Aftermath (35 page)

The nurses’ station seemed to be the natural meeting point for the people living on this level and they had all gathered there, perhaps twenty or thirty men and women, and were engaged in a hushed but animated conversation. As LaRouche stepped towards them, Lee felt like he should hang back, but the sergeant motioned him forward. The gathering at the small nurses’ station did not take notice until they were standing amongst them.

A man looked around at them, almost annoyed. He was a middle-aged man that wore a tattered old baseball cap with the Browning logo on it, and a dirty white t-shirt and jeans. When his eyes focused on LaRouche, a sudden and hopeful smile broke out across his face. “Sarge!” He exclaimed, immediately grabbing LaRouche by the shoulders. “You’re back! They said that you’d left us!”

LaRouche didn’t smile back, but he shook his head by way of response. “Where’s Julia? We really need to speak with her.”

“
I’m right here!” The tiny woman that had wheeled and dealed brazenly with Shumate to get Harper and Miller released pushed her way through the crowd and latched onto LaRouche with ferocity. “Jesus Christ! What’s going on out there?” Her eyes traveled to Lee. “You’re out? How the hell’d you get out?”

Lee shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He pointed to the stairwell door behind him. “I’m sure you folks heard the power go out. The doors are open downstairs and infected are inside the building. We need to start getting you guys out of here.”

There was a chorus of exclamations and the air became almost palpable with fear.

The man in the Browning hat swore. “Well, what are we fuckin’ waiting for? Let’s grab our shit and get the hell outta here...”

But Julia was shaking her head. “No.”

Lee took her arm and looked into her face again. “Julia, we don’t have a choice. This place it about to get swarmed. On top of that, Milo’s men are still in the building and there’s only a matter of time before they come looking for me. It’s not safe here. We gotta get out.”

She jerked her arm away, looking between him and LaRouche. “You don’t understand! I have people here that need me, people we can’t just move! They’re sick and injured and I sure as hell can’t leave them lying here.”

The gathering at the nurses’ station mumbled, but now it seemed split down the middle, half of them agreeing, the other half wanting to make a run for it. Lee could imagine that those that agreed were the ones with the sick and injured in their families. Those that wanted to leave were the single ones that had no ties and no reason to linger.

When the crowd realized it was divided, it got louder.

Lee cut it off before it got nasty. “Can you give me a rough estimate of how many immobile people you have?”

Julia raked hair out of her face. “It’s not just about immobile. The only way out now is down the elevator shaft and into the maintenance crawl-way that leads out back. I have six people injured that won’t even be able to make it down the shaft, not to mention a few old folks and some of the younger kids.”

The man with the Browning hat looked incredulous. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Julia. So you’re just going to sit here and not even try? We can at least
try
to get them out.”

“
And what are we gonna do if we even make it out?” Julia demanded. “I don’t know if you’ve looked out the window, but we’re completely fucking surrounded!”

LaRouche stepped in and looked at the man with Browning hat. “George, we can continue this conversation in a second. Right now, help me barricade the doors to the eastern stairwell.”

“
The doors open into the stairwell,” George observed, half-heartedly. “How we gonna barricade them?”

LaRouche was already moving down the hall. “We stack up a big pile of shit. It won’t hold them forever, but it’ll buy us some time.”

“
What about the western stairwell?” someone asked.

“
And what about Milo’s guys?” spouted another.

Lee raised a placating hand. “Western stairwell is blocked from the bottom. As for Milo’s men, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Then he looked at Julia. “Where’s the radio to Camp Ryder?”

Julia reached over the counter of the nurses’ station and snagged the radio from the other side, handing it to Lee. He spoke to her quietly as he turned it on. “If I can get a hold of someone from Camp Ryder, we might be able to get help to clear the back. Then at least we’ll know we have a safe way out.”

Julia looked exasperated. “I already told you...”

Lee put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in so that his low voice could not be heard by the others. “You can’t speak for everyone here, Julia. There might be people that want out. If you choose to stay here and fight, that’s up to you. But I think you need to start thinking of ways to get your sick and injured down that elevator shaft. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

Julia looked back at the smattering of gaunt-faced survivors huddled at the nurses’ station. Slowly, she nodded. “Okay.”

Lee keyed the radio. “Captain Harden to Camp Ryder. Captain Harden to Camp Ryder. Harper or Miller or anyone from Camp Ryder. Does anybody copy me?”

He released the push-to-talk button and waited. A short burst of static filled the air, but no response came. Everyone jumped at the screeching sound of metal on tile floors as LaRouche and George shoved a big filing cabinet up against the door to the eastern stairwell. They grunted and groaned and finally got the thing in place. It had to weigh at least 300 pounds, but it was top-heavy. With enough infected pounding at it and trying to climb over it, the thing would eventually tip over. LaRouche and George turned and began looking for other heavy objects to stack in the doorway.

Lee repeated his attempts on the radio, receiving the same response.

Nothing.

“
What do we do now?” someone moaned.

Julia pointed to a red-headed woman. “Barb, do you have any rope?”

She looked briefly flustered. “I can try to find some...”

“
Do that,” Julia instructed. She raised her voice. “Everyone, we need to find rope. And some soft-restraint straps—like the kind they have on the gurneys—and some back-boards. The back-boards are usually orange or yellow and they look like a little surf boards with handles on the sides.”

Then she pointed at Lee, every bit in charge. “You keep trying that radio, Captain. And keep those stairwell doors secure...”

Her last few words were drowned out by the sound of LaRouche and George suddenly shouting as the eastern stairwell door was thrown open and dozens of mad voices began screeching at them from the other side of the barricade.

CHAPTER 20: THE ONLY EASY DAY…

Lee spun and pointed at Julia and the group of survivors standing stock-still behind her with big eyes and open mouths, frozen in terror. He had to shout to make himself heard over the ear-splitting feral screams of the infected. “Gather what you need! We’ll hold them off!”

She nodded once and turned on her heels. The stillness in the group of survivors behind her broke into frenzied motion, everyone shouting and pointing this way and that. Two men broke off from the group, one of them with a scuffed and blood-stained baseball bat, the other with a classic wood-handled AK-47. Lee was surprised to see it, as mostly he’d seen nothing but hunting rifles and sporting shotguns in the hands of the average survivor, but the AK-47 was the most manufactured firearm in the world. He should have been surprised that this was the first one he’d come across.

“
We’re with you, Captain,” the man with the AK-47 said.

Lee didn’t respond to them, but turned and made for the stairwell, where he could see LaRouche with his back braced up against the filing cabinet, and George struggling to push another, slightly smaller one into place to bolster the first. The first cabinet covered the edges of the door with room to spare, but left about a two-foot gap on top. The whole thing was shaking back and forth as the infected on the other side pounded and tried to climb over. A pair of greasy, gray hands gripped the top of the filing cabinet, pulling desperately, and a horrific visage squirmed out of the murky darkness of the stairwell, all sinews and gnashing teeth.

Lee stamped his feet to a stop about twenty feet from the creature on top of the filing cabinet and raised his rifle. Behind him, the two tagalongs skidded up short to avoid running into him. It would be an uncomfortably narrow shot: LaRouche’s head was only a foot from the infected’s gaping maw.

“
Heads up!” Lee yelled.

The little red dot settled, and Lee fired three times in rapid succession.

The infected jerked a bit, then lay still atop the cabinet with its toothy jaw still working like a fish out of water. After a second or two its grip on the cabinet faded and it fell back into the stairwell. LaRouche stared indifferently at a bullet hole in the side of the cabinet, not six inches from his head.

Lee slapped his shoulder as he took position next to the sergeant. “You’ll be alright.” He planted his feet and pressed his back against the cabinet, mimicking LaRouche’s position. “I got this. Cover the top.”

LaRouche bounced off the cabinet, drawing his sidearm again and pointing it over Lee’s head at the gap. The other three men slammed into the second cabinet, breaking the inertia and shoving the thing into place with a heavy metallic
crunch
. The two cabinets were now perpendicular to each other, forming a T shape, the smaller bracing the larger.

Lee pulled himself upright. “That’s not gonna hold forever, but it’ll give us some time.”

LaRouche breathed hard. “Any more of those filing cabinets?”

“
Yeah,” George pointed to a room behind him with the door hanging open. “There’s two more in…”

George’s right eye exploded.

Lee heard the
zzzip-snap
of a bullet passing close to him.

Salty warmth on his lips and tongue.

George pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground.

Lee reached out and grabbed the person nearest him, which happened to be the man with the bat. He hooked his arm around the man’s chest and dove sideways. As Lee flew sideways, he saw LaRouche and the man with the AK-47, their eyes following George’s lifeless descent, their faces plain and un-amazed, not having realized what was happening.

Lee would never know if that bullet was meant for him, or if Milo’s men had decided to kill everyone for the sake of simplicity. He would wonder about it later, but he didn’t have time for it now. He hit the ground and scooted up against the wall.

He registered rapid gunfire.

The unmistakable chatter of an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon
erupted from down the hall
—fuck, he should have remembered that Milo’s crew had one! It chewed the floor and walls, sending drywall and chunks of tile into the air. A cluster of holes suddenly appeared in the filing cabinets, but LaRouche dove out of the way.

The man with the AK-47 wasn’t as quick.

He tried to leap, but a few rounds zipped him through the legs, spinning him around. He flopped to the floor, his legs limp and useless behind him. He looked down at his legs, suddenly aware that something irreversible had just happened to him. His mouth opened but he had no words so he just started screaming. Another blat of 5.56mm projectiles silenced him.

The guy with the bat was yelling. “Dale! Get up! Dale! Hurry!” He tried to stand up and go to his dead friend.

Lee grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him against the wall. “He’s fucking dead, man! Leave it!”

The M249 fell silent and in its place was only the ringing in their ears.

LaRouche was up on his feet, but crouched down low, with one hand on the ground, like a sprinter on the starting blocks. Lee followed the sergeant’s gaze to where it was fixated on the AK-47 lying between its owner and George, just out of their reach.

Lee edged up to the corner and grabbed a handful of LaRouche’s sleeve to get his attention. When he had it, he said, “on me,” and got a single, curt nod by way of response.

Lee stuck the barrel of his M4 around the corner and started cranking off rounds blindly in the general direction of their attackers. He knew he wasn’t going to hit anything but walls, but he hoped it would keep their heads down long enough.

LaRouche didn’t need to be told to move. As soon as Lee started firing he darted out into the hall, snatched up the AK-47, and then launched himself back into cover. Not a second after he had cleared the corner, the hall flared up with automatic fire once again. It inaccurately sprayed the walls on the far side of the hall and Lee figured their attacker was blind-firing, just like he was.

LaRouche scooted himself between Lee and the man that clutched his baseball bat. He checked the ammunition level on the AK-47 while the man with the bat began to whimper. The magazine was full. LaRouche pointed down the hallway. “The hallway wraps all the way around. I’ll keep ‘em busy, you flank ‘em.”

Lee made a circle out of his thumb and forefinger and then hauled himself up to his feet. He felt exposed going into a gunfight without his vest. It wasn’t the first time, but that didn’t make him feel any more comfortable. It just made him feel like
eventually my luck will run out.