A Glimpse of Decay (Book 3): Lost in Twilight (19 page)

“But you can’t leave just like that,” Farris pleaded.  Jim could see the fear in the man’s eyes.

“We’re not staying,” Jim stated.  “I’m not forcing any of you to come with me, so please don’t try to force me to stay.”  He then walked over and took Irene by the hand.  “Come on, honey, let’s go.”

“I’m with you,” she said.

Without looking back, Jim opened the door and the two of them stepped out into the hall.  He drew his pistol and they started jogging down the corridor towards a stairwell.  He opened the heavy door and looked down the darkened stairs.  He realized that the fifth floor was the only floor that was powered.  The rest of the building had been blacked out.  The roar of gunfire from down below echoed off of the concrete walls.  Looking over at Irene, he smiled nervously and asked, “You ready?”

***

Karnes and the two other soldiers grabbed at the doors of the Humvee as Carrie slammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a stop just outside of the south entrance of the hospital.  The four quickly piled out of the vehicle and began to run towards the barricaded vestibule.

“Open the fucking doors!” Karnes screamed.  “Let us in!”  Just inside of the vestibule, the glass walls were lined with desks, filing cabinets, tables, and soda and snack machines—basically anything that could be used to reinforce the entrance points to the hospital.  The same was done for all the other entrances, and the electric sliding doors to the emergency room had been blocked off by an ambulance parked across the entrance.

“Hold on,” called a voice from inside.  “The power to the doors has been cut, so we have to open them by hand.”

“Well hurry up!” Carrie screamed.  “We don’t have long out here!”

Two frightened looking soldiers climbed up onto the stacked items that formed the barricade and they began to tug on the doors.  Just then, a fast mover came into sight and made a dash for the exposed troopers.  He was quickly riddled by rifle fire from Karnes.  The infected man spun and twirled as the bullets tore through his body.  As he crashed down onto the pavement, Carrie ran out to him and shot him in the head.

“Watch out!” Karnes yelled as he aimed at a lumbering zombie.  It had popped out from around the corner of the building and was heading towards Carrie.  He placed the red chevron of his sights on the head of the mangled, grotesque looking woman and he squeezed off a round.  The bullet struck low and to the right, taking off a large portion of her cheek.

“Fuck!” Karnes cursed aloud.  It was hard to shoot at the head of a moving target, especially when the adrenaline was pumping and the mind was stressed.  As he readjusted his sight, a bullet from one of the other soldiers scattered the zombie’s brains into oblivion.

“Get your ass back here!” Karnes yelled to Carrie.  Realizing just how exposed she was, she ran back towards the awning of the entrance.

After struggling with the doors for what seemed an eternity, the soldiers inside were finally able to get them pried open enough to allow Karnes and the others just enough room to squeeze between them.  “You first!” he yelled to Carrie.  “Come on.”

He knelt down and cupped his hands together.  He was going to have to hoist her up so she could squeeze through the opening and climb over the barricade inside of the doors.  As she planted her boot down onto his hands, she looked at him and said, “Don’t take too long to get in here,”

“I won’t,” he grunted as he lifted her up.

With her rifle slung over her back, she reached through the opening and grabbed onto the legs of a desk that was stacked on top of two snack machines that were lying on top of each other.  She pulled herself up onto the desk and dropped down into the vestibule.

“Alright, you two are next,” Karnes told the other two soldiers.  Both of them were nervously scanning the area just outside of the entrance and they looked at each other in confusion—wondering who was going to go first.

“You go first, Washburn,” said one soldier to the other.  With that, Washburn ran over to Karnes and was lifted up and through the doors.  He quickly shimmied over the desk and jumped down into the vestibule.

“Okay, you’re it,” Karnes said to the last soldier.  The frightened red-head ran and was hoisted up by Karnes.  Once the trooper was on top of the desk, he turned and reached for Karnes.  As the sergeant was being pulled up and through the doors, a large number of reanimated made their way into the entrance and began to slap on the glass barriers.  Several of them reached in through the two open doors and began to grab and shove at the snack machines and other barricade items.  One pair of shriveled hands actually grabbed onto Karnes’ dangling legs and began to pull him back out through the doors.

“Shit, one of them has my legs!” Karnes screamed down to Carrie.  “Hurry, pull me in!”  The soldiers manning the entrance, along with Carrie, Washburn and his partner, all grabbed at Karnes and pulled him in the rest of the way.  He tumbled down the stacked barricade and fell onto his back, knocking the wind from him.

“Hurry, shut the doors!” Carrie screamed as she stepped over Karnes.  “They’re trying to push in the barricade!”

Two soldiers climbed up on top of the clutter and began to try to pull the doors shut.  Karnes gathered his wind and his senses and got back to his feet.  He could see between the desks and chairs and he was horrified to see that the entranceway was clogged with undead and infected.  Just then, the glass of the left door shattered under the weight of all of the attackers and the barricade began to shift.  Karnes grabbed Carrie by her sleeve and pulled her back from the unstable stack of furniture and snack machines.

“Shit, it’s giving way!” Karnes yelled.  “Get off of there!” he yelled up to the two soldiers who were still trying to force the doors shut.  “They’ve already broken the glass, get down off of there!”  It was too late.  The rest of the left door gave way and the barricade came crashing down.  The two soldiers who were on top of the pile were now on the bottom—smashed under the heavy desk and chairs.  Before he could react, one of the troopers was being drug out of the hospital by a hungry mob of undead.

“Go!” Karnes screamed as he turned to run.  He looked back at Carrie and made sure that she was doing the same thing.  In a futile attempt to stop the attack, she lowered her rifle to her hip, emptying a full magazine into the swarming corpses.  Although a few were brought down, the others simply stepped over them and clambered their way through the debris of the fallen barricade.

***

Riggins opened the door to the command center and cautiously stepped in.  He immediately saw the pool of blood on the ground—he couldn’t miss it because he had stepped into it—and he called out for Hartman and Collier.  He then saw Collier standing at the window with her back to him.  He took a step towards her and called her name again.  She turned towards him—slowly and awkwardly—and she swayed.  He could see streaks of blood running from the corners of her mouth—and he saw her milk white eyes.

“Holy shit!” Riggins screamed aloud.  He immediately realized that somehow Collier had turned into a reanimated.  He drew his pistol and was about to fire at her when someone came bursting from out of the utility closet.  It was Hartman.  In a violent crash, Hartman had knocked the surprised captain off of his feet.  The two men tumbled to the ground and Riggins’s pistol skidded across the carpet.

Clawing madly at his victim’s face, Hartman screamed and shrieked.  His nails dug deep into Riggins’s skin, and the captain cursed and yelled as he fought to shove his attacker off of him.  Riggins could taste his own blood—his left eye already swelling shut from having Hartman’s finger shoved into it—and tasting his own blood sent a wave of terror and shock through him.  With strength built from fear, he threw wild, uncontrolled punches at the general.  He rolled over onto his back, drawing his knees up into his chest.  With whatever strength he had left in him, he delivered a solid kick with his boots to the infected Hartman’s torso.

“Get the fuck off of me!” Riggins screamed as he hammered his boot heels into the general’s chest.  Hartman was sent flying back and the bloodied lieutenant jumped to his feet.  He turned to make his way to the door and ran right into Collier.  With his adrenaline rushing through his body, he was able to push the dead private aside, but as he tried to fling her clutching hands away from him, she latched onto his right arm and pulled it to her mouth.  In one quick and fluid motion, she bit down onto his knuckles and drew back with shredded flesh hanging from her teeth.

Riggins screamed in pain as he pulled his gnawed hand into his body.  He made it to the door and dashed down the hallway.  Hartman was right behind him—raving and yelling like a possessed man.  As Riggins turned a corner in the hall, he tried opening the first door that he came to.  It was locked.  He then saw the door to the lounge that the researchers were in.  To the surprise of Farris and the others, he burst into the room and immediately tried to hold the door shut with his good hand.

“Help me!” he screamed.  Not knowing what was taking place, Farris cautiously walked over to the wounded man.

“Good God, what happened to you?”  Before Riggins could answer, he was sent reeling to the floor as Hartman came rushing through the door.  In an instant, the raging general was attacking the stunned Farris as the rest of the group broke in panic and scattered throughout the room.

After pummeling on Farris’s face and chewing on his right forearm, Hartman left the man in a bloodied heap and then focused on Wang.  The frightened researcher picked up a chair from a conference table and held it over his head, thinking that Hartman would back away from him.  After sizing up his victim, the general simply lowered his shoulder and plowed right into Wang’s belly, knocking the chair from his hands.

Two other researchers, a younger man and a middle-aged woman who was an Air Force officer, ran past the chaotic scene and made their way for the door.  As the terrified man pulled the door open, he was greeted by Collier.  She grabbed him by his collar and they both fell back into the room.  The Air Force officer jumped back in an effort to avoid Collier and she didn’t see that Riggins was back on his feet, twitching and convulsing uncontrollably.  He bent over and retched and vomited violently, projecting a dark stream of goo onto the floor.

“Oh my God!” the officer screamed as she turned to run.  She broke into a sprint, but as she tried to jump over the mangled Farris, he reached up and grabbed onto her boot.  Knocked off balance, the woman crashed down onto a coffee table, splitting her head wide open.  Stunned from the fall, she didn’t see that Riggins was about to pounce on her.

As the butchery continued, the room was filled with screams of terror and shrieks of pain.

***

“Wait a minute,” Jim said as he stopped at the landing of the fourth floor.  He hunkered down and Irene drew close to him, seeking a sense of security.  “Shit, that gunfire sounds like it’s inside of the building.  On the first floor.”

“What does that mean?” Irene said, trembling with fear.

“They may have gotten into the hospital.  Damn it!”  Jim listened intently to the crack of gunfire—and shouting—that was filtering up into the stairwell.  “Okay, let’s keep going…but be ready to haul ass in case those things are in here.  And that pistol that I gave you…get it out of your bag.  Just in case.”

Now terrified she pulled the bag off of her shoulder and dug the pistol out of it.  “I got it,” she said in a shaky voice.

“Okay, just hang onto it…and don’t shoot me in the back by accident.”

Irene couldn’t tell if he was joking with her or being serious.  “I’ll put it in my cargo pocket,” she said.

Reaching behind him, he took hold of her hand and began to slowly walk down the stairs.  With the power being off, the stairwell was almost completely dark except for the light coming up from the bottom floor.  As they made their way to the third floor landing, the gunfire was replaced with screaming and yelling.

***

“There, the stairwell over there!” Karnes yelled to Carrie.  He was pointing to a stairwell that was on the far end of the mall.  “Follow me!”

Carrie began to run after Karnes as the first floor of the hospital filled up with dead and infected.  She glanced back and saw that some of the ranks of the infected were made up of the same soldiers who had been fighting alongside of her a few minutes earlier.  The sight terrified her and she closed her eyes as she turned back towards Karnes.

Karnes darted across the mall and ran for the door to the stairwell.  He flung it open and was horrified to see that the door way had been barricaded with a clutter of office furniture, lounge couches and a soda machine.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!” he yelled.  “Hurry, help me pull some of this shit off!”

Carrie caught up with the frantic sergeant and the two of them hurriedly pulled off a desk and several chairs from the barricade pile.  Tossing them back out into the mall, they crawled over the remaining heap of furniture.  As they started to make their way up the dark stairwell, Carrie asked, “Where are we going?”

“Up a couple of floors and then find our way back down.  Hopefully Novak is out there somewhere with his helicopter.”

“Can’t you call him on your radio?” she asked.

“Like a dumbass, I lost it somewhere outside.”

The sound of rattling and clanking terrified the both of them.  The horde was at the stairwell barricade…and they were tearing it down.