Z Ward

by Jay Mouton

  Even in the relative darkness of the enclosure she could see the silhouettes of their heads moving up and down enthusiastically. The shadows of movement multiplied the adamancy of their confidence.

  “If, for whatever reason, we’re unable to make our way through the ducts down to the first floor,” she said, adding, “well, simply put, we are going to have to use the hallways to get to the stairwells or elevators to make it down to First.”

  “I hadn’t considered that,” Robey said.

  “Elevators?” Buddy asked.

  Susann nodded. She, like her young friends, forgot they might not be able to see the movement of her head.

  “Uh-huh. We know the electrical system is still operating. We’ve seen the lights from various halls and rooms as we’ve been moving along,” she said. She added, “I had considered the possibility that we might have had to grope our way through complete or near darkness if the electric had failed us.”

  “So, we can just take the elevator down to the first?” Buddy asked.

  Robey countered the point almost before Buddy finished his question.

  “That sounds easy enough, but what if there are some zombies that don’t quite like the idea of the three of us using the elevator without their permission?” the boy said. He pointed out the fact that they’d been hearing more and more noise from those very creatures out in those halls that they were, at least for now, protected from.

  “I’ve got this,” Buddy said, and gave his window pane and bed bar spear a few pokes into the harmless dimness that enveloped them.

  “Robey’s right, Buddy,” Susann said, again, tasting another helping of reality that Robey seemed intent on force feeding her as an appetizer for whatever they might have to bite off just to survive.

  “It’s probably close to a fifty-fifty chance that most of the elevators have one or more zombies inside,” Robey said.

  “Yeah, but we can fight ‘em off, right? Robey?” Buddy said, some of the confidence he’d felt when he’d been making his spear thrusts, now ebbing as Robey reminded him of their plight.

  “Sure, Buddy. We might be able to stop one of ‘em. Maybe two. Three, maybe,” Robey said, as he tried to sort out fact from fantasy inside his own mind.

  From the first moments that he, Buddy, and Susann had managed to stop Doctor Huddleston and the other zombie they’d encountered, he had been having growing doubts as to their ability to fight off a stronger creature. A super strong zombie.

  Robey had done the math over and over in his head.

  There were three of them, right now. He hated the knowledge, with a vengeance, that soon enough there might only be two of them. Two boys trying to fight off a zombie horde? Robey Paquette had always loved the escape that movies had provided him from the hard realities of his life up to that point. Realities he’d encountered, and overcome, had given him a strength of will to go up against some hellacious odds. Still, he was a twelve-year-old boy. And he knew it.

  Robey understood that he could, and he would, stand up against what they were, undoubtedly, going to run into. As well, he understood that it was up to him to make sure that they were doing all that they could to tilt the odds he was aware of as heavily in their favor as he could. And doing so would require depending upon his brain much more than upon his brawn. All one-hundred and eighteen pounds of his pre-teen brawn.

  “Look, guys,” he said, speaking into the grey atmosphere between the three of them. They were, still, in their little circle.

  “All I’m getting at is that, from the sounds of it, there are a hell of a lot more zombies walking around this hospital than when any of us first arrived this morning.

  “You’re right,” Buddy sighed. There was a lingering defeat in his tone.

  Susann didn’t reply. She brought her knees up to her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs as if they were anchors that might keep her from floating away. Floating away to another place that was, just maybe, somewhere near the vicinity of death.

  She was silent. But Robey felt the shudder that moved over her body as she sat next to him.

  *****

  Robey, his tender soul acutely aware by a long, practiced, talent for empathy realized that a pep talk about fighting off the zombie apocalypse was sorely needed. Still, he now had to use his gift to reinvigorate both Buddy and the, now, almost forlorn Susann Beckett with hope. Not the unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, fake politician kind of hope. The kind he understood was false. But hope that could build upon even the smallest of successes. The kind that could be kindled into flame by just a spark of fire catching in just the right spot.

  The hope that the young boy had learned to allow to creep inside his own heart. And that, ever so stubbornly, did make its way back into his own heart. The kind his mother had, day by day, week by week, and month by month. Kindled by her hard-tumbled road to sobriety. The kind of hope that she, so unselfishly, now, constantly tried to share with her little Robey.

  The kind that wasn’t empty, nor void of possibility. They needed the kind that held the promise and portent of what was possible.

  That kind of hope, he reminded himself.

  Then, he spoke.

  “Right now, I’d like to make a promise to both of you,” he said. He forced the confidence he knew he had within his heart through his being. He wanted to use that confidence. He needed it now more than he’d ever needed it in his life.

  “I promise you both, that if you will give what I’m going to tell you a try, we will make it to Miss Tilde,” he said. The confidence he was anxious to draw out, giving him another little shot of that hope, he wanted to share with Buddy and Susann. Before they attempted to accomplish that which he was about to suggest.

  *****

  Initially, Buddy and Susann both blurt out, in unison, an emphatic, “no!”

  Robey didn’t contradict them. He didn’t offer an argument.

  The boy, wise beyond his years, kept his mouth shut for a few moments.

  Then when the protestations from his dearest friends on Earth slowed, diminished, and then stopped, he spoke up once more.

  “You both know this will work. And it’s the quickest, easiest, and safest way for us to make it into the cafeteria,” he said. Engaged as he was by his own growing confidence, he knew that he could, indeed, make sure his friends made it to safety.

  He was even more convinced that he would make it.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Still, aided by acting skills, honed by the years spent narrowly escaping catastrophe after catastrophe through his childhood, he was able to convince Buddy and Susann. They began to believe in his idea. They knew they could make it the rest of the way. Just as they’d, already, made their way across the hospital through the ducts.

  Epiphany—!

  Again, as when they narrowly avoided falling victims to zombies, shortly before their trek through the maze of duct work, their mutual luck continued to hold.

  Susann visually confirmed that they were, now, physically directly above the hospital cafeteria. Thanks to Buddy’s idea of sliding the edge of his glass spear through one of the slats of a duct cover. The glass offered a clear reflection of the area just on the other side of the wall outside. They were going to simply knock the cover off, but after they considered the noise factor, they nixed that idea.

  As soon as Buddy held the glass steady, Susann surveyed the area. Then she announced, with total confidence, exactly where they were. As she’d put it, “down to the square foot!”

  Everything about Robey’s plan was falling into place, just as it had in his imagination.

  Now, their plan was over half-way implemented.

  The only down side was that the second half of the implementation was, as the cliché went, the hard part.

  If the plan was to work, they would have to move quickly. They had to move as a team. Robey reminded them both that once they kicked off the second part of his plan, there would be, as he said, emphatically, “not one second to lose.” He conti
nued, willing himself to keep whispering, even though he was so pumped up that he thought he might, accidently, start shouting, “No do overs with this, guys. No time to stop and cook up another idea. Once we open this grate, we’ve got to bee line over to the elevators.”

  It was still dim inside the duct work where the three of them, now, were laying down. A small amount of light streamed in through the slats of the duct cover on the wall of the hallway they were just above.

  Robey was confident that he and Buddy could kick the duct cover off with one, well-coordinated and solid, kick. But it would, unavoidably, make a lot of noise when it hit the floor below.

  As far as they could see from between the slats, and from the observations Susann had just made, the corridor around the elevators was empty. They could see not a living soul. Or, for that matter, a dead one.

  “Are we ready for this?” Robey asked. He knew full well that the statement was, as their English teacher Mrs. Benning was always saying before every test, rhetorical.

  Robey and Buddy, weapons laid to the sides, lay on their backs and lifted their legs. They had their feet aimed at the dusty metal slats of the duct cover. They brought their legs back.

  “Wait!” Susann cried out, trying to keep her voice down, stopping the boys before they kicked out.

  She succeeded.

  “Sorry, guys,” she said, “I need to let Tilde know that we hope to be running through the cafeteria kitchen door pdq.”

  Robey, felt a twinge of annoyance, but immediately found it replaced by a thankfulness that Susann had the frame of mind to think about it. As it was, it was likely a good idea to make sure her friend knew they were just about to come knocking.

  Susann, brought Doctor Huddleston’s cell phone to her ear one more time. She fingered the redial.

  “Tilde, I mean it,” Susann’s voice shifted from reassured confidence, to a tone of seriousness that really meant, just in case we don’t make it.

  Susann continued. Determined, but still managing to stay close to a whisper, she insisted of her friend that, “if you don’t hear me, or one of the boys, telling you to open that door—don’t! Don’t open it if all you hear is noise, banging, or whatever you are hearing! That door stays closed unless you hear the words, ‘open the damn door!’”

  “Okay, Susann, I’ve got it. All of it. Be careful, young lady, and good luck,” Tilde said.

  “Thank you, my friend,” Susann returned. Her voice as soft as a leaf falling from a tree to the ground.

  Susann brushed the end call icon.

  What she’d not heard before ending her call to Tilde. What none of them heard, just before the metal duct cover flew away from the hospital wall, and clattered, too many times, on the hard tile below when it landed.

  What they did not hear was Tilde’s, frantically shouted, afterthought.

  “And be careful coming through Z Ward!”

  *****

  Even though they’d not had a chance for a dry run, they discussed Robey’s simple plan several times before they had come to the point of putting it in action

  As soon as the duct cover had begun its short flight into the air, and the even shorter engagement it had with gravity, the boys were already sliding their lithe, wiry bodies out of the wide duct opening. Together, they made the short jump down to the floor below them. They shot a grin at the other, then looked up toward the, now, gaping, dark rectangle on the wall.

  Almost as quickly as they’d regained balance and looked up, their spear and battle ax were being lowered out from within the darkness of the duct and down to them.

  Without hesitation, both boys reached out and took the offered weapons in hand.

  They stood at the ready.

  At the same time both boys readied for combat with zombies, Susann Beckett’s small framed body was, almost, reaching the floor in front of them.

  Buddy, quickly, ran over to where two large elevator doors were closed. He pressed the down arrow on the wall between the two. Then, nervously, he glanced up above the door closest to him.

  A small, red number beamed: ONE. Next to the loneliest number, a red arrow glowed, and it was pointing up. The elevator began its snail’s crawl up to the third floor.

  Robey had already cautioned them, when they’d discussed his plan, that it was almost a sure thing that there would be people on the elevator. He’d surmised that as the zombies grew in strength of numbers, and their attacks more obvious to anybody that was still a normal person, some people might try to find temporary shelter anywhere that seemed safe. Even in an elevator if possible.

  “Remember, Buddy, be ready for anything! Anything might come jumping out when that door opens!”

  “Got it, pal!” Buddy called out over his shoulder. His window shard spear pointed, threateningly, at the still closed door of the elevator in front of him.

  Buddy, nervously, glanced up. The red number one had changed to a two.

  So far, Robey’s escape and evasion plan seemed to be working flawlessly. They were doing a hell of a job escaping. But, soon enough, evasion would become the next step. And it would be the most important part of their plan.

  No sooner had Susann’s sneakers made contact with the floor, when a flourish of sounds were heard somewhere down the hallway from where they were standing. They waited for the elevator door to open.

  Robey had expected this. And, he knew that what he was about to do might be stupid. It was why he hadn’t mentioned this part of his plan to Buddy and Susann. He was pretty sure they would not have gone along with him if he had.

  Just as Robey Paquette had thought it would, the noise from the duct cover falling to the hard, tiled floor caught the attention of several zombies that had been, apparently, hunting for prey down the hall from the elevators. He didn’t know it, but just beyond the hall from where he and his friends were, agonizingly, waiting for the elevator door to open, was a double set of swinging doors. He couldn’t see the doors as they were around a sharply, curved corner of the hall. But, he could sure hear something coming from that direction.

  The red, glowing number above the elevator door changed from two to three.

  “Robey! Door’s opening!” Buddy yelled out! His voice, oddly, the same key as the sound of a ringing bell as the elevator door began to slide open.

  “Robey!” Buddy yelled again, not seeing his best friend out of the corner of his eye. He held his spear at the ready, as the bed bar weapon shook in his sweating hands.

  “I’m here, Buddy! Be ready!” Robey called out, suddenly standing between Susann and the sliding doors.

  The two best friends stood, side by side, ready to face whatever horror was about to jump out to attack them.

  From behind him, Robey, his heart pounding with fear. But also with a sheer determination that, whatever was about to happen, he would die before he let one of those damn monsters ever touch one of his friends.

  “Hell, yeah!” Buddy yelled out, unable to hold back the mixture of relief and pure joy he was suddenly filled with as he stood in front of the, now, wide open door to the elevator.

  It was, miraculously, empty.

  “Come on!” Buddy yelled, but did not waste a single second looking behind him before jumping into the beckoning opening.

  Susann, too, rushed in, side by side, with the excited boy. Dealing with her own fear of what was about to happen as they waited for the door to open, only moments before, she, too, had not glanced off to the side before quickly entering the elevator.

  Just as Robey had planned, should his worst expectations of what was running lose all through the hospital, he prepared to stop the creatures that were, now, visible.

  Robey, brought his battle ax up along his body, and stood his ground. Then, the first of the zombies he’d heard coming rounded the corner from down the hallway.

  The boy, terrified, but pumping with adrenaline, yelled over his shoulder, “Buddy! Quickly, hit floor number one! I’m right behind you!”

  Susann was already ahead o
f Robey’s command. She’d turned, and quickly stabbed the button that would take them, hopefully non-stop, down to the first floor of Baptist. Then it was on to the cafeteria, and the possibility of refuge.

  Susann expected Robey Paquette to be following close behind her as she’d entered through the elevator’s welcoming door. That was, exactly, how his plan was supposed to go. And so far, everything was, in fact, going according to the plan. It was going even better than they’d planned. It was, almost, a perfectly implemented plan.

  Almost—!

  The elevator door bell chimed above Buddy and Susann.

  The door, so torturously slow only moments before while they waited for it to open for them, now, for some reason seemed to move with lightning speed. The doors began to slide shut.

  But, there was no Robey Paquette inside the elevator with them.

  “No!” screamed Susann!

  “Wait!” Buddy yelled out! As if his command would cause the doors to cease their rapid closure.

  The doors closed, like the finality of the door to a tomb.

  *****

  Robey Paquette stood, alone, in the hallway.

  Almost alone, that was.

  As the first of the zombies came towards him, it moved in ravenous motion. The creature’s hunger was driving it forward toward the boy. Clumsily, it nearly fell forward on top of the boy. Robey heard the elevator bell ping behind him. He felt a small rush of relief, even as he gripped his ax tighter and readied for battle.

  A gaping maw, brimming with gnashing, clicking teeth, was all Robey was able to focus on. The first of the zombies came down upon its prey. The monster was at least six feet tall. The way its girth filled the entire space in front of the small boy, Robey thought it had once been a heavy-set man that had enjoyed more than his share of good meals in his former life. Robey, as scared as he felt as the creature came upon him, wasn’t about to become the man’s first meal as a zombie.

  As if suddenly possessed by the spirit of a Samurai, Robey swung his battle ax across the fiend and across the front of its torso. The boy’s first slice took off the creature’s right arm at the elbow. It didn’t stop the monster, but it caused it to list, slightly, to its right. It threw it off balance for the fraction of a second it took Robey to, deftly, turn the handle of the ax in his hand. At the same time, he brought the razor-sharp shard back up, forward, and sliced through the zombie’s neck.