As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Frater, Rhiannon

  Blanche lifted her gun and opened the door, revealing Ray’s terrified face and, beyond him, figures moving through the growing darkness.

  “Thank God, Blanche, I—”

  She fired and Ray’s head snapped back. He looked suitably shocked before his eyes went utterly blank and he fell. Mottled, decaying zombies were closing in.

  “Stay off my property!” she screamed, aiming at the nearest one. When she squeezed the trigger, the gun clicked empty.

  She was hit full force by the horrible reek of the undead creatures; then they were on her, knocking her back into the house and onto her expensive Persian rug. One of the zombies screeched at her and she slapped it. “Get off me!”

  It grabbed her hand and bit down.

  Screaming, she tried to get away, but then more were on her and suddenly she realized what Curtis’s note had meant.

  He had left her one bullet.

  She had used it to kill Ray.

  Fuck!

  Her screams of fury filled the night until they finally gave way to screams of pain.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1.

  Gateway to Death

  Jenni watched as the front door to the hospital swung open and the zombie in the pink housecoat growled and grabbed for Ken.

  With a grunt, Ken shoved the spear into the dead old woman’s eye socket.

  The male zombie in the other wheelchair fumbled toward the open door, trying to reach the opening where the humans were.

  Roger put his sneaker squarely on the zombie woman’s gnarled knees and shoved her and her wheelchair back.

  With a loud hiss, the old man launched himself toward Bill, but landed flat on his stomach. He clawed at the floor, trying to move, but Bill beat his head in with his boot heel.

  “That was truly disgusting,” Ken muttered as he watched Bill walk over to the lawn and wipe the gore off his boot on the dry, overgrown grass.

  Tilting her head, Monica read the male’s admission bracelet. “He’s tagged as bitten.”

  “They took off and left the infected behind,” Jenni said, pointing to the sign on the door. It read: EVACUATED TO MADISON RESCUE CENTER. DO NOT ENTER HOSPITAL. GO TO MADISON RESCUE CENTER.

  “I wonder how many infected there were,” Roger said, looking nervous.

  Jenni checked her weapons one more time: her ax, a dagger in a sheath on her thigh, two revolvers, a rifle, and a short spear. “Enough to kill us,” she said honestly.

  Lenore snorted. “Same old, same old.”

  Moving back over to the group gathered in the hospital doorway, Bill said, “Okay, no guns unless absolutely necessary. Do not open any doors that are not in our brief. If you run into trouble, radio in immediately. We’re here to get the supplies and get out.”

  Monica moved closer to the front door and peered past the two dead zombies, then shoved the old man to one side and stepped into the hall. Her large brown eyes looked terrified, but her chin was set with determination. In that moment, she reminded Jenni of Juan.

  “We should hurry,” she said. “The sun will go down soon, and we don’t want to be wandering around here in the dark.”

  They walked cautiously down the hall, toward a large reception area. According to Charlotte’s map, the hospital was divided into four areas. The doors straight ahead led to a long wing of patient rooms. To the left were the cafeteria and gift shop. To the right were the admissions area, doors to the ER, and the elevators and stairway. The operating rooms, exam rooms, and ICU were upstairs.

  Jenni and Monica, who were in the lead, paused as they reached the end of the hall. The spacious waiting room was illuminated only by dim emergency lights. Most of the chairs had been overturned and dried blood was smeared over the walls. Behind a glass window, a woman dressed in nursing scrubs hissed.

  “Someone ate that girl’s arm,” Lenore observed. “Nasty.”

  The nurse clawed at the window with her remaining hand, clearly unable to slide it open.

  “Okay, no one goes into the receptionist’s office,” Monica said grimly.

  Moving toward the stairs on the far side of the room, Jenni stepped over the body of a truly dead security guard who had been shot in the head. Roger followed Jenni, studying the room nervously. She grimaced at a headless corpse shoved under a pile of chairs. Bill let out a soft curse. Felix took up the rear, clutching his crossbow.

  “Head,” Roger whispered, jerking his chin to the left. Jenni glanced over and spotted a decapitated head snarling at her from a potted plant.

  “I don’t wanna know how that happened,” Bill decided.

  “Man, that’s fucked up.” Felix sent a crossbow bolt through the zombie’s eye.

  “Gross,” Ken said from behind them.

  Pausing before the doors to the emergency room, Jenni raised a hand to bring everyone to a halt. The stench of death was strong. That the doors were chained shut was not a good sign.

  Fear flitted over the faces of her companions as they waited for her next move. Scrutinizing her surroundings, she pulled a framed picture off the wall. Holding it up, she used the reflective surface of the glass to get a look through the windows set in the chained doors. Adjusting it slowly, trying to stay out of sight, she finally managed to get a good look.

  She almost dropped the painting.

  Immediately, she slid down to the floor. It’s full of them, she mouthed.

  Lenore crossed herself and Ken gulped.

  Bill signaled that they should crawl past the doors and stay out of sight. Ken and Lenore went first, with Dale and Monica right behind them heading for the patient wing. Holding her breath, Jenni followed, with Roger, Felix, and Bill right behind her. The stench was so bad, she found it hard not to gag. Keeping close to the waiting room chairs, she crawled to the stairwell. It appeared clear.

  Across the room, the first team discovered that the doors to the patient rooms were not chained. After a wordless debate, Lenore stood up and peeked into that hallway, trying to do it without attracting the attention of the zombies in the emergency room. Motioning that all was clear, Lenore led her team through the doors.

  Bill moved up beside Jenni and squeezed her arm gently. “We do this and go.” They began to climb the stairs.

  2.

  Death’s Doorway

  The patient wing seemed to be empty.

  “I don’t hear them,” Lenore whispered. “It’s all quiet here. I bet they’re all stuffed in the emergency room.”

  “They can stay there,” Ken groused. He winced as they passed a decomposing corpse, its shattered skull surrounded by dried blood and brains. “Whoever cleared this place shot everyone in the head.”

  “Smart move,” Dale said in a hushed tone.

  Lenore gingerly pushed an empty stretcher out of her way.

  “Okay, let’s start getting what we need.” Monica blew her dark bangs out of her eyes. “Just what’s on the list. No more.”

  Monica, Lenore, and Ken began to collect items, striking off entries on their “shopping” lists. Dale knocked out a window at the end of the hall and started to lower equipment onto the lawn. That seemed like a good idea to Ken, considering the danger in the emergency room. There were probably enough zombies in there to break the chains if they were provoked.

  Lenore warily avoided closed doors while she shoved things into her tote bag. Ken wheeled equipment down the hall to Dale, sashaying as prettily as he could. Dale appeared amused.

  Monica slid out the window and ran for the truck, gun in hand. Ken thought she was hot for a girl, but Dale … he was a big hunk of a man, just like Ken liked them. It was truly annoying that no one else in the fort was out of the closet. “Stop staring,” Lenore chided.

  Ken waved a hand at her and rolled the heart monitor to the window. He saw that Monica had backed the moving van closer to the hospital and was beginning to load it with the things Dale had placed on the lawn. Dale picked up the heart monitor and carefully set it outside, barely looking at Ken as he did so.

>   Sighing, Ken checked his map. There was supposed to be a supply room nearby, at the end of a short hall that branched off the main corridor. Charlotte had said that a number of the medications she needed could probably be found there. He peeked down the shorter hall and saw two more sets of double doors. The emergency lights made the windows in them glow an eerie red.

  “Cover me,” Ken ordered Lenore.

  Holding his spear firmly in one hand and his map in the other, he moved along the hall, keeping close to the wall. The door to the supply room was near the very end. Beyond the double doors was another corridor that led to …

  Ken unfolded the map just as he reached the double doors.

  … the emergency room.

  Heart pounding, he jerked his head up and stared into the snarling face of a zombie on the other side of the glass. Ken’s gaze swept down the length of the doors. They were unchained.

  The door burst open, smashing Ken into the wall and knocking his spear from his hand. Ken was trapped, wedged into the narrow area between the door and the wall. He was in a perfect little triangle of hell.

  Ken cowered in the small sliver of space. The zombies growled at him through the window as they pressed against the door. His body barely fit into the space, and the pressure was beginning to cut off his breathing.

  The twisted, dead faces squashed against the surface, teeth champing. Blood and spittle smeared the slowly cracking glass.

  Struggling for breath, Ken knew he was going to die.

  The first gunshot startled him. The volley made him hopeful. The distorted, gruesome faces turned away. Moaning, the zombies shambled down the hall.

  Ken finally managed to take a full breath, relief filling him until he realized the door would swing shut without the zombies holding it. He would be exposed. Grabbing the door’s handle firmly, he struggled to hold it in place. More zombies staggered past him, moving toward his friends. His sweat-slicked fingers slipped on the handle.

  A zombie noticed him through the smeared glass. It was an old man, one side of his face eaten away and his throat shredded into dried strips of flesh. It gripped the side of the door firmly and pulled.

  “No, no, no,” Ken whispered, struggling to hold on as his adrenaline-fueled strength drained away.

  The zombie persisted, its slow movements agonizingly frightening. Ken heard its bones cracking and its muscles tearing as it hauled on the door, but since it didn’t feel pain, it had no reason to stop. Ken’s grip failed and he tumbled into the corner, screaming as the zombie reached for him.

  “Die, fucker,” Lenore growled from behind the zombie.

  Ken screamed again as the zombie toppled over onto him, then realized the thing was truly dead. A crossbow bolt had shattered the back of its head. Rotting brains slid out in a slimy pile as he shoved the creature away.

  Grabbing Ken’s arm, Lenore pulled him to his feet. “Run!”

  They ran, stumbling and sliding over the dead bodies littering the floor. Hearing moans, Ken glanced over his shoulder to see zombies staggering after them. Lenore and Ken raced to the open window, where Dale stood outside waiting for them. Dale lifted him up and out. Ken clung to him, relishing the moment, until Dale set him down and shoved him toward the moving van. Lenore was heavier and the zombies had almost reached her when Dale wrestled her out of the window. Grabbing Lenore’s hand, Dale tugged her away as zombies filled the window and started to tumble out.

  Standing next to the truck, Monica fired at the zombies, her shotgun barking loudly.

  Ken scrambled into the back of the truck.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” His voice sounded shrill, but he didn’t care.

  Dale pushed and Ken pulled and Lenore cussed at them impressively as they hauled her into the back of the truck. Dale slammed the doors shut, securing them. Seconds later, the truck lurched off at top speed.

  Lenore sat down on the bench beside Ken and took his hand. He was sobbing and was stunned to see that she was crying, too, her big body shaking.

  “You are one stupid faggot,” she finally said.

  Ken threw his arms around her and wept into her large bosom. “I know, I know!”

  Clutching him, Lenore rocked him. “I love you anyway.”

  “You saved me,” Ken sobbed. “I thought I was dead, but you saved me.”

  “No zombie is eatin’ my best friend,” Lenore declared gruffly.

  Ken lifted his head. “But what … oh, God … what about Jenni and the others? They’re still back there!”

  3.

  Death’s Doorway Opens

  It was evident from the chaos in the operating rooms that things had gone to hell fairly quickly. Dead bodies lay everywhere, each shot in the head. Someone had also meticulously killed every person in the ICU. Some victims, Jenni suspected, had not been zombies.

  “Why kill all of these, but not the ones in the ER?”

  “Ran out of time, I suspect,” Bill said.

  “Can we hurry it up? This place is making my skin crawl,” Felix said from across the room.

  “Yeah, it’s damn creepy,” Roger agreed.

  Jenni unfolded her map and held it up against the wall to study it. “Bill, you and I can take care of the stuff in the OR. Roger, Felix, you get those drugs from the pharmacy,” she ordered.

  Felix gave her a brisk nod. “Let’s roll.”

  The corpses in the operating rooms were terribly decomposed and the scavengers tried hard not to look at them too closely. Bill and Jenni loaded medical instruments into a bin, trying to collect all the ones Charlotte had requested.

  Bill’s walkie-talkie hissed to life.

  “Sorry, Bill. Ken’s my best friend,” Lenore’s voice said.

  Bill fumbled to grab the walkie-talkie off his belt.

  “What did she mean?”

  “Hell if I know, Jenni.”

  Bill was about to call Lenore back when they heard gunshots from below, followed by the bellow of a hundred zombie voices rising.

  “We’re out of here,” Bill declared.

  Jenni grabbed the bin and followed Bill into the hallway just as Roger and Felix came running from the direction of the stairs.

  “Just run!” Felix hollered.

  Jenni heard footfalls on the stairs. “Shit!” She ran, clutching the bin.

  Felix shoved open a door. They all piled into the room beyond, and Roger quickly locked the door behind them. Felix was already racing toward the windows on the far side of the room.

  Looking around, Jenni saw that they were in some sort of dorm room, with several beds and curtained-off areas. It had probably been used by doctors working long shifts. Suddenly Jenni realized that something was moving behind a curtain at the far end. She could just make out its silhouette, highlighted by the fading sunlight coming through the windows.

  “Felix, no!” Bill called.

  Distracted, the slender young man glanced back—and ran straight into that last curtain. He and the thing behind it went down in a tumble of grunts and moans.

  Roger ran to help. “Felix!”

  Behind Jenni, the door shuddered as the pounding began. Bill pushed her aside and shoved a large metal wardrobe in front of the door.

  Felix shouted as Roger grabbed the curtain and yanked it away. Felix gasped for air as he struggled to his feet. Behind him, a terribly mutilated, decaying soldier was chewing on something.

  “Shit!” Roger yelled.

  “Kill it!” Felix shouted, leaping away from the zombie with his hand clapped to the side of his head.

  Jenni drew her weapon and fired as the soldier lunged forward. It jerked as the bullet tore through its chest. Her second shot blew off one side of its head and the zombie tumbled to the floor. When it hit, a bit of ear, with a diamond earring still attached, fell out of its mouth.

  “Oh, shit, no!” Felix cried out. “No, no. He ripped off my earring!”

  Roger raised his gun. “Sorry, Felix.”

  “No, the fucker ripped it off! It didn’t bite me! I sw
ear!”

  Pushing a desk in front of the metal wardrobe, Bill swore under his breath. The door was starting to buckle. “We don’t have much time!”

  Jenni emptied the bin of surgical instruments onto a bed, then rolled the tools up in the sheet and tied the ends to make a backpack. With a sigh of regret, she yanked her ax from her back and tossed it away. Pulling on the makeshift backpack, she hurried toward the men, who were arguing fiercely. Felix screamed at Roger, clutching his torn ear, as Roger obviously tried to get up the nerve to fire.

  “Don’t do it! I swear it didn’t bite me! I promise. Dear God, I promise!” Tears streaming down his face, Felix raised his gun, pointing it at Roger. “Put the gun down, Roger. I mean it! It didn’t—”

  Without a word, Jenni raised her gun and fired. Felix fell, silent and dead, on top of the soldier who had effectively ended his life.

  “You make it fast,” Jenni said to Roger in a ragged voice.

  “God, Jenni. He was my friend.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You make it fast!”

  The pounding on the door was increasing.

  “Roger, some help,” Bill said from where he was still stacking things against the door. “Jenni, find us an escape route!”

  Roger ran to help barricade the door. Decayed hands reached into the room as the door gradually inched open. Jenni looked out the window and saw the roof of the first floor about fifteen feet below. The red pickup was just within view.

  She opened the window and punched out the screen.

  “We gotta jump,” she said, pulling a mattress off the nearest cot. She pushed it out the window and watched it fall to the roof. Satisfied with its position, she sent another mattress after it. “Let’s go, guys!”

  Bill and Roger abandoned the barricade, rushing to the window. The door gave way and the first of the zombies burst into the room. Jenni tucked her gun into its holster and climbed onto the windowsill, her trembling hands gripping the frame. With a deep breath, she lowered herself as far as she could, then let go. She dropped hard onto the mattresses, knocking the wind out of herself. Rolling onto her side, she managed to get to her feet.