Deathly Contagious (4 page)

“Are you getting any closer to finding a vaccine?” I asked, knowing the answer would most likely be ‘no’.

“Possibly. I’ve found some similarities in Hayden and Parker’s blood. When I have the samples to compare it to I might know more. Hayden’s resistance to pain medicine could be something too. Of course, having someone to test the vaccine on would help.” She scribbled my name on a sticker and wrapped it around the vial. “Can you bring me a monkey?”

“Huh?”

“A monkey. You know…” she imitated a monkey, complete with scratching her head and jumping up and down while making a horrible noise.

“Yea, I know what a monkey is. Why do you want one?”

“Primates share most of our DNA. I might be able to infect one.”

“Oh, yea. If we don’t have enough problems on our hands already, let’s throw in a crazy, homicidal zombie-monkey.”

“I’ll let you shoot it in the head if it goes crazy.”

“Gee, thanks.” I raised my eyebrows. “If I find a monkey, I’ll bring it back.” I shook my head and left, pondering where the hell I’d even find a monkey. Chances are every animal in a zoo was dead; there was no one left to care for them.

It was easy to convince Fuller to let me go. He thought it would ‘do me some good’ to get my mind off of everything that had happened. I packed a bag and hugged Raeya goodbye. Like Padraic, she didn’t want me to go. I snuck into the hospital ward and explained everything to Hayden, who was fast asleep. I doubted he could even hear a word I said.

I hadn’t interacted much with the six other A1’s: Gabby, Jessica, Alex, Mac, Jose, Noah. I wasn’t sure who I’d get paired up with, and, frankly, I didn’t care. Besides Hayden, I preferred to work alone.

Since this was supposed to be an easy supplies run, only Alex, Mac, Gabby and I were going. Like Hayden, Alex had served multiple tours overseas. He had intense gray eyes and dark hair. His strong jaw was set and he was the self appointed leader. I instantly didn’t like him.

I wanted to get to the nearest hospital, get the stuff Hayden needed and race back to the compound. We spread out a map and starred every hospital in a fifty mile radius. Hell, if we hit up a close one, we might even make it back tonight.

I had gone over the list several times with Padraic so I would make sure I’d get exactly what we needed. He had even told us what parts of the hospital to go to first. This really would be an easy mission, I reiterated to myself.

Against my suggestion, Alex drove north. I told him that we had
just
come from a mission where we went north and it was cold and snowing and miserable. He said that he’d rather deal with the snow than zombies, since zombies don’t fare well in the cold.

 I had to work hard to bite my tongue. I hated the way Alex tossed his ranking around like it mattered to me. He was a Specialist in the Army; Hayden was a Sergeant, which was a higher rank. It was so tempting to remind Alex of that. Not wanting to make this trip any worse than it was damned to be, I kept my mouth shut. Plus, I was too preoccupied with the nagging feeling I was missing something crucial to care much.

It didn’t seem right that only four gang members would have an entire street marked off. Why would they need so many houses? And if they were relying on those houses, they’d have to set up camp nearby. Hayden and I wasted so much time looking; if they were around we would have found them.

“Get off on this exit,” I told Alex, following the route with my finger on the map. “The hospital is only a few miles after that.”

“No,” he said shortly.

“Why?”

“Don’t question me, Penwell. I said no.”

“And I asked why,” I retorted.

“I said we are going to a colder climate.”

“Colder? We are ten miles from the camp. It’s colder up here.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Mac cast me a nervous glance in the review mirror. I could tell by the way he ground his jaw that he was at wits end with Alex. His eyes caught mine and he nodded slightly, asking me to just agree.

“Fine. The next hospital then. The longer we’re gone the longer Hayden is in pain.”

Six hours into our mission, we stopped to eat and pee. I got out of the SUV, eager to stretch my legs and get away from Alex. I didn’t like being with people I didn’t know. I had seen them all in training and knew they were all competent with their weapons, so at least I didn’t feel responsible for anyone. Still, I liked the commoradity of my regular group.

We were about an hour away from another hospital,l and we were running out of daylight. Alex ignored my directions and got off on the wrong exit. Since there were no traffic laws, we drove through the median and across a lawn to get to the hospital parking lot.

The front doors of the hospital were open, spewing out unknown danger and darkness. Silently, we got out of the SUV and suited up. I had a holster on each side holding an M9, a machine gun strapped to my right thigh and the compound bow and arrows hung from my shoulder. Extra clips weighed down my pockets.

We silently stepped into the lobby. Daylight filtered through the open doors and cracked windows. Gabby gagged at the smell of rotting humans. Feet limply dangled out of a once grand fountain; the rest of the body was disintegrated under putrid water. Brown and tan foam floated on the water’s surface. The stench only got worse the farther we went in. I traded my M9 for the machine gun, using the night vision scope to see through the dark halls.

Alex took the lead. I wasn’t even going to fight with him on that; if we got attacked, at least he’d be the first to go. Glass crunched under his boots. Someone had broken open the case that held back the fire axe. I cringed as the rubber soles of my camo colored combat boots crushed the glass, its breaking sound echoing down the dark, empty hall.

Well, the used to be empty hall.

Three zombies limped their way out of a waiting room. Alex motioned for me but I was already a step ahead. An arrow whizzed through the air, sinking into the rotten eye of a female S2. Ignoring the sting of the string slapping my unguarded wrist, I shot two more, dropping the other zombies. I clicked on my flashlight and looked with disgust at the kill.

Careful not to press too hard, I put my foot on their festering chests to pull out the arrows. I shook off the lumpy parts and wiped them clean on the zombies’ dirty clothes before sticking them back in the quiver.

“Nice work, Orissa,” Gabby said, her smile barely visible in the dim light. I smiled and nodded. We stepped over the corpses and continued down the hall, pausing to look at the directory.

Alex had just opened his mouth to bark out an order when we heard the moans. My hand flew behind me, my fingers grabbing onto an arrow. My heart skipped a beat when the shuffling of feet drowned out the moans.

I went for the M16 instead.

A hoard of zombies snapped their dead faces in our directions, opening their decaying mouths hungrily at the sight and smell of us. We opened fire, dropping the first line. It offered little help; the zombies that tripped only crawled at us. Death calls came from behind us. Damn it, we were being surrounded.

“Fall back!” Alex yelled.

No. We were so close. I wasn’t leaving empty handed.

“Cover me!” I yelled, eyeing a doorway.

“No, get out Penwell!”

“Twenty minutes! If I’m not back in twenty, assume I’m dead and go on without me. Now cover me!” I strapped the gun back to my leg and sprinted through the open door, the rapid fire blinding and deafening me. I tripped over a fallen IV stand, sending painful shock into my wrists as the heels of my palms smacked the cold, tile floor. I kicked the door closed and madly looked around.

I was in a lab room. I scrambled up, shoving a file cabinet in front of the door. There was another door; I assumed it led into waiting room or, if I was lucky, a hall behind the exam rooms. It did both and I raced through the waiting room into the narrow pathway, running past the exam rooms. I slammed into the automatic doors that led to the ER.

Several gummies moaned and made feeble attempts to come at me. I buried an arrow in their mushy skulls. Holding the flashlight in my mouth, I yanked back curtains. A nearly deteriorated gummy had oozed onto a hospital bed, permanent bed sores sticking him to the material. The smell choked me and I gagged.

He reached at me, biting at the air. He had no teeth left.

“You give ‘gummy’ a whole new meaning,” I said as I fired an arrow into his head. It went all the way through and stuck into the wall behind him. I wrinkled my nose at the globs of brain matter that oozed off it and decided to leave it.

Padraic told me to look for a machine that dispensed meds. I frantically looked all over but came up empty handed. Refusing to leave with nothing, I filled a pillow case full of IV bags and antiseptics. I shot a zombified EMT in the skull with the M9 as I found my way to the exit. I kicked open the doors, rushed past an ambulance and jogged into the parking lot.

“Seventeen minutes,” Alex said when I got into the SUV, hardly able to keep the smile from his face.

“Told you,” I said, adding extra smugness to my voice on purpose.

“Three more and I would have left you. What did you get?”

“IV fluid and that chlorhexidine stuff Padraic wanted. I couldn’t find the meds.”

“The next hospital,” Mac promised. I nodded and tossed the bags into the back of the SUV. “Where did you go for that stuff?” he asked.

“The ER,” I told him.

“Was if full of zombies?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

Mac looked at Alex and Gabby. “We should go get the monitors and pumps.”

Alex grumbled, not liking the idea simply because it wasn’t his. After a moment’s consideration, we pulled the car around and went back into the ER. Alex and Gabby took on half the list while Mac and I found the rest of the items. We filled up the back of the SUV in less than an hour. And we got everything on the list…except the medicine.

We were running out of daylight. Alex wanted to keep going but when thick snowflakes floated down from the dark clouds, we turned off the back road in search for a town.

It was the tall, unscathed cast iron gates that drew us in. The town seemed ghosted, though the litter that blew atop the powdery layer of pristine white snow led me to believe it was abandoned only recently. I was too busy scanning our surrounding for the undead to read the town’s name on the sign as I passed it, though the paint was chipping and flaking off so badly it would have taken a second glance to discern what it said anyway.

I lowered my rifle and examined the house we had chosen. Painted a forest green with dark gray shutters, the Victorian house must have been beautiful at one time. The wooden boards creaked as we walked up the porch. I half expected a creepy girl dressed in a white lace dress to pull back the ivory curtains and stare at us before disappearing. I rolled my eyes at my own thought.

“No,” I told Alex, seeing him raise his foot to kick the door it. I set my rifle down. “I’ll get it.”

“You’re good and all, Penwell, but I’m stronger than you,” he stated. That was almost a compliment.

“Chill, Hercules. If you kick down the door, we can’t close it tonight.”

“Then how are we supposed to get in?” he demanded, waving his hand at the door.

I pulled a bobby pin from my hair. “Uh, pick the lock.” I straightened the pin and yanked the rubber ends off. I did the same to another, causing my bangs to fall into my face, knelt down by the door, and got to work. Only a minute later, I turned the knob.

“I’ve heard you are quite the criminal,” Alex sneered.

“Lay off, Alex,” Gabby snapped. “She got us in. Thanks, Orissa.” She glared at Alex and stepped inside. I dropped the bobby pins and followed her.

The first thing I noticed was the stuffed dog. It wasn’t a cute, fluffy, toy stuffed dog. It was a real dog—taxidermy at its finest— in a sitting position, set at the bottom of the stairs that spilled into the foyer. The light from Gabby’s flashlight reflected off the glass eyes.

“That’s disturbing,” she said and cast her light elsewhere.

“Not as disturbing as that,” Mac said, motioning to where his flashlight illuminated.

“What the hell?” I asked, tipping my head. I looked around and felt the slightest bit of sickened fear. “We’re in a fucking wax museum.” I stepped forward to the life-size wax figure of Abraham Lincoln that Mac’s light was still on. I pulled my glove off and scrapped at his face with my fingernail.

“What a lovely place to stay,” Gabby said sarcastically. She took her backpack off, letting it drop to the floor with a heavy thump. “Hey,” she whispered, turning to me. “Do you think there’s a psycho in the basement waiting to dip us into a big vat of wax and turn us into dolls?”

I looked at her quizzically. “Uh, no.”

“Never mind, I guess you never saw that movie.”

We explored the rest of the house. Each room was set up in a different theme with coordinating wax characters. We shoved the dolls out of the living room and broke chairs apart to use as firewood for the fancy, cast iron fire place, which did little to warm the frozen room.

We slept in shifts. Like usual, I took the first watch. I was too cold to settle down so I walked around the building, jogging up and down the stairs to keep warm. There was an old newspaper in the recycling bin in a closet of an office. It was dated four years ago. This place had gone out of business before the town even ghosted out.

At two AM, Gabby said she’d switch me. I crawled inside my sleeping bag but was unable to warm up. Cold and tired, I drifted to sleep easily. I dreamed that we made it safely back to the compound but as soon as I stepped inside the faux brick estate, I was taken back to my grandparents’ Kentucky farm. Raeya was sitting in the living room crying. I walked past her and slowly ascended the stairs.

Hayden was laying in my bed, his eyes cold and lifeless.

I startled awake, my heart racing. “Stupid nightmare,” I mumbled to myself, as I rolled over to try to get comfortable. Hayden wasn’t dead. Well, he wasn’t as far as I knew. Only one person had died in that house and I refused to think about her.