Wolf Running

by Toni Boughton

  She found Jamie at the nurses’ station, talking on the phone. The harsh overhead lights bleached the young woman’s face of color as she yawned widely. Nowen caught her eye questioningly and Jamie mouthed “Dr. Westrick” as she hit the speaker button and placed the handset in its cradle.

  “-and I’m pleased to say that both mother and child are doing fine.” The rich and self-satisfied voice rolled out from the small speaker. “My experience working under stressful conditions in the operating room enabled me to take control of this situation. Under my guidance the delivery went smoothly. Of course, the nurses provided valuable assistance.” Jamie rolled her eyes at this, then leaned over to Nowen and whispered “Why, the mother hardly needed to be there at all!”

  Nowen turned away to stifle her laugh as Jamie said “Wow, that’s some good news, Dr. Westrick. And I’m pleased to tell you that our first supply run went really well. We’ll be sending down-

  “Just a moment, please.” The doctor interjected, concern evident in his voice. “Can’t you quiet him?” This seemed directed at someone near the doctor. “Well, I think it might be good idea if we did. Now!”

  Jamie looked quizzically at Nowen. “Dr. Westrick, is something wrong?”

  “The infant is crying, and it’s rather loud. The infected people outside the delivery ward are attracted to the noise. There’s quite a few of them at the main door, now. No, you fool, move everyone back!” The doctor’s voice faded slightly as he pulled away from the phone to yell at someone. The sound of a baby’s cry came faintly through the speaker. “Jamie?” Dr. Westrick’s tone had shifted from concern into genuine worry.

  Jamie leaned over the phone as if she could crawl through the wires down to the second floor. “Yes, I’m here! What is it?”

  “We’re moving everyone as far from the entrance door as we can, but it looks as if every infected person on this floor is here. We’re hoping that if they don’t see or hear us they will disperse.” There was a pause, and then the doctor continued. “The worry now is that they will get in somehow.”

  “Like through the glass or something? ‘Cause I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem. We haven’t seen the Revs exhibit any kind of advanced thinking. It’s not likely that they’ll try to break the glass by throwing things at it.”

  “Could their combined weight break the glass?” Nowen said.

  Jamie shot her a withering look as Dr. Westrick gasped. “No, no, don’t freak-I mean, don’t worry. It’s all, like, safety glass down there. And as for any other way they could get in....the doors can only be opened from outside by swiping the hospital ID across the sensor pad. So unless one of the Revs has one, you should be ok.”

  Dr. Westrick’s voice, when it came through the speaker, was very quiet and very still. “One of them does.”

  “What?”

  “One of the infected at the front of the group has an ID clipped to the front of his shirt.” The whispered words spilled out of the phone. “He is watching me, and my speaking seems to agitate him. I will attempt to move out of his view.”

  “Put the phone on speaker!” Jamie whispered back.

  There came a small click, and then they could hear the muffled sounds of movement. Jamie abruptly whirled from the desk, walking briskly a few steps away before turning back. She motioned Nowen over and murmured “We’ve got to do something to help them!”

  Nowen nodded. “We can try and draw the Revs away....”

  “How?” The nurse anxiously chewed her fingernails as she paced in a small circle.

  “The stairwell. We can make some noise to get their attention.”

  Jamie looked up eagerly. “Right! Bedpans, trays, IV stands - those will make a hell of a noise!” She headed for the phone. “I’ll tell Dr. Westrick what we’re going to do.”

  Nowen joined her, and they got to the counter in time to hear Dr. Westrick shouting. The well-rounded, satisfied tones of before were utterly gone; there was only terror in his words: “The door is opening! The door is opening!”

  “Dr. Westrick! Dr. Westrick! What’s going on?!” Jamie hunched over the phone and pressed a button, increasing the volume. Now a cacophony of voices and noises filled the air around them. In the wild tumble Nowen could make out the wail of the baby crying. There was a strange rumbling noise, and a metallic clattering mixed with the raised voices of the people two floors below.

  Jamie gasped, and Nowen looked over to see the other woman take a step back. Her eyes were huge and filled with tears, and she clasped her trembling hands together as if in prayer. Nowen turned her attention back to the phone, teasing out separate voices from the tangle.

  “No, no, move that over here! We need to block the door!” Dr. Westrick was shouting at someone. Again there came a rumbling noise, and Nowen recognized it as something heavy being wheeled across the floor. “It’s not working!” someone yelled, and someone else was telling people to “Move your asses!” The voices rose and fell around each other, weaving a tapestry of fear and despair. Now the moaning of the Revs was audible, hungry and implacable. Nowen heard herself growling in response. She clenched her jaws tightly together, so tightly that her teeth ached.

  The sound of something heavy falling over crashed through the speaker. Screams followed, and the moans and snarls of the Revs were louder now. Then, slicing through the chaos, came a cry of agony, of pain beyond bearing. Nowen could hear the crack of bones breaking, the wet sounds of raw flesh being devoured. With a distant kind of interest she realized she was licking her lips. She looked over at Jamie, only to see that the young woman was gone.

  And then the lights went out.

  Darkness fell, so full and absolute it was as if Nowen had been struck blind. In the silence that followed her heartbeat was loud as a drum. The surcease of noise was almost as frightening as the chaos of a moment ago. And then, at the very edge of her hearing, faint screams came to her.

  “Jamie!” she called. She opened her eyes as wide as they would go, straining to make out her surroundings. “Jamie! Where are you? Damn it, answer me!” Urgency colored her voice as she stumbled away from the desk, arms stretched out in front of her, hands searching for the walls. Why isn’t she answering? Is she hurt? and this thought brought such a wave of fear that her stomach knotted. There was a bolt of pain behind her eyes, so sudden and sharp that it took her breath away. Fiercely she rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them again the darkness seemed to bleed away. Everything was visible to her, all the colors there but washed out to paler shades.

  She heard Jamie calling her and she ran down the hallway. Nowen found her in the room from which they had lowered supplies the day before. She was feeding the makeshift bed-sheet rope out the window, and she looked up when Nowen entered. Moonlight poured in the open window behind her, and in the cold white light the nurse was as insubstantial as a ghost.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nowen shouted.

  Jamie tugged on the rope. The other end was knotted around the leg of a hospital bed. Satisfied that the knot would hold, she swung one leg over the sill. “I can’t stand here and listen to them die.”

  Nowen was at the window in a flash. She grabbed Jamie by the shoulders. “No. This is insanity.”

  Angrily Jamie shook herself loose. “I’ve got to help them! If nothing else, some of them can climb up the rope with me.”

  “I won’t let you do it.”

  Jamie looked at her, her blue eyes as pale and cold as river ice. “You may be content to watch as people die and feel no desire to help them, but that’s not me.” She swung her other leg out the window and grabbed the rope with both hands.

  Nowen reached for her. “No! Listen to me, it’s too late! Would you give up your life for them?”

  “Yes!” Jamie leaned back, just out of reach. Screams and the moaning of the Revs were audible now, rising up into the night sky from the open window below.

  Nowen hung out the window and grabbed Jamie’s hands. “I won’t let you.” Their eyes locked. N
owen didn’t care how determined the other woman was - she was not going to lose a pack member someone she cared about.

  A cry from below broke their stalemate. They looked out and down, and saw an elderly woman staring back up at them from the second floor window. “Help me!” came her wavering call.

  “Grab the rope!” Jamie screamed.

  The old woman reached out a thin arm. As Jamie yelled encouragement she managed to catch the twisted bed-sheets that swayed lightly in the breeze. And then arms, grey and bloody, shot out the window and dug into the old woman’s back. She managed to scream, once, before she was dragged out of sight.

  “No!” Jamie cried, trying to twist free of Nowen’s grasp. Nowen planted her feet and pulled, bringing the other woman back inside. Jamie collapsed in a heap on the floor, her thin shoulders shaking with the force of her weeping.

  Nowen stepped hesitantly toward her. Jamie was saying something, words that fell into the small spaces between her sobs. “It’s all over. It’s all over. It’s all over.”,

  Nowen heard, and she understood that the woman wasn’t just crying over the loss of the people below, but for the all the people that were dying everywhere.

  She sank to her knees next to Jamie and wrapped her arms around the other’s shaking body. Jamie leaned against her, and as she held the young woman and let her cry, she wondered why she wasn’t crying, too. And she listened to a small voice deep inside that whispered so what if all the humans die?

  Chapter Nine

  Then

  In the month that had passed since the slaughter on the second floor, Nowen and Jamie had discussed plan after plan, weighing the pros and cons of each. They agreed, eventually, that all the plans boiled down to just two options: stay, or go. Jamie argued fiercely for staying where they were, if not in the hospital then at least still in Exeter. There was food and shelter, and protection from the Revs. And if, by some incredible twist of fate, help arrived, they stood a better chance of being rescued.

  Nowen nodded and agreed with these facts. Everything Jamie said made sense. But the Rockies to the west and the great open plains to the north called her. She felt claustrophobic more and more lately, and had taken to sleeping outside on the roof of the next floor down. Jamie would join her some nights, but she didn’t mind admitting that she preferred a roof over head. Alone, Nowen would watch the stars, distant and cold against the black velvet night, and track the satellites that still kept their lonely patrols.

  She pled her case. She reminded Jamie that they would have to go further and further to scavenge supplies. She brought up the rotting bodies that still fouled the air. She mentioned the packs of abandoned dogs that roamed the city, feeding on the dead and undead alike, and how that was yet another obstacle to overcome to get food and water. And she reminded Jamie of her own words, that north or west could be better than staying in the city.

  But Jamie refused to budge. The death of the people below them had changed her, had made her less happy-go-lucky. She rarely smiled anymore, and more than once Nowen had come across her crying quietly in one of the hospital rooms. When Nowen would ask what was wrong, Jamie would only shake her head and turn away.

  And so they found themselves still at an impasse today as they stood together on the roof of the third floor. Nowen was wearing the blue backpack. Sticking out an unzipped edge was a length of metal pipe. She was making another supply run today. Previous trips to the gas station had cleaned it of everything edible, so she was going further afield, to another station four blocks east.

  Jamie stood beside her. Nowen watched as she fidgeted, adjusting the straps of her own pink backpack. The sun beat down mercilessly from a cloudless sky. The calendar by the nurse’s station that Jamie had diligently maintained showed that it was the first day of August.

  “Does it bother you? Not knowing who you are, I mean?” Jamie asked suddenly.

  Nowen paused, thinking. “Yes, of course. Do I have family out there? Is someone looking for me?”

  “You just never talk about it, that’s all.”

  Nowen looked out the window at the blue, blue sky. “It bothers me. It’s...weird, not knowing if you were someone good or bad, someone who did great things or terrible things. I only have who I am now to go by, and how accurate is that? But, to be honest, I’ve just had to put it all aside. I’m more interested in staying alive, right now, than figuring out who I am.” She looked at the other woman. Jamie’s head was lowered, and she picked at the stitching of one of the backpack straps. “Why do you ask?”

  “Sometimes, I think it would be easier, not knowing anything. Not worrying about people. Not missing people. Not caring about people.” Jamie looked up. The look on her face was distant and lost. “I know my parents are dead. They probably died horribly, too. Wouldn’t it be easier to have never known them, then to know what you’ve lost?” She fell silent and looked away.

  “Are you up to this, Jamie?” Nowen asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I bring back enough to keep us fed-”

  “I know you have, Nowen!” came the harsh reply. Jamie tugged sharply on the pack as she continued. “We wouldn’t have made it this long without you, I know. But I can help, too. I’ve dealt with gunshot victims and mental patients and people dying of cancer and pregnant people. I’m not a helpless princess, waiting for someone to rescue me.”

  Nowen was a loss for words. She had never thought that Jamie was incapable, but it just made sense for her to make the runs and for the nurse to wait at the hospital. “If I made you feel that way, I’m sorry.”

  The other woman waved her hand dismissingly. “You have nothing to apologize for.” she said, but she wouldn’t meet Nowen’s eyes. “But I can help, and I’m going to help today.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t worry, I’m only going as far as the field.” Jamie motioned toward the large grassy area behind the staff parking lot. “Even I can handle gathering plants.”

  “Jamie-” Nowen started, and again she was cut off.

  “Come on, let’s get going.”

  In silence they descended to the ground, using the painter’s ladder. The staff parking lot was empty of Revs. They had thrown anything metal they could find out a front window thirty minutes ago, and the Revs had responded to the noise, congregating along the south side of the hospital. Nowen hit the ground first and, pulling the iron pipe from her pack, moved out into the parking lot. Jamie was right behind her, gripping her own weapon - a length of mop handle, sharpened at one end. They walked through the lot, listening to the faint cries of birds mixing with the moans of the Revs.

  At the chicken-wire fence they stopped and took in their surroundings. Jamie pointed at a small stand of trees, about twenty feet from where they stood. “Occasionally I’ll come out here on break - or, rather, I used to come out here - and I recognize those as walnut trees. I’m also pretty sure I’ve seen strawberry bushes. And there’s a good chance of finding dandelions, wild onions, blackberries...” At Nowen’s incredulous look she laughed. “Remember? Farmer parents who lived off the grid?”

  Nowen smiled, glad to see that Jamie’s mood had lightened. “Ok, I’ll trust you. Just don’t poison me.”

  “Never!” Jamie said, and clambered over the fence. “Admit it, you’d like something fresh, right?”

  “Yes, I think that would be nice.”

  “Well, then get going!”

  Nowen smiled again and headed down the alley. She hadn’t gone this way before but the view ahead was less obstructed than the other end, and she could see only a few dusty cars on the street. Jamie called her name, and she looked back.

  The young woman stood in the knee-high grass, green fronds dangling from her hands. Her face was serious and strained. “Come back, ok?”

  Nowen raised a hand. “I will.” she said, and continued down the alley.

  She slowed her pace as she got to where the gravelly path joined the paved street. Cautiously she edged up to the corner of a small g
arage and peered around the corner. Looking right she could see a few stragglers shuffling along, on their way to join the mob. To her left the street continued on another couple of blocks before it curved away and out of sight. Small neat houses with unkempt lawns lined the streets. There were very few cars, and no Revs that she could see.

  Nowen consulted her inner map. She needed to go three blocks over and one down, and as she debated the routes she could take she noticed that the alley continued on straight ahead. It ran on for quite a distance, and under the noon sun it lay empty and flat.

  Another look both ways and then she was off, running as fast as she could for the next alley. She hit the gravel and dropped to a crouch next to a battered dumpster. A peek around the rank-smelling dumpster assured her that none of the Revs had noticed her passing. She adjusted her backpack, tightened her grip on the pipe length, and jogged down the alley.

  She passed the backs of cookie-cutter houses, different only in their paint color. In one fenced-in back yard she saw the corpses of two small dogs, mummified by the heat. Movement drew up eye up to a window on another’s house’s second floor. Trapped behind the glass, a Rev that had been a very young girl watched her pass.

  She reached the end of this alley section and stopped. On either side were more of the boxy houses, and she leaned around one to survey the street. There were a handful of Revs along the street to the left, and none to the right. The Revs were standing close together in the middle of the street, but their backs were to her. She thought she could make it to the next alley without drawing their attention, but there were no conveniently placed cars to provide shelter. It would be tight.

  Nowen took a couple of careful steps forward, wanting the solid pavement under her feet before she ran. A strong breeze sprang up, racing down the alley and sweeping over her before whirling out into the street, where it rattled the lid of an overturned trash can. As one, the Revs raised their heads and saw her. She froze. This had worked before, the undead, if they weren’t too close, losing interest in her if she didn’t move. The Revs stared, unblinking. Nowen began to hope that her plan was working. Then the Revs opened their mouths and shrieked.