A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  “Uncle Pete?” Trina’s voice was shaky with fear. “They’re starting to climb up after us. The covers are closed, but . . . they’re still coming.”

  Chapter 36

  The ventilation panels hadn’t lasted as long as Miles had hoped they might. The press of flesh had jammed up against the doors and created an eerie silence as the zombies ran out of elbow room to strike. A few scant minutes later, they’d discovered the openings at the bottom of the doors and hammered their way through.

  The first few through had cut themselves to ribbons on the steel fins, but the mass behind had pulled away enough to pull the first casualties back through. That didn’t bode well for their expected timeline. If they couldn’t depend on the bodies of the dead to create some sort of temporary barricade, Ross was going to have to fire off the first rank of claymores that much sooner. They’d angled them as much as possible, but Miles didn’t know how well the shack doors would stand up to the blast. For that matter, every shot they missed was liable to go through the doors.

  The quartet settled into an easy rhythm; one man on each side shot while the other waited or reloaded. Miles wasn’t ashamed to admit he was the worst shot in the group. At this range and with the window he needed to fire through, that just meant he wasn’t nailing a headshot every time. So far, it was enough.

  Ross cursed on the right as his SCAR locked open on an empty magazine and the final bullet bounced off of the skull of his target with a high-pitched pinging noise. “Got it,” Janacek said, and calmly sent a heavier 7.62mm round into the zombie crawling through the opening on that side. Whatever boosted their capability and intellect seemed to have made their bodies more robust. At this range, a 5.56mm armor-piercing round from Ross’ SCAR 16 should have gone through bone like butter. All too often, the sound of a ricochet was their only reward for Ross and the Chief as they hit their targets. Meat machines, Miles reminded himself bitterly. The survivors had allowed themselves to dream and look forward to the future with the assumption that the hordes arrayed against them were withering in the face of time. Confronted with the opposing reality, he couldn’t help but feel more than a little helpless. He hadn’t been this scared outside of the wall in a long time.

  The heavier rounds from Janacek’s rifle and Miles’ own custom job were more than up to the task of taking their attackers down. That firepower was also focused on the left side. As Foraker began to fire, Ross called out, “Janacek, swap with the Chief when he drops his mag.”

  “Roger that,” Janacek called back. Foraker shouted his own curse as his second shot of the session came tumbling back at him.

  “Mine,” Miles said, as he lined up his shot and pulled the trigger. It didn't take him long, but it was enough of a delay that the zombie was completely out of the door and on its knees before he took it down. Damn, they’re so much faster.

  It was a strange sort of tension, Miles reflected. There was no frantic edge to their motions, but the low-grade undercurrent of terror defined every action. They were holding the tide back, if only just, but any hesitation on their part was an opening.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Foraker said. “What’s he doing?” The following zombie reached through the ventilation hatch and seized the one Miles had shot, but rather than pulling it back through, it rolled the lifeless body onto one side as it started to slide through. Foraker fired steadily, but the fallen body acted as a shield. It jerked under the impact of the Chief’s fire, but there was enough cover there that he couldn’t get a direct headshot. It crab-crawled sideways, as though trying to get out of the line of fire.

  “Mind your sector!” Ross barked, and Miles jerked his eyes back over to the left opening, where a pair of smaller zoms had crawled out at the same time. The first put its back to them and ducked its head down.

  Miles’ mouth dropped open. It was acting as a shield for the second, which slid between the first and the door and started tugging at the cable they’d used to secure the handles together.

  “I see it,” Janacek said and flipped a switch on his SCAR. Even suppressed, the three-round burst made for an impressive concussion in Miles’ chest. The shielding zom spasmed as the heavy bullets struck it in the back and neck. At least one of them got the spinal cord because it went limp. Janacek’s follow-up burst messily removed the second zom’s head from its shoulders before it could do any more than tug on the ends of the cable.

  “I’m out!” Foraker announced and came up on his knees as he pulled his magazine and replaced it. He and Janacek flip-flopped positions as Ross began firing. The Chief propped his rifle up on Janacek’s rucksack and grimaced. “I can smell your dirty socks, you animal!”

  Janacek laughed. “It’s not my fault you only change yours once a week, old-timer!”

  Despite his fear, Miles laughed. This time, when he spotted movement in the left opening, he didn’t hesitate. The target of his fire flopped, suspended halfway between the interior and exterior of the shack. He waited for the one behind it to make a move . . .

  Silence reigned for the span of half a dozen heartbeats before Miles realized that everything inside of the shack was still. “Is that all of them?” he whispered.

  Foraker was silent for a long moment, then muttered, “No way. They’re up to something.” The big man fell silent and cocked his head and stared at Ross for a long moment. The two men held eye contact until the lieutenant gave an oblique shrug.

  Foraker levered off of the ground into a low crouch. He tucked his rifle into his shoulder and crept forward. The only sound in the silence was the light click of gravel against his boots.

  The Chief paused just behind the final line of claymores and stared at the openings in the shack doors.

  Tink.

  “Did you hear that?” Janacek muttered.

  “Shut up,” Foraker hissed. He pressed his ear up against a ventilation duct.

  Tink.

  The Chief straightened and looked back, brow furrowed in confusion. He placed a hand against the air duct.

  Is it big enough? Miles wondered. It’s got to go sheer vertical at some point, how the hell can they get a grip to climb that, even if it is big enough?

  Tink.

  Foraker pulled his hand away from the duct and whispered, “Ah, shit.” He began to step backward, faster than he’d advanced with no concern for the noise he was making. “We got problems,” the Chief sang out. Confused, Miles looked over to Janacek and Ross; the other two men looked as baffled as he felt.

  “Chief . . .” Ross began, but the other man cut him off with a pointing finger. A pair of hands reached through the upper part of the ventilation holes and took hold of the right door.

  “The doors open in, Mikey, which means the hinges are on the inside. They popped the pins.”

  Metal scraped as the gray hands pulled.

  The cable and wrenches kept the doors together, but with no support at the right side, the doors swung open as one, and the horde burst forth.

  Tish didn’t know what was worse; the knowledge that there were a dozen or more infected milling around in front of the clinic, or the fact that they weren’t trying to break through the doors.

  “What do we do?” Lizzie whispered. Tish bit her lower lip and glanced at Frannie, who shrugged. Tish had bandaged the entry and exit wounds and wrapped gauze around her waist to secure them. It wouldn’t do for a long-term fix — they needed to clean the wound channel, if nothing else, to get any debris out before stitching it — but it would do for now. Frannie was pale with pain, but she’d accepted the small pistol from Larry and was keeping a close eye on Jaid. The other woman sat slumped in the corner of the room and seemed oblivious to what was going on around her.

  “Dad?” Tish murmured. “How are you feeling?”

  Her father didn’t answer right away, but his sigh told her all she needed to know. “I don’t know how much good I’m going to be in a fight, kiddo.” He pressed a hand to his forehead and grimaced. “Where’s my stuff?”

  She leane
d over beside his bed and pulled a plastic laundry basket out from underneath it. Tish had reduced his clothing to rags when she'd cut them off in surgery. She’d gotten him a clean pair of jeans, a shirt, and underclothes from his house and laid them inside. His belt with his holstered handgun was underneath. “Here,” she said.

  He opened one eye and regarded the basket. “And, like an idiot I had to give Pete my shotgun. Anything else in the building?”

  She licked her lips and tried not to curse. “No.” Sure, it’s a clinic — but you’re Larry Vance’s daughter, you should have known better. Now it was an oversight that might just be fatal.

  “Damn it,” Larry muttered and winced. “So we’ve got the LCP with what, six rounds in it, and my Glock and a couple of spares?” Tish glanced at Frannie; the other woman nodded in confirmation.

  “We just hole up, right?” Frannie said. “They’ll start sweeping the interior soon, won’t they?”

  Tish glanced at her dad. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “I don’t know, Frannie,” Larry admitted. “That was one hell of an explosion — I’m guessing something breached the wall. Did they get it contained? We haven’t heard gunfire for a bit.” He hesitated. “And that doesn’t even begin to consider who or what breached the wall, if that’s what it was. Could be raiders.”

  “No way can we fight our way out,” Tish said. “We have to wait.”

  Her dad glanced around. “This isn’t the room to do it in.” The windows were high up, as they were in all the settlement’s new construction, but what did that really mean? She remembered Vir’s description of how the infected had piled up on top of each other to get at him and shuddered. It wouldn’t take many to get high enough to push their way inside. These windows were ordinary residential glass, nothing fancy. They wouldn’t last long under a determined assault.

  “The surgical suite,” Tish said. It was the only room in the clinic without a window. The door wasn’t the most solid, but at least it wasn’t glass. Maybe they could put some shelving in front of it . . .

  “Get moving,” her dad said. “Start with Lizzie.”

  Tish nodded. “Right.” She stepped over to Lizzie’s gurney and kicked the locks off of the wheels. It had been a colossal pain to get the hospital beds back to the settlement, but right now, she was glad she’d fought for them. There had been serious consideration to using simple, stand-alone cots — that wouldn’t have rolled.

  Frannie stepped aside, closer to Jaid, as Tish wheeled Lizzie’s gurney around the foot of her dad’s bed and toward the door. She tensed as she neared Jaid, but all the fight seemed to have left her. The other woman settled for staring Tish down with sullen eyes as she passed.

  Tish negotiated the gurney through the door into the hallway and resisted the urge to push as fast as she could. The last thing she wanted to do was lose control and shove the gurney through the glass doors. “Don’t look,” she whispered to Lizzie, but the other woman either didn’t hear or didn’t want to look away. The infected outside pressed themselves up tight against the glass doors as she wheeled the gurney by, but they did nothing other than stare.

  Lizzie whimpered, but she remained silent. Tish whispered a silent prayer in thanks for that. She didn’t know what, if anything, would set them off. A scream had to be at the top of the list.

  She wheeled Lizzie through the door and shifted her sideways to clear the doorway for the other gurneys. “Sit tight,” she said and turned to return to the other room. As she crossed the glass doors, one of the infected ran its fingertips down the glass with a slight scraping noise.

  Just a few more minutes, she told herself.

  “I’m taking you now, dad,” Tish said as she kicked the locks open on his gurney. “Hold tight.”

  He was closer to the door so her path was easier. She swung the foot of the bed toward the door, moved to the headboard, and started pushing.

  She tried to ignore the infected at the doors as she pushed him by, but something nagged at the back of her mind as she did so.

  Are there less of them? Where did they go?

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” her dad whispered as they crossed. “They look different.”

  “They’re sure acting different,” Tish managed through gritted teeth. Her shoes squeaked on the floor as she pulled up to slow the gurney down. She moved around to the front to turn it, then pushed it further in. It was going to be tight in here with all four gurneys; maybe they should put JT and Bob on the same gurney for this last run? She considered it for a moment and almost abandoned the idea. Frannie was in no shape to be pushing, and she didn’t think she could move a gurney with that much weight on it. Maybe Jaid would help? She snorted to herself. Regardless, she needed to move them. “Be right back, dad.”

  Tish started talking as soon as she crossed the threshold into the other room. “Frannie, we need to shift Bob and JT into the same bed.”

  The nurse grimaced and nodded. She was opening her mouth to reply when Jaid chose the moment of distraction to make her move.

  “You two are idiots,” Jaid snapped, then jumped on top of Bob Gentry’s gurney. “You can stay in here all you like; I’m leaving.” She threw open the latches on the window above the bed and lifted the sash. Tish turned to Frannie and opened her mouth to tell her to shoot, but the sudden shriek from the open window cut her off.

  She turned back and stared. Jaid had gotten halfway out the window. Now, though, she shrieked odd, wet screams and tried to pull back inside but couldn’t. As she twisted, Tish understood why and tried not to retch.

  Something had shoved some sort of wooden shaft into and through Jaid’s shoulder. If she’d pulled in the right direction, she might have been able to slide it out, but in the frantic urgency of her agony, she was pulling straight back. The length of the shaft slammed into the outer frame of the window and pinned her in place. A pair of wasted gray arms appeared at the bottom of the window frame and put Jaid in a choke hold. Her screams cut off, and a sudden, surprisingly strong yank pulled her body the rest of the way through the window. Save for a spray of blood, there was nothing to declare that the woman had ever been there.

  “Go,” Tish whispered as a pair of hands grasped the bottom edge of the window and began to pull. She saw a bald head outside, just outside of view, and heard the scrabbling of feet against the side of the building. “Go, now!”

  Frannie only hesitated a moment before sprinting out of the room and down the hall. Tish stared at those grasping hands, cursed herself for a fool, and leaped onto Bob’s gurney.

  Her skin crawled at her proximity to the thing trying to climb in, but she forced herself to reach up and seize the top of the window. She put all her weight into it; bone cracked as she slammed the window home on the grasping hands. One released and pushed up on the window, but she pulled down again. This time, the bone splintered enough to tear through the desiccated flesh. The fingers plopped down inside; outside, she heard a thud as the climber hit the ground.

  How much time do we have?

  She twisted the locks on the window. It wouldn’t keep them from busting through the glass, but it should slow them down. She hoped.

  Tish climbed down to the floor and stared at the two men in their hospital beds. Despite all the commotion, neither had reacted. If not for the slow rise and fall of their chests, they could pass for dead.

  Would the infected be fooled? Somehow, she doubted it. Despite their stillness, the bodies were warm. It would take no more than a touch to tell the truth of their state.

  She couldn’t save them both, but she couldn’t leave them for the infected to eat alive.

  Could she?

  Be honest with yourself, a calculating part of her whispered. Neither one of them was ever going to wake up, even if this didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean you can’t give them some small mercy.

  A decision this momentous should have the benefit of more time and more discussion. It shouldn’t be the call of single, desperate woman. Outside, s
omething bumped against the wall.

  You don’t have time for this. Do it.

  Tish pulled a large-gauge syringe out of the supply cart between the two gurneys. She tore it out of the packaging as something thumped against the wall outside the window. She watched it out of the corner of her eye as she drew the plunger back and filled the hypodermic with air. She jabbed it into the port on JT’s IV drip and pushed it home.

  God, forgive me.

  They didn’t have heart monitors, but JT jerked up in the bed, then sagged back down. Death by air embolism wasn’t a certain thing, but she hoped that she’d dumped enough air into his system to make it so. She pulled the syringe out and refilled it with air and repeated the process in Bob’s IV. He didn’t react as JT had, and she wasted a handful of seconds attempting to find a pulse. He was gone.

  Tish left the syringe in the IV and sprinted down the hallway as fast as she could. More of the infected at the glass doors had peeled away — moving around back, perhaps? — but enough were there to eliminate the front doors as a possible escape route. There was a crash of breaking glass behind her as they breached the first window.

  She stepped into the surgery suite and ducked to one side as Frannie slammed the door. There was a lock on the doorknob, but it was a light-duty one intended, like the windows, for residential use. She doubted it would stand up to a determined assault.

  “The gurneys,” Tish said. “We’ll jam them up against the door. It’s better than nothing.”

  Frannie nodded and stepped over to Larry’s bed. He’d heard Tish and was already trying to climb out.

  “Let me help him, Frannie,” Tish said. “I don’t want you straining yourself with the wound.” She looped one of her dad’s arms around her neck and lifted, helping to support him as he stood up beside the bed. “Floor for now, dad,” she grunted and eased him down.