“Quinn, we have to go,” Alice said, grabbing his arm. She was looking down now, down at the tracks on the floor that led to the center of the room. So many tracks.
“Kiiiilll mmmeeeeeeee,” Gregory hissed, eyes jittering in their sockets, his arm outstretched and shaking.
Quinn brought up the handgun and aimed at the man’s forehead. The sights wavered as the doctor’s jaw clenched so tight they could hear his teeth cracking in his mouth. Quinn squeezed the trigger but then released it and moved across the operating room to the far wall.
“What are you doing?” Alice said.
“I have to be sure,” he said, opening the last refrigerated cell on the counter. Inside were four vials of clear liquid. He grabbed the first and pulled it out, ripping the drawer in front of him open. Inside were all manner of sterile instruments in plastic wrappers. He rifled through them, a clock ticking down in his mind. Gregory screamed behind him. The syringes were at the very back of the drawer, and he drew one out, tearing the package with his teeth. He fumbled the plastic cap off the needle and plunged it into the rubber stopper at the end of the vial. He retracted the plunger, filling the syringe, and threw the vial across the room.
Somewhere far away, a stilt roared.
Quinn jammed the needle into Gregory’s neck and depressed the liquid.
His eyes bulged, and all of his wind rushed out, sliding from between his broken teeth. A small amount of blood dribbled down his chin, and he seized again, muscles becoming bands of iron before slackening.
“Quinn!” Alice yelled as she pulled Ty out of the room and headed toward the door they’d entered through. He began to follow and looked back when he reached the divider between the operating room and the lab.
Gregory was slumping forward, further than he should’ve been able, and Quinn saw that the bone around him was softening where it met his clothes. The doctor raised his head, eyes clear now locking onto Quinn’s, the pain in them washed away.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Quinn turned and ran.
Alice, Ty, and Denver were waiting at the locked door. He drew out Roman’s card and was about to slide it through the reader when another croak echoed into the lab. Quinn turned, squinting down the passage that led out the back of the room. There was a small amount of light filtering in at the rear wall.
“Wait a second,” he said and sprinted through the lab and down the hall. It turned a corner at a door marked ‘roof access’ before opening up to the field outside the end of the building. There had been a fire exit door there once, but it had been torn away and lay scratched and bent on the grass. The rain continued to fall in an unending drizzle.
Through the storm, he saw the first of them on the horizon.
In a span of seconds, there were dozens more. Then hundreds.
They ran toward the building with a single purpose. He could feel their calls in his bones.
Quinn bolted back the way he’d come, sliding on the slick floor as he raced toward the lab door.
“We have to go, right now,” he said, slicing the card through the reader. They pushed past the door and ran down the hallway pausing again before bursting into the lobby. Quinn glanced out through the tall windows lining the front of the building and slid to a stop, grasping Alice and Ty as he did.
Two stilts were striding toward the truck. They were too close; they’d never make it.
“Damn it,” Alice said, her hair whipping as she looked around the building. Ty’s hand trembled in his own and Denver whined and paced before them.
“The roof. If we can get on the roof, maybe we can distract them long enough to jump onto the awning and then down to the truck,” Quinn said.
“No, if we go outside they’ll kill us,” Alice said.
“If we stay in here, we’re trapped. They won’t leave until they’ve dug us out. Those doors aren’t going to hold them. There’s hundreds of them out there,” Quinn said, gripping her arm hard. She searched his face and looked out at the stilts near the truck. They picked at it with long fingers, and it rocked on its springs.