Infected (9 page)

“They're blocking the exits.”

“Maybe they moved in the hospital. The entrance might be clear.”

Weiss heard a commotion at the end of the hallway.  He saw a woman in bloody pink scrubs leading a pack of the newly risen towards them. A section of her scalp had been peeled away and hung on her forehead. Weiss glanced at the elevators and figured they wouldn't have enough time to wait. They ran around the corner, turned right. There was an office at the end of the hallway and Weiss tried the door. It opened. They went inside, the sounds of the dead echoing in the halls.

They shoved a desk in front of the door and backed away. Weiss turned around and looked out the window. He had a view of the parking lot, where a few dozen cars remained. He hoped to see extra police cars out in the lot, but there were none.

From the other side of the door came scratching as they tried to get in. He looked out the window again and saw a cluster of bushes beneath the window.

“How do you feel about jumping?” Weiss said.

“It doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy, if that's what you mean.”

“It's about twenty feet. If we were to hang and drop, it would cut down on the fall. There's some bushes down there that might break our fall,” Weiss said.

“Considering the alternative.”

He yanked a drawer from the desk and smashed it into the glass. It cracked but stayed in the frame. Using the drawer, he completely busted out the glass. Lori climbed up first, straddling the sill then hanging out before dropping. He heard a thud and looked out to see Lori rolling out of the bushes. “You okay?”

“Just a little battered.”

Weiss did the same, letting himself drop. When he hit the ground his ankle turned and he got up, hopping and swearing. From above, he heard the door crash inward and the woman with the peeled scalp stuck her head out the window and growled at them.

“Don't suppose you have your keys?”

“In my purse. Which is in my desk.”

“We'll go to the ambulance bays. Maybe there's a rig parked.”

“Your ankle.”

“Just twisted it a little.”

They made their way to the rear of the hospital, where an ambulance was parked outside the emergency room doors. The crew was nowhere in sight. As they got closer, Weiss saw someone on the ground. They were on the opposite side of the ambulance, and he went around to find one of the paramedics. His blue uniform was darkened with blood. His right ear had been torn off. Weiss recognized him as one of the men that had brought Marty in. “Shit. Think his name was John.”

Lori opened the driver's side door. “Keys are in it,” she said, and climbed in.

“His partner must've taken off.”

Weiss was about to get into the passenger seat when he was grabbed. He spun around, slamming his arm into the person that had grabbed him. It was the other paramedic, and he stared at Weiss with those bleached-out eyes. He smiled a mirthless smile, exposing teeth with bits of bloody flesh stuck in them. Weiss recoiled in disgust.

He lunged at Weiss, who managed to grapple the freak to his knees. His head was half in the ambulance and Weiss slammed the door on the creature's skull. It took five times before the paramedic stopped moving. After dragging the body out of the way, he got back in the ambulance.

Lori started it up, and they pulled out of the ambulance bay.

Emma and George swept the fourth and fifth floor and found no one alive. There had been several bodies, all with chunks and bites taken out of them. She'd worked a murder case about five years ago. Teen who'd gotten lost up in the woods, fallen from a cliff, and broken his neck. The animals had got at him, nibbling away pieces. That's what the corpses reminded her of.

She was beginning to lose hope of finding anyone alive.

Until they reached the sixth floor and heard someone calling for help. It came from down the hallway, the sound of someone moaning, long and low.

They tracked the noise to a large conference room. Inside was a highly-polished cherrywood table with enough room for two dozen chairs. There were several framed motivational posters hanging on the wall with words like
Excellence
and
Dedication
on them.

They found the moaner in the corner. It was a man in a lab coat and scrubs. He was dark skinned and dark haired, and his identification badge indicated he was Doctor Ajay Gupta. The good doctor's scrub shirt had been ripped open, exposing a circular ring of teeth marks on his side.

“Doctor Gupta, can you hear me?” Emma asked.

Gupta opened his eyes and looked at Emma. “I'm sick. Burning up.”

“What happened?”

“A pack of them – those things – came through here. Bit me, but I managed to elude them. They might still be around.”

Emma looked at the wound and saw the teeth had gone deep. The doctor might be infected but she had no idea how fast or when he might change into one of the freaks. “Can you get up, doctor?”

The doctor nodded and sat up, wincing at the pain in his side. Emma saw the sweat beading on his forehead and the ashen color of his skin.

“How soon after you were bit did you get sick?”

“Not long. Fifteen minutes.”

George said, “Where did they go?”

“I heard them down the hall. I heard more screaming,” Gupta said. “Are they all over the hospital?”

“Hospital's crawling. It started in the emergency room,” Emma said.

“We've got to get you out of here,” Emma said.

“I can do it. I'll get to the elevator,” Gupta said.

They dragged Gupta to his feet and urged him out of the room and down the hallway. He said, “Where are you headed?”

“Upstairs. There might be more patients.”

Gupta shook his head. “I came from seven. It was a slaughter. I'm the only one that got out.”

Mom was on eight. She had to get up there. “There's one more floor after that. We can't chance leaving anyone up there.”

“People are changing. They get bit and come back to life,” Gupta said. He looked down at the bite on his side. “I'm a danger to you. I'll turn like the others.”

She glanced at George, who was beginning to sweat. “George, how you feeling?”

“Like I have a bad flu. Nauseous. Chills.”

“Take the doctor downstairs. I'm going up to the eighth floor.”

George said, “I'm not leaving you here.”

“That's an order. “

She watched the big man begin to sway. Slowly at first, then rocking back and forth, his eyelids fluttering.

“Faint,” he said, and crashed to the ground, his head cracking against the tile. Blood pooled on the floor underneath him.

Gupta knelt down, took a penlight from his pocket, and pried open one of George's eyelids. It was Emma had feared. George's normally blue eyes had been replaced by a milky white membrane. He was starting to turn into one of them.

She felt like a shit for doing it, but she took the Glock from his sidearm and ejected the clip. Then she took the spare from his belt. After that, she ejected the shells from the shotgun and took the spares from his pocket.  Needed all the ammo she could get. She was fighting back tears at the thought of George turning into one of the creatures.

George's body started to twitch. He began to rise and Emma backed up, Gupta doing the same. Her former deputy rose to his feet like a boxer rising from a knockdown. When he was upright, he turned his head and hissed at them. The color seemed to have drained from his skin, leaving it somewhere between white and gray.  

George reached out and grabbed Gupta. The doctor flailed but to Emma's horror, George pulled him close and sank his teeth into the doctor's neck. One of the main gaskets in Gupta's neck blew, blood pumping and spraying on the wall. George's lifeless eyes fixed on Emma as he ripped his way through the doctor's neck.

Emma turned and ran for the stairs.

Chapter Fourteen

Maria had gathered the patients in the room at the very end of the hallway. Pediatrics had sent down a kid named Christopher, who was battling leukemia. Now, Christopher sat on a bed across from the  Ross woman, who was recovering from knee surgery. He was supposed to go home next week, after this round of chemo was over.

Other than the patients, there was Megan, the nurse from this floor, and another nurse named Rebecca, who'd brought Christopher down. The rest of the staff on the peds floor had fled after the slaughter had started.  Rebecca had stayed behind with Christopher.

The three nurses stood outside the hospital room.

“You're lucky just one patient,” Maria said. “I'd hate to try and clear out a whole floor.”

“Amazing how many people just bolted. Doctors and nurses,” Rebecca said. She was tall and had the build of a lamppost. A blond ponytail hung down past the middle of her back, and Maria could see the tip of a star tattoo poking from under her sleeve at the wrist.

“We'll get them both in wheelchairs. We'll take the patient elevators,” Maria said.

“Mrs. Ross is gonna have a fit,” Megan said. “But then again, she gets upset if her meatloaf touches her mashed potatoes.”

“Let's tell them the plan,” Maria said.

The boy, Christopher, was propped up in bed reading a Harry Potter novel. The Ross woman was sleeping, her head to one side. Maria gently nudged her, waking her up.

“What do you want?”

She hesitated to tell them exactly what had attacked her in ICU. “We're evacuating the hospital. There's some sort of security problem, people loose in the hospital. We need to get you out of here.”

Christopher set his novel down. “What kind of people?”

“Dangerous people,” Maria said. “Rebecca's going to get you in a wheelchair. Mrs. Ross, Megan and I will help you into a wheelchair.”

“I'm not leaving,” she said. “My knee hurts.”

“If you stay here, you're going to die,” Maria said. “I got attacked in the ICU. There's more of the people that attacked me roaming the hospital. “You can stay if you want, but I don't recommend it.”

“Fine. Be careful moving me. I'd hate to have to sue the hospital.”

This woman acted worse than her twelve-year-old son in the middle of a tantrum. She glanced at Rebecca, who rolled her eyes. “We'll try not to drop you on your head or anything.”

They got the patients into wheelchairs and proceeded to the patient elevators.

As they descended, Christopher said, “What are they going to do with us?”

“We'll cross that bridge when we get to the lobby.”

“I called the cops,” Rebecca said. “The dispatcher said they're already on scene.”

Maria figured this whole mess might be beyond the local Sheriff, but she didn't say anything.

They reached the ground floor and the doors opened, revealing a pair of Coke machines straight ahead. “Let me check and see if it's clear,” Maria said.

Maria stepped out of the elevator and went to the main corridor. Looking right, she gasped. A security guard in a tattered blue uniform and a woman dressed in scrubs squatted over a corpse. The guard held a severed arm to his mouth. He was gnawing on it. The woman was tearing at the corpse's midsection.

The woman turned her head and saw Maria. She stood up and gave chase. Maria ran for the elevator.

Rob waited by the button for the roll-up door, Kayla at his side. Tim Orr knelt in front of the door, a two hand grip on his Glock, waiting to blast anything that got in sight. Mary stood next to him. She had  kicked off her heels and was standing in her bare feet.

Ryan waited for the door to open. He looked like a track sprinter ready to run a race.

Rob called to Ramsey, who was watching the security camera in the office. “All clear out there?”

“No sign of anyone.”

Ryan nodded to Rob, and he pressed the button. The motor whirred to life and the steel door rose on the track. The security lights outside illuminated the loading ramp. Rob looked out and saw the van parked towards the end of the ramp, maybe seventy or eighty feet away.

Ryan sprinted up the ramp, the car keys jingling. He reached the van and got in. Rob had a bad moment where he wondered if the engine wouldn't start. He'd seen too many horror movies as a kid. But the engine roared to life.

Ryan swung the van around. That's when Rob saw the first zombie. It appeared in the van's headlights. Tim opened fire, hitting it twice and sending it to the ground. Ryan finished it off by running it over with the van.

Rob looked down at Kayla, who was covering her ears.

More of them appeared out of the darkness, leaping onto the van, throwing themselves at it in order to get at Ryan. He swerved back and forth, throwing some of them off. Three of them clutched the van and he began backing down the ramp.

“He's going to bring them right to the door,” Rob said.

“Not much choice. Get ready,” Tim said.

One of the zombies smashed the driver's side window and started tearing at Ryan, which caused him to back into the concrete wall. The zombie began to pull Ryan from the van, but Rob sprang forward, leveled the shotgun, and blasted it in the face. He opened the door and pulled Ryan from the driver's seat.