Z Ward

by Jay Mouton

  The beast died for the second time that day. Its head flew from its body, neatly severed at the base of the neck. The heavy body, now missing half of an arm and all of a head, slumped forward falling to its knees. With its one remaining arm flailing about, it toppled over into a lifeless heap in front of Robey’s feet.

  Serendipitously, the zombie that had been right behind the one that Robey Paquette had just slain, tripped over the pile of twice dead flesh in front of its path. Robey, instantaneously, seeing he had the field advantage, rapidly brought his battle ax high into the air, and brought the working end smartly down upon the creature before him. The sliver of window glass, that had little over an hour before been a small part of an intact window, seemed born to slice and dice zombie flesh.

  The shard sliced down, inside, and through the matted scalp that appeared to have once held a healthy growth of curly, blonde hair. Along with a big hunk of the scalp that had been attached to the creature’s skull, it removed the zombie’s left ear. Robey used the split seconds the unfortunate and clumsy zombie had, inadvertently, given him to step off to the side. The boy turned, in another clumsy pirouette, and brought his swinging ax blade down across creature’s fleshy neck. One more severed head rolled over the tiled floor, leaving a gruesome trail of slick blood behind it.

  As if it contained the very essence of Excalibur or Thor’s hammer, Robey’s trusty battle ax held together ready to fight on. The boy, worn by his exertions but fueled at his very core by the overwhelming instinct to survive, felt another surge of adrenaline pump through his body. He brought his ax high, yet again. He waited for the last of the zombies that had followed the sounds he and his friends had created when they exited from the bowels of the air shafts of Baptist Health.

  For some reason, Robey felt a twinge of ache when he caught his first look at the oncoming zombie’s face. There was something, ever so slightly, familiar about it. Still, Robey planted his feet firmly, and stood ready to face battle once more.

  The young boy steeled himself for another swing of his weapon.

  Then, startled by a flash of recognition, Robey, even as he was swinging his ax handle through the still air of the hallway and toward its intended target, lost his grip on the bed bar he’d been so gallantly wielding.

  As his battle ax dropped to the floor, between him and the small mound of zombie flesh already disposed of, the sound of glass shattering filled his horrified ears as if amplified in sound.

  No! The boy thought, silently cursing himself for allowing himself even a cursory distraction. He heard the handle of his battle ax, now just a tubular length of metal from the bed that he’d been sitting on that very morning, roll across the cold tile. It came to rest, just a piece of an old, hospital bed frame, against the wall.

  Scattered all over the tiles on the hallway floor, fragments of the shattered ax head reflected, like tiny diamonds, from the light from the florescent bulbs in the light fixtures above him.

  At the same moment Robey heard the metal bed bar hit the hall wall, he pivoted to his right. He caught a powerful whiff of rancid breath from the dead creature’s mouth, but side-stepped out the its reach.

  As the creature sailed through the air between them, propelled by what little speed it had been able to gain ambling toward the child prey it had targeted for consumption, it missed the boy by mere fractions of an inch. And as the creature’s face crossed in front of Robey’s, the boy’s mind confirmed the flash of recognition he’d had upon, initially, seeing the monster’s hideous face.

  It was Mrs. Benning from school!

  He felt himself spinning, falling backwards, and he stumbled out of the zombie’s path. He could hear himself laughing, loudly and crazily, at the silly thought that crossed his mind as he continued his descent.

  He corrected his thought, as if he was taking one of Mrs. Benning’s English grammar tests.

  He thought, in the split seconds it took to fall away from her clutching hands, Correction! That was, Mrs. Benning from English! The hysterical laughter he could hear, emanating from his throat, was from adding to his thought that he wasn’t, indeed, just being rhetorical—!

  His laughter ended, abruptly, when he slammed down on his back, and his fall came to its, inevitable, end.

  As the air leaped out from his lungs, it left him, momentarily, gasping for breath. His eyes caught sight of a sign at the very end of the hallway.

  He read the sign, upside down, while he fought to suck oxygen into his oxygen starved lungs.

  He felt the crumpled bodies of the two dead zombies below him. They had broken his fall enough to keep him from being seriously hurt for a second time that day.

  He was scared out of his wits. He was fighting to breath. And he could hear Mrs. Benning moving only a few feet from him as he lay atop the bloody bed of slain dragons he’d fallen upon.

  Still, hope made one more visit to the boy’s heart.

  Adjusting for the backwards and upside factors, Robey was able to read the sign.

  EXIT.

  *****

  Still gasping for air, he brought his hands back behind him. He pushed against the broken and blood-soaked mass under his body. He wretched when his fingers had made purchase with the putrid gore. But, grunting, he managed to push himself to a standing position.

  Just as he got to his feet, Mrs. Benning, again misjudging the exact spot on which her intended meal was, landed, teeth first, on the pile of dead zombie parts from which young Robey had just extricated himself from.

  This time the boy didn’t hesitate.

  Leaving the dead Mrs. Benning to her own devices, he bolted towards the one shot he would have at leaving the third floor of Baptist alive.

  Whispering another of a growing list of silent prayers, he pushed on the cold, metal bar of the door in front of him. He asked God to let the stairwell be a zombie free zone.

  The door clicked its release, shot open, and slammed against the wall behind it. Robey dashed though the opening and beelined towards the stairwell. He bounded down the steps two and three leaps of steps at a time.

  Again, the boy threw his full body weight up against the bar on another door. This one read: First Floor Entrance.

  Again, the door burst open. Again, the metal slammed against the wall behind it. This time, it sounded like a thunderous clap from a twenty-one-gun salute. It also sounded like freedom as it exploded behind the boy as he ran through the opening.

  As amazing as it seemed to Robey, the elevator door down the hallway was opening just as he was running up to it.

  Even more amazingly, Buddy and Susann came, tentatively, creeping out into the hallway. Buddy, spear pointing out in front of him, seemed to be expecting a greeting party of zombies. Instead, Robey, still fighting to catch his breath, came sliding to a stop smack dab in front of the last two people on Earth that expected to ever see him alive, again.

  “Robey!” Buddy and Susann both yelled out in total joy upon seeing him.

  Robey was grinning from ear to ear. He was excited to simply have made it through his exploits up on the third floor in one piece. Still, he had the frame of mind to shush them both.

  They were, as far as he knew, still in the heart of enemy territory.

  A cursory glance up the hallway proved that they were, for the moment, without the company of the dead. At least not anything dead that they were able to view from the elevator hallway.

  After some short and intense hugs, the three of them slipped down the hallway toward a set of double doors. The words above the double doors, the same words that nurse Susann Becket had read hundreds of times in her time at Baptist, read: MAIN LOBBY.

  This time, before they opened the doors, they were able to see what lay on the other side.

  The double doors each had a small, clear, thick glass pane imbedded in the strong metal.

  While Buddy kept his guard up behind them, Robey and Susann each peeked through one of the window panes.

  They both sighed with relief.

>   They could see a couple of zombies stumbling about the lobby. But, for whatever reasons, it was, for the most part, empty.

  The only explanation that Susann could think of was that the hospital, probably one of the first places that began to even fathom what was happening, had locked the place down to the public outside the doors.

  It may have seemed inhumane to do so. But to not shut out the growing hordes of those who had, in vain, rushed to the various hospitals in the city and county, would have simply exposed all of those, already, inside the hospital. Exposed those who were sick, and already in need of protection.

  They were all learning, quickly, the monsters, though few in number, could kill. They were not going to take any unnecessary chances. Not when they had fought their way so close to where they hoped was, at least, a temporary peace.

  “Hey,” Buddy said, only then noticing Robey didn’t have his battle ax in hand, “where’s your ax?”

  Robey, sighed, and simply told him that it had “broken.”

  Susann assured them that if they could make it past the small number of zombies loitering about the Main Lobby, albeit looking for something to feed on, they were almost home free. The door that would get them into the kitchen of the cafeteria was little more than a hundred feet from where they were now standing, behind the lobby doors.

  The ebb and flow of hope was, at least for the moment, at high tide for them. Robey noticed that even Susann seemed to not seem preoccupied with the idea that she, too, might soon change into a zombie. As he looked at the beautiful, young woman. At his angel of mercy. It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he should ask God to answer one more prayer. But then, as if he knew that he’d used up his share, ten-fold, on the third floor of the hospital, only minutes before, he banished the thought from his mind. Instead, he crossed his fingers that he would have nothing to beg forgiveness for in the minutes that lay just ahead of them.

  “Look over there, Robey,” Susann pointed through the glass, toward what looked like a long desk that opened toward the Main Lobby. In huge, black letters above it: RECEPTION.

  “I see the desk,” Robey said, feeling another surge of protection towards the woman. As they stood close to each other, their cheeks nearly made contact.

  “See the flag poles on each end of the desk?” She said. She pointed through the glass at two flags, each hanging from a separate pole. One flag, for Duval County. The other, was the Florida State Flag.

  “Uh-huh,” Robey answered, but feeling a blush burn up his neck, and to the surface of his left cheek as it, accidently, brushed against Susann’s.

  “Those poles come right up out of the bases, and they are made of very, sturdy wood,” she said.

  Robey just listened, and hoped that she would not reach up in touch his cheek. He thought she could, very well, feel the heat. He was still a young boy, and he was embarrassed by his boyish attraction to the young woman.

  “Before we open those doors, just across the lobby, let’s you and I each grab one of those things for protection,” she said. Then, she turned away from the window. At once she caught the blush on the boy’s cheek. She smiled at him, but did not let on that she understood, indeed, why he was blushing.

  “Right, let’s do that,” Robey answered her. Then, hoping she’d not caught sight of his embarrassment, turned to Buddy. He added, “you got that, Buddy?”

  Buddy, keeping up his guard over the hallway behind them, turned to Robey and nodded.

  Like their previous plans, they kept it simple.

  Quietly, they would open the door a little, and slip into the lobby. Buddy would lead, as he still had his spear. They would go directly over to the reception desk, where Robey and Susann would each take the flag poles out of the bases below them. Susann already knew how to unhook the flags fastened to the poles, and it would only take her a moment.

  Then, the three of them would be, at least lightly, armed again. Then, as quickly as possible, they would make their way across the open area of the main lobby. Hopefully, if their luck was still holding, they’d have an open shot across the small, open cafeteria. Then it was another quick trip down a wide hallway just off the lobby.

  And there, just behind the service counters, they’d find the doors that lead into the kitchen. And to Tilde. And to the only thing they agreed with the zombies on. Something to eat.

  Once more, luck joined their side as they put their quickly laid plan into action.

  And, once more, their plan went off without a tick.

  In no time at all, without attracting the attention of two zombies that were loitering near the front of the Main Lobby, they grabbed the flag poles. Then they made the mad, but silent, dash across the lobby’s expanse and entered the short hall area that lead to the cafeteria.

  As they entered the cafeteria, they walked along the edge of the few tables scattered about the room. Some of those tables were littered with trays. And most of them held remnants of unfinished meals.

  The trio walked between the two main service counters and stopped in front of the door closest to the outside wall of the cafeteria.

  Susann Beckett, her flag pole joist clenched in one hand, brought the free one up to the door and knocked, softly, on the glass partition screen to the kitchen.

  Nothing.

  She knocked, again.

  Still nothing.

  “Tilde?” Susann said. She didn’t want to speak too loud, knowing she might attract unwanted company. But she remembered that she’d told her friend that she should not open the door unless she heard Susann’s voice tell her to.

  “Tilde? We’re here. We made it,” she said, her volume increased slightly as she added, “you can open the door. It’s Susann, Tilde!”

  Still, nothing happened.

  For a moment, Susann seemed to panic. She dropped her wooden flag pole to the ground. They all tensed at the sound, but nothing came running from out of the hallway they’d just came from.

  It was Buddy who said what was, already, running through their minds.

  “Do you think, well, it could be,” his voice trailed off. He didn’t have to finish his sentence for them to each know what, just maybe, could be.

  Susann peeked through the glass, but could see nothing but a huge icebox situated right across from the door. It nearly blocked the entire view within the room on the other side of the door.

  “Tilde!” Susann tried once more. This time, she yelled.

  Nobody opened the kitchen door. No one answered from the other side of the glass that Susann kept peering though.

  But somebody, or something, heard the young nurse call out Tilde’s name.

  There was a commotion from just down the hall from them. The sound traveled like fire, burning their ears, from across the empty cafeteria.

  Apparently, they had been right about another thing. Zombies had good hearing.

  Just as the first of what appeared to be a swarm of the infected came bounding into the cafeteria, Robey threw all caution to the wind.

  None of them knew what they’d find waiting for them inside the kitchen. But, they knew just what hell was in store for them if they did not vacate the cafeteria premises pronto.

  “Open the damn door!” Buddy yelled out, and pointed his bed bar stuffed with glass toward the growing horde of zombies that were now, flooding into the cafeteria.

  Robey leaned into the door, and pushed.

  It didn’t budge, and he felt an electric surge of terror shoot through his body as he panicked for just a moment.

  He shook off the fear before it could take control of him.

  He pushed against the door, again. This time, he really laid into it. He felt it, ever so slowly, begin to slide open.

  “Susann! Help me with this!” he yelled to the woman, as he continued to push with all he had in him.

  Susann leaned her weight into the door with Robey.

  Something on the other side of the door was blocking it. But they kept pushing, and the door opened little furt
her. Then as they continued their struggle with it, still pushing together against it, the door opened a little more.

  “Hurry!” yelled Buddy, and with his yell, he drew back his spear and threw it as hard as he could right at the head of the zombie that was leading the pack right to them.

  “Buddy!” Robey yelled out, pushing Susann through the narrow opening they’d been able to force open in the door.

  Buddy, didn’t wait to see if his spear hit anything, he was already turning toward the kitchen when he heard Robey yell out to him. He didn’t need a second invitation as he dove through the same narrow opening that Susann had just disappeared through.

  Robey pushed at Buddy’s ass end, and darted in right behind his best friend.

  Susann, knowing that they would not have a moment to spare, threw her body up against the kitchen door just as she saw Robey’s small frame slip inside.

  The door closed easier than it had opened, but it wasn’t secure yet.

  Then, at the bottom of the door, down near the kitchen floor, Buddy caught sight of a long, narrow piece of metal that ran along the bottom of the door itself.

  It was a sliding bolt lock.

  And just to the right of the bolt was the bloody remains of what appeared to be, at one time, a young man dressed in a blue and grey security guard jacket.

  Buddy convulsed, once. Then ignoring the gory remains piled against the kitchen door, the boy leaned over and shot the metal bolt into the hold on the door frame.

  At that precise moment, the battering of zombie flesh began pounding upon the, now, secure kitchen door.

  *****

  It took a minute for the nightmare scene inside the kitchen to make any real sense to the trio that had just fought its way through the zombie infested interior of Baptist Health.