Aftermath

by D. J. Molles

  Too close.

  He slammed the gurney into the door, flinging it wide and causing the body to jitter and nearly topple off. Some horrid gas trapped in the corpse was jarred by the impact and came out of the thing in a gush of warm, noxious air that nearly made him retch. The gurney barely fit into the bottom landing of the stairwell, the head of it jamming against the door that had been welded shut. There was maybe an inch of clearance between the foot of the gurney and the frame of the door to the lobby, so the gurney was effectively stuck in that position. If Lee wanted to get the lobby door closed, it was going to take some jostling.

  Behind him, a feral growl echoed, and he knew without having to look that they had made it inside. Lee leaped over the gurney and into the stairwell, landing hard on his shoulder, feeling a pop and a tingling sensation in his fingers. He rolled onto his back just as the first infected hit the open door, its eyes wide and wild, trying to climb over the gurney after him.

  Lee let out an involuntary cry and yanked the pistol from his waistband, firing three times into the infected’s chest, knocking it backward off the gurney and directly into a second infected. This second mad creature tried to scrabble for purchase by grabbing the doorframe but couldn’t quite get a grip and fell back, hissing.

  Lee jumped to his feet and yanked the gurney out of the doorframe, then reached across the putrid-smelling body still strapped to it and slammed the stairwell door closed. The door hadn’t even closed completely before it shot open again, stopping only because it slammed into the corner of the gurney as Lee tried to push the damn thing in place to block the door. A wiry hand shot through the narrow opening and grabbed hold of Lee’s arm, trying to pull him through.

  Lee stuck the muzzle of the pistol into the opening and fired three more times without looking. The hand on his arm didn’t let go, but the grip loosened enough that Lee was able to extricate himself. He slammed the door closed on the arm with as much strength as he could muster and heard bones crack. The infected’s arm spasmed and slipped back out through the door. Breathing heavily, Lee shut the door with both hands and used his hip to nudge the gurney in place. Now the foot of the gurney was wedged against the inner door and the head of the gurney against the outer door, effectively blocking the door off. It wasn’t a tight enough fit and would eventually rattle out of the way as the infected on the other side continued to assault the door. But it would buy him some time.

  Lee squeezed past the gurney and bolted up the first flight of stairs. When he reached the landing and turned the corner, someone was standing at the top, pointing a rifle at him. Lee nearly fell backward off the stairs but caught himself on the banister as he brought up his pistol, finger already squeezing the trigger.

  “Captain?”

  The only thing that stayed Lee’s trigger finger was the gray-and-tan digital pattern of ACU camouflage, which in the recesses of Lee’s subconscious mind still meant “friend.” Lee gasped as he lowered his pistol, realizing how close he’d come to putting two holes in LaRouche’s head.

  “Sergeant!” He sucked in air. “What the fuck?!”

  LaRouche ported the rifle—Lee’s rifle, he realized—and took two steps down from the landing he stood on. “Jesus Christ, Captain! I almost fucking shot you!”

  “What the hell is going on out there?” Lee bounded up the last few steps. “Where’re Harper and Miller? Did they make it out?”

  “Yeah.” LaRouche put a hand to Lee’s shoulder to steady him. “They both got out, and they got the supply truck too. That was the fireball that went off. It was an accident, but it happened when we came back to get the supply truck.”

  “What?” Lee realized he sounded furious, but he actually felt a measure of pride for what Harper and Miller had pulled off. What a couple of regular G.I. Joes. “Are you kidding me?”

  LaRouche smiled. “Naw. We used one of your claymores; hope you don’t mind.”

  “Shit.” Lee rubbed his face, trying to process everything. “So how’d you get back inside?”

  “Busted a window on this floor. Radiology, I think.” LaRouche moved to the door that led to the second level of the hospital. “No one comes down here. I was just getting back inside when I heard the gunshots from the stairwell and came running over. Man, I’m glad to see you.”

  Lee nodded rapidly. His plan was changing even as he stood there and processed what he had learned. Escaping the hospital was being moved to the back burner. The lobby below them was filling with infected even as they spoke. Those infected would eventually find ways to get upstairs.

  Lee looked at LaRouche. “How many other emergency stairwells are there?”

  “One other in this wing of the building.” LaRouche pointed through the doorway to the opposite side of the building. “It’ll be on the east side.”

  “None of the stairwells are secure?”

  LaRouche shook his head, then seemed to register the banging below. “Aw, fuck… they’re in the lobby, aren’t they?” And then louder, “Dammit, we ran out of fuel, didn’t we?”

  Lee pushed him through the doorway and onto the second floor, letting the door swing closed behind them. “I got the door blocked, but they’re gonna find the other stairwell soon.”

  LaRouche paced, shaking his head. “It was the explosion and the fireball. It must’ve attracted every infected in the city.”

  “I know.” Lee smacked his shoulder. “It’s done and over. We need to figure out a way to get out of here.”

  LaRouche pointed above them. “We gotta talk to Julia. She’s got the radio to Camp Ryder. We can get them to help us.”

  Lee grimaced. “I don’t know how much help they can be.”

  LaRouche began walking. “I still need to find Julia. I’m not gonna leave all these people here to get ripped to shreds by infected or shot by Milo’s goons.”

  Despite Lee’s desire to get the fuck out of town, he had to admit that LaRouche was right. The average survivors taking refuge in the hospital weren’t responsible for Lee’s incarceration, nor did they wish to align themselves with Milo, from what he’d seen. On the contrary, they all seemed to loathe him, and they seemed to loathe Shumate even more because he subjected them to Milo’s whims.

  “How many floors up is Julia?” Lee asked.

  “Just one.” LaRouche poked a thumb up. “Right above us.”

  “Alright.” Lee glanced between the pistol in his hands and the M4 in LaRouche’s arms, and the look did not escape the sergeant.

  “You want your rifle back?” He held the weapon out to Lee.

  “Yes.” Lee smiled like he was being reunited with a friend. He handed the pistol over to LaRouche and grabbed the rifle. As he reached out, though, a shock of pain ran down his arm from his shoulder, causing him to nearly drop the rifle. “Shit!” His free hand instinctively reached up to touch his shoulder.

  LaRouche held his hands out as though he were preparing to catch Lee if he passed out. “You okay, Cap?”

  Lee rolled his shoulder a few times to loosen up the tense pain there. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.” It felt like soft-tissue damage. Nothing serious. He jerked his head down the hall. “We need to roll. You lead the way.”

  LaRouche slipped the extra pistol in an empty pouch on his vest and went to his Beretta M9, which he obviously felt more comfortable with. Moving with controlled speed, he led them through the floor cautiously. Lee’s bad tidings of hordes of infected one floor beneath them had made LaRouche think that perhaps radiology was not as abandoned as he thought.

  They passed the ever-present cream-colored medical devices that stood only as memories of a time when a hospital wasn’t a place for people to hide but a place for people to heal. Each one of these unknown devices that Lee passed by was probably worth several thousand dollars, but now they lay discarded and gathering dust in a dark and empty radiology department that would probably never see the amount of electricity that had made it useful to begin with. At least not for a very long time.

  They reac
hed the other side without incident and approached the eastern emergency stairwell. They stopped at the door and listened to what lay beyond, but it was only dark silence huddling there, holding its breath.

  Lee covered him while LaRouche opened the door and stepped through. This stairwell was as dark as the other and Lee had to again use his flashlight to illuminate the hollow space above and below them. When the white light pierced the still redness, nothing reacted by screeching or rushing toward them.

  LaRouche’s voice was a low whisper, fear taking the volume out of him. “Should we go down there? You know… block off the door?”

  “No,” Lee said. “I don’t see anything we can use to barricade the door, and we don’t have time.” He thought about using a gurney like he had on the other stairwell, but there was no way in hell he was going back into the lobby now. “We need to focus on getting everyone out of this place.”

  LaRouche didn’t look like he was in love with the idea of turning his back on a door that might burst open at any moment and let through a horde of infected, but he turned and took the stairs to the next level without further comment. Behind him, Lee followed, still shining his flashlight down into the gloom.

  The next level up held another door. LaRouche pulled it open slightly and poked his head through. From the other side, Lee could hear the sounds of people, the steady murmur of urgent conversations. They weren’t shouting, because they weren’t panicked just yet, but it was clear that many people were expressing many viewpoints. The sergeant took in whatever he saw and seemed to decide that it was safe. He pulled open the door and the two of them stepped through onto the third level of the hospital.

  The smell was the same as the building in Camp Ryder: dirty clothes, dirty bodies, and a faint sewer smell underlining everything. This level was slightly better lit than radiology, due to a large bank of eastern-facing windows to the right. The layout was different than the fourth floor where Lee had initially come from. The whole wing of the hospital was a rectangular shape, the short sides facing approximately north and south, and the long sides facing east and west. Offices occupied the south-facing side, a bank of elevators on the north-facing side. The outer walls of the east and west sides were just windows, while the inside was a block of hospital rooms. A nurses’ station was at the mouth of a hallway that bisected the block of hospital rooms.

  The nurses’ station seemed to be the natural meeting point for the people living on this level. They had all gathered there, perhaps twenty or thirty men and women, and were engaged in a hushed but animated conversation. As LaRouche stepped toward them, Lee felt like he should hang back, but the sergeant motioned him forward. The gathering at the small nurses’ station did not take notice until they were standing among them.

  A man looked around at them, almost annoyed. He was middle-aged and wore a tattered old baseball cap with the Browning logo on it and a dirty white T-shirt and jeans. When his eyes focused on LaRouche, a sudden and hopeful smile broke out across his face. “Sarge!” he exclaimed, immediately grabbing LaRouche by the shoulders. “You’re back! They said that you’d left us!”

  LaRouche didn’t return the smile, but he shook his head by way of response. “Where’s Julia? We really need to speak with her.”

  “I’m right here!” The lady who had wheeled and dealed brazenly with Shumate to get Harper and Miller released pushed her way through the crowd and latched onto LaRouche with ferocity. “Jesus Christ! What’s going on out there?” Her eyes traveled to Lee. “You’re out? How the hell’d you get out?”

  Lee shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He pointed to the stairwell door behind him. “I’m sure you folks heard the power go out. The doors are open downstairs and infected are inside the building. We need to start getting you guys out of here.”

  There was a chorus of exclamations and the air became almost palpable with fear.

  The man in the Browning hat swore. “Well, what are we fuckin’ waiting for? Let’s grab our shit and get the hell outta here…”

  But Julia was shaking her head. “No.”

  Lee took her arm and looked into her face again. “We don’t have a choice. This place is about to get swarmed. On top of that, Milo’s men are still in the building and it’s only a matter of time before they come looking for me. It’s not safe here. We gotta get out.”

  She jerked her arm away, looking between him and LaRouche. “You don’t understand! I have people here who need me, people we can’t just move! They’re sick and injured and I sure as hell can’t leave them lying here.”

  The gathering at the nurses’ station mumbled, but now it seemed split down the middle, half of them agreeing, the other half wanting to make a run for it. Lee could imagine that those who agreed were the ones with the sick and injured in their families. Those who wanted to leave were the single ones with no ties and no reason to linger.

  When the crowd realized it was divided, it got louder.

  Lee cut it off before it got nasty. “Can you give me a rough estimate of how many immobile people you have?”

  Julia raked hair out of her face. “It’s not just about immobile. The only way out now is down the elevator shaft and into the maintenance crawlway that leads out back. I have six injured people who won’t even be able to make it down the shaft, not to mention a few old folks and some of the younger kids.”

  The man with the Browning hat looked incredulous. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Julia. So you’re just going to sit here and not even try? We can at least try to get them out.”

  “And what are we gonna do if we even make it out?” Julia demanded. “I don’t know if you’ve looked out the window, but we’re completely fucking surrounded!”

  LaRouche stepped in and looked at the man with the Browning hat. “George, we can continue this conversation in a second. Right now, help me barricade the doors to the eastern stairwell.”

  “The doors open into the stairwell,” George observed halfheartedly. “How we gonna barricade them?”

  LaRouche was already moving down the hall. “We stack up a big pile of shit. It won’t hold them forever, but it’ll buy us some time.”

  “What about the western stairwell?” someone asked.

  “And what about Milo’s guys?” spouted another.

  Lee raised a placating hand. “Western stairwell is blocked from the bottom. As for Milo’s men, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Then he looked at Julia. “Where’s the radio to Camp Ryder?”

  Julia reached over the counter of the nurses’ station and snagged the radio from the other side, handing it to Lee. He spoke to her quietly as he turned it on. “If I can get ahold of someone from Camp Ryder, we might be able to get help to clear the back. Then at least we’ll know we have a safe way out.”

  Julia looked exasperated. “I already told you—”

  Lee put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in so the others could not hear his low voice. “You can’t speak for everyone here. There might be people who want out. If you choose to stay here and fight, that’s up to you. But I think you need to start thinking of ways to get your sick and injured down that elevator shaft. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  Julia looked back at the smattering of gaunt-faced survivors huddled at the nurses’ station. Slowly, she nodded. “Okay.”

  Lee keyed the radio. “Captain Harden to Camp Ryder. Captain Harden to Camp Ryder. Harper or Miller or anyone from Camp Ryder. Does anybody copy me?”

  He released the push-to-talk button and waited. A short burst of static filled the air, but no response came. Everyone jumped at the screeching sound of metal on tile floors as LaRouche and George shoved a big filing cabinet up against the door to the eastern stairwell. They grunted and groaned and finally got the thing in place. It had to weigh at least three hundred pounds, but it was top-heavy. With enough infected pounding at it and trying to climb over it, the thing would eventually tip over. LaRouche and George turned and began looking for other heav
y objects to stack in the doorway.

  Lee repeated his attempts on the radio, receiving the same response.

  Nothing.

  “What do we do now?” someone moaned.

  Julia pointed to a redheaded woman. “Barb, do you have any rope?”

  She looked briefly flustered. “I can try to find some…”

  “Do that,” Julia instructed. She raised her voice. “Everyone, we need to find rope. And some soft-restraint straps—like the kind they have on the gurneys—and some backboards. The backboards are usually orange or yellow and they look like a little surfboard with handles on the sides.”

  Then she pointed at Lee, every bit in charge. “You keep trying that radio, Captain. And keep those stairwell doors secure…”

  Her last few words were drowned out by the sound of LaRouche and George suddenly shouting as the eastern stairwell door was thrown open and dozens of mad voices began screeching at them from the other side of the barricade.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Only Easy Day…

  Lee spun and pointed at Julia and the group of survivors standing stock-still behind her with big eyes and open mouths, frozen in terror. He had to shout to make himself heard over the ear-splitting feral screams of the infected. “Gather what you need! We’ll hold them off!”

  She nodded once and turned on her heels. The stillness in the group of survivors behind her broke into frenzied motion, everyone shouting and pointing this way and that. Two men broke off from the group, one of them with a scuffed and bloodstained baseball bat, the other with a classic wood-handled AK-47. Lee was surprised to see it, as mostly he’d seen nothing but hunting rifles and sporting shotguns in the hands of the average survivor, but the AK-47 was the most manufactured firearm in the world. He should have been surprised that this was the first one he’d come across.