I watch the muted television while Dave dials. Information about the curfew scrolls across the bottom of the screen. Phone numbers. Lists of schools that have canceled classes. Businesses closing early. The works. Everything is shutting down, like on 9/11. Around the country, I'm sure, people are glued to their screens as Dave and I are, waiting for whatever comes next.
The floor shakes as something loud and heavy crashes in the hallway, making me nearly jump out of my skin. Dave stops dialing, and holding our breaths, we both stare at the door, waiting for the brushed metal lever to turn down and for someone to burst into the room.
But they don't. The seconds tick by, and finally, I allow myself to exhale.
With a shrug, Dave finishes dialing and places the phone to his ear.
While he’s doing this, I go to the door and place my ear against the cool wood, trying to hear something, anything.
“Aw, come on!” Dave whines. “It says ‘call not completed.’ What the hell?”
I turn to face him. “I'm sure you're not the only one trying to make a call right now. Try again in a minute.”
He ignores me and gets the same result. His face grows red with frustration.
“Is there anyone else you can try?” I ask. “Someone who may be able to get in touch with her?”
Dave shakes his head. “No. Ronny and I got into it last week. He owes me a hundred bucks, and he won’t return my calls.” Ronny is Dave and Jenny's mutual friend, the guy who introduced them.
“Try him anyway.”
Dave glares at me. “Fuck him.” He lies back, trying to make himself comfortable, phone ready in his hand.
The hospital alarm blares. “This is an emergency broadcast,” a male voice says as soon as the alarm stops. “Hospital staff are instructed to—“ A stabbing squeal of electronic feedback erupts from the speaker before he can finish, then all is silent.
The television goes dark, and the steady hiss of cool air from the grate in the ceiling disappears, and right away, the room feels hotter. Or is it only my imagination?
Panic washes over me, coming out of nowhere to wrap its arms around me, enveloping me in a giant cloak of anxiety. I feel like I'm going to puke, like I have to shit. My stomach is a ball of squirming hot meat, turning over on itself, struggling to turn inside-out. I stagger to the chair beside the bed and fall into it. Cold chills race up and down my body, making me shiver uncontrollably.
“Are you okay?” Dave asks, alarmed.
My breath comes in short, ragged gasps, the nausea receding as fast as it came on. My stomach still feels twisted, keeping me on notice. However, the urge to puke has been supplanted by something else—a deep and profound sense of helplessness. The life I thought I knew is unraveling faster than I can comprehend, carrying me away on an inky dark river of uncertainty. Another shiver courses through my body, a sub-dermal shock wave rattling me to my core.
I belch raw stomach acid. “I don't know… I think so.” I climb to my feet and stagger to the window to stare down at the parking lot.
While the parking lot was empty only a few minutes earlier, that’s no longer the case. Two squad cars are parked below, lights flashing and doors open. I imagine puddles collecting under the motors, condensation from the air conditioners running full-blast in the hot Texas sun. I can't see any officers at first. Then, from the car on the left, three quick flashes are followed by the wave of an arm.
They're shooting at something.
“What is it?” Dave asks. “What’s going on?”
I put my hand up to shield the sun burning into my eyes through the window. “I don't know. Something—”
Sharp white flashes of light erupt from behind the door of the cruiser on my right. A second later, the pieces fall into place: the police are firing toward the hospital entrance, at someone inside the building.
I give Dave a play-by-play as the drama unfolds. The battle looks one-sided; no one returns the officers’ fire, the entire exchange occurring in eerie silence. I tap a fingernail against the window and inspect the edge where it meets the windowsill. Triple-paned. That explains it.
The firing escalates, both officers shooting in the same direction at the same time. Small flashes erupt over and over again from their pistols. One of the cops gets to his feet and dives into his car. A moment later, the car rockets backward and spins around, tires churning up great plumes of black smoke as the officer puts the pedal to the floor and tears off in the opposite direction. From my vantage point, I can't see the face of the remaining cop, but his body language tells me all I need to know. He's alone, and he's in trouble.
A man stumbles into view, heading in a straight line toward the remaining cruiser. He looks to be in his mid-forties, maybe a little older. Overweight, bald, and limping, he moves with a plodding, determined pace.
The remaining cop concentrates his fire on the bald man. I watch as the man twitches with each impact, twisting left, then right, yet always reorienting himself, maintaining his path toward the cruiser.
“They're shooting at a man!”
Dave's cast makes a loud thunk as he slides it off the bed and onto the gold-and-brown speckled linoleum floor.
I can't stop watching. The man is almost at the cruiser. He reaches for the door, his arms outstretched in a crude parody of an embrace. Then, I see the trail of blood behind him. A young woman, I think I saw her in the emergency room earlier, comes into my view behind the man. She's headed in the same direction, toward the cop.
The cop fires twice more at the man, then changes his aim to fire at the woman. One of his shots slams into her shoulder, knocking her backward a few feet, seeming to stop her in her tracks. As I watch in disbelief, she spins around in a slow circle until she faces the officer again and resumes her voyage. I want to be there, on the ground, to see what the cop is seeing. At the same time, though, I realize if I were down there, I would want to be anywhere else, anywhere at all.
Dave joins me at the window, the white of his knuckles grasping the window ledge and the tight line of his mouth testaments to his curiosity. I offer my shoulder for him to lean on, and he accepts.
“What the…?“ he asks, pointing at the lone cop.
I only turn my head away for a second, but it’s enough. The man and the woman, both bleeding profusely, reached the cop during my moment of inattention. They descend upon him in a frenzy of flailing arms, smothering him, becoming one with him. Before I know what’s happened, the cop is gone, swallowed up by his attackers.
Dave trembles against me, his entire body vibrating with suppressed fear.
“Do you have the phone?” I ask.
He's glued to the window, to the sight below. He points at the bed.
The phone has full signal. Perfect reception. Opening my contact list, I dial our mother. She lives in Waco, alone ever since our father died. I'm greeted by silence. Pulling it away so I can see the screen, I see the same message Dave saw. All circuits are busy.
“Who are you calling?” he asks.
“Mom.”
“Can you try Jenny again?”
Dave yells before I can dial. “Chris! Come here! The cop. He's okay. He's getting up!” Dave waves frantically, motioning me back to the window.
Sure enough, the cop is using the police cruiser to lever himself onto his feet.
Only, he's not okay. No. He's anything but. Although I can't make out details from my vantage point, it’s obvious something is terribly wrong with him. I blink, not believing my eyes. Again.
The cop, who not a minute earlier carried a sizable gut over his gun belt, appears to have lost his mid-section. His beefy upper body teeters on an impossibly thin waist, all sense of proportion obliterated.
This can't be right. His stomach. It's gone.
As I step away from the window, the nausea comes roaring back, crushing me to my knees as the half-digested remains of my breakfast burrito explode from my mouth.
“We need to get out of here,” I insist as I wipe my mouth cl
ean.
Dave shakes his head vigorously. “No way, man. I'm not going anywhere. Not now. You saw what happened to that cop.”
I leave Dave at the window and cross to the door. I put my hand on the handle, then looked back, hesitating. Maybe he has a point. Maybe we are safer in here. No. We need to find someone in charge.
Then, I hear a soft slap-slap and an intermittent squeak coming from the other side of the door. Stepping to the side of the doorjamb, I grit my teeth and slowly press down on the lever as carefully as humanly possible, praying all the while it doesn't make any noise.
No one listens to my prayer. The latch mechanism makes an ear-splitting KER-CHUNK as it reaches the bottom.
I suck in my breath and stand stock still, my hand a frozen claw on the lever. The sound in the hallway has stopped. I think.
Dave motions at me, telling me to get on with it.
Something in my gut tells me this is a bad idea, maybe the worst idea I've ever had. But I'm committed now. Screwing up my courage, I pull open the door a few inches and peer through the gap.
A woman stands at the door to the next room. She’s young, maybe in her twenties or early thirties, not my type, but definitely attractive with her lustrous blond hair cascading down her back in languorous waves. With a start, I realize I'm staring at the perfect curve of her bare ass peeking out at me from the open folds of her hospital gown. Embarrassed, I avert my gaze. Her right hand clutches a shiny chrome IV rack. A clear plastic line snakes into her forearm from the empty IV bag dangling from the rack.
“There's someone out here,” I whisper as I open the door a little more. “Miss?”
At first, I don't think she hears me, but then the IV rack rolls, tilting toward her as she tightens her grip. Bit by bit, it shifts, the empty bag swinging as if caught by an invisible breeze.
“Miss?” I repeat. “Are you okay?”
My internal alarm blares full-tilt, my fight or flight response pegged hard at flight. The IV bag is empty, and the girl, almost catatonic, ignores me. Maybe she's drugged up on painkillers? Maybe she was in surgery? The possibilities are endless.
Pulling the door open the rest of the way, I move into the hallway and take a tentative half-step toward her. I put out a hand to her, intending to tap her on the shoulder.
Like a dog disturbed from a deep slumber, the girl springs to life. With a feral screech, she twists to face me. The IV spins away, clattering to the floor in a raucous explosion of metal on tile. The line in her arm rips free with a sickening slurp and a jet of blood erupts from the free end, etching a thick line of gore across my chest and neck, barely missing my face.
I leap back, disgusted, and wipe at the spray of bodily fluids slicking my bare skin. “Hey!”
The girl lunges, arms outstretched, grasping for my face, her bony digits curled into makeshift talons, ten tiny pink razor blades. In the span of a heartbeat, I realize that whoever this girl once was is long gone. Twin orbs of bloodshot fury bore into me, burning in their intensity, consuming me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Dave hobbling across the room, leaning against the bed for support. His mouth hangs open, as if he's yelling, but I hear nothing.
BOOM!
The girl accelerates toward me, no longer under her own power.
BOOM! BOOM!
An enormous cavity appears in her chest, blood and gore sprays over me, over the wall, over everything.
“Out of the way!” someone shouts.
BOOM!
The girl's head disintegrates into a soupy mist of bone, blood, and brain matter. The lifeless husk of her body crashes to the floor, skidding to a stop at my feet.
“Mr. Thompson?”
I look up from the dead girl. It's Officer McElroy. He dashes down the hall toward me, his gun clutched in both hands but aimed at the floor. A woman holding a small child follows him, a terrified yet determined grimace on her face.
“McElroy?” I ask, shocked.
McElroy checks over his shoulder as he reaches us. Now that he's close, I can see the resolve in his eyes, and it infects me, displacing my fear, coursing through me in waves.
“What—“
He cuts me off with a shake of his head. “We don't have time. We have to get to the roof. Now! They're coming!”
“Who?” Dave asks from the door. “Who’s coming?”
McElroy gestures at the dead girl. “More like her.”
That's all I need to know. “Which way?”
The woman with the child steps from behind McElroy. Small splotches of blood stain her sage-green pants and flowered blouse. A nurse. “Down the hall.” She points past me. “It's not far.”
“Let's go,” McElroy says. “Our ride will be here any moment.”
I don't understand. “Our ride?”
McElroy glances over his shoulder again, then makes a show of checking his pistol. “My girlfriend. She flies the traffic chopper for KHOU. She's on the way.”
The elevator at the end of the hall opens with a soft bong. We all turn to look, and for a long, painful moment, it seems as if it’s a false alarm, that we’re jumping at our own shadows. Then, slowly, inexorably, a cluster of people spill from of the metal box. They're far enough away that I can't make out details, but it's obvious, even from this distance, that something isn’t right. Something in the way they're moving, stalking, taking their time to sniff the air, seems deliberate yet almost random. One of them, a fat man with no shirt, swivels his head toward us. A sound erupts from his throat, almost a bark, and as one, the group turns and surges in our direction.
“Let's go!” McElroy roars.
As we ascend the stairs to the roof, McElroy takes the rear, firing careful shots at the crowd approaching from behind, cursing as he dispatches each target, cursing twice every time he misses.
The stairs end at a heavy steel door with a push bar. The nurse goes through first, flooding the stairwell with light. I'm next, supporting Dave's weight with my shoulder. I know each step must be an exercise in agony for him as the impacts are transmitted through his cast into his freshly broken leg, but we keep going.
I hear the helicopter before I see it. It's behind us, whipping the air into a frenzy of dust and trash, mussing my hair, drowning out all semblance of thought.
McElroy nudges me from behind, and Dave and I shuffle forward.
“We've got to block it!” McElroy screams. He runs around to the side of the exit, returning a moment later with a piece of two-by-four, which he wedges under the door handle. He stomps down on the wood, locking it in place against the gravel-covered roof.
I don't think it will hold for long. In fact, I know it won't. But maybe it will hold long enough. The last thing I saw before we entered the stairwell was another elevator full of people spilling into the hallway.
We don't have long. There are too many of them.
“This way!” McElroy yells over the clatter of the helicopter. He takes the nurse’s hand and leads her toward the helicopter.
I look at Dave and mouth, “You okay?”
He nods, blinking through tears of agony, and motions for me to go. We set off after McElroy and the nurse. Dave's cast leaves a thick ragged line, a map charting our imminent demise, in the roof gravel as we approach the helicopter.
McElroy is helping the nurse and child into the helicopter when we arrive, pushing from behind. He looks over his shoulder at Dave and me, his mouth a grim line of despair. He shakes his head.
I can't hear a thing at this point; the rotor noise is my world.
My stomach falls off a cliff as I look into the helicopter and realize the cause of McElroy's expression. It's a small machine, the kind of chopper used for traffic reporting and following criminals on the run. Four seats total, one already occupied by the pilot. The nurse holding the child and another man clutching a bare bleeding arm to his chest sit in the two rear seats. I can't be sure, but I think I see teeth marks on the man’s forearm, as if someone has taken a chunk out of him. His eye
s are closed, his head tilted against the far door.
There's no more room.
The pilot, a pretty woman with red hair tied back in a ponytail, twists around in her seat and meets my eyes. She looks down, and I see her brow furrow as she struggles with the calculations. She can’t save all of us. We all know it.
Grabbing McElroy, she screams something into his ear. A moment later, he turns to Dave and me and holds up a single finger.
Dave squeezes my shoulder and looks toward the stairwell. His pulse, hot and fast, thunders against me where our skin meets.
Our time is up. Our options have been reduced to a terrible singularity. Only one of us will make it off this roof alive.
Dave’s shout interrupts my thoughts. “Go!” He squeezes my shoulder and tries to push me away, toward the helicopter, toward salvation.
I shoot a glance at McElroy. His gun is out, trained on the stairwell, waiting.
The world tilts.
I'm seventeen. Dave is nineteen. We're on a white-water rafting trip somewhere in Colorado.
The raft tips, and I'm out, free from the boat, swirling, upside down. My back scrapes and grinds along the river bottom; a wall of gray fills my vision, an enormous boulder reaching for me. Water floods into my mouth, up my nose, filling my lungs in an instant, denying me the basic right to scream. Out of nowhere, fingers knit into my hair, grasping, pulling, and ripping so hard it feels as if my scalp is unzipping from my skull.
Sunlight. I'm back in the boat, and Dave is straddling me, pressing on my chest.
The roof. Now.
I grasp Dave and shove him into the helicopter. Tears stream from my eyes as I lean into him and scream, “Find Max and Jenny!”
Dave gapes at me, slack-jawed. Then, with a frantic look in his eye, he wraps me in a spine-crushing hug, squeezing me so tight I'm afraid he's broken me.
And then he's gone, pushed into the chopper by McElroy, stuffed into the impossibly small space like a piece of carryon luggage.
The engine strains as the machine claws its way from the roof. For a second, I don't think they'll make it, that they'll touch down again and push Dave out, but bit by bit, inch by inch, they ascend, the engine noise becoming more regular. The nose of the chopper tilts down, and they lift away, climbing into the clear blue sky, into the future.
Elements of the Undead - Omnibus Edition (Books One - Three) Page 19