“I guess,” I said doubtfully. “The hospital is a huge place, though. I have no idea where we would even start.”
“We’ll just poke around some. Ask a few questions. See what we can find out. If we’re getting nowhere, we can figure something else out,” she suggested.
Sterling Securities. That’s where I wanted to go, to be honest. We knew they were connected somehow with Lindström and Dad’s pharmaceutical company, but the security company is where our substantial evidence pointed. They’re the ones who took Nathen and I assumed my family, too. They’re also the ones setting up checkpoints around the city. I’d check out the hospital because that’s where Carina wanted to go, but if we didn’t turn anything up in a hurry, we were out of there and making a beeline straight for Sterling Securities.
“Are you okay, Conor?”
Carina’s voice brought me out of my thoughts and I realized my muscles were coiled tight. My face felt hot.
I breathed out and forced myself to relax. “Yeah,” I lied. “Just want to find Nathen and my family.”
“Then what?” she asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Get everybody out of here maybe. I’ve had just about enough of whatever’s going on around here.”
She didn’t say anything. I glanced at her, but couldn’t get a read on her in the dark.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I could tell by the tone in her voice—tight, worried, and hesitant—that she was still thinking about finding her dad. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to find him even though we knew he had already killed at least one person. Mr. Walker. He was still her dad and even though I didn’t know him, it was evident the monster I’ve met wasn’t who he was. Carina was shocked and devastated by his appearance and how he had acted.
“I have to get my family out of danger,” I said. “Once I’m sure they’re safe, I can come back to help find out what happened to your dad.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said sadly.
“You didn’t,” I said. “I told you I would. Big difference.”
“Really, Conor,” she insisted.
“Let’s just worry about one thing at a time, okay? First up, the hospital.”
We drove in silence for a few more minutes. I was already making mental plans to help Carina if she decided to stay in Salt Lake to find out what had happened to her dad. She could make all the arguments she wanted, but I was going to do what I could for her.
I picked up the little black box from the center console and stared at it, turning it over in my hands. It made no sense to me. There was a circular speaker on the front, but I hadn’t heard anything come from it. The button did absolutely nothing. I pressed it but didn’t hear the tell-tale clicking that walkie-talkies make. No lights lit up on it. It did…well, nothing.
Why would both men have them clipped to the front of their uniforms? I thought maybe the device I had grabbed might be dead and wished I had snatched the other one as well. I turned it over. It had two little pin connectors for charging. A quick look over the center console revealed two divots that looked like charging ports.
“Oh, man,” Carina said.
I looked up from trying to align the device for charging. “What?”
“Look.” She pointed a finger over the steering wheel.
The hospital lay straight ahead. It was completely dark. As she pulled into the parking lot, I could see that most of the first- and second-floor windows were busted out. There were trash and debris scattered everywhere.
“Looks like it got hit,” she said as she slowed the Hummer to a crawl.
“By what?” I scanned the area but didn’t see any of the creeper teens around. The place seemed completely abandoned in spite of a few vehicles occupying spaces in the lot. “Pull into the emergency bay,” I said, pointing out the direction.
“I can’t do that. What if there’s an emergency?”
“They won’t come here. There’s nobody here.”
She nodded and pointed the Hummer toward the indicated bay, bumping a curb as she pulled in.
“I guess we go look around?” she asked.
“Yup.”
She climbed out. I hesitated a moment, waiting for her to close the door behind her. When she had, I reached over the console to grab the gun. I hopped out and clipped it to the back of my belt, pulling the tail of my shirt over it before she rounded the Hummer.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We stepped through the automatic doors, already forced open, and clicked on our flashlights.
“Don’t hospitals usually have backup generators?” Carina asked.
I shined my light on an emergency light just inside the doors. “Normally. I guess that’s out, too.”
The hospital reminded me of Carina’s house, but on a larger scale. There were chairs, papers, pieces of equipment, and broken glass everywhere. There were chairs embedded in walls, gurneys half on counters, vitals monitoring equipment forced through plexiglass dividers. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to the destruction that I could see. It looked like destruction for destruction’s sake.
We moved from the emergency room area to the generally restricted area hallways, passing offices that had been completely demolished. We took stairs up to higher levels but encountered much the same devastation. By the third floor, I was about fed up with stepping around the random parts of random hospital equipment. It felt like a lost cause. There was no way we would be able to find anything of importance here.
Carina stopped by an office with its door ripped off the hinges and shone her light inside. “Something’s not right.”
“You think?” I said sardonically.
“Not just all this, but this.” She focused her light on the mangled computer.
“It’s like that in all the offices,” I said.
“Exactly. All the rest of this seems just so random, but there’s not a computer left untouched.”
“Are you saying somebody targeted the computers?” She was right. Through all the debris, it looked like computers where their main focus. Most of them had been smashed to bits so little that it was barely recognizable anymore.
She nodded. “And did all the rest of this to cover it up.”
“It’s a possibility, I guess.” I swept my light around the mess. “Now, all of it just looks like a big pile of—”
A clatter of metal on tile floor echoed down the hall. Carina and I jumped and swung our lights in the direction the noise came from.
“What was that?” Carina whispered.
I shrugged.
“Is somebody here?” she asked.
I shrugged again. “Let’s go see.”
Carina grabbed my arm to stop me. “What if it’s one of them?”
“Them who?” I asked. “It’s not those creepers. They roam in hordes that aren’t subtle enough to hide.”
“What if it’s a Sterling guard?”
“Then we can ask him a few questions. We’re obviously not getting any information wandering around here.”
Carina reluctantly let go of my arm. I could tell she didn’t want to go down there, but she had to see the futility of the hospital visit. Any scrap of information we might be able to pry from a Sterling officer would at least make the trip worth our time.
I cupped my hand over the tip of the flashlight, blocking out most of the light. I left just a tiny sliver shining toward the floor to illuminate enough for us to navigate down the hall without tripping over a defibrillator or something. Carina turned hers off.
I kept my ears open, listening for the slightest sounds as we crept down the hall. I heard nothing. The hospital was as quiet as a graveyard. I’d seen pictures online of old, abandoned hospitals and mental wards. They fascinated me. I’d always wondered what it would feel like to explore one. SLMC was about as close as I would get without actually visiting one of them.
Carina grabbed my shoulder to stop me and leaned
against my back, her lips so close to my ear, I could feel the heat of her breath. “I don’t like this.”
I nodded in understanding. I wasn’t about to just turn and run, though. If there was anything or anybody here that could give me the slightest piece of information I could use to figure out what was going on, I was going to push forward. I took another step, but she pulled on me again.
“Let’s get out of here,” she breathed. “What if it’s a trap?”
I shook my head at her. I didn’t think it was a trap, but my thinking hadn’t been sound lately. I turned to tell her to stay behind just in case. I didn’t get it out.
Something thunked me hard on the back of the head, right at the base of my skull. I pitched forward, knocking Carina over as I fell to the tiled floor. My flashlight jumped out of my hand and spun across the floor. Its light twirled around the hall like a one-bulb disco ball.
I rolled to my back and saw a figure standing over me, holding something high overhead. That was probably what had hit me and it looked to be coming back for more.
The figure let out a scream. It was high-pitched and almost wild.
I held up an arm to deflect the coming blow.
The flashlight stopped spinning several feet away with its beam shining right on me.
“You,” the figure said with a hoarse voice. “I know you.”
Chapter 28
12:43 a.m.
I pushed myself away from the figure as the long, metal bar lowered slowly to its side. The blow had felt like it nearly knocked my eyes out of their sockets. My healing had kicked in, though, but I was sure I’d have a knot on the crown of my head for a while.
“Stop!” Carina shouted, putting as much threat as she could in the command. She flicked on her own flashlight and shined it on the figure.
A woman stood over me, blinking at the sudden light in her face. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties and wore faded blue jeans, a maroon hoodie, and held a slightly dented white bar that looked like it had come off a piece of hospital equipment.
“What are you doing here?” the woman asked.
I blinked at her. She acted like she knew me, but she seemed only vaguely familiar to me.
“Were you with them?” she demanded.
“Who are you?” Carina asked.
The woman’s eyes flicked from me to squint past the light at Carina. And it hit me. I did know her. She looked completely different in the odd shadows the flashlights cast, and her hair was down, but those piercing bright blue eyes were the same.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again. “There’s nothing left to destroy.”
“Does it look like we’re destroying stuff?” Carina demanded.
“You’re a nurse, right?” I held up a hand to hold off her reply. I sat up and pushed myself to my feet, resisting the urge to rub the spot on my lower back where I had rolled onto the gun.
“Yeah, how do I know you?” she asked. “You look familiar.”
“I was in here a few days ago.”
I watched her eyes widen in recognition. “You came to see that poor kid before he died. You’re from the school newspaper.”
“What?” Carina said. It came out more of a quick laugh than a word.
The nurse glanced at her, then back to me. “You’re not really with the school paper, are you?” She took a step back.
“Wait!” I said, holding up both hands with palms out. “No. No, I’m not. But we’re not like all the other kids. We’re not here to trash everything or whatever.”
“You did have something to do with that kid, didn’t you? You said you weren’t a part of that fight, but you were.”
I hesitated. “Look, things aren’t what they appear.”
“They’re not?” She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “It appears my hospital has been completely trashed. It appears this whole city is going crazy. It appears you have something to do with it.” She used the bar to point at me briefly.
Okay, maybe everything was as it appeared.
“Look, we weren’t a part of this, okay?” Carina said when I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’ve seen what’s going on out there. It’s all kids your age.”
“Not all of us,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” Carina demanded, turning things around on the nurse.
“I work here.”
“There’s no here left to work,” Carina said.
“Look,” I cut in, “I’ll be honest with you.”
“A little honesty would go a long way these days,” the nurse said.
“I was in that fight that kid got hurt in,” I admitted and held up a hand when she opened her mouth to talk. “But, I didn’t bring that bat. I was out with a friend and a group of them jumped us.” A little white lie. “Things were crazy. I wasn’t anywhere near that kid when he was hit.” Not quite a lie. Technically, I really wasn’t. He was down the alley. I left out the fact that I had thrown the bat. “This was all before everything went nuts, right? We aren’t a part of this.” I waved both hands to take in the mess in the hallway.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looking for answers.”
“Answers to what? If you’re really not a part of this, you should be home. It’s not safe to be out.”
“My dad has disappeared,” Carina cut in. That wasn’t quite a lie. He hadn’t seen him since the school.
“And you’re checking the hospitals for him?” The nurse’s eyes softened a bit.
“Well, no,” Carina said truthfully.
“Things are going crazy,” I said.
“No kidding,” the nurse said, letting weariness lace her voice. “Look, you kids really shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous and you don’t want to get caught here if they come back.”
“Look, um… My name’s Conor,” I said, hoping she’ll offer up her name. “This is Carina.”
“Julia Baker,” she said after a moment.
“Look, Julia, her dad isn’t the only one missing. My family is, too. So is our friend, Nathen. We’re looking for them and the things we’ve found led us here.”
“What things?”
“Both of our dads work in the medical field and their companies had ties with this hospital,” Carina said.
“Local companies?” Julia asked. “There are ties between all local medical fields around here.”
“There are very specific ties,” I added.
“What ties?”
Carina and I shared a look. How much could we trust this nurse? So far, as much as we could tell, it had been medical types that had led us to this point. All clues pointed to this hospital, Lindström Research and Development, Sterling Securities, and Salt Lake Pharmaceuticals. Julia Baker was an employee of the hospital. Did she have anything to do with what was going on? Why was she in the hospital now?
“What happened here exactly?” I asked, deflecting her question.
She glanced around the trashed hall. “They came all at once like it was coordinated, but it couldn’t have been. They came through all the entrance at the same time. There was no rhyme or reason to their actions other than causing as much hurt and destruction as they could. They attacked people, only stopping long enough to destroy whatever wasn’t bolted down.” She paused a moment and held up the bar. “And some stuff that was.” Realizing she still held the metal weapon, she leaned it against the wall.
“Were you working?” Carina stepped next to me, lowering the light so it wasn’t in Julia’s face.
The nurse nodded. “Up in ICU.” She glanced at me.
I knew exactly where that was. Her look said it hadn’t gone unnoticed that I didn’t tell her my role in the fight.
“I don’t know how long those of us on the higher floors had no clue what was going on below. A rush of people flooding our hall to escape was what finally gave us a clue that something was happening. Some rushed out of the stairwell while others climbed higher to escape. Getting any information
out of those poor, terrified people was nearly impossible.” She leaned against the wall, exhaustion written on her face. “Once we figured out the hospital was under attack, we initiated a lockdown.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The doors into the ICU are magnetically locked and can’t be opened from the outside.” She paused a moment, her thoughts entirely on the incident. “I didn’t think the doors would be enough. They’re strong, but they can only take so much damage. Those kids attacked them with reckless abandoned. They slammed into them with whatever they could find, including their own bodies.”
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