by Frank Tayell
The glass was as caked in grime as the others they’d passed, but from what Nilda could see of the interior, it looked as if two stubby tower blocks had been built, complete with windows that looked down on an empty atrium. They’d been positioned in a V-shape that met around an elevator shaft and what she guessed was a reception desk. A glass wall which stretched from the ground to the roof, had been built to encompass the two blocks, the atrium, and elevator.
“There are no signs on the doors,” Styles said. “No clue as to what they did inside. And those windows all look like the blinds have been drawn. It’s a bit odd for an office. You want to go inside?”
Nilda gave the doors a hopeful push. They moved just enough to confirm they were bolted at the top and bottom. “Try it,” she said.
Styles pushed the chiselled end of the crowbar between the door and the pavement. He gave it an experimental push. The door barely wobbled. He stood, raised his foot, and stamped down on the curved end of the crowbar. The lock didn’t break, the glass did. There was a brief sharp crack, and before Nilda could tell him to stop, a great fissure leaped up, reaching halfway before the entire glass pane shattered. Nilda jumped backwards but not quickly enough. She felt a white sliver of pain as a ragged shard sliced through her cheek. As the tinkling vibrato died away, the path became silent once more. So silent she thought she could hear the warning chirps from the parakeets on the other side of the river. Then she was hit by the smell, so dense it was like a wall, billowing out from inside. It was that musty, dark odour of decay they’d become so familiar with.
“What kind of reinforced glass shatters like that?” Styles muttered.
“The kind that isn’t reinforced,” Yvonne said. “Which means the doors aren’t usually locked.”
“Then let me rephrase the question, what kind of building doesn’t usually lock their doors.”
“Let’s go inside and find out,” Nilda said.
Broken shards crunching beneath their feet, they walked over to the reception desk. Next to a row of blank screens and silent phones was an old-fashioned in-tray. Nilda picked up a letter from the top, her interest not in the contents but in the address at the top.
“The Tower Bridge Hospital,” she read aloud, and then glanced at the covered windows looking down at them. “Those must be the patient’s rooms.”
“I thought the hospital was near London Bridge,” Greta said.
“That’s Guys, the NHS one. This place must be private,” Nilda said.
“The hospitals were emptied, weren’t they?” Yvonne asked.
“I think so,” Nilda said. But then she wondered why she thought that. She’d not got closer than the car park of the one in Penrith, and she couldn’t remember Chester telling her what had happened elsewhere. Her nostrils flared and again were filled with that forbidding scent. “But I don’t think this one was.”
“I can’t find a map,” Greta said. “They must have been digital. That coffee shop is probably… that way. Those doors there, I think.”
They followed the signs to the Tower View Restaurant. Nilda’s hand gripped and regripped her sword, as she expected to see the undead with each turn and every new corridor, but they saw none before they reached the restaurant. One of the shutters had been rolled up leaving a gap two feet wide. Nilda ducked under it.
“Restaurant?” Styles scoffed. “It’s more like a coffee shop with delusions of grandeur.”
“The prices aren’t bad,” Yvonne said, reading the board behind the counter. “At least for London.”
“The kitchen’s empty,” Nilda said, looking quickly inside. “It’s small. There’s no storage space.”
“Must be down in the basement,” Styles said, checking the cupboards under the counter. “There’s some disposable cups and cutlery. Some napkins. Nothing else.”
“Do we look for the food, or do we go to the roof?” Greta asked.
“Neither,” Styles said. “I vote we go back outside and look for a different building. There’s something wrong about this place. The closed door, the lack of food. That smell, that’s death.”
“No,” Nilda said. “I know it’s tempting. All instinct tells us to flee. But where to? Back to the Tower? And then what? If we can get this telegraph to work, then in a week’s time either Eamonn will have reached Anglesey or they’ll have heard the message. If not…” She stopped. “It has to work. There’s no other choice. We’re here. We have to try. There’s no one else who’ll do it for us.”
They found a stairwell twenty yards down the corridor to the right. Nilda pushed the door, holding it open with her foot, as she held the sword ready to stab at a creature stumbling out through the dark. She turned the flashlight on. Dust danced in the feeble beam, but nothing larger appeared. She tapped the sword against the metal hand rail. The metal gonged, but there was no answering shuffling clatter of a zombie rising from a crouch to stumble down the stairs.
“They can’t climb,” she whispered to herself. “Not easily.” Nevertheless, as she took step after step, she found the tension rising.
She paused at the first landing and tried the door. It was unlocked. She opened it. Looked. Listened. There was nothing. It was the same on the next landing and the third. The hospital was eerily quiet. The stairwell ended at the fifth floor.
“The roof access must be somewhere else. Maybe near the elevator shaft at the centre of the building?” Yvonne suggested.
It was as good a place as any to look. As Nilda stepped out into the silent corridor, she wished Styles hadn’t voiced his fears. She wasn’t sure if it was that which was making her cautious or some deeper instinct of her own. She raised a hand, signalling everyone to stop. There were doors leading off the corridor. She knocked the tip of the sword against the nearest one. Nothing. She opened it.
It was a patient’s room and a wizened corpse lay in the bed. A drip dangled from one arm, an array of silent machines stood nearby. Nilda tried the room opposite. Some of the medical equipment was different, but the scene was otherwise the same.
As they followed the corridor towards the centre of the building, she opened other doors, and found a corpse in each except one where a drip lay on the floor next to a discarded hospital gown.
“What do you think?” Styles asked.
“I think he got out,” Nilda said, picking up the medical chart by the bed, and then she glanced at the small fitted wardrobe. It was empty except for a solitary coat hanger. “Either he escaped on his own, or perhaps someone came to get him.”
“I meant the rest,” Styles said. “Was it murder, euthanasia, or a merciful release?”
“It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?” Yvonne said. “Someone took the time to end their lives. What their motives were isn’t important.”
They headed outside, and Nilda ignored all the other doors and headed towards a nurses’ station. The pharmaceutical cabinet had been selectively emptied. She’d seen that before in surgeries and vets, and she remembered the Abbot of Brazely telling her how he’d missed the atomic bombing of Glasgow by being part of a group deemed trustworthy enough to empty surgeries and pharmacies of the more addictive drugs. As far as she could tell, most of those were still there, but others were missing. Bandages, sutures, those were also gone. She forced herself to relax.
“They killed the patients, and as you say, their motives don’t matter. It was seven months ago, and we came looking for the roof.”
They found a door with a set of stairs that led up to the next level. The rooms there were all small offices crammed with tables and chairs.
“Administration,” Nilda muttered. And again something was wrong about them, but she dismissed it until they reached a junction and found the corridor blocked.
She pushed at an upturned table. It gave, slightly, before it was pushed back at her. She heard that familiar rasping wheeze of air being sucked into dead lungs. That temptation to run, to hide, it was there, but as she’d known before, as she reminded herself every morning when
all she wanted to do was close her eyes again, there was no one else. Just them.
“Get ready.”
She pulled at the table, yanking it free. There was a clamouring clatter as chairs and cabinets toppled. Then she saw it. A zombie, and only one, wearing a coat that was now more yellow than white, over scrubs that might once have been green. Greta darted forward, punching her axe at its face. It fell, and all was quiet once more.
Beyond the barricade were four more rooms; a windowless break-room, a pair of offices that the man had used to sleep in and another, whose door they closed quickly again, that he’d used as his bathroom. The break-room was full of supplies, and all were neatly ordered.
“Not much food,” Styles said, looking through them.
“No, but the bandages will be useful,” Nilda said. “So will the gloves. Swabs.” She picked up a steel instrument. “This is something surgical. Well, I suppose if we don’t know what it’s for, it’s not going to help us much.”
But there were other supplies that didn’t look like they’d come from the hospital. Had the trip out to collect them been the one in which the man had been infected?
Yvonne picked up a drill and put it in her bag. “These will be useful.”
“The tools? Don’t we have some back at the Tower?” Greta asked.
“Nothing electrical,” Yvonne said. “I checked first thing this morning. None worked.”
Nilda went back out into the corridor. There was a fifth door at the end. One marked with bright red no admittance signs. It led to a ladder. There were tables and chairs on the roof indicating the staff had ignored the signs and used the space as a fair-weather break area.
“I wonder how long he was here for,” Styles said as they walked towards the roof’s edge. “And whether he was here while Fogerty was on the other side of the river, neither knowing the other existed. It makes you think, doesn’t it? About how many people might be—” He stopped. They’d reached the edge of the roof and could see the road below. Some stationary, some moving, the streets belonged to the living dead.
“I’d say two hundred in the road outside, and the same number in the streets close by,” Styles said when they’d climbed back down the ladder and were back inside. “There’s a few abandoned cars, and there’s some rubbish and other junk, but there’s nothing really blocking the road.”
“We can bring the drone back,” Nilda suggested, “and use it to try and find a route to the Shard somewhere closer to the railway bridge. But realistically, I don’t think we’ll get any closer than this.”
“I suppose we could try building a different type of antenna and broadcasting a different signal,” Yvonne said. “Maybe we could try and reach Kirkman House and bring back some of the equipment from there.” She sighed. “We’ve found some tools, at least. That’s something. And the bandages will be useful.”
Nilda nodded absently. In her mind, she was already classifying the scheme as a failure. Trying not to let her feelings show, she led them back to the stairwell. She thought of the zombie they’d killed and the dead patients. Perhaps he hadn’t been a nurse or a doctor, and had just worn the scrubs because they were clean. A relative of one of the patients, perhaps, who’d come here looking for a loved one but found… He’d found food and supplies and decided to stay. There was something odd about that. Why had he then gone out and risked infection? There were lots of possible answers, but none seemed to fit.
She found herself quickening her pace, taking the stairs two at a time. Her footsteps seemed loud, growing louder, drowning out her racing heartbeat. No, it wasn’t just her footsteps. She broke into a run, leaping down the steps three at a time, five, grabbed the bannister, vaulted over it, dropped to the next flight, and then jumped to the next. The others followed. They’d heard it, too. Above them, the noise grew. By the time they’d reached the ground floor it had grown from footsteps to a wall of sound.
“We run, and we don’t stop until we’re outside,” she said.
“Not until we’re back on the raft,” Greta agreed.
Nilda pushed the door open, and darted out, sword ready. The corridor was empty, and the sound seemed muted. The other three followed, and the door swung shut.
Now she realised what was wrong. It was the barricade. Why had that man built it there, blocking off nearly everything except access to the roof? Why not the stairwell? Because, she realised, he hadn’t taken refuge here. He’d been trapped.
They found out what by when they got back to the atrium. The blinds over the second and third floor windows were moving as undead hands pawed and clawed at the glass. The scratching thuds filled the cavernous space, drowning out all sound and most thought. There was a hand on her arm dragging her forward.
“Run!” Greta bellowed, her hand waving vaguely towards the elevator shaft. Nilda staggered forward a few steps, her head turning to look. On the fourth floor, around the barrier in front of the elevator, the undead had gathered. Some wore gowns that might once have been blue, others were in scrubs, a few in the matted ruins of civilian garb. Their arms waved over the barrier, and Nilda knew it wasn’t high enough. She saw a creature topple forward, landing head first on the reception desk. Then a second zombie fell, landing on the marble in an explosion of gut and gore. A third stumbled over the shallow railing, then a fourth, a fifth… Nilda dropped her bag and ran, following Styles out of the door with Yvonne and Greta close behind.
Outside, they watched the slow waterfall of the undead, splashing down on the hard concrete floor in a spray of brown pus and yellowed bone.
“Where’s your bag?” Yvonne asked.
“What? I dropped it,” Nilda said.
“Damn. That had the tools in it,” Yvonne said. “We need those,”
“Wait! Yvonne!” Nilda called, but Yvonne had run back into the hospital. She’d be okay, Nilda thought. The undead were landing head first. Except they weren’t. Not all of them. Yvonne reached the bag and picked it up just as a zombie staggered halfway to its feet a step behind her. Its hands clawed at her legs. Yvonne batted at the creature, pushing it away, but its mouth snapped forward, its teeth sinking deep into her hand. Yvonne’s scream cut through all the other sounds, and Nilda found she was sprinting back into the building, Greta at her side. Nilda swung her sword at the zombie, splitting its head open. It fell and it took half of Yvonne’s hand with it. The woman screamed and collapsed. Nilda grabbed her, and started dragging her towards the exit. Greta reached them. Yvonne kept screaming as they carried her outside.
“Quiet!” Nilda hissed. It had no effect, and it didn’t matter. The undead would already have heard them.
They threw Yvonne into the raft. Greta sawed through the rope, and Styles pulled out one of the dressings they’d taken from the trove on the top floor. It felt dry and dusty as Nilda slapped it around the wound. She grabbed Yvonne’s other hand and clamped it over the bandage.
“Pressure!” she snapped as she improvised a tourniquet around the woman’s wrist. She wasn’t sure if the woman had heard her.
Halfway across the Thames, the woman’s screams subsided into shallow sobs. Nilda was grateful for the respite, and then felt bad for the thought.
By the time they got to the stone steps outside the Tower, Nilda was certain the woman was unconscious. She was wrong. When they lifted her up, Yvonne began screaming once more.
“What happened?” Fogerty asked. He wasn’t alone. The riverside path was crowded with people, all of whom must have heard the woman’s pitiful cries.
“She was bitten,” Nilda said, and realised that the soldier already knew that. “On her hand. She’s lost a finger and part of her palm.
When they got her inside, into a room next to Chester’s, Nilda discovered the wound was worse than that. The little finger and two inches of palm were gone. The top of the third finger was only held on by a scrap of flesh.
“What do we do?” Nilda asked.
“Cauterise it,” Jay said. She hadn’t realised her son had followed t
hem inside.
“Hold her down,” Fogerty said. Greta reached for Yvonne’s shoulders. “Not you,” he said, “not until you’ve washed. Same for everyone else. We need to keep this clean and sterile. And Jay’s right, we’ve got to stop the bleeding.”
“Are there any painkillers left?” Kevin asked.
“Just pills,” Fogerty said. “And there’s no way she’s going to swallow them. No, we’ve got to be quick. First we’re going to have to cut off that finger. We need some bolt cutters.”
There was a moan from Yvonne that might have been of protest.
“Can’t help it, lass,” Fogerty said, bending low. “It’s only held on by a scrap. It won’t even hurt. The bolt cutters?” he added, snapping at the room.
“I’ll get them,” Jay said.
“They need to be sterile. And we need boiling water,” the warder said.
“I know,” Jay said, running from the room.
He wasn’t gone long, but with Yvonne whimpering and moaning it seemed like an eternity.
“Bolt cutters,” Jay said, holding them out to Fogerty.
“My eyesight’s not good enough. Someone else needs to do it.”
“I’ll do it,” Nilda said.
“You’re not sterile,” Jay said, pushing Fogerty out of the way. He placed the edge of the blade near the ragged, bloody scrap of flesh. Before Nilda could formulate an objection, he pushed down, severing the finger. Yvonne moaned.
“And we need something to cauterise it,” Fogerty said.
“Already in hand,” Jay said.
Nilda stood, frustrated at her own inability to help, as her son cauterised the wound with an ornate metal seal that had been heated in the boiler room. Yvonne let out a single, brief, high-pitched scream as hot metal seared flesh. Then, thankfully, as the room filled with the smell of burning meat, she passed out again.
