by G. Benson
“Keep moving!”
“Guys, don’t look back!” Xin hissed.
So, of course, Joy peered over her shoulder.
The woman’s face was pressed against the round windows. The door started to shift. How Joy wished the hospital used more door handles. Or electronic doors like some of the newer buildings had, a button needing to be pressed to get it open.
Adrenaline hit her system, and they raced down to the door on their right that led to the Orthopaedic Ward.
The force of three running women rammed into a solid person who emerged from the door.
Taren made an ‘ooph’ noise and Joy screamed.
She needed to get a handle on that.
Xin’s hand on Joy’s shirt and Joy’s grip on Taren stopped Taren toppling over with whoever they had collided with. They stopped dead and stared down at a sprawled-out, groaning form on the ground. It took a second for Joy to realise who it was.
“Raj!” Joy pushed forward and pulled him up.
He stared at her in wonder, his hand tight in her own. He had a gash on his forehead, shaggy black hair sticking to the wound, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Something like a police baton hung limply from his hand. A brown-haired woman she hadn’t even noticed stood right behind, hand clutching the sleeve of his scrub top. Natalia? No, Natalie.
“Doctor Ayton?” Raj stepped forward and pulled her into a tight hug.
Joy awkwardly patted his shoulder until Taren’s hard words cut through. “Hug later. We need to move.”
Joy pushed him back. “Is behind you clear?”
Natalie shook her head, holding her left arm awkwardly against her body. “You don’t want to go back there.”
“Who are you?” Taren asked.
“Natalie. And really. Don’t go back there.”
A scream came from the double doors behind them that led to the Orthopaedic Ward. Raj made a whimpering noise. Natalie’s knuckles whitened on her right hand as she made a fist.
“Damn it,” Joy muttered.
“We need to go the other way.” Raj’s voice was insistent, and he tried to push them back down the corridor.
Xin shook her head. “There’re two coming.”
Raj blanched, his brown skin a sickly hue. Natalie gasped, going even paler.
A groaning noise sounded, the creak of a door, and every hair on the back of Joy’s neck stood up.
As a group, the three women turned, Raj and Natalie standing behind them.
“Oh, shit.”
The whispered words could have come from any of them.
A hand appeared through the door to Vascular Ward as it pushed open. Drying blood raked over the paint. Her head appeared first, as if it were trying to go faster than her body, giant glasses barely managing to cling to her face. Her sallow skin and bruised eyes sent a shiver up Joy’s spine. When the dead-looking gaze caught sight of them, the lips turned upwards in a mockery of a smile. It disappeared as she gnashed her teeth. The other door that they had first entered from started to push open, far too quickly. The man from the elevator.
Xin walked backwards into them, and they all stepped back into Raj and Natalie.
There was nowhere to go.
“We have to do something.” Desperation clung to Taren’s words like a bad smell.
Joy groaned as the elevator man stepped through. His eyes focused on Joy. Dead eyes didn’t look so dead when they filled with hunger.
“Guys?” Xin’s voice was high pitched and the woman in front paused, her head twitching at the sound. A growl emitted from her throat and she trod forward, feet pigeon toed.
A deep breath filled Joy’s lungs. She stepped forward, Taren’s fingers clinging to her shirt as if to pull her back. She wrenched her body away, separating the digits. Clenched fists before her, Joy took another deep breath. The woman was a metre away. In class, Joy’s fists never shook this much. Not even in competitions. Sweat trickled down her back. Her breathing was too loud.
Twisting her body, Joy centred herself and let a perfect back kick fly. Her foot struck the growling woman in the breastbone, sending her reeling backwards towards the wheelchair. She fell into it, glasses askew and the chair flying back a few metres into the man, sending him spinning in place at the force of it.
Joy turned her head, butter knife useless in her hand. She let it drop, the sound of it clattering barely audible over the horrible breathing of the two trying to attack them and all of their desperate breathing. There was no way she was getting close enough to them to use a knife. “Help of some kind? Please!”
There were chairs lining the wall in a waiting room appearance, all connected to each other, so no help. An attached table with brightly covered pamphlets. Papercut them to death?
Xin scanned the space and her eyes lit up. “Fire extinguisher!”
She and Taren ran forward, wrenching the red object off the wall. Xin clutched it to herself and stood next to Joy. The man was advancing, the woman struggling to get out of the chair that kept shifting at her movements. Joy swallowed her shock as the woman finally got to her feet—the kick seemed to have done nothing to her.
They just kept coming forward.
“Xin?” Joy didn’t take her eyes off the virus-plagued people in front of them.
Nothing happened except they stepped closer.
“Xin!”
A blast of foam erupted out, arcing through the air. In seconds, the two in front of them were covered. Unable to see, their hands clawed at their faces and they bumped into each other, breathing sloppily and snarling.
Joy turned to Xin. “I thought you’d hit them with it.”
Xin looked down at the heavy fire extinguisher in her hands. “Oh. Yeah. That would have made more sense.”
Taren, Natalie, and Raj pushed at them from behind.
“Let’s go!” Raj’s voice was fraught.
Taren pulled the fire extinguisher from Xin’s hand.
“Hey!” Xin protested.
Joy watched her arms rise, muscles prominent in the tank top she was wearing, that white of it stark against her dark brown, smooth skin. She swung the cylinder and hit the woman in the head. She went down with a bark that was more animal than human, but stopped quickly as Taren lifted it up again and brought it down, hitting her in the face. The man had swiped enough of the foam from his eyes, his hands rising up towards Taren. She straightened, then swung the fire extinguisher again, hard. His head snapped back and he flew backwards, landing in the row of seats, arms out wide, blood seeping out of his nose, along with some clumps of what could have only been brain matter.
Xin and Joy gaped down at the two bodies as Raj edged himself away, skirting around the wheelchair as if afraid to touch it, Natalie tailing him. She stared at Taren, expression impressed as she walked past her. Blood mingled with the white foam, creating an off-pink pool.
Joy blinked at Taren, who was staring down at the mess, blood flecked over her glasses.
“They are p-people.”
Taren straightened her back and looked up at Joy.
“I still know that.”
Taren
It could be the next day. Who even knows?
Taren reached forward and grabbed Xin by the sleeve of her scrub top, pulling her forward roughly. Xin brought her unsteady gaze up to look at her. Taren tried not to flinch from the look in her eyes. “We need to move.”
Xin nodded and started to follow Raj and Natalie down to the doorway back out, away from the wards. Taren tried to ignore the shaking in her hands. She’d done what she had needed to do, she knew that. Those people kept getting back up and she in no way wanted to be eaten. She’d seen them in A&E. Heard the screaming. Seen Owen. They didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Their group was barricaded in here. Were they supposed to run away and leave them wiping foam out of their eyes to be able to corner them later?
No.
She’d done what needed to be done.
She
had.
Breathing heavily from the exertion and trying to block out the memory of how bone had crunched under the unforgiving metal, Taren turned her attention to Joy.
“Ayton.”
Joy’s eyes were on the still bodies on the ground.
“Ayton!”
The woman blinked at her.
They stared at each other a long moment. There was nothing Taren could say.
As if waking herself, Joy shook her head slightly and swallowed heavily. “We need to move.”
“We do. We need somewhere safe.”
“Where? We can’t go to the Ortho Ward. The Vascular Ward is a graveyard.”
The pitch of Joy’s voice was rising. It was confronting, to see someone who always seemed so put together falling apart. They’d met years ago, really. But had only started talking properly the last few months, and Taren had thought they’d been getting to know each other.
There’d been a surgical consult for Taren’s patient. Taren had said something dry. It was three a.m.; all she’d wanted was to sleep. Joy had given a surprised bark of laughter. She’d been cocky, almost arrogant, really. And damn, had it been attractive. She’d been like that on their one date, too. In the bathroom. Back at Joy’s house afterwards. The next morning.
Now, Joy’s fists were still clenched by her sides, shaking visibly. Her skin was an off-white colour. “The staff room has that horrible man who wants to eat our insides. Downstairs is worse than upstairs. Everywhere else is barricaded!”
Taren chewed the inside of her cheek, a bad habit since forever. Joy was losing it. Hesitating a moment, Taren was unsure if she should offer some kind of comfort. They’d barely had a conversation, let alone touched since the night they’d spent together weeks ago. Deciding to get over herself, Taren stepped forward, put her hands on Joy’s shoulders and looked at her seriously. Over her shoulder, there was a poster of a smiling woman with perfect teeth, a spray of blood over the image, dripping slowly down the wall.
“We will find something.” Joy shook her head, but Taren shook hers harder. “No. Ayton. We will find somewhere to hide. Okay?”
Joy took a slow breath. Finally, she gave a nod. A hand came up, holding onto Taren’s elbow, fingers wrapping around her skin. “Okay.”
They were too close, and Taren wanted to push into her and melt. Let all this go away. But there were two dead people around them that Taren had left there. “Let’s go to the stairwell for now.”
Taren caught Xin’s eye behind her to see if she agreed. A half-hearted shrug was her answer. Eyes back on Joy, she gave a tight smile.
“Come on.” Taren tried to make her tone reassuring. “We’ll hear anything that comes along there, and there’s a way down and up if we need to move.”
“Okay,” Joy finally acquiesced.
Raj’s voice reached them. “Sounds like a plan.”
Taren needed to remember to include the others.
The five of them turned and walked away.
No one looked back at the mess on the floor.
They made it into the stairwell, and barely spoke at first. They sat, some staring at the wall or the steps. Others rubbing at their hands.
But then Xin asked Raj how they’d ended up where they had. And they started to exchange some stories of how they’d all wound up here.
“We couldn’t stay in Vascular and figured A&E would be a nightmare. So, we tried to get through to the canteen and the walkway through Ortho. It was…a bad idea.” Raj stared down the steps as he said it.
Natalie only nodded in agreement with what he’d said.
“What do we do, then?” Xin asked.
No one had much to say.
“And you’re sure, that…that they won’t let us out and quarantine us, or something?” Natalie asked.
Xin, Taren, and Joy shared a look.
Taren shook her head. “We definitely saw shot people outside. And they shot at us.”
Raj deflated, even though they’d already told them all of this.
Then a quiet settled over them that bordered on too much.
Taren, realising finally that her vision was blurred, cleaned her glasses. It took a few tries to find a clean spot of clothing to do so. The blood spot on them smeared over the glass, and she rubbed harder.
“Anyone’s phone working?” Natalie pulled hers out and waggled it.
All as one, they tugged their phones out of their pockets, thumbs tapping at screens. Taren’s was warm in her hand. Her background lit up, a photo of her and Lola grinning at a music festival they’d been to in the summer. Their favourite indie band had finished their set, and the sun had been hot, beaming down on them. Their skin was glowing in it. Lola’s grin was so warming Taren could close her eyes and launch herself back to that moment. The heat, the sound of music, the cold drink she clutched in her hand, the trampled bright green grass tickling her sandaled feet. People milling around them, loud and carefree.
“I’ve got nothing,” Taren said.
Everyone else made murmurs of agreement.
“Here’s the weird thing, though,” Natalie said, staring down at her phone. “Normally I have, like, a little symbol that shows it’s trying to get a bar of signal at the top, or something. But it says ‘no service’. Which it never does in the hospital.”
“Mine too,” Joy said.
Everyone else agreed.
“Do you think they’re—are they blocking the service, somehow?” Raj asked.
Taren went cold. “Can they do that?”
“I don’t really know. On TV they do.”
No one laughed at him referring to what they’d do on TV. Because what other kind of reference for this situation could they possibly have?
She looked back down at her phone. Her thumbnail still had red stuck to it. She jammed her phone in her pocket and tucked her hands between her thighs.
“Fuckers,” Natalie muttered.
Xin gave a small sound of agreement.
They went quiet, then.
“Hey, Doctor Ayton?” Raj’s voice floated down from where he sat further up. “Where’d you learn to kick someone like that?”
Taren breathed a laugh, but Xin, Natalie, and Raj all looked at Joy intently, who pressed into the wall even more. “I’ve been doing martial arts since I was a child.”
“Ever think it’d come in handy for this, then?” Natalie asked.
“Definitely never thought I’d use it on people who were trying to eat me, no.” Joy, who’d been looking up the steps at the others, shifted so she was leaning against the wall, turning her head away from them. Clearly done with the conversation.
They didn’t have much more to say, and the quiet left too much thinking time for Taren.
She didn’t want to think. If she did, she’d remember the weight of the fire extinguisher in her hands. The way her arms ached, now, the muscles tightening. The sound of bone crunching under the impact as she’d brought it down as hard as she could.
No. Thinking about that was not what she wanted to do.
She could think about all the things they couldn’t do, instead. There were the locker rooms—there could be food shoved in lockers. More clothes. But they were cramped spaces with only one way in or out. There were supply rooms with pillows and blankets, yet they were sitting, shivering, in a concrete stairwell with too much fluorescent light. Maybe they’d be able—
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The truth was, none of them wanted to move while they had somewhere somewhat safe.
Taren leaned into the metal railing of the staircase, far from those at the top.
Here, there was quiet. Nobody was trying to eat them.
Merely their raggedy little bunch, the chilly air, and the quiet.
No, she’d stay here. On the steps at the bottom. Joy on the opposite end of her step, sharing space without really sharing it.
The step was cold under Taren’s bum, and she dozed but not r
eally, leaning against the equally cold metal. Sleeping was not the best idea. From how she felt, it had probably not been long—a long nap always left her wiped out, feeling worse than if she’d never napped at all. Her neck cricked as she straightened up and stretched. Everything ached and all she wanted to do was go home and have dinner with Lola. God, she wished she could talk to Lola. She fished her phone out of her pocket, glaring at it when it showed there was still no service.
She glanced groggily around. Xin was curled into a ball above her on the landing they’d entered from the corridor, though Taren couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not. Somehow, Raj was fast asleep, lying over several of the top steps, and Natalie leaned against the wall above his head, arm held tight against her stomach.
Joy was still seated at the other end of Taren’s step, right at the bottom, watching her. She was still incredibly pale, even paler, really. There was a sheen of sweat over her forehead.
Taren held her gaze. “Never thought it would be you I’d be stuck with in this kind of situation.” She kept her voice soft.
Joy breathed a laugh. “You’ve thought about this situation?”
“Well, no. But you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
They were quiet.
“You know, you didn’t act like someone not looking for something serious.” The words fell from her lips before she could stop them, and Taren mentally kicked herself, heat flooding her cheeks. This was really not the time. Her hurt pride didn’t matter right now. Though, considering the situation, she didn’t have a lot to lose by talking about it.
Really, though, why couldn’t she learn to keep her mouth shut?
But Joy’s closed-off expression during their discussion at work still stung. The difference had been staggering from the woman Taren had been getting to know.
Joy swallowed. “I—Taren, I can’t talk about this right now.”