Aftermath

by D. J. Molles

  The loop went on, dizzyingly.

  Lee found a door and tried the handle. It was locked. He moved on.

  More doors. Lee didn’t stop for each one, but he tested the handles as he went by to see if any of them were unlocked. It seemed the people of Smithfield were as paranoid about Milo as Camp Ryder was. They were all buttoned up tight, waiting for him to leave.

  Gotta find a room. Gotta find a room.

  Finally, a handle gave and Lee slipped in, not even checking to see who was in the room. His instinct to hide was so strong that he didn’t even think about it until he closed the door behind him and realized he was in total darkness—this room didn’t even have the red emergency lights.

  Plunged into blindness, Lee felt the fear turn into a brief bout of panic, and he fumbled quickly for his flashlight and flicked it on. The room leaped out of the darkness in stark relief. Buckets. Mops. Industrial cleaners and solvents. Spray bottles.

  Janitor’s closet.

  Lee put his back to the wall and let himself close his eyes and think.

  Step two was getting out of the hospital. If he knew the hospital better, he might know a good way out, but in his current situation, he only knew two: the stairwell to the parking garage and the exits on the ground floor. Obviously, the stairwell to the parking garage was a no-go. All of Milo’s men were jam-packed in there and trying to get to the parking garage. Lee had faith in his abilities, but he also knew he wasn’t Superman.

  Exiting by the ground floor might be safer but presented its own set of problems. Thinking back to every hospital building he’d ever been in, Lee knew that most doors from the ground floor to the outside would be electronic sliding glass doors so the sick and injured could get inside without too much trouble. Some of them would have key-card or code-security locks, but Lee had to assume that even on the unsecured doors, they would have dismantled the motion sensors to keep the doors from opening up to anything that wandered past. And usually they were constructed of bullet-resistant and shatterproof glass, which meant he couldn’t shoot or bash his way through.

  They might have them barricaded as well, but he wouldn’t know that until he got down there. If it were impossible for him to pry open the doors, he would just have to find the hospital’s diesel generator and start pulling parts until it stopped working. He figured the best bet for finding the generator was either on the ground floor or the basement level, if the hospital had one. In either case, it looked like he needed to go down.

  Lee shut off the flashlight and replaced it in his pocket. He eased the door open an inch and peeked out through the crack. The curving hallway was clear. He stepped out and closed the door behind him, like he had every reason to be inside the janitor’s closet, and began making his way down the hallway. He searched the walls for placards indicating the direction of an emergency stairwell that might take him down to the bottom floor.

  The hallway he walked in was on the outer wall of the hospital, which was where the emergency stairwells were usually situated, so it didn’t take him long to see the little black placard on the wall with a rudimentary picture of stairs, a flame, and an arrow pointing to a door.

  Lee looked behind him to see if he were being followed, but the hall was deserted as far as he could see. The sounds of struggling from the parking garage stairwell had grown muted and faraway.

  He pushed through the door and into a dimly lit space. To his left, the stairs led down into darkness. The smell in the stairwell was dank, like an unfinished basement, but he didn’t detect anything foul. He flicked on his light and began moving down the levels, taking the stairs two at a time. His earlier guesstimation about which floor he was on turned out to be fairly accurate, as he only had to travel down four flights before reaching the ground level.

  As with all emergency stairwells, the ground floor had an exit door that opened to the outside world. Lee pushed on the door but found that it would not budge. He played his light around the edges and discovered the sloppy chunks of soldering that bound the steel door to its metal frame. Someone had been in a rush to weld the damn thing shut.

  “It can never be easy,” Lee mumbled to himself.

  Behind him, he found another door, this one leading into the hospital. It was unsecured. He opened it slightly and looked through to what appeared to be the main entrance to the hospital. The smell of the lobby eked through the open door, heavy and rich with decomposing flesh. Lee gagged but forced himself to stay in the door and keep surveying the room.

  The place had clearly been a madhouse in the last hours before Smithfield fell apart. Muted daylight bathed the room, coming in through the bank of windows and sliding doors at the front. The room was wider than it was long, with white linoleum floors and heavy-looking white pillars topped with green accents. Trash was scattered everywhere and shoved into corners to make narrow paths for gurneys to get through. The trash was a mix of food wrappers, bottles, and the sterile packaging of innumerable medical supplies. Directly across from Lee, a corner of the lobby was crowded with gurneys draped with white sheets. On several of them, the white sheets bulged into swollen, discolored mounds. Here and there a hand or foot poked out from underneath.

  Lee watched, and the moment stretched. Nothing moved in the lobby, so he stepped out slowly, keeping his eyes trained on the front as he navigated around one of the large white pillars that blocked his view of the outside. When he could finally see around it, he froze. Fear mounted a comeback and seized the breath in his chest.

  Outside the thin wall of sliding glass doors, just past the cement barricades and loops of concertina wire, the parking lot and the street beyond had been swallowed by the approach of hundreds upon hundreds of infected.

  * * *

  Doc stared at the dead man for a very long time.

  The man’s mouth was open in a scream that Doc couldn’t hear, staring back at him with eyes that Doc couldn’t see. The feeling that the dead man gave him was as raw and empty as the holes in his face that glistened darkly in the blood-red light. It was a ponderous, horrid feeling, but it was something Doc had never felt before, and for that reason only, he could not take his eyes off the dead man. The feeling that wormed around in his gut, the feeling that he had never felt before was true and pure. It was unadulterated hatred.

  Eventually, Doc moved.

  He leaned forward and got his legs underneath him. Then he staggered three steps so that he was looking over the dead man. Who was it? Some stranger. Some person. Another random event. Another act of violence. Another dead body.

  He mustered what frothy spit he could in his dry mouth and let it fall from his pursed lips as he hung over the dead man. The white globule landed with a wet smack in the center of the man’s forehead. The glob seemed to wiggle, as all the tiny bubbles it was made of popped and dribbled down the man’s forehead and into the gaping wound of his left eye socket.

  Doc knelt. For once in his life, his skin-and-bones build was a blessing. He was able to pull his hands around to his side, despite the duct tape that bound them. He went through the man’s pockets, found half of a granola bar wrapped in a napkin and a pocketknife.

  Doc sat back, satisfied with his find, and opened the pocketknife, feeling his way through cutting at his bindings. His face was a mask of concentration as he focused and visualized his own hands behind his back, twisting and contorting his wrists to get the knife edge to the tape and begin to slowly saw back and forth. The process was long and particularly difficult with a missing finger, but after about five minutes of breathless focus, he freed himself.

  He brought his hands to his front. Ripped the remaining bits of tape off his wrists, not wincing when they took his hair with them. He balled up the tape and tossed it to the side. He worked his shoulder and neck, trying to get some life back into the stiff joints. Then he inspected the pocketknife. It was about a three-inch blade. Solid wood handle with brass fittings. He took the knife, blade up, and made three quick stabbing motions with it.

  H
e looked at the knife and nodded.

  He leaned over to the dead man and took a breath, as though preparing himself. He put the tip of the blade against the dead man’s stomach, then seemed to reconsider and moved the point to the neck. Cringing slightly, he pushed the blade into the neck. He pulled the knife out and regarded the blade curiously. The silvery steel was marred only by a small smear of blood near the base of the blade. He was familiar with the weird sensations that went along with putting a blade through flesh. Being a pre-med, he’d done some work on cadavers. But he’d never simply stabbed someone in the neck.

  This was a new sensation.

  Doc settled himself into position in front of the dead man and stabbed him in the neck again, three times in quick succession. When he was done, he took a moment of self-evaluation, then finished with a firm nod. He wiped the blade off on his pants and closed the knife. He folded his legs underneath him and picked up the granola bar, regarding it unsurely, but unwrapped it, sniffed it, and did not find it offending. He ate the granola bar slowly, still watching the dead man lie there.

  When he had finished the granola bar, he picked up the knife and opened it again, then he moved to the door and tested the handle. Captain Harden had left it unlocked. He opened it without regard for what was on the other side and stepped through. The hallway to his left was beginning to fill with people, but they paid him no mind. Their eyes and their fear were focused out the windows and down to the cement and barbed-wire barricades that encircled the hospital. Even Doc paused for a moment to stare down at the view. It was amazing and terrifying all at once.

  Pushed tight against the barricades and stretching to either side, beyond Doc’s line of sight, a horde of infected scrambled at the defenses. They climbed and clambered and tangled themselves in the wire, trying to get over. Trying to get to the hospital. In several places they had already choked the barbed wire defenses with so many bodies that they had managed to create more human bridges across, just like at the outer barricade. Like storm waters through a crack in the dyke, the encroaching horde was beginning to trickle through. There were so many of them, it was breathtaking in an almost awe-inspiring way. A bacterium, something smaller than the width of a hair, had brought humanity to its knees and had turned them all into a surging mass of lunatics.

  Incredible.

  He kept walking down the hall, toward the nurses’ station.

  Several of Milo’s men and a few of the survivors from the Smithfield group were crowded around the door to the stairwell. As he approached, he could hear a shouted conversation between two familiar voices that he eventually realized were Milo and Shumate.

  Milo had a finger in Shumate’s face. “Tell me how to get the fuck outta this hospital!”

  “There’s only one way in.” Shumate looked scared, his voice a panicked whine. “We did that on purpose so we didn’t have to guard all the other entrances and exits.”

  “Well, what the fuck did you do to those exits?”

  “They’re all on the ground floor!”

  “And there’s no other way to get in the parking garage?”

  Shumate’s face clouded with thought. “We might be able to jump across from the roof, but by the time we do, the parking garage is going to be full of them.” He pointed out the windows. “They’re breaking through already!”

  Milo had had enough. He drew out his Bowie knife and grabbed Shumate by the collar, slipping the blade easily under his chin and growling so low that Doc almost couldn’t hear it. “This is your fucking fault. This was one of your fucking people who did this, because you’re weak, and you have no fucking control.”

  Shumate’s terrified eyes were squeezed shut. “I didn’t know; I swear to God! It had to have been LaRouche. He’s had it in for me and you since this all started!”

  At that point, Doc had lost interest in the conversation. He strode forward, heading for the big man with the goatee standing close behind Milo with his arms crossed. Big G. Didn’t Milo say that Big G was the last person with Nicole? Yes. Doc believed those were his words.

  He pushed through the crowd, and for some reason, no one stopped him. Maybe because they didn’t recognize him; maybe because they just didn’t expect it coming from Doc, because he had always been such a puppet for Milo that they simply couldn’t wrap their brains around him doing something Milo wouldn’t approve of. Whatever the reason, they moved out of his way when he nudged them aside and strode up, just to the right-hand side of Big G.

  Big G must have felt the burning stare, or perhaps he noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye, but he managed to turn his head just as Doc reached him, and he uttered a weak syllable of surprise before Doc plunged the pocketknife into his throat.

  It was odd how everyone stood around and did nothing.

  Like they couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Big G. The mighty giant, slain by Doc, the weakling. Surely Big G was just going to toss Doc off of him and beat him to a pulp. They all just watched and waited in those brief few seconds, as though it were some sort of stage play put on for their amusement.

  But it was not a play.

  Doc felt the crunch of all the little bones and cartilage in Big G’s throat as the blade slipped into his larynx. The man’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened and emitted a strange, raspy shout that turned into a gurgle as blood welled up in his throat. Doc held the back of Big G’s neck as he kept the blade pressed firmly inside of him. Big G’s hands scrambled about, first going to his throat, then trying to shove Doc off of him, but they were panicked and ineffective. Doc stared into his eyes, his skinny arms corded tight by manic strength, a grimace of pure hatred on his face.

  “Where’s my Nicole?” Doc whispered.

  Big G sank to his knees and there was a collective gasp from those who crowded around. Even Milo seemed too shocked to move for a moment.

  “Where’s my Nicole?” Doc’s voice grew to a bellow. “She was mine! She was mine!”

  The shout seemed to jar Milo into movement. He released Shumate and sprang for Doc’s slender frame, plunging the Bowie knife into the man’s back, all the way up to the hilt, nearly running him through.

  The only reaction that Doc gave was to pull the knife from Big G’s neck and begin repeatedly stabbing him in the same spot, screaming as he did. It was not pain that wrenched that sound from Doc, but a purity of rage that froze everyone else in the room.

  Milo pulled his Bowie knife out and stabbed again and again into Doc’s back, but it was as though Doc had completely disconnected from his body. The entirety of his mind was focused on Big G, who was nearly dead even at that point in time, and he just kept sticking that pocketknife into his neck until the heavy body fell backward, taking Doc down with it.

  Doc rolled onto his back, looking up at Milo with wild, insane eyes. The skinny man smiled and blood pooled behind his lips, staining his teeth. It was a wicked smile, a sneer that said he knew something they didn’t know.

  His voice was a thready whisper. “You’re all gonna die. You’re all gonna die… tonight… tonight…”

  And with those last words, Doc faded away.

  When he died, everyone stood in silence for a moment.

  A heavy breath bubbled out of Big G’s mouth and speckled his face with red. Then that big man died as well, right alongside the skinny little medical student that no one thought would ever do something like this.

  Milo stared at the two dead men, flabbergasted. Then he threw his hands up, still holding the knife. “Fuck!” He stared at the two bodies in bewilderment, tapping the blade of his knife against his thigh. A thought seemed to occur to him and he pointed to two of his men. “If he’s out, Lee’s out! Check the room!”

  The two men hauled off to the room down the hall.

  Milo pointed his knife at Shumate. “How much longer until your generator runs out of fuel?”

  As if on cue, a steady hum that had gone unnoticed up to that point suddenly ceased to vibrate the air, and just for a sec
ond, the emergency lights flickered. Milo’s men looked around, stupefied, while every member of the Smithfield group let out a collective gasp of dismay, because they knew exactly what that meant.

  Shumate began to visibly shake. “I think that was it.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Overrun

  Lee was halfway across the lobby when the power went out.

  He hadn’t noticed the constant hum that filled the air until it died and left him feeling like his hearing had just gone out. When that happened, he stopped in his tracks and looked around. The ubiquitous red emergency lights flickered and then dimmed.

  A subtle whirring sound came from the front of the lobby and instantly the lobby was filled with the maniacal screams of the infected as they fought to get over the barricades. When Lee spun, he found himself exposed to the outside world. The thin wall of shatterproof glass that comprised the main entrance to Johnston Memorial Hospital had used its last bit of battery power to slide open, ignorant that its safety function was not saving the occupants of the building but dooming them.

  Beyond those gaping, open doors, at least a hundred infected had managed to get inside the barricade, and when the doors slid aside, a hundred pairs of eyes locked on the opening like a predator picking out the sick antelope in the herd. Without pausing to think—because they didn’t think, they just acted—they all began sprinting for the opening.

  It was almost like Lee’s adrenaline glands had been tapped out. The only thing he felt was a dull ache of disappointment and his earlier words echoed in his mind: It can never be easy. He looked desperately around the room as the dark shapes of the infected loped toward him, sodden tatters of clothing hanging off of them in ribbons, trailing behind them like kite runners.

  Lee crossed the room in three quick steps and grabbed one of the gurneys huddled in the corner. He didn’t have time to be respectful of the body lying beneath the darkly stained sheet. He twirled the bed around and shoved it at the door to the stairwell, constantly glancing to his side as he ran, checking to see how close the infected were.