The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) (14 page)

           
The
leader at the top of the stairs was a tough-looking white dude in his forties;
he had short hair covered in a baseball cap that had
Hardened Construction
embroidered on it. “Well, the gate’s open,”
he said as he pointed his rifle at Ardent.

           
“Yeah,
it is.” Ardent answered.

           
“No
point in all of you staying outside in the cold,” he said calmly. “Might as
well come on in.” He lowered his weapon.

           
“Let’s
go, it’s clear,” Ardent shouted to Lauren and the rest.

           
But
they were still firing at the dead and then more of them appeared.

           
Dozens
more.

           
“We
got a problem here!” Milla yelled.

           
“Pull
back!” Ardent told them.

           
One
of the other men at the stairs was an uptight Italian guy in his fifties, bald
head, bad attitude. “That’s perfect! How are we suppose to keep those things out
now?” he yelled.

           
The
third man was the sniper from the hospital roof, armed with a compact machine
gun now.

           
“Charge
the tunnel, Bear.” Ardent said.

           
Taking
a bigger explosive package from his bag, Bear said, “Already on it.”

           
Bear
went back in the tunnel. “Move out!” he told the fire team.

           
Milla
and Derek ceased fire and went into the gate with Ardent, but Lauren kept
firing as she finished the magazine in her weapon. She had the butt stock
against her shoulder firmly and it
kicked
her with every well-placed shot. She was hitting necks and many heads with her
volley.

           
The
dead were dropping like flies.

           
Permanently.

           
Her
weapon
clicked
empty, and she calmly
turned around and walked past Bear as he was placing the explosive on the
tunnel wall. “Look alive, you got thirty of them coming your way,” she told him
casually as she locked a fresh magazine into her weapon.

           
Bear
took a quick glance and she was right—the tunnel was full of them and
they were running straight for him. “Okay.” He finished attaching the bomb and
said to it, “Saved the best for last.”

           
He
ran back inside the gate.

           
“Up,
let’s go, we need to be farther away from this!” Bear shouted and all of them
climbed the stairs, they took cover at the top and Bear got his detonator.

           
He
armed it…

           
The
dead got to the gate, it was many of them, and they began to run inside.

           
“Fuck!
Do it now!” Derek shouted.

           
Bear
pushed the button—

           
The
charge went off and pummeled the tunnel in a precise blast—running
corpses disappeared into pieces and were engulfed in concrete and dirt debris. The
tunnel collapsed and the explosion displaced dust and pieces everywhere,
including a lot of excrement from the outhouse pile.

           
Up
top, in the front courtyard of the hospital, the ground
shook
from the eruption below like an earthquake and then settled.
The courtyard was large, there was a parking lot with about fifty parking
spaces near the front of the building and a driveway that led to the front
gate, which was closed, locked, and blocked off by the fifty-five-passenger
bus. The gate wasn’t normal, either—someone reinforced it with a layer of
railroad ties and plate steel. The dead were held at bay outside. There were a
couple abandoned cars in the parking lot, but most notable was the eighteen-wheeler
truck that was parked, its trailer was locked with secrets. Manicured
landscaping ran along the walls all the way to the gate, but all the roses,
shrubs, and trees, were withered dead or dying. At the spot in the ground where
the explosion took place, no one was around to see the ground give way and
sink
a few inches.

           
It
stopped, leaving a twenty-foot oblong depression in the dead lawn.

           
Back
down in the sewer, the dust cleared, and the tunnel was completely caved-in,
tons of dirt and concrete blocked the route. One corpse was pinned down at the
edge of the cave-in and was trying to free itself from the large concrete chunk
that was on top of its legs. The construction man shot it clean through the
head. Derek was out in the open when the bomb went off and he was covered in
dust and shit.

           
“You
know, it wasn’t that bad when my balls were floating in shit water, but now I’m
soaked and covered in shit,” he said.

           
“Sorry,”
Bear said with a grin.

           
“Uh-huh,
sure you are.”

           
The
construction man turned to Ardent. “Okay, you’re in and you all can stay if you
help out and don’t give us any trouble.”

           
“Agreed,”
Ardent said.

           
“And
one other thing—“

           
“—You’re
in charge,” Ardent said.

           
“That’s
right. We’re gonna get along nicely.”

           
Ardent
extended his hand. “I’m Ardent Keller.”

           
The
man took his handshake. “Tom Rebollo.”

           
Ardent
introduced the group. “This is Bear and that’s Lauren, Milla, and the one
covered in shit—that’s Derek.”

           
“Funny,”
Derek noted.

           
Tom
introduced the ones with him. “The angry Italian is Joe Centeno, and that’s my
brother, Anthony.”

           
Some
of them exchanged handshakes, but nobody wanted to shake Derek’s hand or be
near him, for that matter.

           
Tom
said to Derek, “You’ll excuse me, Son, if I don’t shake your hand.”

           
“Nah,
I understand, nice to meet you.”

           
“Well,
let’s all go up top so you can meet the rest of us,” Tom said.

           
“There’s
more of you?” Milla asked.

           
“Yup.”

THE
HOSPITAL

I
n the basement of the hospital
, they emerged in the engineering
section, where the building’s boilers and other large machinery were at, all
off and quiet for months now. A man stood guard, waiting for his comrades to
return, he had a shotgun in one arm as he took a swig from an alcohol flask. He
looked in his thirties and had a seedy quality to him, a little creepy, and an
obvious loner. This was Alan Parks and he was the hospital’s building engineer.
The group came his way and he saw people that he didn’t know. He didn’t like
it. “What’s going on? I heard an explosion,” he said to Tom.

           
“We
had to seal the sewer tunnel.”

           
“What?
Why? With what?” he asked angrily.

           
“The
new guys were being chased by the stenches, so they used a bomb.”

           
“And
you let them in?”

           
“I
kinda didn’t have a choice, Alan,” he said as he passed him by. “New guys, this
is Alan, the building engineer. Alan, new guys.”

           
Alan
didn’t give them a second look as he walked back to the sewer for a look.

           
Once
Alan was out of earshot, Tom said under his breath, “Building asshole.”

           
Anthony
spoke into a pocket radio. “We’re coming up, and we got company,” he said to
somebody.

           
On
the first floor of the hospital, in the reception area was where most of this
group lived. They turned the offices there into their quarters. The front
doorway of the hospital consisted of two double doorways on the inside and
another set on the outside for added security. The main corridor was long and
went down the middle of the building; it ran from the front doors all the way
to the backdoors, which led to the employee parking lot and the loading dock
for shipping and receiving, which was also protected with a stone wall.

           
The
group arrived in the reception area, and it wasn’t a warm welcome, the others
looked at them with suspicion and slight contempt. There was a man in a white lab
coat, thirties, dark hair and moustache, nerdy glasses gave him that perfect doctor
look. This was Dr. Richard Ceraulo, and he looked a little on edge, which was
understandable since all his patients were dead. Not far from him was Donnie
Harris, an odd looking white guy in his late forties; he still wore his janitor
uniform, even though he wasn’t carrying a mop anymore. He had a semi-automatic
rifle now. He stood there and quietly eyed the new group; he didn’t much care for
them or anyone else, for that matter.

           
Across
the hall was an attractive older woman and a nine-year-old girl, it was obvious
who they were as Joe Centeno joined them. Maggie was Joe’s wife, she had long
wavy, blonde hair with frost-blue eyes and she was strong, she had to be as her
daughter Corina clung to her jeans. The littler girl was wearing a blue summer dress
that was once pretty, now it was dirty and in need of washing, but that was
difficult without an abundant water source. The little girl herself was clean,
kept that way by her mother. Her short blonde hair was across half her face as
she looked at the new people walk in.

           
“Everyone,
these are the new people,” Tom said to his comrades. “Guys, these are my
people,” he said and pointed them out. “That’s Doc Ceraulo, our resident head
shrink. That’s Donnie, our building janitor, but he’s been neglecting his
duties lately, so please excuse the mess,” he said with a smile. “And that’s
Maggie and little Corina, Joe’s family.”

           
“Is
this all of you?” Ardent asked.

           
“Yeah,
this is it.” Tom answered.

           
Ceraulo
pointed to the front of the hospital where all the undead were in the street. Hundreds
of them could be heard in a frenzy to find food. “We have all of you to thank
for that, I suppose?” he said to the new group.

           
“No,
you have me to thank for it,” Ardent said. “I’m the one that chose this place,
and I’m the one that ordered the blasting of the sewer gate to get in.”

           
“That’s
what we felt,” Maggie said.

           
“Yeah,”
Joe said to his wife. “They sealed the tunnel with a bomb and destroyed our
only working bathroom.”

           
Derek
gestured to his shit-soaked clothes. “I really wouldn’t call it a ‘working’
bathroom.”

           
“So
what are we going to use as a restroom now?” Donnie asked.

           
“We
can still use it, for now, we’ll figure something out later,” Tom told them.

           
“I
don’t like going down there, anyway, gives me and Corina the creeps,” Maggie
said under her breath.

           
“Why
couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?” Ceraulo told Ardent.

           
“Look,
we were being chased by thousands of those things, and we needed a place to
hide!” Bear said. “We’re here, so deal with it.”

           
“Yeah
and I guess you’ll be wanting some of our supplies, too, right?” Alan said as
he returned from the basement hotheaded.

           
“No,
we have our own supplies, and we won’t be staying long.” Ardent answered.

           
“They’re
my supplies, Alan, and I’ll give them to who I see fit,” Tom said.

           
“Whatever,
Tom, but this is my building, I worked here! So what makes you think that I
want them here! Huh?” Alan said and raised his shotgun at Ardent.

           
Bear
and the others reacted with their weapons but Ardent waved them off.

           
“Jesus,
Alan, put the gun down!” Tom said.

           
Alan
ignored him. “I want all of you to leave!” he said to Ardent as he put the
shotgun barrel right in his face.

           
“Sure,
we’ll just leave out the front gate.” Ardent replied coolly. “We’re stuck here,
for now, whether you like it or not.”

           
Alan
thought about it for a moment and that’s when Ardent moved in a flash and
snatched the shotgun from him. Now he put his own weapon in his face.

           
“You
need to relax, you’ll live longer,” Ardent told him.

           
“We
were doing just fine, until you got here,” Alan answered defiantly.

           
“Alan’s
right, there were just a few out there before you got here; now there’s
hundreds of them,” Ceraulo added.

           
“No,
there’s thousands out there,” Bear said. “But if we’re quiet, they’ll lose
interest after a while and most of them will leave.”

           
Ardent
took the shotgun barrel out of Alan’s face and unloaded it, but only one shell
came out of the weapon. “One shell, that’s all you got?”

           
“One’s
enough,” Alan said.

           
Ardent
slid the empty shotgun on the floor to Alan’s feet; he reached into his bag, pulled
out a box of shotgun shells and tossed it to Alan. “Now you have more; use them
wisely. Because if you ever point a gun at me again, I won’t stop my friends
from cutting you in half.”

           
Alan
looked at the box of buckshot in his hand. “Thanks.”

           
“I’d
like to take a look from the roof, can we get up there?” Ardent asked.

           
“Yeah,
let’s go,” Anthony said.

           
Anthony
headed to the stairs and Tom followed him, Ardent and the others put their duffel
bags down, but kept their weapons and their backpacks. Derek took a seat on a
reception area chair. “Go on, I’ll watch our stuff.”

           
Ardent
and everyone but Derek followed Anthony and Tom into the stairwell to go up.
The doctor went on his own way. Alan picked up his shotgun and headed back
downstairs to the basement. Donnie just stood there and eyed Derek, who looked
back at him. Joe went into their room, while Maggie and Corina stayed by the
door as they watched Derek. For a grown man that was holding an automatic
weapon, he felt uncomfortable with so many eyes on him. “Well, this is awkward,”
Derek stated with a forced smile.

           
The
little girl looked at Derek. “Mommy, something smells bad,” she said.

           
Derek
laughed and pointed at Donnie.

The little girl smiled and laughed.

           
Donnie
didn’t.

           
In
the stairwell landing of the first floor, before they went up, Ardent and his
group noticed that the emergency exit that led to the back of the building was
barricaded with tables, desks, and chairs that made it impassable. “Are all the
exits blocked like this?” Ardent asked.

           
“Yeah,
it’s to keep out any of the dead if they manage to get inside.” Tom answered.
“The only open exit to the back of the building is the one in the main
corridor.”

           
The
emergency lights that were in place on every floor landing gave them some light
as they ascended, the lights weren’t the brightest, but it was better than
nothing.

           
“You
have power?” Bear asked.

           
“Not
very much; the hospital is equipped with solar panels,” Tom said. “We only use lights
in key places, like this. Everything else is off, especially the outside lights.”

           
As
they went up, Bear opened the door to each floor they passed to have a look.
All they saw were deserted floors, equipment overturned, papers scattered, but
luckily, no bodies or blood.

           
“We
were lucky, the dead never got in here,” Tom said.

           
“How’d
you get stuck here?” Milla asked.

           
“I
came to get my brother, but by the time I got here, the city went to shit and
we couldn’t get out, so we dug in.”

           
“You
work here, kid?” Lauren asked Anthony.

           
Anthony
was a little uncomfortable with the question. “No.”

           
“Oh.”

           
“Is
that what happened with Joe, he and his wife came to get their daughter and got
stuck, too?” Bear asked.

           
“Yeah,”
Anthony said. “But Joe came with his daughter to get his wife.”

           
“Really?”

           
“She
was in here for attempted suicide or something like that,” Anthony said.

           
“And
what were you in for?” Lauren asked.

           
“That’s
none of your business,” Tom told her.

           
“I’m
just asking,” she said.

           
“No,
it’s okay,” Anthony said. “I was in here for a nervous breakdown, but I’m
better now.”

           
They
passed the eighth floor and kept going up.

           
“So
what happened to the rest of the patients in this place?” Ardent wanted to
know.

           
“A
lot of them were checked-in voluntarily, so they just left when everything
started breaking down,” Anthony explained. “The others, the real disturbed
patients, were evacuated to another facility.”

           
“What
facility?” Milla asked.

           
“I
don’t know the name, but it’s somewhere in the Midwest where they keep the real
crazy ones,” Anthony said.

           
“They
had patients like that here?” Bear asked.

           
“Oh
yeah, some of the worst psychotics in the West Coast were locked up in this
place in the north wing,” Anthony told him.

           
“That’s
great,” Bear said uneasily.

           
“What’s
the doctor’s story?” Lauren wanted to know.

           
“Not
sure, he was here when Anthony and me came back after trying to leave town,” said
Tom. “Said he came to get his work files from his office, but didn’t leave fast
enough and got stuck here, like the rest of us. I told him that I was gonna
lock the place down and he stayed.”