Mad Swine (Book 2): Dead Winter (24 page)

Our group gathered around the main entrance to the structure, some folks sitting down on the large boulders and some relaxing on or against the hay wagon. The team leaders gathered together just outside the doors. I stood next to Lara and took the opportunity to hold her hand. She looked at me and winked.

“I’ll keep this simple so we can get everyone inside and get warm. We’ll search the place in teams. Matt and Lara, team one. Chandra and I are team two. Justin, I need you out here on watch. Pick a few people and put them on posts at the flanks and rear.”

“Roger that,” Justin said. His hands fell to his Tomahawks holstered at each of his hips.

“Make sure you pick people who won’t panic. No gunfire unless you’re overwhelmed and that’s your last resort. We don’t know what’s under the snow in the fields out there and we don’t want to know.”

“Right.” Justin’s hands gripped his ‘hawks tightly. “What do I do if any of the crazies come at us?”

“You kill them,” Lara said and smiled slyly at Justin.

He smiled back, his sense of humor not lost. “Thank you for your permission.”

“Any more questions?” Brian asked. “No? Good. Let’s get this done.”

Justin moved off to accomplish his task while the rest of us were determining the best way to pry the doors open without too much damage. We wanted to be able to secure the doors again once we were inside. Unfortunately, none of us were experienced with picking locks. I offered no suggestions; I remembered clearly my experience at the Dunkin’ Donuts the night the world changed. I had succeeded in prying open the drive thru windows only to set off the alarm. I barely escaped that fiasco and the ensuing horde of infected that had come running at the sound.

“We could try getting the blade of a knife in there and wedge the bolt,” Chandra offered.

“Why don’t you just slip your credit card in there and jimmy the lock?” Brian mocked Chandra.

“I would, but my credit is so bad I don’t have a credit card anymore.”

Lara laughed at Chandra’s comment and then said, “Maybe we should just try the door and see if it’s open.”

Both Brian and I stared at Lara for a moment and then we looked at each other. Finally, Brian shrugged his shoulders. He stepped toward the door, grasped the knob, turned and pulled. Silently, the door opened.

I turned to Lara and gave her a big kiss on the mouth, not caring who saw us. “Let’s go,” I said, taking her hand. To Brian I said, “See you inside.”

The interior opened up into a lobby that was dominated by a circular desk that lay directly below the lookout peak (which was actually a skylight). I noticed the sudden change in temperature as soon as I stepped into the structure. I also noticed the silence. It was a dead silence, where no machine or clock was running; none of the background noise that we become accustomed to and often don’t notice. I could tell that Lara was a bit unnerved by the silence.

I propped my back pack on one of the deep blue lobby chairs and then set my SKS down against it, hooking the sling over the arm to ensure it didn’t slip and fall. Lara and the others followed my lead and lightened their load. I hefted my splitting maul. Lara carried her mace-like baseball bat over her shoulder.

From the lobby there were several doors on the left, and to the right lay a set of swinging doors that led into the medical side of the operation. Since Brian was closest to that side, he signaled for Lara and I to clear the left side of the lobby. I nodded and then touched Lara’s elbow. With a gloved hand I indicated the two doors to our left and we moved forward.

The two doors on our left turned out to be bathrooms; one ladies and one gentlemen. Lara whispered, “I’ll take the ladies’.”

I shook my head. “We stay together.”

“That’s sweet, but I can take care of myself, dear.”

“I know that, but I feel safer when you’re with me.”

She looked at me for a moment, her bullshit detector turned on high. I must have gotten better at hiding my lies because her face softened and she nodded her head.

The ladies’ room consisted of two stalls, which were both empty. The pink and white tile pattern was nauseating even in the gloominess, but Lara thought it was cute. Before leaving, Lara stopped me and pointed to the hand towel dispenser.

“We need those. And the toilet paper, if we can get those dispensers open. I’m tired of wiping my ass with newspaper or cardboard.”

The men’s room was more of the same, except there was one stall and one urinal, and the tile was blue and white. The small window on the west wall carried in very little light as most of this side of the structure was flanked by mature trees. We took note of the toilet paper and hand towels and moved on.

The third door was marked STAFF ONLY on a white placard. The mahogany colored wood door was a six panel job, very fancy. The polish that was last applied was still slick beneath my fingers when I took off my glove and touched the surface. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and peeked inside. A narrow hallway that stretched about sixty feet greeted us. The west side of the hall was lined with windows, while the right side revealed doors; each staggered about ten to fifteen feet apart. We’d have to check each one of them.

Deep blue carpeting whispered under our feet as we traversed the distance to the first room on our right. I paused with my hand on the knob. Even with all of the windows, the hall was not well it. These interior rooms would have no windows; it would be too dark to see.

“What’s wrong?” Lara asked over my shoulder.

I could tell she was creeped out by all this. In fact, so was I. It was one thing to face the enemy out in the open, where you could run and dodge. It was completely different when you were in tight quarters with limited escape options…especially when you had no idea where they were.

“Nothing is wrong. We just need some light.”

My flashlight was clipped in my front left pocket. Setting down my splitting maul, I stripped off my gloves and shoved them in the pockets of my coat. I retrieved the flashlight and pushed the activation button with my thumb. A cone of crisp white light spotlighted the carpet where I aimed. Satisfied the battery still had juice, I took up my axe.

“Open the door,” I said to Lara.

Without hesitation, she gripped the knob, turned it, and pushed the door. It opened inward. She’d pushed it hard enough that it struck the wall and rebounded slightly; the door hit my left flank as I stepped into the room and swung my flashlight from left to right. I cringed at the noise the door made, but after a few seconds of that dead silence, I was confident nothing else had heard the sound.

The room served as a conference room. A large rectangular table made of the same polished mahogany dominated the space. Ten mahogany chairs with maroon leather seats and backs surrounded the table. I played my flashlight over the west wall and found a built-in buffet. A large coffee urn stood solitary on the wood surface. Other than that, the room was empty.

Lara had edged in behind me. It wasn’t until she let out her breath in a whooshing burst against my neck that I realized she’d been holding her breath in anticipation.

“I’m so nervous,” she said apologetically.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

The next door revealed a consultation room: a desk and two guest chairs, behind which stood two large bookcases. The third room was a mirror of the second, with the desk, chairs and bookcases on opposite ends of the room. The fourth room revealed an examination room. The metal table stood in the center of the room. A podium type desk housed a laptop computer and stood to the right of a built in desk. On the desk was a myriad of supplies; rubber gloves, gauze, bandages, and other items I did not immediately recognize. I could see that Lara was already making a mental note of which supplies we would appropriate before we left tomorrow.

Out in the hall again, I stopped outside of the fifth door. As had become our pattern, I stood to the left of the doorway, waiting for Lara to push the door open. She put her hand on the knob and paused. Her eyes narrowed for a moment and then she put her ear against the door.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Shhh.” She adjusted her head slightly, pushing her ear further against the wood surface. Several seconds ticked by and finally she stood up. “I thought I heard something.”

“We good?”

“Yeah, you ready?”

“Open it.”

She pushed it open—not as hard as she’d done with the first door—and I stepped into the room with the flashlight at the ready. Before my eyes could take in any of the details of the room, my foot suddenly slid in something. I tried to brace myself against the door jamb, to stop myself from falling. My legs did a painful split and suddenly my groin was on fire. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I heard Lara behind me, although I couldn’t make out what she was saying. She was pulling me by my coat, dragging me out of the room, back out into the hallway.

“My God, you’re bleeding,” she said when she knelt down beside me. I followed her gaze and saw that my pants were covered in blood. There was no way that could be mine.

“Don’t touch it!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly. Lara fell back onto her butt, her eyes wide with fear. “It’s not mine. It may be infected.”

“Shit.” She pushed up quickly from the floor and picked up her weapon. Her attention immediately turned to the dark room. I could see she was full of nervous energy; she stood in her fighting stance, legs shoulder-width apart. Her body couldn’t stop moving back and forth.

Taking a moment to catch my breath, I slid up against the west wall and cringed as the window sash scraped painfully against my back. With my eyes never leaving the open doorway, I bent down and picked up my flashlight. I directed it at the doorway and saw the pool of blood in which I’d slipped. It was dark, almost black. It wasn’t so much a pool; it had congealed to the consistency of churned butter. From where I stood, I could not see the source of the blood.

Stepping forward so that the light could penetrate deeper into the room, I plucked up the splitting maul that had fallen from my hands as well. I choked up on the grip as it was difficult to swing the heavy head with just one hand. At the threshold I started when Lara spoke out behind me.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

I shot her a look over my shoulder and then refocused on the room in front of me. Just to the left of the door lay the body of a medium sized dog. Its eyes reflected the light of my flashlight and for a moment I had a horrible thought that it might still be alive, turned into one of the creatures. To date I had not witnessed any infected animals.

“Stay back,” I said to Lara, not because I expected the animal to jump up and attack, but because I wanted to have room to maneuver.

“What is that?”

“It’s a dog. Please stay back.”

Using the flashlight, I quickly checked out the rest of the room, expecting whatever had killed the dog to still be inside. Surprisingly, I found nothing. The rest of the room was empty except for the furniture.

“Clear,” I said, stepping back a few steps to get out of the awful smell of decaying dog. I was suddenly very aware of the stench.

“What killed the dog?”

I shook my head. I had no answer to that question. I closed the door again and then turned toward one of the windows on the west. I unlocked it and pulled it open, breathing deeply of the cold January air.

When I stood up, Lara said, “That was pretty awful.”

Wrinkling my nose, trying to get the smell of dead dog out, I said, “No shit.”

She slapped at my arm and gave me a hurt look. “You don’t have to be mean.”

“Sorry, Lara. I didn’t mean it that way. It just came out sounding sarcastic.”

“Close the window,” she said and started down the hallway in the direction of the sixth room.

After doing as she directed, I followed her down the hall. Thankfully, the remaining doors on the east wall revealed nothing gruesome. At the end of the hall, another hall branched out forming an ‘L’. This corridor was shorter than the last with fewer rooms to search. At the end of the hall was another set of glass pneumatic doors which I suspected was the rear entrance to the emergency room. Somewhere back there were Chandra and Brian.

The door to our immediate right was locked. The placard to the right of the door jamb indicated this was a janitorial closet. We moved on to the next and stopped in front of a set of double-doors. The placard read: CHAPEL. Instead of knobs, the chapel doors boasted large looped handles, one on each door. The handles were secured with loops of duct tape and the handle of an aluminum hammer had been pushed through both openings, further securing the doors.

“What the fuck?” I blurted.

“Why would someone do that? To keep something out?”

I shook my head. “To keep something in.”

“Maybe we should leave it alone. If there’s anything in there, it doesn’t appear as though it got out.”

I considered Lara’s statement for a moment, but I knew we needed to find out what was in the room. “We can’t sleep here wondering what’s in that room. What if whatever is in there gets loose? Someone could get killed.”

Lara was silent. Her eyes were locked on the barricaded door. Using my flashlight, I looked carefully at the tape. It was slightly stretched, and the adhesive, although still tacky, no longer stuck firmly to the brass handles. The wood near the claw of the hammer was gouged and scratched. Whatever was inside had tried to get out at some point by pushing and pulling the doors. Luckily the tape had held.