check any bathrooms. Almost every room had one.”
“Okay, let’s split up again and start searching. Just make sure to check whenever you go in one of the rooms.”
Jenny walked over to the counter and grabbed a notepad and a pen, then proceeded to write us a small list of what to look for. “Any kind will be better than what we have, but for his severe case we really need the top one on this list, Polymyxin, but Vancomycin will do if you can’t find it… Honestly though, in the very least we need the Vancomycin. The regular stuff probably won’t do anything except slow it down.”
Allen said “Since this is an emergency room they should have that stuff, right?”
“I’d be shocked if they didn’t. Now, come on, we need to hurry. Brian’s blood is already being poisoned by the infection. There’s a room in this building somewhere that’s dedicated to housing medication, we just need to find it.”
“We checked every door, we didn’t see any room like that. Only patient beds and two small offices.” I replied.
“Fine, you two go help Brian inside and get him into one of those beds. But keep an eye out for any locked cabinets – that’s a clear indication of drugs.”
Brian was still trying to act like it wasn’t that bad, but the effort it took to get him out of the car proved the exact opposite. Once we got him to the lobby, Allen broke away and pushed over a wheelchair that was sitting in the corner by the front desk. “It might take a minute to find a room that doesn’t look like a slaughterhouse.”
As I wheeled Brian down the hall, Allen ran ahead and began checking the rooms for a clean bed. Near the end, he said “Found one!”
“Check the bathroom!”
“On it!”
Brian was like Allen, not quite as large, but still looked to be at least two-hundred pounds of muscle. His dead weight felt more like three-hundred. Even Allen grunted as we lifted him out of the wheelchair and onto a bed.
Allen said “This seems like a pretty good place to hide out for a while, especially for Brian. You think I should go back and get the others? Bring everything we can?.. I can even go back to get anything else we can’t fit.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. We can even take our time siphoning gas from the cars in the parking lot.”
I heard Jenny’s footsteps quickly approaching. When the rattle of pill bottles accompanied them, I let out a sigh of relief. She came flying into the room, and I pulled out the small bottle of water I had tightly stuffed in my front pocket.
“They have everything we could ever need. We’re going to clean this place out when we leave.”
“About that.” I looked over at Allen and motioned for him to present Jenny with his idea.
As she injected Brian with the antibiotics, gave him something for the pain and I helped her roll him onto his stomach so she could check the wounds, Allen ran his idea by her.
“You’re right, we can’t move him.”
She took out the car keys, but Allen declined. “I’ll search the bodies until I find some keys and take one from the parking lot. The trunk in the Cadillac is almost full.”
“Perfect. Be careful.”
Before Allen left the room he remarked “If you hear me come back in it just means the car I ended up with didn’t have shit for gas and I have to find another set of keys. I’ll yell out so you know it’s me.”
I nodded and said “Make sure to always look around before you just walk outside… And I’ve seen them hiding in the shade between cars before.”
“Don’t worry about me, just take care of your friend.”
When Jenny removed the bandages from the deep scratches down his back they didn’t appear to be very infected. But when she removed the bandage from the back of his neck and right shoulder, my eye bulged at the sight of it. I could see the veins around it almost glowing red, just as Jenny described the infection in her hand.
The moment she touched it, Brian twisted his body, clenched his teeth and tightly gripped the corners of the bed as his groans filled the empty building. She put her hand on his forehead for a few moments. “There’re a few more drugs I need to find. If I can calm down the fever it should really help.”
When she disappeared from the doorway, Brian asked “Did she say I was going to die?”
She thinks you’re are. “No, but she’s really scared.”
“It feels like I’m dying.” He said through his teeth.
“A lot of the time infections get worse before they get better.”
Brian ignored my attempt at comforting him. “You know, one of the guys I worked with, some crazy Russian dude named Vadim… He was always goin off on these wild tangents about theories he had… One was that the brainwaves that make up the human consciousness are similar to waves of energy running throughout the universe. He believed they could be… connected somehow... He even suggested that’s what happens to your consciousness when you die… It leaves your physical body and becomes one with the universe. You consciously exist as pure energy and can be anywhere and see anything in the blink of an eye – traverse the universe itself in an instant… He theorized that we become the human idea of god.”
“What do you think?”
He lightly laughed. The pain cut it short and caused him to cringe and squeeze his eyes shut. “I don’t know… He was probably the smartest man I’ve ever met, just a littl
e wacky… But, you know what they say.”
“What’s that?”
“A genius can look crazy to average or even above average people... But, I pretty much always thought that kind of thing was wishful thinking on his part. People like us dream about travelling the universe, so it’s only natural that he’d create evidence in his mind that played into his fantasies… Maybe I’ll find out.”
I picked up the pill bottle. “Yeah, you have a point… The human mind is definitely capable of that. You can see it in countless different social customs and beliefs… But, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about any of that shit for a long time. These antibiotics are supposed to be the strongest made.”
“We’ll see.”
Jenny came back in with several different vials, pill bottles, more needles and a small tube of cream. “I have to put this cream on, then I need you to sit up again so you can take some pills. I need to try and lower the fever and the inflammation… In a little while I’ll induce sleep so you can get some rest and really heal.”
Jenny tried gently rubbing the cream on the bite wound, but it still caused him a great deal of pain, so she just finished as quickly as possible. As we helped Brian sit up, he said “I asked James if you think I’m gonna die. I think he was bullshittin me when he said no.”
“I don’t know to think, Brian… And it doesn’t matter. All that’s worth thinking about are ways to help you at the moment.”
He smirked “Convincing.”
“Shut up and swallow these… Ass.”
“You’re gonna call a dying man mean names?” He said, jokingly portraying to have had his feelings hurt.
“You’re not dying yet.”
The growl of someone’s stomach loudly sounded out. Jenny and I both looked at each other, and Brian said “I didn’t feel like eating when I woke up.”
I headed out of the room. “I’ll get you something from the trunk.”
When I was about halfway to the lobby, his voice echoed down the hall “Doritos! Cooler Ranch!” It was then followed by Jenny angrily demanding that I find something somewhat healthy. I could hear them bickering and her giving him a hard time until I made it past the front counter.
Trying to Survive (Part 3) Page 8