The Sunshine Dame of Doom (18 page)

Shane lifted the garage door that led to the hangar. It was very heavy, but such fact wasn’t a problem to her. Even so, she found it too easy to open. She checked chains and pulleys of the mechanism and verified they were all ruined.

She remained composed, but some feelings she wasn’t quite familiar with took possession of her senses.

The elegant woman walked, her high heels producing loud tap dancing noises. She froze all of a sudden, her heart for the first time assaulted by two sensations very foreign to her - surprise and dread.

“No, this can’t be right. This can’t be right!”

“What happened to our kids?” One mother asked Missus Hildenbrandt with anguish and fear corroding her face of terrible expectation. Her husband was wrapping an arm around her.

“Oh, they are fine.” The principal clarified. “They are in the toy room with one of my teachers.”

“Damn you!” One father exploded. “You could have said that in the first place! Jesus Christ!”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m too nervous. Something very unprecedented took place and I confess I don’t know how to deal with the situation.”

“Why don’t we all calm down, take a coffee, have a seat, and then you tell us what’s going on?” Another mother suggested with gentle, understanding eyes.

“Cuff yourself.” Lily ordered the sheriff.

“Are you locking me up in the bathroom?” McBeattie complained. “This is a hospital, for crying out loud! There could be all sorts of bacteria in here!”

“If they are disgusted by you like I am, you got nothing to worry.” Lily answered.

“Besides,” Clark said “you’re in a good position here. If nature calls, you’re already in the right place.”

“And I suggest you resist the temptation to scream for help, because
we
might respond to it.” Lily spoke. “And those zombies outside still have their appetites.”

“Fine!” The sheriff muttered and cuffed himself to a pipe.

“Court is adjourned.” Clark said to McBeattie.

The grey-haired doctor left the break room, looking satisfied. He nodded at some beautiful nurses on his way to the elevator. He pushed the button. When the doors opened, he went inside.

“Wow, those girls are getting better.” The doctor couldn’t help whispering once the doors closed again.

“And perhaps you are not!” Lily stood up behind him, with Clark by her side, pointing the sheriff’s gun to the doctor’s hip. “You do remember us, right?”

The Australian girl pushed the emergency button and the elevator stopped between floors.

“Yes.” The man answered insecure. “Please don’t hurt me. I do whatever you want.”

“What’s your name?” Lily asked.

“Doctor Blake.”

“I’ll call you Blake, because you’re hardly a doctor.” She said. “You should be treating that woman we brought here. Well, we’ve just been to her room and she doesn’t seem to be doing any better. What are you giving her in those dip bags?”

The doctor hesitated. Clark pressed the gun against his back.

“She’s under
Luviximil
, okay!” Blake finally replied. “She also took some shots of it. But believe me, it’s basically a soporific for the muscles, she’s not in any danger!”

“It looks way more than that.” Clark said.

“I can bring her back!” The doctor assured. “Just say the word!”

“Not you, doc” Lily determined. “I don’t trust you. We need to find ourselves a real doctor.”

“What are you going to do to me?” Blake asked.

“What’s the name of the woman we brought, do you know?”

“It’s Susan.”

“Great.” Lily continued. “You’ll accompany us to Susan’s room and you’ll help us getting her out of this dump. But first, we need to blend in.”

Doctor Blake was walking the hospital hallways toward Susan’s room. Clark and Lily were following him on both sides, dressed like nurses. The tennis player was hiding the gun in his apron pocket, still pointing at Blake.

They entered Susan’s room and Lily closed the door. Clark could now expose his weapon to the doctor.

“Alright,” The Australian girl said “you know what to do,
doctor death
. Start disconnecting her.”

“Judge me as much as you want.” Blake muttered while detaching the patient from monitors and tubes. “I suffered serious losses before they found me. I saved lives in this hospital, okay! I was given a chance to continue practicing medicine. I’m useless out there like everybody else. At least in here I can do something!”

“Yes, as long as you oversee one or two atrocities, right?” Clark spoke.

“And flush your Hippocratic Oath down the toilette.” Lily completed.

Blake finished disconnecting Susan.

“I guarantee everything that was done to her can be undone.” He said. “I didn’t break my oath!”

“Then get a taste.” Lily spoke.

“What?”

“You heard me, doc. Stick a needle in that bag, fill it up with some of the goo and inject yourself with it.”

“I… I can’t!”

“Oh come on! If the substance is as harmless as you said, what is the problem?”

“But…”

“It’s always better than the alternative.” Clark cocked the gun hammer.

“Alright, alright!”

Doctor Blake did as Lily told him and got a taste of his own medicine. He fell on the floor, convulsed for some seconds, then held still, but it was clear he was awake.

“Now he’s practicing medicine.” Mate commented.

Lily and Clark pulled the transport stretcher with Susan on it, covered with a sheet, only her head was exposed. When they left the elevator down the main lobby, a security guard stopped them.

“Hey, where are you taking this patient?”

“She’s been transferred.” Lily replied.

“Transferred where?”

“She can’t stay in this hospital!” Clark said with urgency in his voice. “She’s got the plague! It’s not safe in here! She’ll turn into a flesh-eating living dead! And she bit me! Oh my God, I’m turning! Aargh, aargh!”

The man ran to the nearest corridor.

“Good one, partner!” Lily praised him.

“I can’t believe he fell for that one.”

But he came back with five more guards.

“They didn’t all fall for this one.” Lily observed.

Clark drew the sheriff’s gun and shot twice at the ceiling. People in the lobby screamed in fear, covering their heads. The guards also froze in their places.

“All right, this is, um… a kidnapping!” Mate shouted, waving the pistol back and forth. “We are taking this patient here to later, you know, ask for a ransom and everything!”

“And get the money from the vending machines ready!” Lily talked. “That will be the ransom… possibly!”

“Everybody on the floor!” Clark screamed and the whole floor complied. “And stay that way for fifteen…”

“Twenty.”

“Twenty minutes, yes!”

Then, he and Lily left the hospital pulling the stretcher.

“Those people are kind of idiots, aren’t they?” Mate said.

“Don’t be so hard on them.”

They got to an ambulance and carefully placed Susan in it through the rear doors.

“Hey!” Two other men left the front of the vehicle. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just load an ambulance like this! I want to see your permits!”

“Sorry, we had no time to get them.” Clark said. “This is very urgent, this patient got the disease!”

“The disease, you mean, the one who turns people into dead beasts?”

“The very same” Lily confirmed. “And she got the airborne cluster.”

“Airborne cluster?”

“That’s right. And we have to… we need to… ACHOO!!! Sorry. We need to evacuate her immediately before the virus spread like water!”

But before she finished the sentence, both men were already far in the distance.

“They are kind of idiots.” Lily wound up agreeing.

They finished securing the stretcher firmly into the ambulance, got into the front seats with Lily on the wheel, and sped away.

However, they didn’t go very far. A great number of limousines quickly came from all streets around and blocked the ambulance. Lily had to step harshly on the brakes not to hit one of them. Men in black suits got out of the cars, fire-weapons in hands.

“Step out of the vehicle!” One man commanded.

“News spread fast around here.” Lily observed.

“No worries!” Mate said smiling. “I got an idea.”

He pushed buttons in the dashboard until finally finding the one that activated the sirens.

The annoying blare caused most of the men to cover their ears, but none of the limousines actually cleared the way.

Disappointed, Clark turned the sirens off.

“They don’t respect sirens around here.” He sighed.

“No problem.” Lily said. “Let’s do this
Death Race
style.”

“And what is
Death Race
sty… AHHHHH!!!”

Lily stepped on the gas pedal with everything she got and the ambulance dashed forward like mad, forcing several men to jump out of the way, limousines violently thrown to the sides after being crashed by the heavier vehicle.

Some soldiers fired machine guns at the ambulance, but it accelerated out of range.

“Interesting” Lily spoke. “I’ve always suspected that an ambulance could open way through limos.”

“I’m glad we found that out.” Clark responded pulling himself together and checking if everything was okay with Susan. “And next time you want to corroborate a thesis, let me know first.”

“Sure. I’m just not comfortable driving on the left side, you know.”

However, they passed by another police car hiding behind a billboard.

“Oh no, not again!” Tony cried “More trespassers! This place is starting to look like the Fifth Avenue!”

“Darn it!” Joe cursed. “Well, let’s go.”

The police car pursued the ambulance. Lily saw it coming in the rear mirror, red lights blinking like Las Vegas, a deafening sound blaring.

“Shall we respect their sirens?” Clark queried.

“I got an idea.” Lily answered.

She stopped the ambulance. The police car parked right behind it. The two cops left their car and adjusted their clubs on the belts.

“Step out of the vehicle!” They heard that order again.

But Lily and Clark came out from the back. The policemen stood still and brought hands to their guns.

“We need your help!” The Australian woman spoke.

“Fast please!” Her partner emphasized.

The cops ran to the ambulance.

“What’s going on here?” Joe asked.

“Are these working?” Clark frowned at the two defibrillator pads in his hands. He decided to try them on the two men standing before him.

The surge of electricity caused the policemen to fly backwards and collide against the police car windshield.

“Guess they are.” The tennis player concluded.

“They’re fine.” Lily said after realizing they were still moving. “Let’s go.”

And the ambulance sped away again, disappearing into the woods.

“I hate this job!” Tony cried massaging his hips.

“Shut up!” Joe said.

“We need to get a doctor to Susan back there.” Lily said, noticing the woman was moving uncomfortably on the stretcher.

“Let’s follow this road. It got to take us somewhere.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to handle a gun.”

“Well, it’s not a tennis racquet, but it also hits balls.”

And they took that time to tell each other about their respective adventures from the moment they were separated.

“Jesus!” Clark spoke astonished. “You mean the freaking zombie was almost biting you?”

“And he smelled worse than my armpits in those hot Australian days.”

“How did you get out of that one?”

“Well, it’s kind of complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“A little embarrassing too.”

“Oh.”

“Anyhow, I escaped. After I broke out of there, I crossed path with this woman. She was bringing the three children I was supposed to kill as a zombie. She said reporters were coming to document some important educational event local leaders must have invented. But everything was cancelled when I told her what really happened in there.”

“How did she react?”

“She was shocked, a very good sign. Her mind wasn’t under control, only misinformed. I asked her to tell people the truth about Shane.”

“Do you think she’s going to do it?”

“We’ll find out.”

“What about that starched guy I told you about, the one who calls himself the minister? He looked more like a pigeon in suits.”