The Fall of Society (Book 2): The Fight of Society (18 page)

            Milla and Derek arrived at the top floor of the south wing as Derek led. Milla was very quiet; her concentration precise as she aimed her weapon at every dark corner. She knew any one of them could be hiding danger. Derek, on the other hand, moved with increasing adrenaline. He wanted to find Cozine badly. “Come on, fucker. I got something for ya,” he whispered intensely.

            “Keep down the chatter. He could be anywhere,” Milla whispered.

            And they kept on into the darkness…

            Ardent and Bear had finished searching the first floor with Alan trailing behind them. They were headed to the stairwell to go when Ardent, who was leading, stopped abruptly at stairwell door. They all did because they heard
something move
somewhere behind them. A low muffled sound, as if someone shuffled papers on a desk. Ardent slowly turned and scanned the area from where he thought the sound had come. Alan was frozen in place from fear, but Bear was already on the move toward the office he thought the disturbance was at.

            He moved stealthily to the office door. It was cracked open and he positioned himself to avoid being seen by coming at the door from the side. Ardent did the same and placed himself on the other side of the door. They both tried to get a look inside the office, but it was a black gash that hid everything. Ardent signaled Bear and he acknowledged his plan—they heard the movement again—just inside. Ardent kicked the door open and Bear stepped in with his rifle ready. Their flashlight beams saturated the room and scared the crap out of a large rat that was foraging on the desk. It jumped off and bolted through a hole in the wall. They eased up and saw that the rat was tearing pieces of paper off sheets on the desk, most likely for nest building material.

            “You dirty rat!” Bear said startled. “Lucky little bastard, I almost blasted it.”

            Ardent lowered his weapon. “Let’s get moving; we have a lot of ground to cover.”

            Tom and Anthony conducted their search on the upper floors of the main building, Anthony was moving a little fast and almost right behind his brother. “Slow down a bit,” Tom whispered.

            “I’m not moving that fast; you’re just moving too slow,” Anthony said back.

            “Anthony, we’re looking for a maniac I gave a gun to. Slow down.”

            “Yeah, okay. Good point.”

            Outside, the night began its slow surrender to the approaching dawn; the horizon was golden tipped as the black night began to ease into dark blue. The sinkhole in the front courtyard continued to expand toward the outer wall, but it was still over forty feet from it. The wall would remain intact for the time being.

            The street in front of the hospital gate was full of the lurching stenches, easily a couple thousand of them; bellowing and howling as they wandered aimlessly. On the next block, the remains of Hayward’s Black Hawk helicopter lay encrusted in ash and surrounded by scattered, burnt body parts. The fuselage was his tomb and the street his altar.

            Directly in front of the hospital gate was what the survivors inside couldn’t see, unless they were up on the roof of the main building. Some had been up there but, even so, they didn’t notice this crucial change in the street—one of the missiles Hayward fired when he and John crashed had struck right on the manhole Ardent’s group had fled into. The explosion left behind a huge crater and exposed the sewer tunnel.

            The edge of the crater was right at the hospital wall.

            The blast hole was about twelve feet deep and was full of trapped corpses that had fallen into it. Almost a hundred of the beasts were in a frenzy to get out. Filled with many fast movers that were clawing their way out, they were actually expanding the hole and gaining no ground. Tons of dirt mixed in with hundreds of gallons of sewer water had created a cesspool of mud that all the fetid creatures were caked with. They dug the hole larger as they tried in vain to escape and they were already under the hospital wall.

            Mindless machines that kept clawing and scratching…

            Inches of dirt fell every few seconds…

            They were digging into the courtyard…

            On the third floor, John and Lauren had just finished searching as they headed to the stairwell to go up. John reached the stairwell door; he shone his flashlight in the landing—all clear—and walked in. Lauren was just a few feet behind him. As she got to the door and turned her back to the corridor—Cozine appeared out of nowhere and hit her on the back of the head with a handgun—then disappeared like a ghost. John heard the impact on Lauren’s skull and turned around quickly, just in time to see her hit the floor, unconscious.

            John reacted; he rushed to the door, stopped, and looked around both corners for anyone waiting in ambush. Not seeing anything, he looked down at Lauren. She seemed fine, but he wasn’t sure without examining her. He slowly knelt down and checked her pulse—it was normal—she was okay, just knocked out by the blow to the back of her head where he saw bloody hair. He couldn’t help her though; he had to concentrate on the man who did this to her—Cozine was nearby—John knew that and he waited for him to make a mistake. He proceeded slowly down the corridor to where he thought Cozine might be.

            He didn’t get three steps before a soft
thud
broke the silence behind him—John spun around with his assault rifle ready—his flashlight illuminated nothing and then he realized it was a distraction.

           
“Shit.”

            John cut back to facing the other way, half-expecting to catch Cozine trying to sneak up on him. No one was there—the thud noise broke out again behind him—he spun back and his flashlight again, found nothing or no one.

            John froze when he felt
cold steel
touch his neck—

            There was a surgical scalpel at his throat. Even though there was little light, the stainless steel of the blade glimmered as it pressed against John’s vulnerable skin, directly on his jugular vein. Its wielder was revealed as he rose behind John like Moby Dick coming for the Captain.

            It was Cozine and he slapped his other hand over John’s forehead, pulling his head back and fully exposing his neck.

            “Hi, John,” his row of white teeth hissed.

            John didn’t answer, his mind racing.

            “Nothing to say, huh? You were such a chatty Charlie before.”

            John only had Lauren on his mind because he needed to protect her. He wanted to get Cozine as far away from her as possible.

            “Drop the big gun, if you will,” Cozine said.

            John dropped his rifle to the floor and then stepped backward, forcing Cozine to move with him, away from Lauren.

            “What’re we doing, John? We dancing here?” Cozine said entertained. “I like this, we’re doing the tango!”

            A couple steps later and Cozine stopped John from moving any further.

            Cozine’s character changed in a heartbeat from a bubbly, happy man, to a dark psycho. “I hate the tango. Would you like to know why you’re not dead already, John? Hmm?”

            “I’m dying with anticipation here,” John answered.

            “Touché. I like that. Well, you’re still alive because I wanted you to know that I beat you. You tricked me to get in the cellblock, but I wanted you to know that I outsmarted
you
in the end.”

            “You must be proud of yourself, huh, Ben?”

            A shadow appeared behind Cozine; someone was there that he wasn’t aware of.

            “Proud because I outsmarted you? Please, that’s a given. You’re pathetic, John. I just wanted you to know that before I cut your throat.”

            “Fuck you,” John said spitefully.

            “No, thank you, but I will give that a try with Lauren after we’re done here.”

            Cozine tightened his arm muscles, he was about to cut John’s jugular wide open…

            Until the unknown person appeared right behind Cozine—

            It was Donnie, of all people; this weirdo was about to save John.

            The janitor had a syringe in his hand that was filled with a clear liquid.

            Donnie positioned the needle toward Cozine’s neck…

            Who was still unaware of his presence because he was preoccupied with John…

            Donnie stuck the needle—

            In John’s neck…

DAY 24:

CERAULO and  DONNIE

THE CITY OF LONG BEACH WAS COVERED IN DARK PATCHES from the festering storm clouds overhead, the sun hidden because it didn’t want to see the chaos below. Traffic was a disaster everywhere as was the city; gunfire ticked off constantly, accompanied by explosions from ongoing battles with the dead. Fires were everywhere and they gave the city a glow of perdition with smoke trailing away like numerous black threads.

            Tom’s big rig truck just exited the gate of the Saint Angeles Mental Facility as they tried to make their escape out of the city. Anthony, still in his hospital clothes, was in the passenger seat as Tom drove the large semi that left the hospital in its wake. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t be gone long. The hospital looked deserted now. Including the buildings surrounding it, the area was practically devoid of life. A few people ran around a corner as fast as they could, headed away from the city. They ran by the hospital and didn’t give the open gate a glance.

            A man rushed out of the hospital—a security guard. He was very nervous as he got in his car and burned rubber out of there. His smoke trail settled and then more people came out of the hospital in a hurry. It was Joe and Maggie, with little Corina in her mother’s arms as they ran to their car. They hopped in and Joe drove them away. Their escape, too, would be short-lived.

            The inside of the hospital was just as deserted as the outside. Papers were scattered all over. Chairs and tables were toppled; a storm had gone through this place. Two hospital staff appeared as they hurried to the back employee parking lot to leave.

            In the machine shop in the basement, Alan was in a tool closet with an empty bottle of hard liquor in his limp hand, passed out in a drunken stupor during the apocalypse, just like Anthony said.

            The north wing of the hospital was quiet until two nurses rushed out of the cafeteria with arms full of food, some of it dropping to the floor as they made their way out. Their fast footsteps faded into thin echoes and the silence settled back into the eeriness this place created. Up the staircase to the second floor, the voices of two men could be heard as they argued. Their words weren’t clear, but their abrupt, short barks made it obvious they weren’t having a happy discussion.

            In the high-risk cellblock, the two men—hospital orderlies—were arguing. The cells were filled with over sixty mental patients and they were not quiet as they vocalized their dislike with being incarcerated. They had no idea of the state of the world outside. The cellblock was clean, unlike the way it was going to be in six months time. The floors and walls were spotless, as were the view windows in the cell doors. Each patient could be seen; they were definitely disturbed people, but they were healthy and dressed in fresh clothes. The only thing unclean was the madness in their eyes.

            One orderly was a white guy with pale skin and carrot-red hair, the other a black man with a shaved head, both in their thirties. The white man wasn’t happy because the black man, his friend, was the moral voice of reason. “We can’t just leave them here like this, Patrick. They’ll starve to death,” the black man said.

            “Ron, everyone is leaving. Dr. Ceraulo is packing his shit as we speak,” Patrick said. “No one is coming to pick these patients up, man, we’re on our own, and what the hell can two of us do to help them?”

            “I can’t leave them like this, it isn’t right.”

            “Right? Right now we have to get the fuck outta here or we’re gonna get stranded here and die with these psychopaths!”

            Ron was in deep thought about the predicament. “At least help me feed them before we go?” Ron pleaded.

            “Feed them? It’s gonna take too long for the two of us to feed sixty-seven of them. I’m leaving,” he said.

            Patrick got to the security door, unlocked it, and locked it behind him. He was gone.

            Ron stood there alone as he looked at all the pairs of eyes that stared back at him through the door windows. Most of the patients couldn’t comprehend they were about to be left to die a slow death. Ron finally realized he couldn’t do anything to help them, not alone. “I’m sorry,” he said to them.

            He turned to leave, but stopped to a voice—

            “Wait, please don’t leave me in here!”

            Ron turned back and saw the person who called to him—one of the patients in a cell had his face squished in the food access slot in the door—

            It was Ben Cozine.

            “There’s nothing I can do, I’m sorry,” Ron said.

            “Please, Ron. Don’t leave me stuck in here. I’ll die.”

            “What do you want me to do?”

            “Let me out,”

            “You’re insane, Cozine. The second I let you out, you’ll kill me.”

            “No, no, no, Ron, I couldn’t do that to you in a second, you’ve always been nice to me.” Cozine said sincerely. “Please, don’t leave me here to die like this. It’s inhumane. Please! Please!”

            He began to cry.

            Ron knew that Cozine was right. He knew it before Cozine said it, but to let this murderer out of his cell was insane. He couldn’t do it. He also didn’t want it on his conscience that he left these things, who were still human beings at their core, to die a slow, horrible death.