by Rand, Thonas
Anthony pfft to that. “So am I.”
Ardent and Bear were still at work on the second boat motor when John approached.
“Ardent?” John said.
“Yeah, what’s up, John?”
“Can you gather everyone out front in fifteen?”
“Sure, why?”
“I’ll tell you in fifteen.”
“Okay,” Ardent said as John walked toward the hospital.
Fifteen minutes later, they were all gathered in the front courtyard. More specifically, they were gathered around the sinkhole from the sewer blast.
“This is from the bomb you guys used in the sewer, isn’t it?” Joe said.
“Yeah,” Bear said.
“This is real pretty, but why are we here exactly; are we having a picnic?” Ceraulo impatiently said.
That’s when the ground shook slightly, and they watched as the sinkhole became a little larger by a couple feet.
“What the fuck?” Derek said as he stepped back.
“That’s why,” John said and he pointed to his knife stuck in the ground. “I put my knife there three hours ago.”
“Yeah, and?” Alan said rudely.
“I put it on the edge of the sinkhole.” John said.
They saw that the edge of the sinkhole was past the knife by several feet.
John picked up his knife. “Now look where the edge of the sinkhole is headed.”
It was headed toward the front wall of the hospital—it was only sixty feet away.
“Those tunnels are concrete, right?” Donnie said. “Shouldn’t they hold up?”
“The sewer system in the city is over a hundred years old, and that’s about how long concrete lasts before it comes apart,” Tom said.
“Perfect,” Derek said. “We just got here, man!”
“How long do you think we have?” Ardent asked John.
“It’s had to tell; it could just stop and never reach it, or worst case scenario…a day, maybe two,” John answered.
“Goddamnit,” Derek barked.
“What? A day or two until what?” Joe asked confused.
“What do you think, you idiot,” Donnie told him.
“What?!” Joe shouted.
“A day or two until the sinkhole reaches the stone wall and undermines it,” Bear said. “And then it might collapse.”
“The wall might come down?” Maggie said as she held her daughter close.
“Yeah,” John said.
“Great, that’s just great!” Derek said.
“Then we need to hurry up and get out of here,” Milla said.
“Ya think?” Ceraulo said rudely.
“Not until we fix both of the boat’s motors, otherwise, it might not make it to the coast because we’re gonna load it to capacity with supplies and all of us,” Ardent told them.
Lauren stood there, listening, and occasionally looking at John.
“Then you guys need to pick up the pace and fix that piece of shit!” Alan said.
“We’re working as fast as we can,” Bear said.
“You need to work faster!” Joe added.
As they were arguing—no one noticed that the ground in the center of the sinkhole moved slightly, just barely, but Maggie’s daughter, Corina, noticed. She stepped away from her mother’s grasp toward the movement in the ground.
Curiosity had her.
She was within a couple feet of it when Maggie saw her.
“What’re you looking at, baby?” she asked her daughter.
Suddenly, the ground burst apart in a cloud of dust and one of the dead sprang out. It attacked the first person that it saw—
The little girl.
But Maggie grabbed her screaming daughter out of harm’s way, just as the stench swiped its claws at Corina, barely nicking her dress. John was the first to draw his pistol and shoot the thing dead in the head.
“Holy shit!” Anthony said.
“Fuck! Those things are under the ground?” Ceraulo exclaimed.
“Must’ve been one from when we blasted the sewer and the tunnel collapsed in on them.” Bear said.
Maggie held her daughter close and looked her over. “Are you okay, baby?”
“I’m okay, Mommy.”
“We need to cover this hole with something,” said Ardent.
“Use the eighteen-wheeler,” Joe suggested.
“No, we’re using my truck to tow the boat,” Tom said.
John pointed to the abandoned cars nearby. “Let’s use a couple of those.”
A little while later, and they already had one compact car in the sinkhole on top of the corpse that came out of the ground. The car was flipped over so it would cover the sinkhole better. They had another compact car in place and six of them, including John and Lauren, were ready to flip it over as well.
“Okay, ready?” Ardent said and they were. “On three. One, two, three!”
Together, they lifted the car and flipped it over into the sinkhole.
“That should hold any more of them out, for now, anyway,” Tom said.
“Yeah,” Ardent agreed. “We’re gonna head back to the boat and get the second motor working as fast as we can.”
“Good,” Tom said.
Ardent and Bear left, and everyone else went back to what they were doing, which was loading the boat with supplies. John waited until Ceraulo was gone before he approached Alan.
“Hey, Alan?”
“Yeah, what?”
“Can I borrow the keys to get into the north wing?” John asked.
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Cuz I don’t have those keys.”
“But you’re the engineer, you should have keys.”
“I had just started this stupid job when this infection shit hit, and I didn’t get a set of my own keys cuz the guy that I replaced was a dick and took his keys with him.”
“So who has keys then?”
“Ceraulo.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Alan said and walked away.
John stared at Ceraulo with suspicion as he walked into the hospital.
Joe and Maggie were also heading back inside. Maggie was carrying Corina…
The child’s dress bounced a little with each of Maggie’s steps, exposing her thighs for just a moment with each bounce…
Maggie didn’t check her thoroughly because she thought that the dead thing didn’t touch her, it just nicked her dress…
Her dress bounced up again and exposed something…
The corpse had scratched the little girl’s thigh.
Not a deep scratch, but it was there.
Corina didn’t realize it, herself, because she was so shocked when the thing attacked her.
It was a very light scratch.
And it was bleeding…
Tom and Anthony went back to their trailer and John followed them.
“Hey, Tom?” John said.
“What’s up?” Tom answered.
“Do you have any rope?”
“What kind of rope?”
“Climbing rope.”
“What do you need it for?” Tom asked.
“I like to have as many options as possible in case of an emergency.”
“Makes sense, what kind of option will rope provide?” Tom asked.
“I want to tie some rope to the roof in case someone gets stuck up there, then they’ll be able to rappel down.”
“I hope that doesn’t happen to me because I hate heights,” Tom said as he looked up at the hospital’s roof.
“Me, too, but it’s smart to be prepared.”
“Amen to that, brother,” Tom said. “There’s rope in the back, by Anthony’s room.”
“Thanks.”
John went and grabbed six bundles of climbing rope and then saw some climbing harnesses.
“Tom, can I take a couple of these climbing harnesses?”
“Sure, man.”
“Thanks,” John told him. “Antho
ny, can you give me a hand?”
“Yeah.”
They grabbed all the climbing gear and left to go up to the roof.
• • •
John and Anthony were setting up the ropes on the main roof of the hospital. They had already placed three ropes on the front side of the building and were setting three more down the back of the building, securing the ropes to piping or to anything else that was strong enough to hold the weight of a person.
“John?”
“Yeah, Anthony?”
“You know that she likes you, right?”
“Who?” but John knew.
“Lauren.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I see the way she looks at you; she’s like a puppy when you’re around.”
“A puppy? That girl? More like a pit bull.” John laughed.
“You know what I mean,” Anthony said as he threw a rope over the roof.
The rope unraveled and fell all the way to the bottom.
“Yeah, I do, kid, but it’s not exactly the best time to go on a date, ya know?”
“Then when?” Anthony asked.
“The day I can walk around without a gun.”
“When will that be?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“But she likes you.”
“Okay, Anthony, I get it, she likes me.”
“She doesn’t seem to care that it’s a bad time for dating.”
John threw down a rope.
“Well, she’s a girl, and girls are all mushy inside.”
“True, but Lauren could kick my ass, mushy or not.”
“Yeah,” John said. “I wouldn’t want to mess with her, either.”
“Do you still want a set of the plastic armor?” Anthony asked.
“Yeah, if it’s no trouble?”
“Not at all, I already made it.”
“I figured as much, I’ll get it after we’re done here.”
“Okay.”
“You wanna do some more work with the claymores with me?”
“Sure, where at?”
“I wanna set some up in the front courtyard.”
“Cool, just like we did in the back?”
“No, I wanna put some on both sides of the courtyard, and we’ll set them up facing each other, so if any of those things get in through the front gate, they’ll get blown to bits in a crossfire.” John interlaced his fingers to demonstrate a crossfire effect.
“Cool,” Anthony said enthusiastically.
They finished setting up the ropes and left four of the climbing harnesses ready for use.
“All set. It would be a good thing if we didn’t have to use them,” John said. “But just in case.”
“Speak for yourself, I wanna use’em,” Anthony said as he looked over the edge. “Looks like it would be fun.”
“Except for the height thing, it is,” John said with a grin.
THE UNKNOWN
The hour was a little past noon, Ardent and Bear were making progress on the last engine—they had more than half of it rebuilt. The group also had the boat almost fully loaded with supplies, but they were tired and hungry.
“Let’s take a lunch break,” Ardent told Bear.
“Sounds good to me.”
They stopped work and headed inside, out of the heat of the sun and the constant noise of the dead outside their walls. Others followed suit.
• • •
Most of them were in the cafeteria, except for John, Anthony, Tom, and Ceraulo. Everyone was relaxing or trying to relax, as they ate. Tom and Anthony walked in, and not long after them, John walked in and sat at a table by himself.
“You wanna know what I miss the most before all this shit started?” Alan posed to everyone.
“Porn?” Anthony said.
“No, still have plenty of that. Beer, an ice-cold beer.”
“No argument there,” Bear said.
“Wanna know what I miss?” Derek volunteered.
“Pot? We know, baby.” Milla said.
“No, besides that. TV, man. I miss just chilling out and watching some TV.”
“Me, too,” Maggie agreed.
“Lasagna,” Joe said. “I miss my mother’s lasagna, it was the best!”
“Oh, stop! Don’t say lasagna!” Tom said yearningly.
“God, I miss my mom,” Joe added.
“She didn’t pass because of the infection, did she?” Milla asked.
“No, thank goodness,” Joe said. “She passed a long time ago, and to this day, I still can’t make her lasagna the way that she used to. I followed her recipe step-by-step, but it always missed something.”
“It was her, Joe, it’s because she didn’t make it,” Maggie said.
Joe knew that. “Yeah.”
“I miss Helen,” Anthony said out of the blue.
“Who’s Helen?” Lauren asked.
“A nurse that worked here; she was always really nice to me, even when I was bad, which was a lot, but she never complained. She really liked her job, because she liked to help people.”
Then the last person of the group, Ceraulo, arrived.
“We were just talking about things we miss before the world ended, Doc,” Tom said. “What about you, is there anything that you miss?”
Ceraulo thought for a moment. “I miss my computer.”
“Your computer?” Tom said.
“Yes, my computer. I use to be able to access my patients’ files with the click of a mouse. Now, I have to resort to looking at the hard copies. It’s archaic.”
“What’re you looking at your patients’ files for, Doc?” Tom asked. “They’re all dead now.”
“You don’t know that; they were evacuated somewhere safe,” Ceraulo said.
“Safe? Could you please tell me where that is cuz I’d like to go there!” Joe spat.
“Come on, Doc, you gotta know that your patients are most likely dead, right?” Bear put to him.
“You don’t that,” Ceraulo said.
Bear looked at him like the fool that he was. “Okay.”
“You wanna know what I miss?” John said.
He had everyone’s attention.
“What?” Lauren asked.
“Trust. That’s what I miss. Before the fall of society, there was a certain amount of trust that a person could depend on in everyday life, not much I know, but just enough to make life decent. And now? With everyone dead and the rest of us struggling to live another day, trust is almost impossible to find. Treachery is what we have now; oh sure, we’re working together to survive, but if it comes down to it, everyone here will most likely scatter to save their own skin.”
“What’s your point?” Milla told him.
“Treachery gets people killed.”
“What are you talking about?” Alan asked.
“Hey, Ceraulo, what’s in the north wing?” John asked him casually.
“What? Nothing, I already told you, it’s empty,” Ceraulo said.
“Treachery, Doc, treachery is a bad thing,” John asserted.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
All eyes were on Ceraulo now.
“Sure, you don’t,” John said. “When I walked the perimeter today, I happen to come upon a familiar smell that was coming from the north wing.”
“What kind of smell?” Bear wanted to know.
“Dead bodies?” Maggie added.
“Why don’t you guys ask Ceraulo; he knows what I’m talking about,” John said.
“What’s going on, Ceraulo?” Joe asked.
“What is he talking about, Doc?” Tom said.
“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Ceraulo said nervously.
“Tell us!” Maggie shouted.
“Look at you,” Ceraulo said to everyone. “You people are insane. You’re going on the word of some man that just got here, we don’t know him or what he really wants from us, and you’re all ganging up on me? It’s sad. Pathetic, actually.”
<
br /> “Bullshit,” Lauren said. “What’s in there?”
“Damn you people!” Ceraulo shouted. “For the last time, there’s nothing in there, it’s—”
John cut him off. “I got in there today, Doc.”
Ceraulo suddenly went quiet. He was speechless, and that’s when everybody knew what John was saying was true.
“Oh, what the hell?” Anthony said.
“You mind telling us what John is talking about?” Ardent said to Ceraulo.
Ceraulo was at a loss. “I…uh, I don’t think…there’s anything to…talk about.”
“Open the north wing, Ceraulo,” Alan said.
Ceraulo tried to be assertive, said, “No,” but failed.
“Open it!” Maggie shouted.
Tom walked right up to Ceraulo’s face with his gun in hand. “Listen to me, Doc—we’re all gonna go to the north wing and you’re gonna open those doors. Right now.”
There was nothing Ceraulo could say to the look in Tom’s eyes.
Nothing.
• • •
The inside of the north wing’s reception area was quiet, deathly quiet, and the walls were so thick of old concrete that the dead could barely be heard outside; they were a chorus of muffled cries. Besides that, there were no signs of life in this place, just a layer of dust-encrusted air that was stagnant for months now.
A key hit the door lock outside, and the double doors opened and light poured in as if a tomb was discovered after a thousand years of being closed. Ceraulo stepped aside as the group entered; he let them pass and tried to step back so he could slip away without being noticed, but John walked up behind him and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Come on, Doc, give us the tour,” he said sarcastically.
The reception area was full of the usual relics—a reception desk was on one side, waiting room chairs, and on end tables were old magazines of a forgotten time. On the other side of a large staircase was the cafeteria; the group decided to go in there.
This eatery was just like the one in the main building of the hospital, only this one was smaller and there was one other difference—it was stocked with food. Dozens of canned goods boxes were stacked on the cafeteria tables in orderly piles that totaled to hundreds of cans, everything from Spam to canned fruit, all waiting to be eaten. There were also dozens of boxes of bottled water. And at the far end of the cafeteria was where the used cans were—dozens and dozens of discarded cans littered the floors and tables. The caretakers of this can graveyard were hundreds of flies that buzzed around forming a dark cloud. They were everywhere, and the smell was bad. On one table were the files of many patients that Ceraulo had neatly stacked for some strange, unknown reason.