9.0 - Sanctum (19 page)

We exited the dark stairwell into a dimly lit hall on what turned out to be the second floor of a hospital.  It looked and smelled like a storehouse for corpses, one central place for them all to rot.  The walls were lined with bodies lying or sitting where they’d died, decomposing, flesh slowly collapsing over their skeletons, fluids running across the floor.  Few looked to have been scavenged by anything except the rats, flies, and roaches.  The cockroaches skittered everywhere I looked.  Fly buzz filled my ears as they clouded the air in the hall.  The rats, fat and malicious, staked out their claims to the decaying meat beneath their feet.

Eve wretched.  Jazz and Fritz did too. 

It wasn't the best place to pause and take stock, but I needed to know where we stood before we moved on.  We were all scraped and bruised.  I asked, "Anyone hurt too bad to run? Broken bones?” I tapped my head.  "Concussions? Anything like that?"

Graced stepped up to Jazz and started checking her, looking into her mouth and examining the blood on her face to find the wound.  Eve checked Fritz.

“Quick,” I told them.

Everyone went through whatever they figured was enough of an evaluation to see they were in full working order.  I took one of the two rifles I’d been carrying and handed it to Eve.  I gave the other to Fritz.  That left only Javendra unarmed and he seemed okay with that until I put the extra pistol in his hand.  “You might need this.  But by God, don’t shoot unless one of us shoots first.  Got it?”

Javendra, wide-eyed and frightened, nodded as his teeth started to chatter.

“Adrenaline.”  I reached out and turned his face to make him look right at me, to assure him I knew what I was talking about.  I was hoping I was, too.  Mostly I was hoping he wasn’t a raving coward.  Cowards make bad choices.  Bad choices get people killed.  I turned to Murphy.  “You wanna lead?”

“You’re the man with the mojo.”  Murphy stepped between some corpses to get close to a wall so everyone could pass through the narrow floor space between the bodies in the center of the hall floor.  “I’ll take up the rear.”

No time to argue.  I headed down the hall with my machete in one hand, and my knife in a sheath on my hip beside a pistol I was now carrying there.  I was ready to do some killing.  But mostly I needed to get everyone away from the hospital as quickly as possible.  Every hungry White in San Angelo would be descending on us.  More helicopter assholes were probably on their way from the Air Force base. 

I started jogging, looking back to make sure everyone was coming, and to make sure everyone was matching the pace.  At the end of the hall, I rounded a corner, careful with my feet in the slippery mess between the bodies.  In a nice surprise, a long catwalk branched out of the corner of the building to stretch catty-corner across the intersection below, toward what looked like an older, taller hospital building.

I had a flash of a memory of a similar walkway between the buildings back when I was trying to get Steph, Dalhover, and all the others out of Brackenridge hospital, but I had no time to dwell on that. 

I called over my shoulder, "We need to get across here as fast as possible.”  Made sense to me.  If I were in one of the helicopters overhead, it wouldn't take me long to decide to spray the walkway with bullets, just in case.

I sprinted.

At the far end, I rounded a corner as I was slowing down and looking back.  I should have been looking where I was going instead.  I bumped into a pair of Whites who'd been running to access that end of the catwalk.  We all fell onto the decaying corpses that lined the walls.  I rolled as I fell, trying to keep my body moving forward.  I'd need to get back to my feet in a second or two, and I didn't want to be trying to do that within the grasp of a crazed cannibal.

Two shots thundered in the hall.  Two more followed right after, ringing my ears.

I looked up to see Fritz with his rifle against his shoulder, looking down the barrel at the Whites who were motionless on the floor.  Just then, an explosion rumbled up the length of the catwalk, rattling all the windows and vibrating through the floor.

Fritz looked at me.  “What the fuck?”

“The helicopter?” I asked. 

“Had to be.”

I was up and looking back into the catwalk as everyone stumbled into the hall around us, shaken but still on their feet.

So far so good. 

But the hairy part was yet to come.  Every second that passed gave the Whites in town more time to trap us in the building.  The longer we stayed in the connected buildings, the less time we’d have to escape out the other side without the nosy eyes of a bunch of helicopter assholes watching us go.  Because if they saw us come into the street, they only had to hover over us to make sure every White in San Angelo knew where we were.

It was time to run again—not jog, but run.  I led everyone through a hall that ran the length of the building, dodging decaying bodies, rubbish, and enormous rats.

At the end of the hall, we raced down a stairwell with windows to the outside, bringing in plenty of light for us to avoid the dead who lay on the landings and the steps.  At the bottom, I pushed an exit door open and peeked.  The door opened to a parking lot jammed solid with abandoned cars next to a street that didn’t look much different.  Across the street, I spied a tall, white steeple on a red brick church at the corner of a complex of buildings the same color.

“Anything?” Fritz asked from right behind me.

I shook my head as I scanned the blue sky.  I heard the helicopters.  They were up there even though I couldn't see them.  I turned to face everyone crowded at the bottom of the stairs.  "It's a maze of cars.  I didn't see any Whites, but you can bet your ass they're out there.  We're going to sneak through.  Keep down.  Go as fast as you can.  Stick together.”  I looked at Fritz, at Eve, and then at Javendra.  "For those of us handicapped with normal skin color, stay behind the rest of us if we come across any Whites.”  I focused on Javendra.  He was nervous, and I didn't trust him not to fuck up.  "And don't shoot unless somebody else does."

“You told me before,” he muttered.

“Because it’s fuckin’ important,” Murphy said with a fake grin before slapping Javendra on the back.  “Be cool.  Pay attention.  And we’ll all live through this.  Okay?”

Leaving the Javendra problem to Murphy, I leaned out the door, scanned what I could see of the sky, and figured it was time.  I jogged out, looking back and forth as I headed for a spot between two tall pickups.  The others followed.

I spotted a White almost immediately.  She was working her way through the maze of cars, trying to find the source of the noise the helicopters were making.  She’d just come around the front of one of the trucks as I was coming into the gap between them, and suddenly, we were face to face.

She froze, surprised to see me, slow to react.

I wasn’t slow.  I had my machete up, ready to do its bloody work, and I brought it down and across, slashing at her throat.

Her arm came up to block my blade, but only after the machete had cut through her neck and banged against the fender of the truck to my left.

She collapsed, grasping at my flesh and struggling to catch a breath through all the blood flowing down her windpipe.  She was going to die, one more to add to the mounds of corpses in my wake.  I stepped over her and moved on. 

Other Whites were in the parking lot but not as many as I expected.  I saw them through the dirty windows of cars that separated us.  Mostly they didn’t give me more than a glance.  The helicopters were so much more tempting than a skinny bald White carrying a bloody machete.

We made it through the parking lot and crossed the street and then wove our way between closely jammed cars on the sidewalk and narrow lawn in front of the church.  Once through those, I bounded up a handful of steps and crossed a portico to a pair of double doors, painted white and streaked with smears of dry blood.  They sat ajar, a clear invitation for us to come on in.

We passed through a foyer and another set of doors into the chapel.  Far at the other end of the oblong room, a lectern stood in front of a baptismal pool with a giant cross on the wall above.  Row after row of pews was filled with the dead lying on the benches, laying on one another, some seated but bent over.  Others were on the floor.  Among them were some dogs, feeding on the carrion, more rats, and thick clouds of flies.

“What the fuck?” Murphy asked, talking more to himself than the rest of us all standing there with feet momentarily glued in place. 

Nobody answered.

None of us had an answer to give.  San Angelo was different than the other places we'd been.  In all those places, the Whites had gnawed the corpses down to the bone, and they'd killed the dogs and the cats in their need to feed.  And it had occurred over the whole of the cities and towns we'd visited.  It had happened so fast that no hospital, no overflow church across the street had become overwhelmed with so many dying patients.

More to worry about later.

"C'mon,” I told them and jogged down the center of the chapel, past the pews.  When I reached the front of the church, I didn't pause at the lectern, I turned left toward the door in the corner.  Once there, I cautiously opened it, found a nearly empty room beyond, empty of the living, that is.  A few bodies were rotting inside.  A door on the other side of the room looked like the way to go.

Minutes later, after we’d passed through a building attached to the church, we were out the back and running through another packed parking lot, seeing disinterested Whites by the handful but certainly not by the hundreds.  Behind us by a few blocks now, four helicopters were circling the hospital building we’d crashed on.  Another Black Hawk was flying in from the Air Force base.  No one was shooting.

We crossed another street and ran down a narrow alley, passing dumpsters and grease barrels behind restaurants that faced the street on the other side.  Still, we weren’t seeing many Whites.  The ones we did see at a distance didn’t howl, they didn’t chase, and they certainly didn’t attack. 

I decided to push our transient luck and follow the alley through two more blocks before Fritz tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention.  I stopped by a dirty brick wall where the dumpsters on both sides would keep us from view of anyone passing by on the roads at both ends of the alley.  Fritz pointed up at a sign on a door we'd just passed.  The building was a bar.  He said, "We're far enough away.  Maybe we should hide."

I looked up at a narrow slit of blue sky I could see between the buildings on both sides of the alley.  "We're not far enough from the hospital."

Grace stepped close.  Panting, she put a hand on my shoulder.  “We’re far enough.  They’re not going to search door-to-door for us.”

“No,” Fritz agreed.  “They can’t have that kind of manpower.  They’ll fly overhead like they did back in Austin.  That’s all.  We’re better off inside, hiding, than outside where we risk being spotted when they conclude we’re not all dead in the helicopter crash.”

I glanced at the sky again, remembering our run through Austin after Murphy and me had helped Fritz and his friends escape from the Survivor Army.  The Whites that night had been more dangerous to us than the helicopters and the Humvees.  I climbed a few greasy steps and put a hand on the knob on the tavern’s back door.  I glanced at the others for any objections.  None.

I opened it.

There wasn’t much to it, the same retro shit you see in every warehouse-district bar in every town—worn old brick on a wall or two, a ninety-year-old wooden floor covered in character-enhancing scars and varnish, an old-style stamped-tin ceiling that was probably plastic tiles with a faux patina.  The genuine part of the bar was the stink of cigarette smoke and the smell of piss coming from the restrooms.  No decay, though.  No bodies were rotting away inside.  That made the bar primo property for short-term guests like me and my friends.

“Somebody needs to go to the front and keep watch.”  I pointed at the big windows that faced the street.  “Maybe turn over some tables to hide behind so you won’t be noticeable.”

Eve said, “I’ll take guard duty.”

“I’m with her.”  Fritz followed her toward the front. 

Murphy took Jazz, and they went through a swinging door into what had to be the kitchen.

Grace went around behind the bar, and Javendra said, "I feel useless.  Should I do something?"

I looked him up and down, standing, doing nothing, not knowing the first thing about staying alive in the world as it was.  He was a fumbling liability no matter how valuable he might be in finding a vaccine.  “Just watch what we do.”  I nodded my head toward Grace.  “We’ve got some experience at things you need to learn.”

Fritz called over from where he was by the front windows.  “Don’t listen to him, Javendra.”

I turned to Fritz, a little offended.  “What?”

“You’re talking down to him.”  Fritz walked back toward us.  He looked at Javendra.  “Zed’s a good guy.  He knows what he’s doing, but he gets stuck in dick mode.”

“What?” Didn’t I just save your ass? Again?

Fritz put a hand on my shoulder, and his salesman smile made everything seem okay.  "Look, man, you've got to understand, this is a big change for Javendra.  He's been living the good life—the safe life—inside the veterinary science building.

“I know that,” I said.  “I want to keep him alive.  We went to a lot of trouble for his sake.”  In truth, it was for my sake and for everyone else’s.  A small part of me believed there was still hope that Javendra, last of the scientists, would be able to come up with a vaccination to protect humanity’s future children from the virus.  But to do that alone, with the jack-shit equipment he was likely to have out in Balmorhea, he’d have to be a fucking genius.  Otherwise, I’d wasted my time and risked my life for pretty much nothing.  I looked at Javendra.  “You wouldn’t happen to be a fucking genius, would you?”

Javendra stuttered through a response that came out sounding like babbled noise.

Fritz put an arm over Javendra’s shoulder and guided him away.  “If you’re going to learn from somebody, it’s better you learn from me or Eve.  We’re not infected.  We don’t have white skin.”

“Isn’t that a little bit racist?” I asked them as they walked away.

Fritz turned to look at me, laughing.  "Jesus, Zed.  All I'm saying is you can walk out there, and the Whites won't mess with you.  Me, Eve, Javendra, we can't.  The rules are different for us.  We still look like normal people used to look."

Javendra stepped back over to me, his hand extended.  “Thank you.”

I shook his hand.  “Don’t worry about it.”

He looked at Grace.  "Thank you, too.”  He called to the back where Murphy and Jazz were in the kitchen, "Thank—"

I shushed him with a harsh look and a raised hand.  “Don’t call out.”  I pointed outside.  “The Whites will hear you.  Like I said, don’t do anything you don’t see someone else do first.”

Javendra shrank and turned to walk to the front of the pub.

Fritz said to me, “He’s a smart guy.  He’ll be fine.  He just needs some time.”

“Yeah.”  I scooted out a stool and sat down at the bar.

“What can I get you?” asked Grace from behind the bar.  “Doesn’t look like the place was ransacked.”

“How’s that possible?” I peered over the bar.  “Fritz, why don’t you grab a seat and let’s figure out what we’re doing next.”

Grace put a beer bottle down in front of me and popped the top open.

Fritz looked at it and told Grace, “Same for me.”

She put a bottle down for him and opened one for herself.

I drank.  The temperature didn’t matter.  It tasted like food.