Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Book 4): Walking In The Shadow Of Death (12 page)

“Stop worrying about the door, I
won’t let anything in,”
he heard Sean say.

Brad looked back over his shoulder,
trying to focus his vision on the tiny apartment located above the coffee shop.
Finding the building but little else, Brad released the cadaver’s shoulder and
re-entered the tiny lobby of the clinic. He moved through the snow and found an
inside wall. He pressed back against it and knelt down into the shadows of the
room. Brad sat silently like a statue, only moving his head as he slowly panned
his night vision display across the space.

The room had a tile floor that was
covered in paperwork and broken furniture. Half the room was filled with snow
where it had blown in through the open door. Brad scanned the drift and quickly
identified several sets of footprints in the snow. He panned and searched
deeper into the room. It ended at a long counter. To the right of the counter
was a doorway; its door had long ago been torn from its hinges.

“Are you alone?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered,
breaking his silence.

“Explain?”

“I don’t see anything, but there
are tracks in the snow.”

“Coming or going?”

Brad looked again at the
footprints. They did all appear to have the toe pointed towards the doorway. He
let out a sigh of relief and shook his head as he reported back over the radio,
“Going.”

“Good, they were probably with
the group pursuing the brothers. Be cautious, get in … get out.”

Brad swallowed hard before getting
back to his feet. He searched the room again and moved towards the counter,
stepping deliberately to be as silent as possible. Brad pushed up against the
cutout of the long counter.  He scanned left and right. To the right he
could see banks of printers and tall file cabinets. To the right was another
door leading back. Brad leaned out over the counter and looked behind it.

He saw the body of a thin woman.
She was wearing a long lab coat and loose-fitting pants. Her coat was ripped
and an arm was twisted away from her at an odd angle. Brad knew that if he were
to remove his goggle and use a flashlight he would probably find blood and gore
on her clothing. For a brief moment he was grateful of the sanitized view the
night vision device provided.

Brad stepped back and slowly walked
towards the open doorway. He posted up next to the entrance and stood silently,
again listening intently for anything that might be lurking inside. He could
hear the wind whistling through the door. There was the clanging of an object.
The beat was random yet rhythmic, probably something that had come loose in the
wind, now slapping against the side of the building.

Satisfied, Brad raised his pistol
to the ready position and stepped into the doorway. He looked down a long hallway
with doors on both sides; the end of the hall turned off and to the left. Brad
stepped into the hallway and cautiously made his way to the first door. He
looked at a sign above the door. It was labeled
‘Patient Room 1.’
Brad
wasn’t there to clear the building; the door was closed so he moved on. Doors
were staggered along the hall, each one labeled with an ascending number. He
reached the end of the hall and slowly turned the corner, slicing it with his
vision so that he always had his pistol pointed in the correct direction as new
objects came into view.

The hallway as it turned left
opened into another large space. There was a destroyed coffee table in the
middle and an overturned magazine rack. Brad saw a number of sofas and chairs
along a wall. He took a step deeper into the space and saw more bodies. Like
the woman in the front, they were also dressed as medical workers. Brad made
his way towards a wall and again pressed back against it as he recon’d the
space.

The room was a large square. Across
from him was an exit sign above a door, to the left, a lab, and to the right, a
pharmacy. Brad stayed in his position and slowly lifted the goggles from his
eyes to check the room for ambient light. As he’d suspected the room was pitch
black. Deep in the building he was concealed in complete darkness. He continued
to listen, hearing nothing but his own heartbeat, the wind, and the clanging
object.

“You have a status? There is
more movement out here.”
Brad jumped as Sean’s voice broke the silence.

“I found the pharmacy, I’m about to
enter,” Brad said as quietly as possible.

“Okay, pick up the pace. The
numbers are manageable, but they seem to be waking up, doubling every few
minutes. They are all coming from the market.”

“Great, thanks for the positive
forecast.”

“Anytime, buddy.”

Brad rolled his shoulders and
stepped towards the pharmacy door. Just to the right of the door was a small
service window. A large panel had been slid across the window, shutting off the
access. Brad reached down and tried the door. He found it locked; the knob
turned easily in his hand, but the door wouldn’t budge. Sliding his gloved hand
along the edges of the door he noticed there were bolts at the top and bottom.
Possibly secured from inside or with a key.

Brad pressed on the door again and
verified the resistance and the weight of the door. He was certain he wouldn’t
be able to break into it using the hawk. He moved on to the service window.
There was a large pane of Plexiglas with a slot at the bottom. Just beyond that
was a large wood panel sealing off the door. Looking closer he could see the
wood panel was only held in place by a small locking latch and a track at the
top and bottom of the panel.  Brad reached his arm down into the slot and
pulled on the Plexiglas. It was solid but he was confident he could remove it.
Twisting his arm, he pushed against the wood door beyond the glass. He found it
to be light and loosely fitted.

“I have a problem,” Brad said over
the radio.

“Go.”

“The door to the pharmacy, it’s
heavy and secured. I’d need a fire axe or more to get in … There is a small
window but it’s closed up and blocked on the far side with another door. Looks
weak enough to gain entry but it’s going to be loud.”

“It’s your call … I won’t lie to
you, if you make noise you are probably going to piss off the neighbors.”

“How’s it looking out there?”

“Just shy of twenty of them.
They took notice of the ones I put down. These fuckers aren’t acting dumb,”
Sean
said with anxiety in his voice.

“We didn’t come all this way to go
back empty-handed.”

“Got it, I’ll keep them
outside.”

“Okay. There’s an exit door right
here. If they get in, I’ll egress that direction … I’m about to open this can
of whoop ass,” Brad said.

14.

Brad placed the spike of the
tomahawk under the glass and the claw against the wall. He pressed down on the
handle and heard the Plexiglas strain before snapping loudly and popping out of
the frame. “Oops, that was a lot louder than I expected it to be,” Brad
whispered.

“
I don’t think they heard it,”
Sean answered.

“Good, I’m going to breach the
sliding interior door now,” Brad whispered.

Brad positioned the tomahawk
against the small metal latch. He began to apply his weight to the handle of
the hawk.
Boom!
There was an impact against the far side.  Brad
jumped back, almost tripping over his own feet, yelping in the process. The
banging continued and was joined by moaning and the high pitched scream of the
primals.

“What was that are you okay?”

“Oh shit … Something’s in there,”
Brad answered.

“Okay … Brad, listen to me … get
out, get out now. We’re scrubbing this mission.”

“No, I got this, they still can’t
see me.”

“Brad … it’s over, get out of
there!”
Sean yelled
.

Brad ignored him and took the
tomahawk in a baseball bat grip and swung at the door. The spike stuck, the
thing banging on the other side continuing its assault on the door. Brad
ignored the screaming and Sean’s instructions over the radio as he pulled out
the hawk and swung again.  This time the flimsy door began to split. 
Brad slipped the hawk back into its holster on his hip and leveled his M4. He
had already made plenty of noise.
What will a little more hurt?
He
thought to himself.

Brad saw the split in the door open
as a set of grey fingers reached through the crack. They pulled at the door
until a piece of it broke away.  Brad raised the rifle just as he
recognized an eye staring back at him from the hole. He squeezed the trigger,
putting two rounds into the door just right of the eye, the suppressed rifle
sounding far louder in the confined space. The fingers lost their grip on the
door and he heard a thud on the far side.

Not wasting time, Brad used the
collapsed stock of his rifle to knock away the remaining pieces of the sliding
door. The pieces fell in, now allowing him to see into the pharmacy. He spied
row after row of tall shelves stocked with bottles and boxes of medication.
Brad looked left and right and saw no movement.

“I’m going inside,” Brad said over
the radio.

“You need to hurry, the
neighbors are pissed about the noise; they are moving towards the clinic.”

“
Got it,”
Brad said
as he pulled himself through the window.

He landed next to the crumpled
creature he’d just put down. Unlike the others, this one was wearing a law
enforcement uniform. Its arm was wrapped in stained bandages. Brad saw that
deeper into the room lay a pump shotgun and a semi auto pistol near the
officer’s jacket. There were more bodies in the room, these ones torn apart.
Brad looked to the heavy entrance door and saw that it had been locked and barricaded
from the inside. The surface of the door was covered in deep scratches.

“I see multiple dead in here …
Clinic must have fallen … They hid in here together. Until this one turned on
them, then folks didn’t have a chance,” Brad mumbled.

“Yeah, we’ve seen that before.
Are the meds there? Brad, you need to hurry,”
Sean said, cutting him off.

“Yeah, shelves of them. Okay, let
me look.”

“Brad, I’m trying to push them
back, but they are onto you. They’re all moving towards the clinic now.”

Brad pulled the sheet of paper from
his breast pocket. It listed generic medical items such as gauze bandages,
syringes. Brad saw a wall stacked with miscellaneous medical supplies. He
opened his pack and began stuffing them in, several of everything, no time to
sort in the dark. He came to the drug list. It called for pain killers and
antibiotics. Darvocet, Percocet, Oxycodone, Tramadol. Brad read the list but
didn’t see them on the shelf. He quickly ran up and down the aisles searching
until he saw a locked cabinet in the back. 

No time to waste. Brad leveled the
M4 and shot through the handle. He grabbed the door and twisted the latch until
it popped open. The first thing he saw was a box labeled
‘Hydrocodone/Vicodin.’
Shit, close enough,
Brad thought as he grabbed the box and dumped its
contents into his pack. Then he grabbed several other bottles from the cabinet
and threw them in.
If it’s worth locking up it must be good shit, he
thought
as he turned to search for the antibiotics.

He looked at the list. They all seemed
to end in ‘cin’. He was looking, knocking over boxes, when he heard an
unsuppressed gunshot. “What was that?” he asked, continuing his search.

“I’m buying you some time, they’re
at the clinic door,” Sean said just as Brad heard another gunshot.

Brad tipped over another box,
finding a bottle labeled
‘Sisomicin.’
“I don’t know what you are, but
you’re coming with me,” Brad whispered as he dumped the bottles and those
around it into his pack. He quickly zipped it shut and put it on his back. He
turned towards the window as the frequency of gunshots increased.

“Brad, they’re inside! You need
to find another way out,”
he heard Sean yell just as a primal crashed
against the window.

Brad jumped back, pumping rounds
into the creature’s head as it attempted to climb into the space. “Fuck,
they’re at the window!” Brad yelled as he turned and grabbed a shelf behind
him. He pulled it sideways and then shoved it against the wall, blocking the
window. He took a desk in the corner and slid it across the room and jammed it
against the shelf. Now Brad could hear them screaming and beating against the
other side of the shelf.

“Brad they’re in the coffee shop
below me, I have to bug out!”
Sean said.

“What the fuck, I’m trapped in
here, don’t leave me Chief.”

“
Hey, you’re still in the fight,
don’t quit … I’m moving, back with you in a few.”

Brad continued to pile the shelves
against the window entrance. He could hear them screaming against the far side,
but his barricade was holding. Brad looked around the room, finding it hard to
see. He flipped up his night vision and turned on his flashlight. He
immediately wished he hadn’t; the room’s floor was coated with dried blood, the
walls streaked with bloody handprints. The white light brought color to the
horror of what had happened to the pharmacy workers.

Brad moved the light along the
ceiling and walls. He was closed in. There appeared to be no other way out. He
moved around the room, yanking shelving from the walls and throwing them
against the barricade. He knocked over the cabinet filled with painkillers,
searching the wall behind it. Nothing. He was trapped. Brad moved to the wall
opposite the barricaded window and dropped to the floor. They were still
screaming outside and beating against the shelving. He watched the wall vibrate
with every impact.

“Chief? You there? … Sean?”

There was no response. Brad pushed
the magazine release on the M4, quickly replacing the mag with a full one. He
took off the assault pack and sat it next to him. He could see his breath. Even
though he was still sweating, he knew he would be cold soon. Brad searched the
room and saw the police jacket still lying near the shotgun and pistol in the
corner. He got to his feet and moved towards it. The jacket was dark blue and
of a heavy quilted material. Brad picked it up. There was a large tear and
blood marks on the sleeve.

Brad pulled his knife and cut away
the bloody part of the jacket. He looked down at the pistol. The slide was
locked to the rear and empty. He picked up the shotgun, a standard 12-gauge
with iron sights. On closer inspection he found three rounds in the tube and
five more attached to the stock. He left the pistol but decided to take the
shotgun for now. He moved back to his spot by the wall and sat down, pulled his
knees in tight and placed the police jacket over them. All the while the
primals continued to scream and press against the barricade.

Brad shut off the light and sat
quietly in the dark. The longer he sat, the calmer the primals became. He could
still hear them on the other side of the room, snarling and occasionally
lashing out at each other.  Brad would sometimes drift off, but sharply be
woken by the sounds of an attack against the barricade. He forced himself to
stay quiet, to avoid using the light. Often he would power on his night vision
to reassure himself that he was still alone in the pharmacy. He tried the radio
several more times, getting no response.

It was cold and he began to shiver.
Brad was tempted to build a fire in the room, but he didn’t want to risk
burning himself alive or agitate the primals anymore. He removed a stained lab
coat from one of the workers and added it to his layers of clothing. He found a
newspaper and used the crumpled paper to insulate the layers of his jacket.
Brad again sat back against the wall in the dark. The primals were still out
there; he could hear them. There was no way he would be able to get out the way
he’d come. Brad closed his eyes, trying to formulate a plan. He drifted in and
out of sleep in the corner with the shotgun in his lap.

“Knock.” There was a noise at
the heavy locked door. Brad jumped, shaking his head; he turned on the
flashlight and searched the room, finding nothing. He listened intently for the
noise that had startled him, finding only silence. “The primals? Where did they
go?” he thought. Brad rolled himself to his feet and slowly walked towards the
barricaded window. He strained again to listen. Still nothing.

“Knock, Knock.” There was
another pounding at the door.

“Sean, is that you?” Brad called
out as he backed up and leveled the light at the door. He was startled when he
saw the handle move up and down. “Sean?” Brad called out, again getting no
response. He moved closer to the door and heard an audible click as a key slid
into the lock. Brad watched as the bolt lever on his side of the door turned
into the open position.

Brad took another step back,
shaking now, still holding the light. The handle moved. Brad dropped the
flashlight, kicking it away. He heard movement. He fired his rifle, the muzzle
flash lighting the space. He could see Ryan entering the room, running at him,
screaming. Brad continued to fire, falling backwards. Ryan landed on top of
him, clawing at his face. Brad turned and twisted, trying to escape, gasping
for air.