Deathly Contagious (5 page)

I got only a few hours of on and off sleep over the night. I dozed off in the car. I had no idea where we were when Mac shook me awake. I instantly became alert when a large hospital loomed ahead. There was a fresh dusting of snow over the parking lot.

“There are no foot prints,” I stated.

“You don’t know that,” Alex spat.

“Yes, I do. There either are or there aren’t. And I don’t see any.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I didn’t say it meant anything. But I’m telling you, I do not see any footprints.” I clenched my fists. If it came down to it, I’d so trip Alex if zombies were chasing us.

 As far as we could tell, nothing new had left or entered the building since the snowfall. The hospital looked new. The lobby was big and thankfully bright due to large glass windows. There was a large atrium off of the lobby, with high glass windows and a glass ceiling, giving a full view of the thick forest that sat behind the hospital.

Weapons raised, we eased our way through the hospital, making our way to the oncology floor. Bodies littered the hall, but they had not been killed by zombies. They were neatly layed with sheets covering them, all with the same bloodstain in a similar spot on the head; they had been executed.

I stopped counting after fifty. The smell was horrendous; we all covered our noses and did our best not to gag. We reached the end of the hall. Mac pushed on the doors revealing that they had been chained off from the other side.

“Son of a bitch!” Alex swore, glaring at me as if it was my fault. I opened my mouth to say something catty back when we heard the growl.

The smart thing to do would be to kill the sole S1 silently. Dressed in bloodstained scrubs and a dirty lab coat, the crazy doctor bared her teeth when she saw us. Her ankle was twisted and broken and two of her fingers had been chewed off. She wasn’t even worth an arrow. I pulled the knife from its sheath on my belt and ran forward, prepared to send the blade deep into her damaged brain.

The bullet was faster.

Faster, and louder. Once the crazy dropped, I turned to stare down Alex, who had his pistol raised. He had a smirk on his face, satisfied he had gotten the kill before I did.

“What the hell?” I yelled, seeing no point of keeping my voice down now.

“Three points for me,” he said smugly.

“Yea, three point for being a dumbass!” I waved my arms at the end of the hall. “Why the hell would you do that? We are at the end of a
locked
hall!”

Alex’s face twitched when he realized that. “You could thank me for saving you.”

“You didn’t save me. You just endangered us all you moron!”

“Stop being so dramatic,” he jeered. “Obviously we’re fine.”

Mac and Gabby exchanged nervous glances. They agreed with me. “Let’s get the stuff,” Gabby suggested. “It’s cold and I want to go home.”

“Good plan,” Mac agreed. We double backed, going down a different hall to get into the ER. Adrenaline coursed through my veins so much my hands almost shook. I kept expecting something to jump out at us. We made it to the pharmacy without running into anything.

It wasn’t right.

But who was I to wish for zombies? We had to break open locks, rip cabinets apart, and pry open drawers of the computerized medication dispenser. I hit the lock on a medical refrigerator several times with the butt of my riffle before it broke. The only good thing about it being so freaking cold in here was that the medications that needed to stay cool did. I dropped bottles of insulin as I madly rooted around.

“I found it!” I exclaimed, holding up a little glass vial of Fentanyl. We spent another few minutes gathering up more meds, including a tablet form of the Fentanyl. Since it worked the first time, I grabbed another pillowcase and held it open for Gabby to dump in medications. Once it was full, we high-tailed it out of the hospital. I stayed in the rear of our line, glad the others couldn’t see my smile. I would be back soon, back to see Hayden. I got that annoying fluttery feeling in my stomach when I thought of him. I shook it away; I was eager to get him the pain meds I was sure he desperately wanted.

Bright light from the atrium shone like a beacon. We marched for it, so close to going back to the compound. The smell hit us first. The four of us stopped, crouching into position. Then we heard the moaning and the shuffling of feet.

A pack of zombies blocked us from the exit. There were dozens of them, mouths gapping and arms reaching for us. No! We were so close. I had the medicine. I wasn’t letting this stop us now. We spun around to flee the opposite direction.

More zombies filtered into the hall. Where the hell were they coming from? Gabby fired first, sending a bullet into the head of a child zombie. It dropped, tripping the S3 that was behind it. We all opened fire, raining down metal death on the herd that marched closer and closer. My clip emptied from the M9 and it had made no difference in the numbers.

We needed to get out if we wanted to live. We were being swarmed. I shoved the M9 back in the holster and yanked the M16 free. I jumped onto an overturned sofa in the lobby and sprayed the glass windows with bullets, causing the glass to break apart and crash to the ground. I grabbed the vials from my pocket, pressed them into Gabby’s hand and yelled,

“Twenty minutes! I’ll lead them off. If I’m not back, go, get back to Hayden!”

She opened her mouth to object but I took off, using the rifle as a baseball bat and hitting an S3 in the face. His teeth slimed out on impact and clanked onto the floor, splattering bits of blood and rotten gum particles over the tile.

Seeing I had little choice, I picked up a piece of the broken glass, rolled my sleeve up and dragged it across the top of my wrist. “Hey, you motherfuckers!” I screamed, whipping my hand back and forth to get the scent of blood in the air. “Dinner time!” I climbed on top of a table, kicking over a colorful display of pamphlets on how to deal with a loved one’s illness.

Gabby, Mac, and Alex continued to fire at the zombies. A few caught the yummy scent of my blood and roared as they lumbered over. Damn it, it wasn’t working well enough.

“Hey!” I screamed again. I really should invest in a fog horn. I threw a dead pot of marigolds across the atrium, hitting the glass, though not hard enough to break it. A few more zombies turned their attention to me.

Gabby screamed when a fast moving S2 jumped on her. Mac kicked it off, shooting it in the head and pulling Gabby to her feet. I screamed again, my voice getting lost in the zombies’ moans. I shook with the fear of us dying and not getting back to Hayden.

Hayden and Raeya and Padraic.

I wanted to see them again. I wasn’t going to die. Not by the hands and mouths of zombies. It worked before, I reminded myself and took another deep breath.

“Oh mama I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law,” I sang as loudly as I could. I grabbed and arrow, wincing in pain as I rolled the cold metal through my blood dripping cut. “Law man has put an end to my running and I’m so far from my home.” The arrow flew through the air, grazing the arm of a S2. The others around him pounced, following the smell of blood.

It worked. I smiled triumphantly, eyeing my fellow soldiers. Alex waved for Gabby and Mac to go while he covered them from behind. His eyes met mine and I nodded, letting him know it was ok. He took off. Right as I was about to jump down, sprint out the broken window and race around to the SUV, a well fed S2 lunged at me.

We collided. I slid off the table, the wind getting knocked out of me and the M16 bounced out of my grip. He pinned me down, saliva dripping from his open mouth. Bits of flesh and hair stuck to his teeth. I struggled to get away, kneeing him in the balls instinctively. Of course it had no effect. I rolled back and sat up quickly, elbowing him in the nose.

His grimy hands thrashed the air, recoiling from my blow. I scrambled away, kicking him in the ribs before I stomped on his head. I dove for my rifle only to get attacked by another zombie.

“Son of a bitch!” I swore and flipped myself to my feet, pulling the knife out at the same time. I kicked the zombie in the chest and drove the blade into its head through a soggy eye socket. The eye came out with the blade. I didn’t have time to wipe it off before another grabbed my hair.

Using form so perfect my martial arts instructor would have been proud, I softened my knees and sprung up and around, my fist landing square in the middle of the zombie’s face. It didn’t hurt him of course, but the blow made him stagger back. I dropped down, kicked his feet out from under him, jumped on his neck while at the same time slicing through the spinal cord of another, younger zombie.

I jumped through the broken window, taking off as soon as my feet hit the frozen ground. The sound of the glass breaking let me know without looking back that I was being followed. I slipped on a patch of ice and fell only staying on the ground for a split second. I was up and running again, but this time slower. I had twisted my ankle and it hurt like hell. I doubted it was broken or even sprained. All I needed was to rest it for a minute to let the pain subside.

Desperately, my eyes scanned the trees in front of me. About twenty feet to go and I could climb to safety and wait until the herd dispersed. I couldn’t resist shooting two more in the forehead before I climbed up and away. I stopped once I was ten feet up, just out of the reach of the festering, grabbing hands.

“Come and get me,” I jeered. “Oh wait, that’s right. You can’t.” I emptied the rest of my clip, pocketing the empty magazine while I traded it for another. I quickly fired every bullet into the head of a zombie before I tested the branch above me. Deciding it was strong enough, I climbed up and sat, leaning against the truck of the tree. I grabbed a handful of snow and pressed it onto the cut on my arm, which was starting to sting.

I struggled to maintain balanced as I extracted a bandage from my pocket to tie around my wrist. My ankle hurt too, so I forced myself to slowly extend and bend it, trying to get the blood flowing so it would feel better.

The sun reflecting off of the snow was blinding. I wished I had sunglasses. I closed my eyes, almost relaxing as I waited for the zombies beneath me to give up and move on. More than twenty minutes passed before she came wandering out of the pine trees.

Ice hung in clumps from her hair and she was not at all dressed for the weather. Black patches of frostbite covered her exposed arms and face. She was carrying something, something warm that oozed and steamed in the cold, winter air.

With more curiosity than I should have had, I leaned over my branch and watched the crazy struggle through the shallow snow, slipping every now and then. When she saw the herd of zombies clawing at my tree, she clutched her object to her chest and hissed.

As if she was suddenly afraid the zombies might get whatever the hell she was holding, she bit a chunk off and chewed. And then I realized she was holding a stomach.

I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t had years of experience cleaning and gutting deer. Except by the size of it, I didn’t think Ms. Frostbite had killed a deer. She had ripped it out of something smaller than a deer and I instantly wondered how she managed to hunt anything with all her damaged skin cells. It was a stupid thing to think about. I shook my head and carefully stood, precariously placing my feet on the branch.

I ignored the pain putting weight on my ankle caused. Slowly, I edged to the end of the branch, keeping hold of the one above me in case it snapped. I didn’t feel like falling to my death just yet. A few zombies noticed the crazy, who stupidly stood there hissing and snarfing down her stomach.

It was now or never. The zombies milled away from my tree, going for the crazy. She let out a harrowing yell and took off, leading the zombies away from me. I didn’t want to go through another failed Evil Kenevil act of jumping from tree to tree. My face hurt just thinking about the last time I attempted that.

Seeing I didn’t have much of a choice, I snaked my body up another level of branches. I hated being so high up but the branches were much closer up here. I resituated the bow over my shoulder, held my breath and jumped.

My hands burned from grasping the branch so hard but I made it. I shimmied through that tree, paused as a S3 limped under me and jumped to the next tree. The branches snapped and I tumbled down, hitting every limb on my way.

I landed on my ass. It hurt like hell but it was the best thing to land on. I pushed myself up, not allowing myself time to register the pain and attempted to run before the zombies noticed me. It was a feeble attempt and I knew if it wasn’t for the impeccable timing of that crazy wandering amidst the forest, I wouldn’t have made it. 

 I jogged around the hospital, slowing only when the street came into view. I expected Alex to give me crap for taking a long time. I was thinking of something extra bitchy to spit back at him when my feet hit the pavement. My eyes darted around the street, looking for the SUV.

I didn’t expect this. They were gone.

Chapter 3

No, I thought. They just drove off to distract the zombies. That was all. They wouldn’t really leave me. Panic tried to bubble in my heart. No, I repeated in my head. They will be right back. They wouldn’t leave me.

I stood, rooted in the spot, for several minutes as I waited to hear the distant roar of the engine. But all I heard was the distant moaning of zombies. The distant moaning that was gradually getting louder and louder.

Damn it.

I couldn’t stay here. I had to find somewhere safe to wait. Abhorrence made my heart race. What if they came back and I wasn’t here?

“No,” I actually said out loud. I had to move. My ankle was stiff from standing still for so long in the cold. It cracked painfully when I took a step. I let out a breath of pain and limped down the street. It took effort to climb on top of the ambulance. I layed down out of sight from zombie eyes. If I just waited, if I just stayed right here, they would come back.

The sun set and I was still alone. Alone, hungry, and cold. I had to face it; they had left me, truly left me. I slid down the front of the ambulance. This sucked, but it wasn’t the end. I would get back to the compound eventually, and I would knee Alex in the balls as hard as I possibly could. Using the sinking sun as my guide, I started walking south in the general direction of this town’s downtown area. The forest gradually thinned, obviously torn down to make room for the modern buildings. My plan was to find a safe place to stay tonight, get a car in the morning, figure out where the hell I was at and go to Arkansas.