Riggins screamed in pain as he pulled his gnawed hand into his body. He made it to the door and dashed down the hallway. Hartman was right behind him—raving and yelling like a possessed man. As Riggins turned a corner in the hall, he tried opening the first door that he came to. It was locked. He then saw the door to the lounge that the researchers were in. To the surprise of Farris and the others, he burst into the room and immediately tried to hold the door shut with his good hand.
“Help me!” he screamed. Not knowing what was taking place, Farris cautiously walked over to the wounded man.
“Good God, what happened to you?” Before Riggins could answer, he was sent reeling to the floor as Hartman came rushing through the door. In an instant, the raging general was attacking the stunned Farris as the rest of the group broke in panic and scattered throughout the room.
After pummeling on Farris’s face and chewing on his right forearm, Hartman left the man in a bloodied heap and then focused on Wang. The frightened researcher picked up a chair from a conference table and held it over his head, thinking that Hartman would back away from him. After sizing up his victim, the general simply lowered his shoulder and plowed right into Wang’s belly, knocking the chair from his hands.
Two other researchers, a younger man and a middle-aged woman who was an Air Force officer, ran past the chaotic scene and made their way for the door. As the terrified man pulled the door open, he was greeted by Collier. She grabbed him by his collar and they both fell back into the room. The Air Force officer jumped back in an effort to avoid Collier and she didn’t see that Riggins was back on his feet, twitching and convulsing uncontrollably. He bent over and retched and vomited violently, projecting a dark stream of goo onto the floor.
“Oh my God!” the officer screamed as she turned to run. She broke into a sprint, but as she tried to jump over the mangled Farris, he reached up and grabbed onto her boot. Knocked off balance, the woman crashed down onto a coffee table, splitting her head wide open. Stunned from the fall, she didn’t see that Riggins was about to pounce on her.
As the butchery continued, the room was filled with screams of terror and shrieks of pain.
***
“Wait a minute,” Jim said as he stopped at the landing of the fourth floor. He hunkered down and Irene drew close to him, seeking a sense of security. “Shit, that gunfire sounds like it’s inside of the building. On the first floor.”
“What does that mean?” Irene said, trembling with fear.
“They may have gotten into the hospital. Damn it!” Jim listened intently to the crack of gunfire—and shouting—that was filtering up into the stairwell. “Okay, let’s keep going…but be ready to haul ass in case those things are in here. And that pistol that I gave you…get it out of your bag. Just in case.”
Now terrified she pulled the bag off of her shoulder and dug the pistol out of it. “I got it,” she said in a shaky voice.
“Okay, just hang onto it…and don’t shoot me in the back by accident.”
Irene couldn’t tell if he was joking with her or being serious. “I’ll put it in my cargo pocket,” she said.
Reaching behind him, he took hold of her hand and began to slowly walk down the stairs. With the power being off, the stairwell was almost completely dark except for the light coming up from the bottom floor. As they made their way to the third floor landing, the gunfire was replaced with screaming and yelling.
***
“There, the stairwell over there!” Karnes yelled to Carrie. He was pointing to a stairwell that was on the far end of the mall. “Follow me!”
Carrie began to run after Karnes as the first floor of the hospital filled up with dead and infected. She glanced back and saw that some of the ranks of the infected were made up of the same soldiers who had been fighting alongside of her a few minutes earlier. The sight terrified her and she closed her eyes as she turned back towards Karnes.
Karnes darted across the mall and ran for the door to the stairwell. He flung it open and was horrified to see that the door way had been barricaded with a clutter of office furniture, lounge couches and a soda machine.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me!” he yelled. “Hurry, help me pull some of this shit off!”
Carrie caught up with the frantic sergeant and the two of them hurriedly pulled off a desk and several chairs from the barricade pile. Tossing them back out into the mall, they crawled over the remaining heap of furniture. As they started to make their way up the dark stairwell, Carrie asked, “Where are we going?”
“Up a couple of floors and then find our way back down. Hopefully Novak is out there somewhere with his helicopter.”
“Can’t you call him on your radio?” she asked.
“Like a dumbass, I lost it somewhere outside.”
The sound of rattling and clanking terrified the both of them. The horde was at the stairwell barricade…and they were tearing it down.
“You hear that?” Jim whispered. “Sounds like people talking down below us. Wait a minute…sounds like those things are at the barricade on the first floor.”
“I hear,” Irene whispered back. “Damn, we won’t be able to go out that way.”
“We’ll just have to find another way.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Karnes said to Carrie as he started to run up the stairs. His boots thudded on the concrete and the sound filled the passageway.
“They’re coming up,” Jim said. He turned to head back up the stairs, but at the last moment, he thought he was able to hear people talking to each other. He decided to call out to whoever was coming up below them.
“Hey, who are you?” he called down.
“Who the fuck is that?” Karnes asked Carrie. “Sounds like someone is up above us.”
Shrugging, Carrie said, “Guess it’s somebody from Command.”
Sprinting the rest of the way up to where Jim and Irene were standing, Karnes and Carrie came into view from the dim shadows.
“Man, those things are right behind us,” Karnes told Jim as he pointed over his shoulder. “By the way, who are you?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.
“Captain Rockatansky…and this is Doctor Irene Hopkins. So, they’re down in the hospital?”
“Fuck yes, they got through the perimeter. The fucking bomb run weakened the wall or something and they came right through.”
“Bomb run?” Irene said. “So that’s what all those explosions were?”
“Then we gotta get out of here,” Jim said. “There’s a copter waiting on us…or at least that’s what they told us up there.”
“Well, we sure as hell can’t get out by going back down there,” Carrie said. “This place has had it.”
“Up…let’s go back up,” Jim said. “Follow me.”
The four quickly started ascending the stairs. As they made it back to the third floor landing, the sound of a door opening from somewhere above them in the stairwell caught their attention. The accompanying phlegm-filled wailing and shouting made them stop in mid-stride.
“Shit, that sounds like some of those things,” Jim said. “But how did they get above us?”
“Let’s not find out.” Karnes opened the door leading into the third floor and said, “Let’s try here.” The group followed his lead and they darted into a darkened hallway. With his rifle at the ready, Karnes activated the flashlight attached to his weapon and pointed the beam down the corridor. “We can make our way towards the far end of the hospital and then get out somewhere near the northern entrance.”
“Somewhere near the northern entrance?” Irene asked. “Why not the entrance itself?”
“Because it’s barricaded and we don’t want to spend any time having to dig through it,” Karnes explained. “Shit, we’re probably better off making it down to the second floor and then busting out a window, then jumping down to the ground.”
“You’re probably right, but whatever we do, we better do it fast because I’m sure that chopper isn’t going to hang around very
much longer,” Jim stressed.
“Okay, let’s go,” Karnes said.
As the group prepared to make their way into the dark, the stairwell door behind them flew open and Farris ran out into the hall.
Carrie spun and flipped on her rifle light, illuminating the bloodied and mangled doctor. With her weapon on semi-auto, she squeezed off two rounds. The flash from the tip of her barrel briefly illuminated the hall in a yellow-orange light and Farris went sprawling across the floor. Before he was able to get up, Carrie ran over to him, slamming her boot down on his chest and putting the barrel on his forehead.
“Fuck you!” she screamed as she pulled the trigger again, finally dispatching the infected doctor.
“Let’s go!” Karnes screamed as he started running down the dark hall. Carrie and the others followed and the four ran as fast as they could. Coming to a “T” at the end of the hall, Karnes looked over at Jim and asked, “Where to know?”
“How the hell should I know,” Jim gasped.
“I thought you worked at this place,” Karnes snapped.
“Hell no! I got sent here when all of this shit started. I hate Texas!”
“Fuck it, we’ll go this way,” Karnes said as he turned right. The slamming of the stairwell door echoed behind them and Carrie turned to see if she could make out anything beyond the beam of her light.
As the group continued their flight, Karnes sporadically hit his light to make sure that they didn’t run into something unexpectedly. A brief sprint took them down to a deactivated elevator bank and a passageway that lead into another interior hall.
“Damn, we need to find another stairwell,” Jim snorted. Although he thought himself to be in shape, he was finding out the hard way that he was woefully lacking in the cardio department. Just past the elevators, they encountered another “T.” “Let’s go right!” Jim coughed.
“Are we in a maze or what?” Irene asked.
“There, up there,” Karnes said. Just ahead, sunlight was beaming down from a large skylight. The darkened hall turned into a large lobby with one side of the room opening up into a cavernous passage that fed into a terrarium bellow. An open stairway led up into the remaining floors and down to another open mall area. Once at the railing overlooking the terrarium, Carrie peered down and saw a throng of reanimated milling around aimlessly.
“Down, let’s go down here,” Jim said. “We can make it to the second floor and then make our way out from there.”
Karnes led the group down to the second floor landing and back into another darkened hall. As they quietly made their way in the shadows, they began to hear the grunting and growling of the undead and infected.
“Shit, they’re on this floor,” Carrie whispered.
“Yeah, we need to find a way out of here real fast like,” Karnes whispered back.
“We’re in an interior hall,” Jim said. “We gotta find a hall that has some offices or clinics with windows.”
“Another elevator bank,” Carrie added. “Let’s look for one of those. They usually hook up into another hallway…maybe an exterior hall.”
Just then, the sound of running footsteps filled the corridor. They were coming from behind the group.
Carrie and Karnes spun and hit their lights. To their horror, they illuminated a large group of fast movers, including several freshly turned soldiers. Deciding to make a stand, Karnes dropped to a knee and began to fire into the onrushing pack. Carrie did the same, but she remained standing as she blasted away. Sensing that they were at the end of the line, Jim drew his pistol and joined in, using the rifle lights to pick his targets.
Irene crouched down and covered her ears as the thunderous roar of the gunfire caused them to ring. Carrie’s rifle ran dry and she dropped her magazine—as she grabbed for a fresh one, she realized that she only had two more left in her pouches.
After what seemed like an eternity, the three soldiers stopped firing, leaving the hallway littered with corpses. The smell of burnt gun powder was heavy and everyone’s eardrums were throbbing.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before they reanimate!” Jim exclaimed. The group turned and continued running down the dark hall. They heard the sound of more pounding footsteps behind them and Jim knew that it was only a matter of time before their luck—and ammunition—ran out.
“Where the fuck are the elevators at!” Karnes screamed out. As he was just about to give up hope, a bank of elevators emerged from the dark. Taking the passage that connected the elevators to the exterior hall, Karnes flashed his light in an effort to locate an office door.
“There, at the end of the hall!” Irene screamed. Her lungs were aching and somewhere during the run, she had twisted her ankle. Trying to ignore the pain, she grimaced as she took off running in the direction of the door.
Jim threw open the door and the group found themselves in a dimly lit waiting room. Sunlight was filtering through the reception window and Carrie opened another door that led back into the examination rooms. The group was greeted by the sun light that was beaming in through several large windows that looked out over a parking lot.
Jim ran and looked out of each window, trying to find the best place to escape from. At the last window, he saw that a small building was just outside and under the glass pane.
“Hey, look here,” he called. “This must house some sort of plumbing or air conditioner. Either way, we can jump down onto it and then down to the ground.”
“Good deal,” Karnes said. He looked around and found a chair on rollers. He hoisted it up and said, “Watch out.” With one great heave, he threw the chair through the window, clearing the way for their escape.
Without any hesitation, the group jumped down from the shattered window, landing on the roof of the service shed. Jim immediately heard the sound of the helicopter rotors. It was still around somewhere. He scanned the lot in front of them and saw that it was dotted with the reanimated and fast movers.
Jumping down to a sidewalk, he held up his arms and helped Irene climb down from the roof of the building. Carrie and Karnes followed and the four beleaguered souls headed out in the direction of the sound of the copter. Karnes also noticed that he could still hear some gunfire off in the distance.
“Damn, here they come!” Carrie yelled out as she pointed to several zombies. They undead had seen the group and were quickly walking in their direction.
“Where the fuck is that bird?” Karnes yelled. The sound of the blades was echoing in every direction off of the walls of the hospital, leaving the group with no idea where to go.
“Let’s just get away from the building!” Karnes yelled as he started making his way out into the parking lot. “Come on!”
As Irene stepped off of the curb, her ankle finally gave way and she fell onto the asphalt. Jim reached down, grabbing her up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My ankle. I twisted it inside the hospital.”
“Don’t worry, I got you. Just lean on me.”
***
Novak slowly circled over what was left of the main gate. He couldn’t see any more troops remaining, but the Bradleys were still functioning. He drifted back near the southern hospital entrance and was sickened at what he saw. From his vantage point, it looked like a living, thriving blackened artery was pumping into the vestibule as thousands of undead and fast movers poured into the hospital.
With a large fire raging in the warehouses and apartment complex across from the overrun compound, and with thousands of bodies scattered over the entire area, Novak said, “This is what hell must look like.”
“Hey, look,” Brasher said. “Looks like the Bradleys are making a run for it.” The two pilots watched as the tracked vehicles headed towards the western side of the perimeter. Once there, the tracks blasted away at the wall with their cannons, smashing their way out.
“Good luck to them…wherever they’re heading to,” Novak solemnly said. “Okay, I’m going to take it around one more time and see if anyone is left.” He n
udged his cyclic to the right and hovered around to the east and then made his way to the north.
“Holy shit, are those survivors?” Jones yelled as he pointed down towards four people who were doing their best to get the attention of the chopper.
“Yep, sure looks that way,” Novak replied. “One of them looks hurt.”
“Yeah, and a whole herd of those things is closing in on them,” Brasher added.
“Look, there it is!” Jim screamed as the helicopter hovered into view. “Down here!” he shouted as he frantically waved at the aircraft.
Karnes stopped running and started jumping up and down, flailing as he did.
“Please God, we’re down here!” Carrie screamed.
“Get ready, Jonesy,” Novak said into his mic. “We’re going in!” He angled the nose of the craft down and brought his tail around. Landing within a few feet of the group, Jones jumped out of the helicopter and ran over to help Irene.
“What’s wrong with her!” he yelled over the rotors. “She’s not bit, is she?”
“No, she twisted her ankle real bad, that’s all!” Jim shouted back.
“Alright, then let’s get her on board!” Jones exclaimed as he eyed the approaching swarm of undead and infected. He took ahold of Irene’s other side and the two men lifted her into the helicopter. Carrie and Karnes followed, jumping into the aircraft, and as Jones was securing his passengers, Novak lifted off. Karnes let out a scream of relief as he pumped his fist in exaltation.
Novak circled around the hospital a few more times and then began to head south towards downtown. He looked back at his new found passengers and he saw the captain’s rank on Jim’s uniform.
“Give the captain a headset,” Novak told Jones. Jones did so and Novak then said, “Welcome aboard, Captain.”
“Thank you so much,” Jim replied gratefully. “We weren’t going to last one minute longer out there.”
“I’m just glad we stuck around. We were about to head out when we saw you.”
Realizing just how close they had come to being left behind, Jim shuddered and broke down, choking back his tears. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
A Glimpse of Decay (Book 3): Lost in Twilight Page 18