Dead Lez Walking

by G. Benson

  They fell back on their asses, Taren sure her mouth was hanging open in shock. “Fuck me, they actually shot.”

  Entire body shaking, she tried to stand up. Xin was already on her feet, both her and Joy tugging on Taren’s arms.

  Xin was livid. “My dad was right, the world’s gone to hell!”

  Taren wiped dust off her pants with trembling fingers and watched Joy fall into the chair.

  “They shot at us.”

  Xin and Taren stood over her.

  “Maybe they timed it so they’d miss us.” Xin sounded far too fake even for Taren.

  Joy levelled a look on her that could have made a fairy weep. “Didn’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  Joy shook her head. “On the ground outside.”

  Staring at Joy and trying to figure out what she meant, Taren walked carefully to the window. She stood to the side of it and pulled it down as quickly as she could, hand darting out and yanking at the sill that had left a throbbing on her head that would surely be a sizeable bump. When no one shot at the glass, she stepped forward so she could see out. She swallowed heavily. They had kept one armoured team member kneeling, eyes trained on their window and gun laid over their knee, prepared.

  Taren gestured to Xin to stand with her. In but a second, Xin was pressed next to her, looking out. Gazes swept the ground in front of the barricade.

  “Ayton, what do you—”

  “There!”

  Xin pointed and Taren stopped speaking.

  Several bodies were strewn only metres from the building almost directly below them, easy to miss with all the commotion with all the vans. All the bodies were face down but one, who was sprawled on her back, a shoe kicked out to her side. Most had their arms over their heads on the pavement, giving the impression they’d had them raised when they had walked out. One of them was very small.

  Blood pooled out on the ground.

  That shoe lay there, like it had been left behind.

  “They must have got out through windows.” Taren tasted bile in her mouth.

  Xin took a swift step backwards, shaking her head. “Everything has gone to hell.”

  Joy

  1320

  “Are we supposed to sit here until they let us out?” Joy knew she was glaring at the two in front of her like it was their fault, but she didn’t care.

  Xin and Taren looked at each other.

  Taren shrugged. “I guess so.”

  Joy couldn’t help herself: she glanced down at Owen. His skin had taken on a green tinge. She didn’t need to check to see the other two had looked with her.

  Taren cleared her throat. “We need to talk about the elephant in the room.”

  “Or the vampire,” Xin said.

  Taren laughed at Xin’s words, brown eyes lighting up. “Vampire? I was going with zombie.”

  Xin coughed a giggle. “I think the politically correct term is Undead?”

  “Are you two quite done?”

  They looked guiltily at Joy.

  “Maybe it’s not like that? Maybe he isn’t going to do anything?”

  Taren shared a look with Xin, who earnestly looked at Joy and said, “You didn’t see what we saw.”

  “Then why take him?”

  “We panicked!” Taren burst out.

  “Surely you had connected the dots! You must have known what would happen.”

  Taren rolled her eyes. “No, Doctor, we sat in that closet completely oblivious and not coming to any logical conclusions, not at all staring at Owen and waiting for him to wake up hungry and horrifying.”

  Joy threw up her hands. “So seriously, why would you take him?”

  Xin stepped forward. “Hey, come on. We weren’t thinking clearly. All we had to do in that closet for ages was try to help Owen. What were we supposed to do? Leave him there to bleed out? Dump him? Use him to distract them?” Xin’s voice got more strangled, the pressure of what they’d sat with in that cupboard obviously building. “When we ran, we took him with us. We were in survival mode.”

  “Maybe you took him because you aren’t sure?” Joy asked, teeth catching at her lip nervously.

  Owen convulsed on the couch, this time long enough that Joy knew she wasn’t imagining it.

  Joy finally asked what no one else seemed to want to. “What are we going to do with him?”

  No one wanted to answer. Joy still couldn’t really believe it.

  Taren sat heavily on a chair and Xin walked quietly over to the door, peering down the hallway.

  “Guys,” Xin hissed and fell down in a crouch. “I saw someone.”

  Taren and Joy both dropped down, though why, Joy couldn’t explain—they were far from the door. Taren scuttled like a crab next to Joy behind the couch, so they were both staring at Xin. Taren’s arm was warm against hers. Really not an appropriate thing to notice right then.

  “Who?” Joy whispered.

  “I don’t know! Movement. A person.”

  “Xin,” Taren half-yelled, half-whispered. “A virussy person, or an alive, healthy, not-chewing-on-someone’s-intestine person?”

  Xin blanched. “I don’t know.”

  A thumping noise on the couch made Joy and Taren jump and fall backwards. Joy wasn’t proud that she grabbed at Taren’s arm. Again. She must not form a habit.

  Xin was even more ashen than before. “What was that?”

  The thumping noise continued.

  “Xin, we can’t see, we’re behind the couch. Can’t you see?” Taren hadn’t shaken off Joy’s hand. It was doubtful she’d even be able to, Joy was clutching her so hard.

  Standing slowly, Xin put her hand over her mouth. Taren stood and pulled Joy up with her.

  Owen was seizing, eyes rolled back in his head, the whites a bloodshot red.

  “What do we do?”

  Xin shook her head at Taren’s question.

  “Ayton?”

  Joy had no idea. The doctor side of her wanted to jump forward, to wait for the seizure to end, then assess, to start CPR if indicated. Run fluids. Get an ABG. Assuming he was in hypovolemic shock, he needed blood. And a lot more things they were lacking.

  The other side of Joy that was emerging today had the feeling that none of that would help. All it would do was get her much too close to Owen.

  Taren was staring at her and wanted an answer. She didn’t have one.

  Breathing rapidly, Taren wrapped her fingers around her forearm. She spoke when Joy said nothing. “We leave.”

  Xin finally spoke. “But there’s someone out there.”

  “Who could be healthy. We know Owen—Owen’s not.”

  “So we just leave him here?”

  “We could, I don’t know…put him in the hallway?” Taren said.

  Joy shook her head sharply. “Then we’re completely stuck in here.”

  “I repeat,” Xin said, “we just leave him here?”

  Taren said nothing, eyes glued on Xin, and Joy looked between the two. “What’s the alternative? Kill him?” The words seemed to echo around the room, bouncing off one another. All three of them stared at each other. Joy nodded once, mouth dry. “We go.”

  Taren edged around the couch, Owen still convulsing, and wrenched open the drawer under the sink. When she turned, she held a vegetable knife and two butter knives. Joy regarded Xin, who was wearing an expression that showed she thought Taren was as irrational as Joy was thinking.

  “Do you want to face that thing in the elevator without anything?” Taren asked, thrusting the knives out in the air.

  Joy shuddered. “These are people.”

  “I know.”

  Taren watched her until she finally bobbed her head once. As Taren walked back around the couch, Owen stopped convulsing. He lay completely still, and they all froze for a moment, watching him.

  “He’s not breathing,” Joy hissed.

  Taren squinted at him. Joy couldn’t look away. He w
as completely still.

  “We should start CPR. We can’t—” Taren’s hand gripping Joy’s arm stopped her from moving forward and doing just that.

  All her training screamed at her to do something. Counting in her head, Taren’s hand a vice on her arm, she hit thirty seconds in which there wasn’t a single breath. Nothing.

  It was so quiet it hurt Joy’s ears.

  The sound of the door handle turning.

  “Let’s go, now,” Xin hissed. “He’s dead.”

  “Shouldn’t we—” Joy cut off her own suggestion of helping him. They had to leave.

  Joy moved first, walking through the door and checking the quiet, empty corridor. There was no one and nothing except a few abandoned skips and a trolley for linen. Behind her came Taren, jaw set, and then Xin, lips pressed in a thin line. Xin had one of the butter knives in her hand, and Taren slipped Joy the other. Joy beheld it uselessly.

  Xin started to pull the door shut. Her voice low, she whispered, “They didn’t seem so smart in A&E. Maybe they can’t figure out how to open the door when they’re this sick.”

  The door clicking shut was unnaturally loud.

  They huddled together at the end of the corridor, staring down as if waiting for answers to appear. It was dim, no windows. Just lots of sterile linoleum.

  Nothing moved. Nothing happened.

  Joy’s heart hammered in her chest. The knife in her hand felt foreign, slippery. The breathing of the other two was loud in her ears.

  A thud against the door to their left made them jump. Joy bit back a scream that came out as a squeak when Taren clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Staring at them, inches away, was Owen. He looked disturbingly like the man from the elevator. The bloodshot sclera made the blue of his eyes look like ice. Owen stepped back and walked forward again more forcefully, his face slamming into the glass. He didn’t even flinch as blood started to drip out of his nose, inexplicably slowly. The grin on his mouth was grotesque as blood fell between his lips to drip down his chin. His tongue swiped at it greedily. Joy’s stomach turned, Taren’s hand over her mouth all that was keeping everything inside her from coming out right at that moment.

  Taren yanked Joy’s arm and pulled them away from the door. Joy was dragged away by both the other women as she stared at Owen. A hand came up to the glass to wipe at the blood smeared there and Owen licked it off his fingers.

  After far too long, Joy ripped her gaze from the scene and clenched the knife harder.

  They walked slowly down the hallway, Joy sure the pounding of her heart could be heard by the others. She had no idea who Xin had seen down here. Was it one of them? Or was it a healthy person, someone like them, desperate for help? Their feet carried them further from the horror of Owen and towards the door that led to the Orthopaedic and Vascular Wards.

  “I don’t want to go down there,” Xin hissed.

  They stopped halfway down the corridor.

  Taren licked her lips. “Well, where else can we go?”

  Joy looked longingly back down the hallway to the room they’d vacated. It had felt safe there. Now Owen was busy cleaning the glass of his own blood and may or may not still be Owen.

  “Can we go up?” Xin asked.

  Joy shook her head. “This part of the building is two floors, remember? You have to take the walkway to Block B and the rest of it. Which is blocked. But maybe we can break through?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  They stood bunched together.

  They couldn’t go up, or down. They had no idea what lay ahead of them.

  Joy tried to ignore how nice Taren’s hand felt clutching her arm. Considering how terrified she was, she probably shouldn’t be noticing that. Especially because she was sure Taren hated her.

  Not that she could blame her.

  Claiming you weren’t ready for something serious when you’d given no indication of that before sleeping with someone would do that. The issue was, she’d meant that she wasn’t ready, at the time.

  Taren straightened and looked them both in the eye. “We go to the wards, or we stand here.”

  And now Taren was getting on Joy’s nerves a little. How was she so calm?

  “We could go into the toilets that are here?” Xin suggested.

  “I don’t like the idea of being stuck in there if something happens,” Taren said.

  “But we’d be safe,” Xin argued.

  “She’s got a point,” Joy said.

  Taren chewed her lip, considering. “What if we could get through to Block B? I know they said they evacuated, but maybe there’s a way through the walkway? Or there are more survivors holed up in the canteen? Safety in numbers?”

  More people sounded reassuring, at least to Joy. “They’ve probably barricaded the walkway? Or have people waiting to shoot at us?”

  “That too,” Xin agreed.

  Taren looked from one to the other. “But it’s at least an option of some way out. Being holed up in the toilets will be like being in that supply closet again. Stuck and waiting for something to come to us.”

  Xin twitched at that. “Okay.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m in; we try.”

  They both turned to Joy, who finally said, “Yeah. We at least try.”

  “Well, let’s go then.” Xin may have sounded brave, but her knuckles were pale where she clutched her pathetically small butter knife.

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  No one moved.

  Taren finally sighed and took a step forward. Joy followed with Xin next to her.

  They crept towards the double doors with small circular windows at the end of the corridor. Bumping into each other, yet all somehow managing to still press closer. A sign had an arrow pointing left for the Orthopaedic Ward and right for Vascular.

  Joy’s mouth was dry. Everything was silent again: Owen had apparently stopped attacking the door. Xin’s breathing was ragged in her ear. As the door approached, Taren stood on her tiptoes, knife clutched to her chest. She craned her neck, nose pressed against the glass to peer through the tiny windows.

  “I can’t really see anything.”

  Her breath misted up the glass.

  Taren turned and shrugged at them. Even her lips looked bloodless. They trembled. This entire time she’d seemed so put together, and now this indication of weakness. Joy was struck with the urge to touch her cheek, brush her thumb over Taren’s lips. Try to soothe her. Bring some warmth into her clammy skin.

  “Here we go.” Taren turned and pulled the door open, and together they all stepped through.

  There was nobody either left or right; the hallway was empty. Colourful signs about health care hung on the walls, a smiling woman grinning about her dental care. Why was that even here? To the left and right of them were empty seats that should have people scattered about, waiting for visiting hours, or filled with patients who had managed a small walk. A wheelchair sat abandoned in the middle of the corridor.

  Xin gave a giggle and Taren and Joy glared at her.

  “Sorry. I’m just so nervous. Everything is so quiet.” A sheepish expression on her face, she asked softly, “Left or right?”

  “Right,” Joy murmured immediately.

  Taren rolled her eyes. “Vascular obsessed.”

  “I know the ward backwards!”

  “All the wards have the exact same layout.”

  That was true, but not the point right now. Joy threw back, “Do you want to wander around aimlessly?”

  “I want to wander the hell out of here.”

  Taren ran a hand down Xin’s arm in comfort at her words. “We’ll get out of here.”

  Xin gave a sharp nod.

  They all needed to fall apart in a bar somewhere.

  Finally, they turned right and started walking forward, and a touch of the tension ebbed from Joy’s shoulders. “There might be people there—you said they didn’t evacuate here.”

  Ta
ren’s voice was cold. “After seeing the guy in the elevator, that doesn’t help. God knows what’s in here.”

  The tension was back in her shoulders.

  They stepped up together to the double doors, noses pressed against the glass of the round windows.

  “Oh, fuck.” Joy’s stomach revolted, and she thought she would copy Taren in her earlier almost-vomit.

  Vascular Ward was a carnage scene.

  Bloody hand trails covered the once-pristine white walls. A few people lay on the ground, gore trailing away from them, bloody footsteps making it seem as if whatever had been in the middle of eating them had walked away, distracted.

  Steve, Joy’s favourite nurse, lay sprawled on his back across the nurses’ station desk, his stomach ripped open and eyes staring up at nothing. His hand clutched a bloody pen, a useless weapon.

  None of them moved. The air felt like it was shifting around her. Joy couldn’t take in what she was seeing. Her stomach rolled over again at all the red, the blood in pools.

  Her legs tingled and for a horrifying second, she thought she may pass out. She leaned against the closest thing to her—Taren. Who let her. Joy focused on breathing, the tingling subsiding like it would in the early days of the OR when her aversion to blood would start to get the better of her and she’d push it back.

  Something stirred in one of the doorways to a patient’s room. None of them moved as they stared in horror as a woman slowly emerged, glasses taking up most of her face. Her mouth was chewing something sloppily. There was so much blood.

  Her head raised bit by bit, movements smooth. It lolled on her neck as she looked around the room. Something like flesh clung to her hospital gown. Her gaze made its way in their direction.

  Joy knew they should move. Yet she was frozen.

  The woman focused on them. Her mouth twitched. She stepped forward, faster than she looked like she could. Her feet crunched over pieces of ceramic from a half-broken vase knocked from the nurses’ station. Flowers that were scattered across pink-tinged water flattened under her feet. She kicked a large piece of the vase, sending it skittering over the floor, and stumbled. That was when Taren hissed out one word.

  “Run.”

  They turned and ran down the hall, all three grabbing at each other. Joy slowed at the door on her left that they’d entered the corridor through. The man from the elevator stood down the corridor they’d abandoned. His head turned, and for one stomach-curdling second, they made eye contact. The recoil in her gut made her realise where the phrase ‘to shit yourself’ came from in reference to fear. Taren had slowed down, and Xin clutched the back of her shirt. Joy pushed Taren’s back.