“I saw another magic trick recently,” Albert said. “It involves five people bitten by zombies, and then miraculously coming back to life. Only they weren’t undead like every other zombie, they were still conscious of themselves.”
Tommy shook his head. “That’s different. That’s science.”
“Maybe what I have is science too. It’s just beyond you or me to fully understand it. Or anybody else for that matter. That doesn’t detract from the fact it’s still real. You have a problem with this Architect fellow, a man with his own unique ability. He can see everything anyone will ever do because he fashions hundreds—maybe thousands of different plans—or maybe he has a natural ability akin to mine. I am on your side.”
“How does that help us?”
Albert grinned. “Simple. Colonel Maxwell sent you to the base to retrieve the Failsafe and use it against the Architect.”
Tommy tore his eyes off the road. “Yeah, so?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I am the Failsafe.”
15.
SAM
The hallways still reeked of antiseptic, but underneath it, stronger than usual, was the distinct stench of something else. Death. Sam had met him often enough to recognize his particular brand of aftershave.
Sam identified the rank of each zombie nurse and doctor with a glance and shook her head. They moved through an entire ward without recognizing a head nurse. They checked the door on each medicine cupboard they came to. All were locked. Which one they gained access to was of little importance to Sam, as the medicines she required were common enough to be found in any of them.
They entered the children’s ward—the place Sam least wanted to go. Coming across a zombie was bad enough, but coming across a child zombie. . . A human life cut far, far too short. Just the thought of it set her teeth on edge.
The medicine cupboard was likewise locked. They moved through the ward in their usual semi-crouch and paused when they sensed movement in one of the wards.
The zombie patient sported a shiny dome of a head and had likely been the recent recipient of several bouts of chemotherapy. His skin was pulled taut over his face and he had liver spots on his hands and bare feet. He wore a lawn-green cardigan and wheeled an IV drip behind him. It’d long since fallen over and shrieked every time he moved away from it, drawing his attention once more. It interrupted his regular turning pattern and prevented them from sneaking up on him the way they could with other creatures. They couldn’t work their way around him—not without taking a long diversion. The only way lay through him.
“How do you want to handle this?” Sam said.
“We’ll distract him and take him from behind.”
Joel crawled back and picked a stethoscope up off the floor. He returned to their corner, drew his arm back, and swung the stethoscope high so it landed beyond the zombie. Before it even landed, Joel was on his feet and running at the creature, which was still completing its turn to investigate what’d made that awful noise. The IV drip dragged along the floor and made its familiar high-pitched squeak, causing the monster to turn back around once again.
Joel was only halfway to the beast, ax arm fully extended. The creature saw him coming, a slight delay behind its milky white eyes, and then opened its mouth to make a loud clicking, clacking sound, like something from a great giant bug. It said no more as Joel’s ax smoothly sliced across its neck and removed its head from its shoulders.
Joel gestured for Sam to join him. She rounded the corner and followed him down the hall. As they rushed down it, they hopped over the detritus strewn across the floor; a clutch of bloodied teddy bears and smashed glass vials, unused syringes and, bizarrely, an overturned shopping basket.
They crept down the hall and poked their heads up over the sides and into the private rooms, and eased past the open wards. On Sam’s side were a handful of undead patients. A lad, no older than twelve, with a knife through his neck, akin to bolts on either side of Frankenstein’s monster, and a girl about the same age, who wore a set of pajamas she’d brought from home. The kids had come here for help, and instead all they’d gotten was damnation.
Joel hissed from the other side of the hall. “Psst. Sam. We’ve got a contender.”
Sam checked both directions like her Mama always told her.
“In the ward, on the left,” Joel said, very excited. “At the very back. It’s hard to see her behind the curtain.”
He moved aside so Sam had the best position to see. She peered along the row of empty beds. The mattresses had been turned over and donated toys lay scattered like ashes. At first, she saw no hint of movement. Then there it was—a curtain shuddered as something bumped into it from behind. Sam’s heart leaped in her throat and she grew giddy with excitement that this—finally—might be the creature they were looking for.
She picked up a discarded syringe and prepared to toss it to the other side of the room to speed up the revelation process. She paused as the creature emerged from around the curtain and wandered forward. She wore a bleached scrubs uniform and edged into the light of day, her teeth clacking and chattering in the way of all undead.
Sam recognized the cut of the nurse’s uniform, torn though it was in the front, exposing one pert breast.
“Well?” Joel said. “Is she what we’re looking for?”
Sam smiled. “Yes. She’s what we’re looking for.”
Now all they had to do was kill her without informing the creatures in the opposite ward. A perfect job for Joel. They switched positions and Joel prepared Pointy the ax once more.
* * *
Joel wiped the blood off Pointy’s blade using the starched scrubs of the head nurse’s uniform. Even in death, the nurse wore that same overbearing expression that was the prerogative of all nurses of her station.
Sam took the key from her pocket and tucked it in her own. Did the frown deepen? Sam thought. She said a hasty prayer over the woman and wished she had the time to give her a burial. Nurses were some of the greatest people in the world. They didn’t have songs written about them or statues carved, but they dedicated their lives to doing good work the world needed.
Joel led their re-entry into the hallway. He was nothing if not cautious, especially in surroundings he wasn’t familiar with. He waved for her to follow.
Sam felt the need to hurry, to get to the medicine cabinet as quickly as possible, and then get the hell out of there, but Joel maintained a slow vigil.
They reached the medicine cabinet and Joel helped her to her feet and dusted off her hands and knees. “Well,” he said. “We made it.”
Sam’s foot throbbed. Her ankle could bear her weight but not without extracting a painful tole. In her mind, she knew what’d happened, that the ligaments and muscles had been overly taxed, forced to bend in a direction they did not wish to. Now, it had grown inflamed and made walking difficult. She felt the painful swell press against the inside her boot, making the pain worse. The sooner she got her hands on the meds she needed, the better.
Joel took position at a hall crossroad and kept watch. Any noise that issued from the cabinet would attract unwanted attention. They’d need to make a quick escape the moment they got the supplies they needed. He gave Sam the nod to say the way was clear.
She took the key from her pocket and it gleamed with the overhead fluorescent lights as she slipped it into the lock.
The moment of truth.
She turned the key and heard the lock click open. The tension in her shoulders relaxed. Who knows, the key she took from the head nurse could easily have been her house key and wouldn’t be of much use to them with the medicine cabinet.
She gripped the door handle and pulled. It was heavy. She gripped it tighter with both hands and tried again. No good. She wasn’t strong enough. Odd, considering the nurses had to go in and out of the cupboard multiple times a day. If they were strong enough to open it, so should she be.
She put her foot on the wall to leverage as much of her strength as possible and yanked a
t the handle. Her ankle screamed with the extra weight she forced upon it. The door still didn’t budge. She took a step back and scratched her head.
“What is it?” Joel said.
“I can’t get the door open.”
“The key isn’t right?”
“It’s the right key. I’m just not strong enough.”
“Here. Take Pointy and watch the hallways. The last thing we want is one of those things crawling up our ass.”
He moved to the door. Strong and stout, he ought to have the strength to get it open. And yet, he struggled.
Sam glanced down one hallway and then another. No sign of any creatures. Why would there be? They hadn’t made any noises yet.
On the floor, something flapped from an unseen wind. She caught sight of letters, drawn boldly with red crayon. A kid’s drawing, she thought. It was the children’s ward, after all.
And then something caught her eye, something that chilled her to the bone. Etched onto the page with harsh craggy lines was the word, “ZOMBIE”.
Joel braced the handle with both hands and the door groaned. He placed his foot on the wall, mimicking Sam’s previous pose. “Come on, you bastard.”
With her heart in her throat, Sam bent down to pick the drawing up. When she turned the page over and saw the full image, it wasn’t a child’s drawing at all.
It was a warning.
Something snapped, and the door flew open. Wire embraced the door handle to keep it shut. It was caked in blood. Black blood.
DO NOT ENTER, the warning said. ZOMBIE INSIDE.
Joel didn’t have a chance.
* * *
Sam often wondered if zombies had access to their former memories, if they could somehow draw from that deep well of knowledge and experience for their benefit, or did they merely operate on instinct, leaving their chances of success largely open to the will of fate.
The doctor sprang from the medicine cabinet with surprising speed and grace, his jacket flapping behind him like a cape. Joel wore a helmet, and armor on his chest, around the back of his neck, forearms, ankles, shins, and every other inch most likely to receive a bite, but still, that didn’t protect him. A fully-trained doctor would have known that the easiest way to kill such a man was to launch at him quickly with his teeth fully exposed and to wrap them tight about his windpipe. Bury the teeth so deep the victim could struggle and beat at their assailant with muted fists, but still, they would not work themselves free.
Sam had to wonder about past knowledge because that was exactly what happened.
Joel pounded ineffectively against his attacker, who only used the movement to bury his teeth further into Joel’s juicy neck. He bit so deep, Sam heard the crunch and snap of bone and spine.
Slow to react, Sam swung the ax at the creature, lashing it across the arms and shoulder and back of the head, dealing no meaningful damage. Joel’s body shook, going into shock. Sam screamed and hacked at the creature’s neck, working her entire body to bring the ax around. The neck didn’t sever until she’d struck it with three solid blows. The two men lay side by side, each dying their final death.
Joel tried to speak but only succeeded in gurgling his blood. Sam dropped the ax and pressed her hands to the wound, but it was no good. The injury was too large, a massive chunk ripped from his body.
“I can fix this,” Sam said. “I can. I can fix this.”
They were in a hospital, for heaven’s sake. If you were going to suffer a wound like this and survive, there was no better place to be. “Let me get a gurney. I’ll take you into an operating theater and—”
Joel raised a shaking hand and pushed hers away.
“Joel, I can save you—”
He tried to speak again but it was no use. His vocal cords were torn. She had to take her cue from the look in his eye. He shook his head and looked dead in her eye. He didn’t want to survive. Not like this. Even if he somehow managed to survive the procedure, the undead wouldn’t let him live. And then there was the issue of the virus. It was inside him now.
He reached for the ax—Pointy—and gripped it by the handle. It was heavy and he struggled to tug it over. Sam picked it up and held it in her hands. Joel looked from the ax to her and nodded his head. His body shivered, shuddering as Sam got to her feet.
She looked at herself in the shiny reflective windows of the private rooms. She was bloodied up to the elbows and gripped the ax in her hands. She didn’t have the appearance of a doctor, but the harbinger of doom. And for Joel, she supposed that was exactly what she was. She screamed as she swung the ax around and hacked at what remained of Joel’s throat. It took two solid blows before the blade kissed the floor. The moment it did, Sam lost her strength and the ax tumbled from her hands and she fell to her knees.
Joel coughed and spluttered for another minute before enough blood ran out of him and he died.
The fate of a kind stranger that helped her.
A screech echoed from one of the countless infinite hallways. She checked over her shoulder. It sounded distant, but she couldn’t tell which way it came from.
Did it matter?
Not really. Either way, she had to carry out the same tasks. She scooped up Joel’s ax. She considered taking his backpack but she couldn’t hope to carry it as well as her own. She stepped into the cupboard and scanned the shelves. Much of the medicine on the lower shelves had been knocked off onto the floor, liberally doused with the zombie’s infected blood. She focused on the shelves higher up and used a stepladder to reach them. She grabbed two of everything she needed and backed out of the room.
The screeches were louder now. They came from one particular arm of the corridor crossroad. She hustled through the ward. Creatures pressed against the glass, smearing blood over it, watching her every move.
Sam turned to the emergency exit. They were often alarmed. Dare she risk it?
Yes. If there was ever an emergency, surely this was it?
She shoved the door open, the alarm sang, and she held her ax at the ready. No undead presented themselves.
For the first time in her life, a hospital was the very last place she wanted to be.
* * *
Sam fell in a heap in a dark alley. The wall was slimy and covered with some kind of green slimy goo. It wasn’t likely to kill her, unlike her twisted ankle. Run too slowly, or miss one step, and she was a goner. She reached into the backpack and withdrew the medicine that cost a good man’s life. Her ankle throbbed even harder now, forced to take steps it did not wish to take.
She picked up a bottle and read the label. Except she couldn’t.
The letters were fuzzy and hard to read. She moved the bottle away from her eyes and back closer again, thinking it was something wrong with her vision, but no matter how far away or how close she moved it, it made no difference. The writing remained unclear.
Then her throat tightened and her breath felt hot. She dropped the medicine and buried her face in her hands. Her body shook and she sobbed, stifling only the loudest wails that squeezed from her throat, the kind everyone succumbs to when they’re alone and at a low ebb. Sometimes they’re sobs for the loss of a loved one or a dearly departed friend or a shocking scene or memory that flashes in the mind on an otherwise dull Tuesday afternoon. Sam let the tears spill down her cheeks, without hindrance or embarrassment. There was no need to wear a mask and be strong only for yourself, at least not all the time. And when the wracking sobs slowed and came to a stop, she felt the powerful emotional release, leaving reliable emptiness in their wake.
She sighed, and her breaths came in spasmodic wheezes. She repeated the deep breaths until they evened out and she could breathe smoothly once again. She wiped the tears from her eyes and let the events of the past few days wash over her. Painful memories that would take a lifetime to process. They would never go away and would come back to haunt her during her quieter moments, but they would always be there.
She picked the bottle up, emptied two in the palm of her hand and i
dentified them as painkillers. She swallowed them using a little water from a bottle Joel had thought to bring with him. She added a pair of powerful anti-inflammatories. She picked up the crutches she’d nabbed from the hospital and shoved herself up onto her feet. The crutches had rubber ends on the feet but still made far too much noise for her liking. Within fifty yards, she discarded them. Silence was more important than comfort right now.
She’d already wasted too much time. She needed to get to the guards as quickly as possible. She used the skills Joel taught her, and still felt her eyes water and her throat constrict whenever she thought of that kind little man. He had saved her life and she had been too slow and stupid to save his in return. But perhaps, if she was lucky, she might just help save millions of others.
Joel’s life wasn’t in vain.
She watched the undead on the street corners and down the back alleys. Now, the hardest part of creeping through the city wasn’t escaping the undead, but having the patience to identify and wait for the right stage of their process before working around them. It was slow, arduous work, her eyes constantly alert, and her neck turning this way and that, but she moved through the city one street, and then one block at a time. She only hoped she could reach the guards soon, before it was too late to help Hawk.
How would she approach the guards when she met them? Simple. She’d walk right up to them. She was done with games. She would approach them directly. And what if they didn’t believe her and chucked her back in her old cell? Then so be it. Hawk, the guards’ families, and the rest of the world for that matter, were relying on her to reach them. It was up to the guards after that.
She wouldn’t let them down. Not on her watch.
16.
HAWK
Something bumped into Hawk’s head and jolted him awake. He stirred, staring at the sky and the jagged line of the rooftop. Cheryl didn’t peer down at him.
No one did.
Were they gone? Had they died? Had the undead already burst through the door and lined their stomachs with the hostages?
Death Squad (Book 4): Zombie World Page 14
