“Ah, that makes sense, and I could sure use a reward for getting all my work done.” Darren gave my shoulders a quick squeeze before he released me, letting me off the couch to go get the ice cream.
Neither one of us mentioned the results of his job, but when I was finally able to convince Dillion to go to sleep after his bath, we sat down to discuss possible ways to stay safe.
“How certain are you that your dorm room would be safe?”
“There shouldn’t be anybody on campus. When Jen and I left, there were very few people still in the dorm, and they were all in the process of packing to leave. Unlike our neighborhood where everyone was sent back to their homes, there should be no one on campus.”
“It’s a locked building, so we would need a key. Are you coming with us?”
While I trusted Darren to a certain extent, I still didn’t know him very well, and didn’t want to make a mistake that could get us killed.
“I’ll drive you over there and walk through the building with you, but this house is too open. If these things come in a bigger set, then you won’t be able to keep them out. Or if a neighbor tries get revenge, you’ll be far away from here.”
“I can pack a few bags to last a little while, but we have a ton of groceries stockpiled, and it doesn’t make any sense to leave all that behind.” I frowned, trying to figure out what I would need to keep Dillion occupied and safe.
Darren gave me an appraising look. “Keep the gun I gave you. I’m going to go to my house and get a few things, but I’ll drive over and park in the alley so that whoever is watching the front of the house, won’t be able to see if we’re here or not. I’ll keep you safe,” he promised, trailing a finger down my cheek.
Words failed me, as I wanted to push him back onto the couch and totally take advantage of him. Instead, I just nodded yes as he left me standing there.
The click of the door latching moved me into action, and I started by packing the groceries. There weren’t any boxes, but I improvised by grabbing the laundry baskets. They were sturdy enough to hold cans.
I found an ice chest in the garage for the cold stuff that would go bad, but I left the frozen food because it would last, and I was going to make a trip back at some point.
The hall closet was the next place I looked, but a noise out front caught my attention.
A look out the window didn’t show anything, but probably made me a target with the light behind me. I closed the blinds and turned the living room light out, leaving the one in the hallway on.
The feeling of having to look over my shoulder was going to get old really quick, and I couldn’t imagine how my brother did it every day with his job.
Angie kept a few suitcases around, and it didn’t take me long to put some games and toys into one of them. With Dillion asleep, I had to creep into his room and stuff things from his dresser into a bag. I was almost out of the room when I saw the tennis shoes, and walked to the closet to grab a few extra pairs.
There was a creak in the hallway. Looking up like a deer caught in headlights, I watched as a shadow passed in front of the door. I knew it wasn’t Darren. He wouldn’t have been so quiet.
With the suitcase in my hand, I backed into the closet, placing it onto the floor and pulling the door shut behind me. I could barely see in the darkness. Even though the slats provided a little slice of light, it wasn’t enough to really see.
The bedroom door opened the rest of the way, and a figure came into the room.
Gripping the gun with one hand, I covered my mouth with the other so that I didn’t make any sounds that would give away where I was.
The figure looked around the room and approached Dillion’s bed, and just as I was about to make a run to stop them, the person pulled the covers up and turned to leave.
What in the world was going on here? When had the end of the world become a spy novel?
Not wanting to confront whoever was sneaking around the house since they’d left the room, I stayed where I was.
There was a crash in the living room, and the sounds of a fight began. But I wasn’t going to come out of my hiding place until I was certain the danger was gone.
The darkness closed in and the silence seemed to grow as the minutes ticked on without Darren.
I heard footsteps coming down the hall, but they weren’t careful or quiet this time.
Darren appeared in the doorway with his gun drawn, but lowered it when he saw that Dillion was safe.
Throwing caution to the wind, I threw open the door and rushed to him, but was greeted by a gun pointed at my forehead.
“Stacy.” He lowered the gun and caught me before I hit the ground, passing out.
“Crap!” he muttered.
I could hear his voice, but my body just wouldn’t respond to let him know I was okay.
He glanced toward Dillion—who had managed to sleep through everything else—sitting up in the bed, looking at him.
“What are you doing to my Stacy?”
“Nothing. Can you help me wake her up?” Darren readjusted so that my head was in his lap.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dillion approached us, whispering.
“She got scared and needs you to hold her hand.”
“Mmm…” I tried to make my mouth work again.
“Blink if you’re conscious.” Darren waved his hand in front of my face.
I must have blinked, because he brushed a strand of hair from my face.
“Is she going to be okay?” Dillion broke in, killing what could have been a moment.
Something inside of me broke at his words. I couldn’t let myself give into the numbness.
“Yesss,” I stuttered. “Justtt…give me a minute to recover.”
“Dillion, why don’t you go use the potty and put on some shoes?” Darren directed. “We’re going to go on a road trip.”
Eyes wide, Dillion jumped up and raced to the bathroom.
“Is it safe out there?” I looked up into Darren’s worried face.
“Yes. The neighbor won’t be a problem anymore,” he reassured me.
I started to sit up, and made it to a position to lean against his chest.
“Can you get up?”
Nodding yes, I stood up with his help, noticing the 9mm gun still clutched in my hand.
“I want to get you both to campus and check out the building. I’m going to have to come back here because I think the neighbors are going to need more help. Will you be okay there with only Dillion?”
“Yeah, I think so. I was just so startled, and then my brain just couldn’t take anymore when I found a gun to my head.” I moved over to the closet to get the bags I’d packed.
“Sorry about that. It’s just instinct,” he apologized, as Dillion came back into the room with his shoes on.
Focusing on Dillion, I ignored Darren’s apology because I knew he was correct, and I’d done what all those girls on TV did. I fainted into a guy’s arms. Although, it did feel really good being in his arms. I could see the appeal.
“The groceries are packed up, and we just need to grab a few more things from the bathroom. Dillion, you need to put whatever toys or books that you want into your backpack for me.”
“I’ll carry what you have out to the truck.” Darren took the bag from my hand.
“Wait…is there something he shouldn’t see in the living room?” I knew the sounds I’d heard hiding in the closet weren’t good.
“Um, the neighbor had to go next door. The living room isn’t too bad, but I was more worried about the two of you than cleaning it up.” He frowned and looked at Dillion.
“We’ll call it good if there isn’t a body. Let’s go, because I suddenly can’t stand the thought of staying here.” Shuddering, I led the way to the living room.
The hallway was still the only light on, but that kept Dillion from seeing the mess that the fight had caused.
“Why don’t both of you sit out here and I’ll get the rest of the stuff,” Darren suggested
. I cringed when facing the back gate.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed noncommittedly. I clutched the gun to my side where Dillion couldn’t see it.
“I’ve got this, trust me.” Darren placed a kiss on my lips.
Minutes later, we were driving away with our lights off so that no one followed us. The infected things were dangerous, but it was the humans who worried me the most.
Angela
It felt like I’d just gone to sleep when a door slamming woke me up.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting up as three people rushed into the room.
“They’re going crazy out there! They’re killing everyone!”
“Who’s killing people?” I asked, sliding my shoes on and trying to clear my head.
“The sick! The patients are killing everyone!” the doctor shouted.
I started to open the door, but the other two nurses slammed against it.
“You can’t go out there. The sick are dying and coming back to attack us.”
The hallway seemed empty, but I wasn’t going to argue with them while they were hysterical.
“Was it just the sick people outside?” I asked the nurses.
“No, it was all over the hospital. It was a domino effect. Someone in the garage died and bit someone else. It broke out everywhere, and we didn’t know what to do. The police shot at them and took them down, but not until several others were dying. The process just repeated itself until there weren’t enough people with guns versus those trying to kill us,” Hannah explained.
“All the staff retreated inside, and we’ve been monitoring all those we let inside for bites. If someone looked like they were dying, then we sent them outside. The National Guard made the rounds after last night, and we were escorted to the garage to treat people, but it just wasn’t enough,” Brook added, picking up where Hannah left off.
“Once the attacks happened last night, we lost a lot of people because they went home. They realized it was safer there than it was at the hospital. The really sick had no choice but to stay, and each one that died, they shot. This morning, the amount of dead was huge, and those who were alive…” Brook’s voice broke.
“They kept screaming, and then the screams would be cut short. Before we could lock the doors and institute an emergency drill, it started happening here, so we ran.” Hannah looked apologetic.
“It was a cowardly thing to do, but there wasn’t really any way to escape.” She looked over at Todd, who was a doctor huddled in the corner, not saying anything.
“Did any of the sick follow you up here?” I looked between the three of them to see if they had any ideas.
“I don’t think those things followed us.” Brook glanced out the plexiglass wall.
I ignored Todd, who wasn’t going to help. “Ladies, we need to close the doors and make sure there aren’t any of those infected up here.”
This time, they let me open the door, and we approached the hallways carefully.
Outside of the soundproof walls, I could hear the screams. One of the stairwell doors banged open and I took off running, assuming more people had made it to our floor.
People was a strong word. The person who’d made it through the door was in bad shape, but when he’d collapsed in the doorway, it allowed the dead a way inside.
Brook and Hannah hadn’t followed me, but had gone back into the quarantined room and blocked the door.
I was going to have to fight off these things if I wanted to make it home alive to Dillion.
A plastic chair was the only thing that would keep those things from biting me. When one lumbered toward me, I shoved the chair toward it, hoping to keep it at bay. But I overshoved, and the leg of the chair went right through the eye socket, and it slumped over dead.
I barely had a moment to yank the chair from the dead person’s head before the next one was growling at me.
This time, I aimed for the eye, but the bottom leg got caught in the soft tissue of the person’s stomach. The chair came lose with a sucking sound. The intestines fell to the floor, dangling from its insides.
I tried again, this time aiming with only one leg, with the others off to the side.
Bullseye.
Two down, but more were going to come up the stairwell if I didn’t get the door shut.
Using the nurse’s desk, I walked in a circle, out of the lumbering infected’s reach, and made it to the door as the person in the doorway turned into one of those things.
The leg of the chair met its head as it tried to sit up. It fell back to the floor with a thud, but the screams that echoed in the stairwell weren’t encouraging.
A quick glance over my shoulder gave me a chance to pull the chair from the dead body and shove the hard plastic of the seat into its chest. It didn’t stop it, but I was able to force it in. It’s backbone cracked from the force of my momentum. I left the chair sticking out of its chest and grabbed the other one from behind the desk.
The leg hit the back of its head, knocking it to the floor, but it was still moving and trying to get from the floor with a chair lodged in the middle of its body. If it hadn’t been such a serious situation, it would have made a wonderful video for the internet.
Instead, I slammed the chair down and it finally went still. It was quiet, but the echoes from the stairs reminded me that I needed to get the door closed.
The other person I’d killed was keeping the door from closing, so I walked over the body and grabbed it under the arms, dragging it to the stairs. I pushed it between the railings, and I watched it fall down all six floors.
Two chairs were sitting in a twisted statement of horror. I pulled on the one in its head and almost slipped on the bloody floor when it came free. The chest chair was stuck, and I had to leave it there and push the body to the stairs. It wouldn’t go through the railing, so I kicked it from the top step and watched it roll down until it hit the wall, knocking the chair loose.
It had cracked the plastic down the middle, but I wanted to have an extra weapon on hand to work with, even if it was just a broken chair.
After all the bodies were off our floor, I made sure that the door was latched. It had to be pulled on from the other side, so unless it was a live person, they couldn’t open the door.
I knew the floor had been cleared of patients, but I had no idea if there were any other people asleep like I had been. Holding the broken chair in front of me, I walked to each room, checking to see that nothing moved before clearing it.
The adrenaline that had been going nonstop for only twenty minutes made it seem like it had been an entire day. The nurses and doctor weren’t going to like it, but I was going to come back into that room.
“Hey.” I knocked on the door.
They shook their heads no and moved away from the door.
I pushed the intercom. “I closed the door and moved all those things out to the stairway. There aren’t any other people out here to turn or infect us.”
Brook got up and stood in front of me, looking me up and down before answering, “Angie, you’re covered in blood.”
That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I looked at my hands and realized that she was right.
“I’ll go take a shower and get some new scrubs. Stay in there until I get back.” I honestly wasn’t worried that they were going to leave, but it was second nature to give orders since I was one of the nurses that had seniority over the other two.
“What day is it?” I had lost track of time and needed to know how long I’d slept.
“It’s Tuesday,” Hannah answered.
“Did they call us in last week?” I thought we’d come in on Friday, but couldn’t be sure.
“Today’s the fifth day. I’ll answer any questions, but I can’t handle looking at all that blood on you. Shower, and then we can figure out what the next step is.” Hannah gave a shudder and sank to the cot next to her.
“Oh, yeah. Got it.”
I was headed to the utility room when the elevator doors op
ened, and propped up against the corner of the elevator was Hulk.
“Hulk, what happened? Did you get bit?” I rushed inside, checking to see where he was injured.
“I didn't see them coming. They just wouldn't stop.” His eyes held a glazed look as he continued to mumble.
Brook and Hannah couldn’t see the elevator from the windows in the room, so I pulled the gurney over, hoping that Hulk was only in shock and hadn't actually been injured.
“Come on, buddy.” I tried to coax him up by pulling on his arm. “Let's get you on this bed where you’ll feel better.”
His body seemed to follow through the motions, but he was continually muttering, “They just kept coming.”
He was such a big guy, I really needed him to use his own body to make it to the bed. Once there, he sat in the middle, slowly rocking back-and-forth.
“It's okay, you're safe.” I used my best nurse voice to reassure him as I pushed the bed down the hall to the other quarantine area.
Once he was inside, I helped him lay down and covered him with one of the thin blankets. There was no way to know if the blood on his clothes was his or the residue from another person who'd been attacked. “Shh, your safe now. Try to close your eyes.” On the bedside table was an alarm clock. I turned on the radio, expecting to hear a talk show or music, but most of the stations were playing the same repeated message every three minutes.
Not wanting to agitate him further, I continued flipping the stations until I found some classical music. They weren’t known for their news updates, and should be soothing while I went to take a shower.
I stood in the doorway, waiting to see if he would calm down enough to fall asleep, and within minutes of hearing the music play, he was snoring loud enough to drown out the song.
The supply closet held extra uniforms, and was right next to the only shower on the entire floor. But since I had no idea what might be waiting for me when I came out, I took one of the plastic chairs into the room with me and locked the door.
As the warm water washed away the blood splatter from my hair, I realized how close I had come to being food for dead people.
Against Zombies Box Set, Vol. 1 | Books 1-4 Page 33