by Radke, K. E.
Lincoln felt the blood drain from his face as they talked, and Noah finally nudged him, “What does that mean? I know you figured something out.”
“I saw all those bodies from the blast get back up. Every single one of them. Even the ones that should have died,” Lincoln shuddered at the memories.
“Cannibals caught in the explosion?” Noah guessed.
His head shook, and Lincoln continued, “No one waits to be bitten. If flesh eaters had breached the perimeter—.”
Wyatt cut him off, “We should have heard gunshots because they would have fought them off.”
“All hell would have broke loose,” Heath agreed.
“But it was quiet,” Noah added.
Lincoln’s eyes meet his mother’s. She’d been coherent when Lincoln reached the obsessive phase of collecting information on deadly viruses all over the world.
“Either the ghouls have learned stealth attacks—or the virus is airborne.”
No one said a word. And everyone leaned away from each other.
“So we all might be infected,” Gloria whispered and turned to face the steering wheel.
Noah burst out laughing, “We’re all fucked.”
“He’s right. We were all right down the block from them. If they turned it’s only a matter of time before one of us does,” Wyatt said hopelessly.
“And now I have to ask,” Lincoln’s gaze flickered to Wyatt. “Do we go home?”
“And risk giving it to Lincoln?” Gloria breathed the words out lowly.
Wyatt and Lincoln stared at each other. Knowing the real danger was putting Samuel, Renee, Charlotte and Melanie at risk. They sat perfectly still, neither of them willing to give a nod or a shake.
Noah’s voice broke the intense silence, “There’s still a chance the ghoul’s have evolved . . . and stealthily attacked the little oasis.” He offered the other option with a shrug. “If we’re infected one of us is bound to turn right? Let’s wait it out. We have no idea what happened. Maybe all the people we saw were cannibals before the explosion went off. The bomb we created earlier was like a homing beacon for all the hungry walking corpses.”
“And those people were fine when we passed them a couple hours ago,” Heath pointed out. “So if it’s airborne, and one of us caught it—we’ll know pretty soon.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Not able to sit still Gloria wrapped her hands around the steering wheel and glanced back in the rearview mirror, “Where should we hole up?”
“If we’re not infected, I’m pretty sure Wyatt would like to get his foot fixed up,” Lincoln said in a tense voice.
No one spoke on the way to the hospital unless it was to give directions. The giant, white sterile building loomed in an industrial area. A giant canvas sign hung above the entrance with the words: UNDER QURANTINE. Do not enter.
Torn, yellow police tape laid lifelessly on the ground around the perimeter. A lopsided chain link fence that helped secure the entrance was being trampled by at least thirty cannibals milling around in military uniforms.
Bones littered the ground, some still attached to unidentifiable decaying flesh. Dried blood stained the concrete and the smell outside overpowered the stench in the car.
Slowly inching forward in the parking lot, the SUV’s engine gave the rotten sauntering bodies a new purpose. They surged forward, and Gloria reveled in the game of chase. Every time they were within a foot of the vehicle she sped up.
“How do we get in?” Noah asked the question on everyone’s mind.
Gloria kept the car moving and allowed the ghouls to fall in line behind her as she circled the hospital.
“Let’s keep moving and collect most of the parasites outside. They can follow us away from the building and then we can come back around,” Wyatt suggested.
No one had a better idea, so Gloria rounded the hospital four times before she drove away from it. It was tedious to keep her slow pace, and all her patience was gone by the third mile. Her foot slammed on the gas pedal and she left the maggot infested followers behind.
Without other cars on the road she ignored every street sign and high jacked the sidewalk when the roads were blocked off.
Maneuvering around the parking lot, she stopped in front of the barbed wire attached to the chain link fence laying on the ground. Long pieces of shredded skin ripped from bypassing ghouls dangled off the barbs. Everyone replaced the knives they lost with the spare ones and reloaded their guns.
A wall of flies scattered when Lincoln opened his door. He hopped out with Noah and Heath to peek inside the building. Within a few feet of the entrance the automatic doors slid open and startled the three men. Sunken, pale heads with gray, filmy eyes turned in their direction. Raspy growls and croaks blended with shuffling feet as the five ghouls puttered toward a fresh meal. The noise attracted hidden ones in the lobby and Lincoln signaled for everyone to get back in the Jeep. The ghouls followed in their footsteps and slammed against the idling vehicle.
“Y’all made friends,” Gloria said sarcastically and pulled forward as a black tongue defaced her window.
“I don’t want to waste anymore ammo unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Lincoln admitted. “And every time we shoot the AKs, it brings out more.”
“Shall I drop the annoying shits off at another location?” Not waiting for an answer to her rhetorical question, she played another game of chase.
Turning down a different road, she kept the little rotting ducks occupied until she drove over an overpass and disappeared out of sight once the ghouls reached the top.
Noah had his machete ready when they reached the hospital again. Giddy with excitement, he rolled out of the SUV first and took the lead. He gave himself the task of slaughtering any stragglers, while Heath and Lincoln raided the lobby.
The stench made Lincoln’s eyes water, and his boots sunk into the muck covering the floor. He kept his eyes busy searching for a wheelchair and tried to ignore his germaphobia screaming at him to get the hell out of there.
Walls were splattered with blood and gore. Every step disturbed a tornado of flies and Lincoln realized parts of the floor were moving. He bent forward and dry heaved at the sight of hundreds of fat maggots squirming around inside a mountain of intestines. Every organ scattered across the ground was infested.
For the first time his fingers twitched—not for his Glock—but for a bar of soap. Nothing was salvageable in the area. The waiting chairs were the only objects left standing because they were bolted to the ground. If he found anything useful it’d be tainted with bacteria and probably send Wyatt to an early grave. He sloshed through the muck with his shirt over his nose and tried to ignore the chunks of flesh that didn’t make it inside of a ghoul’s mouth.
Several wheelchairs were in the massive waiting area. One still had a decaying corpse in it and the others were covered in blood and chunks of tissue. He came upon one facing the opposite direction and pulled it toward him. As if lightning struck, he jerked away from the handles and quickly wiped his palms on his pants. Rotting legs claimed the chair, one thigh was torn open with maggots swarming inside the black flesh.
Trying to hide his gag reflex, Lincoln took a step back and surveyed the room for something else to investigate. He beelined to the lobby desk in the middle of the room and began scouring the drawers. Nothing but office supplies stared back at him until he opened the bottom drawer where the receptionists hid their phones and purses. Tapping on the screens, he was surprised they had been plugged into an outlet.
He dumped the contents of the purses on the desk and rifled through it, snagging car keys and a lighter. Noah came up behind him and pocketed the pepper spray, mirror and lipstick. Lincoln raised a questioning eyebrow. Noah shrugged and said aloofly, “When I use them you’ll thank me.”
Both cell phones were dumped into his pocket too and Lincoln asked, “Who you plan on calling without cell towers?”
“I will make you eat those word
s,” Noah chuckled with a cunning grin spread across his face.
Lincoln rolled a chair out of his way to explore more drawers. After finding more office supplies, he commandeered the rolling chair for Wyatt and observed the other visible exits. Both doors that lead to other parts of the hospital could only be accessed with a key card. So there had to be another exit in the vicinity that led to areas visitors were allowed to explore.
Scanning the entire lobby had Lincoln bolting for the exit and a strong urge to scrub himself clean. He used the chair as an excuse to get the hell out of there and took it straight to the Jeep for Wyatt. To get the germaphobia under control he placed a hand on the knife at his hip and the other on the Glock 17 in order to calm down.
Lincoln procrastinated as long as he could before he rolled Wyatt into the building. Gloria joined them and immediately gagged at the entrance. She shouted scornfully, “It smells better in the Jeep.”
Muffled grunts and animalistic shrieks answered her from behind the key access doors. Heath kept both entrances in sight and positioned himself to shoot anything that bursts through instead of hoping they held against the weight thrashing against them. Noah was still scavenging but opted to put the machete away in favor of his 1911.
Itching to be on their way, Lincoln asked no one in particular, “Which way?”
“What are you hoping to find?” Heath inquired. “One of these halls leads to emergency rooms, and one of them probably has supplies. All of them have meatheads behind them ready to tear us apart. That hallway,” Heath pointed at the only entrance not covered, “leads deeper into the hospital and we have no idea how many of these things are wandering around.”
“Coming here was suicidal,” Gloria murmured under her breath.
“Since no one’s around to help, we need supplies for Wyatt’s foot. Anti-inflammatories or cold packs, anything to get the swelling down. Maybe some wraps and a splint to keep the bone stable,” Lincoln offered the extent of his expertise.
“You mean you don’t have that in the giant pack on your back?” Heath asked in
disbelief.
Lincoln tensed, his entire body rigid with anger. He breathed each word with fire and spite, “Ammo seemed the better bet at the time. I was packing for a trek in the city infested with vermin that can kill you with one bite. No need for medical supplies if you’re a walking dead man.”
Before an argument began, a slow R&B song ripped across the room causing a frenzy of movement behind the locked swinging doors. Heads snapped as they followed the sound to Noah’s pocket. He shut it off and glanced from the cell phone to the two locked entrances that could be their doom if the cannibals surged through.
“What if we use the cell phones to maneuver them around?” Noah proposed a strategic plan.
“Or get the hell out of here before we all die,” Wyatt muttered grumpily.
“We’d need a room to lock them in. I want to go see what’s on the other side of that hall,” Lincoln said gazing at the third option. “Heath and I will check it out. Y’all should get back in the Jeep just in case those doors don’t hold.”
Gloria started pushing Wyatt through the muck on the ground and tried to take the exact same path he took when he entered the building.
“Do you really trust him?” Noah whispered to Lincoln.
“No. That’s why he’s coming with me and you’re staying with my mom.” Lincoln replied lowly. “She’s alive now. She better be alive when I get back.”
“You’re worried about her? You should be worried about me. Death shoots out of her eyes,” Noah exclaimed before he sauntered off to help Gloria with Wyatt.
Heath was waiting near the corridor and peeked around the corner before he gave a thumbs up. They both had their fingers near the trigger before entering the wide hallway. Bloody footsteps and handprints were plastered everywhere like in a cheap haunted house. Broken glass from fallen pictures that decorated the small space was strewn everywhere.
Shadowing the walls, Heath took the position in front while Lincoln guarded the rear. Although, if the locked doors in the lobby didn’t hold, it’d be pointless to fight the inevitable. One bullet was all he needed.
Stopping at a turn, Heath peered beyond it and whispered, “Someone used the dead bolt to keep whatever’s on the other side locked up.”
Hope started to break through Lincoln’s dread as he silently traveled the length of the hallway to the locked door. To stay hidden from anything on the other side, he coveted the wall. The excitement over easy access to the hospital immediately wilted once he peered through the window.
Dozens of decaying bodies stood immobile on the other side. They twitched occasionally, but no one moved, almost as if they were waiting for someone to direct them. It sent a shiver down Lincoln’s spine as he backtracked toward Heath.
“Creepy right?” Heath questioned having already witnessed it for himself.
Lincoln nodded, and they returned to the lobby area. Instead of going straight to the Jeep, Lincoln walked right up to the first set of locked doors. The commotion strained the barrier at the sight of him. At lightning speed hands shoved at the window. Lincoln watched fingers twist and break as they manically tried to reach him.
He counted the cannibals in each hoard and found the second set of doors had less. Only eight as opposed to fourteen, if he counted correctly.
“Between the two of us we could take on eight flesh eaters,” Lincoln said convincingly to Heath, and saw him nod slightly.
“Just a matter of accessing it,” Lincoln said thoughtfully to himself. He examined the access pad that had a place to scan a badge. It also had a numbered keypad, so naturally he started to push all the buttons.
Every time he was denied, the access pad would beep loudly three times and the noise attracted more ghouls to the entrance. He started counting again and spotted several nurses bounding toward the double doors with badges swinging from their breast pockets.
At the sight of his face, the raspy growls and grumbles became thunderous. The cannibals near the front were being pancaked between the door and new beasts. Hungry mouths snapped and forced their way through. Trampling over the injured to get to the front line.
Chunks of flesh were stuck in one woman’s teeth as her breath fogged the window. Lincoln tried to see beyond her mouth to get a new head count.
A new sound blared from the access pad. Lincoln’s eyes flickered over it as the panel light unexpectedly changed from red to green. Heath took a fistful of Lincoln’s shirt and dragged him backward as the doors slowly whirred open.
Black, rotten fingers slipped through the tiny opening. The hinges creaked from the pressure weighed against the double doors. In sudden bursts, inch-by-inch, the doors gave in to the heavy burden of bodies, allowing hands and arms to squeeze through the opening. Shoulders and torsos followed, each chomper trying to reach Lincoln first. Limbs cracked, and bones tore through decayed flesh as the desperate hungry parasites fought to reach a fresh meal first. Sunken faces with filmy eyes stared at Lincoln snapping their jaws in his direction. A leg slipped through the crevice, finally able to step into new territory.
TWELVE
O bscenities trailed Lincoln’s escape out of the building. The smell of death dispersed like a bomb suffocating Lincoln and Heath as they ran. Only one foot was in the SUV before Gloria took off. Lincoln’s other foot scraped the pavement and luckily Heath caught his flailing hand to pull him inside before he ended up under the Jeep.
Chompers poured out of the hospital. Lincoln eyed the six nurses in the group.
“Where’d they come from?” Wyatt asked guarding his foot.
“Someone was pushing all the damn buttons on the keypad,” Heath answered breezily.
“I think one of the nurses stuck on the other side triggered the lock. They all had badges hanging off their pockets,” Lincoln guessed watching the hoard tread toward the SUV. “Let’s wrangle them up for another drop off. And steal us a badge.”
Gloria circ
led around in the parking lot attempting donuts with Noah guiding her. She managed to bounce one devoted follower off the fender causing a domino effect. It didn’t take long for them to get back on their feet, determined to catch the moving target that held their next meal.
Two miles from the hospital she zoomed ahead and dropped Lincoln and Noah off at an abandoned burger joint. Then she doubled back to make sure the meatheads stayed on track.
On the side of the building in the shade, they slouched against the wall enjoying the clean air.
“I miss air. Every time I breathe it’s always tainted oxygen. It’s like living with my fucking brothers before they discovered deodorant,” Noah whispered messing with the suppressor on his Desert Eagle. “I also miss being able to fucking talk in a normal voice.”
“I miss seeing you only once a year,” Lincoln grumbled positioning himself near the corner of the building.
“Those were the days,” Noah replied absentmindedly.
The Jeep rolled by painstakingly slow a few minutes later with Heath hanging out the window. Raspy grunts and guttural growls followed the lone engine on the road, and they scoured the deteriorating group for the ghouls wearing scrubs.
Every walking corpse they shot was instantly trampled by the ones trailing behind it. They killed more than necessary in order to reach their targets. As the last one disappeared around the bend, they both released a long exhale. None of the cannibals noticed them.
Near the road they stopped a few feet from the mashed, soupy mess of tissue, organs, cloth and bones. The sun glared down on the rotting heap of bodies adding to the stench’s potency. It looked like a swamp made entirely of blood, bile and pus.
“Oh hell nah,” Noah said loudly and shook his head taking a step back.
“I can’t even tell where one body starts and finishes,” Lincoln murmured trying to stop himself from heaving.
“I’m not touching that,” Noah said adamantly and refused to get any closer.
Lincoln sighed and surveyed the area for some kind of stick to poke the pool of bacteria. The fast food joint loomed behind him and without a word he trekked to the entrance. He covered his face before he shot the glass out and unlocked the door.
