by Sam Sisavath
“Damn, Will, I didn’t know I was flying a badass soldier-slash-ex-SWAT commando around. I’m practically trembling with excitement.”
Will smiled. “You want an autograph?”
“Will you sign my breasts?”
“Are they big enough?”
“Wouldn’t you like to find out.”
*
LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA, ACCORDING to Jen, was a city of 112,000 people. Dull, gray concrete highways had replaced open prairie below the swiftly moving helicopter, and she glimpsed large buildings and skyscrapers in the distance. Marble and glass curtain walls, something she hadn’t seen in a while, glinted underneath the sun’s glare.
Jen reached forward and hit some switches along her helicopter’s dashboard—they all looked the same to Gaby—before speaking into her headset. “Mercy Hospital, this is Jen, I’m on approach. Anyone manning the radio over there? Over.”
There was static through Gaby’s headset for a few seconds, before a male voice answered: “We hear you loud and clear, Jen. Welcome back. We thought you’d abandoned us for good this time. Over.”
“No such luck, Mercy Hospital. I’m ten minutes out. Over.”
“Roger that. ETA ten minutes. Over.”
“Inform Mike I’m rolling in with two new people. They’re armed but not dangerous, so no one get ants in their pants. Over.”
“Will do,” the man said. “Mercy Hospital over and out.”
“You guys have problems with other survivors before?” Will asked.
“Here and there, but nothing we couldn’t handle,” Jen said. “We’ve never had to fight off a whole army of collaborators, though. Mike’s done a hell of a job keeping us going, but…” She paused.
“But?”
“I don’t know. We’re not soldiers, you know? There are a couple of soldiers at the hospital. Mike and a couple of his guys, but the rest of us are just civilians. If there was a fight like the kind you guys had to deal with…” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Sounds like you’ve been lucky so far.”
“So far, yeah,” Jen nodded.
*
AS THEY NEARED their destination, Jen veered the helicopter away from the I-10 Highway and angled south, until they came up on a large group of buildings—a baseball field, a football stadium, and the roof of a large, domed structure. A dozen parking lots, with only sprinkles of cars, filled the rest of the open space. It looked as if they were flying over a college town.
On the other side of the sports facilities was Mercy Hospital, a ten-story brown and black building that looked as if it were molded from clay. Gaby wasn’t sure if the architect purposefully designed it to represent a cross when viewed from the air, but that was what Mercy Hospital looked like to her as they glided toward its rooftop. Four separate towers joined at the center, forming a squatting cross. It also looked a bit like a giant Tetris piece, waiting to be inserted into a larger puzzle.
“Welcome to Mercy Hospital,” Jen said. “People check in, but they don’t check out. Unless they have a helicopter. Which, happily, I do.”
Two figures appeared out of a building along one of the towers and jogged over to the center of the rooftop. Jen hovered above them for a moment before starting the helicopter’s descent.
“How many times have you landed on this roof?” Will asked.
“Too many times to count,” Jen said. “Easy as pie.”
“Are all rooftop landings easy as pie?”
“Just like driving a tank. You wanna learn? I bet a smart soldier like you could probably pick it up in no time.”
“Maybe on the next trip.”
There was a slight bump and rocking motion as the helicopter touched down.
Jen flicked at switches along the dashboard. “You’re welcome to keep your weapons. Just do us all a favor and try not to point them at anyone, okay?”
“As long as no one points their weapons at us first,” Will said.
“Fair enough. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
Jen looked back at Gaby. “There are a lot of guys down there. Teenagers, early twenties, mostly. Don’t be offended if they stare. They’re only human.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Gaby said.
“Don’t sweat it. Girl power, and all that.”
Gaby grinned back at her, then unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out. She was wearing combat boots, and loose but hard gravel crunched under the soles. The helicopter was winding down behind her, its engine the only sound for miles.
Jen waved the two guys over. They were both young, and their eyes went from Will to Gaby, where they stayed for much longer than necessary. She guessed they were in their early twenties, though neither one had shaved in a while, so it was hard to know for sure. One had a shotgun, while the other was cradling an AR-15 that looked brand new.
Jen snapped her fingers in front of them to get their attention. “Hey, boys, stop staring at our guest and grab the boxes from the helicopter.” Jen motioned to Will and Gaby. “Come on, I’ll take you to see Mike.”
They followed Jen to the access building on the north tower rooftop. The steel door was fortified on the other side with a second sheet of repurposed metal, possibly a tabletop with its legs sawed off.
“How often do they attack the door?” Will asked.
“They used to do it more often in the beginning,” Jen said, “but not so much these days.”
“But they’re still around. They know you’re here.”
“Oh, they know,” Jen said, and something about the way she said it made Gaby slightly nervous.
They stepped into the stairwell, their path illuminated by a single LED portable lamp hanging from a makeshift hook. Gaby leaned over the railing to get a look at the nine floors below them, but only saw a big slab of concrete instead.
“There’s only one rooftop access on the north tower,” Jen said. “And that’s only accessible from the tenth floor. The nine floors below that share a common stairwell, but you need to use a separate door to get up to the rooftop.”
“So you didn’t have to barricade the entire stairwell in order to keep using the rooftop,” Will said.
“Uh huh.”
Jen pushed open a second door, this one with no extra fortification. Two people standing guard on the other side glanced over as they emerged out of the stairwell. There was another door directly to their right, reinforced with thick slabs of wood.
“Guys, this is Will and Gaby,” Jen said. She indicated the redhead. “That’s Claire—” and pointed at the man, who was staring at Gaby “—and this slack-jawed idiot is Miles.”
Miles look offended, but Claire chuckled and said, “Welcome to Mercy Hospital.”
“Benny and Tom are bringing some heavy stuff down,” Jen said. “You might want to leave the door open for them. And Miles, make yourself useful and give them a hand when they get down here.”
Claire nodded, while Miles looked sheepishly away.
Jen continued on, leading them through the hospital’s tenth floor.
Gaby noticed the smell right away. She recognized it from all those days and months living inside other people’s basements before she joined Will’s group. It was the suffocating smell of forty people living, sleeping, and surviving on a single barricaded floor with very little (if any) ventilation. After three months on the island breathing in the fresh air, the sudden attack of enclosed space came as a major shock to her system.
The dirty floor under her squeaked, and portable LED lamps strategically placed along the ceilings lit their path. There was barely any natural light, with the windows along the hallways boarded up with doors and furniture, which explained why some of the empty rooms they walked past no longer had doors.
Jen seemed to know where she was going, though Gaby thought they were just walking from one hallway to another. There was a mazelike quality to all the turns, but maybe that was just her mind trying to orient itself to the layout after havin
g the wide open spaces of the island as her backyard for so long.
Every now and then, people came out of their rooms to watch them. Most didn’t bother to wave or say hi. They all had long and pale faces, weary eyes, and gaunt cheeks. They didn’t look sickly or malnourished, but she imagined the lack of light and physical activity had something to do with their unhealthy appearances.
She glimpsed more doors plastered over windows inside the rooms, and stray spills of sunlight here and there. Some of the windows had what looked like steel rebars soldered over them, like some kind of prison.
Must have run out of doors…
“How many rooms?” Will was asking Jen.
“Over 200,” Jen said.
“That’s a lot of access points.”
“We removed every door from the rooms that weren’t being used so we could cover the windows, and we even raided a construction site next door for supplies.”
“The rebars.”
“Yeah.”
“That must have taken a while.”
“It took forever. Luckily, we have people who had done construction before. They taught the rest, and we got them up eventually.”
“So the floor is safe.”
“We haven’t had an incident in months.”
“Don’t jinx it,” a voice said behind them.
They stopped and looked back at an attractive Asian woman in her late twenties coming out of a room behind them. Like everyone they had met so far, she wore cargo pants and a sweat-stained T-shirt.
“Welcome back,” the woman said to Jen. “I thought you were gone for good this time.”
“You wish,” Jen said. “Will and Gaby, this is Amy Park, our resident doctor. Amy, this is Will. He used to be a corporal.”
“I guess that means I outrank you,” Amy said, walking over and shaking Will’s hand. “I was a lieutenant.”
“Only if the United States government is still in operation,” Will said. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“About the U.S. government? Not a thing. Lucky for you, or I’d insist you call me ‘sir.’”
“I was taking them to Mike,” Jen said. “You know where he’s keeping himself?”
“He’s in the central hub,” Amy said, before giving Will an unconvinced look. “So, what’s this I hear about silver?”
*
GABY WASN’T SURE what she had expected when they finally saw Mike, a twenty-something who, like most of the guys she had met so far, hadn’t shaved in quite some time. He was reasonably handsome underneath sleep-deprived eyes, but a tired face didn’t do him any favors.
“Welcome to Mercy Hospital,” Mike said, walking over and shaking their hands. “It’s not much, but it’s kept us alive and you can’t ask for more than that.”
“Been busy, I see,” Will said.
“Almost done. We’ve been using what you’ve told us about the silver. Unfortunately, there wasn’t nearly as much of the stuff on the floor as we thought, but some of us brought personal items, like crosses. I had no idea so many people were holding on to those.”
There were a dozen or so men and women gathered inside what Amy called the “central hub,” a large, circular lounge that connected the hospital’s four towers. A wide, dark cherry desk sat in the center, the glass tabletop featuring a map of the building. At the moment, Mike’s people were using it to hold makeshift weapons. Silver gleamed underneath the LED lights and what little sunlight managed to pierce through the barricaded windows around them.
The weapons had once been crosses and everyday items such as candle holders, but had since been sharpened, sanded down, and forged into bladed weapons. There had to be a good fifty, maybe sixty, dangerous-looking items piled on the tabletop. More than enough for all forty people in Mike’s group.
Will pulled out his cross-knife and showed it to Mike. “Brilliant minds think alike.”
Mike turned the cross-knife over. “And it works?”
“I’ve probably killed over a hundred with just that thing. More with silver buckshot and bullets. It works.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that. I’m tired of shooting these things with a whole magazine just to watch them keep coming. It’ll be nice to see them stay down for a change. Speaking of which, Jen says you brought some goodwill gifts.”
“The boys are bringing them over now,” Jen said.
“And you need medicine?” Mike asked.
“If you can spare it,” Will nodded.
“We can. But I was hoping we could expand our relationship beyond that.”
“I’m listening.”
He gestured around him. “I have forty people here who would rather be someplace else. Jen tells me you have an island. And the creatures can’t get to it. Is that right?”
“We’ve been there for three months, and they haven’t tried to cross the water once.”
“And they know you’re there?” Amy asked.
“We see them on the shores every night,” Gaby said.
She spent most of her time in the Tower’s third floor keeping overwatch and switching shifts with Danny, Blaine, and Maddie. During her night shifts, she could see the ghouls on land, moving around like little black ink dots through her night-vision binoculars. The sight of them used to disturb her, but she had learned to tune them out.
“I was there last night,” Jen said. “Not a single creature. It’s safe, Mike.”
“Is it the water they don’t like?” Mike asked.
“We think it might have something to do with the mercury content,” Will said. “Probably.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“I don’t know anything for sure. Just that some things worked, and others, not so much.”
“What about ultraviolet? Jen says you’ve killed a few with those, too.”
“More than a few. The facility we stayed at before the island had industrial ultraviolet lamps they were using to grow plants. Those things killed the creatures on the spot, but we haven’t been able to duplicate that kind of success on our own.”
“Some flashlights and portable lamps have ultraviolet. The LED ones.”
“So do the solar-powered lamps on the island. But the creatures just run through them without any effect.”
“Wrong wavelength, maybe?”
“Or maybe just not enough of the right kind of UV. The guy who built the facility wasn’t exactly a stickler for building codes. Those lamps could have been more than just ultraviolet despite what they told us.” Will shrugged. “I’m just a grunt, Mike. I’ll leave the science fair experiments to the officers.”
Mike handed the cross-knife back to Will. “Still, it might be worth going back to that facility to find out for sure. That kind of weapon would be invaluable.”
“I wouldn’t mind heading back there myself. We left a lot of supplies behind.” He looked over at Jen. “How about you? Texas is pretty nice to look at this time of the year.”
Jen snorted. “Oh, I see. You were after my Bell all along, weren’t you? And here I thought it was my winning personality.”
“That, too.”
There were loud shuffling movements and grunting behind them as Tom, Benny, and Miles each lugged a heavy ammo can over. Sheets of sweat covered their contorted faces. Gaby guessed they hadn’t seen this much physical activity in a while, probably not since the barricades went up.
“Where do you want these?” Benny asked between grunts.
“Over there,” Mike pointed.
The men (boys) brought the green cans, each eleven-by-five-by-eleven inches over, but only Tom managed to stare at her long enough to get caught at it.
People gathered around them, peering curiously over each other’s shoulders at the ammo cans.
Mike opened one of the green, rectangular boxes and took out a 9mm silver bullet. He held it up to the light. “How many?”
“A thousand 5.56x45mm rounds and another thousand 9mm,” Will said. “Add another 500 shotgun shells to that.”
“A .50 cal can should be able to carry over 1,200 rounds.”
“Who’s counting?”
Mike grinned back at him. “You guys actually pounded out over a thousand silver bullets on that island of yours? That’s a hell of a feat.”
“We had a lot of time on our hands.”
“And a lot of ammo, I see.”
“We drove through Texas. There was no shortage of ammo along the way. And we found some more on the island.”
“God bless Texas,” Mike said. “Hell, I guess it can’t be any worse than what we’ve tried.” The former lieutenant stood up and turned to his people. “Everyone start swapping out your regular ammo with silver. If you’re not using 9mm or 5x56mm, it’s time to change now.”
“Free bullet buffet, kids, all-you-can-eat,” Jen said, flicking open the other two ammo cans.
Mike turned back to Will. “Now. Let’s talk about what it’ll take to get my people over to that island of yours…”
CHAPTER 4
LARA
THE ISLAND ALWAYS looked so different when viewed from the Tower’s windows. The structure stood almost 150 feet high, and gave them a complete view of the island and the surrounding shorelines. In the back of her mind, she always remembered how Karen’s people had sneaked onto the island three months ago. It had almost cost them their lives.
She climbed the spiral cast iron staircase, pushing up on the thick wooden door to access the third floor, and stuck her head up. Because of the Tower’s conical shape, the third floor was smaller than the second, which was smaller than the first.
Danny was over on the east window looking through binoculars. “What’s up, doc?”
“Is that still funny?”
He grinned. “Only if it annoys you.”
“Then I guess it’s never going to stop being funny.”
“Ha!”
She glanced up at the ceiling for a moment. There used to be a big gaping hole up there, the result of a grenade launcher finding its mark. The new roof had a skylight that looked out into a cloudless sky, with the middle of the floor bathed in bright, rectangular pools of warm sunlight. It was easy to tell which part of the third floor was rebuilt after the attack. The top half of the walls were noticeably brighter—almost white—against the dark and weathered gray of the old construction.