Sometimes We Ran (Book 2): Community (11 page)

“He’s mad at me for killing her,” I said, leaning against the car. “Maybe he wanted to put her down.” I glanced at the ground with all the drying blood. “I’ve been on the road too long. You see so many turn. Putting them down just becomes automatic.” I looked at Ben. “It wasn’t Jenny anymore.”

Ben leaned next to me, kicking the dirt off his shoes. “Ryan’s parents and Jenny were neighbors. He had some problems with grades at his college, and was home visiting at Cannon Fields. I think he was going to join the military or something in the fall. When his parents didn’t come home on the day of the outbreak, Jenny kind of took him in. They took care of each other…became pretty close friends. This can’t be easy for him.”

I looked at Ben. “Why are you telling me this?”

His gaze turned to the ground. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted you to know why he was so upset. That’s how things worked at Cannon Fields. When the end came, we all took care of each other. Couples took in orphaned children, and we all stood together. We figured it was better than being alone. That’s why Denise usually sent three or four out on missions. Safety in numbers. We all looked out for each other.” Ben trailed off.

I thought about what he said. Cannon Fields was a refreshing exception. Most groups of people just wanted to kill you, and take you stuff. It would be nice to return to Cannon Fields, maybe start a new life. Claire could have a fresh start, as well.

We just had to get out of this mess first.

Ryan drifted back to where Ben and me were standing. He still wasn’t talking to me, but at least he didn’t have murder in his eyes. Ben gathered us together.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I want to go home. How’s that sound to you two?” he said.
I nodded. “Sounds good to me. How about you, Ryan? What do you say we find this doctor and get the hell home?”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah,” he managed to say.

“Okay. Would you lead the way, John?” Ben said.

“Me? No. You guys are in charge. I’m just along for the ride.”

Ben put his hand on my shoulder. “I can’t speak for my boy Ryan here, but I don’t have a lot of experience out here. We need someone to help us through this god-forsaken world. We need someone who has lived out here. Someone who knows what these monsters out here are going to do. Someone like you, John. Right, Ryan?” After a few seconds, Ryan nodded reluctantly.

Leadership was a role I had been avoiding. Deep in my heart, I wasn’t prepared to lead anyone. I was just a survivor, just trying to live among the dead. I didn’t know if I could do it. Ben looked at me, expecting an answer.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get the doctor, and get home before something else tries to take our heads off. We’ll do it for Jenny.”

Ben repaired the car the best he could, and slid behind the wheel. With a horrible squeal, the car sprang to life. It would get us to the clinic, but I didn’t think it would make it back to Cannon Fields. We might have to acquire another vehicle. I opened the back door to take my seat, but Ryan stopped me.

“You take the front seat. I’ll sit in the back,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was being gracious, or if he was going to blow my brains out as we rode to the clinic. I slid into the front seat anyways. Ryan took his place in the back. Ben put the car in gear, and we began our final leg to the clinic. We were short on time, and the doctor awaited.

We drove in silence the final miles to the clinic. Every eye in the car was peeled for any bad guys. We did not want to be swarmed again. The focus was on getting the doctor out of the clinic and getting home in one piece.

The automotive member of our team wasn’t doing so well. The repairs we made didn’t work, and the sedan was once again overheating. Worse, it was now making an ominous clacking noise from under the hood. It wasn’t going to take us back home. It might not even make it to the clinic.

Ben looked grimly at the bad news from the dashboard. Most of the lights were on, and some were blinking. “Car not doing so good, John.”

“I know. We’ll have to borrow another one if we can.” Luckily, we were passing a showroom’s worth of cars, trucks, SUVs, fire engines, police cars, and other assorted four-and two-wheeled transport. The abandoned vehicles were double-and triple-parked around the clinic and snaked into the street beyond. One of them had to work.

Our poor sedan finally gave up the ghost a few hundred feet from our destination. The clacking got louder, there was a squeal, and then silence. It stalled and became part of the clinic’s end-of-the-world junkyard.

Ben tried to start it a few times, but it wouldn’t go. “That’s it. Car’s done.”

It was a sad moment, and I said a little prayer for our departed four-wheeled friend. The old white car had tried it’s best. It got us as close as it could. “Okay. We’ll pull the battery and see if we can get something else started.”

After loading a few supplies into our backpacks and making sure all our weapons were fully loaded, we started the hike to the clinic. We walked quickly and silently, watching the area carefully. Dead cars, decayed bodies, and other assorted debris littered both sides of the road, with a clear spot between them. Authorities must have kept the road as clear as possible during any evacuations for as long as they could.
The three of us got to the driveway of the clinic. It wasn’t the front door. It was actually some sort of emergency entrance on the side of the building. The main entrance was on the cross street a few hundred yards away, and it was clogged with cars and trucks. A sign confirmed we might have found the right place. A broken sign with the words “Urgent Care” in bold black letters stood near a large driveway. We took some cover by a dead police car.

Ben handed me some binoculars. “Looks like this is the way in.”

I took a look at the entrance through the glasses. The door had been torn off its hinges, and was lying on the ground. A lone Yellow-Eye, badly decomposed, stumbled around on the street near the entrance. “The door is open,” I said, handing Ryan the binoculars.

“Damn!” he said. “Anything could have crawled in there.”

“Right. Okay, you guys have the heavy weaponry. You guys take a slight lead, and I’ll stay a little behind and watch the rear. And Ryan?” I glanced at the young man with the scruffy beard. “Finger off the trigger until you have a clear target. Understand?” Ryan blushed a little with embarrassment, but nodded his head slowly.

The three of us left cover in formation. Ben and Ryan in front with rifles ready, and me bringing up the rear with my handgun. Ben and Ryan looked like seasoned zombie fighters, leading with their guns, and carefully watching the debris for any undead. Jenny had taught them well.

We saw nothing as we approached the door. The Yellow-Eye presented no problem, as he was very far gone. Ben knocked him down and dispatched him with ease. All the other zombies were hiding or feeding elsewhere.

Or maybe they were inside the clinic.

Ben and Ryan reached the door and took positions on either side. I joined Ben on the left side of the opening. In unison, we stared inside the dark clinic.

“Should we knock?” Ben asked.

“Actually, not a bad idea,” I said. I picked up a small piece of junk metal and tossed it into the open door. I stood back and waited for the potential swarm to come running out. I heard the metal clank against a tiled floor. We waited a few seconds, but nothing dead walked out.

We slowly stepped inside, and Ryan got out a flashlight. The strong beam revealed a large waiting room. An admittance desk was on the back wall, next to a dark hallway. The tiled floor was stained with dried blood and medical waste. Gurneys, dead medical machines, and chairs were scattered all over the room. A half-inch of dust and grime covered everything. Some of the gurneys still had bodies strapped to them.

“Nice,” Ryan said sarcastically as he surveyed the wreckage. “What do we do first?”

First, we had to block the door. Ben and I propped the remains of the door against the frame, then we piled empty gurneys, chairs, and busted medical equipment in the doorway to make a temporary barricade. It might keep the Red-Eyes busy for a while. The three of us stood and contemplated the hallway going into the bowels of the clinic.

Ryan swallowed hard. “She must be down there somewhere.”

I kneeled down to get another perspective. About fifteen feet or so down the hall, it went pitch black.
“Yeah…a dark, scary hallway. What could go wrong here?”

Then, out of the darkness, came a growl. It was deep, and very animal-like. It sounded like something from another world. I stood up, as the blood drained to my feet.

“What the hell was that?” Ben asked.

“That…was something horrible,” I answered.

We stepped back as another low growl came from the hallway. “Can I see your flashlight, Ryan?” I asked. He handed me the light. I raised it up and pointed it down the hall. As the light swung up from the floor, we caught a glimpse of a figure with flashing red eyes, clothed in a blood-stained hospital gown.

Then all hell broke loose.

This Red-Eye flew out of the hallway, three or four feet off the ground. I managed to sidestep the beast, and Ryan and Ben scattered as he careened out of the darkness. He fell to the ground, but got up quickly, snarling and growling. He focused on me, and leaped again.

I reacted fast. I shoved a nearby wheeled gurney in the zombie’s gut and pushed him against the wall. He reached out with his rotting arms, trying to take hold of my neck while making sorrowful groaning and whining noises. Ryan got to his feet and took him out with his handgun.

I shot Ryan a wry grin. “No problem.” He only shook his head.

We untangled Ben from a bunch of plastic chairs and started down the hallway. Ryan led the group, rifle ready and flashlight lighting the way. Thankfully, as we walked further into the clinic, the hallways remained clear. Most of the bodies were of the dead and not the walking around variety.

The three of us reached a main hallway. It was more of the same: darkness, bad smells, dried blood, decaying bodies, and debris everywhere. A nightmare haunted house that wouldn’t end. The clinic must have been chaos central.

“Which way?” Ben asked.

I looked both ways. To our left, I could just make out the light from the main entrance. To our right was another dark hallway with a set of double doors with glass windows at the end. I assumed the doctor must be to the right. There were also doors in the hallways to rooms with God-knows-what inside them. “This way. To the right. We’ll try the double doors.”

As a unit, we turned to the right and focused on the end of the hallway. As we got closer, I made out the words “Emergency Rooms” in bold yellow, reflective letters on the doors. I was concentrating so hard, I nearly stepped on a Yellow-Eye on the floor. The Red-Eyes are intimidating, but I think the Yellow-Eyes are scarier in the dark. The yellow glow of their eyes always made me shiver. This poor devil wasn’t much of a threat. Someone had removed his legs below the knees, so all it could do was sadly crawl around and wail. It had the remnants of a white doctor’s coat with a nametag.

“I got it,” Ben said. He hit the zombie in the side of its soft dead head till it went quiet. “It’s a doctor.” We all stared at the doctor-zombie on the floor.

“Maybe it’s our doctor.” Ryan slammed the wall with his fist. “Dammit! We came here for nothing. Jenny died for this, and we got nothing.”

The nametag was water-damaged and illegible. I looked for some other identification, but found none. The corpse was so decomposed, it was hard to tell even what sex it was. This trip my have been for nothing, but I just didn’t know.

“Let’s at least check out what’s behind the door. This Yellow-Eye might not be her.” I pushed open one of the creaky doors, and stepped inside. Ryan and Ben followed closely behind.

The room was pure chaos. Piles of medical equipment were scattered everywhere, and in every corner. Signs of last stands and great battles were scattered among the debris. We walked over a carpet of spent shells. People had fought and died here. The clinic looked abandoned. Our doctor may have moved on.
The room was deathly quiet. I could hear the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I could also sense that Ryan and Ben were a little nervous, as well. “Fingers off the triggers till something bad shows up,” I said. “We don’t want to shoot her by mistake. Or each other, for that matter.”

We turned past dark corner to another short hall. It was a group of emergency rooms with glass doors. They were all dark with curtains drawn, except for one at the end, which had a pale yellow glow coming out. As we stepped closer to investigate, a female voice called out. “I know you’re there, so you might as well stop sneaking around. If you’ve come for drugs, I’m fresh out. If you’ve come for food and water, I don’t have much. If you’ve come to rape me, well, you have a fight on your hands.”

I put my gun into my holster, and Ben and Ryan lowered their rifles. We may have found our doctor. I walked into the room with the golden glow, with my hands up to show I was peaceful.

The little emergency area was lit by a couple of lanterns with flickering flames. They were low on fuel. Medical equipment, food and water, assorted boxes, and a bed were crowded into the space. Standing among it all was a woman in a dirty white doctor’s coat and scrubs armed with a hammer. When she saw me, she raised it slightly.

“Don’t come any closer. I know how to use this.” She raised the hammer higher.

She looked like a tough customer. “It’s okay. My gun is in my holster. Me and my friends are not here to hurt you. We’re from Cannon Fields.” The hammer dropped slightly.

I took off my glove to shake her hand. “Your name wouldn’t be Dr. Connelly, would it?”

She dropped the hammer to a less menacing height. “Yes. That’s my name.” Dr. Connelly gripped my hand in a firm handshake.

We had found our doctor.

“I’m Dr. Johanna Connelly. The last living doctor in this clinic, I suppose.” We stood in the remains of the clinic and shared a handshake.

“I’m John. This is Ryan and Ben.” I nodded back behind me. Ryan and Ben gave an upward nod of hello to Dr. Connelly. She shook their hands.

“If I had known they were going to send strong young men, I would have fixed myself up a little,” she joked. “Did you say you were from Cannon Fields?” She straightened her dirty coat and tried to smooth down her hair, which had started to go a little gray. Her glasses had a cracked lens. The clinic must have been a terrible scene.

“Yes. Sorry we’re a little late. We had a few distractions,” I said.

“No doubt. I didn’t think anyone would come. I had just about given up hope.” Dr. Connelly waved us inside. “You guys have a seat. You look like you need a rest. I’ll get us some water.”

We each found a chair, and sat down in the little room. Dr. Connelly had retreated here as a last chance. Papers, food, boxes of medicine, and other vital supplies were crammed into every corner. It appeared the doctor was mounting a last stand in the compromised clinic. It felt good to sit down. I didn’t realize how tired I had become. Ben sat a few feet away, and Ryan sat near the hallway keeping an eye out for trouble.

Doctor Connelly returned with four hospital glasses filled with water on a small tray. She handed out the glasses, then found her office chair. I took a closer look at the water. Even in the amber light of the lantern, I could see its gray color. Small bits of rust and dirt swirled around in the glass. It didn’t smell so good either; a light tinge of sulfur. I hesitated a bit.

She noticed. “It’s okay. I tested it. I guess the tanks are almost empty.” She drank a few sips from her glass. I followed her lead, and took a few sips. The water didn’t taste so good, either. “Are you the only one here?” I asked.

The doctor sighed. “Yes,” she said sadly. “Everyone else is dead, or left. I stayed behind.”

“How long ago did the others leave?”

She thought for a minute. “Let’s see…It was during all the swarms. The Army tried to evacuate the clinic. It was quite a battle.”

Why didn’t you try to leave with the others?” Ryan asked.

“I had a patient. She couldn’t be moved.” With that, she stood up and drew the curtain back on the small bed in the room. The hooks made a screeching noise on the dry tracks as she revealed the occupant of the bed.

It was a little girl. She was probably no more than four or five years old. Ryan, Ben, and I stood up and took positions around the bed. She looked at us, then buried her head in her pillow. A look of fear crossed her face.

“Her name is Amy. I found her in the wreckage after a few swarms had passed.” Dr. Connelly reached over and stroked the girl’s dark hair. “She was hurt very badly. Others told me to leave her, but I took her inside. That was at the height of the madness. I’ve been nursing her back to health.”

A little girl. This complicated things. “You didn’t mention Amy on the radio, doctor,” Ben said.

“My radio was giving out,” the doctor said. “I didn’t have any time to explain my situation in detail.” Amy hugged the doctor, hiding her face from us.

Amy peeked out at us from the doctor’s embrace. She was a cute little thing. Her face bore a few scars from her injuries and told the story of her survival. I couldn’t help myself and gave her a little smile. She returned it. I guess seeing three armed men come into the clinic had scared her, but the smile might have helped. “Does she talk?” I asked. So far, Amy hadn’t uttered a peep.

“I think so,” the doctor answered. “However, she hasn’t said a word in all the time I’ve known her. I hope her injuries and the horror of the situation haven’t affected her speech.”

I looked around at the darkened clinic. “This place must have been a nightmare.”

Doctor Connelly let out a long sigh. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m actually a pediatrician. I was treating a young lady with some bad burns on her arm from an accident, when we were suddenly swamped with strange cases. We had people coming in sick, people turning into those monsters on beds in the hallway, and some who’d already turned locked in clinics. We were losing ground fast. Hospitals in Huntsville and Birmingham were being overrun, and the military was evacuating both cities.” She paused to take a sip of the gray water. “Then, we lost contact with the outside world. The last thing we heard was that the military was moving to the south towards us. They kept saying something was following them.”

“A swarm,” I said.

“Yeah. And a big one, too. The National Guard slammed into town with about a thousand undead hot on their heels. They had no tanks, no trucks, no jeeps, no vehicles of any kind. Just the weapons on their backs. They tried to stop them outside town, but the barricades failed. Then they moved to the streets and around this clinic. We were surrounded.” Doctor Connelly folded her hands in her lap and looked at her feet.

“Those poor young people. They fought so bravely. The battle ebbed and flowed in and out of the building.” She pointed to the ceiling. “We all ran upstairs to the roof, grabbing any survivors and supplies we could. Those brave soldiers covered our retreat. I watched as the zombies dragged them down the stairs screaming.” She paused for a second to collect herself.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“The soldiers were annihilated. Not too many made it through. The remaining fighters pushed the swarm back outside and into the woods. They held them at bay while we tried to evacuate. The soldiers found a few working cars and trucks and improvised a caravan out of town. That’s when I found Amy.” She paused to stroke the young girl’s dark hair. ”She was so badly hurt that I stayed behind. That was about a year ago or so, I guess.”

“What happened to the caravan?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know. I like to think they made it through. Maybe they’re fighting somewhere else, saving other people from the monsters.”

I thought of all the brave soldiers who fought and died in this mess. They stood and tried to destroy an enemy they weren’t trained to kill. Countless soldiers who were the only line between life and complete chaos in the early days. “Good job surviving for a year in this place.”

Doctor Connelly shook her head. “Just dumb luck. The clinic was a pretty secure place at first. It had a few months of food and water, and I would take trips to the outside world in the daylight to find more. I used a few weapons I found on the ground around the clinic. Had to figure out how they worked.” She smiled a little. “It became a little game. I would go outside, and the Red-Eyes would try and hunt me. I even kept score.” She pointed to a sticky note on a nearby dead computer screen. It had lines that I assumed represented Red-Eyes she had dispatched. About a dozen lines were scrawled on the sheet of yellow paper.

“Looks like we found a zombie-killer,” I said.

“Oh, no,” the Doctor said. “Most of my kills were just lucky. I mostly just ran away and hid from them.” She paused to sigh again. “Like a scared bunny. I’m glad you guys came. The clinic is finished. When those stupid rednecks pulled the door off its hinges, Amy and I were exposed. I locked myself in here with the radio to wait for rescue or the end.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Well, we’re here now. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Thank you. I didn’t think anyone would come.” Tears began to well up in Doctor Connelly’s eyes. It had been a long year. For all of us.

Looking around the room, I noticed microscopes and other lab equipment scattered on all the desks and tables. “You’ve been researching this thing, Doc?” I asked.

She looked around. “Yes. Not making much progress, though. Maybe one day I can write a paper on it. I hope someone is around to read it.”

“Come up with any ideas on what caused all this?” I asked. Ben and Ryan leaned in to listen to the doctor to hear her theories.

Doctor Connelly removed her damaged glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. “I can tell you what I do know. It’s some kind of parasite. I think it’s using us in its life cycle. No one got a good look at it. It doesn’t even have a name. It enters the blood, and suppresses the immune response so it has time to work. It gets to the brain and begins to multiply. When it has bred to sufficient numbers, it releases a toxin that destroys the brain tissue. The victim begins to experience fever, unexplained bleeding, convulsions. Soon, it destroys the upper functions of the brain. Everything that makes you human…gone. What’s left is the brain stem and the more basic parts. We thought it was meningitis. Some form of bacterial meningitis, but we were wrong. So wrong.” She shook her head sadly. “Death soon follows. Then, if conditions are right, the body rises. It rises with a hunger that can’t be satisfied. A shell. A parasite factory looking for flesh to eat.”

“Damn,” said Ben, under his breath.

“At first, it moved slowly among our population. In the beginning, it could take twelve hours to a full day to kill you and make you a zombie. People traveled to their destinations not even knowing they were infected. They turned in hotel rooms, traveling in cars, on planes, in airports and train stations. Then they infected others, and the outbreak began to pick up speed. At first, it was small groups, then the small groups became larger groups. Then they became swarms. A perfect recipe for a holocaust. Add in mass evacuations, looting, and general panic, and you got a civilization ready to collapse.” Doctor Connelly took a sip of water. “The Yellow-Eyes appeared first. They were sort of a prototype. However, the conversion to Yellow-Eye caused too much damage to the host body, so the little bastards refined their process. Each successive generation was stronger, more agile. They left more of the brain intact.”

“And the Red-Eyes were born,” I said.

“Yeah. The Red-Eyes. The parasites came up with a process that created a human-sized, red-eyed psychopath predator with a taste for human flesh.”

Ben shook his head in disbelief. “Do they control the body?”

“Not really.” She handed Ben a folder of information about our little parasite friend. “They create the zombie, but then the parasites are along for the ride. Our bodies make a perfect carrying case. It’s a great place to manufacture new parasites, get food, and to spread themselves around. That’s why they bite. The parasites build up in the fluids of the creatures. One bite that breaks the skin could send thousands into your bloodstream, continuing the process. The change takes only about four or five minutes now. Barely enough time to scream…or pray.”

Ben, Ryan, and I looked at each other. “We know, Doc. We started this little trip with four people,” Ryan said.

“I’m so sorry. This damn thing has taken so many people. Too many..,” Doctor Connelly trailed off.

It was silent for a minute as everyone digested the information. “Where did it come from? Have you ever seen anything like this before? I asked.

“John, I worked for a short time in Africa with children infected with all manner of parasites. I once pulled a tapeworm as tall as you out of a young boy. I’ve been a doctor a long time, but I have never seen anything like this. Most parasites kill their hosts eventually, but to reanimate something as complex as a human being, then use us in their life cycle? I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like that. It’s probably been here, evolving along with us all these years. It’s been waiting all this time to strike. All it takes is someone to eat a bad piece of meat or drink some water with a few bad guy parasites in it and, bang, end of the world.”

“So we wait them out,” Ryan interjected from the back of the room. “They’re dead, right? We wait till they rot, then we hose off the sidewalks and get on with our lives.”

Doctor Connelly stood up and looked Ryan in the eye. “I felt the same way. Lay in some supplies, nail some plywood over the windows, and wait it out. I figured the parasites killed the host, but they hadn’t figured out the knotty problem of cellular decomposition. Eventually, all the zombies would turn to dust and bones.” She looked around at all of us in the little darkened room. “I was wrong. To try and further understand the nature of the infection, I took a few samples from reanimates that had been dispatched…skin, blood, organs, things like that. Under a microscope, the samples showed very little decomposition. The parasites had figured out how to slow the process down to keep their life cycle going as long as possible. A survival instinct, perhaps.”

Ryan sat down heavily like he had been punched in the gut. I felt the same way. “How slow?”

She thought for a minute. “The Yellow-Eyes may last as long as maybe twenty-four months, depending on exposure. In the Red-Eyes, I saw very little cell damage. It’s hard to tell how long they might last.”

This was very bad news. One of the things that I had been holding on to, one of the things that allowed me to go on, was the fact that all the zombies were dead. They would all eventually rot and go away. Now Doctor Connelly was telling me they might stick around. “So, let me get this straight. We could walk out of this clinic in ten years, and the Red-Eyes could still be waiting for us in the woods?”

“Theoretically…yes,” Doctor Connelly said, her voice almost a whisper. “I guess it depends on the food supply.”

I sat there in silence. The world really was a different place. Mankind had been replaced on the top of the food chain. It looked like we might be fighting zombies for our place in the world for a long time.
“We have to get ready to go,” I said. “Is Amy mobile?”

“Yes. She can walk, but I’ll carry her if necessary. I have some things I want to bring.” Dr. Connelly turned around and began to get some small bags together.

“Okay. We have a slight problem. The car we came in died on the street outside. We’ll need another one.”

“There’s a black sport utility vehicle near the main entrance. It looked relativity intact and in the open. I tried to start it a couple of times, but it wouldn’t go,” Doctor Connelly said.

“We’ll pull the battery out of our car. Give us about half an hour, then we’ll go.”

“Sounds good, John.” We started to put our plans into action. “This place you’re taking me to…Cannon Fields. Do they have children?”