“Now you get to do whatever you want. Me and Tom will shadow you to make sure you don’t get into any trouble until the sheriff says we don’t have to anymore.”
“Fair enough. Wouldn’t mind a little rack time.”
“They can stay with me,” Clara told him and us.
The gunshots stopped as we reached Clara’s house, and the guy who hadn’t introduced himself yet reached for his radio. He spoke into it, asking if the western gate was clear, and we all heard that it was.
Dallas, Tim, myself, Clara, Tom, and No-name sat on a pretty couch and three chairs in her house for a few minutes talking, and then I asked if I could take a nap. Clara told me I could use the last bedroom at the end of the hall upstairs, so I excused myself, took a piss using a functional toilet with running water, and hit the proverbial sack.
It was dark when Tim shook me awake. Tom was standing with him.
“Whaazzzit?” I demanded groggily.
“Trouble.”
I sat up immediately, well aware that my weapons were now in the possession of one Dimitri Sabotino, Sheriff of Havre Montana.
Tim put his hands up, palms toward me. “Whoa, we’re OK! No infected attacking us.”
That made me feel better.
Tom piped up, “The sheriff called on the radio. He and the scavenging team are trapped in the hospital.”
That made me feel oddly better too. I let loose with a colossal yawn and stretched. This was the first time I had been allowed to sleep more than four hours in a row since my incarceration at Baldy. And no needles either, or probes or questions, or requests for other fluids.
I could tell Tom wasn’t done. “And?”
Tom passed me my HK. “And we need help getting him back.”
N.M.H. and Zero Tolerance
Now what would be comical about a group of cowboys, complete with cowboy hats, trapped in a hospital and surrounded by a few hundred living dead jonesing for some human flesh with a side order of fries?
They’re trapped in the damn morgue.
Sabotino had taken four guys with him, one of whom was dead, and another unaccounted for. Three of them were trapped in the basement of the hospital, with half a town of undead roaming the halls. The yokels hadn’t been found yet, but the sheriff said that the pus bags were getting close. The half-a-redneck also reported that he had a several huge duffel bags full of medical goodies, but no way out of the hospital. All of this Tom had related to me while we sat at Clara’s table. Sabotino hadn’t contacted Tom again since he first radioed almost an hour ago.
Tom ended his tale by asking me if I would help.
I looked at him dumbfounded. “What the hell can I do?”
“You guys can come with me to get the boys and meds.”
“Wait a minute, dammit, don’t you have almost two thousand people here? Can’t a few of them help? Not to mention I’ve been here ten seconds and you trust me with your sheriff’s life?
“The sheriff asked for you specifically.”
I blinked. What? What did he just say?
“He said that you knew how to deal with the dead up close.”
My dumbfoundedness continued. “Don’t you? Haven’t you had a swarm of them living right next to you for a year?”
“Yeah, but we don’t go over the wall. At least not to the east. We haven’t needed to until now.”
“Fine. But where are your red-blooded American cowboy dudes that want to ride into the sunset after they rescue the sheriff?”
Tom seemed to find something particularly interesting on the floor near his shoes. “Nobody…ah…nobody else will go.”
I was about to tell him that I sure as shit wasn’t going, when I remembered my MRAP. “Your illustrious sheriff took my truck, didn’t he?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
I shook my head and started grumbling under my breath. Carla looked surprised at my language, and I was surprised she could decipher it. Dallas looked shocked too. “Uh, Pard? You OK?”
“Dandy!” I yelled at him, “Just fucking great! I was set to finally get home, and now Wyatt fucking Earp swiped my God damned palomino and lost it to the injuns!”
Best damn analogy ever considering our location and the circumstances.
Dallas stood. “So let’s get ‘er back.”
I put my hands over my eyes and shook my head again. “Yeah. Yeah I’ll go. Tom, I need you to show me where the hospital is, and the best way to get there. Most importantly, I want a map so I can memorize the best way back.”
Dallas fingered his rebar. “When do we leave?”
“We don’t. In case you’ve forgotten, you’ve got a busted wheel there, King Kong. And Tim stays too. I’ll take Tom and that’s it.”
“Whoa there, Pard, I can help.”
“Dallas, please don’t be upset, and for Christ’s sake don’t kill me, but you’ll only slow us down. You’re not walking properly, and we will undoubtedly need to run.”
He nodded. “You’re right Hoss. Plus, if anything happens t’me, nobody will be aroun’ t’ take Clara t’ Frisco.” He sat down. “Good luck.”
“People from San Francisco hate it when outsiders call their city ‘Frisco.’”
Dallas looked thoughtful.
Tom left and came back in five minutes with a huge map of the town. “D.P.W. map,” he told us. We studied the map, Tom drawing routes with his finger. The straightest path went unmentioned, and I asked about it.
“No way. That’s where most of the infected hang out when they aren’t attacking the wall. They just stumble around until they see or hear something, then they move like a flock of birds towards whatever it was spooked them.”
Perfect.
We took two hours making a plan, with several diversions, and a run across the rooftops.
Soon Tom and I were standing at the wall, yet another piece of Havre artwork, staring down into the dead faces of about fifty infected scratching the wood and metal and staring right back at us with a malevolent hunger. The guys on the wall knew the plan and they started making noise. It was exactly nine PM when Tom and I moved a hundred yards south and dropped over the wall.
I was instantly petrified. Fuck bravery. Fuck doing the right thing, this was pants-shitting terror. Tom moved forward, and I followed him to a drugstore with a smashed front window. We crawled in, careful not to step on the glass and make a shitload of noise for any critters lying in wait in the aisles. It smelled of death in there. Tom had told me that there was rooftop access that we could use to get half a mile closer to our destination before we would need to hit the streets.
In the darkness, I looked around. The damn shelves were full. This store was fifty feet from the wall, but Sabotino had opted to go a mile and a half into the city to the hospital. Not being a doctor or a pharmacist, I didn’t know what kind of drugs the hospital had over the drugstore, but this place should have been raided months ago regardless. There was a ton of shit in here, and not just over-the-counter drugs. Dozens of drinks in closed coolers, packaged food, all kinds of toiletries and sundries, and even small toys for kids. The back of the store was loaded with prescription drugs on metal shelves, and there were even some in yellow manila bags that had never been picked up by customers.
Tom was in front of me, and I was watching him closely. The floor was cheap shitty linoleum tiles, and I could make out the sound of his footsteps but just. What was weird was that for every step he took, I heard two, like there was an echo. I reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. Probably not the best move, because he spun and pointed his gun in my face, his eyes wild. He mouthed Sorry! to me, and tried to turn back around, but I held him fast. He had stopped walking, but the steps hadn’t ceased. I made a fist with my hand and he nodded. There was a scrape that sounded like someone was dragging something, then soft but deliberate footfalls.
I looked down, and we had moved off of the linoleum on to a carpeted area by the pharmacy. I couldn’t see further than a few feet in the darkness, but I did see what was left of a body
on the floor nearby. It had been human, but it wouldn’t be getting up again. The top of its head was gone, and a huge pistol was on the ground next to it on a section of carpet that I could tell was significantly darker than the rest even in the low light. The corpse had no arms or legs, and the chest and abdominal cavities were empty. Poor bastard had killed himself and the fuckers ate him anyway.
I knew there had to be a way back behind the counter, but there was no way I was going to look for it. Tom and I moved forward and began to climb over the table. I slipped on some paper and went down on my knee. It didn’t hurt at all, but it made a nice thump.
A low moan came from very close. It sounded like it was behind and to the right, but I couldn’t see. More moans answered, and they were definitely in front of us.
We hopped over the counter, and not two seconds later I heard the sound of a body hitting the desk behind us. It started hissing, and I turned around to look at it. It had been a woman, and it was horribly emaciated and dry. The skin on the thing looked like gray beef jerky. One eye hung out of its socket and the other was so loose it looked as if it would be joining its brother at any time. It began to climb over as we did when I heard a sharp intake of breath from Tom. I spun and brought up my weapon, right into the looming pale face of another skinny dead thing. I pushed with the rifle, and the thing stumbled backward. Another one had chosen Tom as its late dinner, and moved in for a taste. He raised his weapon, a sawed-off, over-under shotgun, and prepared to remove the head of his attacker.
“No,” I hissed, “that will bring every one of them that hears it!” He lashed out with his gun as I had, and his adversary went ass over teakettle, falling backwards. A loud snap punctuated its landing, bone protruding through its forearm. My zombie didn’t seem to notice, and came straight at me. I yanked my knife from the shoulder sheath and brought it in a sideways arc into the side of the thing’s dome. I had been aiming for the temple, but was a tad further back. A year of rot had taken its toll on this thing’s cranium I guess because my SOG slipped into his melon easily. I tore my blade loose as the creature collapsed and I turned to help Tom with his adversary. I had totally forgotten about beef-jerky lady, and she latched a whole bunch of dried fingers on to my load-bearing vest. I’m not ashamed to admit that I panicked for a moment, and spun left with a tiny but masculine yelp. This thing had no weight to it, and it fell off the counter but remained locked on to me. I heard Tom stomping his size tens on the noggin of the one he had shoved down, and I ducked down and threw the thing over my shoulder. It did indeed go up and over, and when it landed on its back, its face (more importantly its teeth) were two inches from my nose.
That would not do.
It didn’t take long for the thing to want to nibble my honker, and in slow motion it came for me. I whipped the SOG in another arc, but in my haste I missed and caught the creature in the mouth.
So picture this; I’m bent over, the monster on the ground in front of me on its back, its arms reached around the back of me, my knife in between its jaws as it struggles to bite my schnozz off. I pushed down as it pulled up, and the knife cut its face in half, the upper jaw, nose, and forehead of the thing falling away the instant the spine severed.
Eew.
It let go of me, but the eye in the socket wasn’t done looking around. It focused on me, but with no body to propel it, it just stared. It had no way to eat or digest, but the bitch was still hungry, I could tell.
I stood up heaving and looked at Tom. He was heaving too. No more moans came, nor were there any footsteps, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Tom brought me back to a small storeroom with a ladder to the roof. We climbed and sat up there panting. It was a good time for a rest. We were a hundred feet from the wall. A hundred feet and I was out of breath.
“All that shit in there,” I said to Tom, thumbing toward the ladder. “Why didn’t you ever get any of it before now?”
“Didn’t have to. The soldiers from Baldy gave us all kinds of supplies to keep us going. We’re only in here now because we’re almost out of medical...” He looked at me funny, kind of a disgusted squint. “Eew. Oh that’s wrong.”
I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
Tom reached his hand out toward me like he wanted to flick a spider off my shoulder, which immediately made me tense up because I hate spiders. I mean I don’t give a shit who you are, from the Pope to Hitler, if you are OK with spiders crawling on you, than I am not OK with you. Tom had an appalled look on his face that I could make out easily under the mostly full moon. He picked something off of me and held it up for me to see before he tossed it away with a revolted gag. For a second, I thought it was a really small yo-yo, but then it hit me like a bug on a windshield: It was the eyeball from the dry, dead bitch that tried to chew on me. It had gotten stuck in my tactical vest.
At least it hadn’t been a spider.
Fully ooged out, I stood and casually (very casually, because I’m effing cool) checked myself over to make sure no more of her desiccated ass was on me. I couldn’t see any, so I stretched like it had been no big deal, etching my cool into the annals of awesomeness.
Tom wiped his glove on the gravel roof with a look of revulsion. Not cool. He didn’t even try to look cool.
Looking across the roofs, I could see that un-cool Tom had known what he was doing during the planning stage of our little outing. The rooftops were quite close together, no more than a few feet apart for a quarter mile. We hopped the gaps, and used this impromptu bridge to get within sight of the hospital.
I pointed at a really nice-looking building, situated pretty much all by itself. “That’s the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
The building looked brand new. It certainly didn’t look like a hospital, more like a space center or something. It was a damn nice-looking building. Wide, with three stories and tall vertical windows.
The parking lot, however, looked like something out of a war movie. Or a story about the zombie apocalypse. There were at least a hundred vehicles, some with doors open or windows smashed, others burned to metal husks. Trash was strewn everywhere, and some type of military helicopter was turned on its side, also burned. The remnants of medical tents were flapping in the breeze, and I could see dozens, if not hundreds, of wrapped figures piled in heaps next to a ten-wheel military truck also with its driver’s side door open.
The entire parking lot was crawling with the dead as well. They moved in between the vehicles, stumbling over forgotten stuff on the ground, and shuffling in and out of the ruined tents.
I looked to the left of the lot, and noticed a school bus. I was happy when a cloud moved across the moon and shielded my eyes, and not a little bit of my sanity, from the tiny figures moving around in that bus. There was something about zombie children that really bothered me. The whole unfairness thing I guess. They never had a chance.
The dead also staggered in and out of the ruined front doors of the hospital. The cloud moved off and the moonlight illuminated the lot once again. One pus bag leaned against the Northern Montana Hospital sign off to the right. It looked like it was out for a smoke break. Something about it…
I sighed. “Aww shit.”
“What?”
“Look there,” I pointed, “near the sign, do you see him?”
The undead I pointed at jerked when one of his brothers got too close. He undoubtedly snarled, although I couldn’t hear him from so far away. He launched himself at the other zombie, and my suspicions were confirmed. Infected, yes. Undead, no. A damn Runner.
The Runner slashed and punched at the zombie, then it did something I’ve never seen before. It leaned in and bit the dead thing on the shoulder. It bit it over and over again, and even from here I could tell it was chewing. The one on the ground fought feebly to get up, not do defend itself, just to stand, but the Runner kept knocking it back down. It even stomped on the dead dude’s back a few times.
Suddenly, the onslaught stopped, and the Runner used its fi
lthy sleeve to wipe its face. That scared the shit out of me more than anything else I had seen during this entire plague.
I went into sensory overload for a moment as my staggering intellect tried to process what was happening. Either this was a fresh Runner, meaning it had only recently been infected, or it had found a way to survive. It sure looked like it had been eating that zombie. If that were the case, and it was surviving by eating the rotten flesh of the dead, then not only did it contain more than just a rudimentary intelligence, it was exceptionally disease resistant. Not only could these things eat, and preserve their pathetic lives, but they could eat shit that would kill a normal human. Take away the fact that the zombie had been teeming with whatever shit had made it a zombie and you still have unbelievable amounts of nasty germs crawling all over its dead and rotting meat.
So Runners didn’t starve to death, or just this one had figured out how to eat?
Fuck.
Yeah, my mind said back to me, but you’re forgetting that the bastard just wiped his face!
Oh no, I didn’t forget, mind of mine. I remember all too well. Why did the thing wipe its face? Instinct? Doctors at Baldy used to theorize that both zombies and Runners exist on instinct alone, but I thought that was bullshit. Now I know it. I agree that eating is instinct. Wiping your mouth is not. It is a learned response to having something uncomfortable on your face. This thing had remembered. It remembered to wipe its mouth. You could shoot this prick, or break his legs, but it would never stop coming at you. Self-preservation had no meaning to it, but it had wiped his mouth.
Double fuck.
What if it remembers how to open a door? Or use a knife? Or a gun? Or set traps? Or speak French? Ugh... Who wants to speak French? If this bastard had indeed survived, and was learning, then we were in a whole new world of shit.
Or it could have been a fluke. Just some weird shit that meant nothing. I filed it away in my head for later consideration.
Someone was talking to me. It was far off, but I couldn’t help thinking it was also close. I blinked and looked at Tom. “What?”
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 8
