Virus (19 page)

He was on a balcony two floors
beneath the roof. The man that attacked him was nowhere to be seen.
Getting to his feet took some doing but he managed it in the end.
He turned looking over the edge of the balcony but he could nothing
because the mist beneath was too thick.

He looked up at the roof. There were
loud growls emanating from it. That meant those things were still
there. Sighing he faced the door in front of him which led back
into the hospital. It swung open at his touch. Pausing for about a
minute, Wole took a deep breath and walked through it closing the
door behind him.

The inside was dark___ too dark to
see clearly. He could barely make anything out. A faint slurring
growl from his left made him freeze and crouch down very
slowly.

There was a faint light to his
right. It looked like the light you get when you are in a dark room
and the light from the next room filters in through the bottom of
the door.

Lying flat on his stomach, he
crawled towards the light. His progress was slow because he was
trying to be quiet. He did not want to alert whatever was growling
to his presence.

Stretching out his arm in front of
him, he used it as a feeler to know what was ahead of him. He was
thus able to avoid cracking his head on a large wooden sofa.
Directly behind this was the door. Taking a deep breath, he rose a
couple of inches off the floor reaching for the door handle. It
turned with a faint click and he pulled it open. Freezing for about
a minute, he listened for the slightest sound but heard
nothing.

Pulling the door open wider, he
stepped through it, closing it gently behind him. He now stood in a
long corridor. It had white tiled floors, brown texcote painted
walls and high ceilings. The corridor was illuminated by several
white florescent bulbs attached to the brown wood-grained
ceiling.

A door stood twenty paces ahead. The
word cafeteria was put on a sign above it. He sighed taking a step
towards it, freezing when the sound of several whispering voices
reached his ears.

His eyes widened in surprise. There
were people, real people behind that door. Streaking towards it, he
pulled to a halt giving the door two sharp raps with his knuckles.
Loud gasps filtered out from behind the door.

“Who is there?” the voice was gruff
and shaky. The person speaking was obviously terrified.

“Hi __ my name is Wole. I am looking
for__”

“WOLE!!” Another voice piped up. A
big smile widened his lips. So his mother was safe.

“OPEN THE DOOR QUICKLY! That’s my
son.” She cried.

“How are we sure its just him? it
could be those things mimicking him, trying to get us to open the
door.”

“Oh come off it Tayo__ we both know
those things don’t talk. Open the door for the boy.” Another man
piped up, he ended his sentence with a disgusted snort. There was a
pause for about thirty seconds before the door was unlocked and
opened slightly. Wole squeezed through the narrow opening and the
door locked after him.

He barely turned when someone seized
him in a bear hug. His thought was that it was his mother, until he
realized that the person hugging him was too short to be his
mother. It took a couple of seconds to realize that it was Tunrayo.
That realization filled him an inexplicable sense of peace. Anike
stood three feet behind watching them with tears streaming down her
cheeks.

“I thought you died.” Tunrayo cried
choking out the words between sobs. “When you fell from the roof__”
She paused unable to continue.

“He fell off a ROOF?!! Anike cried
racing to her son’s side. Pulling him from Tunrayo’s grasp, she ran
her hands over him, checking to see if he was ok. Satisfied that he
was, she whirled on Tunrayo in fury.

“How come you said nothing of this
when you came in?” She demanded. “The only thing you said was two
of you got separated.”

Tunrayo sighed gulping back a sob.
“I did not know how I was going to tell you. The part about us
being separated is true. I just didn’t know how to explain the
rest.”

Anike leaned closer opening her
mouth. Before she could say anything however, the tall man behind
her clapped his hand together and yelled “SILENCE!!!” The room
instantly became quiet.

Giving the cafeteria a wide sweep,
Wole realized it was filled with almost two dozen people. Most of
the people were doctors and nurses. Searching each face in turn, he
realized neither Tunrayo nor Chike’s parents were
present.

“Where are your parents? Your
family?” He asked looking at Tunrayo with panic in his eyes. She
shook her head slowly as she began to cry.

He turned catching his mother’s
gaze. “Dad?” his voice was low, almost too low for his mother to
hear.

“We were attacked at home, a little
after 3pm, around the time you are get home from school. When the
door opened, I thought it was you. Looking out of the kitchen__”
Her voice broke. Seeing how distraught she was, Wole feared she
would not be able to continue.

“___ it was Mrs. Blandson, our
neighbor. Do you remember me telling your father that I had not
seen her for a couple of days?”

He nodded but did not
speak.

“Well she appeared today with five
others. It took me almost a minute to realize something was not
right. I barely made it out of the back door. Your father saved
me__ unknowingly that is.

“He came to the door of our room to
see what the ruckus was about, so they left him alone and turned on
him. The last thing I saw was he being brought down. He screamed at
me to run and get away__” She broke down sobbing as if her heart
would break.

“I am ashamed to say___ Wole ___ I
did run and I did not look back.”

Wole stood frozen in shock as he
listened to his mother’s words. His dad in all likelihood was dead.
He expected to cry but the tears did not come. All he felt was a
great numbness in his heart and emptiness he knew nothing would
ever fill.

On the periphery of his
consciousness, he could hear the others speaking. For the first
five minutes, he found it difficult to focus on what they saying.
Eventually their words began to sink in.

“They attacked my home just as they
did with Mrs. Owolabi.” The man speaking was plump and short. He
had pig eyes. Wole could not remember his name. He knew he worked
in a bank. He might even be the manager. As confused as he was now,
it was hard to say which was which.

“My wife was in the living room
watching a TV sitcom. They attacked her first.” His voice broke as
his eyes filled with tears.

“__ I was in the kitchen getting
water from the fridge when I heard her screams. By the time I
reached her, this thing had ripped off half of her throat. I tried
to get it off her , but it was as if the damn thing was stuck to
her neck.

“In fury, I went to get the pestle
we had in the backyard. I did not stop hitting it on the head until
what remained was a red gooey paste. Before I could reach for my
wife, others came. I made it to the kitchen by swinging the pestle
to ward them off. I somehow managed to get the back door opened. In
the melee that followed, I ripped the gas cylinder’s hose. I barely
made it out when the house exploded.”

That explained the fires Wole
thought to himself. Oraromi was usually drier than a tinderbox at
this time of the year, and with the houses built so close together,
it was no wonder the fire spread.

Others began to share their stories
one after the other. In every tale, there was one similarity.
Someone had told them to come to the hospital. Most of them didn’t
even know what his name was. But they did know one thing. He was
Oraromi’s most gifted cobbler__ Baba Adora.

Chapter
Thirty-One

Alaba led Joke through the trees.
His senses were alert and his ears cocked to hear even the faintest
sound. Sweat poured out of Joke’s skin. He looked at her face with
worry in his eyes. She could not take much more of this.

She winced every few minutes as
sharp pains coursed through her pregnant body. Every time that
happened he was tempted to say they stop. But even he knew they
could not. They had to keep on moving. Their lives and the life of
their unborn child could well depend on it.

The trees came to an end fifteen
paces in front. Three feet away from that was a wall. A very high
wall.

“The hospital__” Joke
gasped.

“How do you know?”

“I come here often enough don’t I?
This is the back entrance. A bike man brought me this way one
day.”

They stepped out of the cover of the
trees as she said this. A couple of meters to their right was a
tiny gate and two people, a boy and a girl stood in front of it
about to walk through it.

“Hey you two__” Alaba called helping
Joke to sit down at the base of a tree. After he made sure she was
settled, he hurried towards the duo poised at the gate. Their eyes
were wary as he approached. From the stiff way they stood, he knew
they were prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation. He spoke
to calm them down.

“Don’t be afraid. I am not here to
hurt you. My wife and I need help.”

They exchanged troubled glances. The
boy stepped forward slowly. This close Alaba saw he had been wrong
in the estimation of the boy’s age. He was in his late teens or
early twenties, not bad looking with a strong jaw line, thick
eyebrows and long lashes. He probably had a way with the women
too.

The girl looked a bit younger,
probably between sixteen and eighteen years old. She was
breathtakingly beautiful and the emerald green dress she wore
hugged her curves showing off her exquisite figure.

“My name is Collins sir__” The boy
began haltingly. “And this is Judith.” He pointed at the hot girl
beside him.

“Hi Collins, Judith__” He nodded at
Judith. “My wife and I were attacked.”

“By creatures who looked dead?”
Judith cut in.

Alaba nodded slowly.

“We saw them as they came into town.
My house is on the outskirts you see.”

“Why did you come back into town
then?” Alaba asked with a puzzled look on his face.

“Our parents__”

“Did you find them?”

“No we did not.”

A sigh burst from Alaba’s lips as he
looked up at the high walls in front of him.

“Why come here then?”

Collins looked bewildered by his
question.

“I mean why are you trying to enter
the hospital? Do you think your parent’s are here?”

“We’ve searched about half of the
town. Everywhere we looked was deserted. We saw the police battling
a mob of those things at the gates of the hospital.”

“So you decided to enter the
hospital__ just like that?”

They both shrugged. “We did not have
that many more places to search.”

Nodding Alaba turned, looking back
at Joke who still sat under the tree where he had left
her.

“Let me go get my wife. We will
enter the hospital with you.”

They nodded, watching as he went
back to fetch Joke. Judith moved restlessly. She was eager to be
off. A frown crept on Collins face as he watched her restless
movements. Sighing he faced the high walls behind him. The police
were probably already inside the hospital, those that still lived
anyway. A shiver ran down his spine when he remembered the slurring
creatures that walked by his house hours earlier. Nothing about the
town’s present situation seemed good.

Alaba walked up supporting Joke on
his arm. Collins couldn’t stop a slight gasp from leaving his lips
when he saw how beautiful she was. Noticing his lustful look,
Judith drove her elbow into his side.

“Ouch!” He cried whirling on her in
fury.

“You are a dog Collins__.” She spat
out in disgust. “Have a little dignity will you. In our present
state, you can still have time to be ogling a very pregnant woman
whose husband is barely three feet from you.”

“Shuuussshh!!” He gasped rushing to
cover her mouth. She pushed his hand away violently and stalked
through the open gate, heading towards the sliding doors ten feet
away.

Alaba and Joke reached his side.
They had puzzled looks on their faces as they watched Judith’s
rapidly departing figure.

“Why did she rush off?” Alaba asked
turning his puzzled gaze to Collins face.

Collins shrugged and started after
her relieved her that Alaba hadn’t heard what they were saying.
They exchanged puzzled looks and hurried after Collins.

Taiwo Betiku stood behind the
reinforced glass doors that marked the entrance to the general
hospital. He watched the sixty slurring shapes standing behind the
glass, banging their fists against it.

Seven of his men stood behind him
watching the somewhat disturbing sight. The glass door was locked
and a thick long chain wrapped around the handle secured with a
giant padlock. Where his sergeant had found the chain or the
padlock was a mystery and as things stood, he was not sure he
cared. The only thing of importance was there was a barrier between
him and those vile creatures. That was all that mattered for
now.