by T. A. Sorsby
There were a fair few broken figures staying on the ground in the car park, but most were crawling or running after us as we slowly made our way back to the woodland road, barely faster than their runners. We wanted to bait as many of them as possible, but I wasn’t sure of the range on the remote. I said as much to Anita.
‘Damn. I’ll turn us around, we’ll make a second pass.’
Once we’d reached the top of the little hill, Anita did a quick turn in the road, mounting the curb, not bothering with three-points. Then she went right back towards the radio station. The faster of the zombies had pulled away from the mob, it felt too small to call it a horde just yet, but they were easily dodged as the SUV drove on towards the gates again.
‘Why’re you swerving?’ I asked her, not sounding critical or anything.
‘No sense damaging the car if you can avoid it.’ She explained.
We drove by the gates again, avoiding the main body of the zeds as they came towards us, though this put us uncomfortably close to some parked cars. I clicked the remote to close the gates, and looked over my shoulder once more as we drove by. It looked like they were struggling to close, some of the crippled zeds were blocking it.
‘Fuck,’ I cursed, ‘last thing we needed. Those gates won’t close unless those bodies are cleared.’
‘Too many of them still coming after us for you to get out,’ Anita warned me, ‘guess I’ll have to thin them out a little more.’
She found a break in the parked cars, and used it to execute a much more careful turning manoeuvre, backing into the open spot, coming out a little, then having to back in again. The road was too narrow for much else.
Then she set the SUV on the warpath. This time, she didn’t swerve away from the massed zeds. She rammed the SUV into the bulk of the mob, sending bodies sprawling, knocking air from dead lungs - if I’d not known these things were emotionless, I’d say they just got a nasty surprise.
Anita then reversed, and came in again. Twice. Three times, smashing the standing ones, trying to catch them on the left or right side of the bonnet rather than head on – I guess she figured we’d be less likely to damage the engine. When most of them were knocked down, broken and writhing, she drove over them, clear through to the other side, then put the truck in reverse and did it again.
‘Cathartic?’ I asked her.
‘Very much so.’ She said, struggling to change gear as one of her tyres spun in something slippery that I tried not to think about.
She pulled us forwards again, and opened her door slightly to look out, as if she were checking her parking at the supermarket. ‘You’re clear to shift those bodies, but be careful. I’ll cover you from here.’ She added, undoing her seatbelt and taking out her gun.
We got out, and I noticed the gore caking the underside of the SUV. Some of it squelched to the tarmac as I watched. I turned away, and went for the gate, drawing my bayonet from my belt – not everything was truly dead yet. I had to set my boot to the back of a few necks, quickly coming down with the steel blade, three or four times.
Once nothing was moving around me, once the carpet of bodies lay still, I dragged them out of the line of the gate, leaving the ones that’d fallen too far in - Conrad or Sachs could handle those, I wasn’t sticking around here longer than I had to.
Bloody smears and unpleasant memories were all that marked where the zeds had fallen in the gateway. I’d managed not to get any real gore on my hands, grabbing unbloodied sections of clothing to drag from, and wiping my bayonet carefully and thoroughly before I slid it back into the sheath.
We mounted up again as I clicked the gates closed, and drove for the woodland road to meet back up with Neville, Morgan and Laurel. Despite never getting blood on me, I felt unclean, and unclipped Anita’s first aid kit from her belt while she was driving; fortunately it was on my side. I used one of the disinfectant wipes on my hands, but it was awkward to unclip, so just held onto the FAK rather than re-clipping it.
‘How’s it going back there?’ I inquired.
‘Ya know,’ Damian piped up, ‘It’s not that bad.’
I’d have believed him if we didn’t hit a pothole, drawing a groan of extreme discomfort.
‘I’ll make it, don’t worry mon.’ He tried again.
‘I’ve heard of people coming through worse,’ Anita said, keeping her eyes on the road as we negotiated the suburbs, ‘not seen it first hand, but there was a senior officer in our precinct, shot up twice as bad. He pulled through.’
‘Yeah?’ Lucile asked, hopefully.
‘He rode a desk ever since. Shot went through his spine, made it hard to walk.’ She told us in an offhand fashion, ‘But you shouldn’t need PT when you pull through. You’ll be okay.’
‘Make me believe it next time…’ Lucile muttered.
Neville was actually waiting for us when we reached the wooded road, having pulled the 4x4 slightly to the side. He must have seen us driving over the zeds at the gate, and knew what we were doing. Anita pulled us up alongside and rolled the passenger side window down, leaning over to speak.
‘Any complications?’
‘All good here,’ Neville gave the thumbs up, ‘straight to County General?’
‘If it all de same to you?’ Damian shouted up.
‘You heard the man - let’s move.’ Neville nodded.
We led the way, Neville following a few car lengths behind, just in case we ran into trouble and had to stop suddenly. I didn’t pay much attention to the road - or the occasional bit of foot-traffic Anita dodged, bumped or straight-up crunched through. At first, it was because I’d volunteered to load everyone’s guns, Lucile passing forwards the box of shotgun shells. But once the fresh shell was pumped, my cylinders filled and Anita’s magazine swapped, I found myself wrapped up in my own thoughts again, thinking on what our next move should be.
If this were a game of chess, I’d be a rank amateur, thinking only a couple turns ahead. Damian and Anita were in trouble, one more than the other, but trouble all the same. Ironic that during an infectious undead plague we were having to worry about regular old bacteria.
Once we had the meds we needed, once we’d got our pieces back out of danger, it’d be late – fully into the night. Even with the zeds clearing out of the centre, I still figured the hospital to be teeming with them - trapped in private rooms, rattling drawers in the morgue, or just shambling down corridors, unable to find their way out – hospitals are mazes at the best of times.
We certainly couldn’t spend the night in there. We could head straight for the VBC Studio, make ourselves known to the CDC - they were our line on evacuation, after all. With the zeds moving out of the centre, it might even have been fairly safe, though I wasn’t willing to bet anyone’s lives on it, while we knew our own place was secure.
In the end, it’d have to come down to a vote. De-facto leader or not, this was too big of a decision for one man to make. Besides, there were supplies at home we’d do well to bring with us, no telling how short food and water would be behind the CDC’s walls.
When I surfaced from my list of pros and cons, we were rumbling through the outskirts of the city centre, down a road lined on both sides with exotic restaurants of various price ranges and food hygiene standards. The closer to the centre we got, the fancier eateries became kebab shops - one of them seemed to have caught fire in the last day or so, and burned through to the takeaways and pub on either side.
The zeds were still here, thinner on the ground, but ever-present. A handful down a side street, some trapped in the flats above the diners, banging on the windows. I saw one chewing on a bare leg, the rest of the body hidden by the van the poor bastard had tried to crawl under.
It wasn’t far now. The buildings were reaching the odd storey higher, the pavement becoming more worn. We crossed a once-busy junction, leading onto part of the city’s ring road, where we saw a newly built hotel reaching just a little higher than our apartment block. It was called the Gatehouse, and marked th
e entrance to the city centre.
We drove in, making our way to the hospital, heedless of the one-way system that’d formerly made centre-driving a maddening experience. Some of the buildings towered overhead, a mixture between dated offices and new-build steel and glass. Other, nicer aspects of Greenfield town centre stood as yet more reminders that this wasn’t just a day on the high street - where quaint little independent stores stood with their doors and windows smashed, looted, burned, or the sight of somebody’s tragic end.
County General Hospital was a little further, in the more student-oriented quarter, nestled between a couple University buildings and a swanky business park. It formed a blocky C-shape around a parking area - there were never enough spaces, so most visitors had to use a nearby multi-storey parking garage. Today was an exception. Not much call for visiting hours anymore, the place looked desolate. Evidence of the infection however, was hard to miss.
In the nearly empty parking lot, several of the cars that remained were in a similar state to those we’d been passing on the roads - some the victim of collisions, rushing to the road and crashing into bollards or railings meant to protect pedestrians. Others had bloodstained interior windows, blocking from sight whatever horror had taken place within.
I looked up at the hospital itself before we drove around the side; taking in the sight of what we were about to head into. The gore-smeared glass, dark figures moving unseen behind, did not fill me with confidence. One window on the second floor had been smashed open, and an improvised rope of bedsheets thrown out, which would have landed the daring escapist on top of a shelter over the front entrance.
But we pulled passed all that, around the side of the building, to the Accident & Emergency entrance. It was down a broad alley, formed by the side of the hospital and a wall beside the Uni’s Engineering Department building. You could easily get two ambulances down it without sucking your chest in, but we wouldn’t have to worry about other traffic.
Once Anita had reached the end of the bay, she carefully turned the SUV to face back the way we’d came, positioned to drive away easier, should we need it. She pulled forward enough for Neville to do the same, and once both vehicles were lined up and backed close to the doors, she let out a deep breath.
‘Okay,’ she reassured herself, ‘we can do this.’
*
Forty One
Wide sliding doors led into the A&E Department, a large shelter overhead so folk weren’t being unloaded from the ambulance in the rain. Cigarette bins stood at either side of the doors, but according to Katy, most of the EMTs here were total fitness nuts so they were mainly for people who’d driven their loved ones in, then needed to take the edge off once they were being seen to.
Under the shelter, the lights were off, but inside the hospital, everything was lit up. They must have had a pretty robust emergency power system - I suppose you’d have to, with patients on life support you can’t risk a poorly timed power-cut.
As we dismounted our truck, that thought lodged home. If the lights were on all night, any zeds coming by this part of the city would see them. The hospital would definitely not be empty - but I couldn’t see any shamblers from here. Maybe they’d heard our car doors slamming, and would be here any minute.
‘You see it?’ Morgan asked me, hugging herself with one arm. ‘There was a bike in staff parking, up front. Katy’s, I think.’ She added, hooking a thumb over her shoulder.
I shook my head. ‘Didn’t see it. Anita told us staff got out with the patients, cops and soldiers though. No reason to think she wasn’t with them. Can’t have taken her bike if she was in an ambulance.’
‘I hope so,’ Morgan sniffed, twitching her frown into a brief smile, ‘maybe she’ll be at VBC, waiting for us.’
‘I hope so too.’ I told her, before we went to join the rest of the group.
They had formed a rough line before the hospital’s doors, stopping just where the yellow lines marked the drop-off area. Damian was leaning on Anita’s left, but she had her gun out and ready in her right. Lucile stood on Damian’s other side, her own pistol gripped in both hands, with Neville and Laurel either side of them.
‘No guns,’ I ordered, coming up beside Neville.
‘The hell not?’ Laurel asked, tilting her head to the doors, ‘This place is going to be crawling…oh, bastard.’ She clicked the safety on her rifle. Everyone else lowered their weapons slightly, but didn’t holster them.
‘Don’t blame you for being scared. I’m going to need a change of trousers after this is done,’ I told them, ‘but we’ve got to hold our shit long enough.’
Laurel huffed her amusement.
‘We go quiet, for as long as we can.’ Neville finished for me, ‘Bats and blades, everyone.’
It took them a moment, gathering up their courage and readying their too-close-for-comfort weaponry. I had my bayonet already, and Laurel’s improvised version would have to do - that hammer on her belt might have saved my life, but against more than one zed at a time, it’d be better to run.
‘Any of your training cover this?’ I asked Neville and Anita, raising a hopeful eyebrow.
‘Not specifically,’ she hummed thoughtfully, ‘but get your bats up front, I say. Anything they don’t smash outright will get knocked down - leave that for Laurel and Morgan to deal with.’
‘You and Lucile on point then.’ I told Neville, ‘I’ll cover the rear - Anita, keep our man Damian upright, at least until we find a chair or something to wheel him along in.’
‘We have an escape plan, if this goes south?’ Neville asked, simply going along with the command to stand at the front as we faced an entire hospital full of walking corpses.
‘Run back to the vehicles. Nobody gets left behind. Go home and try a pharmacy?’ I suggested.
‘VBC Studios are closer,’ Neville said, ‘and they might have the stuff we need for Damian. Could even check there first.’
Anita shook her head. ‘My gut says hooking up with the mercenaries is a one-way trip, once we’re behind their barricades they might not let you civilians out again, or me. They’ll mean well, it’ll be for our own protection, but if they don’t have the meds, Damian could die. If it’s bad in the hospital, they wouldn’t try to save him - puts more people at risk, and they’re trying to save as many people as they can.’
‘Well-meaning, but not helpful?’ I summed up.
‘Not saying for sure, but that’s my guess.’ She nodded.
Neville tutted. ‘Alright. Let’s be careful.’
I called out the marching order again - Neville and Lucile with their baseball bats at the front, Morgan and Laurel behind with their taped-on-knife spears, Anita and Damian behind them, with me at the rear. A tiny, evil part of my brain whispered that it’d be easiest for me to run away, but a braver and equally chilling part pointed out the one at the back usually gets picked off without anyone noticing. I’d have to be doubly on my guard.
The halls and hubs of the A&E Department were at least partly familiar to me. Often, when I’d finished at the Post Office, I’d walk to the hospital to meet up with Katy for a ride, her place or mine.
While the other nurses weren’t keen on letting people wander during the busy intake periods, they knew me enough to let me walk to the waiting area of whatever sub-department Katy was working in that day - Trauma Centre, Respiratory, Fracture, Paediatrics - the Emergency Department had to be like a little hospital all to itself just to handle the varied nature of its patients.
‘Trauma’s where we need to be,’ I called out from the back, as we entered Triage, ‘they have a small surgical room, think there’s a medicine store for it nearby.’
‘Ya don’t sound too sure, Kelly.’ Lucile accused.
‘It was my fiancée who worked here.’ I said, defensively. ‘But it’s a locked “staff” door in full view of the nurse’s station, only seen white coats and scrubs using it, so it’s not a broom closet.’
‘Alright, but what if -’ Lucile was abou
t to say.
‘Quiet - you hear that?’ Anita shushed us, holding up a hand for silence.
It was just a quiet noise at first, a bumping sound, something you hear when you’re at home alone, and the quiet’s getting to you. Then it came again, louder, closer - the sound of footsteps down a corridor - heading towards us.
The nurses’ station overlooking the waiting area always reminded me of a little fortress, blocking the passageways that sprawled out to its sides and rear from the never-ending tide of sickness and injury. Its chest-high walls suddenly looked even more defensible.
‘Desks, go, keep your heads down.’ I muttered, giving Anita a little nudge, who spurred the rest of the team forwards, quickly and quietly passing through the easily-cleaned plastic chairs of the triage waiting area, and into the nurses’ station. I stayed out and crouched behind, six computer desks, six chairs, they filled the space to capacity, but did as I said - crouching or kneeling out of sight.
Thump. Thump-Thump. The sound grew closer, accompanied now by the definite squeak of boots on the linoleum flooring. From the footsteps, there had to be at least two, maybe three, walking out of step with a slow, easy purpose - not a shuffle.
More people. I hadn’t counted on this. Zeds, yeah, but living people - we’d been burned by that already. With Damian now kneeling behind the desks, out of the fight, I didn’t like our chances if these people were heavily armed. I left his shotgun propped against the side of the desk, but hoped the rest of the group had switched to their guns so they could back me up when this went wrong.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I called out, remaining hidden just in case.
The footfalls stopped, I figured just at the end of the central corridor, towards the Respiratory Department.
‘I’m alone, and unarmed.’ I lied, ‘Just looking for some medicine.’
I waited for a response, but didn’t hear one, though straining my ears, I did hear something - a ragged, shortened breathing, like an asthmatic after a long run. They were as tense as I was.
