Degeneration (32 page)

Ahead, Mathis
saw the chain-link fence ma
rking the edge of the parking lot. B
efore the lot had become a temporary FEMA
and military motor
pool, it served as one of downtown Raleigh’s numerous pay-per-hour lots. B
ehind him, he saw that the sprinting horde was falling behind. He focused
his attention ahead
again, bracing for impact.

The van
tore through the flimsy chain-link fence.

Mathis’ head whiplashed in
the impact and the loose litter in the fr
ont seat briefly went airborne as the van jumped the curb and struck the asphalt hard. The side-view mirrors were torn off, the emergency siren weakly warbled and silenced, and the blood-smeared
windshield shattered
into small fragments
.

T
he SWAT officer
was
flung
off of the passenger door and struck the
blacktop
headfirst
, snapping his neck
. 

Mathis
quickly regained control of
the vehicle and steered it along
the street
, veering around the burnt vehicle husks and building wreckage
.
The van’s blue strobes struggled to shin through the smoky and hazy atmosphere.
He caree
ned through
a deserted intersection, passing underneath a dead stoplight swaying
in the breeze.

The infected gave up their pursuit as the van turned the corner and fell out of sight. They went back to aimlessly wandering the street and alleyways, shambling through shattered storefronts and wandering into flame-gutted buildings.

Soon, Mathis
was
many
blocks away from what remained of the Meymandi Concert Hall and where so many of the men under his command had
b
een left behind.

He didn’t
slow down
and didn’t dare look back
.

17

R
ichard knew that he didn’t have much time before he succumb
ed
to the infection, but
he wasn’t ready to give up.

He
was determined to get to
Butner and rescue his brother.

First, there was the matter of making it
to Butner
before the disease
claimed his life.
Richard didn’t feel sick, ye
t, but he knew that his fate had been
sealed when the
orderly vomited on his face. He tasted the blood-laced bile and knew some had seeped into his mouth.

Still,
he knew there was no time for self-pity. There
was
only
time enough to rescue Andy.

T
ime was of the essence.

Piec
es
of the flame-ravaged
hospital started to break loose and collapse in front of the lobby, only inches away from crushing him in some cases.

He had to keep moving.

He stumbled forward, frightened.

The building
noticeably sagged and warbled as
flames enveloped the en
tire structure. Pieces of plaster, mortar, brick, and glass
trickle
d
down and pelt
ed the ground below. Windows were shattering and the building made loud groans as the structural support beams weakened.

It wouldn’t be long before the building collapsed.

He
knew that he had to distance himself
from the doomed building
quickly and, if he ever hoped to get to Butner, he needed a vehicle
.

He carefully
surveyed the parking lot.

Even though the hospital had been spared the blunt of the firebombing, most of the
vehicles
had been
reduced to smoldering
skeletons
.
Smoke plumes drifted lazily
into the air while hundreds of infected shuffled amongst the vehicle carcasses
, mindlessly navigating the
parking lot
maze.
The only sounds in the parking lot were the low
persistent groan
s the i
nfected
made
and the sound
t
heir feet
made as they shuffled across the
pav
ement.

Richard
crept down the steps in front of the emergen
cy room entrance and walked towards
a Wake County EMS ambulance that was parked
up
on
the
walkway in front o
f t
he hospital. The ambulance had been badly burnt and its tires were flattened.

A woman
wearing a tattered Red Cross uniform
staggered onto the sidewalk from the parking lot just a few feet away from Richard
and stood motionless, hair matted with blood
. She
gazed forward
abse
ntly, unaware of his presence. Slowly,
sensing something in what remained of her peripheral
vision, she started to turn her head towards–

Richard took cover and dove against the side of the ambulance
. He pressed
himself
tightly against the vehicle and held his breath, praying that he moved fast enough to dodge her gaze.

The woman gave a low guttural moan and then turned her head back towards the
hospital, staring at it
.

Richard crept along the side of the ambu
lance and stopped at the rear as he peered out into the parking lot
.

A car, Richie, we need a car!

“You think I don’t know that?! They are all burnt up and not worth a shit,” Richard whispered.

A
SUV and two sedans
were wrecked
against each other just a few feet behind the ambulance. The wreckage blocked Richard’s line of sight into the parking lot.

The front-half of the
SUV
was
on the hood of one of the sedans, the
result of a panicked driver attempting to flee a very cro
wded parking lot. Both of the vehicles had their driver-side doors open and the occupants were
gone
.

But the occupants of the flame-ravaged third sedan were not as lucky– their burnt skeletal remains sat inside their smoldering car.

Richard
stepped out into the clearing behind the ambulance and
ran towards the SUV,
staying crouched down.

He reached the rear of the SUV and froze… waiting to hear the clamor of approaching infected–

Silence.

Hesitantly he stood and peered
th
rough the SUV’s rear window…

He saw
a bus in front of the SUV through the crackled grass.

Surprisingly, the bus seemed rather unscathed aside from some minor burns.

Richard found his ride.

You have to get over there and get inside- fast!

“Working on it,” Richard muttered to Andy’s voice.

He planted one foot on the bumper
of the SUV and held onto
the roof with both
hands as he climbed on the roof of the vehicle.

Behind him,
the rear doors of the ambulance swung open in the faint breeze and
something
started to thrash
inside the
back of the burnt
ambulance.

He heard the sound behind him and froze. Slowly, he
turned towards
the
noise in the
ambulance.

A
charred
woman
was
strapped to a gurney
inside the ambulance. The flames had burnt off her clothes and her blackened skin hung off of her in clumps
. She
stared at Richard with her one remaining eye
and
twisted and contorted in a futile attempt
to free herself from the
tattered
yellow nylon straps that restrained he
r. The gurney rocked side-to-side
as
her
struggle i
ntensified. She kept her eye
on
him
while white foam and bile seeped
out
from the corners of her
mouth.

Richard let out a sigh of relief when he saw that the restrained woman couldn’t do little more than stare at him.

He
climbed
onto the
roof of the SUV, ignoring the thrashing woman
in the ambulance
behind him
. He
stood shakily on the roof and surveyed the parking lot from his new vantage point. His expression sunk in dismay.

Across the entire parking lot
he
saw hundreds of i
nfected
wandering aimlessly in-between the vehicles, but none of them noticed him as he stared at the bus.

Aside from a few broken windows and seared paint, the bus in front of him appeared drivable. Throughout the lot he spotted a few other unscathed vehicles that were scattered amongst inaccessible regions of the infested parking lot.

He knew that the bus would be his best bet for escape.

The wom
an in
the ambulance
behind him stopped thrashing against her restraints and
let out a shrill
cry, spewing saliva and bile
.

Richard badly startled and nearly fell off of the SUV’s roof.

Every near-by wandering i
nfec
ted man, woman, and child within earshot of the woman’s cry
stopped
pacing and looked up at Richard,
star
ing. Giving a unified feral cry, the horde of infected
charged
towards t
he SUV
.

Ric
hard panicked, tripped
off of the roof of the
SUV, bounced off the hood, and landed
hard against the pavement
on his shoulder
.

In the distance, he
heard
the horde
quickly
closing in. They activated car alarms as they bumped against abandoned vehicles.

Richard gripped his aching shoulder and hurried towards the bus
.

The bus had
a
burnt and tattered
Red Cross banner tacked on its
side and its folding doors had been left open.

He ran towards the open bus doors when
a screaming
business
man
wearing
a
charred
suit
careened from around the corner of the bus.

Richard threw both hands out just as the man lunged
towards
him
and shoved the man back.

T
he
business
man rebounded quickly
, leapt forward, and bit Richard’s left hand.

Richard cried out in pain and
quickly
tore his hand
out from the man’s mouth. H
is wound
ed
hand bled profusely.

The man,
blood dribbling down his chin
,
lunged at him again.

Richard drove
his
foot
into the businessman’s chest and sent
the man
sprawli
ng backwards onto the pavement.

As the
business
man struggled to recover
, three more infected emerged
from
both sides of the bus and two more infected clamored
over the top of a nearby sedan.

The infected were closing in on Richard from every direction and the crescendo of car alarms they were activating became deafening.

Richard
held his bleeding hand against his chest and ran inside
the bus.

The inside of the b
us was littered with empty water bottles and opened
sui
tcases. Some of the seats were burnt and some of the interior plastic molding had melted away. Near the back
, a few corpses
sat
slumped
over
in their seat
s
and their
bodies
were mutilated by multiple bullet holes. A sign
in the front of the bus read: