by Rand, Thonas
He ran harder to get the hell out of there and—for a moment—he forgot about Lauren.
The corridor was clear beneath her and she could hear the stenches chasing after John. She wanted to help him and wasn’t going to hide and do nothing about it.
She jumped down.
She quickly reloaded her AK-47, took a shooting stance, depressed the fire-selector to semi-automatic, and took aim at the back of the group that was after John. Her sights were toward one side of them because she didn’t want to risk hitting John.
She zeroed in on her first target.
She held her breath…
And pulled the trigger…
Bullet loose.
Headshot!
The beast dropped and slid on the linoleum, leaving a thick smear of blood.
Many of the pack stopped and turned to her gunshot…
Half of the dead sprinted after Lauren.
John looked back and saw what she was doing, but his freedom was just fifty feet ahead of him…
The rope.
It was right there.
He kept on running and pushed his legs with everything he had….
Lauren kept on firing and wondered why John didn’t stop to help her. “John?” she thought.
She had no choice now; there was nowhere to run. Lauren was out in the open and had to keep fighting. Behind her, in the courtyard of the hospital, multitudes of the dead were still rushing into the building.
Headshot!
Another one dropped, but there were several more coming for her…
A stone’s throw away and closing on her fast…
John took out his pistol and fired at the plate-glass ahead of him—it completely shattered and the wind pressure sent glass shards everywhere.
Out in the parking lot, Milla and Derek joined Ardent after they climbed down. They watched as Tom and Anthony rappelled fast, but Bear was still slowed down by Maggie’s inexperience; he was surprised she hadn’t fallen.
“I’m starting the truck,” Derek said.
“No. Not until everyone is down,” Ardent told him. “The truck’s engine will attract them here.”
But undead were already gathering inside at the back of the first floor, pounding on the back door for freedom. They flocked to every back room and office, decaying children at candy store windows…
The group heard Lauren’s gunshots from somewhere on the upper floors and then they saw the fourth floor plate-glass break apart from John’s shot. It rained glass everywhere, the rising sun’s rays turning the fractured glass into falling diamonds.
John jumped out of the defeated window, flew through the air, and grabbed hold of the rope. He was out and all he had to do was glide down to escape. The rope became taut from John’s weight. He swung out as far as the rope would allow and watched as many of the stenches chasing him ran off the edge and fell to their ends.
He saw the group waiting for him below; all he had to do was loosen his grip…
John looked in the corridor and saw Lauren fighting the cannibals all by herself—shot after shot—heads of the undead were knocked back, but she wouldn’t make it alone for long, they were too many…
John’s grip on the rope loosened some and he began to descend…
And then he heard echoes in his mind of people he lost before…
“Mom!”
“Tommy, stop!”
“Lee! No!”
“Come on, Hayward!”
The voices tore at his soul and he realized he’d heard enough…
John was compelled as he TIGHTENED his grip on the rope. “Goddamnit,” he mumbled to himself.
What the group witnessed next, they did so with jaws dropped—
Instead of climbing down, John held the rope firmly and swung back toward the building, firing his .45 and killing lingering corpses at the busted window. He let go of the rope and landed back inside.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Derek stated.
Hearing Lauren’s distinctive AK-47 gunfire, Milla knew John’s intentions. “That’s Lauren in there. He’s going after her.”
“They’re dead,” Derek mumbled. “We need to leave, Ardent!” he shouted.
“Not yet! We’re not leaving without them!” he responded.
“They’re dead, man! We need to get the fuck outta here!”
“Not yet, goddamnit!” Ardent yelled.
The bolt of Lauren’s weapon locked back empty and she quickly slapped in a fresh magazine, as fast movers would be on her in seconds. The feet of over twenty of them were pounding the linoleum and dozens of dead bones cracking from the brute force. The things wanted their meal. Suddenly, many of them stopped in their tracks when they heard John behind them…
He was screaming in rage as he charged at them…
With a gun in one hand and a tactical knife in the other…
He was going to save her…
No matter what.
Most of the cannibals turned away from Lauren in favor of John. She kept firing to the left and right of him. John did the same, he fired at the ones out of Lauren’s direction, but there were many coming straight for him with her directly behind them.
He needed to be careful where he fired because he might hit her.
The first one got to John and he gave it his gloved fist to the face. The thing still tried to bite him in the forearm, but all it got was a mouth full of plastic armor, along with broken teeth. The beast was pushed aside and John rammed his knife into its skull through the ear.
More were ahead…
Bullets flew from both of them in a back and forth crossfire. John’s handgun went empty and he reloaded in a flash—continuing to fire—but there were too many. He kept running right into the midst of them. He got up close and personal with another dead walker as it bit into his shoulder armor from behind, John slammed his elbow into its face and broke free. More attacked him head-on and he fired at them pointblank, skull fragments and brain matter exploding on the walls, ceiling, and floor. He fired at another one, hitting it in the jaw, and then finished it off with the knife into its forehead.
John was confronted by five of them—two trains were about to collide—he only had enough time to kill two of them and then slid on the floor like a baseball player for home plate. He shot two more as he passed between them. He got to his feet and was attacked by another from the side. He rammed it in the face with his armored elbow and shattered its nose, distracting it long enough for John to ram the knife under its chin, and deep into its brain. He continued running toward Lauren. More of the undead appeared behind him, out of offices, side hallways, from everywhere. He looked back and saw forty of them coming at ramming speed.
He aimed at Lauren and squeezed the trigger—
The tip of his barrel exploded in a brilliant muzzle flash and the bullet sped toward her—
The projectile twisted by her head at the bidding of the barrel’s rifling and hit the plate-glass window behind her. It shattered, releasing into the corridor the loud caterwauling of the dead in front of the hospital. “Run!” John shouted and pointed behind her.
Lauren looked behind and was confused on what to do. The broken window had no escape that she could see . . . a rope flew by the opening . . . now she knew what to do.
She tossed her rifle over her back and ran for it…
John wasn’t far behind her and the putrid dead were close behind…
Two agile corpses and one mental patient appeared in front of Lauren, blocking her path. She fired and hit the patient in the chest, taking it down. She fired again and killed one of the stenches, but the other was right on her—its head exploded from John’s bullet—and she kept running for the opening. Just before she jumped, more fear grew in her as she heard what was outside in the courtyard. She heard so many of them, but she jumped—
Her breath seized as the comfort of solid footing disappeared, but she nailed the rope and her body spun around for her to see John, already midair from his jump, coming
right at her. The momentum of her jump had changed the position of the rope and John was going to miss it—he had no choice but to grab onto her leg. Lauren cried out in terror as she was dragged down a few feet from John’s weight, the rope flash-burned her gloves from the friction. She desperately fought to hold on, but couldn’t—until John grabbed hold of the rope and let go of her. They spun around together and watched as the things chasing them fell out of the window and crashed like a spillway of death into the multitudes below. They saw the gargantuan horde of undead in the courtyard, from wall to wall, fighting each other to get into the hospital. The vast numbers of infected overturned Tom’s big rig trailer.
They swung around toward the hospital and barely made it right back into the broken window. Back in the corridor, they ran like mad to get to the other side where the parking lot was. Up ahead, were a few undead in their path and Lauren went for her handgun as John grabbed something else…
Tom made it to the ground and held on to the rope to stabilize Anthony’s descent. Anthony came down fast and they both headed for the boat with the rest of the group, but it wasn’t a clear path. Some of the many stenches that had fallen from the roof and the windows had survived—their bodies weren’t whole or even close to functioning properly, but they moved in any way they could to attack. Some had completely crushed legs and pulled themselves along with their arms. Others only had the use of one limb and they pulled or pushed to move; many were without any limb use at all. A multitude littered the parking lot and couldn’t move, they just thrashed or shook in place—convulsing dead bodies.
Tom and Anthony shot the ones that were fast enough to attack. They had no other choice, but the gunfire was attracting more of them from inside the hospital. Many more gathered at the back door and all the windows, the constant pounding reaching an apex; the barriers wouldn’t hold them for long. Anthony saw Bear and Maggie rappelling down; they were still a couple floors up so he and Tom went to help them.
Lauren fired at the vile corpses in front of them and the muzzle flashes illuminated John’s activity—he pulled the pin from a grenade and let the spoon fly—then tossed it at the undead in their path. It bounced and rolled right to them and blasted them apart violently onto the walls and ceiling. It cleared the way, now they just had to get there. Their feet pounded the floor as fast as they could push them…
Maggie made it down, breathing hard from the stressful ordeal. She hobbled to the boat and climbed aboard. Bear made it down in a flash once she was out of his way. “Tom, go start the truck!”
Tom said nothing as he ran to his truck…
John and Lauren made it to the jagged window opening. They looked four floors down and saw the boat was still there, along with the group fighting off the battered and twisted undead crawling after them. “Hey!” John yelled down, but they didn’t hear him. The big rig’s engine started and its large vertical exhaust pipes reported a surge of black smoke.
“Oh shit!” Lauren said. “They’re leaving!”
“Get down there! Climb down! Go!” John told her.
Lauren descended on the rope as John fired three shots into the air to get the group’s attention. Several of them looked up and saw them. “Come on!” Ardent shouted. John jumped on the rope and followed Lauren. She hit the ground and, as she waited for John, what she saw not more than five feet away scared the hell out of her—the back doors and all the windows of the first floor were filled to capacity with undead corpses wildly clambering to get out and kill them. She looked at hundreds of them with thousands more behind. She stepped back out of fear and then John hit the ground running. He grabbed her by the arm. “RUN!”
The windows in the back doors cracked and a second later—
Decayed arms shot through and launched fractured glass—
The doors splintered—
All the other windows broke and the dead pushed out of every opening like a bursting dam. John and Lauren ran with the dead right behind them. They sprinted for the boat and John took notice of their exact location in the parking lot. They jumped over the hedges lining the building, ran across the strip of lawn, and their feet hit the asphalt of the lot. John saw what they ran by—
A claymore anti-personnel mine. That one, and the other half dozen directional explosives he and Anthony had set up, were all pointed toward the hospital.
John took out a remote detonator from his jacket. “Cover your ears!” he said to Lauren.
John glanced back at the distance they were gaining between them and the row of mines—
Five feet…
Ten…
The horde was ten feet away from the explosives and closing…
The dead were within five feet…
John activated the remote—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A succession of blasts went off one after another directly in front of the horde. Many of them disappeared into chunks and pieces, and they were all blown back into the hospital from the powerful detonations. Most of the windows on the second and third floors shattered from the blast waves. John and Lauren were thrown to the ground by the back blast. They were dazed, but unhurt.
The horde was disrupted in the chaos of the explosions. Black smoke engulfed them as the last of the fire licked charred bodies, but they began to regroup as hundreds more pushed their way through the hospital at the slightest whiff of possible food. It was a feeding frenzy that so far yielded nothing for them, yet they pushed on like the mindless, ferocious beasts they were. They would never stop, not ever, until every living creature on the planet was dead—and this group was their current target.
John and Lauren picked themselves up and staggered to the boat. Tom tapped his foot on the gas pedal to keep the engine at peak readiness. “Let’s go!” he shouted as he looked in the rearview. John helped Lauren in the boat, but he didn’t get in. “What’re you doing?” Lauren asked.
“I’m gonna cover you guys, don’t worry,” John told her and then looked toward the truck. “Go! Go!”
Tom dropped his foot on the gas pedal and the truck moved toward the parking lot exit gate with the boat and the group in tow.
As she pulled away, Lauren’s eyes were locked with John’s. “Now you care about two survivors, don’t you?” she told him.
John didn’t answer, but cracked a slight smile before he turned and ran across to the far, back corner of the parking lot.
The dead massed into another horde and emerged like a phoenix from the black smoke…
The big rig rolled toward the back gate and many walking dead could be heard outside the gate.
Tom activated a remote detonator—
KA-BOOM!
The entire gate disappeared in a fiery explosion, the dead on the outside vaporized, and the big rig barreled through it and took a hard right with smoke and fire licking their heels.
John got to the truck parked in the back corner and jumped in the bed, he quickly checked the Mark 19 grenade launcher and then pulled back on the loading handles with both hands, the weapon told him that it was loaded with a loud cha-clink and he grabbed the vertical firing handles…
The undead transformed into a stampede raging after the truck and John…
He took aim and depressed the weapon’s trigger with his thumbs—
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! The weapon reported each shot…
The stubby weapon spat out a grenade every second…
John swept its barrel from left to right…
A continuous volley of large projectiles flew across the parking lot and impacted into the undead minions. Each 40-millimeter grenade exploded and affected every cannibal within fifteen-feet. Many were completely blasted apart; some lost legs or arms as they were ejected into the air from the explosions.
John’s stone-like eyes zeroed in on targets and the grenade launcher barrel did his will, sending out his anger one grenade at a time. His enraged face vibrated from the weapon’s jolts as it sucked in the belt-fed grenades, shooting them off, and the emp
ty shell casings, along with the disintegrating belt links, dropping out rapidly—cling, clink, clang, clang—on top of the truck. He fired a dozen rounds at the stenches going after the big rig truck and destroyed all of them in fiery disruptive blasts. He jerked the weapon back in the hospital’s direction and grenades flew all over the undead, detonating at their feet and on the building’s walls as they poured out.
The launcher went empty and John worked quickly to reload it, grabbing a fresh grenade belt and lifting the weapon’s top cover. He inserted the first grenade in the feed chamber, slapped down the cover and pulled the charging handles back. Three fast movers reached him before he could resume firing so he killed them with his pistol and then continued to rock n’ roll with the launcher. He fired at the closest ones that made it to him while he was reloading—they were only thirty feet away when they were blown apart by the grenades. John saw something he couldn’t believe at the hospital doors. The person screamed. “Wait! Don’t leave meee!” It was David, shouting at the top of his lungs.
He came out in the midst of them and several of the corpses were clinging to his body, eating him as he ran. Incredibly, he was able to move even with so many trying to bring him down. David tried to fire his weapon at the undead, but a ghoul tore into his arm and ripped it off in torrents of blood.
“Waitttt!” he wailed like a child.
John fired a string at David and turned his misery into oblivion. When he continued to fire at the converging horde, he saw something else that was incredible—among the many rushing out of the hospital, he saw Joe—he had turned into an infected, but that wasn’t the unbelievable part. As he ran toward John enraged to kill, he saw Corina—his daughter turned ghoul—riding Joe piggyback. The little stench was attacking Joe, ripping apart the flesh of his scalp, neck, and back. Joe didn’t care—he was lost in the madness of his infection, and all he wanted was to reach John for a meal of his own.