More people followed behind them. Brandon, Kristen, Sarah, and Sam all followed.
“I’ve got a hostage. If any of you try anything, Cody back here won’t even hesitate killing him.”
“You alright, Gabriel?” Marcus asked.
David turned around and punched Gabriel’s left cheek, and watched the man spit blood almost as soon as his fist had connected.
“David!” Marcus shouted. Next to him, Holly was in tears.
“You guys know each other?” Brandon asked.
Marcus looked at Brandon. “Yeah.” Then he looked back toward David. “Yeah, we do.”
“Where is everyone else?” David asked. “I know we’re missing a few people. Surely, your friend Will is here, too.” David looked back around the hospital. “Everyone else, come out!”
Almost simultaneously, Rachel came out of her room to his right and Trevor came out of an office to his left.
“Good,” David said. “Gang’s almost all here.”
“What’s going on here? Where’s Lawrence?” Rachel asked.
“Lawrence that nigger we kilt?” Trent asked from behind David.
“Yeah.” David said it without turning around to acknowledge Trent.
“Oh, my God,” Rachel said. She covered her mouth and began to sob. David looked at the other survivors and could see the clear states of shock and disappointment in their faces.
“Where is he?” David asked.
“Where is who?” Holly asked.
He watched her tremble as he approached her, stopping just before he made contact with her. “You know exactly who. Where is Will?”
David looked up from Holly when he heard a voice coming from one of the rooms. He walked closer to the room he thought it was coming from and then the words became clearer.
“Will? Son, where are you?” There was a tremble in her voice.
David kicked down the door and saw the older woman lying on the bed.
“Son?” David asked, smiling.
The woman screamed.
***
Will
The scream of a woman echoed down the hall. Will had remained inside the room while he waited to try and get a grasp of what was happening outside, but knew he needed to go out and help.
“Stay put,” Will told Jessica, who was still inside the closed closet. “Do not leave.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
Will pushed the handle to the door down and stepped into the hallway.
He could see a group gathered at the end of the hallway, near the entrance from the parking garage. Gabriel was surrounded by two men with guns. The other survivors of the hospital, including Holly and Marcus, stood near the welcome counter.
“Will!” The scream of his name came from his mother, and he ran to the room. Holly yelled something at him, but he ignored her.
When he looked inside the room, his mouth fell open.
“Surprised to see me, kid?” David Ellis asked.
The man had one arm wrapped around Will’s mother, and he had a pistol to her head. Will looked over onto the bed and saw a shotgun lying there. Will eyed it.
“I dare you to try it,” David said. “She’ll be gone before you even get three steps over here.”
Will looked back up to David. “She didn’t do anything, David. It’s me you want. Let her go.”
David cocked his head. “And what makes you think that it’s you that I want?”
“Just let her go, and we can go talk. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
David pushed Will’s mother toward him, and he wrapped his arms around his sobbing and now only parent.
Will watched David push the pistol into its holster and then pick the shotgun up off of the bed, and then point it toward Will and his mother.
“I’ll be the one telling y’all exactly how it’s going to be. Now, move your asses out there with the others.”
With his arm wrapped around his mother, Will made his way over to the others. Behind him, David kept pushing the barrel of the shotgun into his back.
“You can stop that. I get it,” Will told David.
The pain shot right through Will’s leg as the shotgun hit the back of his knee. He tumbled to the ground, taking his mother with him.
“Mom!”
Melissa lay on the ground, clutching her knee and writhing in pain. Will looked up to David.
“You son of a—“
The click of the shotgun being pumped resounded throughout the room, and Will stared down the barrel.
David stared right into Will’s eyes and said, “Get… the fuck… up… now.”
***
David
From what David could remember, the group standing in front of him represented all the survivors from the hospital, along with Will, Marcus, Holly, and Gabriel, who Cody was still holding at gunpoint.
David looked at Rachel. “Where do you keep all the weapons?”
Rachel looked confused. “What?”
“I know that you have a supply of weapons here and I know that you know where they are. Lawrence wouldn’t let any outsiders in here with them, and no one ever carried them around the hospital. Where did he hide them?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, shuddering.
David let out a long sigh, withdrew the pistol from his waist, pointed it at Kristen’s head, and pulled the trigger.
Everyone screamed as the young nurse fell limp and her body hit the floor, blood pooling from the wound just above her right eye.
“David!” Marcus yelled. He looked at David as if he could convince him to stop, but David knew he was no longer the same man that Marcus had once known.
Rachel was sobbing now as David looked back to her. “You still don’t know where they are?”
“There’s a service elevator in a restricted area,” Rachel said, her words trembling. “One floor down, the elevator will take you out to a room that’s secure. There’s no creatures down there. There’s a supply closet and that’s where he keeps the guns. There isn’t much, but what we have is in that room.”
“And what about yours?” David asked, looking at Marcus and Will.
“They’re there, too,” Brandon said. “We moved them in there just after these guys got here.”
David looked over to Rachel. “Take me down there.”
Rachel blushed. “I-I-I… I lost my access key. I was scared to tell Lawrence. Didn’t think he would trust me anymore if he didn’t think I was responsible enough to hold onto some keys.”
As he reached into his pocket, David scoffed. He pulled out the keys he’d taken from Lawrence’s corpse and waved them in front of his face. “Well, lucky for your friends here, I’ve got a set of keys. That may be the only thing that keeps me from shooting someone else.”
***
Will
Will had helped his mother up off the floor and was now supporting her as she grimaced from the pain in her knee, though she assured him she’d be fine. One of the men behind David was wearing a backpack, and Will watched as he slipped the straps off of his shoulders and opened the main compartment. “Shit,” Will mumbled.
The man was pulling out long, thick zip ties.
“What did you do with Dylan?” Holly asked.
“That pretty little boy? He gonna be just fine, don’t y’all worry,” the man with the backpack commented.
“You son of a bitch,” Gabriel said. “If you—”
“Everyone, get down on your knees and put your hands behind your back!” David commanded the group, cutting Gabriel off. He looked over to Will’s mother. “Let her stand. She’ll be fine.”
Will was reluctant, only glaring at David, who was looking back to him with a similar face. All Will wanted was to kill the David Ellis. He had regretted leaving David alive at the warehouse, but knew that Marcus and Holly would never have killed the man, considering all the history they had. Now, Will wondered if they were sharing the same regret.
“Just do it, Will,” Marcus said.
“It’s okay, son. My knee is feeling better. I can stand on my own,” Melissa told him.
“Yeah… just do it, William.” David was smiling now, and all it did was fuel the hate inside of Will.
In the end, Will did the thing that would at least temporarily keep him alive. He let go of his mother, turned around, and went to his knees like the others.
The man with David started at the far end of the line from Will, securing each prisoner’s hands. Will could just barely hear the clicks the plastic zip ties made over the crying of the four women in the group.
“On your feet,” David demanded. Will was standing before the others in his group were.
He watched David look back to the man who had been holding Gabriel hostage before they’d had him join the others.
“Take this guy and go down to the storage closet,” David said to one of the other men in his group, nodding toward Trevor. He then looked over to Brandon. “Do you have the keys to the ambulance?”
Brandon nodded. “They’re still in my pocket.”
David looked over to the other man in his group and nodded. The man walked over to Brandon and removed the keys from his pocket while David kept the shotgun aimed directly at Brandon’s head. He then looked back over to the man was holding Gabriel.
“Alright, Cody, go down there with her and start taking the guns to the ambulance.”
David then looked Will right in the eyes. “I have something special to show these folks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Will
David and one of the men he came with, whose name Will now knew to be Trent, led the group down the hallway of the hospital. They passed room after room that the survivors had been staying in until they reached the end of the hall. Will looked one direction and saw a set of four elevators. Each one of them had signs posted on the doors that warned against using them. When he looked the other way, he saw a set of double doors with small windows on them that Will was unable to see through because of the darkness on the other side.
“Through the doors,” David directed them from the back of the group.
Will was near the middle of the pack with Holly to his right and Marcus directly in front of him. The group followed his instructions, and Rachel was the first to push through the double doors, as everyone else followed.
“I think you know exactly where we’re going, don’t you?” David shouted to Rachel at the front of the group. “Go on, take us there.”
“Where is he taking us?” Will asked Rachel.
“Tell him and I’ll start shooting,” David said. “I want it to be a surprise.”
Will took a deep breath, trying to contain his frustration. He wiggled his hands in the restraints with little hope of getting out. David had made sure that his zip tie was extra tight, so much so that it was now cutting off the circulation and he was losing feeling in his wrists.
The group entered a dark corridor and Will could feel his heart thump in his chest. He wondered where David could be taking the group to where it needed to be a surprise. Just behind him, he could hear his mother sobbing. Will slowed down enough for her to catch up to where he was walking.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“I’m scared, Will,” Melissa said, her eyes red from crying.
“I know. So am I. But you’re going to be fine.” In truth, Will really wasn’t sure if they were going to make it through this. He knew what a monster that David Ellis was, and he knew that the man would get off from toying with them. How much longer until he would finally get bored and decide to do away with them?
“I’m not scared for me. I’m scared for you, son.”
“Don’t be. It’s going to be fine, Mom.”
“She should be scared for you,” David said from behind them. He jammed the barrel of the shotgun into the small of Will’s back, causing him to grimace. Will heard him chuckle before he did it again. Fed up with it, Will finally turned around and stood inches from David’s face.
“Do it, then! Just go ahead and shoot!”
“Will!” Holly yelled. Like his mother, she was crying and had a shudder in her voice.
“Do it!” Will shouted again.
Before Will could react, David threw a punch catching Will under his left eye. He hit a wall before falling to the ground, unable to brace himself with his hands bound behind his back. He felt the blood pool in his mouth and used his tongue to check for any teeth missing. Still, he was only missing the tooth he’d lost as a teenager playing hockey.
“That’d be too fucking easy,” David said. “Now, get on your God damned feet.”
Spitting blood onto the white tile floor, Will slowly made his way back to his knees. Before he could get to his feet, David kicked him in his ribs, sending him back down to the ground.
Will coughed, trying to catch his breath as more blood came from his mouth. He made it to his knees again, and this time, David let him stand all the way.
“Now, fucking move,” David said, pressing the shotgun back into Will’s spine.
They reached the end of another hallway and only had the option to go left. This area of the hospital looked much like the one the group was living in, rooms on either side, most of them closed.
When Will moved around the corner, he saw a light shining at the end of the hallway. The entire group was being quiet, aside from the sobs of his mother and Holly. As they reached the end of the hall, Will heard a sound that was all too familiar. His eyes widened. His heartbeat sped up.
When they went around another corner at the end of the hall, Will saw the source of the light.
Inside a small room with a large window at the front, there was an Empty, strapped to a bed, fighting to get out of its restraints.
“What is this doing here?” Will asked.
David pointed down to the other end of the group. “Ask her.”
Will looked and saw the rest of the group already looking at Rachel.
She licked her lips. “We… we’ve been studying her. Running tests and such. Trying to see what we can find out about them.”
“What have you found out?” Holly asked.
“Only that the disease isn’t viral. We ran many tests and couldn’t find any signs that she’s ill. Other than that, nothing much.”
“What do you think is making them like that?” Will asked.
“We don’t know,” Brandon added. “We were supposed to run some more tests with Lawrence tonight.” He looked over to David. “Guess that won’t be happening now.”
“Guess not,” David said, laughing right after the words came out.
Will watched as David walked past him. He walked to the end of the line and stopped in front of Rachel. At first, she gasped when he unsheathed his knife. Then, David cut through her zip tie, and Rachel rubbed her burning wrists.
“Remove the restraints,” David told her.
“What?” Rachel asked, as if she hadn’t heard the question.
“The creature in there, let it go.”
“Um, okay. Let me just go and get a sedat—“
“No,” David said.
Her jaw dropped and tears welled up her eyes again. “Please.”
“Don’t do this, David,” Marcus said.
David moved within inches of Marcus’ face. Will thought about making a move, almost forgetting that there was another man in the room with a gun pointed at them.
“Or what, Marcus? You gonna pretend like everything is okay and then just leave me for dead again?”
“Mother fucker, you shot me!”
“Yeah, and you fucking deserved it. I saved your God damned life and you fucking betrayed me. I should have just left you in that room to rot.”
Will almost spoke up after hearing David trying to take the credit for saving Marcus, but decided against it.
“Now,” David said, turning his attention back to Rachel. “Go in there and undo her restraints.”
Will looked on as Rachel began to tremble. The tears were pouring o
ut of her eyes now, and she was trying to say something that couldn’t be made out through how upset she was.
The nurse standing next to Rachel was crying as well, and Will watched as David put the shotgun into her chest.
“You can either do as I say, and go in there and let that thing go, or you can watch as I put a slug in this bitch’s chest. Then, we can all wait around and see what happens after she’s dead for a while.”
David pumped the shotgun, and Sarah screamed. Inside the small room, the creature was snarling and writhing in the bed, trying desperately to get out of the restraints.
“Okay, okay,” Rachel finally said. She made her way to the door and started to type the code to enter it, but her hand was moving around too much from her nerves to allow her to hit the buttons. As David counted down from five, giving her a time limit before he’d presumably fire, Rachel finally punched in the code and the door clicked and the light turned from red to green.
She hesitated before she walked through the door, the snarl of the creature louder now that she had pushed the door to where it was cracked. Will could see from her profile that her eyes were closed and her mouth was moving, and he assumed that she was praying.
Finally, Rachel pushed the door all the way open and walked through. The growl of the creature became more rampant, and it chomped its jaws as Rachel approached the bed. When she’d made it about halfway to the bed, Rachel turned around and looked at David.
“Please, don’t make me do this.”
“Alright,” David said. He pressed the shotgun against Sarah’s chest again, who screamed and continued to cry.
“Don’t!” Rachel yelled.
Marcus looked over to David. “Stop it!”
Trent was laughing as David looked back at Rachel and started counting. “Three, two…”
“Okay, okay! Stop!” Rachel said.
She turned around again and walked up to the Empty’s left leg. It spit and snarled at her as she unbound the leather strap that was around its ankle. When it was all the way undone, the beast kicked its leg, which startled Rachel and made her jump back, almost sending her down onto the ground. Will looked over when he heard Trent begin to laugh again.
Empty Bodies (Book 2): Adaptation Page 14
