Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Says you! I’ve got burrs in my hair!” She used a hand to shake one of her green ponytails at him. “This is unacceptable. You totally suck as a tour guide.”

  Jake was completely unaffected by her plight. “I’ll give you a refund when we get back to Langley. Now keep quiet. Here come the others.”

  As the two of them watched, the Troll careened around the corner of West Clyde and Foreman. Kat spared them a dirty look as she sped the Hummer by. She was fully aware of O’Connor and Bee’s location, because they’d discussed it hastily when Jake told the women his plan to reach the hospital.

  Basically, Elle and Cho would provide a distraction with the Humvee, drawing the dead to the north and east. That would allow Jake and Bee to enter unobserved, wrangle the scrub-wearing survivor into leaving, and make for the ER entrance on the western side below the helipad. Kat would keep the zombies occupied to give her friends thirty minutes exactly, then circle back to pick them up before heading out. She’d been rather upset about not going along with Jake to keep an him out of trouble, and firmly informed him that his decision would bring about dire consequences.

  O’Connor had scowled and told her not to break a nail on the steering wheel, which earned him a dangerous narrow-eyed gaze from the pretty Asian. She’d left in an angry huff swearing revenge. He just knew the comment had been a bad idea at the time, but neglected to keep his mouth shut. Foolishly. There would be some groveling in his immediate future if Jake wanted to keep

  the peace.

  But that would have to wait. The dead had already oriented on their Hummer. The mean, green, zombie-pulping machine began rolling past the crowd, drawing them off and up the street, away from the hospital. Elle stood in the vehicle’s turret, taking carefully timed aim at the crowd as it followed slowly in their wake and dropping two out of every three shots. She didn’t make a kill with every trigger pull, but did a damn sight better than Jake could himself with the Long-Arm. Quite a few of the ghouls jaws ceased their endless clacking as the bulky rifle sent steel-jacketed last rites through their skulls. A few rounds even sailed on to fell second rotting victims behind her initial targets, which pleased the blonde sergeant to the extreme, and she began trying to time her shots for multiple knock-downs.

  When Cho finally turned east, Jake hit the button on his watch starting the thirty minute countdown. The kinetic driven Seiko had been a graduation gift from his now deceased father prior to heading overseas and, since the timepiece powered itself off the movements of his body, never had to be wound. Unless he didn’t wear it for a few days that is.

  Glancing towards the hospital, O’Connor saw only “draggers” remained. The ones that either couldn’t stand due to injury like a broken leg, or lacked legs altogether. There were only a handful of them however, and they could be easily avoided even at a brisk walk. He rose and, motioning for Bee to follow, began moving at an easy trot across the street towards the western ER entrance.

  Bee kept trying to look everywhere at once. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Relax, the plan worked like a charm.” Jake assured her as they sped over the sidewalk and onto the lawn. “The mobile ones are all staggering after Kat and Elle.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be any inside, right?” Bee nearly tripped as they jumped a small, three-foot retaining wall that separated ‘Smoking Section’ from the rest of the grounds.

  “Doubtful. If there were, I’m certain the guy in there would be kibble by now.” Jake walked around the corner of the building as she recovered and hurried to follow. “Besides, even if... Shit.”

  Bee leaned around his shoulder and saw a small pod of the creatures milling around under the drop-off cover in front of the ER doorway.

  “I told you so! Didn’t I tell you so?”

  “Later! Run for the truck!” O’Connor took off once she got moving to cover her rear.

  An ambulance was parked halfway under the drop-off, its driver’s side and rear doors hanging open. There were old but definitive splatters of long-dried blood on both the outside—where the rain had failed to wash it away—and interior, but that didn’t matter to Jake. Whatever horrors had transpired within the vehicle, were long done. He wanted it for one thing, and one thing only.

  “Climb on top!”

  “We’ll be trapped!” Bee moved to obey his direction even as Jake felled the closest ghoul at about twenty yards, splattering the things brains all over the creature behind it with a lucky shot from his rifle as he ran.

  “We’re not going to be sticking around, now move! Get your weapon ready and cover me once you’re up so I don’t get my ass bitten off!” He slowed and kept plugging away at the approaching crowd as Bee clambered onto the vehicle’s roof. She had to use one of the doors as a ladder and accidentally kicked it away as she pulled her torso over the edge, sending it rebounding off the side of the ambulance to come back and smack her on the butt.

  “Ow! Mother-fucking fucker!”

  Jake would’ve laughed at how much she sounded like her Uncle George just then, but he was busy trying to stay alive. It took him four attempts to bring down the next creature, and the other eighteen or so closed on him as he sent it slumping to the asphalt. “Bee? I’m going to die here!” he called up. The rest of the things were getting really close.

  “Oh, keep your panties on!” The fuming young woman stopped rubbing her bruised bottom and brought up her weapon. Bee flipped the fire selector to single shot and sighted on the pack. “Okay, ready!”

  She began calmly double-tapping zombies as O’Connor turned, tossed his M4 up to clatter against her boots after he engaged its safety, put one foot on the tailgate, and all but jumped onto the roof. He transfer his forward momentum by using his arms to push his body vertical mid-leap, and rolled smoothly onto the roof like a traceur, vaulting over a wall.

  Seeing prey escape seemingly pissed the creatures off. They began beating on the vehicle, leaving smears from their rotting fists against the sides and moaning at the tops of their rotten lungs with hunger. Jake once again thanked heaven the things couldn’t reason, and weren’t coordinated enough to climb anything but—occasionally—staircases. If they’d been agile enough to do so, the horrors would’ve been up on the roof with them.

  As he caught his breath, Bee was still taking pot-shots into the crowd. In the small amount of time it took Jake to gain the roof, there were five fewer of the nasty things due to her ability with a rifle. She put a round through a zombie on the driver’s side as the writer got to his feet, splattering the ghoul’s cranium all over the landscape. That one had been an extremely overweight man in Bermuda shorts and a soiled Oklahoma Thunder jersey. One of the things eyes didn’t track correctly, and it was missing a large chunk of its neck. There was a good amount of flesh sloughing free of its biceps as well as it pounded against the unyielding metal in a feeble attempt to reach the pair of humans, wanting nothing but to sink graying teeth into warm, living flesh. Bee’s shot ended its miserable existence, and it fell (un)lifeless to the

  pavement.

  “Don’t bother with the rest!”

  “Say what?” Bee plugged a ghoul through the brain-holder and took aim at another.

  O’Connor squatted and sprang upward, hands latching onto the lip of the ER canopy. He pulled himself up and quickly reached down to her. Bee tossed their rifles up—after taking a final shot and ending yet another maggot-head’s quest for a meal—then jumped high. Their palms smacked together sharply, allowing him to pull the emerald-haired girl up over the edge from where he lay, and spin her away from the drop.

  Not wanting to squash her with his weight, Jake rolled to put her on top and Bee knelt over him, hands still locked to his, panting noticeably.

  “Well. That was kind of intense.”

  O’Connor was working on catching his breath too. “Those smelly
fucks can’t climb, and we know there’s no way up through the building or Mr. Survivor inside wouldn’t still be crapping on them, so we’re safe for now.”

  “Brings all kinds of possibilities to mind, doesn’t it” She asked with a smile. “We’ve got about what, thirty minutes? It would be a little rushed, but...”

  Jake realized she sat astride him in what was termed: The Classical Position. He could feel nicely-firm buttocks riding an appealingly slim waist—beneath a healthy pair of “lungs”—pressing over his groin and, being only human, his body responded sharply.

  He started to panic.

  George would kill you! His back-brain yelled, not even the slightest bit helpful and also panicking. Cho would kill you! Hell, Rae would kill you too, and she doesn’t even like talking with Bee! Defuse this now! I’m going to update our last will, in case you do anything stupid here...

  “Um.” Yep. He had nothing.

  Bee’s smile widened. “Relax, I’m just screwing with you.”

  “That’s kind of what I’m worried about.”

  “Yeah, that could happen.” She laughed. “You’re nice enough for an old guy, I suppose. And a dork. But I’m not into the geriatric thing.”

  That offended him a bit. He wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination, even if some mornings he felt about eighty. He was only approaching thirty for God’s sake. Jake was tempted (but only for a second) to ask if she’d like to find out what someone with experience—as opposed to only youth—could do, but wisely kept his mouth shut. Beatrix had some attributes that would make any red-blooded man howl at the moon, but he was still relieved when she grabbed her carbine and rolled off him.

  He wasn’t ready to even think about being intimate with a woman again yet anyway. The wound left on him by Laurel’s death was still so raw it hurt when he breathed.

  Shit. I already had a wardrobe malfunction today too. He groaned and reached for his weapon.

  Bee offered him a hand up and, ego smarting, Jake pointedly ignored the gesture. He bounced to his feet with a kip like Steven Tyler used to do on stage during a concert, and smirked. “Geriatric, huh?”

  “Okay. My bad,” she held up one hand, “I forgot about that silver fox guy. The one who was like sixty-five or so that tried out for Ninja Warrior? He was in damn good shape for his age too, so I’ll admit—”

  “Never-mind. Come on.” He turned and stalked towards the third story window. He just knew some conversations wouldn’t go anywhere good. “Let’s go find Mr. Hanky up there before anything else happens and ‘le merde frappe le ventilateur’.”

  Ponytails bobbing as she jogged along, Bee said “I don’t speak Spanish.”

  Jake winced as the headache behind his left eyeball once again began to throb.

  * * *

  Upon breaking a third floor window next to the canopy and entering the hospital proper,—as Jake had guessed—they found a total absence of undead presence inside.

  Their rifle’s tactical lights illuminated a pronounced lack of clutter within too, which neither of them could understand. Until they checked one of the darkened stairwells that is. Anything and everything that wasn’t bolted down: end tables, treatment carts, waiting room chairs and loveseats, hospital beds, large anesthesia machines, huge containers filled with steel surgical instruments, even heavy cases of “adult pull-ups” had been used to completely fill the landing up to the second floor. With all of that stuffed together like a gigantic Jenga puzzle—combined with the steel security doors at ground level, there was no possible way anything living or dead could gain entry to the upper floors.

  Bee whistled, carefully keeping the muzzle of her rifle pointed safely away from O’Connor as he tried to peer down into the mess. “Whoa. That would’ve taken a while.”

  “It’s been nearly four months since the zombies rose,” Jake reminded her with a shrug. “I’m sure there wasn’t much else for the guy to do. And his life would’ve depended on keeping them from getting through the doors, so...”

  “Good point,” she admitted.

  They began climbing towards the fifth level, still leery of the door at each landing and moving quietly, but there didn’t seem to be anything above. No moans, no shuffling footsteps, no stench of decay that marked the presence of the dead, it was a nice change. Upon reaching the proper floor, Jake slung his rifle after dousing its light, and pulled his large Hammer pistol. Ensuring the magazine in the heavy repeater held .45 slugs and not 12-gauge cartridges, he flipped off the safety, took a firm grip on the door handle with his left hand, and waited for Bee to squeeze his shoulder to signify she was ready. When her fingers tightened on his deltoid, O’Connor pulled the door open and ghosted into the hallway beyond, moving swiftly to his left. Bee went right, eyes roving downrange and looking for a sight picture as she moved to press her back against the wall.

  This was considered textbook “CQB (close quarters battle) dynamic room entry.” Jake had learned the process overseas from a crusty, old SEAL who’d beaten it into his SAS brick over and over and over again, until they could, Fucking preform the fucking process fucking properly! as the older man had so eloquently put it. The entry team lined up all on the same side of the door. The second man put his hand on the first man’s shoulder; the third man put his on the second man’s and so on and so on. The last man in the stack readied himself, and then squeezed the shoulder of the one in front of him. Moving up the line, each man gave the one to their front the signal, until the lead man felt the squeeze on his shoulder. Then, knowing the team was ready, they entered the room. The first going left, the second right, on down the line, until the entire group was inside (preferably in three seconds or less) and they proceeded to decimate any opponents within.

  George Foster used the same technique with great success for years during his time as a domestic and international “problem solver” for the United States military. He’d drilled Jake and his friends relentlessly once they’d decided they needed to flee his Ohio safe-house, and they’d become adept at it quickly for one very simple reason. If they failed the exercise—and fail they did sometimes—they got to do ten more chin-ups. Or fifty more push-ups. Or sit-ups. Or run laps around the inside of the old warrior’s underground motor pool for another half hour.

  As politically incorrect as it might be: Pain was a very effective motivational tool.

  While not there to take part, Beatrix Foster was quite good at sneaking-and-peeking. It seemed that her crass uncle had seen to it she could handle herself in tight situations as well. Jake noticed her gaze kept moving from side to side as they crept smoothly down the hall which would keep Bee from “tunneling,” basically seeing only threats that were directly in front of her. Tunneling was a dangerous and many times fatal habit in combat. Focusing on what was before you and neglecting to watch your surroundings (or your back) was a good way to get dead, really, really fast. Such was not the case with Bee. She kept her gaze moving just as he did, searching for targets.

  They reached the first intersection and Jake moved forward, retrieved his mini Mag-light from its pocket on his tac-vest, and “cut the pie”, making sure to crouch low to the ground so he wouldn’t produce a silhouette. Seeing that no bullets came screaming at him—and no ghouls staggered out from the darkness—he clicked the light on and panned it into the gloom. Nada. There were a scraps of paper towels—along with a crap-load of empty Doritos bags, Snickers wrappers, and half-crushed plastic Pepsi bottles—around a nearby trashcan, but otherwise there was no sign of human habitation. That equated to no stink of unwashed bodies or overflowing toilets. The pair moved up to the next junction and the hallway grew slightly brighter. A single door stood open perhaps a third of the way down its length, and sunlight beamed into the hall from room beyond. Slowing to a crawl as they drew nearer the opening, Kat and Bee heard a male voice berating someone.

  “…because you don’t possess any manners whatsoever. Ye
s, I’m talking to you. Do you see anyone else here? Lord, trying to have an intelligent conversation with you is pointless. It’s like talking with a bloody goldfish. The little thing realizes you’re there, but doesn’t know and doesn’t give a single, little fishy-turd what the sounds coming out of your mouth mean. You might at least attempt to pay attention occasionally, you know. Just to break the norm? Fine, act like that then. I’m going to have some lunch.”

  A rustling came from inside the room, followed by the sounds of angry footsteps. Jake edged forward he waited beside the entrance, putting himself slightly out of sight and right to deal with it there if source of the footsteps proved dangerous. He readied himself, then his stomach fell when he saw Beatrix step into the middle of the hall and quickly adjust her shirt into a more flattering fit. Basically she just tied the bottom in a knot to show off her bare waist and naval but damn, Jake had to admit it was a nice picture. He tried to wave her back and away, but she merely gave him a long-suffering look and leaned against the far wall in a provocative pose.

  That’s when the scruffy fellow they’d seen relieving himself on the dead outside came through the door. He wasn’t a large man, but had a bit of height and stood perhaps only a hair or two shorter than Jake. The light blue scrubs fit his too-slim frame well, but O’Connor wished he could feed the poor guy a few Big-Macs. If he could’ve found a few, that is. In addition to the scrubs, the man wore a set of mismatched shoes—one brown, one black—a pair of glasses that had seen better days (neither of the arms matched the frame), a nurse’s coat with pockets at the bottom hem, and—judging from the amount of beard-growth—hadn’t shaved in a week or three.

  “Hi there!” Bee piped in a happy voice, giving him a bright smile.

  The whip-thin man turned to gaze at her calmly.

  “Oh, it’s happening again. This never gets old.” He shook his head, and removed the eyeglasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Please leave me alone, I’m not in the mood. You’re just another hallucination anyway.”