Nowhere to Hide

by Tobin, Tracey

  “Do you think there’s any power?” Greg wondered allowed. “We could fill ‘er up if the pumps work...”

  Ken glanced at the fuel gage. “Why don’t you check it out while Nancy and I check out the store,” he suggested.

  Somewhat reluctantly, Nancy handed the baby back to Greg. It would be easier to gather supplies without her hands full. “I’ll try to find something yummy for you, sweetie,” she told the child as she trotted away.

  The supermarket was locked, but it had the typical large glass window-doors. Ken smashed one to pieces with a large rock. Nancy helped clear away the shards of glass before he reached through and undid the locks. They couldn’t seem to find the lights, but the building had a number of skylights so it wasn’t too dark. Ken reached over a cash register and grabbed a fistful of plastic bags, of which he handed half to Nancy. They set off cautiously.

  Most of the produce was black and stinking, having been sitting out for several weeks, but Nancy painstakingly picked through it and managed to find a bag of potatoes, two small bags of onions, and a couple of oranges that were still holding up. From there she went to the baby aisle, where she grabbed a few bottles, and swept as much of the powdered formula and glass jars of baby food into the bags as she could carry. After hauling everything out to the trunk of the car, she returned and grabbed several packs of diapers. While she was on the way out with this pile she met up with Ken, who was struggling with several bags filled with canned foods. When she asked if he needed help he handed her a separate bag filled with a dozen can openers. Nancy gave him a funny look and he simply said, “Backups.”

  They spent twenty minutes piling whatever they could into every spare inch of the car. They grabbed as much bottled water as they could without weighing the vehicle down too much, and reluctantly passed over the delicious-looking frozen entrees. Everything in the freezers had melted when the power gave out, and even if it hadn’t, they had no way to store or cook the food anyway. While Nancy and Ken were busy with the food and baby supplies, Greg had managed to find the backup generator in the gas station, got a pump running, and filled up the car. He’d also grabbed flashlights, batteries, a road safety kit, and a large carton of cigarettes. When Nancy saw the cigarettes she gave him a very hard look. He tried to defend his choice for a moment, with a look of amusement from Ken, but Nancy gestured toward the baby and made it very clear that if he wanted to smoke he was staying behind. With a huff of defeat, Greg tossed the cigs out the car window.

  “Maybe we should stay here for a while,” he suggested then, surveying the town. “It’s so quiet, and we seem to have the supermarket all to ourselves.”

  “I don’t know about settling in,” Ken disagreed. “But we could certainly find somewhere to sleep for a while. Get our strength back, you know?” He certainly looked like he needed it.

  Nancy wasn’t sure herself how she wanted to weigh in on the subject, so she changed it. “I’m just going to go use the washroom before we leave,” she told them, and headed into the gas station before they could object.

  Because Greg had started the generator, Nancy was able to turn the lights on in the washroom, for which she was terribly thankful. She chose a stall and laid a few strips of toilet paper along the seat, chuckling to herself a little for the old habit that seemed so much less significant these days. She was just zipping her jeans up after relieving herself when a moan echoed through the room, the sound bouncing off the cheap ceramic tile. Nancy froze, her breath caught in her throat, as she realized that she hadn’t brought a weapon with her.

  There was a second moan. Nancy judged that it was coming from another stall. Slowly, and as silently as she could manage, she pushed the stall door. It squeaked. She cringed and stood stone still, but there was no further noise for a full thirty seconds, so she continued. As she tiptoed through the tiniest crack in the door that she could fit through, she silently cursed her habit of using the furthest stall from the door. Whichever of the five stalls the zombie was in, she was going to have to walk past it to get out.

  She walked on the very tips of her toes to keep her sneakers from squeaking. She eyed each stall door; they were closed, but none appeared to be locked. The zombie could be in any of them. She damned her luck of stumbling in the only public restroom she’d ever seen in which the stall doors ran all the way to the floor.

  She made it to the middle of the room when one of the doors began to move. With wide eyes and an audible heartbeat, Nancy watched as the zombie pushed its way out of the stall. The creature had once been a teenage girl in a very pretty skirt and a floral blouse. A large chunk of hair was missing and part of her collarbone had been snapped and torn off. When she saw Nancy standing there, her vacant eyes went huge and she lunged forward.

  Nancy screamed and dove without looking, jamming her leg against a sink in the process. She stumbled to the floor and scrambled in the direction of the door. She was just reaching for the door handle to pull herself up when a searing pain tore through her leg. It was so intense that she couldn’t even scream. She turned her head and found that the zombie girl had grabbed her by the calf of her left leg and pushed all five fingers clean through the skin and into the muscle. As the creature’s teeth sunk into the flesh of her leg, Nancy hauled back with her right foot and kicked as hard as she could. She caught the zombie girl in the chin and heard a sickening snap as her neck broke. For half a second Nancy reveled, thinking that surely that must have been a killing blow, but the zombie only released her leg for half a second as it stumbled back with its head lolling sideways. Nancy could barely tear her eyes away from the horrible sight, but she managed to pull herself to her feet, throw open the door, and hobble away with a shriek on her lips.

  “Help!” she cried, unsure if the men would be able to hear her from here. “Help me!”

  A bang from behind told her that the zombie had pushed its way through the washroom door and was in pursuit. Nancy didn’t risk the second it would have taken to look back. Blood was sopping through her pant leg and she was finding herself running slower and slower with each passing second.

  The sound of running feet made her whimper, but suddenly there was Ken, appearing from behind a display of motor oil. He had a tire iron with sale stickers on it in his hand. He flew past Nancy and she heard a two loud, wet sounds in rapid succession. A moment later Ken scooped Nancy up into his arms and took off for the car.

  “Thank you!” Nancy gushed. Her voice trailed off when she noticed the look on Ken’s face. Then she heard a familiar sound from outside. “What’s going on?” she demanded. Ken didn’t answer, but as they flew through the gas station’s front doors she saw for herself.

  They’d come, seemingly from nowhere, and were swarming from all directions. A wave, not as large as the one they’d left behind at the hospital but plenty large enough, was closing in on the car. Sarah was screaming from the back seat. Greg was hanging out the driver’s side door, holding Nancy’s katana in one shaking hand.

  “I’ve got her!” Ken screamed.

  Greg’s head whirled around. A half-second of relief passed over his face as he ducked into the driver’s seat. Ken hauled open the back door and Nancy scooped Sarah into her arms as they slid into the car.

  “Go, go, go!” Ken commanded. Greg was half a step ahead of him, squealing the tires before Ken even had the door closed behind him.

  As zombies bounced off their bumper for the second time in as many days, Ken began tearing strips of material from his shirt. He threw one of the strips around Nancy’s leg and pulled tight. The pain made her gasp; a moment later the gasp turned into a scream. Sarah wailed. Nancy tried to bite back the tears streaming down her face as Ken fastened another strip of material, but it was impossible.

  “The bleeding isn’t stopping,” Ken groaned when he’d lost half his shirt. “The wounds are too deep! I need to close them up!”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting that we stop at another hospital, are you?” Greg cried back, incredulous. “Yo
u saw how fast they appeared! We need to get out of this town as quick as we can!”

  “I understand, Greg,” said Ken. His voice had become high pitched, desperate. “But do you want Nancy to bleed to death?”

  Nancy’s eyes grew wide. Was it really that bad? Suddenly she found herself feeling very faint. Sarah’s tears were soaking through her shirt.

  “A general practitioner’s office,” Ken was saying. “That would have the materials I need and wouldn’t be as difficult to defend as a large hospital. Few windows, smaller doors.”

  Greg nodded. “Yeah, yeah...okay...” He began scanning the buildings as he drove wildly past. In a part of Nancy’s mind that was becoming giddy from blood loss, she wondered if Greg even had his driver’s license.

  It didn’t take long before Greg shouted, “I see one!” and swerved madly to head directly for it. It looked ideal; a small brick building with one door and only three windows. A placard on the front of the building read, “Dr Barrie and Dr MacKinnon”.

  Sarah seemed to run out of breath for crying and buried her face into Nancy’s chest as the car nearly toppled sideways due to Greg’s reckless driving. He came remarkably close to crashing into the building, but Nancy had to admit that it was the best parking job for the situation; he’d landed the trunk less than two feet away from the door.

  The men flew from the car and put their shoulders together to plow through the door in seconds. Ken gently removed Nancy from the car, making sure that her grip on Sarah was still good, and carried her into the waiting room. He placed her carefully down in a chair and ran to help Greg. Together they ripped their supplies out of the car and tossed them unceremoniously into the building. They had almost all of them when the hoard reappeared from down the street; they abandoned whatever was left and rushed inside out of view. Then, as quickly as they could, they piled everything in arm’s reach - filing cabinets, chairs, a computer desk complete with the computer - in front of the door. As an afterthought Ken removed a large painting from the wall and affixed it up against the lone window in the room before lighting a candle from a box he’d grabbed from the supermarket.

  Nancy, despite the dizziness that was coming down on her, seemed to be the only one to actually look at the painting. She groaned. “You guys... This is a god-damn dentist office.”

  The men turned blank stares at her before looking at the painting and realizing that she was right. They were looking at a very detailed cut-away image of the inside of a molar.

  Ken went pale for a moment, but recovered quickly. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” he shouted while rushing off to the back room. “Dentists have to suture wounds from wisdom teeth sometimes, right? Yes, I’m sure of it!”

  Greg looked green. Nancy could tell that he was praying to God that Ken was right. If they’d trapped themselves in a building where they couldn’t even help Nancy...

  The baby reached out and grabbed Nancy’s lip. She tried to smile, but her heart was hammering and she felt very faint. The strips of material that Ken had wrapped around her leg were soaked clean through. “Greg,” she cringed. “You’d better take the baby before I pass out.”

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Ken cried as Greg pulled the baby out of Nancy’s arms. He came running down the hall with what looked like spools of thread and several bottles of rubbing alcohol. There was a large, curved needle between his lips. Nancy felt her face drain of all color.

  “Tell me there’s something back there that you can knock me out with,” she pleaded.

  “No time!” Ken insisted. He laid his supplies at her feet. “I don’t have time to figure out the correct dosages. It could do you significantly more harm than good!” With that he shoved a rolled-up magazine in Nancy’s mouth and told her to brace herself.

  Nothing in her world up until that point compared in the way of physical pain. Eventually Ken had to use his belt to strap her leg to the chair because she was struggling too much for him to clean and close the wounds properly. She screamed around the magazine in her mouth until her voice started to go hoarse. The rubbing alcohol that Ken poured felt like a thousand fires. The steady threading of the needle felt like the small, thin teeth of a vicious animal. By the time he was done Nancy was panting, pouring sweat, and very confident that she was going to pass out.

  Greg found some gauze in the back and Ken wrapped Nancy’s leg. While she struggled to wipe the tears from her face Ken rooted through the supplies and found a box of cookies. He ripped the box open and shoved a handful at Nancy. “To get your blood sugar back up,” he explained. She didn’t feel anything that was like hunger, but she struggled to force the food down her throat.

  “You should rest now,” Ken insisted. He lay down the gauze and picked up the katana. “Greg and I will keep watch for a while. I don’t think they saw us come in here, so hopefully they’ll wander away.”

  Nancy shook her head vehemently. “You haven’t slept in almost 48 hours,” she argued. “And I doubt Greg got much rest either.” The look on the boy’s face proved her right. “You guys sleep, I’ll watch. We’re safe enough for now.”

  Ken tried to dissuade her by pointing out that she was injured and weak, but she couldn’t be reasoned with. “You’re no good to us dead on your feet,” she reasoned. Her face was set and stubborn. That, combined with the fact that he did feel like he might collapse any minute, eventually convinced Ken. Looking much like a zombie himself, he dragged himself off to one of the back rooms to try and get some sleep in one of the dentist’s chairs.

  “Help me into a corner,” Nancy asked Greg. He handed Sarah back to her and swiveled chairs around the room until Nancy was sitting in the corner, facing the door, with her feet up and outstretched on a second chair.

  “I’ll watch from the window in the hygienist’s room,” Greg insisted. At a look from Nancy he added, “Until I get too tired.” He dragged several of the supply bags over next to her chair before he left. “Are you comfortable?” he asked on his way out. “Do you want me to take the baby?”

  Nancy wasn’t comfortable at all, and her leg was throbbing horribly, but she snuggled a giggling Sarah close and nodded. “Wait for a few moments,” she asked.

  With the energy she had left Nancy mixed some formula with some lukewarm water into one of the bottles she’d found and offered it to Sarah. The baby seemed confused by the bottle at first, but soon snagged on to it hungrily until her eyelids began to droop. The woman watched the baby for quite some time, losing herself in the innocence of the child while desperately trying to ignore the moaning and shuffling noises from outside the building. Once the baby had drifted off to sleep, Nancy handed her off to Greg and watched them wander down the hall.

  Nancy wanted Sarah with her, but she couldn’t just at that moment. As she watched the candle that Ken had lit slowly burn out, she couldn’t help but remember the way the zombie girl’s teeth had entered the flesh of her wounded leg...

  Chapter Eleven

  When Nancy began to drift back into the waking world she was sweating a river and felt like a bass drum was pounding inside her skull. She thought she heard voices, but she couldn’t quite make them out. Something was touching her face, wiping away the sweat. Nancy groaned and tried to readjust herself but the world was shifting back and forth, up and down. She felt an immense desire to vomit, but barely managed to hold it back before she passed out again.

  After what felt like two minutes but was actually more like two hours, she heard the baby crying and tried to open her eyes. Her head was throbbing, her body numb, and her vision blurred. There were two voices speaking nearby, but she still couldn’t make out the words. The baby’s wailing sounded like it was a hundred miles away. Nancy groaned and the voices got louder; they seemed to be panicked. She thought she made out a few words but her brain was so muddled that it all sounded like gibberish.

  “Are you sure you should risk it?”

  “I don’t really want to, but this is getting out of hand. She’s going to hurt herself.”<
br />
  “You’re sure you’ve got the right dosage though?”

  “No, I’m not sure, but I mixed it low just in case. Worst case scenario it’ll just be ineffective.”

  In her confusion and desperation to understand what was happening Nancy let out a strangled cry; through her blurred vision she thought she saw two fuzzy figures jump and move closer to her.

  “You hold her arm.”

  “Do I have to?”

  The last thing Nancy recalled from the strange conversation was a quick, sharp pain in her upper arm. Then everything faded away to black.

  “You’re hurt, sweetie.”

  Nancy looked down at her leg. The gauze was gone and she was staring at two circular series’ of hastily sutured lacerations that were bound to leave ugly scars. She looked back up at Gramma Sarah and gave her a sheepish smile. “I was careless,” she said. “I let my guard down and she caught me by surprise.”

  Gramma Sarah was smiling, but it was a sad, disappointed smile. “You have to be more careful, my dear. You have a child to take care of and two young men who are very concerned for you.”

  Nancy looked out over the city. It was decidedly different from in her last dream. Instead of fields of green and skies of blue she was looking down on a city of gray and red from the top of a burning apartment building. The city was empty, and yet she thought she could hear the echoes of screaming in the distance. The sky was filled with the black smoke from a thousand fires.

  “I’m sorry, Gramma,” she said, gently tugging at a loose thread from one of her stitches. It didn’t hurt at all, but the surrounding skin instantly began to turn red. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

  “Be sure that you do.”

  Nancy turned to smile at her Gramma, but there was no one there. She frowned, sighed, and turned back to watch the world burn.

  “Oh lord, my god-damn head,” Nancy groaned. She tried to lift her hand to her forehead but found that she couldn’t. Her eyes flew open and she balked to find herself strapped to a dentist’s chair via random cords and equipment. “What the hell is going on here?!” she shouted.