by M. Van
“I’m sorry,” she said and gave me that hurt look that I had seen before.
“For what?” Before she could answer, a metallic voice boomed down the hall.
“Sergeant Meadow, Private Jones, if you can hear this please respond or try to make a distinct sound if you can’t.”
Our heads shot to the door. That voice sounded so close. Angie drew in a sharp breath before she turned to face me, her eyes dark.
“I have to go to them,” she said. The moment the words left her mouth, my hand shot up to grab her wrist. There could only be two outcomes to this story, but abandoned alone in a hospital infested with zombies definitely felt like the lesser of two evils, the other being a lab rat and all. Still, the thought of being left on my own hit me like a sledgehammer. My throat constricted, and I couldn’t get air into my lungs.
“If they search this place, they will find you. They won’t if I’ll go to them.” I sensed the urgency in Angie’s voice.
Unable to speak, I nodded. I wanted her to know I understood even though it scared the shit out of me.
“You know what will happen if they take you, and I don’t want that, but I can’t promise you I’ll come back or find you again,” she said. “I will try. God knows I will try, but I can’t promise.” Her voice broke.
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted her to promise she’d come back for me, to rescue me from this place, although I appreciated her honesty. I’d feel pretty crappy about it if I sat here waiting for her and she never showed.
“I understand,” I managed to say and tightened my grip on her wrist. “Still, I’d rather die here than on an examination table.” Angie’s eyes went wide.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said without the conviction I had hoped for. She started to explain that the evacuation of the building would start soon enough. Rescue teams were already scheduled to get the rest of the patients out the day after the military had cleared out the cancer ward. They probably hadn’t expected the hospital to be overrun with zombies, but that wouldn’t stop them from coming.
We had been running or rolling around this hospital for almost a day, and they shouldn't be long. Angie told me that because the ground and second floor were crowded with infected, the rescue teams might send assault teams by helicopter first—to carve out a route to evacuate the remaining patients.
I could tell she was trying to reassure me, trying to get me to go with the rescue teams, but something told me she wasn't sure it was the best thing for me to do.
“You can pretend to belong to another ward,” she said. “They’ll take you to a safe place.”
I snorted a sorrowful laugh and rubbed a hand over the pitiful amount of hair on my head.
“As if they'd mistake me for anything I'm not,” I said and felt my voice break. My shoulders lifted then slumped.
“Don’t be stupid, ki—” she started to say but swallowed the word. The loud, metallic voice boomed across the hall. Angie jumped to her feet at the sound. She hesitated, exchanging glances between the bathroom door and me.
“I have to go,” she said, attempting a matter-of-fact tone that didn't come fully across. Forcing a straight face, I nodded. I wanted to appear strong, if only to reassure her that I would be all right.
She cursed as the metallic voice called out her name and rank and then looked at me with a pained look. She raised her fist. “Till we meet again.”
I raised my fist and held it to hers.
“Next time.”
Just like that, she was gone. I could hear the muffled exchange of words down the hall, but couldn’t make any sense of them. Later, I heard the rotor blades cut through the air, and then everything returned to screams of the dying and moans of the zombies.
| 11
It felt like an agonizingly long time, waiting in that stupid bathtub, and without a watch, I had no way of telling how much time had passed. After a while, I heard footsteps running up and down the hall along with voices and the sound of people scrambling along. Someone entered the room, but I hid under the blankets and shower curtain. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t announce myself to the evacuation team. I was too afraid these rescuers might be part of whatever Angie had been part of. Shivering like a baby, I hid until the sound of footsteps in the hall faded and disappeared.
Fear ripped through me at the thought of leaving the bathroom or this tub. I even kept drawing out the times I used the toilet. Besides, there was a drain in the tub. As long as I stayed on one side, peeing wasn't a problem.
It wasn’t the zombies I feared. I knew they wouldn’t touch me. Everything else scared the shit out of me. I finally understood Angie’s struggle with leaving me behind. Had she thought I would die out here on my own? I started to think she might have been right, but at least, there wouldn’t be any poking and prodding.
I slept most of my second day in the bathtub. When the last strip of sunlight had faded from the room adjacent to the bathroom, I couldn’t ignore my stomach’s cries for food any longer. The last time I had eaten was the night before Chuck showed up at my bedside. Adrenaline had kept me going the entire day as we ran from the zombies. Fear of discovery had kept me frozen in place for most of the day after.
The packet Angie had dropped into the bathtub turned out to be an MRE—a Meal Ready to Eat. It wasn’t much, but then, I guess she hadn’t expected me to stay. She’d thought I’d leave with the rescue crews. It hadn’t been enough to soothe the hunger that had built for almost two days.
The agonizing process of climbing out of the tub and onto my new mad-scientist wheelchair had left me exhausted. Even then, the chair kept fighting me. It felt as if the brakes had remained clamped onto the wheels, and there was a squeaky sound every time I made a turn. It made the trip down the hall difficult. In their effort to get Angie and the remaining patients out, the soldiers had, I guessed, killed many of the zombies roaming this floor. Considering I had to wheel around their bodies, I would have preferred moving ones.
The hall looked nothing like the pristinely cleaned hallway that belonged in a hospital. The smell of death and decay hung in the air. Blood spatters in all forms and sizes covered the walls and floors. Bodies littered the linoleum. In some places, bodies lay in stacks where the soldiers must have piled them on top of each other. For some, only their clothes told me something of the story of whom they must have been, a doctor, a nurse, a soldier, but for most, nothing would reveal their identity ever again. The hospital had been evacuated, and I didn’t expect anyone would set foot in here for a while. It made me wonder how long these bodies would lie scattered across these floors or how long zombies would roam these halls. When it came to the thought whether I would be one of them, I shoved it from my head.
I used the elevator to reach the ground floor. The main restaurant was on that floor, and I wanted to see whether I could find some food. The vending machines were my last resort, but that would mean I had to break them open somehow.
The ground floor looked to be a lot more crowded. Zombies shuffled the halls without purpose. I guessed that for as long they couldn't detect anything tasty to nosh on, they didn't know what to do with themselves. The reassurance I felt about wanting to die here instead of on an examination table wasn’t as strong as before. Dread filled the emptiness left by the lack of food in my stomach. The hunger inside faded.
Forcing my chair between the bodies of the dead and undead, I caught sight of one of the restaurant entryways. It wouldn’t do me any good to go in that way. There wouldn’t be any access to the kitchen with this chair, but I had a way around that.
One of the cooks, a friendly, chubby guy who’d looked like Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show, had given me a tour once. He had shown me around the kitchen with its massive pots and miles of stainless steel tables. He had shown me an alternative entry.
The employee’s entry doors stood open, and I felt glad. They looked like a pain in the butt to open. With a little effort, I managed to roll the chair past the threshold.<
br />
My head barely reached above the tables as I rolled past them. Something smelled funky, and I saw the lights on an oven still lit up. The kitchen felt strangely empty and looked, for the most part, untouched. Past the food displays on the other side of the counter, I could see a couple of zombies that milled around the restaurant tables. They didn’t even seem to notice me. Then a fluid motion pulled my attention, and I froze. Zombies had lost their ability to move like that. My gaze shifted to the zombies milling in the restaurant. Nothing had disturbed them.
My heart lifted with the smile on my face. It had to be Angie; who else would be able to stroll past those zombies? She had come back for me, hadn’t she? Not wanting to be an idiot, I kept my mouth from shouting her name. In an attempt to keep the squeaking to a minimum, I rolled my chair past the tables. Someone stood at the pantry door. My heart pounded like crazy at the possibility that Angie had come for me, but the lack of military clothing made my heart sink. She wore cargo pants and a black jacket, but it wasn’t Angie.
I stared at the figure of a woman. She stood in front of the pantry door, and there was clearly something inside. One of her hands held a gun, and the other hovered over the door handle. It seemed as if she debated whether to enter or not. I stared at her in awe: she was so tall. I realized that from my position, probably everyone looked tall, but I’d bet she could rival that tall, dark lieutenant with those brilliant jade eyes I had seen with Angie. Despite her too-skinny frame, she looked like a freaking amazon, but with very short fuzzy hair like mine. It seemed I had discovered the reason she was able to move past the zombies without effort. For a moment, I debated whether I should show myself to her. She didn’t look like a serial killer, although she did carry a gun. The blood on her cargo pants and the bandages on her face told me she hadn’t come out unscathed, which could explain the gun. However, she had a friendly face, and I decided to risk it.
“What’s up?” I said.
I didn’t expect her to shoot at me.
Find out what happens next!!
in
Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies
the next book in the Wheels and Zombies series
by
M. Van
Ash
A novella in the
Wheels and Zombies series
M. Van
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