by Russ Munson
They were skeletal and infirm, almost feeble, their knees boney protrusions in the skirt of their gowns. An entire HMO had come to get me. Individually, they were not intimidating, but their numbers made them formidable. They moved toward me as a single mass and blocked the fifth-floor landing.
Behind me, the mob was still coming. The paramedic had the shotgun now and he was wielding it like a club.
My best option was to hit them fast. This was real life, not the movies where I could fight one of them while the others stood and waited for their turn. The moment I planted my fist in one of them, the others would lunge for my neck.
They were shoulder to shoulder like linemen. I had to make a hole. I lowered my own shoulder and charged up the stairs. I struck the first patient in the groin and drove him backward, creating a gap. He fell against the stairs and I scrambled over him onto the landing above.
The others turned around at once, a weird contortion as if they had all been knocked over and were struggling to get back to their feet. They merged and swallowed the gap I had opened by stepping on top of their fallen doppelgänger.
I had the higher ground now. One option was to keep running, but I wanted a barrier between me and that shotgun-swinging paramedic.
I raised my fists and took a stance. They groped at me and I kicked at the rightmost patient, delivering a heel to his chest.
He fell backward and tumbled down the stairs. The others reached for my outstretched leg, but I yanked it back, and still balancing on one foot, delivered a right hook to the next man in line. He went over backwards and tumbled down the stairs too. Then the other two patients jumped. My right knee was still cocked from the kick and I drove it into the next patient’s groin. He doubled over and blocked the last patient, who was now leaning forward, off balance. I delivered a left uppercut to his chin and it was hard enough to lift him off his feet, to crack his jaw, and send him down the stairs.
I didn’t wait to see if they had snapped out of being possessed. That’s what it was. It had to be. A demon had taken control of our bodies and was using us like meat puppets. It needed an exorcism. I vowed to find some priest who could wrench it free—and if not, I would yank it out by myself, rip out my own spine if I had to.
I turned around and kept climbing. On the sixth floor landing, the next door opened. A nurse in flowered scrubs shoved a mobile bed through the frame and blocked my passage.
An old man lay on the bed, half-reclined. I paused and closed my eyes. It was almost silly. I was trapped inside a single-copy zombie movie with a weak storyline where the only thing that mattered was the fighting.
The old man on the bed reached for his catheter and yanked the tube out of his leg and tossed the bag of piss at me. I ducked and it splattered on the wall. A thick and dark yellow sludge left a slug-trail down the wall. I wrinkled my nose. I tried to muster some kind of compassion, but had lost sense of which moves were mine and which moves were controlled by the demon and I could only think in lame one-liners.
“Now you’ve really pissed me off.”
All that mattered now was winning. I vaulted over the railing, and with five stories of air beneath me, leapt across the gap to the other staircase. I grabbed the side of the concrete with my fingertips, dangled there for a moment, and then summoned the strength to pull myself up. I climbed over the railing, swung my feet over, and went back to climbing. The nurse tossed a bag of saline at my head and I ducked and it exploded on the steps and sparkled in the reddish light.
“No need to get salty!” I yelled.
I was halfway there. My chest was screaming, on fire. I pictured little embers of fallout nestling in the sponginess of my lungs, little time bombs that were conspiring to kill me later.
I tried not to think about it and kept running. On the seventh landing, I paused, half expecting an attack. It seemed as if the entire hospital had been mobilized against me.
It didn’t come. I even waited for it. Then I realized I was being stupid and went back to climbing. But the moment I turned around, the door flew open and someone grabbed my ankles and yanked my legs out from under me.
I fell face first and caught myself on the sharp edge of the stairs. The person had me by the ankles and dragged me back down to the landing. I kept my chin up, but my chest bounced against the sharp edge of the stairs and my ribs were bruised before I managed a donkey kick to break his grip.
I hopped up and turned around, my fists ready. It was a man in a three-piece suit. He must have been one of the administrators. He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and lunged at my neck. I dodged the blow and he hurtled toward the stairs. He caught himself and pushed off and turned around to face me, his hand cocked back with the pen as if it were a knife.
“If I were you I wouldn’t gouge the patients,” I said.
He attacked. I slipped the duffle bag off my shoulder, waited until the last second, and then hopped off the balls of my feet, raised one knee, and did a quick jump kick with the other leg by snapping my right foot upward. It connected under his chin and he fell back against the stairs, the edge striking his tailbone hard enough that he dropped the pen.
I picked up my duffle bag and stepped on his chest as I climbed over him. I was ashamed to admit that kicking him in the face almost felt good. There was nothing better than sticking it to the suits.
I kept climbing. By the time I got to the eighth landing, I was completely spent. My legs were weak, my arms tired. But there were still six more floors to go. Behind me, the stairwell echoed with groaning. The horde was gaining numbers, still climbing.
I couldn’t stop to rest. I had to keep going. But each landing felt farther and farther apart, like I was climbing an escalator going down. I glanced at the bubble camera. It was mounted on the landing wall like a single blue eye. My reflection warped around the dome and showed me just how tired I was: my shoulders were slumped and my neck hang-dog.
Then the eighth-floor door opened. A kid came out. He couldn’t have been older than nine or ten. He was wearing a hospital gown. And he was bald.
I was out of one-liners.
“Enough,” I said.
Yet as tired as I was, I felt my fists clench.
“No. Stop it. I’m done fighting.”
I took a step forward, my fists ready. I looked up to the bubble camera and pleaded with the cycloptic eye. Surely there was a limit to this depravity.
“Not the kids, goddammit. Don’t make me.”
The kid’s right hand was buried under his gown and there was a cylindrical bulge at his hip. That was part of the game, I guessed. Make him steal a gun from a fallen cop and distract me with my emotions.
“Dammit,” I said.
Before the kid could squeeze the trigger, I kicked him in the side. My foot hit the hard bulge on his hip and a gun fell out from the bottom of his gown and clanged on the landing.
The kid the dove for it. I dove too, like we were fighting for candy from a piñata. I grabbed it first and yanked it away from him and tossed it over the railing. It disappeared into the redness below and there was a faint clang.
“You ever hear the story about the cop who shot the kid who was playing laser tag?” I said. “You stay way from guns.”
The kid’s lip quivered.
I pointed a finger at his face. “Stop it. Don’t cry.”
“My momma’s dead,” he said.
Was this for real? Or was someone controlling him? Was the kid sent to distract me while the mob climbed higher?
“What do you want?”
He didn’t answer, just sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The adults have let you down.”
I left him crying there and kept on climbing. I grabbed the railing for support and pulled myself up each step as if it were a rope leading to a mountain summit.
On the ninth landing, the door flew open and a tall man in a tight black T-shirt stepped out. An adult. It was almost a relief. Someone I could punch. His biceps were huge, much bigger than min
e. Curls for the girls, I thought. He must have been a rehab trainer. He had a big chest, skinny legs, and a perfectly gelled quiff, the very advertisement of the health club’s dream client.
I had taken down guys far bigger than he was before, but not under these conditions, not after climbing nine flights of stairs and fighting for thirty minutes without a break.
The trainer put his fists up. It was a classic boxing stance. But not practical under these conditions. He looked like he had watched a lot of boxing on TV, took kick-boxing classes, kicked a bag in the gym.
“Heavy bags don’t fight back,” I said.
He swung at me. I ducked. He turned around, swung again. His form wasn’t bad, but ineffective. He had spent most of his time throwing punches at a mirror.
“I’m gonna do your face a favor,” I said.
He swung another right and I sidestepped the blow, swatted his arm away, and jumped onto his back. I wrapped my legs around him, my heels hooking onto his thighs, and took him to the ground.
We hit the concrete hard. I was underneath him and a jolt went up my spine. My tailbone would be bruised for days. Stupid, stupid. I had forgotten in my fatigue that we were not in the ring.
With my hand still on his wrist, I scooted out from underneath him, wiggled to the side, and pulled his wrist into my chest. Then I swung my other leg over his head and brought it down on his throat, his arm trapped between my legs. Then I rocked back and put him in a classic arm bar.
He grunted. As I expected, he had no idea how to grapple. He quickly lost control. Brian had taught me to work on my ground game like a Brazilian, that power striking wasn’t enough if I wanted to be champion. He had been right: half my wins were tap outs.
I rocked back farther, expecting the trainer to signal defeat. But in the focus of our tangled limbs, I had forgotten that he weren’t in the ring and that if the trainer wasn’t in control of his body, there was no advantage to tap out. I rocked back too far and he screamed and his arm came loose in my grip, popped from its shoulder socket.
I let go of him and stood up. He lay on the ground, writhing in pain.
“At least I saved your face,” I said.
I left him there on the landing and kept climbing. With each step, my tailbone ached. I’d probably have a bruise the size and color of a plum. It had been an easy submission, but I should have been smarter about it. Dropping him on the concrete was the kind of mistake that made the difference between a champion and a bum on the street.
I made it to the tenth landing. I locked my hands behind my head to catch my breath. Then the door swung open. By now, I was immune to the frustration of it. It was inevitable.
A large woman stepped through the frame. She was wearing flowered scrubs the size of a parachute. She must have been four hundred pounds. She was so wide, she had to turn sideways to get all the way through. Once on the landing, she took up most of it.
I had never fought sumo before. They had tried to get me in the circle once for a charity match, but I had declined the invitation and donated a million bucks instead. Those wrestlers had dark and sweaty places that could swallow you whole. No thanks.
I lazily raised my fists. She’d probably try a bear hug and force me down the stairs.
She looked at my bloody wraps. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What?”
“Half the building’s blown up, the world’s on fire, and you’re out here fightin folks?”
“You’re not one of them?”
“One of who?”
I lowered my fists. “You’re in control?”
“Of course I’m in control. You escape from the mental ward or somethin?”
“No, ma’am.”
She squeezed past me and grabbed the railing. “Crazy fool. You’re goin up when you should be goin down.”
“To each his own,” I said and kept climbing.
She huffed and lumbered down the stairs, each step heavy enough the vibrations came through the railing.
On the eleventh-floor landing, the door was already open. It had opened wide enough to strike the cinderblock wall, and was closing slowly. But the landing was empty. A strong wind came, a vortex of cinders, and I got a glimpse down the hallway. It was dark, but I could see the orange sky in the distance.
The whole back of the hospital had been ripped off.
I kept climbing. But I had only gone up three steps, when someone landed on my back, a sudden weight that sent me face first into the stairs. He wrapped his legs around my waist, one arm around my chest, and put his teeth on my neck and bit at my carotid.
I howled and whipped to the side and threw myself backward into the railing. His back slammed against the metal and he loosened his grip, his teeth taking a chunk out of my neck.
When most people are choked, panic sets in and they instinctively go for the arm on their neck. But it’s better to go for the balls. I dropped a fist and grabbed and squeezed.
He screeched and fell off my back.
I turned around. It was a small guy in a gown, the backside unbuttoned and flapping in the stairwell breeze. He had a ratty beard and ratty hair, his lips bloody from the bite. He must have been hanging from the staircase overhead and dropped on me the moment I passed under him.
He oscillated back and forth, his arms dangling like some combination between a caveman and a monkey. I touched my neck. There was a bloody flap, but nothing too deep. He had missed the vein. The guy looked like he had escaped a padded room and I hoped he didn’t have rabies.
He came at me again. I pressed my back to the cinderblock wall, my feet on two stairs. He jumped at me and I swung the duffle bag around and used it as a sparring shield. He grabbed at the bag and tried to rip it away from me, but with both hands on the bag, he had nothing to defend himself, and I delivered a head butt to his nose.
His face broke open. His nose rammed back into his face, leaving two bloody holes, but no bridge, like something simian. He fell backward, but was still clinging to my bag and pulled me with him. We tumbled back down to the landing. I landed on top of him, sat up, and dropped an elbow on the back of his hand. His fingers popped open and he let go of the bag. I scrambled to my feet, yanked the bag away from him, and gave him a kick across the face. He tumbled down the stairs.
I didn’t bother watching him hit the landing. I turned around and climbed again. Nearing the summit gave me a second wind, like I had found a cache of extra hearts along the way. For the first time since the bottom, I took two stairs at a time.
The twelfth-floor door opened. A dark figure stepped out. Fire raged behind him. The whole twelfth floor was in flames and thick pillows of smoke had gathered in the ceiling like a dark storm had come indoors.
The man was dressed in a flame retardant uniform with reflective stripes. There was an oxygen mask on his face, a tank strapped to his back, and he was wearing tall, rubber boots. With the mask and hard hat, I couldn’t punch him in the face or strike him in the head. His sleeves were thick enough that he’d barely feel a kick. But worse, he was wielding an axe.
And then two more firemen stepped out of the flames behind him. There were two more axes, two more oxygen tanks.
I felt naked in comparison. I raised my hands.
“Who’s in control here?”
The fireman said something unintelligible behind his mask. Then he swung the axe. I hopped back, a near miss, and it swished across my shirt. The swing was hard enough that it clanged against the cinderblock wall. He pulled it back and swung again. I ducked the blade as it swung over my head, a quick breeze through my hair. I spun into a sweep kick and took his legs out.
He fell backward, but his buddies behind him caught him and pushed him back up. He swung the axe around and brought it straight down as if he were chopping wood, and I rolled out of the way. The blade swiped my shorts and clanged against the concrete landing. The vibration ran through the handle and made his arms shudder.
Before I could get back to my feet, the man behind him ra
ised his axe and brought it down. I rolled in the other direction, another near miss. Then the rightmost axe came down, and I rolled back the other way. But then the middle axe came down again, right at my torso.
It wasn’t some old school video game with a decipherable pattern. These were real people. Unpredictable. I rolled all the way to the left, the middle axe grazing my leg, but put myself right into the path of the last axe. One of the swings was bound to connect. So instead of rolling back the other way, I scooted backward and spread my legs and the axe struck the concrete right an inch from my cup.
I squeezed my thighs around the blade and tensed my abs, gripping the axe. Then I rolled backward, the force hard enough to yank the axe from the fireman’s shuddering grip.
I hopped to my feet just as the second blade came down. I raised my stolen axe and blocked the blow with the handle, an inch from my face. But my hands were both up, leaving my midsection open, and the last fireman kicked me in the gut.
It sent me backward. I was on the edge of the stairs. Gravity hated me. I let go of the axe and tucked my chin into my chest and covered my head, tumbling backward.
I bounced off the stairs, each edge gouging my bones, and landed in a heap on the lower landing. Every bone hurt, bruised. I had stayed loose during the fall and nothing was broken.
I looked up the stairs. The three fireman were blocking the exit.
Behind me, the mob was only a flight away.
I was battered, exhausted. The mob behind me was too large to consider going back down, not unless I jumped, but there was no way I could survive that fall.
The axe was lying on the third step from the landing. An explosion. Another one. Another. There were loud clangs. Denting. As if some metal beast were kicking at the door. The firemen looked behind them. Oxygen tanks on the twelfth floor were going off like fireworks and whistling and pummeling the door.
I used the distraction to scramble to my feet, climb up and snatch the axe. The firemen turned around. I had a weapon now. I raised the axe like a baseball bat, ready to swing for the bleachers, but the handle had been damaged, and the blade flew off behind me and disappeared down the shaft.
