LZR-1143: Redemption (29 page)

FORTY-FOUR

The access control room was on the other side of the hospital, on the ground floor. In theory, it was a small room, with a thick, metal bar locking it off from the rest of the hospital. Again, in theory, that bar had been thrown by the guards who were arguing before the hospital went into lockdown.

If we wanted out of the hospital, that was where we needed to go first.

The emergency systems governing the access into and out of the hospital were run on a different circuit, and from a different power source than the internal doors or the facility we were in now. Diana had located an old emergency procedures manual that we were poring over for details. The locks could be disengaged from the main control room, or by the campus authorities or police at a remote location. The latter helped us not at all.

There were two ways there. Through the main floor of the hospital or through a series of air ducts that crisscrossed the raised ceilings of the first floor of the building in an exposed series of metal tubes, deemed by the architect to be ‘modern’ and ‘neo-industrial’ when the hospital was built.

“So we have to crawl through these narrow tubes, above thousands of these things, when just one bad bolt, or just one weak piece of thin metal could dump us on those assholes like meat out of a delicatessen piñata?” Diana was unimpressed by the forming plan.

“No. You could try walking across the lobby instead,” said Kate, chewing on a cracker. Behind us, Kopland and Ky were finishing emptying Ky’s large tactical backpack and putting the last of the materials inside. Before the power had gone out, Kopland had completed compressing a large batch of aerosolized vaccine into several small, thermos-sized containers. Several thumb drives, loaded from a battery-powered laptop, held backups of his work, and he distributed one to each of us in case only several—or one—of us made it through.

“Yeah, no thanks,” she said, disgruntled.

“So the trick is access to the system,” I said. The emergency manual had a small map, indicating that outside the door that was currently being held shut by a fire hose, there was T-shaped hallway. The long part of the T extended toward the lobby, which meant that when we came into the hall, we’d be in full view of the creatures clustered by the thousands against the glass windows we had seen from the outside. To the left, along one of the short edges of the T, there was a small utility closet fifty feet away that allowed access to the ventilation systems for cleaning and maintenance.

“Fifty feet.” I said softly.

“Fifty very long feet,” said Ky, looking up from the bag she was packing.

“That’s what she said,” muttered Kate from behind Ky, and the girl’s head shot up, frustrated again.

“Damn it! Someone please tell me what the hell that means!”

“What?” asked Diana, looking confused.

“Never mind,” I said, amused. “She’s too young.”

Ky’s withering look and hateful glare were anything but young.

“It’s not an easy lift,” I said, staring at the map again, voice serious.

“And we’re down to spitting on these things,” Kate said. “My shotgun is toast, dropped it outside when we had to go to pistols. I’ve got two clips left for that. Rhodes is down to his sidearm, and Ky’s got her crossbow with one bolt left.” She turned to Diana. “I don’t suppose you guys have any weapons laying around, do you?”

Diana smiled and looked at Kopland, who nodded at her once.

“No guns, no. But we do have something we can contribute.”

She sat up and went to the deep cabinets beneath the large research station, pulling open the doors and revealing five-gallon drums of some obscurely marked chemicals.

“We can make things go boom.”

I wasn’t sure who smiled the widest, but I know it was a close contest.

*

After a fifteen-minute argument involving tears, pleas and screaming, Ky won. Kate eventually realized that she had no way to object. If Ky were bitten, she would die. If she took the vaccine, she would live a different life. But she would live.

Kopland administered the doses to everyone, noting that the new cocktail should mitigate the side effects that had hit Kate and I several weeks ago. There should also no longer be a requirement that the vaccinated be in close proximity to the undead. It was untested, but he was sure that it was a pure as it could be, under the circumstances.

Kopland brought a new injector with him for Rhodes as we left the laboratory, Oppenheimer trailing behind.

“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked, glancing at the cat.

“Not if they’re not interested in animals,” said Kopland. “We could try to shove him into a backpack, but that wouldn’t end well for anyone. No, I think he’ll be fine. Once these doors open, he will have free reign to trap an abundance of mice outside. Better off, really.”

Rhodes stood silently, watching the door bulge inward, straining the nylon hose to its limits. I carried his lightened pack in one hand, and slid it along the floor to him.

“Just ammo and water,” I said, “We stripped them down for weight. Almost empty now. Can you carry it?”

“I’m not a little girl,” he said, wincing as he picked it up.

“Hey, asshole,” said Ky, glaring at him.

He returned the look, then winked once.

“Present company excluded,” he added wisely.

“Damn skippy,” she said smartly.

Diana shot forward, rolling up the sleeve of Rhodes good arm.

“You want immunity?” she asked curtly. “You won’t be able to hang out in the sun anymore. Like, ever.”

“I don’t tan anyway.” He said, eyes still on the door.

She shot the needle into his arm, then pulled it out again quickly.

“Good bedside manner,” he grunted.

“Bite me,” she responded, smiling slightly.

He looked at her once, then at the door, meaningfully.

“I’ll leave that to them.”

“Everyone clear?” I asked.

“Open door, toss bombs, shoot zombies, toss bombs, run to tiny room, close door, flee to ceiling,” said Ky, swallowing from a warm soda can she had found somewhere. She tossed it at the arms thrusting through the widening gap between the door and the wall.

“Pretty much,” Kate said.

I held my pistol in one hand, my machete in the other. Kate was similarly outfitted, while Rhodes held his sidearm, a spare clip from his pack already held in his wounded arm. Ky had only one bolt left for her crossbow. Diana and Kopland held a five-gallon jug each, both jugs trailing a short, alcohol soaked cloth that tapered past a porous seal and into the liquid beneath.

“What’s the range of these things? What kind of explosion we talking about here?” asked Rhodes, glancing at the makeshift explosives.

“Not sure. Never tried it before. Read all about it in chem lab, though.” Diana shrugged as we gathered away from the door, guarding against the explosion. I watched closely as Kate set her machete on the hose and Kopland removed the lighter from his pocket.

“You’re not sure? So we could all be vaporized standing here?” Kate threw back, eyes wide and startled. “You never mentioned that part.”

“Well, we have jack shit for choices, right? So let’s go out with a bang.”

Ky chuckled, and I slapped her arm.

“Jesus Christ,” Kate said under her breath. “Fine. You asked for it.”

She nodded at Kopland as the machete took the hose in one powerful swipe and she rolled away, grabbing the Doctor by the arm and fleeing toward where we all moved behind the shelter of the corner.

They fell through the opening like marbles from a jar, tumbling into the space and falling over one another’s twisted, rotting forms, the smell of their pestilence reaching us as we dove for cover.

Then, the hallway disappeared.

The walls shook and the rain of flesh and bone against the small confines was drowned out by the fireball that pushed its way away from the now utterly destroyed entryway and into the lobby outside. A cloud of flame burst into the side hallway where we huddled, the heat blasting into the small space like an open oven door before receding suddenly, leaving clouds of smoke and debris in its wake.

The moans that had echoed so loudly from the confines of the narrow passageway were gone, the only sound chips of cement falling steadily from the ceiling. I shook my head, blinking and trying to orient myself. My vision was blurred and I couldn’t hear. I checked on Ky and Kate before standing, groggily, amidst the carnage, and looked around the corner.

There were no bodies, only body parts. The doorway was shrouded in a thick pall of smoke, and beyond was only darkness.

“Let’s go!” I screamed, knowing that I wasn’t alone in my deafness. Hopefully, it would fade.

I sprinted past bloody chunks of hair and flesh and bone. The walls were pockmarked by the explosion of cement and metal. A piece of the metal door had impaled a creature, and then embedded itself in the wall. All that was left of the unlucky undead was the shattered torso, stuck to the smoke-smeared wall.

At the hole that used to be the doorway, I paused, squinting to see through the smoke. Thick and oily, it billowed through the hole in the wall, eager to expand and fill the spaces beyond. I caught the gentle flicker of orange flame on the other side of the space, and knew that something had caught fire in the explosion, hopefully continuing to burn and create more cover.

The group followed closely behind and I drew a breath and burst through the smoke, trying to move quietly amidst the concrete rubble and steel debris. I could barely see the outlines of the large lobby atrium ahead, and movement in the distance was jerky and halted, as if they were shocked by the ferocity of the explosion.

Good.

Immediately, I turned left, searching through the thick smoke and dust for visibility.

An arm shot out from somewhere, and I saw the rot of death before taking it off silently with a backhand swipe of the razor-sharp machete blade. The body tumbled forward, and I clutched the thrusting jaw with a quick strike, clasping the head and whipping it around in a single act, snapping it loose from the spine.

My hearing still lost, I turned to watch for the remainder of the group. Rhodes, I knew, would take the rear. Ky was clinging to Kate’s belt, while Romeo shot past my leg into the gathering smoke and dust. I watched as Ky coughed several times, and knew we had to get the rest of the group out of the smoke and dust soon—they couldn’t deal with it like we could.

Not yet.

Kate’s blade flashed suddenly, taking down a stumbling creature whose face was still consumed by fire and whose eyes were gone. It fell heavily into the litter of dirt and debris.

Ahead, the smoke started to clear in the darkened passageway, and I saw the outlines of bodies pressed against the walls, bloody smears across some of the faces where the shock wave from the explosion had forced the skin back from the bone in the front of their skulls. Eyes bulged above the exposed rictus of too many teeth, mouths frozen in a horrid smile. Even as I watched, they stirred. The blast had shaken them. But they were already dead, so they continued on.

Almost as one, they rose, arms pushing the bodies away from the ground and the walls. A meal was before them, and they wouldn’t miss the dinner bell.

My eyes caught the door ahead, only thirty feet distant. The smoke was dissipating as we moved along the hallway. Behind us, the cloud was thinning enough for those in the lobby to reorient and see the movement of our forms. They filled the void behind us, the passageway back to the lab now firmly cut off forever.

Several creatures stumbled in front of me and I allowed my pistol to greet them. Four shots later, I stepped over the forms laying prone on the ground, watching the corners of the distant hallway still shrouded in darkness.

My hearing started to return as I caught the report of two more pistols. From the rear, Rhodes was dispatching those that ventured too close. Kate took down three more that had pushed away from the wall, while Kopland was stooping down in front of an anxious Rhodes to pour some of his mixture on the ground, even sprinting away briefly to ensure full coverage of the hallway behind us.

“What are you doing?” I shouted, sparing a glance back as we neared the doorway to the utility closet.

“Insurance,” he yelled, then removed a lighter from his pocket and lit the mixture.

Instantly, flames shot into the air as the chemicals burned hot and bright. He stumbled back, batting at a small fire on his coat before taking up the half-full can and following Rhodes. Forms approached the fire and stepped in, undeterred by the heat, but stumbling quickly as they came through the superheated air, clothing and skin burning so hot and so rapidly that they couldn’t see or orient themselves.

I laughed briefly and turned, ten feet from the door.

At least twenty more of the creatures lined the hallway further down, and I grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it open.

“In,” I shouted to Kate and Ky as Diana and Kopland staggered behind.

“Doc!” I yelled, holding out my hand.

He stared for a moment, then handed me the remains of the second bomb.

From the hallway ahead, hundreds more forms were quickly appearing, and I cursed. We hadn’t counted on two avenues of attack.

Rhodes tapped my shoulder as he approached, letting me know he was there. I made the decision quickly, and took the first four creatures in the face with the pistol before dropping it back into the thigh rig. Sprinting into the midst of at least a dozen more, I spun and twisted, my blade taking heads and arms, as I sought distance from the small room. Behind me, Rhodes shot the few that made it through Kopland’s ring of fire, keeping the doorway clear.

Fifty feet from the door, they were clustered together down the long hallway, bottlenecking at a collapsed nurses station. Still moving, I hurled the large drum into the thickest group of them, seeing the liquid disperse and tossing the cap I had removed quickly to the ground. I felt mouths on my arms and gauntleted hand, the metal reinforced fabric saving me from getting torn apart. My machete took more heads and limbs as I retreated, pulling the lighter from my pocket.