Her girlfriend Katrin is one of our best snipers. She showed up one day with a freaking Barrett 50 caliber semi auto sniper rifle, a thick German accent and a really bad attitude. Her skills totally make up for the attitude. Katrin absolutely never ever misses, from like a couple of football field lengths away never misses.
On the downside every time I take Cassandra out on a run her girlfriend calmly tells me that she will kill me if she doesn’t come back.
I tend to believe that she is serious.
I have several guns, my baseball bat and my machete stashed all over me as well as a stun baton.
Killing is not always the answer.
Not all the trouble we run into will be from the undead.
I have not kept any kind of score on the undead that I have killed but each and every human that I have killed no matter how much they deserved it is etched deeply on my soul
Coincidently the number is seventeen.
This isn’t a typical run, we aren’t after supplies we are after information. We will search the hospital floor by floor and hopefully come across Tina’s tall doctor and the other children like her and persuade the tall doctor to answer all of our questions. We will ask politely the first time.
Less politely if we have to ask again.
And so on.
Our merry little band of adventurers are locked and loaded and ready to roll by the main fortified entrance, we are just waiting for the sun to come up so we aren’t doing this shit in the dark.
Like all of our runs we will be hoofing it, cars are useless, even if we had one that still ran, because of all the stalled vehicles and assorted rubble and debris blocking the roads. We still syphon gas from the cars for our generators but that is about the extent of their usefulness.
Big Al is here to see us off.
“Watch your asses people, I am sending nine of you idiots out there and I hereby order you to all come back in one piece. Use the walkies sparingly, other less than friendly ears might just be listening so no needless chatter. When you come back you report what you find directly to me, not a word to anyone else until I say so, are we clear?”
“Yes sir!” We all shout back at him in ragged unison.
His eyes find mine and he gives me a small nod towards his daughter who is standing next to me and I know he is silently asking me to watch out for her. I give him a small nod back and I know he knows I will do what I can.
“Ok people. Give them hell.” He tells us as he motions for the guards to let us through the first set of doors.
I am squad leader on this little stroll so I take point, Joyce takes up position on my left and the rest of the squad fans out behind me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It is eleven long blocks to the hospital as the crow flies but we are forced to zig zag around obstacles and packs of zombies so it is an even longer trek for us. We take it slow and careful, the damn hospital isn’t going nowhere. Cassandra has been taking out the occasional crawler, as we go, quick and quiet with her hatchet but so far we have been able to avoid serious trouble.
We hunkered down for a few minutes to let a small band of scavengers from a different camp go by, they might not have been hostile but we aren’t on a mission to make new friends either. I want us there and back with no drama of any kind.
The hospital looms ahead of us now, nine stories tall with God knows how many levels below ground. The task of searching it seems more daunting now than it did when we came up with this plan. We will start by searching the lower levels and look for that CDC quarantine lab the doc was talking about, it seems like our best shot at this.
There are a few assorted sized zombies milling about between us and the emergency room entrance that will have to be dealt with.
“Clear it.” I whisper to Willis.
He nods and takes out a crossbow with a mounted scope and pulls back hard on the cocking lever.
I am no sharp shooter, either with a gun or a freaking crossbow. My accuracy is sufficient to blowing out zombie brains at close range and I am not bad in fire fight against human raiders either but this kind of shooting I leave to those who excel at it.
Despite my misgivings about him, Willis is awesome with a crossbow.
Give the devil his due.
He drops six zombies, one by one with a crossbow bolt through their little brainpans. They drop to the ground and there is no noise to draw more of the vermin. When the last one goes down we move out as quickly and quietly as we can towards the entrance. Willis takes a moment to pull the bolts out of each body and shake the blood and other crud off of them before replacing them in the quiver he carries across his back.
I give him a quick thumbs up that he ignores and then we are spilling through the hospital entrance into the emergency room area.
First thing we do is we all turn on flashlights because it is dark up in here. Other scavengers have been here and for some reason they have tagged the walls with spray painted graffiti. The need to do that isn’t really something that I can relate to.
Us Narwhals don’t bother with that, we get in get what the hell we need and get out.
Silently we fan out and head for the stairway so we can start to check out the lower floors. We open the door and right away Jamal has to take out a ravenous preteen who goes right for his throat. He swings a small sledge hammer and caves the damned things skull in with one blow. Nobody looks at the fucked up little corpse as we move past it.
Like I said before, we have learned not to.
Joyce is glued to my left flank, I suspect that her father demanded she do so as a condition of joining this mission. Her hair is tucked up under a black watch cap and because she is wearing gloves I can only guess that her grip on the steel pipe she is carrying is a white knuckle one. She has a pistol on each hip and the knife I gave her is tucked through her belt.
We head down.
Jamal used to work here and he whispered to me that we have to go down at least four floors before we might find the isolation lab. He is on my right and there are specks of zombie mess in his hair that I make a point of not telling him about. He is along for the ride because we need a medic but he isn’t a solider. That being said the guy isn’t flinching from what needs to be done.
A crawler slithers out from the shadows and starts trying to gnaw through Cassandra’s boot to the tasty flesh it must smell inside. She takes its damned head off with the hatchet and we keep moving.
We go down a few more floors until we hear the music.
The wheels on the bus go round and round.
Jesus Christ on a stick.
Everyone forms up and looks at me for what to do next. The music is faint so we have a couple of levels to go yet and I motion for everyone to gun up and move out.
At the next landing we see that the access door had been welded shut. Pretty much a sign for us saying, well hell this must be the place. Fortunately smarter people than me have thought of this possibility and prepared for it.
I tend to count on stuff like that.
Guy named Grant steps up and takes a portable cutting torch from the backpack he is wearing. He sparks it up and proceeds to use it to go about unwelding the damn door. The hiss of the torch and the tinny sound of the kids’ music is the only sound. The rest of us stand around with weapons drawn getting ready to play yet another round of everyone’s favorite game show.
Yeah, you guessed it. What the bloody hell is behind door number one?
Grant steps back and Jamal gives the door lock a smack with his mini sledge and, we get the opportunity to find out.
Someone obviously doesn’t want visitors.
That somebody has barricaded the doorway with shelving and assorted other crap. Not a serious barrier to us but likely enough to deflect zombies or the casual scavenger. As quietly as we can we move the makeshift barrier out of the way and proceed to ghost our way into the area we were being discouraged from going into.
We are about ten steps in before all fucking hell breaks out.
Several shots ring out and the bullets ping off of the walls all around us, we all drop to the floor and bring our own weapons up but no targets present themselves. I check my team and nobody is hit.
The music ends abruptly and a few more shots ring out, all the bullets going over our heads.
“Whoever you are get out!” A thin trembly voice shouts out and to make his point even clearer, he fires a few more shots.
“Fuck this.” Cassandra says flatly as she pulls out a flash bang grenade and shoots me a questioning look.
“Do it.” I tell her as I cover my ears.
She grins wickedly and pulls the pin and then tosses the grenade in the direction that the shots came from.
The grenade goes off with a super bright flash of light that will temporarily fry the retinas of anyone looking at it and a mind numbing loud bang that will scramble the brain of anyone around it.
My team all were smart enough to look away from the flash and cover their ears as best they could. We are on our feet and moving down the dark hallway in seconds with our weapons ready.
We don’t need them.
A scrawny middle aged balding guy in a lab coat is on the floor bawling like a baby, his hands rubbing at his eyes. A handgun is a couple of feet away from him and I pick it up.
“Yo, cupcake, your momma ever tell you that it isn’t polite to shoot at people?” I ask him even though I know he probably can’t hear me.
Grant hauls the guy to his feet and zip ties his hands behind his back. He slaps him lightly across the face to get his attention.
We wait a few minutes for the guys hearing to come back to him, he has stopped his caterwauling and stands there blinking nervously at us. Likely we all look like blurry flashes of color to him still but that effect will fade as well.
“What’s your name?” I ask him politely when I think that he can hear well enough again.
“Fuck you.” He spits at me.
“Nice to meet you, tell you what I will just call you Fuck for short. My name is Jake and these nice people and I would like to know what the hell you are up to down here. Specifically we would like to know everything you know about a little girl named Tina.” I tell him still using a polite tone but with just a hint of an edge to it.
“You can’t make me talk.” He is trying for defiant but he is coming across more sullen than anything else.
“Tough talk for somebody who was sobbing like a little bitch a couple of minutes ago.” Jamal points out.
I check out the guys gun, it’s an old 1911 45 and after checking to see if there are still rounds in the magazine, I put the muzzle against his forehead and cock the hammer back.
“Sure about that?” I ask him pressing the muzzle in so hard that I know I am leaving a bruise.
Of course if I end up pulling the trigger a bruise will be the least of his problems.
He swallows hard and to give him credit he lasts a few seconds before he caves in.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well Fuck, why don’t you just go ahead and tell us everything?” I suggest easing the hammer back down and lowering the gun.
He does.
CHAPTER NINE
“Bullshit.” Cassandra says out loud which I am pretty sure we are all thinking. Whoever this asshole is, he has a pretty wild tale to tell.
“I can show you.” He says a little too eagerly.
For some strange reason I fail to have overwhelming faith and trust in my fellow man these days. Call me a cynic but I don’t trust this little squirmy worm and looking around I see most of the team doesn’t either.
I slap him way harder than Grant did, hard enough to snap his head back. It sounds like a gunshot in the quiet hallway.
“Listen carefully Fuck, if you try anything, if you lead us into a damn trap I will personally beat you to death.” I tell him in an even tone, the way you would tell somebody you will meet them for lunch.
He looks frightened which is good, I need him frightened. Too frightened to try anything stupid. We have no other choice but to go and check out what he has told us about, but I don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about what we are going to find.
“Take us there.” I tell him.
There is blood around his mouth as he nods several times looking like a damn bobble head doll.
We move out, dude has a lot of guns and other weapons pointed at him as he walks clumsily down the hallway, tripping over rubble as he goes. If my team is freaked out by what he had told us they show no sign of it, even Joyce seems frosty.
He stops in front of a doorway with an electronic card reader lock.
“How do you still have power?” Cassandra asks him quietly.
“Solar panels all over the roof, give us enough to keep a few systems running. Key card is in my pocket.” He says sullenly.
Joyce reaches in and takes out the card and then hands it to me.
Sometimes the only way to tell if the stove is hot is to touch it.
I scan the card.
The light goes from red to green with a heavy clinking noise.
Joyce pulls the door open and I shove our prisoner roughly through the open doorway. He gives a little squeal as he lands in a heap on the floor inside. Lights come on as he goes through.
We all follow through slowly and fan out once inside. This has to be the lab the doctor was talking about. There are two isolation wards, one on either side of the room. Each has a large unbreakable one way glass observation window, the view we see through each is very different.
The room on the left is full of zombies, at least a dozen of them ranging from infant crawlers to preteens. They are all milling around slowly, with no prey to be had they are more or less dormant.
The room on the right is full of living breathing children, ranging from about three years old to about nine. All of them blonde haired and blue eyed like Tina. All of them are dressed in matching white pajamas. I do a quick head count and there are sixteen of them.
If the little puke at our feet is telling the truth, what we are looking at is a before and after picture.
He says that they have a cure.
The children are playing with toys, we all just look at them for a moment. None of us have seen anything like this since the dust fell. It stirs memories in me that this isn’t the time or place to deal with.
I haul the man on the floor to his feet and push him lightly against the wall, time to play twenty questions.
“How did you find a cure? What caused this in the first damn place?” I hiss at him.
“We don’t know what caused it and how we found a cure is….well it is complicated.”
“Then speak slowly and use small words that a moron like me can understand but tell me what you did.” I accent the suggestion with a little tap upside the head.
“He can’t explain it to you because he doesn’t understand it himself.” A voice says calmly from behind me.
A very tall man is standing there in a dingy lab coat with his hands up. He has graying hair pulled back into a ponytail and an untrimmed ragged beard. My team surrounds him with drawn weapons.
“Tina says hi.” I tell him cheerfully, watching his face carefully.
An unsettled look flashes across his face but whatever he is feeling he hides it quickly.
“Who are you people?” He asks with a hint of anger in his voice.
“We are the Narwhals.” My team barks back at him in perfect unison. From the baffled look on his face, I doubt that the answer cleared things up for him.
“That is what we call ourselves, we are a group of survivors with a base not far from here. On a scavenging run we came across a little blonde girl who told us he name was Tina and that she came from here. Want to explain how she happened to be out on the damn street?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, carefully looking all of us over. After that moment he sighs and gives an elaborate shrug.
“Once some scientists locked an ape in a room that the
y had designed to have only two ways to escape. They then watched to see what would happen, the ape escaped in a third way. Tina, well she was like that ape. She got out somehow, we still aren’t sure how.” He tells us.
“Actually we are more concerned with why than how, as in why a small child purposefully escapes a place she is being cared for to take her chances on the fucking street? What the hell goes on here that she thought that was her best hope?” I demand.
He slowly lowers his arms, we let him but there are a lot of weapons ready to ruin his day should he decide to act up.
“Maybe you could untie my assistant and we could all sit down and talk about it.” He suggests with a small cautious smile.
I nod to Joyce and she uses the knife on her belt to saw through the zip tie and she gives him a small shove towards the tall doctor.
The doctor loses his smile and before we can stop him the bastard pulls a small remote from one of the lab coats pockets and pushes a button.
There is an unpleasant clunking sound as he activates the door lock on the isolation lab to our left.
Unlocking the door separating us from the room full of zombies.
Fuck.
The door slides open and the zombies inside catch sight of us and move out of their dormant stage and start moving aggressively towards the door. The doctor and his assistant dive towards the back corner of the room.
The more mobile ones come scuttling through the door gnashing their teeth at us and making their high pitched hunting cry. My gun is going off before I even think about it, they are rushing us in a lurching uneven charge. The room is suddenly filled with the echoing sound of guns going off, the air is filled with the smell of gun smoke and the spilled blood of zombies. My team wipes out the damned things in one spasm of violence like we have been trained to.
But in the process we lose track of the tall doctor and his weasily little assistant and that isn’t good.
Apparently the other isolation lab is also sound proof because none of the children react to the fire fight that just went on right outside the window to their little world. They just keep on playing with toys, in the same way that they were when we came in.
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 1): Suffer The Little Children Page 4