Afterbirth: A Strandville Zombie Novel #2

by Frisch, Belinda

  Nixon checked the infant, unable to waste further time. “I have to get him inside,” he said and gestured for Wayne to lead.

  Wayne reluctantly shuffled inside.

  “We’re headed to the fifth floor,” Nixon said, eyeing the pile of burnt bodies in the Ambulatory Surgery waiting room.

  “Maybe we should wait for the others. Paul and Joe should be with you, not me.” Sweat beaded on the fat man’s brow, magnifying the stench of eggs and onions rolling off of him.

  “Why? You’re not capable of opening some doors?” Nixon stood in front of the stairwell, wondering if Wayne could make the climb. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Wayne pulled the door open and Nixon squeezed, sideways, past him. A sense of vulnerability set in as he adjusted his grip on the infant, unarmed and unguarded.

  Neither of them spoke as they ascended.

  Nixon struggled to hear anything over the sound of Wayne’s wheezing. Shhh. Something had changed. The deep rising and falling of the boy’s chest had been replaced by smaller movements and a sound that could only be described as death rattles. Nixon placed his ear to the boy’s chest.

  “We have to hurry.”

  He took the final flight two stairs at a time. The door to the fifth floor hallway was closed, and as he moved toward it, he realized he couldn’t wait for Wayne to open it. He shifted the boy’s weight and reached for the knob with his shaking hand. He pulled the door toward him and a familiar stench crept into his nostrils. The dispatched bodies of two infected construction workers stood between him and his office at the other end of the hall. There had been dozens of men working on the wing and if these two hadn’t made it out during the evacuation, certainly others hadn’t, either.

  The door slammed behind him and he hurried down the hall at a pace just short of a jog. The boy gurgled and spattered the oxygen mask with bloody mucous. He started to shake and then went stiff.

  “Dammit.”

  A hammer skidded down the hall and three more infected construction workers emerged from behind the hanging plastic sheeting.

  “Dr. Nixon, wait.” Wayne stood doubled-over in the doorway, his face red and sweaty.

  Nixon, unwilling to risk his or the boy’s safety, paused only long enough to look over his shoulder at the ravenous horde descending on Wayne. The sight of them attacking made him run faster. Wayne’s pained screams filled his ears as he rushed into the remains of his office and locked the door behind him. He panted, out of breath, and ached from the climb. The combined weight of the oxygen tank and the boy had quickly become a strain.

  The boy coughed again and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “No, no. Don’t do this to me!”

  Nixon stepped over Lois, his former secretary, whose corpse lay at his feet. Her body had decomposed so badly that if it hadn’t been for the outfit he’d last seen her wearing and the tightly wound bun of gray hair, he might not have known it was her at all. He cleared a space on the floor away from her and laid the boy out, praying the antivirus would slow his demise long enough to collect the samples he needed. He ran into the bathroom and pulled open the medicine cabinet, slamming the heel of his hand into the wall when he found it empty.

  “Damn it!” He kicked a prescription bottle across the bathroom floor and ran his hands through his gray hair. He searched the wreckage, hoping the shots had been misplaced, but knowing there wasn’t a chance. Few people would have known what those shots were. Fewer would know where to look for them. Nixon narrowed his suspect list to one and wondered what Reid was up to.

  CHAPTER 61

  A bitter wind blew through the atrium. Paul’s hands stiffened from the cold and a clear thread of snot ran from his nose. He fumbled the clasp of the storage bin, sneezed, and opened the lid. “Here.” He replaced Joe’s pistol with one exactly like the one Nixon had given to Zach.

  “This isn’t going to be enough.” Joe shook his head. “The sight helps, but not against dozens.”

  Paul brushed his hair away from his face and pulled on a black hat to manage it now that his gel had given up. He picked up one of a dozen frag grenades.

  “Get serious.” Joe shook his head. “You want to be in a narrow, interior hallway when that thing goes off?”

  Honestly, no, he didn’t, but there were some advantages. “Wait a minute.” Paul remembered the landscaping truck abandoned out front. He pulled the hat down over his ears and rushed out into the cold. A blue tarp covered the bed of a rusted, white pick-up truck and he dropped the tailgate to see what was inside.

  “Perfect.”

  He ran back to Joe with a chainsaw dangling from each hand.

  For a minute, Joe didn’t say anything.

  “Think about it--distance, unlimited use.” Paul unscrewed one of the gas caps. “This one’s full.”

  Joe checked the other. “This one, too.” He holstered the pistol and fired up the chainsaw. Smoke poured out of the engine and cleared when he choked the engine to idle. Paul did the same and the two of them headed down the hall.

  “Why do you think Nixon’s doing it?” Paul asked.

  “Doing what?” Joe kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “Keeping Zach placated. Nixon said it himself, he’s not the second chances type.”

  Joe nodded toward the shadow-covered wall and opened the chainsaw’s throttle.

  The chain spun and the shadows picked up speed, headed in the noise’s direction. The pack moved quickly, their posture slumped and their bodies decomposing. A dozen or so infected adults and one child clamored for pole position. A bald-headed girl wearing footie pajamas moved to the front of the pack. Plastic stuck out from between her teeth and a gnawed off length of IV tubing dangled from under her sleeve.

  Joe knocked her aside and tore through the adults, singlehandedly decapitating four former patients who were discernible from the others by their hospital gowns and robes.

  Blood sprayed everywhere and Paul squinted to keep clear of the spatter as he charged and took out two victims of his own.

  The chain ripped through the flesh, barely missing a beat as it severed through each of their spines and sent their heads flying toward the walls.

  “Joe, watch out!”

  A middle-aged man with stringy, long hair, a drawn face, and nearly translucent skin, ran toward him. His dogged determination marked him as a physical threat.

  Joe hacked at the air and narrowly missed his target. The emaciated man kept coming and forced Joe against the wall. Joe carved at the air and limbed the man’s outstretched arms inches at a time until there was nothing but bloody stumps wiggling from his shoulders.

  Paul sawed his way through the others and leveled his chain at head-height. “Joe, over here.”

  Joe sent the man backward with a single, well-placed kick to the stomach.

  Paul widened his stance and with a smooth motion, severed the infected man’s head. His long hair caught in the chain and spun, casting spray from floor to ceiling. Paul let off the throttle and the chainsaw sputtered out. He threw it on the ground with the head still attached and looked at the little girl.

  The last of the group, she clawed at a closed door as though she could sense something inside.

  Joe revved the chainsaw and Paul intervened. The two of them were blood-soaked and dripping with biological shrapnel.

  “Wait.” Paul approached the girl whose deep-set eyes and thin face said she’d been dying long before the virus took her. In a world of sad things, this was the worst. He unholstered his pistol and sighted his shot, afraid that his shaking hands would make him miss. The red dot danced on her glistening, white scalp and finally settled. He said a silent prayer and pulled the trigger. She went down quickly and cleanly, and appeared pure against the carnage of much less sympathetic kills.

  Paul surveyed the destruction, the mess that would have to be cleaned and the bodies that would fuel the pyre—except for hers. Her, he planned to come back for and bury.

  Joe jiggled the door
knob of the room she’d been trying so desperately to get into. “It’s locked.”

  Something crashed inside.

  “Look out.” Paul fired blindly through the curtained window.

  A man’s scream echoed through the door. Whomever he’d shot wasn’t infected.

  Joe picked up his chainsaw and shattered the glass with the butt end, clearing safe passage for his arm. He reached inside, but couldn’t quite get the lock.

  “Here, let me try.” While Joe’s arms were far more muscular, Paul’s were longer. He reached in, praying not to be attacked, and quickly found the lock. He released the button and Joe opened the door before his hand was all the way out.

  “Jesus, Joe. Give me a minute, would you?”

  “We’re already too late.” Joe pointed up at the drop-ceiling tile which had been moved to allow someone’s escape. A fabric sling dangled from the opening and bloody handprints dotted the metal framing.

  A toppled wheelchair lay in the center of the room.

  “Looks like whoever it is, he’s hurt.”

  “It’s got to be Reid.” Joe pushed aside one of the two beds, exposing the body of the elderly man who had bled out on the floor. “But who is this?”

  The man wore a thick flannel shirt and had a black medical pack strapped to his belt. His buckle was half as wide as his waist.

  Joe snagged the pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket before the blood from the gunshot could ruin them.

  Paul bent down and lifted the elderly man’s eyelids. After verifying there was no sign of infection, he pressed two fingers to the side of his neck to feel for a pulse. “He’s dead.”

  “I’d still like to know who he was.” Joe rolled him over. “Get his wallet.”

  Paul opened the faded leather bifold and looked inside. An old picture of a reasonably attractive woman was nestled between the two flaps. Twenty-seven useless dollars and some credit cards indicated this was a man who held onto things out of sentiment rather than necessity. He held up a New York State driver’s license with a picture that had nowhere near kept up with the man’s aging. “Name’s Frank Krieger.”

  Joe tested the faucet for running water and washed the blood from his hands and face. “Never heard of him.”

  Paul shrugged. He hadn’t either, but he wondered why, with dead bodies at the door, a madman on the loose, and rampant infection, someone so vulnerable would come to the center alone.

  In his estimation, he hadn’t.

  Survivors were dangerous and he guessed Reid wasn’t their only living problem.

  CHAPTER 62

  Zach started up the second flight of stairs and wondered how much further he could carry his unconscious wife. “Allison, honey, come on, wake up.” He shook her and her head fell back over his arm. He leaned against the wall and shifted her weight, but the bulky dressings on her feet made it impossible to even the load.

  Corey scratched at his face and huffed out a breath. “Would you hurry up? It stinks in here.”

  Zach ignored him and kept the slow pace.

  With each step the smell grew stronger.

  “Allison, baby, can you hear me?” If she could even wrap one arm around his neck it would make things easier. A hundred pounds never felt so heavy. “Why isn’t she waking up?”

  “It’s the pain-killer,” Corey said, moving on without any offer of help. “She’ll be out for hours.” His voice trailed off as he got farther away.

  Zach nodded, but something didn’t feel right. Allison’s body radiated heat and her forehead beaded with sweat. Zach’s shirt was soaked through where she pressed against him and her breathing had become shallow and raspy.

  “Oh, shit.” Corey stopped a good ten stairs ahead of Zach and for the first time, Zach caught up.

  “What?”

  “My guess?” Corey wrinkled his nose and coughed. “It’s the source of the stink.”

  Zach stared at the dripping pile of decomposing flesh creeping down the stairs toward them. Broken bones mixed with hair, skin, teeth, and tissue. Handprints covered the wall and railing and footsteps led away from the mess. “Someone was here.”

  “More than one someone by the looks of things.”

  Zach didn’t mean the pile, which was an obvious mix of at least a half-dozen corpses. There was an indentation where the bones were more broken than in the rest of the pile. Someone had fallen and pulled themselves out of the mess. The crooked trail leading away from the scene said they’d limped away. Zach would bet anything they hadn’t survived to talk about it.

  “We can’t get through that,” he said. “I can’t get through that. Not and carry Allison, too.”

  Corey rolled his eyes. “There are at least a dozen other staircases in this place.”

  “It was hard enough getting her this far.” Zach turned around and headed for the second floor entrance. “Get the door, would you?”

  Corey held his pistol out in front of him and swept the Labor and Delivery unit before letting Zach in. “All clear.”

  Zach edged past him, his arms and back on fire from the strain of the dead weight. The corpse of an infected woman, naked and with sagging flesh, spread across the hallway.

  Corey waved for him to keep moving. “Looks like someone’s already started the clean-up. I checked her. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Make sure there’s nothing else, would you?” Zach shifted Allison’s weight and set her down on a gurney in a nearby patient room, relieving the strain on his muscles. A metallic twang soured the air. He stepped on the lever of a trash can marked “biohazard” and a swarm of flies sprang from a nest of maggots feeding on fresh blood. “What the hell?”

  Corey appeared in the doorway and swatted at the fly buzzing around his head. “All clear.”

  Zach lifted the side rails to keep Allison from rolling out of bed. He brushed her damp bangs back from her face and kissed her hot forehead. “No signs of anyone?” He covered Allison with a blanket and, after checking her breathing, moved the trash can into the hallway.

  “See for yourself.”

  Zach reluctantly locked the door, knowing only Nixon had keys. “What do you call those?”

  It didn’t take much investigation to see that Corey was no tracker. Footprints, like those they had seen in the stairwell, led to a closed door not four rooms away from Allison’s. Zach rolled his eyes and drew his pistol. He approached the room slowly, pressed his ear to the door, and when no sound came from inside, threw it open. The stench hit him head-on. Soaked clothing piled on the floor and he held his breath to get to it. A box of gloves hung on the shower room wall and he put a pair on, fearful of the infection.

  “What are you doing?” Corey buried the lower half of his face in his elbow.

  “What you were too stupid to do.” He kicked the shirt away and withdrew the wallet from the back pocket of a pair of soggy jeans. The license identified the owner as Brian Foster.

  It was another connection, no matter how indirect, to Miranda.

  CHAPTER 63

  The smell of death was thick inside Nixon’s office. Lois, his secretary, had begun to putrefy, and since the fifth floor windows didn’t open, he was trapped with the stink. Wayne’s desperate pleas for help had silenced and Nixon feared the worst, expecting that there was a several hundred pound man now waiting to eat him. Nothing about resuming his place at the center had gone as planned and he prayed, that once the hordes were eliminated and the generator was up and running, the cost of the return will have been worth it.

  He bent down to the drawer and found the hybrid boy barely moving. The I.V. bag had dried up and drew his blood back into the tubing. Nixon undid the tape and quickly removed the line.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said, though the boy’s condition had been too touch-and-go for him to believe it. He peeled back the blanket and examined his pale skin. The bluish-black lesions had spread to his chest and worsened as he looked at them. The antibiotic wasn’t working and there was no way out of hi
s office to find an alternative. He listened to the boy’s chest and a suspicious rattle surfaced among the faint breath sounds. His heartbeat had slowed, and when Nixon rolled the boy to check his back, he huffed out a breath and went limp.

  “Not again.”

  Nixon’s hands shook as he lifted the boy and laid him out on the carpet. The infant’s white eyes stared blankly ahead and his mouth, full of needle teeth, fell open. Nixon removed the oxygen mask and resumed the CPR he’d already performed twice en route from the cabin.

  “Don’t do this to me.”

  He placed three fingers to the boy’s tiny chest and performed thirty quick compressions. His hands ached from the last time. He covered the boy’s nose and mouth and gave him two gentle breaths. He tapped the boy’s shoulder and when he couldn’t be roused, resumed the compressions.

  One, two, three…

  He counted in his head, refusing to be distracted by the growling and scratching at his office door, and gave the boy two more breaths.

  “Come on, breathe.”

  The boy’s legs went plank-straight and his arms tensed at his sides. Dark, almost black, blood seeped from the former I.V. site. A gurgling noise rose from his throat and he started to choke.

  “No, no. Don’t do this.” Nixon let the boy cough, knowing it was the best way to dislodge whatever was stuck, and watched, helplessly, as the boy clung to life. Thick foam ran from the corner of his mouth and he stopped breathing. Nixon panicked, desperate to help clear the block. He cradled the boy, face-up, in his arms and swept his mouth with his thumb and first finger. He didn’t feel anything and rolled the boy onto his stomach, delivering gentle back blows.