Wolf Running (4 page)

“There! Restroom!” Jamie gasped, pointing to the left. They shot through the door. Nowen stumbled and fell, landing hard on the cold floor. Jamie was forcing the door shut, and Nowen slid over to help. Together they got it closed and then braced it with their bodies.

The running feet thundered past outside and continued away from them. Nowen looked up at Jamie. The nurse had her head turned sideways against the door, straining to hear anything. She caught Nowen’s inquisitive look and shook her head, laying a finger across her lips. From some distance away came another ear-splitting cry, and then silence. Jamie waited another minute, then turned and slid down to join Nowen on the floor.

“Anyone else in here?” she mouthed to Nowen. Nowen got on her stomach and looked down the row of stalls. She shook her head. “Oh, thank God.” Jamie leaned her head back against the door, breathing deeply.

Nowen watched the young woman. Her hands were trembling, and shock and fear mixed in her blue eyes. Nowen looked at her own hands, steady and calm as her heartbeat.
Why don’t I feel the same way?
The fear and uncertainty she had experienced earlier had disappeared. Even the sight of dead people seemingly coming back to life hadn’t scared her. She felt, instead, in a state of perpetual readiness, mentally and physically preparing for whatever happened next. Her nerves were thrumming with electricity and all her senses seemed heightened.

Jamie pulled her knees up and crossed her arms over them, dropping her head down to rest. She began to murmur, words jumbling and tripping over each other rapidly. Nowen nudged her, worried that Jamie was slipping into shock.

“What are you saying?” Nowen whispered harshly,

The young nurse raised her head and focused her bleary eyes on Nowen. “Zombies.”

“What?”

“Zombies. It’s zombies, I can’t believe it, you read about them in books and watch them in movies and you think it’s just nonsense, but then they turn out to be real and then it’s holy shit what do you do? “Jamie was talking faster and louder. She didn’t seem to see Nowen at all now, looking instead at some far off point only she could see. “What do you do I mean it’s fun to read about them or watch them but then they turn out to be real and they’re chasing you and eating people-”. A distinct note of hysteria wove through the rushed words.

Nowen grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. When that didn’t stop the flow of words she slapped Jamie, lightly, across the cheek. Jamie turned astonished eyes on her.

“What was that for?” Her voice was hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Nowen said softly, “but you were getting strange. And loud. And not making much sense, really. What do you mean, ‘zombies’?”

Jamie rubbed her cheek and gave Nowen a look that was equal parts incredulous and pissed. “You can’t tell me you’ve never heard of zombies.” she whispered.

“I’m an amnesiac, not an alien. Of course I’ve heard of zombies, but that girl out there is not a zombie.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s impossible! There are no more zombies then there are unicorns!”

Jamie crossed her arms across her chest. “Ok, let’s look at the facts: the girl was dead and then she came back to life. Bingo, zombie.”

Nowen rubbed her eyes and leaned back against the door. The bright lights over the sinks seemed to stab through her eyelids and straight into her brain. “Jamie, we have no proof that that girl was dead.”

“She was in your room, right? Did you examine her?”

“Yes, but-”

“And she was dead, right?” Jamie’s tone was almost insufferably smug.

“Yes, but-” Nowen held up a hand to stop the expected interruption, “I’m not a doctor, that I know of, and I could have been wrong. You’re the one with the medical expertise; I’m sure you could come up with dozens of reasons why that girl is acting that way outside of her being a zombie.”

Jamie looked thoughtful for a moment. “Ok, I’ll give you that. But!” and her whispered words were triumphant, “Marcy was for sure dead, and she came back to life!”

Nowen stared at the other woman, at a loss for words. A sound from the hallway outside the bathroom caught her attention. She looked at Jamie. “Did you hear that?” she hissed.

Jamie shook her head and mouthed ‘what?’

Nowen pressed her ear to the door, straining to catch the sound again. Jamie followed suit. There was nothing other than their hushed breathing, and then Nowen heard it again. Bare feet on tile, coming toward the bathroom, coming from the direction that the girl in the pink tank-top had run. Jamie’s eyes widened as she finally heard them, and together they listened in silence as the walker moved past their door and back toward the nurses’ station.

When the footsteps had moved out of hearing range Nowen turned to Jamie. “Now what?” she whispered.

Jamie sighed and shrugged. “I don’t particularly want to spend the rest of the night in here - I don’t trust that this door can keep out anyone who really wants to get in. The staff lounge is back round the way we came from, and who knows who else back there might be undead.” Nowen rolled her eyes. Jamie continued, unperturbed. “At the end of this hall are the emergency exit stairs. If we take those down, we can check the other floors for a safe place or even just get down to the ground floor and go from there. That’s the best plan I can think of.”

Nowen nodded. “Sounds good to me. We could use a weapon, though, in case someone comes after us.”

Jamie looked around the restroom. “Nice idea, but there’s not much in here that would work. We can check the utility closets or stations on the other floors.”

Nowen stood up quietly. Jamie did the same. They turned and faced the door. “Ready?” Nowen whispered. Jamie nodded, murmuring “In any good horror movie the bad guy will be waiting on the other side of that door.”

With utmost care Nowen pulled down on the door handle, flinching inside at the clicks from the mechanism. Carefully she eased the door back just enough for Jamie to poke her head out. A moment’s pause and then Jamie whispered “All clear.” Nowen pulled the door further inward and moved up next to Jamie.

The hallway to the right was empty but showed some of the same disarray as the other hall. To the left the nurses’ station was also empty and quiet, but Nowen thought she could hear a faint, low growling coming from beyond the station. The two women turned to the right and began to make their way down the silent corridor. All of the hospital rooms stood open and empty as they passed.

Jamie took the lead as they reached the exit and pushed aside the heavy metal door, entering the coolness of the silent stairs. Nowen followed, the door sinking silently into its frame behind them.

The staircase split from the landing they were on, rising up to a floor above them and sinking downward into the hospital’s interior. A red sign painted on one wall stated that this was the fourth floor and that smoking was prohibited. They started down the metal stairs, their footsteps echoing lightly.

At the third floor landing they looked through a small window set in the exit door. The sight was depressingly similar to the floor they had just left - papers and furniture and chaos - but was different in that there were several people here. Jamie reached for the door handle but Nowen stopped her, nodding her head at the people. There were four of them, three men and a woman and all in hospital gowns, and they stood in a group around a body on the floor. Nowen couldn’t see much of the body other than an arm that had been stripped to the bone. Blood was everywhere, and the four patients swayed slightly as they looked down at their victim. Beside her Jamie gave a small horrified gasp. She tugged on Nowen’s sleeve and together they backed away from the door and continued downward.

They didn’t even stop on the second floor landing. A glance at the exit door window, covered from the inside in an opaque redness, and then they headed down to the first floor.

Nowen stopped suddenly, throwing her arm out to block Jamie. The other woman looked inquiringly at her. Nowen tilted her head, listening. Soft sounds were echoing up from somewhere below them, noises that were familiar but that she couldn’t place. Motioning to Jamie for quiet, Nowen led them down to the halfway point where the stairs turned back and under themselves. Here she paused and looked over the railing to the floor below them. Her insides turned to ice.

They had found out to where everyone had disappeared.

Chapter Four

Then

It was the aftermath of a terribly one-sided war. Bodies lay on the first floor landing, piled two and three deep. The exit door leading to the first floor was wedged open by corpses. Blood splashed the walls and pooled on the concrete floor, and the air was thick with the coppery scent. Patients and medical staff and ordinary people were jumbled together in a mix of ragged limbs and torn clothes. Moving through this abattoir was a small group of people. They were as blood-drenched as the rest, but this was because they were feasting on the dead. As Nowen watched impassively as an old man plunged his arms up to the elbows into the gaping chest cavity of an equally old woman. He pulled out stringy strands of flesh and shoved them in his mouth, chewing. Behind her she could hear Jamie gulping air.

Something - a sound they made, or a movement - caught the attention of the eaters. As one they stopped and turned their heads toward the stairs. Nowen froze, holding as still as she could and hoping that Jamie was doing the same. The moment seemed to stretch on forever as multiple eyes in blood-masked faces ticked from Nowen to Jamie and back again. Finally, most of them returned to their feast, preferring the prey in front of them. Two of the group though, two men in fouled lab coats with stethoscopes still hanging around their necks, stood up slowly, unfolding from their crouches like malignant flowers. As with the teenager upstairs, their gaze locked on the two women and never wavered. They began to moan from low and deep in their chests as stared.

Nowen tensed, fighting the urge to lunge toward the men. She could feel an answering growl building inside her, and spared a moment to wonder at the suddenness of the surely-suicidal behavior. Then she turned and lunged up the stairs, grabbing Jamie by the hand and pulling her along.

Behind them the growls ramped up into wails, alien and bone-chilling. Nowen and Jamie hurtled upwards, chased by the sound of pounding feet, leaping two and three steps at a time. They sped around the second-floor landing and shot up the next set of stairs. Nowen slowed to let Jamie pass and wasted a moment on a glance behind.

The lab-coats were only a flight of stairs back.

“Go! Go!” she screamed at Jamie. The third-floor exit swept by in a blur and they kept on upwards, heading back to the fourth floor in a mutual but unspoken agreement. Jamie was gasping for breath and starting to slow down now. Nowen slowed down too, trying to keep between the young nurse and the two hunters who were fast approaching. She could smell them now, a foul miasma of blood and spilled bowels. As she circled the last landing and leapt for the final flight of steps a clammy hand wrapped around her right ankle and pulled. She came down on the steps hard, clipping her lip on the concrete. The taste of blood was in her mouth.

Fire swept through her nerves and ignited something deep in her brain. In one smooth motion Nowen flipped on her back and drew her free leg up to her chest. Her captor raised his head, his leaf-yellow eyes staring into hers, and she shot her leg out with all her strength. Her heel smashed into the bridge of his nose and the crunch of bone echoed through the stairwell. The grip on her ankle fell free as the man’s head snapped backwards, and then his body followed, tumbling loosely into the other lab-coat and knocking him off his feet. Nowen pulled herself up and turned back to the stairs, where Jamie was watching, horrified.

“Go, damn it!” Nowen called, and followed her up the last few steps. The nurse paused at the exit door and looked through the window. “It’s clear.” she said, pulling the heavy door open and darting through. Nowen was right behind, dragging the door shut behind her. The click of the latch closing was a welcome sound.

“Oh, hell.” A whisper from Jamie. Nowen turned to see the teen-ager in the pink tank-top staring at them from the far end of the hallway. There was no warning moan this time - she moved from a stand-still to a full run in a second, pounding down the corridor toward them. Her shrieking bounced off the walls, a manic siren. Nowen braced herself for impact, raising her hands in front of her. She knew she would have next to no time at all, once the girl crashed into them, to kill her before she killed them.

Then Jamie was there, stepping in front of Nowen just as the girl reached them, driving something into the soft flesh of the teen-ager’s throat. It was a small lamp, stripped of its shade but not the metal holder. The girl’s own forward momentum forced the lamp deeper into her neck. The light-bulb broke with a pop and a smell of burnt skin. The girl’s hands grasped ineffectually at the lamp protruding from her throat as Jamie shoved her down to the floor.

Nowen and Jamie looked at her, watching as the yellow eyes moved over their faces. Slowly the girl raised her bloody hands toward them. Frothy bubbles gathered at the gash in her throat as she tried to growl. Nowen took a step forward and brought her foot down on the girl’s head, right above the broken nose. The skull cracked and a stream of black ichor stained the brown hair that fanned across the floor.

Jamie looked at Nowen.

“Zombies.” she said.

“Right.” Nowen replied.

Now

The storm had moved on in the night, leaving behind endless blue skies and a bitter cold. The wind had stayed, and it swept around the small house in a constant stream, prying at the windows and pushing inquisitive fingers under the doors. Snow covered the prairie from horizon to horizon. A small herd of pronghorn antelope stepped delicately across the front yard.

Nowen stood in the kitchen and watched the herd move through. She chewed slowly on a granola bar. Crumbs fell unnoticed to the dusty linoleum as she thought. It was unusual for prey animals to come so close - the smell of wolf usually kept them away. As if hearing her thoughts the herd startled and bounded off. Puffs of snow danced in their wake.