Detour: Book Two of the Humanity's Edge Trilogy

by Paul B. Kohler

  They separated, Alayna darting back up the stairs and Clay turning toward the wide swinging doors, which led him into the hotel kitchen with its bright countertops, scattered with food packaging. A large slab of meat rotted on the counter. The smell made Clay’s stomach turn. Bolting through the room, he found a supply closet near the pantry. Inside, a dozen automatic weapons were positioned, lined up like library books. There were three flashlights and several boxes of ammunition on the shelf above.

  “Fuck yeah.” Clay reached for a gun and found the right ammo. He loaded—his movements deft and precise—as if he’d been at war his entire life.

  Not like before, when he’d been a slightly overweight sheriff, just waiting to go home for the day. That Clay didn’t seem to exist anymore.

  He slipped two flashlights into front pockets then took another gun for Alayna before heading back to the foyer. As he looked down the countertop, past the slab of meat, he saw a few packages of granola bars in the corner. Grabbing them, he ripped his teeth into one of the packages, pulling out the snack, sugar tingling on his tongue.

  In the foyer, Alayna was waiting for him, emptyhanded.

  Clay tossed a pistol across the room. She caught it deftly, surprise on her face. “Is this loaded?” she asked. “It could’ve gone off.”

  “It didn’t,” Clay said. “You find a phone book?”

  “Just the one hospital is listed. The one we saw coming in. I think that’s our best bet. Where’d you get the firepower?” she asked, spying Clay’s newly adorned holster.

  “Supply closet through the kitchen.” Clay thumbed over his shoulder.

  “Anything else back there?”

  “At least ten more. It’s strange they left so much here. Oh. And I found these.” He tossed a pack of granola bars toward her. She nabbed them from the air and ate them quickly, her jaw grinding like a wild animal. Clay looked away, he didn’t like to see her like that.

  The ingrained behavior of civilized society was dropping away from them. They were blood and guts and wants and needs. For all intents and purposes, they were animals with guns, on the loose in a jungle.

  “You get enough?” Clay asked.

  “It’ll never be enough. Can’t you see how much weight I’ve lost?” she asked, bits of granola falling from her lips. “I’ll be skin and bones before the end of the week. We should get some up to Lane and the kid. He’ll be needing fuel soon.”

  “Hurry,” Clay snapped, pointing toward the staircase. “We leave in five.”

  Watching her scamper up the steps, he felt high, dominant, resilient. When Alayna reached the foyer once more, the food delivered, she was huffing, out of breath.

  Chapter 38

  The streets of Dearing were eerie, abandoned of anyone living or dead. It was long after sundown, and the few street lamps that still worked flickered like a cartoon haunted house, casting strange shadows. Clay and Alayna held their guns forward, scanning left and right. For a long time, as they crept through the town, they found no reason to speak.

  Their path was crowded with abandoned cars, most of them stalled haphazardly, with several rammed into the backs of others—as if some kind of real-life bumper car ride had opened up to the general public. Clay and Alayna had to bob and -weave through the streets, darting between the wreckage, crunching over broken glass on the pavement.

  As they moved, Clay peered into the abandoned cars, trying to make sense of the lives that were left behind. The effect was humbling. Car seats, empty—probably still sticky from bottles of formula or milk. Toys scattered throughout. Several of them resembled the little red sedan Valerie had driven when they’d first met as teenagers, all those years before. They’d made out in the back, finding all the uniquely wonderful ways they could make each other’s bodies feel—unaware they were just animals, chasing hormones like dogs chase balls.

  “It’s weird not to see anyone in an entire town like this,” Alayna said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

  “There’s a lot we won’t get used to,” Clay said.

  After nearly forty minutes, they reached the hospital, a two-level building made of concrete and steel. They approached the emergency room entrance first, peering into the long, whitewashed hallways. The automatic doors didn’t open—no power. Alayna reached for a decorative rock near an overgrown bush. She prepared to hurl it through the glass.

  “Don’t!” Clay held his hands up. “That could attract them. We’ve been lucky so far, but who knows how long that’ll last?”

  Alayna nodded and dropped it to the cement walk with a dull crack. “Let’s circle the building then. I’m sure there’s another entrance.”

  “Agreed,” Clay said.

  They crept around the building, eyeing the dark, shadowed windows.

  Alayna stopped short.

  “What’s the matter?” Clay asked, turning toward his one-time deputy.

  “How are we going to see a thing in there? The power—”

  Clay slipped the two flashlights from his pockets like a magician. “Voila!” he said, handing one to Alayna.

  “Aren’t you full of surprises.” She clicked the power button on and off several times.

  “I found them in the same storage closet where they stashed the guns and ammo. I figured it might get a little dark in there. It’d be tough to see things without them.”

  “Great thinking,” Alayna said. “You don’t think anyone’s hiding out in there, do you? Waiting for fools like us to stumble in?”

  “People could have used this as a shelter, sure. We just have to have our wits about us,” Clay said. “They could try to shake us down, or worse, try to kill us. Desperate times. You can’t say what anyone will do.”

  “Right.”

  They rounded another corner and found an auxiliary entrance, where a dark, narrow corridor led into the depths of the hospital. Alayna stayed behind Clay, her breath coming in ragged bursts, showing her fear. He clicked on his flashlight. It blinded them for a moment before their eyes adjusted.

  “We’ll need to find batteries for these at some point,” Clay whispered. “I didn’t see any back at the hotel.”

  “Let’s head toward the front of the building,” Alayna murmured, her voice quivering. “I think I saw a directory through the glass doors. It should show us where the pharmacy is. I don’t want to waste time wandering around too much. This place gives me the major creeps. And that smell!”

  The odor was a foul mix of unwashed bedpans and decomposition. Having come directly from Alex’s room to this, it was easy to link horrible smells with fear. Even that first day in the jail cell, Clay had felt fear, had smelled the rank vomit and alcohol, and then had unknowingly contracted the infection.

  This was an unclean world.

  They made their way through the dark hallways, walking what seemed like miles, ending up in countless dead ends. They passed nurses’ stations and dark, closed doors, until they finally found the facility’s admissions center. The place looked orderly, with the clerk’s chairs still facing their desks, almost as if everyone had just gone out to lunch and turned out the lights.

  “There. The directory,” Alayna said, pointing toward a large map of the premises. She traced her finger up and down, then across the floor plan, studying its layout before finally stabbing a finger on top of their destination. “Wing C. Didn’t we pass a Wing C on the way here? About five minutes ago?”

  “No,” Clay said, eyeing the staircase. “Just A and B. I think you’re looking at the second floor, there.”

  “Ah. Right,” Alayna said, waving her flashlight over the map again. “It’s directly above us.”

  Turning toward the staircase, they hurried up, a sudden bounce in Alayna’s step—presumably from the much-needed fuel that the granola bars gave her. She surged past him, entering the darkness of the second-floor hallway first. Her confidence was stronger now than it had been less than an hour ago. Chances of finding any of the crazed seemed low.

  Once
in the pharmacy, however, their confidence bottomed out.

  “Shit,” Alayna said, kicking at an empty cardboard box and watching it bounce against the far wall.

  The place had been cleared out. The shelves were bare, with boxes tossed to the floor. All the medication had been taken. The drawers in the pharmacists’ desks had been yanked open, analyzed, sifted through.

  “Think it was the people at the hotel?” Alayna asked.

  “No way to know,” Clay said. He raised his fist, preparing to punch the nearest wall. Anger pulsed within him. “Come all this fucking way, and it’s empty. And now the kid’s going to die.”

  He allowed the silence settle around them. Alayna sighed. Her flashlight to dropped to her side, where it beamed a bright circle on the floor.

  “But . . . these were only the meds that were being sold,” she said, realizing.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The hospital must have NFR meds for their own internal use,” Alayna said. “You know. Supplies they used to actually treat their patients. Everything that was in here was almost certainly for resale.”

  “Okay. Where would that be? I’m pretty sure it’s not in the directory,” Clay said.

  “Near the emergency room for starters,” Alayna replied. “Although it could also be near a nurses’ station. I’m not sure . . .”

  Clay turned back toward the staircase, and was back in the admissions center in minutes. The emergency room sign pointed down the hall. He moved quickly, heart pounding, his flashlight snaking across the floor ahead of him. The rank smell seemed to get worse as they approached the ward—perhaps indicating that the sick and injured had been left for dead when the crazed struck.

  He didn’t want to look into any of the rooms to check.

  When they reached the emergency room nurses’ station, they found it to be similarly ransacked. Boxes scattered on the floor. Cabinets completely cleared out. “Fuck,” he yelled, his voice echoing.

  “I don’t really know . . . I mean, maybe we could check some of the pharmacies around town?”

  They both knew the reality was that if the hospital was ransacked, those places would be, as well.

  Clay seethed with anger. He pushed ahead, opening as many of the doors as he could. They were all pilfered, with papers and empty boxes strewn around. It was almost artistic, the way every door led to more mess. It was a metaphor, perhaps, for this strange, new world. Every town they entered seemed to offer the same dreary, post-apocalyptic streets—the same crashed cars—the same familial memories. The same dead.

  As he made his was down the hallway, he continued to open doors, feeling like a hunter. Alayna followed him, making skeptical noises.

  “I just don’t think we’ll find anything, Clay. I don’t want to waste our energy. Maybe we should just cut our losses? Head back to the hotel? Get an actual good night’s sleep?”

  “No. We can’t have come all this way for no reason,” Clay snapped. “We have to find something. Some kind of . . . anything.” He tried another door, finding more of the same. He shivered, feeling the hopelessness descending like clouds.

  “Fuck this,” he said.

  “Wait. Clay, look.” Alayna pointed toward a dark, massive door at the far end of the hallway, broader than most of the others, with a small green badge near the handle. “It says—it says Internal Supplies.”

  Clay reached it in seconds, grabbing the knob and yanking it as hard as he could. But it didn’t twist. The door didn’t budge.

  Clay gasped, pounding his fist against it. “Alayna, do you know what this means?” he asked. “It means we might have finally found some luck. If we can’t get in there, neither could they. This—this could be our last hope.”

  Alayna put her hands on her hips, watching Clay as he considered the door. They shared a feeling of hopelessness. Their flashlights began to dim.

  Chapter 39

  Clay took several steps back and then lunged at the door, twisting his shoulder and slamming into it. The wood began to splinter, but it didn’t give. Alayna was startled, dropping her flashlight to the ground. She was torn. Stare at Clay in disbelief or watch her flashlight roll off down the corridor.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  Clay turned back, grinning broadly. “I think one more ought to do it, don’t you?”

  “The nanites,” Alayna murmured. “Is that really what it is?”

  “Who cares? It worked, didn’t it?” He stepped back and then threw himself at the door again. It broke away, leaving the knob still locked in the jamb as it flew open. He shone his flashlight in, illuminating shelves of packaged medical supplies—two entire rooms of it, enough to stock the hospital for several weeks.

  “It’s all here, Alayna,” he said. “All of it.”

  Alayna nabbed her flashlight and peeked in behind him, her eyes growing large. “Wow,” she breathed, taking several steps in and beginning to read the labels. “This is all cancer medicine. Can you imagine having to deal with cancer at a time like this?”

  For a moment, an image of a cancer-ridden crazed passed through Clay’s mind: a large tumor growing from the monster’s throat, his eyes secreting yellow puss. He shook the morbid thought away.

  “Stock up on cold and flu medicine,” he said. “And maybe some painkillers, just in case.”

  Alayna started reading labels and tossing things in her backpack. It filled quickly. After Clay offered her his bag, he meandered down the long aisles, looking for mobile defibrillators. His heart pounded, telling him they needed to hurry. They needed to get back to the kid. But without the defibrillators, their own survival was at stake.

  Skirting around the far corner, he saw them. For a moment, he couldn’t believe his luck. They’d wandered through the entire hospital, tearing open nearly every closet door, and here they were, all lined up in a row.

  “Jackpot,” he shouted, rubbing his palms together. He grabbed his second backpack and dropped in one of the four mobile defibrillators, then turned and found Alayna behind him, both her backpacks bulging with the meds.

  “Only one?” she asked. “We’ll need another for later. No clue how long they last. Why not grab them all?”

  “They’re actually quite heavy. I don’t know if we can carry all of them along with the medical supplies,” Clay said, his voice urgent. “Besides, if Lane can’t get this to work, it’ll all be for nothing. And if she does, we can come back for the rest of them.”

  Alayna nodded. “Fair point. But how about we take two just in case? I can handle these two backpacks, if you want to lug the two defibrillators.”

  “Sure,” Clay said, yanking another unit from the shelf. “Whatever you say, doc.”

  Alayna shook with sudden laughter, looking almost manic in the soft light of the flashlight. “I can’t believe we found this stuff. We actually did what we set out to do. Do you remember the last time something worked out?”

  Clay gazed at her fondly, if only for a moment. He began to reach forward, wanting to touch her shoulder—to tell her that things would get easier from here on out.

  But before he touched her, they heard a howl in the distance. The blood drained from Alayna’s face.

  “What—what was that?” she stammered although they both knew exactly what it was.

  “Great. We have company,” Clay said grimly, pointing his flashlight back toward the hallway. “We better get out of here before we can’t.”

  “And how do you think we’ll manage that?” Alayna asked. “I hardly remember the way back to admissions.”

  “We’ll manage, Alayna. We have to,” he said.

  They set off down the hallway, their weapons drawn and their ears sharp, watching for the crazed. They eased down the first hallway and then raced past the nurses’ station, finding themselves deeper in the belly of the hospital.

  “What time do you think it is?” Alayna asked, jogging alongside Clay.

  “No idea,” Clay said. “It was dusk when we arrived in Dearing.
But that seems like a million years ago.”

  They continued down the hallway, getting increasingly lost. Clay led them down a series of turns, feeling certain that his path would take them toward the entrance. Instead he led them back to the same place—a sign that read, EAT HEARTY EAT HEALTHY, with a list of fruits and vegetables beneath.

  “You’d better try,” he said.

  They heard another howl, much closer than they were comfortable with.

  “I think I saw some light that way,” Alayna whispered, pointing at the right fork of the maze. “Clay, I think it might be morning.”

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  They hurried toward the soft, grey light that seeped in through a distant window, which they reached after two more turns. The window cast long shadows on the hallway floor. Their eyes rose and waited to adjust to the change in brightness. They froze, filled with sudden panic. Clay’s finger flicked against the trigger of his gun.

  “There must be fifty of them,” Alayna gasped.

  In front of the doors, a horde of the crazed were plastered against the glass, pounding with bloodied fists. Their mouths were wide open, revealing toxic green gums, their eyes yellowed and puss-filled, and they were crying out some kind of animalistic chant. Clay tried not to look at their faces, knowing that in short order, they’d have to shoot them all in the head if they wanted to survive.

  “We can’t make it through that,” Alayna said. “There’s absolutely no way.”

  Both flashlights flickered out.

  “Fuck,” Clay snarled. “I guess we’re really screwed now. We can’t go back through the hospital without light, and we can’t face that many of them head on.”

  The crazed growled, hammering their noses against the windowpanes until they bled.

  “I think I’ll take my chances in the dark,” Alayna whispered.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  They turned back toward the impenetrable darkness of the hospital, both grateful not to be staring death so squarely in the face. As they took their first steps into the corridors, the sound of rapid gunfire met their ears, growing louder.