Toxic (41 page)

N
othing. All around her, even in her head.

Elaine opened up her eyes right as she heard several blasts that resembled shots. The grunts and bangs brought her back to reality. She had managed to take refuge inside the stock room. In a panic and with her heart palpitating, using the bed to block the door had seemed sensible to her, even after having locked it. The bed acted as a sort of psychological barrier on which a man was lying down as if he belonged to two worlds. The nurse refused to look beyond it. The creatures were in a hurry just behind the door. She could feel them. The walls didn’t block the stench that came in from everywhere to the point of saturating the air. The noises of these bodies in pieces and of the drumming stumps filled her with terror. She leaned her back against the bed with her hands flat on the cold floor. The Colombian was still sleeping despite the concert of grunts and wheezing.

“And now?” she whispered, her breathing jagged.

Her clothing stuck to her skin. She shook like a leaf.

Why had she followed the biologist’s advice? There was no way out.

She felt around in one of the bags and took out a flashlight. The room was like any hospital stock room, just less clean. The glow from the light confirmed her fears: it was a dead end.

The infected continued to bang on the door, which vibrated under the shower of bodies. That wouldn’t stop as long as they could smell their presence less than a meter away. She wondered how long she could hold out and then tried to focus on a way to escape. Her eyes fluttered around everywhere.

The beam of light danced at the base of her arm as she swept the flashlight from left to right in the middle of the aisle. The empty and overturned boxes of supplies were of no interest. She would have liked a gun, like the assault rifles in old movies. After an inspection, she returned to Hector. The infected were not getting weaker. The shapeless mass agglomerated just on the other side infested her imagination and stopped her from concentrating.

“Oh, shit...” she mumbled.

She grabbed the Colombian’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, even though he was still asleep. “You’re a good person deep down.”

She sponged his forehead. The stream of water followed the lines of his Latin features.

“You saved our life and me, I’m not able to save yours.”

The race against the clock, the operation, the colonel who was almost bitten, all of that to fail miserably here, in a dark, dead end stock room. Elaine let herself slide onto the floor, her back against the foot of the bed and her knees under her chin.

“Bruce!” Masters yelled. “Help me move this cabinet.”

The marine was in a rage. The living dead had come out of everywhere as if they had coordinated their attack, an idea that was pure fantasy. They had taken them by surprise and even worse: the horde had cut off their retreat. They had strictly prohibited the biologist from going down. He had been forced to go look for him and had risked his life in doing it, wasting precious ammo at the same time.

The two men pushed the piece of furniture to block the stairs, at the foot of which a half-dozen zombies were piled up. Alva balanced the chairs and stools that they had had so much trouble extracting from the tangle of furniture a few hours earlier.

“Son of a bitch, it was all for nothing,” Bruce swore. “But where are these L-Ds coming from? It looks like they’re coming from inside.”

“I find it weird that we can’t see any bodies. Now I know why,” the colonel muttered.

“Yeah. We’re lucky to have gotten out of there.”

“Lucky?” Alva replied. “And Elaine? Where’s she?”

“Safe, I hope. I told her to hide in the stock room.”

“The what?” Masters stared at him with wide eyes.

“Bravo, bravo! It’s a dead end, you idiot,” Alva yelled. “And you call yourself a scientist? Think a little, for Christ’s sake! What will we do without her?”

Stung by her words, the young man frowned. He doubled his efforts to fill the stairs. Then, he stopped.

“I wanted to help her... I thought we’d have the time to go back and climb with Hector. She wouldn’t have come alone.”

The colonel observed him.

“You had the right idea. For the moment, she’s safe.”

“What?”

“We don’t have time to discuss.”

Once the passage was blocked, they hurried into the direction of the surgery ward that the colonel had spotted previously. He crossed the open double doors quickly and pushed open the annex door. After a brief pause, he headed to the end, behind the rows of shelves, with Bruce on his heels.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to get her out of there,” Masters assured him, with a grin deforming his lips. “Go find Alva; we’ll need her.”

“¡Hola chica!
”

Elaine sat up as soon as she heard the familiar words pronounced by a weak voice. Her professional reflexes told her to control the Colombian’s pulse and breathing before even responding. He turned his head slowly. His shining eyes scanned the barely lit room.

“
¿
Dónde estoy?
” he repeated.

“I’m here, Hector. It’s Elaine. We’re... lost,” she almost added. “How do you feel?”

“Where are we?”

“We were attacked by a horde.”

All of a sudden, the trafficker tensed up and his face twisted. “
Madre de Dios
, that smell, that noise, is that...”

Elaine grabbed his hand.

“Get me out of here,” he whispered.

Before Hector’s understandable reaction, she yielded. The determination of the infected was not getting weaker and if they managed to get in... She preferred not to think about that. Hector showed his impatience while she disengaged the breaks. They took refuge at the back of the stock room. The flashlight placed on the floor produced just enough light to make out the ceiling. At least she couldn’t see the door. Hector moved around on his bed. He tried to lean towards her.

“
Gracias chica
,” she heard.

All of a sudden, she asked herself why he was thanking her.

“I did my job, nothing more.”

“You’re not a surgeon, I think. You’ve accomplished a miracle.”

She looked away from him, looking for a way out. Her thoughts were misguided.

“Who is Marisol?”

The trafficker’s face tensed up right away.

“Nobody,
chica
.”

“You didn’t stop saying her name each time that Alva was beside you,” she insisted.

“Alva will never be Marisol,” he cut her off.

Elaine bit her lip.

“I thought you liked her...”

The nurse didn’t insist and for a moment, she remained standing to check her patient’s vital signs. The clanking of a container thrown into a duct added to the sound coming from the hallway. Elaine turned around. Her gaze fixed on the access to the goods lift, which she hadn’t noticed. After a second projectile fell from it, she hurried to open the hatch. She twisted her neck to move her head up.

“Elaine, are you down there?It’s Masters; how are you?”

“Good God, what the hell are you doing up there?” she said angrily.

“The L-Ds have taken over the ground floor. We had to protect ourselves as fast as possible. We’re going to get you guys out of there.”

“How? This thing needs electricity to work.”

“The lift has a manual mode. It can take one person at a time.”

The nurse turned towards the Colombian. In normal times, she wouldn’t have allowed him to get out of his bed.

“Prepare to receive Hector,” she advised them.

With her help, the trafficker managed to sit up on the edge of the bed, grumbling about the pain. She encouraged him with a warning voice.

“
Cállate, chica
,” he responded with a grimace.

“I’m not a
chica
”

The man put all of his weight on Elaine’s shoulders to slide off of the bed.

“Yes, behind your sense of superiority that’s exactly what you are,
una chica
lost in hell.”

“Shut up, Hector, or I’m going to let you rot here alone.”

The walk to the hatch was painful, but not as much as the ordeal of making him go into and fit into a narrow space originally designed for bundles of sheets and operating room supplies. The Colombian looked like a wounded bear squeezed into a cage too small to contain his anger.

“All ready,” Elaine yelled for the others.

Bit by bit, the platform carried the trafficker, centimeter by centimeter.

Elaine went back to look for the bags. She couldn’t leave them. She dragged them along the floor for a few meters.

When it was her turn, she placed them under her thighs. The ride up was never-ending and Elaine, relieved, literally jumped out of the lift once she had made it to the upper floor. Alva took care of the Colombian, who was lying down on a new bed. While Bruce took care of blocking the handle, Masters helped the nurse recover the bags.

“I’m happy to see you.”

“There will never be an end to this. We’re condemned to run around until the aliens capture us or we become infected in turn, isn’t that so?”

The colonel resumed his feelings with a nod of his head and then brought the materials out of the annex.

They all found themselves in the hallway with an important worry on their minds:

“How do we get out of here?” Bruce wondered.

“Hector can’t walk,” Elaine specified.

Alva sighed and then leaned with her back against the wall. Masters crossed his arms against his chest. “We can’t stay here forever. It’s filled with L-Ds. And we still have to be able to transport him, right?”

Elaine recognized that the solution was doable as long as he remained lying down the whole time. The biologist went right away to look for a stretcher. Elaine pulled the marine aside towards a neighboring room.

“We won’t make it to the van.”

“Yeah, that’s right. So the van’s going to have to come to us.”

Masters took his 45 out of its holster and checked the magazine.

“I have four bullets left and two more clips in my pocket.”

“You’re not thinking about that.”

“The infected in the area all showing up around here, which means that the main door should be clear.”

“That’s crazy!”

“You said it yourself; Hector can’t walk. We don’t have a choice if we want to get back to the boat.”

Of course she was right, she thought, watching him prepare. The group got together once again in the middle of the hallway under the light of a flashlight held by Alva. Bruce came back with his discovery: a foldable stretcher.

“Here’s the plan,” Master explained. “I’ll bring the van to the bottom of the emergency staircase that you will find at the end of the hallway.”

“How are we going to get him down there?” Bruce questioned. “It’s too narrow.”

“Attach him securely so that he doesn’t slip,” the colonel advised him before putting an end to the debate.

Before leaving, the singer held him back for a moment.

“Be careful.”

Bruce and Elaine prepared Hector to transfer him to the stretcher. The operation looked like it was going to be a delicate one until the biologist suggested that they put the stretcher on a second bed and simply slide the Colombian.

“Excellent,” Elaine approved.

The patient revealed himself to be as cooperative as possible despite the pain which hindered his movements.

“You can’t give him anything?” Bruce questioned.

“The liquid morphine expired over a year ago and I didn’t find it in pills.”

They left the room and put Hector close to the French door. Alva had already brought back the two bags as well as a third one, which caught the attention of the young man.

“What’s in there?”

“None of your business.”

Elaine warned her: “You know, expired drugs are even more dangerous. Let me take a look at least.”

The singer lost her temper. “Do you think that I only think about getting high?”

She exposed the contents of her bag: packets of biscuits collected from the broken vending machines.

“So, are you happy now?”

The van crossed the lawn turned savannah at breakneck speed. They saw it cut a path in the vegetation and then stop at the foot of the stairs. Masters came out of the vehicle and gave them a sign.

“Let’s go,” Bruce said.

Alva started down the stairs first, carrying the bags. Next, they slid the stretcher softly, making sure not to stumble. Hector hung on tightly to the edge with his teeth clenched, not reassured by his companions’ hesitant movements in the middle of the metal trellis.

“It’ll be over soon,” Elaine said to him, despite her anxiety.

The descent seemed never-ending and she didn’t stop looking to the left and right. She heard noises from inside. One of them made her jump.

“Pay attention, for Christ’s sake,” The biologist yelled at her.

Maybe the infected were getting ready to fall on them. By means of their twisting movements, they made it to the bottom of the staircase. Elaine and Bruce slid the Colombian into the back of the van when a shot suddenly resounded in the air. When she pulled open the door, she saw Masters pointing his smoking gun at an L-D on the ground less than three meters away.

“Get a move on! We have to go now!” he yelled.

Bruce pointed to the bushes several dozen meters away. L-Ds were moving around, attracted by the group and by the promise of a feast of fresh flesh. The colonel kept from killing them, preferring to save his ammunition. He got into the driver’s seat next to Bruce. Elaine climbed into the back with Alva. Masters floored the gas pedal in the direction of the front line formed by the creatures.

Elaine closed her eyes but the noise of broken bodies and the vehicle’s jumps were enough to turn her stomach despite it being empty. They got back to the deserted road, which they turned off of at the first intersection to take adjacent streets. The main roads of the cities attracted hordes because they were spacious. The passengers kept silent almost religiously.

Only once they had gotten back to the marina did the pressure decrease and they realized their good luck. Alva congratulated Masters on his chauffeur abilities. The biologist shook his hand and gave him a pat, something that he wouldn’t have allowed himself to do before. Elaine hugged him and thanked him. Annoyed, the colonel left and started to get Hector out, who was swearing in Spanish.