Afterbirth: A Strandville Zombie Novel #2

by Frisch, Belinda

  Michael slid off her underwear and placed her feet in the stirrups. Her head swam, and though the Demerol barely took the edge off the pain, it confused her to the point that she could no longer think or worry about being touched.

  “Is there water on?” Michael asked Penny.

  Penny sniffled and turned on the faucet. “Cold,” she said.

  “Scott, look for something like a washcloth and fill a basin. Miranda’s burning up.”

  Michael inserted the speculum. “She’s dilated eight centimeters. It could be hours or minutes until she’s ready. Two more centimeters and she can push.”

  “I need to push now,” Miranda screamed. The pressure and cramping felt like needing to have a bowel movement.

  Michael held a cold washcloth to her forehead. “Just a little bit longer.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Reid adjusted the pack on his back with the hybrid infant sleeping inside of it. Neither Corey nor Brett had spoken for miles, adding to the awkward tension of a prisoner calling his own shots. Reid hated throwing-in with Nixon’s guards, but he wasn’t stupid when it came to opportunities. With what happened to Nate, there was a hole in Nixon’s regime that he’d rather fill than be on the other end of a gun with Zach, who stumbled up the mountain ahead of him. Zach cradled Allison, wrapped in the silver blanket which didn’t stop her teeth from chattering. Reid wasn’t sure what Nixon had been up to with her, but taking one look at her now, it was clear she was fighting the virus.

  The muddy, leaf-covered ground became stony as the group approached the small log cabin near the summit.

  A small group of hens wandered the property, pecking at scattered seed and clucking. Reid noted the open gate in their pen.

  “Must be how she got out,” he said.

  No one answered.

  Nixon opened the front door and leaned against it. His hair was completely gray now and he scratched at his temple, shaking his head. “Well, this is certainly unexpected. Zach Keller and Max Reid. Just like old times.”

  “Get in there.” Brett shoved Zach toward the threshold. Zach flashed him a nasty look and tightened his hold on Allison. “What do you want me to do with them?” Brett asked Nixon.

  Allison mumbled something under her breath.

  “You boarded up the window?” Nixon asked Joe.

  Joe nodded. “She’s not getting out of there twice.”

  “Check them for weapons and put them both in the room,” Nixon said.

  “What about the infection?”

  Nixon gestured for Corey to keep Zach at bay.

  Corey pointed his gun directly against Zach’s head and warned him not to move.

  Nixon lifted Allison’s eyelids and sighed. He took two syringes from his lab coat pocket and injected her. “This will either work or it won’t,” he said. “Lock them up.”

  Corey pressed the gun harder into Zach’s skull. “Move it. Get in there.”

  Zach carried Allison inside. Corey, after taking what supplies and weapons Zach had on him, locked the door and resumed his place in formation. The guards, Reid noticed, circled around him.

  Reid met Nixon’s steely stare, a show of bravado that, once he was inside and surrounded, became a harder act to keep up. He looked around the room for anything he could use to escape if he had to.

  An obese cook fried eggs in a cast iron pan on the woodstove and the room stunk of grease. A blood-spattered basin in the corner held the remnants of apparent torture. Iron tongs and a burnt out ember beneath a lowered pulley indicated it had been recently used.

  “Up to old tricks?” Reid eyed the large guard sitting on a stool in the corner. The others closed in behind him, waiting for Nixon’s orders.

  Nixon appeared to be doing a head count. “Where’s Nate?”

  Reid looked over his shoulder at both Corey and Brett and then back at Nixon. “I had to shoot him.”

  The admission clearly caught Nixon off-guard.

  The large guard in the corner stood up.

  Reid took a deep breath. “Sit down, big guy. It wasn’t like that. He was infected.”

  Nixon shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Max Reid, you’re a tough one to catch. You slink around my hospital like a ghost living off of what I lost and you come here after murdering one of my men and act like nothing happened. Give me one good reason why I should let you live.”

  Reid went to the butcher’s block, unfastened the clip at his shoulder, and slid the pack off his back. A mewling sound came from inside the bundle and Nixon moved closer. Reid pulled the half-closed zipper, careful to avoid being bit, and pushed the swaddling blanket aside. “Miranda’s child reason enough for you?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Allison’s stomach ached from the window ledge pressing into the minefield of puncture wounds, the most recent having become red and swollen.

  Zach eased her onto the cot and she kept her knees bent until the worst of the pain passed.

  The room, once filled with sunlight, had become nothing more than a tomb. Cramped and hot with only a single oil lamp for light, it might as well have been a coffin.

  “There has to be a way out of here.” Zach paced the floors, searching for something to pry the board from the windows. “I’m not going to let them continue hurting you.”

  Allison sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Then they can’t save me, either.” She slipped out of her muddy clothes and used the washcloth and water left in the basin to wash herself. After one rinse of the cloth, the water became black. She examined her feet, noting no sensation at all in her toes and a terrible burning feeling everywhere else. The color was off, but hard to see in the dim light exactly how far. The blisters, however, were unmistakable. She limped to where Ben had stashed a change of clothes and slowly redressed. Each movement hurt more than the last. The cold and shivering stiffened her muscles and joints. The erratic treatments had caused mixed reactions and she couldn’t differentiate the side-effects from exposure. She limped over to the cot and covered up with the blanket. The warmth felt nice, and after what she’d seen in the woods, she felt safer inside than out. She patted the thin mattress for Zach to join her.

  He sat down and the springs groaned under their combined weight. The mattress sank lower to the floor and she shifted to avoid feeling like she was rolling toward the edge. She took Zach’s hand and sighed, immediately tearing up. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I followed every lead and never gave up. I guess I got lucky.”

  “I was the lucky one.” Tears flowed down her face and dripped from her chin. If she died then, she couldn’t have been more at peace. “What’s happening out there? What was wrong with those people?”

  Zach looked confused. “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. “How could I? I’ve been trapped here.”

  He wiped his hand across his forehead and broke eye contact. “It’s a virus.”

  “Those people were eating a deer, alive, Zach and then it just up and ran away with half its guts out. What kind of virus does that? Where does something like that even come from?”

  Zach’s lower lip quivered and he sniffled. “I’m so sorry.” He pulled her close and she pushed him away.

  “Zach, where did it come from?”

  He turned away from her. “The Nixon Center.”

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “And that boy, he ran after me. He was going to attack me like they did that deer, and he stopped. He chased you, instead. Why is that?”

  “Allison, you were dying. I had to…”

  She moved away from him. “Had to what?” She tossed the blanket aside, suddenly too warm. Her hands shook and her skin crawled with the stinging of pins and needles. “You did this, didn’t you?”

  “The virus cured your cancer. It bought you time. Nixon told me he could keep you from becoming like…”

  “Like those people in the woods?” The widespread darkness, the lack of co
mmunication, and the secluded cabin formed a bigger picture. “How many people are infected?”

  He lowered his head.

  “How many?” she shouted.

  “Almost all of them.”

  “And there is no cure, is there?”

  “No,” he whispered. “The shots hold it off, but…”

  The shots. “You know what Ben said to me when I told him I didn’t want to be treated for cancer anymore?” She brushed her tangled, sweat-plastered hair away from her face. Halos formed in her vision, surrounding the single lantern light, and she blinked until they cleared. “He told me that it wasn’t the cancer killing me.” She wept into her hands. “I never would’ve believed for a minute it had anything to do with you.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Zach said. “I couldn’t imagine life without you.” He tried to hold her and she refused to let him.

  Her stomach felt uneasy and a dull ache started in her head. She pushed him away, and in the flickering light, saw the pain in his eyes. For what she’d endured, for the peaceful death he denied her, he couldn’t hurt badly enough.

  “You want to know why I escaped from this place and went wandering through the woods?” She shivered and pulled up the blanket, her skin hot with fever. “Because I wanted to die. I begged Ben to stop the treatment and they killed him. They turned him into one of those monsters. The only thing that made the guilt worth it was that I hoped to find you, Zach. And now I’m sorry I did.” Her muscles twitched and went rigid, so much so that it forced her flat on her back.

  Zach grabbed both of her arms and held her tight. He shouted something, though she couldn’t hear him. She could only see his mouth moving and his face contorting with panic. Her ears rang and her jaw clenched. The rigors shook her hard. The black hole in her peripheral vision spread like ink until there was nothing but dark silence. She was conscious, but paralyzed and prayed that this was her end.

  CHAPTER 41

  A foul odor putrefied the stairwell air. Foster turned the corner toward the next landing and the smell intensified. The bodies of undead patients covered the stairs and had clearly been there for months. Males and females blended together, their skin decomposing into a single, rancid pool. Shattered bones, crushed it appeared, by someone who trampled over their bodies long after their deaths, formed a gruesome amalgamation. There was no way around them and not enough time to try another stairwell.

  “Shit.”

  He holstered his gun and reached up for the length of steel girder that steadied him as he secured a foothold on the trim above the mess. The toes of his boots barely fit on the narrow ledge and his body tensed as every muscle engaged for the climb. The smell turned his stomach, the nausea becoming worse as he exerted himself and his breathing became deeper. He became lightheaded, and by the fifth stair, his hands had frozen into two aching claws.

  He stopped for a minute, flexed his fingers, and looked past the sea of partial faces at how far he still had to go. Pairs of misaligned jaws protruded from the pile at awkward angles. Teeth peppered the putrid slime. He powered through the next few steps and leapt triumphantly onto the landing.

  The fifth floor hallway was a maze of construction and plastic sheeting from the renovations Nixon commissioned before the escape. Foster held still and listened. Hearing nothing but silence, he hurried to Nixon’s office.

  The entire hospital had become a museum to that night. Strewn paper and toppled cabinets littered the room, a pair of handcuffs, the ones that had held Zach to the radiator, dangled from the pipe. Nixon’s desk had been thoroughly tossed, and if there had been shots there, someone would have taken them that night.

  Foster waded through the disaster, stepped over a toppled credenza, and went into Nixon’s private bathroom. He collected a large roll of duct tape from the back of the toilet tank and searched the three-drawer plastic cart in the corner. He pocketed several personal care items, but found no shots. He checked the time on his watch. Fifteen minutes. This was taking too long. He looked around the pedestal sink, inside the stand-up shower, and around the toilet, and only paused at the sight of his reflection in the mirror. His reddish-blond hair was grown out and disheveled and his pale complexion made the purple bags under his eyes all the more prominent, even with his glasses on. He reached up, hooked his fingers around the mirror’s chrome edge and pulled. The vanity magnet let go and when the door swung open, he sighed with relief. A stack of six syringes lay neatly inside. He prayed they were enough, and when he turned around to leave the bathroom, he swore something moved in his periphery.

  “Hello?” He called out, wondering if one of the others had come looking for him. “Someone out there?” He added the syringes to the supplies already in his breast pocket and buttoned it to make sure they were secure. “Hellloooo?” A crash startled him and he adjusted his grip on the pistol.

  The woman’s back was to him. A bird’s nest of gray hair wrapped in a sloppy bun and her matronly frock dress gave her away as Lois, Nixon’s secretary. He stepped out into the office, knowing he had to hurry.

  The woman turned around, locked her custard-colored eyes on his, and lurched forward in a clumsy, ragdoll limp. Her lips receded and she appeared all broken teeth and pale gums. She stumbled through the mess, her arms stretched, and clawed at him with blood-caked nails from some unfortunate victim before him.

  He danced around her, moving closer to the door with each step. He needed to get back to the others and if he could do it without shooting, he would. Lois couldn’t be the only infected.

  He looked around for anything he could use as a silent weapon and found nothing.

  “Dammit.”

  His boot lace caught on the ragged edge of a hacked-up file cabinet and he toppled, barely able to break his fall for fear of the gun discharging. He reached down to pull the lace free, but it had splintered and was tangled in the metal. Lois was immediately on him. He kicked her as hard as he could with his free foot. She fell backward, but quickly recovered. He took aim and fired. A single shot into the middle of her wrinkled forehead shattered her elderly skull and her face collapsed in around the hole.

  Stagnant, black blood sprayed the wall behind her and the smell of death that followed made the odor before it seem faint by comparison.

  He gagged back the spit filling his mouth and swallowed. Something moved in the hallway. Foster sawed his lace wildly across the jagged metal to get free. Finally, the lace broke. He got to his feet and ran, but it was too late.

  An undead construction crew of six men blocked the door to the stairway. Foster looked through the plastic sheeting, unable to tell how many others there might be. Two wore hardhats and he wondered how he’d get to their brains without being closer. He fired several consecutive rounds, most of them hits, a few lethal. A rogue bullet blew out the knee of one of the men wearing a hardhat and when he fell, the hat skidded away. Foster took the headshot. Two more headed straight for him. He couldn’t outrun them and was low on ammunition. He picked up a folding chair from outside Nixon’s office and opened it for cover.

  “Get back!”

  He knocked one of them down and ducked into the stairwell.

  The other followed.

  Foster descended the stairs, his footsteps tapping in quick succession as he kept an eye over his shoulder for the infected construction worker giving chase. He was out of breath and his heart hammered so hard his chest hurt. He fired a shot and missed, the sound much louder in the stairwell than it had been in the hall. Halfway down the flight, his feet went out from underneath him and he howled. A jarring pain knocked the wind out of him as he fell flat on his back in the gelatinous mess he’d been too preoccupied to avoid. He scrambled to recover, the sharp bones protruding like punji sticks beneath him, and shook the putrid mush from his hand. He reached for the railing and pulled himself up. A piercing pain in his back made it hard to walk. Each slippery step sent debilitating pain through him. His wet clothes clung to him like a wretched second skin. He inventoried for wou
nds and wondered how long the virus lived in a dispatched host. Hopefully less time than these bodies had been there.

  He stumbled onto the second floor and Penny limped down the hall after him.

  “Brian!”

  Foster held up his hand. “I’m all right. Don’t touch me. Please, I don’t want this stuff on you.”

  “What happened?”

  He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and handed over the syringes. “Take these to the doctor. Tell him to hurry. This place is crawling with infected.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “Push, Miranda. Push!” Michael stood at the foot of the birthing bed, his shirt spattered with blood and amniotic fluid.

  Scott helped Miranda sit up and braced her weight so that she was in a half-squat. She hooked her arms through his and squeezed his hand. Sweat ran down her back and face, and even with the fall chill in the air, she’d never felt so hot in all of her life.

  “Push!”

  The stabbing pain of the contraction peaked and she bore down, holding her breath and tucking her chin to her chest as she worked to get the baby to crown. There was intense stretching and burning and she feared she might tear.

  Michael shifted his position. “I see the head.”

  “You’re doing great,” Scott said. “She’s almost here.”

  Miranda only managed to draw a single deep breath before the next contraction hit. She screamed, pushed until she saw stars, and forced the baby’s head from inside her.

  “That’s it, that’s it. Keep pushing! She’s halfway there!”

  Penny limped into the room, scattered the syringes on the countertop, and begged for everyone to be quiet.

  Michael all but ignored her. “Good, Miranda. I’m just going to rotate her shoulders and she’s here.”

  “Please, stop screaming.” Penny begged.