Race the Dead (Book 1): The Last Flag

by Cavanagh, Wren

  Emma flipped on one of the wall switches and weak lights came on. “It’s a hospital; they have their own power backup systems. Wonder how long this one has been on, though.” She pointed out some of the waning ceiling lights. “The power is low to dead in spots.”

  Ross pointed at the welcoming coffee pots on one of the tables. “Who cares? We can make coffee and heat up some food. We’re all hypothermic here!”

  “Outstanding idea.”

  Theo got up and rummaged through the shelves and cupboards until he finally struck gold. He put a paper filter into a coffee machine and filled it with fragrant grounds. After a few minutes, the aroma of fresh coffee warmed the room. Theo prepared four cups and brought one each to his new teammates. He handed the last one to Anjali and stopped in his tracks. Her appearance transfixed him. He stood, staring, examining her face —stiff, impassive, almost unnatural. Not enough color had yet made its way back to her flesh, but her eyes were alive.

  “Theo, Dr. Anjali Aluri. Anjali, Theo. Take a picture, Theo,” said Emma. “It lasts longer.”

  “Riiight, the walking flag.” He nodded and released the cup to her. “Sorry for staring. You look...”

  “Kid...” Emma warned.

  “It’s, okay,” Anjali replied with a smile. “Hi. Theo. Thanks. Love coffee.”

  “Hi,” Theo muttered, and sipped from his cup as he watched and evaluated her. Eventually he smiled back.

  “you look...dead-ish.”

  “Was, am better now. Thank, you. Just need, vacation.”

  Theo’s loud young laugh surprised even him, and eventually it trailed off to almost hysterical giggles as he fell onto the couch next to Anjali.

  “They must have a break room or a cafeteria with some food.” Ross ventured.

  “I’m not gonna waste my time looking for it, I wanna get out of here.” Theo said, as he wiped tears of laughter and relief from his eyes. “I can get a burger on the right side of the fence.”

  “Yeah okay, you got a point. Emma, how long will we be waiting for Lew?”

  “Until he gets here.”

  “He's dead. They all are.” Theo said.

  Shocked and weary, Ross aimed the camera. At that moment it wasn’t just his job, it was a shield. He focused on Emma’s devastated expression then panned out to capture Theo in the scene.

  “How do you know? Have you seen them?” Emma got up and advanced on Theo, who — seated on the couch — didn’t realize the effect his words provoked.

  “Yeah, saw Lew, the other kids, their dad. What’s their name...Carson, Tessa? They're lunch...Okay? I grabbed their flags and ran. And then...” He never finished the sentence, as a hard slap twisted him almost around, his coffee spilling hot on his face. Then Emma was on him, tears streaking her face as she grabbed his jacket and pushed him down to the floor, her angry eyes a few inches from his.

  “You took the flags?” Her question comes out like a sob through clenched teeth. “But you didn’t help them?”

  “Fuck OFF! They were done, okay? Nothing I could do or yeah, I would have helped!” He yelled back. “I ran into Kate I held her up and helped her for as long as I could. She couldn’t keep up. She kept falling, and they were right there and gaining on us.” Angry, Theo pushed her back. “Get off me, you crazy bitch!”

  “Let me see the flags.”

  Theo pulled the flags from his pocket and held them up briefly in his clenched fist before shoving them back inside. “They’re mine. Fuck off.”

  Emma got up and stepped away from him. “Yours? You’d be dead without me. You’d have no flags without us —you took ours. And you can’t win without a cameraman.”

  Theo staggered to his feet and shocked Emma as he went from fury to near calm in seconds. “Maybe.” Theo shrugged, briefly regarded Ross, then locked eyes with Emma and continued with a flat, dead tone of voice. “As you got the cameraman. But hit me again and you’ll be keeping company with the other dead assholes outside.”

  Emma stared at him, face white with anger, her chin trembling. Theo thought she might go after him again and tensed for a fight, but she wrapped her arms around herself and darted away.

  “Hey, where're you going now?” The boy looked to Anjali, then Ross. “Where is she going?”

  “I think she needs to process this. She and Lew were a couple. What happened to Eliza?”

  “Alvin. He died, came back,” he shrugged, “ I'm sorry. I liked her; she was really nice.”

  Appalled, Ross managed to nod, Theo sank back down onto the couch. His demeanor was calm, but his body vibrated with anger and adrenaline. He grabbed Emma’s coffee and wrapped his hands around the cup, the warmth radiating in the palms of his hands. It felt like it was burning but he didn’t let go. What the hell, she broke mine, he thought, and drank deeply and slowly with eyes closed in appreciation. When he opened them again he turned to Anjali. “The hell are you anyway?”

  Anjali never got to answer. A loud crack followed by the sound of falling glass ended the conversation.

  “Shit, we gotta go.” Theo jumped up from his seat and grabbed his ax while Ross got up and stepped around the corner camera in hand. The ghostly shapes outside the frosted windows had multiplied tightened their siege. At entrance, where the logos on the glass were nonexistent and the furniture didn’t block the view, a woman stared back at him. Once she made eye contact, she pushed on the door with renewed urgency. In a few minutes she had company and the doors began to bow inward, regardless of the barricade that had been erected. “Let’s find crazy bitch, we gotta go.”

  “I'm here.” Emma came out from the shadows, eyes swollen, wiping the remnants of tears from her face. “Let’s get out of this damned town. You call me a bitch again, I’ll break your arms.”

  “Elevator?” Ross nodded his head toward the elevators doors at the back wall of the large admittance atrium.

  “Stairs — elevator might be fine, but do you really want to risk getting stuck in it?”

  “Stairs it is,” Ross concurred. “Stairs are good for your health. Six floors, piece of cake. Unless we run into Turned that is.”

  “Then we retreat and go to plan B.”

  “Plan B? What’s plan B?” Ross asked with a puzzled but hopeful expression on his face.

  “I’ll figure it out then,” Emma replied and looked into the camera. “Tom, pick us up. We are done.”

  They made their weary way upward, flight after flight of stairs in the echoing stairwell decorated with blood drips and smears, the detritus chaotic fugitives left behind as they had fought their way out. Emma took the lead and, as they made their way up, she and Theo kept axe and crowbar at the ready. No one believed that the production, or life for that matter, wouldn’t have a last nasty surprise for them. Emma looked back to see that Anjali had stopped, half a flight behind. Softly, she called out to her.

  “Anjali, we're almost there. C’mon.”

  The older woman, lost to a place within herself didn’t reply. Her eyes had an inward focus and she seemed unaware of her surroundings, for a moment Emma feared that Anjali had regress and again joined the herd of the Turned.

  “Anjali?” She asked, weary and cautious.

  Ross heard the tension in her voice and stepped away from the doctor.

  “Dr. Aluri?”

  ----------

  “Dr. Aluri.”

  The voice startles her, she turns with a gasp and almost falls. It’s Peter Reynard, the hospital’s security manager.

  “We've started securing and evacuating the hospital, Dr. Aluri. I need you to move your things to the third floor, please.”

  She nods and encourages him to go on.

  “We got it locked down so we have only an entry point at the bottom and top level.”

  “Roof access. You restricted the roof
access.”

  “We did. I got it contained to the sixth floor roof entrance. That floor will be for staging and processing. Fifth floor — patients, fourth floor — patients, and the third for labs and doctors. Anyone here for normal reasons will be on the first and second floors until they get evacuated.”

  “All right, thank you Peter.”

  “Doc.” He says “You okay, doc?” He asks, and his voice comes out with a womanly timbre that puzzles Anjali. She blinks and Peter is gone.

  ----------

  “You okay, doc?” Emma asked, standing a step away from her now, with her crowbar lifted, ready to strike.

  “Yes! Yes, something…I think.” The electric ripples on the surface of her brain had returned, and quickened with her every blink and movement. “Yes, memories, returning, I think, roof access, locked. Only access...From inside sixth floor.”

  “Theo, can you check that? We’ll wait at the entry of the sixth floor,” asks Emma.

  Wordless, Theo ran up the stairs and by the time they got to the sixth floor he was on the way back down to meet them.

  “Locked up to hell and back,” he reported.

  “They wanted, containment,” Anjali said. “No stairwell…sneaking to the roof.”

  “Patients? Did you have Turned on the sixth floor?”

  “Yes.”

  Emma tried the door. It was open and she gave a quick mental thank you to God before slowly and quietly pushing it ajar. Behind her, everyone was tense and holding their breath, listening intently for any noise. Nothing. She widened the opening and looked in. Right off the bat she saw seven to ten people down the corridor, and closed the door.

  “Yeah, they’re there — counted about ten people. We have to be prepared. Which way to the roof access, Anjali?”

  The woman briefly looked nonplussed. She shut her eyes tightly and desperately tried to will her memories back, and like water over parched land, they returned and sank into the arid cracks of her mind.

  “Southmost corner? No. wait...northmost! Left, right, north south. I…mix them up,” she said embarrassed, “Northmost I am sure. Take a right, all the way down the corridor, then left half way, and follow that corridor to the center of the floor.”

  “So it is. Let’s go people, quiet as church mice.”

  “Your church has rats…okay,” muttered Theo, as he lifted the ax to his shoulder. “Fancy church you got there.”

  “Pious rats, what can I say. Shush, everyone,” Emma whispered, and opened the door as gently and carefully as if she were carrying a lighted candle over a lake of gasoline. The dead lingered down the corridor. The coast was clear.

  Thank God for small favors, she thought, but not without anger and resentment. Would a loving God have left Lew die, what did God care for his pious rats? She held the door open and let Theo take the lead, waited as Ross and Anjali went past, then closed the door and closed up the line. As they walked down the dimly lit hallway, muffled noises or the soft sound of furtive movement could be heard intermittently from behind closed doors. Theo slowed down, and then halted the procession as they reached the end of the hallway. Cautiously he peeked around the corner.

  In seconds, he turned back and leaned against the wall. He mouthed a silent curse, mouthed ‘thirty’, opened and closed his left hand six times. Emma shoulders dropped in dismay and took a look. Thirty was optimistic, she saw furtive movements from the rooms and side halls, Anjali gestured for them to step in close for a huddle.

  “Wait in a room. I can try, and draw them away?”

  Emma shook her head. “We need cover...” She said and tried one of the doors. It opened into a large lab, with only one of the turned occupying it, a doctor still dressed in her lab attire. Emma rushed in, the others followed in haste. She walked up to the dead woman and swung the crowbar with all her strength. The Turned crashed to the floor, a small pool of dark fluids pooled beneath her head.

  “Okay, just us now. I like the idea, Anjali. But I just don’t think you're ‘dead’ enough anymore. You have no idea how different you look and seem even from we split up at the bank. We need something different.”

  “We could...Call for rescue,” offered Ross, not holding much hope that everyone will agree with the idea. “The Army could land on the roof and get us out.”

  “Yeah, great, and then they’ll send us home with shit compensation money on a cheap-ass economy class ticket,” Theo retorted with an angry sneer. “I need that money.”

  “We are here! We're at the finish line,” Emma agreed. “No way am I calling for a rescue now — we’ve lost so much and we’d get nothing in return. No!”

  Anjali shrugged. “I just, want out.”

  “You're a doctor; you have family, a home, a real job. I got nothing,” Theo countered, angrily jabbing his finger at her.

  “It’s not her fault, Theo. Let’s stick together on this. Distract and redirect is still our best strategy. I have an idea.”

  “Like I give a shit as to what the woman who tried to slap my face off has to say!”

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” Emma said, and then pointed at the ceiling. “I'm light enough that I can make my way over the metal grid holding up the ceiling tiles. I’ll make my way straight down, opposite direction, make enough noise to bring as many as possible and come back up here. Then we go.”

  Grudging he nodded his agreement. “So long as you are doing it.”

  “Block the door.” Emma got up onto one of the lab tables, positioned a heavy storage bin on top of it, stepped onto it and reached the ceiling. She removed one of the panels and lowered it to Theo. She took off all the extra weight she could, left in jeans and a t-shirt and socks she then carefully pulled herself up into the metal frame holding the vascular and nervous systems of the building.

  Christ, glad I spent all that time at the gym, she thought, and crawled to her destination. It was an apprehensive trip, a few panels fell along the way, giving her glimpses of tragedies past and present. As she moved along the metal frame, joists shifted and bowed; a few gut-clenching times, they buckled under her weight, but she kept going, until finally there was no more forward to go to. From her precarious spot, she shifted one of the panels to the side.

  She was above a janitor’s closet holding an array of supplies. A fire wouldn’t do, that’s just plain crazy, and once down, would I be able to climb back up fast enough, and hell, why even get down? She mulled her options and backtracked until she was past the wall defining the small closet, and over the corridor. Stealth be damned, she knocked out several ceiling panels. The first one fell onto the head of one of the Turned. Serendipitous! From her perch, Emma hollered and cursed. She grabbed her crowbar and banged it against the sprinklers within reach. Once the heads broke off the water nosily rushed out. Soon, it was a merry party, and attendance grew, noise was as good as an invitation to those things. And if one joined, the neighbors come along. In less than five minutes, she abandoned the sea of dead bodies that were beginning to trample upon one another trying to reach her. She rushed back and twice almost fell to the ground below, but eventually vaulted feet-first into the lab.

  “Yay, ceiling cat is back. Get down here so we can leave,” was Theo’s terse welcome.

  Kid holds a grudge — great, Emma thought, dismayed and a bit ashamed, especially since she was the one who attacked him. Will have to smooth it out, he didn’t deserve it. Shouldn’t have gone off on him.

  “Yeah, ceiling cat is back.” She agreed, shivering she rushed back into her clothing. “Let’s hit the road.”