by catt dahman
Robert opened the back door and propped it open with a doorstop. Tim saw the first hungry faces of the zombies and began to yell, demanding to be let go.
Running, Robert followed Kevin through the door to the living room without a glance back at the tied, struggling men.
Once out that door, the two slammed furniture against it to keep the door to the kitchen closed so they could safely escape out the front door where the yard was cleared of shamblers.
The men in the chairs in the kitchen, realizing they were left to keep the creatures occupied, began to shout more, begging for help and mercy.
It had been easier to have mercy on an innocent man than one who had blood-soaked hands.
Halfway down the driveway, Robert and his group could hear the two men begin to shriek as the zombies filled the kitchen. They also heard them scream with pain as the ghouls got the two men.
But they kept going. Many innocent people suffered as much or more.
“I feel bad about leaving them,” Lucy Ann said, but she hadn’t look very concerned, “how far do you think it is?”
“We’ll be there after lunch,” Robert said. He jumped forward and to the side to take out a shambler, beating the thing’s head, bashing, and breaking its arms. When it was on the ground, he stomped at the head furiously.
DeVon lit a cigarette and offered Robert one, but he refused; she patted his arm, telling him it was okay what they had done.
“They were bad men; you could see it in their eyes even if you missed what they said or how they acted,” DeVon added.
“Capital punishment is here, and unfortunately, we have to be judge and executioner,” Wheeler said, “we may have left those two slime balls to suffer, but we also may have saved a few lives they would have taken. We have to re-determine who the family is now.”
“I just can’t think about it, or I’ll go crazy,” Lucy Ann said, “I can’t think of a lot of things…my daughters and grandbabies…I can’t think of any of this….” Her eyes were full of tears, and DeVon and Bella took her arms to help her along. “The two men shouldn’t have come back to do their evil to us…and make us have to do that.”
“But they did because they are bad men. Were bad.”
“This disease should have let someone young and healthy survive not an old woman like me,” Lucy Ann said who felt bitter.
“Hush, I prefer that you be here,” DeVon said.
A few times the group had to hide and wait for ghouls to pass them, or they had to sneak past some; sometimes, they had to fight a few, and sometimes they took better paths that would save meeting a horde head-on. Twice, they ran.
It could have been be safer in a car, but the group didn’t have one, and the streets were often clogged with traffic or rubble. Sometimes, the sounds of cars drew the creatures from all around. If they could remain stealthy, they would have a better chance.
One stop they made was at a shoe store where they found Cory some newer boots that he said felt like soft sneakers.
DeVon found better fitting, high-topped sneakers, and Wheeler put on some better boots. They got more baseball bats and batting gloves.
DeVon slipped sweat pants over her shorts to protect against blood splatter, and they grabbed extra clothes to stuff into their packs. Bottles of sports drinks were warm but provided hydration.
Cory tried dressing in shoulder pads, knee and shin pads, and a helmet, with gloves, but he dropped one piece at a time as he tried them out and found that the extra equipment might inhibit his movements and senses.
They found the walk a little better after that stop.
“Look, there it is.” Robert pointed out the small hospital later that day after they had eaten, rested, and walked more.
He felt a stab of fear as he noted how many shamblers were there. While a few wore remnants of medical clothing, most of those walking around seemed to be would-be patients, Reds, and those who were bitten and infected.
A flash of movement caught Robert’s attention just below where they were standing, down the little hill. Robert pressed his fingers to his lips to indicate everyone with him should be quiet so he could quietly check out the situation.
He crept through the grass and broken asphalt, almost tripped, and then saw something surprising. Sneaking along, he came up behind a small group of people. Two men and three women stood over a man who was lying on the ground; they were murmuring concerns and looking at one another with indecisive eyes.
“Take it easy; I’m a friend,” Robert said as the trio spun around, “what’s wrong? Is he bitten?”
“No. He cut himself on some metal, and the cut is infected. He needs antibiotics and maybe an IV for fluids,” a woman said, “normal infections can be dangerous, too.”
Robert squatted to look over the wound. The sharp metal had opened the man’s calf so it was angry, red, and swollen with infection, but it was not the infection they feared.
Robert was able to compare this wound with what he saw days before and had filed the information away so he would know the Red infection by sight and scent.
The man’s leg needed to be well cleaned and stitched, and he needed antibiotics for his high fever. The tissue might need to be debrided. If he didn’t get help, the man would need to lose the leg, or he would die.
Robert hadn’t thought the man was well enough to survive an amputation since the wound bled a lot and dehydrated him. The man was tired and had a slow, weak pulse. “And you want to get into the hospital for supplies, right?”
“He’ll die unless we do,” the woman said, “who are you, and what are you doing here with a gun?” She sounded curious but not hostile.
Robert explained as easily as he could and told them his group wanted to go into the hospital as well. “We all need meds, but those things are not going to be easy to get around.”
“Gotta snap their heads in. Damned Sticks won’t go down unless you destroy the brain.”
Robert nodded. “Maybe we can help one another?”
The others agreed, but admitted going into the hospital might be akin to a suicide mission at a time like this.
Robert motioned his friends to join the small group, and they traded greetings, and then they went over various plans of action.
Each crew felt it needed to help those who were injured or needed medications. Robert summed up the situation best when he said that they were just regular people and didn’t know how to do the mission correctly, but they were going to try.
When it was time to go, Cory and Bella ran to a car, found no keys, and went to the next. They were very fast, as their friends silently cheered them on.
At the third car, they found keys, and Bella beat back a creature as it tried to get to her. Both got into the car. Cory turned up the music, and he and Bella yelled out the windows to get the zombies to follow them.
From where the rest stood, they could see Cory behind the wheel, grinning as he and Bella got the creatures to follow them around the parking lot in a surreal visage. It was almost a chance to release some pent-up stress; Wheeler shook his head with a little chuckle.
“Pied Piper,” the man said. He was Dale, and the women were Annie and Shonelle; the other man going with them for the medicine was Ricky. Leaving the man and woman to guard the man on the ground, the survivors quietly skirted the worst of the rubble to hide behind vehicles; stealthy was smart.
The car and the zombies were around the building, leaving the emergency room doors clear. Kevin took the lead, and the others ran after him. “Come on, I hear movement inside.”
After everyone was in, Kevin closed the doors. He hardly had time to turn around before the creatures inside were almost on them, scratching and snapping their jaws.
Lucy Anne and Wheeler stood back while the others used melee weapons to crush skulls, sending blood flying across the room.
A security guard lay dead with a self-inflicted shot to his head, and Kevin scooped up the service gun as they ran by.
It took a lot o
f energy and work, but they knocked the ghouls down so that most were left as crawlers that Wheeler and Lucy Ann could finish off so Cory and Bella wouldn’t blunder into them.
Luckily, most of the creatures were partially eaten and were missing hands and arms except for the few who did all the damage. A few less people fighting and they could have lost the battle.
“Hospitals are a bad idea in zombie infestations,” Wheeler remarked.
Kevin gagged as he kicked away arms and hands that littered the floor. The staff had thrown chairs and tables into a barricade in order to keep the zombie locked in.
Cory and Bella ran in right before they went through the ER doors. They took a second to catch their breaths.
“It’s a slaughter house,” Bella said as she looked around, “my, God, they fought hard.”
“This is why they closed the other hospitals and should have closed this one, but people kept coming. It could be entered only one way; that is why the doctors and nurses didn’t make it out.” Robert shook his head, understanding more now. “They had no chance.”
“We were doomed at second one,” Wheeler said softly, “get one Red who bites everyone in the family; then, you have four. That’s how it moved so fast.”
Dale and Ricky glanced into the tiny rooms, dreading pulling back curtains, but when they did, the men found empty, blood-soaked beds and a few bodies so eaten away that they could hardly wiggle.Dirty sheets, bandages, trash, and smears of
bloody fluids were everywhere.
Dale slid a sharp knife into the eye sockets of a man, spun the blade, and slipped it back out with a slight gag. “Oh my, they wanted help and were eaten alive.”
Despite the horror they were a part of, Dale wondered abstractly, if the country were ever put back to normal, how would anyone ever get so much mess cleaned up, blood washed away, and biological waste removed. Maybe that’s why there was no hope, he thought.
“The IV bags have all been used, and blood is on the needles; they pulled ‘em out,” DeVon said as she checked a bag on the floor. “They may have some of the infected as patients, but they weren’t doing anything with ‘em besides giving them fluids?”
“Didn’t know what else to do,” Kevin said. He scooped up an unopened suture kit, kicking one that was partially used under a bed with disgust. “There is no cure.”
“We can’t use contaminated needles and supplies, or we’ll give someone the infection,” DeVon said.
Ricky groaned as he slammed a bat down into a creature’s head. The thing kept coming, and he was forced to side step so Cory could swing at it.
Bella poked at it with a scalpel, but the thing didn’t react to the stabs, aggravating her. “How can we fight things that feel no pain?”
“Must be nice,” Lucy Ann muttered as she rubbed her painful joints.
Shonelle swung a hoe low, knocking the legs out from under the zombie so that it fell. “Take that you biting son-of-a-bitch, zombie-headed freak.”
“Way to tell ‘em, Sho,” Dale said.
“Got the bastard,” Shonelle said.
A zombie nurse shuffled out from the last cubical, and Kevin and Cory moved fast to put her down. The man that Shonelle knocked down reached for Ricky with blood-encrusted hands. Shonelle huffed; she thought he was dead.
Annie screamed, “Ricky!”
Ricky kicked at the thing, but it pulled his leg to its mouth quickly, and the teeth grazed his skin through his pants. Without thought, Ricky pushed at the zombie, but two of Ricky’s fingers slid into its mouth.
With a strong force, the thing snapped its jaws closed and pulled, ripping the fingers away at the last knuckle. Ricky screamed and slid to the ground to kick at the thing, “He got me; the bastard got me.”
Annie battered at it but managed to hit Ricky, breaking his leg.
“Get it off me,” Ricky screamed as the thing bit his thigh, causing blood to shoot out onto his pants. The man’s artery was nicked, and he already had a pool of crimson beneath him; he was pale.
Dale put the creature down, and Robert got on the floor to see about Ricky.
“I can’t do anything. He’s bleeding out, and he’s infected,” Robert said. Any one of the man’s injuries was enough to put him out of the fight. The amputated fingers, broken leg, and bite had to be causing Ricky agony.
“We’re in a freakin’ hospital though,” DeVon said. “What better place could we be in to help him?” She looked around but didn’t seem to find an answer.
“Yes, but I’m not a doctor with a handy team, and…he…is…infected,” Robert said slowly to make his point. The most skilled surgeon would be unable to help him now…the infection….”
“I’m losing him,” Annie wailed.
“He’ll turn and come back soon,” Wheeler said as he looked at the man, “I’m sorry but….” Ricky was barely conscious.
Shonelle handed Robert a syringe she loaded with something. “Can you do it? I filled it, and I am not any doctor, best I can do. It’s just what I found.”
He didn’t ask what it was but assumed it would, at the least, knock the man out.
Robert found a vein and shot the liquid into Ricky who relaxed, letting his eyes close; he jerked once and went limp. They waited a few long seconds. “No pain, now.” Robert patted Ricky’s arm kindly.
“Turn away,” Dale ordered, and then he slid his knife into the eye socket and out. “Done.”
“We need to do better than this; we can’t be losing people like this,” Cory ranted.
Chapter 17
Hospitals Are A Bad Idea In Zombie Infestation
Be ready when we open this door. There will have to be a supply closet. We can look for what we need,” Dale told them, “now, pay attention, and watch each other’s backs. This could be worse. And don’t dare ask how much worse can it get?”
I’m sorry about Ricky, but we need to be more careful.”
“It was so fast, ” Shonelle said.
“I know. We have to do better,” Cory said again.
When the next doors were flung open, there was silence.
“Check the perimeter, and don’t open any doors,” Robert ordered. “There it is.” He and Cory went to work, prying open the medical cabinet. It took a while to get it open, and both men were soon covered in sweat.
Kevin and some of the rest pushed heavy things to block a door that creatures pounded on, hoping it wasn’t the way they needed to go. They needed time to work in relative safety.
Robert thought while he worked, he imagined where he would be and what he’d be doing if his family were not infected.
He wasn’t sure they would have left the house to explore, so he never would have known these people. On the heels of that, he was thankful he had met such good folks when there were plenty of bad people roaming about.
“What you got?” asked Wheeler as he brought Robert back to the present.
“IV bags. Pack some of them. Bandages…tape…we want this…suture kits.” Robert handed things back to people to be put into backpacks. He found various creams and ointments that they could use, but not the things they needed most. He did find a bottle of anti-inflammatory tablets to help Lucy Ann.
“Like gold,” said Lucy Ann as she clasped the pill bottle.
“Under that desk, I found these; share them around.” DeVon handed out warm colas and bottled water. She opened her soda.
Once she cared only about caring for herself and making a few dollars to buy food and to use for rent, but now, she felt as if it were her place to help these people all she could, thought Lucy Ann.
“Bet you wish we had ice now, huh?” Cory laughed. “The next part, I don’t know if it’s worth trying; there are plenty of zooms.”
“Then more doors and maybe more meds are in the hospital,” Kevin said. “You need to help decide what we do next.”
No one wanted to go back where they left Ricky’s body covered. They all wanted to go forward. “Okay, but we move fast and knock them away if we ca
n; we don’t try to put them all down.”
Cory, you and I will close the doors that open up to the next room so we don’t have more coming in…got it?”
They all nodded. The efforts thus far tried them all, and the soda was gone.
Kevin made sure everyone knew the plan and thought each was ready.
Kevin and Cory opened the doors and ran to close off the open section, dodging the creatures lunging at them.
Their action was so unexpected that the two were hardly touched, and the rest of their team moved across the other side anyway, distracting the horde.
The creatures were (when human) attacked by the awakened Reds and chewed apart, torn up, and shredded while they were alive; they were covered with dried blood, had parts hanging by a thread of skin, and tripped over their own guts as they shambled. The stench was thick.
It was hard to believe that these people didn’t leave the hospital to be with their own families but hid instead. Dedication to the profession got them killed.
“I bet no doctors and nurses survived past the first few days,” Kevin muttered.
Bella was first through to the other side and then Dale, and they were busy taking out the creatures in that section, slamming melee weapons down on the creatures’ heads.
DeVon kicked a zombie hard in the legs, and when it fell, it took down several more; now, Shonelle and she could get across. “Like bowling,” she remarked.
Wheeler was right behind them, swinging his bat to clear a path for Kevin and Cory. They had a good system going, but they were tiring and not as quick with their fight. Wheeler wheezed slightly.
Robert saw Lucy Ann falter and try to run back the way she came, but she couldn’t get by the shambling bodies. Her frantic eyes caught Robert’s eyes, and she whined like a trapped animal.
“I need help,” Robert yelled. He was calm since there was time to get to Lucy Ann, get some back up, get her to safety, and show her that it was okay.Her eyes were wide with fear, and she no longer beat at the ones reaching for her as she panicked.
