by Anna Abner
I stuttered to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. I was getting better about guns, but the unexpected sight of one still made my guts clench so tight I hovered at the edge of throwing up.
He didn’t spare me a glance, his gaze on the room at the top of the stairs. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “I can smell it.”
Dragging my gaze from the firearm, I knelt, pulled a clean tee from my pack, and wrapped it around my hand, which was bleeding worse than my arm.
“Did she cut you?” he asked in a frighteningly calm voice.
No sense pretending she wasn’t a violent psychopath. “She tried to feed me to her zombie husband.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But he’s got her now.” I heard her whimpering upstairs.
“Where is her husband?” Ben asked.
The pistol in his hands was fully extended and aimed at the room at the top of the stairs. But the barrel wobbled just enough to let me know he was barely hanging onto control.
Rather than try to explain, I swept aside any nerves and focused on the faint sounds of chains clinking and Walter’s low moaning. Placing my hands gently atop his, I aimed the gun at the wall of the second floor room, at the spot Walter was bolted in place.
“Right about there,” I whispered. “He’s on his hands and knees.”
“Back away,” he said equally as quietly. “It’s going to be loud.”
I removed my hands and stumbled three steps back, keeping my eyes on Ben.
He emptied the gun—five shots—at the wall, and I cringed at each bang. But I must have aimed him well because by the fourth shot, Walter stopped making any noise at all.
Silence.
Ben slid the handgun into his waistband before he faced me. “How bad is it?” His voice quivered and the closer I looked into his flushed face, the more frightened he appeared.
“I’m fine. It’s only a little blood. No major damage.”
But he wasn’t convinced. “Come here.” He ushered me to the pool cabana and a stack of fluffy white towels. “Sit down. Put pressure on it.”
Good idea. I was light-headed and jumpy, but guns did things to my equilibrium, messed with my emotions, and I needed a minute to sort my reactions.
I hadn’t been able to handle the sight or sound of firearms after Mom’s murder. They made me sick to my stomach and brought up gruesome fantasies of her final moments.
But I didn’t have time to freak out. I was bleeding.
I wrapped one towel around my hand and fumbled the second one meant for my arm. It slithered to the ground.
“Can you hold it for me?” I asked.
Ben’s red eyes seemed wider than normal. “I can’t, Maya.”
“What’s wrong?” Oh, no. Was he hurt? Sick?
“It’s the blood.” He slid another step back. “I’m sorry.”
I looked down at the blood painting both arms and staining my shirt red, and then up at him.
“I’m scared,” he admitted.
“Of what?” The cuts were beginning to ache, and the blood itched as it dried. But I couldn’t tear my eyes from Ben’s pained expression.
“I’m afraid of getting too close to the blood. I’m afraid it will make me hungry.”
“But you’re cured.” Aren’t you?
He backed away even farther, to nearly shouting distance. “What do you need? A pharmacy would have stuff, right?”
Fighting a swell of dizziness, I inspected the damage. A freely bleeding slice across my right palm. Shallow punctures from shielding myself from the blade. The worst wound, though, was in my left arm. It might even need stitches.
“No, a hospital would be better.” I wrapped the towel and kept pressure on both my hand and my arm simultaneously. “I’m up to date on my tetanus shots, but I need alcohol, antibiotic cream, gauze, maybe even sutures. Pain meds, too, would be nice.” The cuts burned.
“A hospital.” He looked relieved to have something helpful to do. His shoulders drew back as he studied the surrounding area. “Yes. I’ll find you a hospital.” His red gaze took in my arms and the bloody towel. “Can you walk?”
“I’m good.” To prove it, I shuffled away from the cabana and the more I moved, the easier it became. “We’re going to have to move inland. There probably won’t be any hospitals on the beach.”
Inland where the zombies would be more plentiful. Inland where traveling would be harder. Another setback in our trek to D.C. Another time killer. But I really did need proper medical supplies, not just a couple Band-Aids.
Ben rushed back to the staircase, slipped my guitar over his head, and then put the backpack on. “Hold on. I see maps.” Leaving me by the cabanas, he jogged into the hotel lobby and returned with a bunch of paper maps.
He didn’t show me the charts, but after a moment of searching, he declared, “There’s a hospital about a mile and a half from here.” There was renewed hope in his expression. “Can you make it that far?”
“No sweat.” I could walk forever. Walking wasn’t the problem. The pain was intense, and I wondered if I was in shock because I didn’t feel worse about Walter and his wife’s fate. Was I becoming cold inside? Shouldn’t I be more upset at being partly responsible for the deaths of two people?
Maybe the world really was different since the plague. And I was different, too.
Chapter Three
We left the grounds of the sprawling, white-roofed beach resort and cut across a street and then a city playground before hitting a line of barricades.
“Did you try to climb the stairs?” I asked, gingerly stepping over the concrete barrier. Were Ben’s symptoms reversing? Would the color of his eyes eventually fade to average brown? Would he be able to run up flights of stairs one day with no trouble besides a racing pulse?
“I’m not getting better.” Like always he saw right through me. “I’ll never be… normal.”
“That’s okay.” I wasn’t either. I was too quiet or too smart or too weird to be normal.
He shook his head at me as if I didn’t understand.
Wiping sweat from my brow with my shoulder, I tried once more to reassure him. “In a world overrun with the infected, a guy who survived it and cured himself might be the most normal of us all.”
Ben snorted in disbelief. “How’s your arm?” he asked in an obvious change of topic. “Has the bleeding stopped?”
Without slowing our forward momentum, I peeled the towel away from my palm and examined the wound. “It’s seeping a little,” I observed. What I didn’t admit was I could see inside myself—a thin layer of fat cells and red muscle tissue under the epidermis. What I had hoped was a shallow cut was much deeper. I needed some kind of closure. Quick.
By the time we rounded the next street I spotted the signs for a medical center straight ahead. Ben increased his pace, and I jogged to catch up.
“From now on,” he said, a hint of teasing in his gravelly voice as he headed for the front doors, “if we see a needy survivor, we approach with caution.”
“Agreed.”
With a grunt and a hearty push, he forced open the hospital’s sliding glass doors. A foul, sour stench blew over us, raising dust and leaves in the doorway. There couldn’t be healthy survivors inside. The entire building was a dark, stinking tomb.
On top of that, the place had obviously been looted and re-looted, and I heard shuffling footsteps echoing through the maze of hallways. I leaned my head and shoulders in and grimaced. The air trapped inside the sprawling complex was much hotter than the air outside, hot and thick like a living thing.
We had to be fast. In and out.
As soon as I marched inside the hospital, I was all business. “There’s not much left.” I tiptoed through a wide reception area, past a waiting room ringed with crispy dead flowers in vases, and then through emergency triage, parting filmy curtains, pinpointing anything and everything useful. “Hopefully we’ll find a suture kit.”
Ben stepped up behind me and drew my short sword off my bel
t. “Tell me exactly what you need, but stay close.”
There wasn’t anything in the first exam room worth taking. Someone had been there before us. I opened drawers, already emptied, and peeked into cupboards bare of supplies. On the floor under a rolling stool was an opened package of four-by-four gauze pads.
“Those.” I nodded toward them, keeping my arms clenched to my middle. The pressure stemmed the bleeding but made the aching pain worse. With his free hand Ben upended a big box of tongue depressors.
Giving up on the first room, I crossed to the second. I nudged the door open, but something on the dusty tile floor blocked it. I pushed harder and a half-eaten corpse flopped at my feet. Gasping, I fell back a step.
“No,” I said, my stomach twisting. “Oh, no.”
Something else moved behind the door, its breath huffing in and out.
“Stay here.” Ben edged around me, my sword in his fist. “I’ll tell you what I find inside.”
He left our gear, the box, and my guitar with me and shoved into the exam room. The creature inside moaned, but it was more pathetic than terrifying.
“There’s a Red in here,” Ben said. A scuffle. A groan of pain. And then something collapsed to the floor. “It’s okay. But there’s not much medical stuff. Long swabs… some alcohol rubs… a broken jar of cotton balls…”
I pictured the room in my mind, minus the two dead bodies. Plastic counters, paper covered exam table, symptom charts on the wall. “Grab the alcohol rubs.”
After a moment, he reappeared with a handful of square packets. “Let’s check the next room.” He dropped them in the box, and we moved on.
The third room had been set on fire and nothing remained but charred counters and the gurney’s metal frame.
“I hear someone moving,” Ben said, his eyes on the hallway to our left. “We’re not safe in here.”
“They could corner us.” It was one of my greatest fears, being herded into a blind alley by a pack of hungry zombies. “This is hopeless.”
We were wasting time with nothing to show for it. Gauze and alcohol rubs? Big deal. I could find those anywhere. There were supposed to be professional medical supplies in a hospital.
He stared pointedly at my bloody clothes. “We’ll keep looking a little longer.”
Footsteps grew louder, and a Red turned the corner fifteen feet away, made eye contact with me, and broke into a run. I didn’t see any humanity when I met his red stare. Not the way I did when I looked at Ben. This was a zombie, and he wanted to finish me off.
Ben slid in front of me and stuck the Red in the chest with my short sword. A wet stabbing sound, a gasp, and then the zombie hit the floor.
“Thanks.” But killing people, even peripherally, messed with my emotions. Even if the Red had wanted to consume me. “Maybe he was guarding something.” I headed down the hall and turned left, hoping for the best. It was a short hallway with a closed metal door at the end. I tried the knob, but no luck.
“Can you break it down?” I asked. “It’s possible no one’s been in there yet.” Wasn’t the best stuff always kept behind locked doors?
“Stand back.” He rearranged our gear and slammed his shoulder into the door. It made a lot of noise, but didn’t open. He hit it again, and the frame splintered. I could have sworn I heard moaning somewhere behind us. One more solid hit and the door popped open.
“Wow,” I gasped, brushing past him. It was a supply closet. No meds inside, but it was floor to ceiling bins of medical supplies. “Jackpot.”
The groaning got louder, so I grabbed stuff by the armful. “Look for liquid sutures,” I said, tossing sample-sized tubes of antibiotic ointment into our box. “Or suture kits. Anything to close cuts.” While Ben searched the shelves, I gathered latex gloves, mini bottles of hydrogen peroxide, and rolls of gauze.
“What about this?” He showed me a tube of something called Dermabond. I read the label.
“I could kiss you,” I exclaimed. “Perfect. Grab it all.”
The groaning noises sounded feet away. I threw what I had in the box, and we ran for it. Out of the side doors, across the parking lot, and down the street. I didn’t look back until I grew short of breath, which was sooner than normal. The running made every cut hurt all over again.
“Let’s walk for a while,” I said, embarrassed. I was never the first person to drop out of a race. I was more likely to be the last runner standing.
But I downshifted, and the pitter-patter of my sneakers on concrete went from the quick tempo of a club song to the slower rhythm of a sappy ballad.
“Did we lose them?” I asked.
“Maybe.” Ben glanced at me and then down at the bloodstained towel clutched to my belly. “Do you need to stop?”
“No. Just slow down.” I flushed. “Sorry. I’m not used to saying that.”
“Because you’re a fast runner,” he said, as if it were common knowledge. “I know.”
A surprised laugh bubbled up. “How do you know?”
“Because I watched you.” But he wouldn’t look me in the eye all of a sudden. “You’re faster than everyone else. You’re comfortable running. Like you’ve been doing it for a long time. Like you were probably coached.”
“I was on the track team,” I admitted. “And I was good at it.” I surveyed the desolation around me—abandoned vehicles, trash in the streets, everywhere evidence of violence and disease—so different from the footpaths I was used to. “But that was a long time ago.” Before the world went sideways and things that used to mean a lot suddenly meant nothing.
He didn’t say anything, just kept up a slow and steady pace. But he wasn’t at full strength, either. Wrenching his back, he rubbed at his ribs as if they hurt.
That morning he’d been passed out on the beach, and I’d been so distracted by Walter and his wife I hadn’t bothered to check on his condition.
“How are you feeling?” My dad had been a chemist with a medical background. Just by living in the same house I’d picked up a lot of helpful medical and first aid knowledge. I couldn’t perform an appendectomy, but I could probably set a bone if I had to. Or reduce a fever. If Ben would just talk to me I might be able to help him.
“I'm fine,” he grunted.
“Describe your symptoms,” I ordered in my best imitation of an actual medical professional. “Fever? Chills? Headache? Muscle pain?”
“Maya.” He stopped so suddenly to glower at me I nearly plowed into him. “Thank you for caring. But we’re not safe out here. I have to find us a safe place to rest.” With a nod, he gave me his back and marched northeast toward the beach.
A hundred yards down the quiet road and I got a funny feeling, like someone was watching me. I glanced over my shoulder. “Uh, Ben?”
Behind us, gathering in the middle of the street, were at least twenty Reds. A pack. But bigger than any I’d ever seen. And they had us in their sights.
The zombie in front, a hulk of a man with a high and tight buzz cut, trained furious red eyes on me. The words Devil Dog were printed in flames across the front of his black tee. He was a monster in every sense of the word, and the very sight of him made me feel deep down scared, like little-kid-afraid-of-the-shadow-monster-under-my-bed scared.
He had obviously surrendered his higher level thinking long ago. He didn’t care about hygiene or higher education. Friendships and relationships flew right out the window. The only thoughts racing through his infected brain were…
Feed
Kill
Feed
And he was staring at me as if he couldn't wait to chew into my belly and then pick his teeth with my bones.
“Run,” Ben said, giving me a nudge. “Fast.”
Chapter Four
He didn’t need to tell me twice. I sprinted, and Ben kept up even though he carried all of our gear on his back. He was stronger than I gave him credit for. Maybe he really was fine and whatever had happened in Smart’s lab hadn’t been so bad.
Yards and yards of pave
ment, sand, and grass disappeared beneath my feet as I pushed myself into a steady pace I could keep up for a while, despite the sticky sweat popping up on the back of my neck. But the towel and the pain and the blood loss all compounded to make me unsteady and ungainly. Much too soon I was jogging instead of running, holding back as the ache in my arms multiplied tenfold.
“We’ll lose them in the trees,” Ben said.
We steered right and ran into thick woods, so thick that tiny branches and pine needles clawed at my face and chest. The ground was a tangle of weeds, pinecones, and dry vines. I had already fallen in the trees once before, and I’d spent days limping on a sprained knee. I couldn’t afford another injury on top of the ones I already had, so I decelerated even further.
Lucky for me, Reds were also human beings with human limitations. None of Devil Dog’s pack were great runners, especially the giant leader. By the time we passed out of the woods, they weren’t behind us anymore.
But we kept up a quick walking pace anyway, just in case they followed our trail.
Two steps ahead of me, Ben stumbled over a gopher hole and grabbed the nearest tree to stay upright. The pack and the guitar and our box of supplies were weighing him down.
“Give me the guitar,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to carry everything.”
“You’re hurt,” he said as if I had forgotten.
“The guitar won’t make a big difference, but I’ll feel better and you’ll walk easier.”
Reluctantly, he helped me strap it to my back. “Thanks.”
As the afternoon faded into evening, the woods opened onto a beachfront mobile home park, and we weaved around fallen BBQ grills and overturned lawn furniture heading east toward the sound of the Atlantic Ocean. When the sun set at our backs, it got dark along the water. Like pitch black, middle of the night and the streetlights were broken, dark. With no light to guide us toward civilization, we headed north across the beach. Eventually we’d have to hit a town. There wasn’t that much wilderness left in the country.
