Toxic (37 page)

T
he top floors had suffered less than the ground floor, the colonel noted, as he explored the area looking for medical supplies. Maybe they should have brought the Colombian directly up here. The stairwells were blocked by benches, cupboards, chairs and all types of furniture, which weren’t lacking in a hospital and would certainly block the passage of a stretcher. However, with elbow grease and determination, they could overcome any obstacles. Marine Faith, a corps instructor would have added.

“Find me bandages, compresses and proper bedding,” the nurse had ordered, with a firm voice that wouldn’t have been out of place on a base. He got about visiting each room in the long hallway of the third floor which, apparently, crossed the building from one wing to the other. In the middle of his search, he fell upon a veritable treasure: a storage room that supplied the three operating rooms that made up the surgery ward. The cabinets hadn’t been pillaged. However, the overturned stretchers and torn open boxes indicated that people had already helped themselves to the room beforehand.

He asked himself where these people had gone. He hadn’t seen any bodies, which increased his feeling of unease.

All the while on his guard, he concentrated on the contents of the cupboards and boxes and checked inside drawers. A double door to his right led to a room submerged in darkness. His lighter didn’t help him much. Apart from a hatch whose contours he made out on the back wall and other shelves, the place revealed itself to not be of interest, particularly because he didn’t see anything. The soldier got back on his way.

He inspected the room once again and stopped in front of a row of short cabinets. One of them held bulky sports bags. Those were exactly what he needed. He put two on a table, which he cleared beforehand.

“Bedding, napkins, compresses, dressings, bandages,” he recited aloud.

He didn’t want to weigh it down more than necessary. On the other hand, he doubted he would be able to follow the same path as when he came. The stairs were harder to negotiate while burdened with such a load.

“First things first. Supplies first.”

The bags filled up quickly. To them, he added surgical instruments that he found in a drawer. Bottles of alcohol and disinfectants were also added to his inventory. The amount of materials seemed to be more than enough to him. It was time to return to the pediatric ward. The best option was to go outside. He had spotted the sign for an emergency exit at the end of a hallway on arrival. He headed to the right, his gear on his shoulders. When he came to the open French door, he crossed the frame and then found himself on a metal landing whose center held a narrow and steep staircase. The descent didn’t have any particular problems to it, other than the two sports bags, which he harnessed to his back to free up his hands.

After five minutes of exertion, he stepped onto the grass. The main entrance was located on the other side of the building. He opted for the safety of the shady alley that looped around the complex and led right to the entrance. At the time, it seemed like a good decision to him. That way, he would keep out of sight, under the trees that bordered the path.

The bags saved his life barely two minutes later.

Masters didn’t see the L-D that jumped on him as he passed by a leafy shrub. He felt a violent push at his back and off balance, he couldn’t avoid falling on the concrete, face down. The stench of the grunting infected person, a mix of fetid residues and the smell of rotten eggs, made his stomach curdle. The creature tried to bite him unsuccessfully due to the large bags that blocked its head. Its excitement went up a few notches. The marine heard it get annoyed and scratch the fabric which luckily was thick. Masters managed to slide his hand to his stomach to grab the butt of his 45. He was sweating. The hardest part was turning around. The colonel closed his eyes. He counted to three.

When the shot ripped through the air, Elaine told Alva to stay with Hector. She hurried towards the room where she prepared the Colombian for an operation that she had never done in her life. She was a nurse, not a surgeon. She was filled with a sort of terror at the idea of cutting a patient without knowing how to go about it. She had to stick to her instincts. The same one that right now, was urging her to abandon her post.

“What’s happening? Where’s Masters?”

Bruce told her that he hadn’t come back from his expedition. She told herself that one of them should have gone with him, but the marine had insisted on going alone, arguing, with good reason, of course, that the biologist should watch over the entrance to emergency while Alva cared for the wounded.

“Fuck,” she swore several times, “I hope nothing happened to him. We can’t afford to lose someone.”

All of a sudden, she heard bangs on the door. Bruce moved the table and the couch which held it closed. When they opened it, the young man drew back. The colonel put two bags covered in blood in front of him before sliding inside, his 45 in his hand. His face speckled and his stained clothes called for the life or death question:

“Were you bitten?” Elaine asked him in a sharp voice.

“No. Check for yourself.”

The nurse took his words literally. She pushed the trolley in front of her and put on a pair of latex gloves, which she took out of a cardboard box. Masters took off his shirt and canvas suit. He pointed to his underwear.

“That won’t be necessary,” Elaine specified.

She cleaned his athletic body with a sponge soaked with water before undergoing a meticulous inspection.

“It looks like you were lucky. How many were there?”

“Just one. It was desperate, but I managed to get it off of me and put a bullet in its head.”

“I see. That explains the tissue splatter.”

She got back up.

“They rarely move around on their own. There must be others.”

“Its companions must be in the vicinity, without counting those of them that are hanging around in the building. I didn’t see any bodies upstairs.”

“The noise is going to attract them,” Bruce muttered. “It’s not a good idea to hand around here too long.”

Elaine shot him a fuming look and then pointed at the sports bags with her chin.

“Did you find what I asked for?”

“Yes ma’am,” Masters said, smiling at her, in his underwear and socks on the dirty tile.

“Perfect! Put your clothes back on, soldier,” she ordered, joking at him in turn.

She went up to the bags to inspect their contents.

“Good, exactly,” she congratulated him. “Exactly what I need.”

She pulled on the trolley and started to place the materials on the two trays. She jumped when Masters put a hand on her shoulder.

“Will he be OK?”

“I don’t know. It’s my first operation.”

“You were an ER nurse. You must have seen tons of surgeons doing this sort of operation.”

She lined up a scalpel on a napkin, beside her group of cutting utensils.

“We tell ourselves that flying shouldn’t be such a big mystery with all of the onboard computers, but finding yourself alone and in charge of the plane filled with passengers when the pilot has just had a heart attack, that’s another story.”

The colonel gratified her with an encouraging smile. “I understand what you’re feeling. You’re going to do fine. I have confidence in you.”

This was their first one-on-one conversation since the showers on the navy ship, she realized. Since her revelation of the alien, he had been avoiding her and the more she thought about that, the more she wondered about it. The soldier, she was convinced, had a bone to pick with these creatures from space. He had seen them, just like her.

She checked her instruments once again and then pushed the trolley to cross the double door.

“Good luck,” she heard.

It wasn’t about luck, she thought, standing in front of the body, which was lying down and covered with green sheets. Alva, in front of her, frowned. She was wearing a white coat, a mask, gloves and a hat. The diva resembled any ER assistant, if you ignored her eyes red with fatigue.

Her hands shook. Despite her depression, she had insisted on helping. Elaine hadn’t refused her, as she couldn’t risk using general anesthesia without the appropriate equipment or without a specialist at her side. All she had was Alva. The singer had to calm the Colombian, who clearly thought that she was someone else. He insisted on calling her Marisol. The poor man was delirious and shivered. Break the fever, treat him with antibiotics, she thought, but first of all, she had to get the bullet out. Elaine took a breath and then put a cloth into the Colombian’s mouth.

“I’m sorry. This is going to be very painful.”

His wide open eyes implored her to not delay. The nurse nodded. She chose a ten blade to make her first cut.

As an informed strategist, Masters knew that they would not hold out against a furious horde. At the sight of a feast of flesh, the infected behaved like sharks overtaken by a frenzy. They had the advantage of numbers and a critical mass, which meant that the more time went by, the stronger they were getting.

The men erected two lines of defense. They pushed the furniture and metallic closets and piled as many chairs and tables as possible in the main landing and also ten meters later, inside the hall where one of the entrances led to the pediatric ward. They closed the fire doors and piled up more chairs. Masters then looked for a way out. He went through the double door with the biologist on his heels. They went by Hector’s room in silence in the direction of the stairs.

“If something goes wrong, we’ll break the window and go out through that path,” he decided.

The windows opened up to a U-shaped enclave that led to the former lawn.

“From there, we can get to the parking lot.”

Bruce agreed. The two men went back to the waiting room.

From his observation post – a crate behind an overturned table – Masters saw the first infected emerge from the tall grass. The creatures whipped towards the covered porch that had received ambulances.
Were they guided by the call of fresh flesh or perhaps primal instinct?
he wondered, coming back down from his perch.

“They’re coming.”

Bruce wanted to alert Elaine.

“She doesn’t need this type of pressure as well. It’s better for her to work unburdened.”

“Maybe.”

The young guy kept his hand on the door.

“Listen. You’re a smart young guy and I imagine that you’ve had to go through ordeals to develop such a character. You’ve made good decisions that have saved our skin.”

The biologist stared at him.

“Having a complete douche bag for a dad helps.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to...”

“No, no, you didn’t mention it for nothing. He cut me off when I refused to become a business lawyer, broker, accountant or some other career that handled a lot of money. I had to manage.”

“I see.”

“My dad and money... It was more than a love story; that was his fix.”

The colonel looked repentant when he understood that Bruce had been anxious to let it all out. For how long had he been living with that knot in his stomach? The new world didn’t leave him any places to let out his bitterness. A muffled bang put an end to a monologue that was bound to be painful and sad, to his great relief.

“They’re attacking the first barricade.”

“Do you think they’ll reach this door?” Bruce asked, raising his chin in the direction of the pile of furniture.

“I don’t know. I guess it depends on how many there are. When it happens, we’ll have to move fast.”

They heard other noises. They each sat in a corner.

Elaine came for news a good fifteen minutes later. She held the door open with her foot and kept her bloody hands in the air.

“It’s what I think,” Masters heard through her mask. He nodded.

“How long do I have?”

“As much time as you need. We put up barricades. They’re not close to getting in here, don’t worry.”

Elaine glanced towards the windows. Like him, she had noticed that it was getting darker out.

“Go back to Hector. Finish your task and we’ll take care of the L-Ds,” he started again.

The nurse moved her foot and went away again. Bruce sat on a plastic stool. He raised an eyebrow at the soldier, who was almost at attention in the middle of the room.

“And you?”

“Me?”

“What’s your story? We think you’ve seen the aliens, I want to say, away from their armor or their damned drones. You know what they look like, right?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You give the impression that you know a fair bit on the subject or otherwise you’ve lived through a thing or two.”

“A thing or two?”

“Yeah, like what happened to Dewei and Elaine in the Bahamas.”

The problem with cunning, intelligent people like Bruce was that they sensed things. They had an intuition, a sort of detector fixed to the right wavelength for this type of mess. Masters told himself that it would have been better had his dad loaded him with money because then he wouldn’t be having this conversation with the son right now.

The colonel sighed.

“I was on duty in Dubai when they arrived. The Ayatollahs had the bomb, the Saudis were shitting their pants. It was a nameless shit hole. We needed to dissuade the former and calm the latter, and not to mention the Israelis. To put it briefly.”

“The aliens fixed the conflict.”

“You could say so. They unplugged everything as easily as you turn off the light by flicking the switch. In one instant, our weapons were turned into useless scrap metal. Their drones launched large-scale coordinated attacks.”

“You fought against them.” Bruce leaned forward, interested in what was to follow.

“I got together a makeshift troop, the equivalent of a brigade, close to a camp in the middle of the desert, three thousand men. Vehicles, a few Russian tanks left over. We had to get a hold of old M-4s without electronic systems. Once we were ready to confront them, we set course for Dubai to meet them.

“And?”

“We got what was coming to us. I managed to reach the suburbs at the head of a recon squadron. We fell into an ambush, it was... all very quick. We didn’t see it coming.”