“It’s dark in there,” I said. Well, of course it was. Did I expect the power to be on six months after the end of the world? “I don’t like it.”
“It is not for you to decide,” Ayaan said but there was less anger in her voice than usual. She slipped her thin fingers into the crack between the two automatic doors and tugged. They moved an inch and then slipped back. Looking over at Ifiyah she held up three fingers and we were quickly joined by a trio of sixteen year olds. Between the five of us we pried the doors open wide enough for me to fit through.
Ayaan handed me a flashlight from herdambiil bag and checked her own by switching it on and off rapidly. The three girls who had joined us ran through the same procedure. I glanced at Ifiyah for authorization to begin and then stepped inside. The lobby of the emergency room was a mess of overturned chairs and blank-screened television sets but at least a little light came in the glass doors and cut through the gloom.
The admissions desk was half buried under a slurry of glossy pamphlets against heart disease and second hand smoke. I stepped on them being careful not to slip and found a photocopied directory taped to the wall. “This way,” I said, pointing at a pair of swinging doors leading off the main lobby. The HIV clinic was deep inside the building. It might take us ten minutes to get there in the dark and just as long to get back. Ifiyah had given us ninety minutes to complete the mission and exfiltrate back to the boat.
I only had to do this once, I told myself. Just once and then I can go see Sarah. The thought of my seven year old daughter languishing in a Somalian religious school made my heart rattle in my suddenly airless chest.
I kicked open the double doors and flashed my light down pitch darkness of the corridor beyond. The cone of illumination caught a couple hospital beds pushed up against the wall. A heap of stained linen on the floor. Two rows of doors, dozens of them, that could be hiding anything.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said. Ayaan pursed her lips as if rankled at being given an order by a civilian. She lifted her rifle to her shoulder, though, and stepped into the hallway.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Ten
Garyshook his head hard and slowly rose to his feet. Looking across atHoboken he saw nothing but empty buildings and quiet streets. The geysers of poisonous gas he’d seen erupt there were gone, had never been there. Just a hallucination.
He flexed his hands, observed himself for a second. Everything intact and in working order. In fact he felt better than ever-the buzzing had left his head and his hands didn’t shake like they had before. Most importantly his hunger was gone. Not entirely-he could feel it looming at the horizon of his awareness, knew it would come back stronger than ever soon enough but for now at least his stomach felt at peace.
He turned around slowly, uncertain how long this newfound sense of health might last or how fragile it might be. Behind him he saw that nothing else had changed-New Yorkwas the same as ever. Just as quiet. He saw a pair of boots on the ground by the bodega where he’d fought with the trucker cap guy and decided to investigate.
What he found didn’t answer any questions. Trucker Cap was dead. Not kind of dead, not walking dead-just dead, lying there decomposing in the sun.Gary could find no damage to the guy’s head, no signs of trauma at all but for some reason the guy had just stopped. Fallen down and stopped, permanently by the look of it.