~03~
Keith’s House, Lansing, Michigan
One look out the window told Keith that the front door wasn’t going to be an option. He checked the kitchen window before quietly easing the back door open. The alley was clear except for a single zombie that was making its way toward the house, and Keith knew that it wouldn’t be a problem unless it made noise.
Helga’s eyes narrowed, and she quickly rolled her bike out to meet the creature. Before Keith could even get the door locked, Helga had taken care of the problem.
“I hear others,” she said as Keith approached on his bike.
“I was afraid of that,” he replied. He rode past her and sped down the alley toward the connecting street, not happy to see it crawling with the dead. Since most of the action was to the left, he went right, with Helga following. She appeared to be having some trouble adjusting to the bike, so Keith rode slowly until she was able to catch up. They rode around the neighborhood in a haphazard pattern until they lost their followers. Keith finally slowed down and watched Helga as she pedaled.
“Are you going to be okay with that bike?” he asked.
She nodded and kept riding, looking a little steadier than she had before. When a ghoul stumbled out from behind a car and grasped for her, she swatted at it with her crowbar, sending it tumbling to the asphalt. A small smile touched her lips as she turned her attention back to the road before her.
The bikes made little noise, yet in the post-apocalyptic world where silence reigned, even the sound of the tires on the pavement was louder than Keith would have liked. The saving grace was the speed of the bikes. By the time the dead noticed the noise and turned toward the source, the two riders had usually already moved past them.
Keith and Helga managed to make it two miles before running into trouble. They rounded a corner, only to find it teeming with the dead. Both bikes did a quick 180 degree turn, but they had trouble getting through the next two streets as well. The whole neighborhood seemed to be cluttered with walking corpses, and Keith realized they were going to have to go the long way to reach their destination.
“We might have to get on the freeway and go around,” he told Helga. “I have no idea what kind of crap we’re going to be running into, so if you want to go back to the hospital, I understand.”
“And miss out on all this fun? No chance,” Helga said.
With anybody else, Keith would have assumed that the words had been meant in sarcasm. With Helga, he took them at face value. He got the bike moving again, this time heading toward the freeway. When they finally took the on-ramp, he stopped and stared at the mass of traffic. Had it not been for the eerie silence, it could have almost been a normal rush hour, except the cars were not moving.
Keith lifted his head when he noticed some movement from the corner of his eye. His hand lingered on the sledgehammer that he had fixed to the bar of his bike, though he didn’t pull it out. He watched as a figure in the distance scampered over the hood of a car then over the center divider. Keith opened his mouth to call to the person, guessing him to be a young teen, but he stopped himself.
“So we’re not alone,” he said to Helga.
“There are many others,” she said. “Not everybody is stupid enough to be killed by those dead things.”
“I wonder how many have good setups like we do at the hospital,” Keith said, “and how many of them are just barely staying alive out there.”
Helga shrugged. “Who knows? If they are not strong, they will die. It is nature.”
Keith sighed, having no desire to get into a philosophical discussion with her at the moment, though he disagreed. Strength was not the only trait that was worth passing on to future generations, but Helga would probably argue that point.
“I’m going to talk to the others when we get back,” he said. “If there are survivors out here needing help, I’m sure we can do something about it.”
He started to move forward among the cars on the freeway, but Helga stopped him.
“What?” he asked, looking around for any sign of trouble.
“These zombies in the cars,” she said, pointing to an SUV just ahead. “They will grab when you walk by.”
“Thanks for the warning,” he said, not having even considered that the dead would still be trapped inside their vehicles. He let out a breath and started forward, watching not only for signs of the dead outside the vehicles but inside them, as well.
He moved slowly down the freeway, having to stop often to close doors that blocked his path. Heeding Helga’s advice, he steered clear of all open windows, until he came to a place where there was one on each side of him. He didn’t see anybody inside either car, so he made his way between the two vehicles but was startled when an arm suddenly shot out and grabbed for him. He stepped away, not realizing that he was backing up against a ghoul in the car behind him.
Helga was suddenly there, shoving him aside so that she could put the dead man to rest with her crowbar. She turned to finish off the one in the opposite car.
“Those mistakes get you killed,” Helga warned him, wiping the blood from the crowbar onto the cloth seat of the car.
“Yeah, I see that,” Keith said, his heart pounding. “Thanks again.”
Since the start of the plague, Keith had spent almost every minute inside the hospital, trying to keep the few remaining patients alive. The only exception had been the day he’d found out that his wife’s building had been bombed by friendly fire. That night, he’d gotten drunk and had gone on a zombie-killing rampage in the parking lot. Helga had joined him. Now he was beginning to realize that while he was in excellent shape and stronger than almost anybody at the hospital, that wasn’t enough to prepare him for what he was facing. His strength would be an asset, as would his cardio fitness, but he would also need to be alert, quick and agile - skills that he’d never tried to hone but could mean the difference between life and death. With these thoughts in mind, he made his way more carefully down the lane, dodging quickly to the right when half a zombie started to crawl out from beneath a truck. Helga finished the creature off, and they continued on, carefully avoiding any more problems for the next ten minutes.
Keith lifted his head when he heard the tell-tale sound of jets. They were hidden by the thick, white clouds, but within a minute or so, he finally caught a glimpse of them crossing the sky through the gaps of blue. He watched as the bombs fell across the city, throwing up clouds of dust and debris and setting off a cacophony of car alarms. He hadn’t been too worried about the bombers since they’d already done their damage to the part of the city where he and Helga were, but the noise was going to make it a little harder to listen for the dead.
When they reached an off-ramp, Keith stopped and pulled a cell phone out of his backpack. He looked at the GPS on it for a moment then rode silently down the ramp. He made a quick turn after finding the street crowded with the dead. He could hear their moans and knew that others of their kind would be drawn to the sound.
“This might be a problem,” he said quietly as Helga moved to ride beside him.
“How far?” she asked.
“Two blocks.”
“Just do it.”
Keith began to move faster, hoping they could lose the crowd of zombies before they reached their destination. When he rounded the final corner and found himself at the location of Shanelle’s building, he let his breath out in a rush. Seeing the devastation hit him like a physical blow. Though he had known that the building would probably not be standing, he hadn’t expected anything of the magnitude he was now observing. There was little left of the structure besides small bits of debris. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare at the ruins until he finally found his voice.
“There’s no way she survived this,” he said, trying to keep his words even. “My wife is dead.”
“Yes,” Helga agreed, looking around. “She is dead.”
Getting off the bike, Keith walked around, searching for something that would prove hi
m wrong, but there was nothing. It looked as though several buildings had been taken out and reduced to the smallest pieces of rubble.
When there was no place else to search, Keith stopped and looked down at his phone, hoping it would tell him that he’d gone to the wrong location, but he had no such luck.
Helga joined him and said, “We must go. The dead will be here soon.”
She was right, he realized. The moans in the distance were growing closer and louder as more of the infected were added to the ranks.
“I guess we should get back on the freeway,” he said.
“That is a very bad idea,” Helga replied, watching as a mass of bodies began to move toward them from the direction of the off-ramp they’d taken.
“I’ll trust you on this,” Keith said. “You’ve spent a lot more time out here than I have.”
“We go this way,” she said, moving down the road, deeper into the city.
Keith followed, dodging the ever-increasing number of zombies that were making their way onto the street. The next block was completely clear, but the one after was filled with the dead and they were forced to make a hasty retreat.
“I wonder why they seem to be in large groups like that sometimes,” he said as they left the horde behind.
“That’s where people are,” she said. “The live ones.”
Keith glanced back, surprised. He wondered if help was needed, but he knew that he and Helga were drastically outnumbered. “Maybe we’ll lead them away, at least,” he said.
Helga didn’t reply. Instead, she kept moving ahead, trying to find a safe path that would take them home.
~*~
St. Mary’s Hospital, Lansing
“Do you want the room next door?” Lindsey asked. “Or if you want to keep our room, I could move. We could also go look somewhere else.”
Helga’s name was carved into a door just two rooms down from theirs, and Lindsey wasn’t happy about it since the other woman didn’t like her. Helga had somehow gotten the impression that Lindsey was interested in Snake, whom Helga considered her man. It was likely that any woman who got near Snake would receive the same treatment, but Lindsey and Helga were the only two women helping Snake with rescues and supply runs.
“I like having a view of the parking lot,” Autumn said. “The view on the other side is just a bunch of streets filled with zombies.”
“I was kind of thinking the same thing,” Lindsey admitted. “We could look at rooms on the fourth floor if you want. The view would be the same, but we’d be a little higher up.”
The hospital was L shaped, so it had been a simple matter to add two walls and enclose the parking lot in front of the building. The back of the hospital had no such protection, though the first floor windows had been covered with brick or block.
“That’s just one more flight of stairs to climb.”
“You could take the elevator,” Lindsey said.
“Sure, as long as the generator is working,” Autumn replied. “It seems like it’s shutting off about ten times a day lately. I’ll take the room next door.”
“All right,” Lindsey said. “I’ll help you move your things.”
“That’ll take a whole five minutes,” Autumn replied. Though the girl was a cancer patient, and she often stayed in the hospital for long stretches, she’d only been at the hospital on the day of the outbreak for physical therapy. Her foster mother had dropped her off, planning to pick her up an hour later. It hadn’t happened, and Autumn had been left with nothing but the clothes on her back, like many of the others at the hospital.
~*~
Yucca University Medical Center, California
Alexander Madec walked into the conference room with a thick folder, which he placed on the marble table.
“This is the one we want,” he said, sitting in one of the leather chairs. “His name is Dan Hixson.”
Robert Burnell leaned over to open the folder. On top of a stack of papers were several photos. Burnell picked up the first one and studied it. Hixson appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with short brown hair and green eyes. The next picture showed him in uniform.
“Why this one?” he asked. “He looks like a soldier. I thought we were looking for one of Rayburn’s colleagues?”
“If you’d look the file over, you’d see why,” Madec said, “but I’ll save you the time. Hixson has a history with Rayburn, and since he’s a soldier, we can assign him to protect the doctor.”
“I like that,” Burnell said. “That’s even better than bringing in a colleague.”
“Especially since they all seem to be dead, as of this morning,” Madec added. “And Rayburn doesn’t appear to have any close friends or family that we could use.”
“If you’re sure about this guy, I suppose we should bring him in.”
“He’ll be on his way soon, along with the rest of his team,” Madec said, frowning as he brushed a piece of lint from his suit jacket. “I made the call ten minutes ago.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’ve been fighting in Long Beach. Hopefully they’ll make it here alive.”
~*~
Dr. Rayburn stood up from his desk and stretched his back. It was hell getting old, he thought, but considering the alternative, he wasn’t about to complain. He had been spending a lot of time on the internet, trying to find out as much as possible about the plague that was wreaking devastation upon the Americas. There had been several new outbreaks over the previous week, and the rest of the world was holding a collective breath as they watched and waited.
Walls had gone up around the Yucca University Medical Center where Rayburn worked. They looked like the sort of barriers that one would see along the freeways, meant to keep the noise of the traffic away from housing developments. He’d asked about them, but had been given no answers. The military had been swarming through the area for the last five days, and nobody was shedding any light on that, either.
He checked his watch, disappointed at how little time had passed. All his life he’d been able to stay busy, and it was difficult for him to adjust to the recent change. He’d enjoyed puttering around the house and garden when his wife was alive, but since her death a few years earlier, he’d found it difficult to be at home. He’d recently begun to get involved with some cancer-related charities which took up much of his free time. Now, for the first time in years, he was bored.
Since the walls had gone up around Yucca, all of his patients had been flown out to other hospitals, and Rayburn wasn’t even sure what his purpose was anymore. He had absolutely nothing to do. Well, almost nothing, he thought, staring at the foot-high stack of papers on his desk. He looked around the office and realized that he’d let the clutter get out of control. He knew that it wouldn’t kill him to organize it while things were slow, but if the world was ending, as many had predicted, why spend his last few days doing something he hated? Looking at the pile of papers again, he decided to take another walk. He could sit at a desk for just so long before having to get up and move around.
Those who were now living in the medical center were used to seeing Rayburn wandering around, and he was starting to know many of the soldiers by name. Most of them were friendly, and since they were comfortable around him, they were also more likely to talk in his presence. He had surprisingly good hearing for a man in his late sixties, and he thought that maybe others didn’t realize it because they were spilling all sorts of information. He had learned a lot more that way than he had by asking questions.
He walked into a room with a large picture window, greeting the two soldiers who stood by the door. When Rayburn went to look out the window, the two men returned to their conversation, obviously trying to keep their voices down.
“. . . said that the city could be completely overrun in days. My wife and kids are out there.”
“Same here. I heard that Peterson and Garcia both bailed during the night.”
“How’d they get out?”
“Ropes. Over t
he wall.”
“That explains the new outdoor lighting.”
Rayburn looked around and finally saw the spotlights that the soldiers had been discussing.
He had seen people leaving the neighborhood in droves before the walls were finished. Curious, he had kept his ears open, and he’d learned that most of those who had left had happily agreed to rent their houses out for tens of thousands of dollars for a one-month period. The story they’d been given was that a movie was going to be filmed in the area, though that was never mentioned in the contracts they had signed. Rayburn wondered how many of them had believed the story and how many had just taken the money, planning on finding a safer place to wait out the crisis. From what he had overheard, the same walls were cropping up in other areas.
As the exodus had continued, people had begun coming in before the walls had even been completed. Some had brought along moving vans full of their worldly possessions while others had been flown in by helicopter with nothing but the shirts on their backs. One thing they all had in common was that they were checked thoroughly for bites and put through a 24-hour quarantine before being allowed into the newly created sanctuary.
“Dr. Rayburn?”
“Yes?” George said, pulled from his thoughts. He turned to regard the soldier who had addressed him.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but my little girl was one of your patients.”
~*~
Streets of Lansing, Michigan
A few blocks later, Keith heard a scream and instinctively turned that way.
Helga followed him, but said, “We cannot help them, Keith, unless we want to die, too.”
Ignoring her, he rode on, wanting to assess the situation. When he rounded the next corner, he saw that the scream was coming from a woman who was trapped on a fifth floor balcony of a tall building. She was struggling to keep the door closed as she held a child who didn’t appear to be more than a year or two old.
Dead, But Not For Long (Book 2): Pestilence and Promise Page 3