The front doors are still wide open, and in a moment of dizzy incomprehension, Rachel sees a flurry of red movement there. She’s still screaming, out of breath, and a sparking blackness is taking hold of the edges of her vision. She drops to one knee, her scream giving out raggedly.
“It’s working!” Bonnie yells, her voice a high keen.
The administration area is a red, slippery mess. Rachel can see that both Chrissy and Kevin have grabbed blood bags, too, and have been directing streams of blood at the corpses, who are exiting the hospital en masse. Blood is flying everywhere, and finally the population of corpses in the lobby is thinning out. The dozen or so that remain cower against the walls, crab-walking toward the double doors, giving the ragtag group of survivors a wide berth.
“Come on!” Joel calls to the survivors closest to him. “Get over here!”
He corrals Chrissy and the rest, moves them over toward Rachel and Bonnie and Alan. He’s throwing glances at the now-toppling barrier at the top of the stairs. It has crumpled into a metal and plastic mess. Corpses are tumbling down the face of it, spitting their strange guttural hisses in a near-chorus, and landing heavily, crab-sprinting past the survivors and the vivid smears of blood across the tiles. They’re clacking through the front doors and out into the burgeoning dawn.
Rachel has her half-empty bag of blood thrust out in front of her, and as these new things edge too near her, she squeezes, letting loose a red stream. Joel touches her arm.
“Wait, wait …” he tells her, and she releases the pressure on the bag. “Guys, stop!” he calls to the others. “Save it!”
The new things crab-walk past them, over the blood-soaked low-pile carpet, their gasps increasing when they come into contact with the blood, then disappearing through the doors and scaling Joel’s cruiser. Some of the larger ones have more difficulty than others, stepping awkwardly over the lower front bumper instead.
“Back up, back up!” Joel yells, and the group slips and slides backward across the tiles until they’re up against the main reception desk.
The corpses continue to stream past them, through the front double doors, all of them staring at the survivors. Rachel tries to read the expressions in the corpses’ upside-down faces but can see nothing but outsized rage.
In minutes, the crowd of corpses that had amassed above the makeshift barrier is gone, and the humans are left panting, cowering, ashen with exhaustion. The reception area is clear, and for now, the entire lobby is empty of animated corpses. The world has descended into a stunned silence.
Chapter 17
“Is that—is that all of them?” Bonnie asks the room. Her gaze is snapping from the front entrance to the stairwell to the doors that lead to the examination rooms. She finally lets go of Alan, who is sitting up under his own power, one hand at his neck massaging a large, pale expanse of skin, and rises on unsteady legs.
Rachel searches the blood-drenched area for more bodies, then, finding none, approaches the front doors.
“Rachel!” Bonnie calls, her voice raspy and uncertain. “Careful!”
Rachel only glances back at her briefly. She moves forward to the glass metal-framed doors, which slide almost reluctantly open, straining again from the weak generator power. The clamor of the corpses clattering through this vestibule still echoes in her ears. She braces herself on the edge of the left door and peers outside, her heart thumping hollowly in her chest.
Activity catches her eye, making her rear her head back. She looks more closely. Most of the bodies that trampled through these doors and over the cruiser are now out of sight, presumably racing somewhere northwest, but two heavy male corpses—both naked, one of them trailing a blood-spattered hospital gown from its ankle—are lumbering upside down across the small grassy area to the south. The blunt sight of their exposed genitals causes a wave of revulsion to pulse through her, but she’s more focused on their destination.
“What is it?” Chrissy is suddenly at her side, making her jump.
Rachel points at the doughy male corpses, which are crab-walking their way toward a small copse of evergreens. She lets her eyes flit over to the other corpse she noticed earlier; it’s still clamped to the base of the Blue Spruce there, its limbs wrapped around the needled branches. In the past twenty or thirty minutes, its body has clenched even more desperately to the Spruce’s trunk, and the corpse’s limbs are obviously fractured here and there, angled horribly, the joints dislocated, the fingers and toes digging into sappy bark. It almost looks like the corpse is attempting to merge with the tree. From where she stands, Rachel can still see the thing’s jaw working obscenely. Squinting, she thinks it’s actually eating the tree—both needles and bark—and a pulpy mulch seems to be splatting from its mouth to the spongy ground beneath it.
The two male corpses have found a lone conifer tree and are tentatively exploring it, their inverted mouths finally attaching to the wood. They remind Rachel of animals surrounding, exploring, and feasting on fallen prey.
“What are they doing?” Chrissy whispers, her tone aghast.
“I think they’re…I think they’re eating the trees,” Rachel replies.
“What?” Joel says, his energy drained, his face full of weary confusion. In one hand, he’s gripping his empty shotgun, bracing it against the remaining piece of the admissions desk to prop himself up. His other hand drops a sticky, empty plasma bag to the floor; he wipes the red hand on his pants.
“Always something new around here,” Kevin says.
“What does it mean?” Bonnie asks no one in particular.
Rachel can only shake her head, dumbfounded, watching the male corpses begin to chew at the bark. Their hulking, fatty bodies inch ever closer to the trunk while their sideways skulls clamp to the tree with ever-growing determination. The jaws work with inhuman strength; Rachel can see the muscles of their necks and jaws straining even from where she stands. The red luminescence is vaguely pulsing at the point of contact.
“Disgusting!” Chrissy says, looking away.
“Why …?” Rachel says quietly. “Why are they doing that?”
Joel makes his way across the sticky tiles to stand at the doorway next to Rachel. For a moment, he has no words. Then, “I saw one doing this in a yard on Laurel, didn’t think much of it then.” He wipes at his forehead. “I was more focused on the ones that were moving. But this—this tells me that it means something.”
Alan, still on the floor, is leaning forward, trying to peer through the doors with his weak gaze. “Could it be an instinct of some kind?”
“Yeah, they’re hungry,” Scott says from Rachel’s left. “Humans, trees—what’s the difference?”
“Well, obviously hunger,” Alan wheezes. He seems to swallow with difficulty. “But these bodies have gone through something totally unusual. You see, maybe it makes sense that … that the way they express hunger is something…something strange like that?” His voice is weak and shaky. Rachel looks over her shoulder at him, concerned.
“Shhh …” Bonnie says, kneeling again at his side. She’s touching the skin of his upper arm and examining his neck. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m all right,” Alan says, sounding far from all right.
“What I want to know is, where did the rest of them go?” Scott calls. He’s staring out the windows from a crouch, his eyes red and wild. “I mean, who cares about these—these monstrosities? It’s the meaner fuckers I’m worried about.” Rachel can see that his left arm is clutching his abdomen. His face is drenched with sweat.
“Scott?” Bonnie says from Alan’s side. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Scott glares at her from his cramped position. “I’m fine.”
Rachel senses movement behind her; Bonnie is moving past her toward Scott. She lays a quick hand on Rachel’s shoulder, and then she’s past her.
There’s an enraged, red-rimmed fury to Scott’s face when it angles up toward the approaching woman. “What do you—get away from me!”
&n
bsp; “Scott, something is wrong.”
Scott is now attempting to laugh—a harsh, high-pitched noise. His face clenches, and he doubles over further. “Fuck! Fuck!”
“Scott, what are you on?” Bonnie asks.
“What? Are you—get—what the—”
“If you tell me what you’re on, I might be able to help you.”
“Fuck off!” His eyes are flashing, and he’s trying to stand, willing himself beyond the obvious pain. He tries a derisive laugh, but the unpleasant bark is cut short with an intake of breath.
Joel is suddenly standing next to Rachel. “C’mon Scott, listen to her.”
“Everybody’s a fucking moron,” says Scott.
And then, almost miraculously, he manages to stand. He is the embodiment of suffering. Watching the rest of them, the muscles of his face jerking, he stalks crookedly through the lobby, taking a wide berth around Joel toward the front doors. He reaches down and grabs two bags of O-negative blood.
“C’mon, man,” Joel says, eliciting a scathing look from Scott before he steps across the threshold tentatively. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
Scott is searching the parking lot and the street beyond, which is still brightening under the new sun. Everything is silvered and red—the deepest crimson sunrise Rachel has ever seen. It reminds her of waking in summer to occasional Colorado sunrises bruised by forest fires deep in the Rockies, the way the fire and smoke turned everything a wounded brown and red. Although she’s sure the local fires have caused a lot of this atmospheric phenomenon, there’s something else—something she’s never seen before.
The world seems eerily calm and quiet out there. There are no moving bodies that Rachel can see at the moment; no vehicles maneuvering the streets; none of the usual sounds of a city waking up.
Scott glances back, jittery. “Home,” he says simply. “I’m going home.”
“Scott, don’t go,” Bonnie pleads.
He’s shaking his head, not hearing her, and the motion of his sweaty, red-haired skull increases, as if he can’t stop the movement. He plants his hand on the trunk of Joel’s cruiser and manages to squeeze past it and through the doors. He’s tentative, watching the two male corpses in the grass for a reaction. The survivors behind him are watching intently for the same thing.
There’s no movement there except for the muscular clench of the corpses’ limbs, bent back and straining, as they grasp the tree still more forcefully. They don’t appear to be aware of anything except for the base of that tree. Rachel watches, mesmerized, as the closest corpse gnaws at the bark, which is giving way to the softer sapwood underneath. Clots of mulch fall from the mouth as the jaws churn and chew.
Scott steps beyond the cruiser’s fender and into the parking lot. He casts a single glance back toward the survivors assembled beyond the doors. There’s a sneer on his lips. He appears about to say something, but then thinks better of it. And then he’s walking southeast toward Lemay.
“Scott!” Bonnie calls.
“Good riddance!” Kevin says from the base of the admissions counter. “Guy’s a goddamn tool.”
Bonnie explains quietly, almost sadly, “He’s suffering withdrawal.”
“He’s lucky he’s not suffering withdrawal of my foot from his ass.”
Chrissy barks a laugh, but Bonnie is shaking her head sadly.
“He’s probably headed home to…” Kevin lets silence finish his thought.
“Oh, I should have asked him in private,” she says. “That was wrong. I should have—”
She’s interrupted by a rattle of movement when the double doors behind her bang open and a corpse scrambles through them. It’s a young woman, a doctor’s assistant, pink and blue gown strained and shredded at the thing’s straining limbs, its turned-over face wild and monstrous. Its wide-open mouth is clenching and unclenching, foaming.
Bonnie and Chrissy scream, and Joel lifts his useless shotgun like a baseball bat. The corpse hisses at them, its dead eyes shifting, and it skitters forward across the tiled floor, battering into Alan. Its bent-back hands come into contact with the blood that’s splashed liberally over the floor, and the thing is suddenly slipping and skidding, pushing back. The hissing sound escaping its mouth ratchets up into some kind of painful, throaty gasp. Joel steps forward, takes a swing at it with his shotgun, but even in the midst of its scramble, it deftly ducks out of the way of the swing, its body briefly collapsing and then lifting up again.
The corpse’s prolonged gasp becomes a screech when a stream of O-negative blood splashes its face. Alan is on one knee, the half-empty bag clutched in two hands, the arc of blood rising and falling but true. The corpse spins defensively and then in a ruckus of swiping limbs, it’s scurrying across the vestibule, its now-red eyes moving frantically among the survivors as it exits the hospital. It climbs onto the smeared hood of Joel’s cruiser, leaps off the other side, and is gone to the northwest.
“Christ!” Joel says, still panting, recovering from this shock as well as the onslaught of the past hour. “I’ve had about enough of those goddamn things!”
Alan collapses again to the floor, bracing himself with one arm—his unwounded arm. He’s watching the front doors contemplatively.
“I think Scott had the right question,” he says, still wheezing, trying to catch his breath. “Where are they going?” He locks eyes with Rachel for a moment. “You need to find out.”
Something drops inside her.
The lobby is silent. They all look at each other. Joel steps over to the cruiser, opens the rear door, and reaches inside. He emerges with a handful of shotgun shells, lifts his shotgun, and begins laboriously reloading shells into the weapon’s magazine.
“I can’t help but feel …” Joel says, glancing up between shells, “… that they’re amassing somewhere. You know? Preparing for battle or something. Crazy, I know. But …the way they move, the way—I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the way they communicate. The way they fight.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Bonnie says. “Please don’t say that. This is all impossible!” She throws up her blood-smeared hands. She notices the state of her fingers and gives an almost comical pout, then rubs her hands on her slacks.
“All right, let’s get out of this mess,” Joel says, frowning at the blood-splattered tiles, which are looking more and more unpleasant under the rising sun. “Let’s get Alan into a chair, get him comfortable. Then let’s assess the situation. See where we stand.”
Kevin seems to snap out of a daze, coming to the older man’s aid. “Sorry,” he says.
He and Bonnie arrange themselves beneath Alan’s shoulders and help him rise from the red, coagulating mess. Alan is crusted with blood; it’s caked on his clothing and misted on his face. Rachel looks at him with a great blooming feeling of warmth and admiration, and melancholy.
Chrissy hurries, in fits and starts, to the edge of the stairwell, peering up the stairs to make sure there are no more corpses coming down. She extricates a plastic chair from the jumbled, angular mess and carries it to the middle of the empty waiting room. Kevin and Bonnie carefully set Alan down on it.
“I’ll get water,” Bonnie says. She walks fearlessly into the hallway beyond admissions.
“Don’t worry about me,” Alan whispers.
Joel remains near the front doors, scanning the area outside the hospital. Rachel joins him after a moment. A single car is moving south on Lemay. Joel watches it for a while, then seems to come to a realization. He reaches to his belt for his two-way radio.
“Buck, come in!” he calls into it.
Silence.
“Come in, Buck.” Joel rattles the radio, listens again.
The car makes a turn into the neighborhood on the west side of Lemay and disappears. Shadows are still fairly long outside. Rachel takes a quick glance at the clock over the admissions desk: 6:43 a.m. She focuses outside again. In the far distance, she can make out stationary figures, corpses in the centers of suburban lawns
, attached to the bases of trees. The more she squints and focuses, the more bodies she sees.
“Do you see that?” she whispers.
“The bodies? Yeah.”
“Are they all doing that?”
He’s shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know.” He fishes out his cigarette pack and places one between his lips. “It doesn’t make sense.” He lights it up.
“What do you want to d—”
The radio squawks. “Joel, Buck here.”
“Buck, how’s it going down there?”
“Pretty quiet here,” comes Buck’s voice, breaking and fading under static. “Got about a dozen people. We’ve barricaded—” Static for a long moment. “—generator and cleared out the school. I’ve got a couple of guys from the Harmony hospital just came in. Word is, that place is a—” More static.
“Fuck.” Joel exhales a cloud of smoke.
Finally, Buck’s voice comes back. “—bodies outside.”
“Buck, can you repeat about the hospital?”
“It’s a hellhole. Filled with those goddamn bodies. Wiped out at least twenty people there. Thought of—” Static. “—good to hear your voice. How’s it going up there?”
“Well, we survived, anyway. But listen…”
Joel goes on to describe the makeshift O-negative blood solution and how they’ve made it work, as well as how the corpses have reacted. Buck confirms that it is his own blood type, and he congratulates Joel for figuring it out.
“I’m not taking credit for that one,” Joel says, giving Rachel a sideways look. “I’ve got a smart little lady here.”
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