Afterbirth (24 page)

Sun poured through a wall of sealed glass that was used in place of windows. Dust and ash caked the top of the heating and air conditioning unit that served as a sill. Two hospital beds lay side-by-side and empty. The once white blankets, now gray after the fire, were wrinkled from being soaked by the sprinkler system. Mold grew in concentric swirls on the wall and the bitter tang of mildew filled the air. A chair tucked under the doorknob reinforced the lock and a blue curtain covered the small rectangular window.

Death scratched on the other side of the door.

Frank tried not to think too hard about that. A restrictive tightness spread through his chest and he ached, bruised from the fall. Wherever they were now, Reid had transported him by wheelchair. Frank coughed and cleared his throat.

“What the hell happened?” He pushed the feet rests out of his way and checked to see that the brakes were on. His legs shook under his weight and then settled.

Reid sat down on one of the beds, trying to tie a square of white sheet. “We’re even,” he said through clenched teeth. “Worst time ever to pass out, by the way.”

“No, I mean what happened to you?” Frank checked Reid’s eyes for signs of infection and found none, though there was one bullet left in his pistol if he needed it.

Reid tugged the knot and the loop fell apart. “It’s this goddamned shoulder again.”

Frank took things slowly—a step, then two—and when he was sure he was stable, made his way over to Reid. “Let me have a look.”

Reid hesitated.

“I was a medic for longer than you’ve been alive. Hold your arm like this.” Frank bent his elbow at a ninety degree angle.

Reid’s face twisted with agony as he imitated the position.

Frank examined the lax joint, pushing with his finger to feel for what he really needed an x-ray to be sure of.

Reid jumped when Frank pressed on his deltoid and tried to move the arm. “Shit! That hurts.”

“Looks dislocated.” Frank considered the best way to get it back in place. “Lie down.” The pounding and rattling of the door increased the sense of urgency. “I have to get it back in place and this is the easiest way to do it. It’s going to hurt like hell until it’s fixed, so lay down.”

Reid reluctantly complied.

Ash and mildew permeated the air as his weight settled on the mattress. Frank turned his head to avoid breathing it in. He placed his one hand on Reid’s shoulder and the other on his forearm, maintaining the ninety degree angle.

“You have something to bite on?” Frank asked.

Reid turned his head away. “Just do it.”

Frank gently rotated the arm out to the left. Reid nearly shot out of the bed. He screamed and the noise stirred the horde outside the door.

“Relax,” Frank said, unable to move the arm because of the tension.

“You relax,” Reid snapped.

“I mean it. If you don’t loosen up, I can’t do this.” Frank let go of his arm and looked through the pills in the bag. He shook a couple of Percocet into his hand and gave them to Reid. “Take these,” he said.

Reid sat up enough to dry-swallow them, and then fell back onto the pillow.

“Ready?” Frank asked.

Reid closed his eyes. “This time, don’t stop.”

Frank resumed the in and out manipulations with the arm bent and the shoulder still. Reid groaned and bit his clenched fist, his knuckles white from tension. He’d nearly broke skin by the time the shoulder moved into place.

“Got it.” Frank tied the cotton sling and helped Reid sit up. “Better?” Reid nodded. He slipped the sling over his head and Frank helped settle the arm into place. “You’ll need to keep it immobilized until you heal, at least a little.”

Reid moved his arm and hissed, drawing a breath through his teeth.

Frank went to the door and pushed aside the curtain. A bloody handprint obscured his view, but he could make out a sea of heads. “We probably shouldn’t have used guns,” he said, knowing it was the noise that drew the attention. “You have a plan for getting out of
this
?”

Reid shook his head. “I was improvising the last time.”

The crowded medevac helicopter touched down in the center’s main parking lot just before noon. The draft from the whirling chopper blades blew sheets across the pavement, toppled abandoned wheelchairs, and created a vacuum which drew a cloud of ashen dust from the main entrance.

Icy gusts of wind cut through Nixon’s sweat-soaked shirt. He flexed his aching hands and wrists, which were strained from performing repeated chest compressions during CPR on the hybrid infant, who he’d nearly lost twice during the flight.

“Wayne, you’re going to have to open the doors for me.” He shouted over the chopper noise to the overweight cook who was good for little else. “Corey, help Zach get Allison to a safe room. Fifth floor, if you can manage, and lock her in.” Zach shot him a nasty look. “It’s for her protection. I don’t have any idea what we’re dealing with in there, and she’s in no condition to protect herself. Corey, once she’s settled, I want you to go out back and manually start the generators. I need power ASAP, so be quick about it.” Paul shut down the helicopter, took off his helmet, and turned around. Nixon gestured in the direction of the trunks of weapons and ammunition stowed in the small cargo area. “Paul and Joe, start cleaning out the infected. I want everybody out of there, dead and alive.”

Paul smoothed his hand over his slicked-back hair. “Even Max Reid?”

“Especially Reid,” Nixon said. “He’s been trouble long enough. Zach, get Allison safe and settled.” He turned to Joe. “Give me your pistol.” Joe hesitated. “I’m not asking, Joe. You can take any other one you want. I need Allison upstairs. Come on.” Joe handed Nixon his laser sight-fitted pistol and Nixon, in turn, handed it to Zach. “Once she’s comfortable, I want you looking for Reid, specifically. You get a shot, you take it. You understand? No questions asked.” He debated clueing Zach in that Reid might well be infected and decided against it.

Zach tapped the rail-mounted sight and a red dot appeared on the ground ahead of him. “And if I don’t?” He tapped the sight again to turn it off.

“I’m not the second chances type, Zach. Don’t push me. I hired you because you can shoot. Nothing about that has changed. Allison’s life is as much in my hands as it ever was, and I’ve held up my end of the bargain, despite the mess you caused here. Kill Reid,” he ordered. “And bring me his body.”

Joe held out a shoulder holster. “Might as well give you this, too.”

Zach slipped his arms through the straps and secured the gun to hang on his left side. Corey unfastened Allison’s safety belt and lifted her toward the exit. Zach opened his arms to receive her. She was nearly unconscious, sedated by the heavy doses of painkiller. Large, white bandages wrapped around her feet and her head fell against Zach’s chest when he cradled her frail, limp body.

Nixon lifted her eyelids and shined a light into them. He felt her pulse and examined her legs. “She’s going to be okay,” he said. “As long as you do what you’re asked this time.” He reached up toward Corey and grabbed the end of the bulky backboard. “Push him this way.” He gestured for Corey to twist the backboard so that he could reach the straps holding the infant. He unfastened the boy, set his I.V. bag on his chest, and swaddled him in a blanket that was meant to be a barrier against the elements as much as anything else. He fitted a tiny oxygen mask over his face, tightened the straps, and hoisted the portable tank onto his back. He adjusted the tubing and headed toward the front door.

The wind picked up and something swayed from the fixtures to the right of the entrance. Paul, who carried a trunk of supplies in front of him, was the first to see what it was.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said.

Mike and Jim, two of the last three men Nixon sent after Reid hung by their necks. Both of them had been shot.

“Keep out.” Nixon struggled to read the words carved into the flesh. Between the gas-induced bloating and the toll taken by the weather, the letters were almost indiscernible. “Not very original, is he? Cut them down.”

Joe and Paul looked at each other and then at Zach.

“You heard the man,” Paul said, the gusts of wind barely moving his gelled hair. “Cut them down.”

Joe’s muscled arms twitched as he unsheathed the knife strapped to his leg and tried to get the rope. Even at over 6 feet, he wasn’t tall enough to reach. He slid the case he’d been carrying next to the body and climbed on top of it. “You at least going to help me over here?” The wind picked up, spreading the rotting smell. Paul turned his head away and steadied the swinging body by its feet. Joe sawed on the rope which frayed, groaned, and eventually gave up. The first body dropped and Paul stepped back, letting it hit the pavement with a slushy thud. Blood poured from the man’s mouth and the smell worsened.

Nixon checked the infant, unable to waste further time. “I have to get him inside,” he said and gestured for Wayne to lead.

Wayne reluctantly shuffled inside.

“We’re headed to the fifth floor,” Nixon said, eyeing the pile of burnt bodies in the Ambulatory Surgery waiting room.

“Maybe we should wait for the others. Paul and Joe should be with you, not me.” Sweat beaded on the fat man’s brow, magnifying the stench of eggs and onions rolling off of him.

“Why? You’re not capable of opening some doors?” Nixon stood in front of the stairwell, wondering if Wayne could make the climb. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Wayne pulled the door open and Nixon squeezed, sideways, past him. A sense of vulnerability set in as he adjusted his grip on the infant, unarmed and unguarded.

Neither of them spoke as they ascended.

Nixon struggled to hear anything over the sound of Wayne’s wheezing.
Shhh.
Something had changed. The deep rising and falling of the boy’s chest had been replaced by smaller movements and a sound that could only be described as death rattles. Nixon placed his ear to the boy’s chest.

“We have to hurry.”

He took the final flight two stairs at a time. The door to the fifth floor hallway was closed, and as he moved toward it, he realized he couldn’t wait for Wayne to open it. He shifted the boy’s weight and reached for the knob with his shaking hand. He pulled the door toward him and a familiar stench crept into his nostrils. The dispatched bodies of two infected construction workers stood between him and his office at the other end of the hall. There had been dozens of men working on the wing and if these two hadn’t made it out during the evacuation, certainly others hadn’t, either.

The door slammed behind him and he hurried down the hall at a pace just short of a jog. The boy gurgled and spattered the oxygen mask with bloody mucous. He started to shake and then went stiff.

“Dammit.”

A hammer skidded down the hall and three more infected construction workers emerged from behind the hanging plastic sheeting.

“Dr. Nixon, wait.” Wayne stood doubled-over in the doorway, his face red and sweaty.

Nixon, unwilling to risk his or the boy’s safety, paused only long enough to look over his shoulder at the ravenous horde descending on Wayne. The sight of them attacking made him run faster. Wayne’s pained screams filled his ears as he rushed into the remains of his office and locked the door behind him. He panted, out of breath, and ached from the climb. The combined weight of the oxygen tank and the boy had quickly become a strain.

The boy coughed again and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“No, no. Don’t do this to me!”

Nixon stepped over Lois, his former secretary, whose corpse lay at his feet. Her body had decomposed so badly that if it hadn’t been for the outfit he’d last seen her wearing and the tightly wound bun of gray hair, he might not have known it was her at all. He cleared a space on the floor away from her and laid the boy out, praying the antivirus would slow his demise long enough to collect the samples he needed. He ran into the bathroom and pulled open the medicine cabinet, slamming the heel of his hand into the wall when he found it empty.

“Damn it!” He kicked a prescription bottle across the bathroom floor and ran his hands through his gray hair. He searched the wreckage, hoping the shots had been misplaced, but knowing there wasn’t a chance. Few people would have known what those shots were. Fewer would know where to look for them. Nixon narrowed his suspect list to one and wondered what Reid was up to.

A bitter wind blew through the atrium. Paul’s hands stiffened from the cold and a clear thread of snot ran from his nose. He fumbled the clasp of the storage bin, sneezed, and opened the lid. “Here.” He replaced Joe’s pistol with one exactly like the one Nixon had given to Zach.

“This isn’t going to be enough.” Joe shook his head. “The sight helps, but not against dozens.”

Paul brushed his hair away from his face and pulled on a black hat to manage it now that his gel had given up. He picked up one of a dozen frag grenades.

“Get serious.” Joe shook his head. “You want to be in a narrow, interior hallway when that thing goes off?”

Honestly, no, he didn’t, but there were some advantages. “Wait a minute.” Paul remembered the landscaping truck abandoned out front. He pulled the hat down over his ears and rushed out into the cold. A blue tarp covered the bed of a rusted, white pick-up truck and he dropped the tailgate to see what was inside.

“Perfect.”

He ran back to Joe with a chainsaw dangling from each hand.

For a minute, Joe didn’t say anything.

“Think about it--distance, unlimited use.” Paul unscrewed one of the gas caps. “This one’s full.”

Joe checked the other. “This one, too.” He holstered the pistol and fired up the chainsaw. Smoke poured out of the engine and cleared when he choked the engine to idle. Paul did the same and the two of them headed down the hall.

“Why do you think Nixon’s doing it?” Paul asked.

“Doing what?” Joe kept his eyes straight ahead.

“Keeping Zach placated. Nixon said it himself, he’s not the second chances type.”

Joe nodded toward the shadow-covered wall and opened the chainsaw’s throttle.

The chain spun and the shadows picked up speed, headed in the noise’s direction. The pack moved quickly, their posture slumped and their bodies decomposing. A dozen or so infected adults and one child clamored for pole position. A bald-headed girl wearing footie pajamas moved to the front of the pack. Plastic stuck out from between her teeth and a gnawed off length of IV tubing dangled from under her sleeve.

Joe knocked her aside and tore through the adults, singlehandedly decapitating four former patients who were discernible from the others by their hospital gowns and robes.

Blood sprayed everywhere and Paul squinted to keep clear of the spatter as he charged and took out two victims of his own.

The chain ripped through the flesh, barely missing a beat as it severed through each of their spines and sent their heads flying toward the walls.

“Joe, watch out!”

A middle-aged man with stringy, long hair, a drawn face, and nearly translucent skin, ran toward him. His dogged determination marked him as a physical threat.

Joe hacked at the air and narrowly missed his target. The emaciated man kept coming and forced Joe against the wall. Joe carved at the air and limbed the man’s outstretched arms inches at a time until there was nothing but bloody stumps wiggling from his shoulders.

Paul sawed his way through the others and leveled his chain at head-height. “Joe, over here.”

Joe sent the man backward with a single, well-placed kick to the stomach.

Paul widened his stance and with a smooth motion, severed the infected man’s head. His long hair caught in the chain and spun, casting spray from floor to ceiling. Paul let off the throttle and the chainsaw sputtered out. He threw it on the ground with the head still attached and looked at the little girl.

The last of the group, she clawed at a closed door as though she could sense something inside.

Joe revved the chainsaw and Paul intervened. The two of them were blood-soaked and dripping with biological shrapnel.

“Wait.” Paul approached the girl whose deep-set eyes and thin face said she’d been dying long before the virus took her. In a world of sad things, this was the worst. He unholstered his pistol and sighted his shot, afraid that his shaking hands would make him miss. The red dot danced on her glistening, white scalp and finally settled. He said a silent prayer and pulled the trigger. She went down quickly and cleanly, and appeared pure against the carnage of much less sympathetic kills.

Paul surveyed the destruction, the mess that would have to be cleaned and the bodies that would fuel the pyre—except for hers. Her, he planned to come back for and bury.

Joe jiggled the doorknob of the room she’d been trying so desperately to get into. “It’s locked.”

Something crashed inside.

“Look out.” Paul fired blindly through the curtained window.

A man’s scream echoed through the door. Whomever he’d shot wasn’t infected.

Joe picked up his chainsaw and shattered the glass with the butt end, clearing safe passage for his arm. He reached inside, but couldn’t quite get the lock.

“Here, let me try.” While Joe’s arms were far more muscular, Paul’s were longer. He reached in, praying not to be attacked, and quickly found the lock. He released the button and Joe opened the door before his hand was all the way out.

“Jesus, Joe. Give me a minute, would you?”

“We’re already too late.” Joe pointed up at the drop-ceiling tile which had been moved to allow someone’s escape. A fabric sling dangled from the opening and bloody handprints dotted the metal framing.

A toppled wheelchair lay in the center of the room.

“Looks like whoever it is, he’s hurt.”

“It’s got to be Reid.” Joe pushed aside one of the two beds, exposing the body of the elderly man who had bled out on the floor. “But who is this?”

The man wore a thick flannel shirt and had a black medical pack strapped to his belt. His buckle was half as wide as his waist.

Joe snagged the pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket before the blood from the gunshot could ruin them.

Paul bent down and lifted the elderly man’s eyelids. After verifying there was no sign of infection, he pressed two fingers to the side of his neck to feel for a pulse. “He’s dead.”

“I’d still like to know who he was.” Joe rolled him over. “Get his wallet.”

Paul opened the faded leather bifold and looked inside. An old picture of a reasonably attractive woman was nestled between the two flaps. Twenty-seven useless dollars and some credit cards indicated this was a man who held onto things out of sentiment rather than necessity. He held up a New York State driver’s license with a picture that had nowhere near kept up with the man’s aging. “Name’s Frank Krieger.”

Joe tested the faucet for running water and washed the blood from his hands and face. “Never heard of him.”

Paul shrugged. He hadn’t either, but he wondered why, with dead bodies at the door, a madman on the loose, and rampant infection, someone so vulnerable would come to the center alone.

In his estimation, he hadn’t.

Survivors were dangerous and he guessed Reid wasn’t their only living problem.