The Survivors (Book 1): Summer (11 page)

A baby.
  There had been a baby in there.

Bile rose in my throat and I fought down the urge to cry.
 Poor little baby.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t mean to do that, to send its little corpse flying.  Silently whispering apologies and prayers, I stepped around the scattered bones and forced myself to look away.  I must keep moving, find the medicine, get somewhere safe again.  If I let myself break down every time I saw a dead child, I would never achieve any of that.

The hospital was deathly silent.
 Not even the drone of the wind reached this far inside.  It was creepy, like an old horror movie.  A weird, chemical smell overlaid the ever-present stench of decay.

I never did much care
for hospitals.  Too many movies as a kid, I guess.  They both gave me nightmares, and now I had to live the nightmare.  Great fun.

I shone my torch side to side, and finally spotted a sign that
hadn’t been completely defaced during the riots:  Maternity Ward.  

I’m in Maternity?
 Oh Christ, that’s just what I need
.

I swore beneath my breath.
 If I found a zombie baby, I was going to turn myself right back around and go die of tetanus in my truck.  On the scale of horrification, zombie baby beat death by tetanus any day.

As I snuck further inside, I spotted doorways flanking the hall, each of them just as dark and ominous as the hallway itself.

I wondered if the power was still out to this part of the building, or if a surge a some point in the past burst all the bulbs.  There seemed to be light further up, so it was reasonable to assume that it must just be this part.  Ten years was a long time to leave the lights on.

Sweeping my torch from side to side, I checked the first room for hostiles, then the second, and moved methodically down the hall.
 No bad guys.  No zombie babies either.  I chalked one up for the ‘Thank Christ For That’ brigade.

Sorry, Mum
.

I was wound up tighter than a starlet’s Spanx as I approached the T-intersection ahead, my brain set to a hair-trigger.
 I moved under the flickering light, half-expecting to be attacked the moment I stepped into the light, but nothing happened.

The closer I got to the corner, the brighter the light grew, though ‘bright’ was a relative term.
 The hallway was lit only by old, dull emergency lights that bathed the corridor in a dirty, artificial glow.

I raised my gun as I slowly approached the junction, keeping close to the left wall.
 Although I moved with the natural stealth of a survivalist, my uneven footsteps sounded loud enough to wake the dead, and my breath was deafening to my own ears.  I was almost afraid to breathe at all.  In truth, they were barely audible, but in the silence with my ears tuned in for the slightest sound, I felt like a rampaging elephant.

Keeping near the left wall meant I could scan down the right arm of the junction before exposing myself on the left.
 I saw nothing.  As smoothly as I could, I slid around the corner to stare along the left arm, again seeing nothing.

Instinct made me stop to assess the distances between myself and the next junction in either direction, to take stock of the rooms I needed to risk passing in order to continue.
 The hallways were short in both directions, branching after a half-dozen metres into more corners, more risk, more places for enemies to hide.

I made a snap decision
.  I didn’t want to stay exposed for too long, so I chose the left hallway and hobbled around the corner with my gun tucked in close in front of me.  There was a room just down the passageway, and I limped towards it to see what was inside.  The lights were on, so I clicked off my torch and held the gun carefully with both hands.

My foot was starting to really hurt as the painkillers wore off, and my heart was hammering in my chest at a mile a minute.
 The sense of urgency I felt was growing more and more overpowering, leaving me feeling increasingly panicked and vulnerable.

This is a terrible idea.
 Why didn’t I wait until morning?
 I mentally cursed myself for being such an idiot.

Of course, it didn't occur to me until much later that with my shuffling gait, my gaunt frame, my tatty clothes and my tangled hair, I probably looked more undead than alive from behind.

I limped into the side room, looking for supplies, any kind of supplies that might help with my injury.  There was a locked cabinet on the far side that contained a promising array of little bottles, jars and prescription boxes.  I shuffled towards it and stared at the contents, trying to make out what was inside before I decided whether it was worth the risk of breaking the glass.   

Something shattered beneath a heavy boot right behind me, and I froze.
 Reflected in the glass cabinet, a dark shadow loomed in the doorway.  A second later, my self-defence instincts kicked in and I spun to face the incoming threat.  Or at least I tried to, but my damn foot gave out in the process and I ended up in a heap on the floor.

That fall saved my life.

The shotgun blast shattered the window right above my head as I fell, showering me in shards of glass and hot shrapnel.  I screamed and covered my eyes with my forearm to protect myself, fully expecting a second shot to tear me apart at any second.  I would say that my life flashed before my eyes, but it didn’t; I just found myself wondering if it would hurt to die.

Would I see Mum again?
 Dad?  Skylar?  Were they waiting for me?  Or would I just… cease to exist?

The second shot never came

"My god, you're alive!"  A deep voice gasped, a voice that was male and strangely hoarse, then a strong hand latched around my forearm and hauled me to my feet before I could react.  "Are you crazy?  What are you doing here at this time of night?  I almost shot you – you could have been killed!"

The survivor was tall, dressed in worn, dark blue combat armour, the upper half of his face concealed by a helmet and night vision goggles that gave him a terrifying, alien look.

I didn't even stop to think.  I just reacted.

Now, I
was a scrawny thing.  While I was pretty tall for a girl, malnutrition had robbed my frame of any body fat that I once possessed; I was maybe 50 kilograms soaking wet, so I didn’t look like much.  However, every gram that I had left on me was muscle, driven by a mind that long ago learned the only good defence was a swift and brutal offense.

Long story short, I did not hit like a girl.

I clocked him square in the jaw with every bit of my physical strength, and the man's head snapped back.  He stumbled away from me, tripping over an old chair and almost falling.  Weighed down by his armour and the combat shotgun, it took him a second to right himself.

That was enough for me.

I snatched my gun and my torch from where they’d fallen, and then I was off like a... slow-moving, half-gimped shot.  It wasn't very fast, but it was as fast as I could go.

I was terrified, my heart pounding in my chest and adrenaline tingling through my extremities.
 Every time I tried to pick up to a run, my foot sent a stab of pain all the way up my leg that was so bad the limb almost gave out on me, so I was forced to be satisfied with a shambling trot.

I was out the door before the man could recover, and headed deeper into the hospital, frantically searching for someplace to hide.
 I needed to get away from him – him and his terrible shotgun.  Every moment of my past experience told me the only thing that could come from an armed man was pain, humiliation and death.

Sweat beaded on my brow.
 It felt like I was moving in slow motion, swimming through treacle, except that instead of treacle it was pain and a gammy bloody foot.  I was never going to make it in time, I realised with painful clarity.  I had hit him hard, but not hard enough.  I could hear him stumble out into the hall just as I was about to round the nearest corner, and heard him scream at me.

"
No, don't go that way, they'll kill you – get back!  Get back!"  

I shot a look behind me and found that he wasn't even aiming at me, just frantically running after me with a panic-stricken look on what little I could see of his face.
 My fear turned to confusion.

Then, I heard the growl.

It was a deep, low rumble from a dark doorway not far from where I was.  The fear surged back up again.  I wasn’t his target, I realised with dreadful certainty.  There was something else here, something terrible.

And now it was after me.

The thing emerged from the shadows with a disturbingly sinuous grace, moving on all fours with its head held low, its bloodshot eyes fixed on me.  Its frame looked human, like any other one of the infected – but the infected did not move like
that
.

I was frozen, like a deer in the headlights.
 This thing, it was outside any of my experiences, something I’d never seen before.  Every ounce of my being screamed at me to flee, and yet I couldn’t get my muscles to obey.

The creature squatted, regarding me.
 It seemed to be considering me, its horrible eyes roaming up and down my body – the stare was almost sexual in its intensity.  I felt nauseated, but too terrified to move.  There was blood all over it, from head to toe, and its clothing was shredded and almost unidentifiable.  Then suddenly, it straightened up, and I recognised the deep blue scrubs of a nurse.

Christ, I was going to get killed and eaten by an undead nurse.
 Not quite how I pictured my death.

At the same moment the armed man caught up with me, the creature sprang.
 The stranger’s bulk struck me hard and shoved me clear.  A fraction of a second later, he swung his shotgun around to bear.  The muzzle flash blinded me as I fell, my torch and gun once more clattering away.  When my vision cleared, I saw the creature lying in a crumpled heap not two feet away from me.

It was still moving.

Even with its face caved in and the liquefied remains of its cerebellum leaking out of the terrible cavity that had once been the front of its skull, it was still struggling to get up.  Still trying to get me.

Human fingers bent into ragged-nailed talons clawed in my direction, and I muffled a shriek as I scooted out of its reach.
 The scattershot had done a real number on the creature; half its head was gone and shrapnel burns covered the entire upper half of its body.  I was fairly certain that I could see the bloody remains of its brain stem, shattered by the shell.

That should have done it.
 That should have killed it.  It should
not
still be moving.

"
How the hell is it still moving?"  I whispered, as much to myself as to the other survivor, but he still heard me and gave me the answer.

"
It's a mutation.  We don't know how it's happening, but this is the fifth one we've seen this month – the second in a week.  We think the virus is evolving."  His voice was harsh, like he'd been running for a few hours without stopping to catch his breath.

As I scooted away from the horrible thing, the stranger put himself between me and the creature again, in a
protective move that surprised me.  With a glance over his shoulder, he spoke softly to me.  

"
Stay back.  There's only one thing that we know for sure kills them."

There was a bottle in his hand, a red metal flask about the size of a drink bottle.
 With gloved hands, he unwound the cap and emptied the contents of the flask over the crawling undead.  From the smell, I realised immediately it was either kerosene or lighter fluid.

He returned the empty flask to one of his pockets and pulled a box of matches from another
– like mine, his clothing bore a lot of pockets.  I noticed his hands shook when he struck the match and dropped it onto the bloody creature, but he didn’t hesitate.  As the flames spread, he hopped back away just in time to avoid being burned, then turned to look at me.

By the time he
finished setting the creature aflame, I was a few metres away, trying in vain to put distance between myself and danger.  To my frustration, my body still didn't want to respond.  He moved closer, cautiously offering me a hand to help me up.  I shoved it away, afraid to let him touch me.  

A surge of adrenaline hit suddenly, and gave me the strength to get up on my own, and as soon as I was up I started backing away.
 I needed to use the wall to support my weight, which made my retreat inelegant, but it also made my fear quite obvious.

In my mind, I was remembering all the terrible, painful, violent things that men had done to me, and forced me to do to them.
 Even though he had helped me and seemed to want to help me again, my instincts were reluctant to forget those terrible things that human beings were capable of doing to one another – and to me.

He hesitated as he watched me scoot away, uncertainty etched on what little I could see of his face.
 Finally, he reached up and slid his night vision goggles up onto his head, letting me see the rest of him.  He was handsome in an angular sort of way, and his eyes made me hesitate.  They were gentle and full of concern for me despite my resistance.