by Sarra Cannon
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Parrish said. “It’s hot out here today. They’re all probably hiding inside where it’s nice and cool.”
“And dark,” Karmen added.
“Let’s check this one out and see where we are,” she said.
Noah pulled the doors open while the rest of them watched, weapons ready.
A single rotter in a paramedic’s uniform stumbled out of the back, and Crash lit him up with machine gun fire.
Parrish smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. “I think you got him,” she shouted.
Crash let off the trigger and laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I freaked for a second there.”
“Well, at least now we’ll know if there are any rotters roaming around the outside,” she said. “When we get inside, though, I think we should try to only use our guns as a last resort. If we see one or two by themselves, it’s best to just let me or Noah handle it quietly, I think. The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better.”
Crash nodded. “Good idea.”
Noah and Karmen had already started searching the ambulance, and when Parrish looked up, Noah lifted a machine from the floor and smiled.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“I hope so,” he said. “It’s definitely some kind of heart monitor.”
“Oh man, that’s definitely a defib,” Crash said, slapping his hands together. “This rocks. We got nearly everything on the list. Please tell me there are some antibiotics in this ambulance.”
Karmen pushed a drawer closed and shook her head. “I don’t see any meds in this one. Just some plastic tubing and needles and stuff.”
“Shit,” Parrish muttered. She closed her eyes and leaned against the ambulance. The one thing they needed most and it wasn’t here. Fate was playing with them.
“Can’t we just take these things back and say we didn’t find anything else,” Karmen said. “I don’t want to go inside.”
“We can’t,” Crash said. “Stephen will die if we don’t get him some antibiotics fast. It’s the most important thing.”
Parrish pulled a deep breath through her nose. He was right.
She didn’t like it, but he was right.
“So the question now is where do we start?” she asked. “Where are we most likely to find antibiotics? Anyone know?”
“All I could do was a quick search on the internet,” Crash said. “Most hospitals have a dispensary or med room where they keep most of the drugs under lock and key. From what I can tell, that’s most likely to be close to the ER.”
“Crap, that’s not good,” she said. “The ER’s were the worst hit with everyone coming into the hospital in droves. It’s too dangerous.”
“When I went to the hospital a couple of years ago when I broke my arm, the nurse had some kind of cart she wheeled around that had meds in it,” Karmen said. “It had a computer monitor on top and she pulled the drawers out to get the bags out of the bottom. What if we could find one of those?”
“Good call,” Parrish said. “Maybe if we start at the main entrance and clear our way through, we’ll be able to find a cart somewhere in one of the rooms.”
“The med room would be our best bet,” Crash said. “Maybe we should at least check the ER first. Like you said, a lot of the patients were quarantined. It’s possible the quarantine was in a different part of the hospital. The ER might not be as bad as you think, and if we find the med room, we’re golden.”
Parrish bit her lip and leaned against the back of the truck. For some reason, they were all looking to her to tell them what to do. She hadn’t volunteered to be the leader of the group, but the position had been handed to her.
She wanted to make the right decision here, because the wrong one could be fatal. There were no second chances in the zombie apocalypse.
They were close to the ER’s entrance. It wouldn’t hurt to at least look inside.
“Noah and Crash, you guys run up there to the doors and see if you see movement inside first,” she said. “If it’s clear, we’ll start here in the ER. If there’s movement, we start at the main entrance.”
The girls waited as the guys ran up to check. They came back a few minutes later, shaking their heads.
“It’s a shit-show in there,” Crash said. “We definitely can’t start here.”
“Then the main entrance it is,” she said. “We’ll look for the nurse’s carts in the patient rooms first.”
“And if we don’t find one?” Karmen asked.
“Then we move slowly in the direction of the ER,” she said. “If we come across large groups, we turn around and try another way. Anyone object?”
No one did.
“Okay,” she said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulders. “When we get in there, we stick together. No one goes off by themselves under any circumstances, understood?”
They all nodded.
“We’ll clear as we go so we have a direct way out if we need it. With a small group, we don’t use guns or make a lot of noise,” she said. “If we get overrun, we head back out the way we came. Everyone ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Karmen said.
They made their way across the front lawn in silence. The glass door leading into the building glimmered in the sunlight, and as they stepped into the dark hallway, it was like stepping into another world.
Instead of the clean, sanitized smell of a normal hospital, the stench of this place turned her stomach instantly. Dried blood decorated the walls and floors, and Parrish nearly slipped in a pool of it just past the entrance. Noah caught her arm and kept her from falling.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her boot on the rubber mat near the door. “Watch your step, everyone.”
“Should we use flashlights?” Crash asked. “Or should I turn on lights as we go?”
“Lights would be good,” she said. “But only in our immediate vicinity. Turn them off as we move. Can you do that?”
“Piece of cake,” he said.
The fluorescents above their head buzzed as they came to life.
The horror of the hallway looked much worse in the light, but she didn’t have the luxury of time to stand here and gawk at it. They needed to move quickly and efficiently. Clearing this place could take hours, and they were burning daylight.
“Noah, you and I will take the lead, clearing out any rotters we come across along the way,” she said. “Let’s leave the supplies we gathered so far out here by the admin desk so we don’t have to carry them the whole way. We’ll pick them up on our way out.”
They emptied everything out of their packs and stuffed it behind the desk with the heart monitor.
“You ready?” she asked Noah.
He nodded, lifting his bat and walking slowly forward.
This section was mostly just small administrative offices. Parrish glanced inside each door, and when she was sure it was empty, she shut it behind her.
“Why close the doors?” Karmen asked.
“Just in case we missed one,” she said. “We don’t have time to go inside every room, and we need to be sure the path back out is clear. The doors should slow them down, at the very least.”
Karmen nodded. Her shotgun was cradled close to her chest, the barrel pointed toward the ceiling. Parrish hoped she didn’t have to use it.
They crept down the hallway, lights going on as they walked and turning off behind them.
They passed the front desk and started down the first of three long corridors.
Parrish listened for any sign of movement or moaning, but the place was eerily silent except for the sound of the lights flickering on and off. Up ahead, the doors to patient rooms were lined up on both sides of the hallway. Some were open and some were closed.
“We’ll clear from left to right all the way down,” she said. “Crash you concentrate on keeping the right lights turned on and off. I will go into the room on the left while Noah clears the door on the right side of the hall. Karmen and Lily, you stand in
the center of the hallway, back-to-back, ready to help if either of us needs it. Ready? Let’s clear as fast as we can.”
Her heart pounded as she stepped into the first room. It appeared to be empty. The bed had been turned over and blood pooled on the floor near the window. Bloody footsteps were smeared across the tile, but whoever had made them seemed to be long gone.
There was no sign of a medical cart, so Parrish left the room and shut the door behind her. One down, God knew how many left to go.
Noah came out of the door opposite hers and shook his head.
They moved to the next set of doors, clearing each room as fast as they could. After nearly half an hour, they’d checked the entire corridor and found nothing useful.
“This is going to take forever,” Karmen said. “Why don’t we each just take a room? It would go so much faster.”
Parrish didn’t like the idea, but Karmen was right. This methodical search was taking too long. They had to move faster if they had any hope of getting out of here before dark.
“Let’s move to the next hallway,” she said. “Lily, you stay in the center. The rest of us will each take a room this time.”
She touched Karmen’s arm.
“Can you handle yourself in a room alone?”
“Yeah, I can do it,” she said.
Parrish nodded and led them to the second corridor. They each stood outside a room and when Parrish nodded, they disappeared inside.
This room had two beds in it with a curtain separating them. Parrish blew out a nervous breath and stepped deeper into the room. She reached for the curtain, but just as her hand touched the fabric, a rotter latched onto her arm, its grip so tight it cut off her circulation.
She brought her blade down on its shoulder, severing its arm from its body in a single slice. She kicked the thing’s chest, and as it stumbled backward, she sliced its head off.
The damn fingers were still wrapped around her forearm and she had to set her sword on the bed to pry it off.
Another rotter grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. She twisted around and reached for her sword, but before she could get to it, Lily brought the butt of her gun down on the rotter’s head and it fell to the floor, dark red blood oozing from its skull.
She leaned against the bed to catch her breath. “Thanks,” she said.
“No problem,” Lily said, out of breath.
Parrish studied her. Had she misjudged her? If this girl had really set them up, would she have just tried to save Parrish’s life? She really hoped she’d been wrong about Lily, and that they would make it through the day without trouble.
In the next room, Karmen screamed. Parrish grabbed her sword and raced from the room, her boots squeaking against the floors. A rotter had its hands around Karmen’s neck, its jaws open and snapping. Her hand was pressed against the thing’s chest, keeping it at arm’s length.
Parrish brought her blade down on its skull, slicing it in two.
Karmen gasped and threw her arms around Parrish.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Were you bitten?”
Karmen shook her head and pulled away, her eyes wide and scared. “I know I should have tried to use my mind control, but I freaked out,” she said. “I don’t think I can do it unless I can concentrate, and how am I supposed to concentrate when one of those things is trying to choke me out?”
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Parrish said when they all met back in the hallway. “We need to stay together, no matter how long it takes.”
“Look, the carts are big,” Karmen said. “I think we should just go in pairs, open the door and glance inside. If we don’t see it at first glance, we shut the door and move on.”
Parrish nodded, but every part of her felt weary. They’d been here less than an hour and were already on Plan D. They weren’t cut out for this, and it was going to get someone killed.
“Okay, Karmen you go with Noah and Lily will come with me,” she said. She wanted to keep an eye on her, just in case. “Crash, you stay in the hall and guard us.”
This plan worked better than any of the others. They cleared the hall quickly and moved onto the last one in this wing, but had no luck finding one of the nurse’s carts.
“What now?” Crash asked.
“We move in the direction of the ER,” she said. She pointed toward sign posted in the hallway.
“Luckily we haven’t seen many rotters yet,” Crash said. “A handful at best. Maybe most of them are contained to the ER.”
“Maybe,” she said, but she doubted it. There was no way they were going to be that lucky.
The double doors leading to the next section of the hospital were closed, but there were small square windows at eye-level. Parrish peered inside, but it was too dark to see much.
“Crash, can you—”
“Already on it, boss,” he said.
The lights in the next corridor came on. The hallway was trashed, just like the rest of the hospital. Bodies littered the floor, but Parrish watched closely to see if any of them were still moving.
“I think we’re clear,” she said.
She pushed through the doors and they made their way down the hall toward the nurse’s station, stepping over corpses as they walked.
“Which way?”
Noah lifted his shirt and cleared blood away from another sign on the wall. The ER was to the left. More patient rooms to the right.
“Maybe we should split up,” Crash said. “I know we said we needed to stick together, but we could be here for hours.”
“I think he’s right,” Lily said. “This place appears to be mostly clear, so if we split up, we can cover a lot of ground twice as fast.”
Parrish swallowed a lump of fear. She didn’t want to lose sight of anyone, but clearing room by room as a group was taking too long. It was already past noon.
If something was going to happen, wouldn’t it have happened already? Maybe she’d been wrong and Lily was not the one who’d summoned those super-zombies.
“Okay, the guys head toward the patient rooms,” she said. “Us girls will go toward the ER. If you get into trouble, use the radios. We’ll meet back up here if we can. If the way is blocked, just head for the exit.”
Noah grabbed her hand. “Are you sure about this?” he whispered. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I think it’s the only way we’re going to clear this place in time,” she said. She squeezed his hand. “Be careful.”
“You too,” he said.
“What about lights?” Karmen said as they started toward the ER. “Without Crash we’ll be in the dark the whole way.”
“Got it,” Crash yelled from the other side of the corridor.
All the lights in front of them switched on.
“Thank you,” Karmen shouted back.
“We’re quiet from here on out,” Parrish said. “And the three of us stick together.”
They cleared the rest of the hallway, checking rooms as they went. How could there not be a single nurse’s cart in any of these rooms? They probably got locked up in the meds room at the end of each shift, but the hospital had been overrun. Who would have had time to put things away neatly?
They had to find one soon.
At least they hadn’t come across any rotters or super-zombies. Maybe she’d been completely wrong about today. Maybe whoever had attacked them in D.C. was long gone, and had been unable to track them when they left the city.
She held onto that hope as they pushed deeper into the hospital, following the signs toward the emergency room.
She figured if they didn’t find something in the next few hours, it was time to call it.
After clearing another hallway, they came across a second set of double doors. Parrish tried to see inside, but the windows were covered in blood and gore on the other side. She couldn’t see anything.
She pressed her ear to the door, listening for any sound of shuffling feet or groans. After a long pause, she finally took a deep breath and
pushed the doors open.
Some of the lights in this hallway were broken, so they only had a dimly lit path through the mess of dead bodies that covered the floors. Most of them were ripped open and the smell of decay hung thick in the air like a fog.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Karmen said, lifting the collar of her t-shirt over her mouth and nose. “This is disgusting.”
Parrish grabbed an extra shirt out of her bag and tied it around her face. It helped some, but nothing could protect her from that smell.
“We must be near the quarantine zone,” she said. She wondered why there hadn’t been any signs warning them to stay out. So far, though, none of the bodies appeared to be moving. These people had been dead for a long time. She stepped over them as best she could, but there were so many.
“We have to be getting close to the ER now,” she said. “Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of the meds room so we can get the heck out of here.”
“Amen to that,” Karmen said.
They’d made it halfway down the long hallway before the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Something wasn’t right here.
“Why are we stopping?” Lily asked.
Parrish looked down at the bodies on the floor. She couldn’t explain it, but a sudden darkness had come over this place.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “We need to go. Now.”
But the moment she turned, every dead body on the floor opened its eyes.
“Do you think we’re even going to find anything?” Noah asked.
They’d cleared another five or six rooms, but they hadn’t seen any sign of a medical cart. All the cabinets had been opened up, their contents long since gone. “I’m thinking someone got to this place before we did.”
“I’m starting to think you’re right about that,” Crash said. “At least they cleared the rotters out for us, too.”
“Let’s move faster,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of us being separated from the girls. Why did we let them take the more dangerous route?”
Crash shrugged. “I think those girls know how to handle themselves,” he said. “Maybe better than we do.”
“True,” Noah said with a laugh. “It’s still hard to believe some of the things we can do now, isn’t it?”
