‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked, eyebrow raised.
‘I’ll put them back, sir.’ Sgt Bailey sighed, stepping out of formation.
Emile mirrored her step, and she raised her head to eyeball him.
He said nothing, but it was the way he said it.
‘Sergeant.’ Hale said after a moment. ‘Let’s hear them.’
I gave him a nod of thanks, before getting into it.
‘It’s all quiet,’ I said, pointing to the cabins, looming silently over the unmanned checkpoint, ‘so there’s either no danger and nothing to worry about, or something awful happened and you could do with some medical help.’
‘Why does it have to be you? I have a trained medic in my team.’ Hale asked, voice even.
‘Gods above,’ Dave grunted, ‘if people are dying in there, then we’re wasting time arguing.’
‘Agreed…’ Captain Hale nodded, looking for a second like he was about to say something else, but with a slight shake of his head, thought better of it. ‘Just stay behind us.’
He raised his gaze to address the rest of the troops.
‘Let’s keep it simple, GFPD, Dr Fielding, into the outbound lane, sweep forward through the vehicles. Make sure we’ve nobody waiting in ambush. SySec, on me, Nurse Cox, follow on.’
There was a round of affirmatives, before Greenfield’s finest checked their pistols and shotguns before hopping the barrier back onto the other side of the carriageway.
‘How’d he know my name?’ Claire quickly asked.
I shrugged. ‘Nametag?’
‘I don’t think so. Hanging about with you is getting me a bad reputation.’ She flashed me a smirk before following in Emile’s wake.
I copied the soldiers’ cautious footsteps as they kept on up our lane, moving faster than the cops as they made their way through the cars. I mirrored their stance too, keeping low and close to the relative cover that the lane barriers provided. We moved swiftly and silently, save for the rumble of backpacks.
In setting up the checkpoint, the SySec garrison had removed a section of the barriers so they could shuffle cars onto the opposite carriageway, sending them back the way they came. I wish there’d have been one of those gaps sooner. Then we could have taken an abandoned car out of the jam and gone back home.
We hadn’t seen any cars coming towards us as we’d been walking. We’d have had to get out the way. I couldn’t be sure about when we were driving, since I didn’t exactly have the window seat, but with things as quiet as they were, I’d say the last car leaving here was long gone.
The cabins were the first thing we saw on approach, but the checkpoint spread out a little further. As we drew closer, I saw the cabins spanned over three of the lanes, with the fourth being blocked by a sturdy looking arm barrier, the kind you got in pay-and-display parking lots – only this one looked thick enough to stop a speeding truck.
Bright orange and white barriers, the ones they filled with water for weight, had been erected to form a safe zone around the cabins. Behind the barriers were a few sets of tables and chairs, with the arrangements suggesting someone would be interviewing, or possibly interrogating, the people across the table.
The windows of the cabins themselves had been smeared with grime. Vaguely, red-brown grime which it didn’t take a genius to work out was blood. The SySec troops must have noticed it too, but they were in full on soldier mode, so were being all stoic and silent.
Through the bridge, I could see the inbound side’s checkpoint was just the same as the other, three cabins long, with the one furthest from the accessible lane having another cabin on top, stairs up the outside, hidden from the road. It looked like cars had been queued up there too.
Were people actually trying to get into Greenfield? While others tried to get out? Perhaps moving through the surrounding counties wasn’t going to be an easy ride. If they were in as bad a shape as Greenfield, maybe even Sydow wouldn’t be as safe as advertised? First the hospital, now this. Nowhere was as safe as anyone said it was going to be.
We were side-on to the cabins when Hale raised a fist, and everybody stopped.
‘Alpha, with me, Beta, secure the inbound checkpoint. Charlie, hold position on overwatch. Cox, follow me.’
Captain Hale’s people knew their parts, and without needing to confer, split off. Beta squad hustled off under the bridge, while Charlie took up kneeling positions, their elbows and assault weapons resting on the traffic barrier for support.
Alpha must have been Hale’s up-close unit, as the couple of guys who followed him and Bailey were sporting a shotgun, and one of those smaller guns that throws out bullets really fast. I’ve been Player Two in enough games with Kelly to recognise what they do, but couldn’t really tell you the difference between one kind of machinegun and another.
Over the barrier, we could see inside the door of the cabin, and right through to the far end, each being open to the other within. The gore on the windows muted the daylight inside, and being overcast anyway there wasn’t that much to begin with.
I glanced to our left, to see Emile’s group still making their way through the cars. They were being thorough, but they weren’t far away if anything went wrong.
Hale and Bailey hung back slightly, while the other two men in Alpha put themselves at either side of the doorway. The cabins were raised off the ground a foot or so, enough for a step to be needed to get into the doorway.
One of them knelt down. They switched their gun’s flashlights on. They held up fingers for a three-count, and leaned around the doorway together.
‘What in the hell…’ I heard one of them say.
‘Sir, you’ll want to see this.’ His partner said, a little louder.
I moved forward, curious. Hale and Bailey were doing the same so I wasn’t disobeying any orders. I found myself almost in line with them as we stared through the doorway – but while their guns were raised and forward, I was just wringing my hands.
A dark haired woman in a white coat lay across a desk in the entryway, her head lolling uncomfortably off the end, arms splayed out. The flashlights shone on deathly pale skin, save where the white was streaked with red. Her throat was a ghastly mass of trauma and the sleeves on her coat had been torn open, where there was more evidence of feeding. There had been infected here, and they had overrun this place, coming and going like a swarm of locust.
The first desk was flanked by two more, and evidence of a struggle was all around. Chairs were strewn across the room, papers and desk clutter scattered across the cheap carpeting. Arterial spurts streaked across the walls and ceiling. They’d been eaten alive.
There were more bodies too. Slumped against a desk, a soldier, pistol discarded beside him. Foetal beneath a window, someone in green scrubs, soaked almost black. Further into the room I could make out more shapes, lying prone in dark pools.
‘They’re dead,’ Bailey muttered, uncertain, ‘sir, they’re all dead.’
‘Wait here.’ Hale ordered, stepping cautiously into the doorway, his weapon raised. He switched a flashlight on too, and took stock of the scene before him.
‘Still think this isn’t serious?’ Bailey asked me.
‘I never thought this wasn’t serious. Lives have always been my priority. That’s why I’m standing here.’ I added.
‘I admit, I’m surprised. I thought you would leave after County fell.’
‘Hale tugged on my conscience. If I couldn’t leave the hospital, I can’t leave the patients. I’m committed.’
‘I told you. He asks a lot, but only if he knows you’ve got it in you…’
‘Tell him thanks, I guess?’ I shrugged, dripping sarcasm.
She made a non-committal noise, and rolled her shoulder uncomfortably. ‘Listen. About earlier. Caught me at a bad time. No excuse, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’
I looked to her, but her attention was seemingly focused on the doorway. She didn’t want to look at me. Embarrassed maybe?
&nb
sp; ‘What’s eating you?’
‘Poor choice of words.’ Bailey muttered. ‘Had my first real brush with the infected before coming to County. Someone turned, right there at the intersection, while we were checking vehicles. They were queued up, passenger tore out the driver’s throat. Must have put her foot down while she was dying because she ploughed across the road and into another car.’
‘Not the first time you’ve seen death, surely?’
This time she did look to me, her expression difficult to read. A touch of pain maybe, hiding behind a stiff upper lip.
‘I’ve seen pointless deaths. Accidental deaths. Quick deaths and slow deaths and everything in between. But un-death? It’s not right.’
‘Took you a while to process?’
‘Might still be.’ She said, turning from me, and joining the others, just in the doorway.
I’d gotten an apology, we were all grownups here. It wouldn’t fix my face but it took some of the sting off, and honestly, I could empathise with Bailey. I have no doubt she’d seen everything she claimed to have, the million ways a person can die. If I didn’t work in a hospital, if I hadn’t been briefed and drilled and very recently dissected the infected, I might have needed some extra “processing” time too.
The four soldiers began to discuss the scene, but I was glad to walk away from it for a moment.
There’s having a strong constitution, an iron-clad stomach, then there’s that. The mess in there. It’s one thing to clinically look at someone’s organs and know you’ll have to hold them in while a doctor practices their needlework, but it’s quite another to look at the final tortured seconds of another’s life and not feel the final crushing mortality of the human condition.
I needed a sec.
That was the reality of what the infected could do, en masse and unchecked, moving like a horde of rampaging monsters from one town to the next, ripping and eating until there was nothing left but corpses. Corpses that walk. Corpses that get back up and start the whole cycle again.
Fucking hell, yeah, maybe I did need to process some more.
I clenched my eyes tight against the leaks that threatened to burst some unseen dam, shoved those thoughts way off to the side for now. I tried to remind myself they were strangers – and that I wasn’t looking into a mirror. But there’d been a body there in scrubs. Another in a white coat. Another with a gun. Were we looking at our future?
I took a couple of steps closer to the front of the traffic queue, and leaned on the barriers, taking deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. I imagined those soldiers had stood here, beckoning people forwards for inspection, back when the checkpoint would let people through.
As I caught my breath, I watched GFPD’s progress through the cars, and began to feel uneasy. It wasn’t the bodies, not how they were now, or even how they were killed – gruesome as it was. It was something about this setup. The infected. They should still be here. Feeding until something else distracted them. That’s how they work.
Except not all of them behave the same. I’d seen that, down in the basement. I’d seen an aberrant infected play dead, show intelligent thought. Be more than just a mindless eating machine. So either there were enough infected around to overrun the checkpoint – infected who’d moved on and were waiting somewhere down the road…or there were ghouls here. Watching us. Waiting in ambush.
I found my eyes scanning the trees on the other side of the wildlife fence. I almost didn’t want to see them, if they were even there. Ignorance might be bliss, but I had to look.
It was hard to see into the shadows beneath the boughs, and looking through the fence didn’t make it any easier. As my eyes scanned from left to right, it was like trying to see the picture in a magic eye puzzle.
And like those puzzles, things suddenly shifted into focus.
Oh Gods.
Ice water ran down by spine, and suddenly I could hear the pounding of my pulse in my ears.
‘Hey…’ I tried to shout, but by breath was caught in my throat. I put my head down and swallowed hard, looking back to check it was still there and oh my fuck it was.
It was watching me from the other side of the fence. Not the trees, closer. So much closer. It wore green and black camo, not the grey of Sydow Security, and had a sunken, almost skeletal look about its dirt-smeared face. It saw how I was reacting, and tilted its head, eyes locked on me, unblinking.
Then it smiled. Broad, lips back and teeth bared.
The hairs on the back of my arms stood on end. I took a breath and tried to shout again.
‘Hey! Over there!’ I cried out, voice shaking, finger pointing.
The figure disappeared at my shout, seemingly in no rush, just turning from the fence and disappearing from view.
The cops had nearly reached the end of the queuing traffic now, and several of them turned to see what had got me so spooked – but there was nothing there now. Their heads had been down, focused on the task at hand, and nobody had seen it. They turned back to me, quizzical, and shouts came up, calling to know what was wrong.
‘I saw something – a ghoul, on the other side of the fence,’ I said, answering Hale first. He seemed like the best person to know. ‘Did Yanis tell you about ghouls?’
‘I know about them.’ Hale nodded. ‘I’m sceptical about the reports, but I know what Dr Lines thought. Are you sure it wasn’t just an infected?’
‘If it was an infected it’d still be there now, trying to chew through the fence!’
‘Calm down, tell me what you saw.’
‘Former white male, tall, woodland camouflage. Pale as death.’
‘It could have been one of Lowe’s people. Some of them are in camo jackets.’ Bailey suggested to Hale.
‘Mrs Lowe’s people should all be back over there.’ Hale nodded back towards the main group.
‘It was a fucking ghoul.’ I said, voice low, ‘Like the one that attacked us in the basement.’
‘We don’t know what happened in the basement.’ Bailey said, ‘not exactly.’
The wheels started turning in my head now, in that way they do when you’re panicking, forced to assess the facts while the clock ticks down behind you.
Blood in his stomach. The ghoul Yanis and I had autopsied. There was blood in his stomach. Aaron, our young friend from the ambulance run, he had been force fed blood too, as far as we could tell. That wasn’t a common means of spreading the virus, and it seemed to change the timescale, the rate the infection took over. Could it also change the nature of the infected themselves? Create aberrations?
‘Find the bastard and I’ll cut him open, I’ll bet he’s got a stomach full of blood.’ I said.
Captain Hale and Sergeant Bailey looked at me like I’d gone mad.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, cautiously.
We’d attracted a bit of an audience at this point. GFPD was listening to what I was saying. Claire emerged from behind Dave’s armoured form, and gave me a thumbs up, urging me to go on.
‘Dr Lines and I autopsied your dead soldier. His stomach contents were just blood. We never got the tests back but it’s damn near impossible that it was all his. It was most likely infected blood, deliberately force-fed to him. It accelerated the rate of infection, and changed how the infection manifested. He became an aberration, what Yanis called a ghoul.’
‘Interesting theory-’ Hale was saying.
‘Come on, who’d make someone drink blood?’ Bailey cut in.
Hale gave her a warning look.
‘An interesting theory. But we have no means of backing it up right now. And nobody else saw anything. Let’s just keep our wits about us, and move on.’
Suddenly, there was a sharp hissing sound, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I stopped this close to making a noise, and found Emile’s hand on my shoulder. Fortunately there was no round of laughter, I wasn’t the only one to twitch, but I caught Bailey’s eye and felt a red flush creeping up my collar.
Hale
lifted his crackling radio to his mouth, and pressed the button.
‘Alpha One, receiving. Report, over.’
‘Sir, the inbound checkpoint shows signs of a struggle. Shots fired, glass broken from the inside. Deceased infected everywhere, along with SySec personnel – some evidence of infected activity on the bodies, though every SySec appears to have been shot in the head. Some self-inflicted. We’re collecting tags and weapons, but a few of these bodies are missing guns already, over.’
‘Any sign of survivors? Over.’
‘The roof hatch is open on the top cabin, looks like someone climbed onto the bridge and got away, maybe one of ours. Armed to the teeth if they are. No sign of hostiles though. The infected seem to have moved on. Over.’
‘Similar story here. Excellent work Beta One, hold position – and let me know if you see anything moving out there. Alpha One out.’
Hale paused for a moment, reattaching the radio to his belt.
‘Best we were all moving on then. We didn’t see them on the way in, so the undead that were present here must be on the road ahead of us. It’s imperative that we secure larger vehicles, trucks, busses, ATVs, something we can use to batter our way through. We’ll siphon gasoline and get them rolling-’
Hale was interrupted again. But this time, it wasn’t the radio.
A familiar, animal scream came from somewhere nearby.
It sounded, of all things, angry.
Everyone stood silent for a moment, frozen, listening for it again. Eyes glanced from person to person, and hands tightened around their weapons.
‘We all heard that, right?’ Dave asked.
‘That’s not one of their usual noises…’ Bailey said to Hale.
It came again. Not closer, not further away. Between the echoes of the tarmac and dampening of the surrounding forest, it was hard to tell where the scream was coming from. But I had a pretty good idea what was doing it.
‘It’s the ghoul. It’s out there, and it knows we’re here.’
‘Dr Lines, he said the ghoul was an intelligent undead. How intelligent exactly, Nurse Cox?’ Hale asked.
‘We saw it play dead. Convincingly mimic human movement,’ I answered, my mouth feeling suddenly dry. ‘It doesn’t senselessly pursue its hunger like the common infected do. But I don’t know what else.’
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 18
