LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  I stopped walking, as did Kate.

  He moved several steps ahead before realizing we had stopped in the darkness.

  “Uh, Doc. That’s… that’s amazing. Do you realize how many people that could save? We could fly over entire cities, camps, forts… anywhere that people are making a stand, or fighting for their lives. We can stop this thing from spreading any further.”

  He thought briefly on it and his lined, young face turned up as it dawned on him.

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  From the darkness beyond, we heard the sound of the door again, and the movement of feet on the floor. We rushed ahead, pushing him back and turning the corner.

  The hallways here were even mustier, the air thick with disturbed dust and the smell of unused air. A utilitarian hallway, whitewashed bricks and two glass-enclosed cases with fire response equipment were the only things to break up the monotony of the dreary walls, now bathed in red light.

  At the end of the hallway, a door was closing behind three shambling forms, who staggered forward when we appeared. Two men and one woman, the former two both clad in bloodied scrubs and badges still stuck to their chests. The woman was nicely dressed, in a pencil skirt and bright white blouse that had somehow avoided the all too common splashes of blood and gore. Her face was drawn and pale, the lines of death pulling her skin back tightly. She had been pretty once. Possibly a doctor, or an administrator. She had been here when the doors closed.

  She had died inside.

  A bloody wound was clearly visible on her left hand, a piece of gauze tightly wound over several small spots of blood, behind a hand adorned in a moderately priced watch and a nice wedding band.

  That was it. That was all it took. That life was gone. Now she was one of them. And we were us. It was all so fucked.

  The three of them moved slowly, and deliberately. I didn’t bother with the machete at my hip. I activated the spring-loaded blades in the arms of my suit and approached the first slowly. The small man’s jaw was broken, hanging uselessly from his head underneath a bloodied face. I grabbed his left arm and pulled him to the side, pushing the blade behind the ear and through the brain quickly, pulling it out immediately. He fell soundlessly. No hiss, no scream, no moan. Just flesh on the floor.

  Kate was using her machete, taking the second man across the throat, but somehow missing the spine. He closed in, and she cursed, thrusting the blade through his torso and releasing it, grabbing his scrubs with both hands and pushing him back against the wall. Instead of the blades in her arms, she simply grabbed both sides of his head and twisted. I heard the pop as the skull detached from the spine at the top of the column and the body started to slip down the wall. She grabbed the handle of the blade as it slipped down, turning to the last creature with machete in hand.

  The woman had stopped. She looked back and forth between the two of us. Her mouth opened once, and she moaned, the cold air from her dead lungs reeking from disuse and decay.

  I nodded to Kate, and I slipped by her, pushing her from the back toward Kate as I moved toward the door, which was opening inward once again, more bodies on the other side. As I stopped to pull a fire hose from the wall, I heard the whistle of her blade, and the sound of the head hitting the floor.

  The door opened inward into the hallway, and there were several more curious bodies on the other side. I approached the door from the hinged side, trying to avoid letting the creatures on the other side know that there were living bodies on our side of the fence.

  The handle was a thick metal latch that allowed it to be tied down with the heavy nylon hose. I looped it through the handle, and secured it to a thick bolt extending from the wall that supported a large, side-mounted trashcan. Pulling it tight, the latch secured and the door shut tightly. I started tying it off, and then I heard Kopland’s voice.

  “Mr. McKnight!”

  Kate was on the floor, face down and unmoving.

  FORTY-THREE

  “There are no other risks, right?”

  “None that I know of,” he said, panting as he kept up. I was running down the hallway.

  “Not good enough, Doc. What could go wrong?”

  “There are always risks! We can’t know! It hasn’t been tested, but I’m fairly— no I’m very certain that it will work.”

  “Get the stuff,” I said curtly, putting her down on the bed she had shared with Ky.

  “What’s wrong?” said the young woman, coming from Rhodes’ room, where I heard more rustling.

  “She’s having problems with her heart,” I said, feeling her erratic pulse once again. Her breathing was in short gasps, and her eyes were fluttering.

  Jesus.

  I couldn’t lose two. Not now. Not like this.

  “Doctor!”

  Diana sped into the room with the injectors, Kopland behind her.

  “Get her chest exposed. I’ve altered hers by adding a stimulant to get it into her bloodstream faster.” He climbed on the bedside, needle exposed, as I pulled the reinforced zipper down her chest, exposing the thermal layer beneath. It tore in my hands as I pulled up, exposing the gentle, soft curves of her chest.

  It was a chest that had stopped moving.

  Tears were in the corners of my eyes.

  The needle touched her chest as Kopland found the site.

  My hand on her chest started to shake.

  The needle slammed into her chest up to the plunger, and Kopland pushed the fluid into her body.

  “Mike, you need to take yours,” said Diana, tapping a finger against the plunger of the second needle to clear the air bubbles.

  Mindlessly, I pushed the metal reinforced sleeve up my forearm, exposing a thick vein, even as my other hand on Kate felt for life.

  The needle entered my arm as I stared at Kate’s face. Her hair was a halo on the white fabric of the bed, her eyes closed and unmoving.

  Kopland slowly withdrew the needle and checked for a pulse.

  His hand stayed on her neck for nearly a minute.

  “It… could take a while. I’m hesitant to do compressions. If her lungs were damaged, or her heart, we have to rely on the healing mechanisms of the vaccine to…”

  I nodded absently as he trailed off, still staring.

  Diana pulled the needle from my arm and I felt a sudden wave of nausea hit me like a freight train. I swayed slightly, catching myself.

  He looked up to me, frowning. “If it’s nausea or lightheadedness, that’s normal. It’s integrating with your blood now. Give it time. Here,” he said, pulling the chair from the corner of the room. “Sit.”

  I shook my head, staying on the edge of the bed with Kate.

  “How long?” asked Diana softly.

  It took me a moment before I understood.

  “One, two hours, max.” I said softly, fighting the urge to vomit.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  That was how much time we had before the hose eventually succumbed to what I knew would be a rapidly increasing press of bodies against the entryway.

  “Diana, stay with Mr. McKnight,” said Kopland.

  “Mike,” I interrupted.

  “Mike,” he corrected. “I will gather the material we need.”

  “I’ll help,” said Ky from the doorway, her voice cracking.

  “I’ll watch the door,” said Rhodes, disappearing quietly from the doorframe.

  It was all a blur of movement and sound. I had eyes for one thing.

  I was watching Kate’s chest.

  Somewhere, in the dark room, in the dull red light, something moved. The rustle of flesh over fabric was like a gunshot. Then, a hand held my own.

  Her chest inflated suddenly and her eyes were open. She breathed deeply, the air rasping in her mouth, and her hand tightening on mine.

  I laughed as the tears came faster, leaning over and holding her tightly to my chest, burying my face in her hair.

  “Why am I lying… on a bed… with my breasts hanging out?” she gasped in
spurts.

  I laughed again, pressing my hand against her face.

  “You collapsed,” I said, helping her pull the remnants of her under layer off, and zip the suit back up. She looked around absently.

  “Did he give me the…”

  “Yeah, that’s why you’re alive,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, contemplating.

  “And we only have about an hour before we get invaded by zombies. Again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then. Do I have time for a cup of coffee? I really feel like shit.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  The access control room was on the other side of the hospital, on the ground floor. In theory, it was a small room, with a thick, metal bar locking it off from the rest of the hospital. Again, in theory, that bar had been thrown by the guards who were arguing before the hospital went into lockdown.

  If we wanted out of the hospital, that was where we needed to go first.

  The emergency systems governing the access into and out of the hospital were run on a different circuit, and from a different power source than the internal doors or the facility we were in now. Diana had located an old emergency procedures manual that we were poring over for details. The locks could be disengaged from the main control room, or by the campus authorities or police at a remote location. The latter helped us not at all.

  There were two ways there. Through the main floor of the hospital or through a series of air ducts that crisscrossed the raised ceilings of the first floor of the building in an exposed series of metal tubes, deemed by the architect to be ‘modern’ and ‘neo-industrial’ when the hospital was built.

  “So we have to crawl through these narrow tubes, above thousands of these things, when just one bad bolt, or just one weak piece of thin metal could dump us on those assholes like meat out of a delicatessen piñata?” Diana was unimpressed by the forming plan.

  “No. You could try walking across the lobby instead,” said Kate, chewing on a cracker. Behind us, Kopland and Ky were finishing emptying Ky’s large tactical backpack and putting the last of the materials inside. Before the power had gone out, Kopland had completed compressing a large batch of aerosolized vaccine into several small, thermos-sized containers. Several thumb drives, loaded from a battery-powered laptop, held backups of his work, and he distributed one to each of us in case only several—or one—of us made it through.

  “Yeah, no thanks,” she said, disgruntled.

  “So the trick is access to the system,” I said. The emergency manual had a small map, indicating that outside the door that was currently being held shut by a fire hose, there was T-shaped hallway. The long part of the T extended toward the lobby, which meant that when we came into the hall, we’d be in full view of the creatures clustered by the thousands against the glass windows we had seen from the outside. To the left, along one of the short edges of the T, there was a small utility closet fifty feet away that allowed access to the ventilation systems for cleaning and maintenance.

  “Fifty feet.” I said softly.

  “Fifty very long feet,” said Ky, looking up from the bag she was packing.

  “That’s what she said,” muttered Kate from behind Ky, and the girl’s head shot up, frustrated again.

  “Damn it! Someone please tell me what the hell that means!”

  “What?” asked Diana, looking confused.

  “Never mind,” I said, amused. “She’s too young.”

  Ky’s withering look and hateful glare were anything but young.

  “It’s not an easy lift,” I said, staring at the map again, voice serious.

  “And we’re down to spitting on these things,” Kate said. “My shotgun is toast, dropped it outside when we had to go to pistols. I’ve got two clips left for that. Rhodes is down to his sidearm, and Ky’s got her crossbow with one bolt left.” She turned to Diana. “I don’t suppose you guys have any weapons laying around, do you?”

  Diana smiled and looked at Kopland, who nodded at her once.

  “No guns, no. But we do have something we can contribute.”

  She sat up and went to the deep cabinets beneath the large research station, pulling open the doors and revealing five-gallon drums of some obscurely marked chemicals.

  “We can make things go boom.”

  I wasn’t sure who smiled the widest, but I know it was a close contest.

  *

  After a fifteen-minute argument involving tears, pleas and screaming, Ky won. Kate eventually realized that she had no way to object. If Ky were bitten, she would die. If she took the vaccine, she would live a different life. But she would live.

  Kopland administered the doses to everyone, noting that the new cocktail should mitigate the side effects that had hit Kate and I several weeks ago. There should also no longer be a requirement that the vaccinated be in close proximity to the undead. It was untested, but he was sure that it was a pure as it could be, under the circumstances.

  Kopland brought a new injector with him for Rhodes as we left the laboratory, Oppenheimer trailing behind.

  “Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked, glancing at the cat.

  “Not if they’re not interested in animals,” said Kopland. “We could try to shove him into a backpack, but that wouldn’t end well for anyone. No, I think he’ll be fine. Once these doors open, he will have free reign to trap an abundance of mice outside. Better off, really.”

  Rhodes stood silently, watching the door bulge inward, straining the nylon hose to its limits. I carried his lightened pack in one hand, and slid it along the floor to him.

  “Just ammo and water,” I said, “We stripped them down for weight. Almost empty now. Can you carry it?”

  “I’m not a little girl,” he said, wincing as he picked it up.

  “Hey, asshole,” said Ky, glaring at him.

  He returned the look, then winked once.

  “Present company excluded,” he added wisely.

  “Damn skippy,” she said smartly.

  Diana shot forward, rolling up the sleeve of Rhodes good arm.

  “You want immunity?” she asked curtly. “You won’t be able to hang out in the sun anymore. Like, ever.”

  “I don’t tan anyway.” He said, eyes still on the door.

  She shot the needle into his arm, then pulled it out again quickly.

  “Good bedside manner,” he grunted.

  “Bite me,” she responded, smiling slightly.

  He looked at her once, then at the door, meaningfully.

  “I’ll leave that to them.”

  “Everyone clear?” I asked.

  “Open door, toss bombs, shoot zombies, toss bombs, run to tiny room, close door, flee to ceiling,” said Ky, swallowing from a warm soda can she had found somewhere. She tossed it at the arms thrusting through the widening gap between the door and the wall.

  “Pretty much,” Kate said.

  I held my pistol in one hand, my machete in the other. Kate was similarly outfitted, while Rhodes held his sidearm, a spare clip from his pack already held in his wounded arm. Ky had only one bolt left for her crossbow. Diana and Kopland held a five-gallon jug each, both jugs trailing a short, alcohol soaked cloth that tapered past a porous seal and into the liquid beneath.

  “What’s the range of these things? What kind of explosion we talking about here?” asked Rhodes, glancing at the makeshift explosives.

  “Not sure. Never tried it before. Read all about it in chem lab, though.” Diana shrugged as we gathered away from the door, guarding against the explosion. I watched closely as Kate set her machete on the hose and Kopland removed the lighter from his pocket.

  “You’re not sure? So we could all be vaporized standing here?” Kate threw back, eyes wide and startled. “You never mentioned that part.”

  “Well, we have jack shit for choices, right? So let’s go out with a bang.”

  Ky chuckled, and I slapped her arm.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kate said under
her breath. “Fine. You asked for it.”

  She nodded at Kopland as the machete took the hose in one powerful swipe and she rolled away, grabbing the Doctor by the arm and fleeing toward where we all moved behind the shelter of the corner.

  They fell through the opening like marbles from a jar, tumbling into the space and falling over one another’s twisted, rotting forms, the smell of their pestilence reaching us as we dove for cover.

  Then, the hallway disappeared.

  The walls shook and the rain of flesh and bone against the small confines was drowned out by the fireball that pushed its way away from the now utterly destroyed entryway and into the lobby outside. A cloud of flame burst into the side hallway where we huddled, the heat blasting into the small space like an open oven door before receding suddenly, leaving clouds of smoke and debris in its wake.

  The moans that had echoed so loudly from the confines of the narrow passageway were gone, the only sound chips of cement falling steadily from the ceiling. I shook my head, blinking and trying to orient myself. My vision was blurred and I couldn’t hear. I checked on Ky and Kate before standing, groggily, amidst the carnage, and looked around the corner.

  There were no bodies, only body parts. The doorway was shrouded in a thick pall of smoke, and beyond was only darkness.

  “Let’s go!” I screamed, knowing that I wasn’t alone in my deafness. Hopefully, it would fade.

  I sprinted past bloody chunks of hair and flesh and bone. The walls were pockmarked by the explosion of cement and metal. A piece of the metal door had impaled a creature, and then embedded itself in the wall. All that was left of the unlucky undead was the shattered torso, stuck to the smoke-smeared wall.

  At the hole that used to be the doorway, I paused, squinting to see through the smoke. Thick and oily, it billowed through the hole in the wall, eager to expand and fill the spaces beyond. I caught the gentle flicker of orange flame on the other side of the space, and knew that something had caught fire in the explosion, hopefully continuing to burn and create more cover.