“Thank God, Blanche, I-”
She fired her gun and his head snapped back. He looked suitably shocked before his eyes went utterly blank and he fell back. It was then she saw the mottled, decaying figures moving up the steps toward her. “Stay off my property,”she screamed and aimed her gun.
Her finger squeezed the trigger, but the gun only 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. She raised the gun again, pulling the trigger over and over again.
One of the zombies, screeched at her and she slapped it. “Get off me!”
It didn’t recoil, but grabbed her hand and bit down.
Screaming, she tried to get away, but then more were on her and suddenly she realized what Curtis had meant in his note.
He had left her one bullet.
She had killed Ray.
Fuck! Her screams of fury filled the night until they finally gave way to screams of pain.
Chapter 9
1. Gateway to Death
The front door to the hospital swung open and the zombie in the pink housecoat growled and thrust her hands outward to grab the tasty human before her. Something long and sharp came straight for her and in the next second her muddled brain became nothing more than mush. With a grunt, Ken yanked the spear out of the old woman’s eye socket.
The old man in the other wheelchair fumbled toward the open door, trying to reach the enticing opening where the humans were. Roger put his sneaker squarely on the gnarled knees of the dead old woman and shoved her and the wheelchair back.
With a loud hiss, the old man launched himself toward Roger, but the delicious human flesh stepped back through the door and the old man landed flat on his stomach. Clawing at the floor, he tried to move through the doorway, but something hard came down on his head. He growled in frustration as the object came down over and over again. Soon, he lay silent, unmoving, his head squashed nearly flat. “That was truly disgusting,” Ken muttered. He watched Bill walk over to the lawn to try to wipe the gore off his boot on the dry overgrown grass.
Bill shrugged. Lenore leaned down slowly, her gaze divided between the long expanse of white hallway and the dead old man. Tilting her head, she studied his bracelet.
“He’s tagged as bitten,” she said finally. Jenni studied the sign on the door. “They took off and left the infected behind.”
The sign read: Evacuated to Madison Rescue Center. Do Not Enter Hospital. Go to Madison Rescue Center. Still rubbing his boot over the rough brown grass, Bill looked up. “That will make it easier for us. Less zombies.”
“Of course, we don’t know how many infected they left behind,” Roger pointed out, looking uneasy.
Jenni checked her weapons one more time: her ax, one dagger in a sheath on her thigh, two revolvers, rifle, and a short spear. “There will be enough to kill us,” Jenni said honestly. Lenore looked down the long white hall beyond the glass doors. At the far end there were smears of blood. “The same old, same old.”
Staring down at the two corpses, Ken shuddered. “Truly gross.”
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 it in immediately. We’re here to get the supplies and get out.”
Linda moved closer to the front door and peered past the two dead zombies. She shoved the old man’s body aside and stepped inside. Her large brown eyes looked terrified, but her chin was set with determination.
“We should hurry,” she said. “The sun will go down soon.”
Slowly, they all filed in, walking slowly down the white hallway. From the diagram they had been given, they knew the hallway ended in a large reception area. From the reception area, the hospital divided into four areas. The doors straight across from them led into a long wing with patient rooms. To the left was a cafeteria and gift shop. To the right was the admissions area, the doors to the emergency rooms, and then a stairwell and elevators. Upstairs were the operating rooms, examination rooms, and ICU. The hospital was efficient.
Jenni and Linda paused as they reached the end of the hall. The spacious waiting room was illuminated by the dim emergency lights. The chairs in the waiting room were overturned and dried blood was smeared over the walls. To their right, behind a glass window where people normally would have checked in, an armless woman hissed.
“Eww,” Ken said with distaste.
“Someone ate that girl’s arm,” Lenore observed. “Nasty.” The nurse began to claw at the window with her remaining hand, clearly not remembering how to slide the window open. Behind her, a man stood jawless and eyeless, turning in a circle.
“Okay, no one goes into the receptionist’s office,” Linda muttered.
“Don’t worry. Not planning on it,” Dale answered. Jenni looked back and forth between the double doors leading into other areas of the hospital. They looked daunting and she took a breath, reminding herself this was for Juan. Moving toward the stairs on the far side of the room, she stepped over a truly dead body. A security guard, it looked like. He had been shot in the head. She signaled to her group to fall in behind her.
Roger followed her, looking around the room nervously. He spotted a headless corpse shoved under a pile of chairs and shook his head. Too weird to think about now. Behind him, Bill let out a soft curse. Felix took up the rear with his crossbow at the ready.
“Head,”Jenni whispered from ahead of them.
Looking up, Roger saw a decapitated head snarling at him. It was in a potted plant. “I don’t wanna know how that happened,” Bill decided.
Felix aimed and a crossbow bolt sliced through the zombie’s eye. “Man, now that’s fucked up.” “Gross,” Ken’s voice said from behind them.
They had to pass the door to the emergency room to reach the stairs and Jenni raised a hand to bring everyone to a halt. The stench of death was strong. Cautiously, she moved closer to the door and realized it had been chained shut.
“Look,” she whispered, pointing to the chains.
Everyone froze. Hesitating, she looked around, then pulled a framed picture off the wall behind her. Holding it up, she used the reflective surface as a mirror to see through the windows set in the chained doors. Adjusting it slowly, trying to stay out of sight of the windows, she finally managed to get a look.
She almost dropped the painting.
Immediately, she slid down to the floor and motioned everyone down. They were already on their way to the ground the second they saw her expression.
“It’s full of them,”she mouthed. Everyone’s eyes widened.
“Packed. They’re just standing there,” she continued to mouth, trying to form words in a way that everyone could read her lips.