“There’s only one way to find out.” I gestured to the truck. “Joe, pull the truck over the bridge, but back it in so that we can leave in a hurry.”
We hoofed it over the bridge and started climbing up the truck and bus.
The sight that greeted us was worse than anyone could have imagined. We hadn’t even made a dent in the infected dead in the area. They were so packed against the vehicles, they couldn’t even move.
“Hey, Corp!” Joe yelled up at me, causing all the ZITs below us to turn and look at us, causing the two rows of overturned vehicles to rock.
“Shh…” I yelled in a whispered hush. “Throw those grenades into the crowd past the bridge. We need to be able to keep the bridge stable.”
While the grenades were going off, I radioed Joe, who was the only one left on the ground. “I need you to stay here with the truck. I’m going to have Steve stay up here on the trucks and pick off anything that we can’t take care of on the ground.”
The grenades had cleared out some of the packed space, but there were still too many for us to get down off of the trucks just yet.
“We need to thin these out some more. What do we have in terms of a larger explosive?”
“Other than dropping a bomb on the entire area, not much, except for those three special weapons they handed out when we left the temporary base.” Len gestured back to the supply truck where there were three flamethrowers stashed.
“Guess our bosses aren’t worried about the rights of a few infected dead people.” Steve grinned, finding his statement humorous.
“If society starts up again, that will be one of the first activist groups to look out for, ‘The Zombie Rights Group’ where we won’t be able to use bullets or fire on the dead because it won’t be humane,” Len chimed in.
“Well then, let’s take out as many of these ZITs as we can so that there won’t be any for the activists to worry about in the future,” I shot back as the crowd below started to come back at the sound of our voices.
I grabbed one of the flamethrowers and started aiming into the crowd at our feet.
The skin melted off the dead as the fiery heat did its job. The other ZITs were drawn to the flame, and when the other two got started, we began to make a dent in the mass of bodies.
After about ten minutes, we needed to let things cool down or we’d never be able to walk across the bridge.
“Steve, throw a couple of grenades to make them wander away from this area.”
I sank down on the metal roof that was warm, but not completely unbearable yet. I needed to cool down from the heat and make sure that all my protective gear was in the correct place around my calves so that nothing could bite through.
“Go ahead and put the armplates on. When the area clears out and cools down a little, we’ll go down and burn these guys out of our way.”
The explosions had almost settled when the four of us dropped down from the roof, landing with a jarring thud. The crunch of still smoking bones and squishing flesh were the first impressions that washed over me as I faced my first zombie horde. This was nothing like the video games everyone played, fighting zombies in a fictional world. These were really dead people with flesh hanging from their bodies because of the grenades we’d thrown at them.
Thankfully, we could put these dead people out of their misery as we started the flames, clearing a path toward the doors of the hospital.
Rick was taking shots at those getting too close as we moved forward.
Only about a hundred feet remained between us and the hospital door when a shift occurred in the mass of dead. They seemed to surge in from the sides, but the rocket launcher roared above us, taking out a section on each side. Rick finished up the extras as we ran to the hospital doors. They slid open, letting out those trapped in-between the inner and outer doors.
The flamethrowers were too large for the five ZITs that lumbered toward us. We pulled our smaller guns out, pointing them toward the problem coming at us.
“Tom and Len, you take the sides. Rick, watch our backs,” I whispered, dropping those in front of us.
Those that had been stuck behind the inner doors came through when the five bodies had moved toward us. Now we had at least twenty or more coming through the doors since they were opened, and our window of relief was closing in as the others from the side masses made our small path disappear behind us.
“Everyone inside.” Thankfully, the guys didn’t second-guess my decision as we shot into the group holding the doors open.
I stepped over the bodies that still seemed to twitch. Once inside the small opening, I shot those in the doorway, pushing them backward into the others trying to come through. I reached up and turned the emergency switch off before another set could come through.
The guys made it in and did the same thing to the outside door.
“Should we leave the flamethrowers here so we don’t have to carry them everywhere?” Tom asked, making a good recommendation.
“What if we have to leave by another exit and can’t come back to this door? Or the ZITs manage to make it through the glass doors? Then we’re up a creek. Either way is not a good option. I’ll leave it up to majority rules, though. Keep them here or take them with us?”
Three hands went up for leaving them. I couldn’t really blame them because they were so heavy. We propped them in the inner corner and took up a stance, ready to dive in when the doors were opened.
“All right, open her up,” I ordered Tom.
The dead had tripped over the others that I’d shot and were reaching up for help. A round to the head made it safe for us to walk over them.
There weren’t as many since most of them had walked out the doors, but our gunfire had brought some of the other moaning dead from rooms and other hallways.
Tom shut the doors behind us so that hopefully we’d have a safe place to retreat to that wasn’t crawling with ZITs.
Most of the lights were off, and the only emergency lighting, along with the exit lights, were still working. There were some rooms that had a lot of light coming out into the hallway because the blinds were open, allowing some extra light to filter through.
I had expected the halls to be filled with infected and nurses, but there were a manageable number—at the moment.
“It would be faster to split up, but I think we should clear it like we would in a very hostile environment. Two in front and two to sweep a room should help us catch any surprises,” I ordered, motioning which teams of two and taking the lead.
Rick and Tom stayed in the hall to pick off the stragglers that were coming to the party. Len and I swept into a room, then the bathroom, to make sure there weren’t any trapped people in there. As we came out of the room, they peeled off into the next one and we stood guard.
At the end of the hall, we turned around and did the other two ER halls in the same fashion, leaving the main hall for last because it went into the main hospital.
There was a stairway at the next main hallway intersection, and everyone knew that we needed to make our way upstairs as quickly as possible.
“Rick and I will go back and get a few of those beds to block off the hallways we haven’t cleared yet. Then we can open up the stairs and start up.”
“Corporal, it’s going to take more than two beds to block this off.”
“I know, Len, but you two can get the next set. It’ll keep the infected away from what we’ve cleared, so at least we’ll know if they’ve moved. Anything human can just crawl over or under to get around the barricades.”
I continued to walk to the hospital beds that had been left in the entrance hallway.
The clock on the wall over the nurse’s desk proclaimed it was only 9:30 in the morning, and I felt like we’d been in battle for hours.
The need to check in with the two guys outside hit me, so I turned my radio up and pressed the walkie’s talk button. “Everything okay out there, Steve? Joe?”
“Yep, just watching things out here. Nothing behind us so far, but the crowd out front came back, although not as thick as before. They sure are persistent things,” Steve reported, sounding really bored.
“All right. We have the ER locked down and are about to open the stairwell to see if we can make it up to the top. Back to radio silence.”
That was all I needed was to have the radio go off and draw the ZITs to us when we were in trouble.
The halls had taken on such a quiet peacefulness, that the squeak of the beds wheels echoed loudly, sounding weird. We got the beds in place, just as two ZITs showed up.
I watched them try to move past the beds, but with the brakes on, they weren’t going anywhere. I took aim and put them out of their pain, but I wasn’t sure that they really feel pain anymore. They could be missing body parts and they would keep coming toward you like it didn’t bother them.
The other two returned quickly, and we went back to retrieve the last two beds when all hell broke loose.
The last hallway led to the emergency waiting room, and also had automatic doors that were letting the ZITs waltz right inside.
Tom and Len were holding them off, but we slid the beds into place to keep a distance from their hands that could pull us into the horde.
“I’ll be back!” Rick yelled and ran down the hallway by himself.
He came back pulling a chair behind him, and stood on it as soon as he got into the hallway intersection.
Extra height gave us the advantage of taking these suckers out before they reached us so that we could make some headway.
“Stay there until we get to the corner, and then follow us into the waiting room. Hopefully, we’ve pulled them toward us and cleaned it out just a little.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rick acknowledge without breaking his concentration on taking out the horde.
I climbed over the beds and the other two followed me, watching the floor to make sure that none of the bodies reached up to grab us.
ZITs littered the hall, and we were closer to the corner so that Rick had to stop until we were around it because he didn’t want to hit us.
The waiting room was full, with about thirty infected, but the doors were wide open, letting more in every minute.
“Cover me!” I yelled, shooting at those in the doorway so that we could get them closed.
Hands brushed my cheek as I jumped over several dead bodies and continued to shoot as the inner doors were cleared and those outside were stalled.
Shots continued as I started to push the dead out of the sliding door’s way. I hit the emergency switch, closing the doors behind me as I faced more coming through. The guys yelling sounded distant as I focused on the goal: get these guys outside and the doors closed.
My gun had never gotten this much action, even when we’d been overseas with insurgents firing back at us. I groaned when the trigger clicked. My clip was out of bullets.
Backed against the doors, I fell through them as the guys found the switch on the inside and opened the door. My team came through, shooting and shoving dead bodies out of the way until it was clear and we could shut both doors against the flood of dead outside.
“Hey, Corp? Are you all right?” Tom asked anxiously.
The only thing that came out of my mouth was a hysterical laugh, and the relief felt wonderful.
“Just give me a minute.” I sat on the floor and put my head between my legs as the reality of what we were doing set in, hard.
“I know you’re in charge, Corporal, but we can’t have you taking chances like that because we need you to make sure we don’t screw up. Your brains are too important to us for you to let the zombies have them. Got it?” Tom, my second in command, gave me the guilt trip I needed.
“You’re right, it was stupid. My adrenaline was going and it seemed natural. I’m sorry.” I looked around at their tired faces.
“Back to the hallway and the stairs, but first we’re going to eat something and catch our breaths.” I walked over to the vending machine and busted the glass, grabbing chips and a candy bar.
Rick grinned when he saw what I was doing and used the butt of his gun to knock the lock off of the soda machine.
“This had better not end up in any reports because I don’t want to be court-martialed over a soda machine and a few chips,” I warned them with a smile.
“We should empty them out and take the stuff back to the supply vehicle,” Rick suggested as he popped the top on a cola.
“It’ll weigh us down on the way upstairs, but it can be our reward if we make it back down to carry as much as we can with us.”
“How are we doing on ammo?” I asked, sitting in one of the chairs and digging in the pack for another set of clips that could be easily reached.
“I’m about halfway out,” Tom chimed in, with Len and Rick echoing his statement.
“Okay, when we get to the upper floors, we may need to setup something so that Joe can send us some more ammo. I don’t think we can make it back through the horde on what we have, even with the flamethrowers.”
“Agreed. I’m hoping the first couple of floors have the most infected because there were so many sick that just walked in and hadn’t been seen yet. I think the upper floors is where they relocated all the normal sick people.”
Everyone gave Len an incredulous look. “Hey, just hear me out. If you were a heart patient, you weren’t going to die from the infection, so they moved all those upstairs because they were the normal sick. But those that had the other kind of symptoms were brought to the ER and infected all the other people. Plus, with the door being open, those ZITs weren’t trying to go upstairs unless they heard something. There were too many here in the waiting room for them to have made it through the door leading to the stairs. Unless there’s another way up besides the stairwells and elevators, the top floors should be less populated.”
“Wow, Len, that was quite a speech, and I agree with you that there should be less infected, so we’ll use less ammo as well. We aren’t going to clear all the floors, though, just the stairway leading up to the top. If there are people up there, we need to get them back to the truck without getting them killed.” I stood up, signaling that the break was over and it was time to get back to work.
The stairway wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and thankfully, this hospital didn’t have stairs leading to the basement in this stairwell.
At each doorway, I peered through the glass in the door to check out the ZIT situation. On most floors, you could see them moving around, but they weren’t all packed together like they were outside the hospital.
Ten flights, and about twenty ZITs later, we made it to the top floor. I motioned for the guys to take a seat.
“Rest for just a minute to catch our breaths.”
“Hey, Corp, are you implying we’re not in the best of shape?” Len sarcastically accused me.
“Nope, but we need to be fresh in case there are still people on this floor. We’ve been at this for hours and I’m not marine trained, so I know for a fact that I have an exhausted button. Though if you’re feeling froggy then go ahead, but I’m pretty sure that most of us lost our energy hours ago.
Loud laughter filled the hallway and was quickly followed by thumps on the door we would be going through in just a minute.
“Looks like our friends have found us. Guess we can let froggy take the lead since he’s just hopping to go.” Tom slapped Len on the back as he got up from the step he’d been sitting on and adjusted his gun, ready to face more ZITs.
Tom placed his hand on the door handle, ready to open it when we were ready. At my nod, he pulled the door back quickly, letting five ZITs fill the landing.
As they landed at our feet, a few more approached and were taken care of without any danger.
Rick leaped over the bodies and started pulling them into the hall so that the door could be closed behind us.
I took a peek aro
und the corner, spotting a few more headed our way.
The layout on the top floor was different because there was only one door in each hall, but they led to a glassed hall with rooms on the other side for infectious diseases. Ironic, really, that the infected were walking the halls, and it looked like the rooms to keep the disease from us were empty.
It didn’t take much to clear all the hallways on the entire floor, but that left the enclosed rooms. There were signs that someone had been alive because there were dead bodies lying around, and it wasn’t because we’d killed them, so we proceeded with extra caution.
Three sets of rooms had a single ZIT, or two, but the fourth glassed room didn’t have any.
I motioned for quiet because this it seemed like the place where the living humans would be holed up.
Opening the door, we entered and didn’t see anything on the beds, so Tom hit the button to open the door.
Two heads popped up from behind the wall, staring at us in amazement.
“Stop,” I commanded Tom.
“Are you sick?” I questioned through the glass separating us from the first living people we’d seen in several days.
“No, we’re both nurses and we were up here resting when the infected attacked.” The willowy blonde stood there in blood covered scrubs.
Another nurse stood slightly behind her, as if she could protect him from the monsters outside in the halls.
What a wuss, I thought.
Tom opened the door the rest of the way at my nod.
Both of them grabbed their personal backpacks, but they must not have had an extra change of clothes in them because they smelled horrible. Even surrounded by the rotting dead, these two reeked of weeks of no showers.
“Is it safe to leave now? Are those things gone?” the female nurse asked anxiously.
“Not exactly. I’m Corporal Jackson, and we’ll try to get you out to our base camp, but you’re going to have to do some running. Have either one of you ever shot a gun before?” I looked them both over in the dim light.
Military Against Zombies (The Against Zombies Series Book 2) Page 7