Dead, but Not for Long (13 page)

Eric felt a twinge of relief.

“I’m security for the hospital and we’re running out of ammo.”

“Security,” the biker scoffed, “now that I can believe. Boys, load up,” the biker ordered
pointing to the gun shop. “Then we’re going to escort this rent-a-cop to the hospital.”

He turned to Eric and smiled, exposing a couple of missing teeth.

“There are a lot of these undead goons out there. You’re going to need help.”

Eric didn’t know the man’s intentions, but he was in no position to argue. A few minutes later they were on their way.

~*~

“Is he always this grumpy?” Autumn asked Keith.

“When Eric is involved, everybody is grumpy,” Keith explained to the girl. “Just wait ‘til
you meet the guy and you’ll see what I mean.”

Keith was beginning to wonder if he should make the run to the gun store himself, but
that would mean leaving his patients at the mercy of Marla, who had gotten
through nursing school by sleeping with the right people. He vividly remembered
her first day of work. She had held up a catheter and had asked what it was. It
had gone downhill since then. As much as he hated to leave her in charge of the
third floor patients, if Eric didn’t show up soon, Keith decided he’d have to do something.

Lindsey and Keith started down the hall as he explained what they would be doing. There
were several IVs to change and a few other things that he didn’t trust Marla to do.

While the others delivered the meds, Jack studied an emergency evacuation plan of the
hospital that he had found in the nurses’ station. They needed a route to the
cafeteria that would give them the most options for escape, in case they became
overwhelmed by a large number of the undead.

~*~

About a half an hour after they’d left, Autumn returned, alone.

“Jack, where’s Keith?”

“He’s distributing meds down the south corridor,” Jack said without looking up.

“I take it Marla usually sits at the desk?” she continued.

“Yeah. Why?” Jack asked.

“She’s trying to make the old man in room 312 swallow a suppository.”

Jack started moving down the hallway, with Autumn in tow. “I hope he’s not cooperating.”

Autumn shrugged. “The guy’s like eighty years old and he looks like he’s in a coma or something.”

“Keith!” Jack yelled, running down the hall.

~*^*~

Lindsey turned out to be a quick learner. Keith knew that he would be able to count on her to help with the patients after watching
her change an IV bag and then insert the meds as he’d shown her. They were on
the third patient when he passed the room of one of Marla’s patients. Keith
stopped when the woman called out to him, complaining about pain.

“Didn’t Marla give you your pain pill yet,” he asked.

“Well, yes, but that’s the problem,” the woman
sputtered. “She didn’t give me the pill the normal way, she put it in my . . .”

“Keith!” He heard his name being called. “I’ll be
right back,” he told the patient as he rushed out the door.

~*~

Eric arrived at the parking lot of the hospital,
along with his newly found posse. He watched as his new friends dismounted
their two wheeled horses and started to gather up. Eric noticed for the first
time that they seemed to be a very diverse group, representing a range of ages
and ethnic groups. The only thing that seemed to be missing was women.

Their attention of the group was directed away as one renegade started howling as he shot into the air. The leader calmly
approached him and slapped the top of the man’s head with such force that
Eric’s teeth hurt out of sympathy. The biker cringed and held his hand out in defense.

“What the hell are you doing?” the boss demanded.

“Sorry, man,” the biker apologized while still rubbing his head.
They walked over to the rest of the group, which had formed a circle, and prayed.

Eric left his car, staring at the men in disbelief. When
their devotional was finished, Eric approached the leader.

“You guys in some kind of cult or something?”

The man looked down at his jacket and pointed out the insignia, which Eric hadn’t noticed before.

Embroidered on the leather were a cross and the words, “God’s Grunts.”

Eric was embarrassed that he had been intimidated by a bunch of Jesus freaks.

Laughing out loud, he asked the leader, “What are you going to do, hit them with your Bibles?”

The man went nose to nose with Eric.

“I wouldn’t laugh at these guys if I were you. They
know better than to kill someone that’s not already dead, but they’ve been known to backslide.”

Eric quickly wiped the smirk off his face as the other man turned to his fellow soldiers and raised a shotgun in the air.

“Let’s clean up, boys!”

The lot was cleared in a matter of minutes. They
were a well-oiled machine, as almost every creature was dropped by no more than
one shot. Two bikers donned surgical gloves and masks and dragged the bodies
into a pile and doused them with gas. As they finished up, Eric could see black
smoke billowing from the burning corpses behind him. Within a matter of
minutes, they had cleared the parking lot and were heading for the emergency room door.

Eric smiled as he keyed his radio.

~*~

“What’s wrong?” Keith asked Jack and Autumn.

“Marla. She’s . . .” Autumn paused as she searched for the proper wording.

“What Autumn’s trying to say is that your bimbo
nurse is trying to shove a log size suppository down the throat of an
eighty-year-old man in critical condition in room 312,” Jack said.

Keith started down the hall at a run. “Well, that
explains why we have an old woman in 303 with a giant Motrin up her . . .”

“Jack, you copy?”

Eric’s voice chimed over the radio, and Jack was actually glad to hear it.

“Where’s our ammo?” Jack asked.

The leader of the bikers saw Eric on the radio and started to walk in his direction.

“I got it, Boss,” Eric said. “My deputies are just cleaning up the parking lot.”

Jack sighed deeply. “What deputies? What kind of crap are you pulling now?”

“I deputized some bikers and they’re . . .”

The leader, hearing most of the conversation, grabbed the radio out of Eric’s hand.

Jack listened as Eric stopped talking and a gruff sounding voice took over.

“Dude,” the voice said into the radio, “we’re
eliminating the threat in the parking lot. I’ve got a group of about
thirty-five armed men who are securing the perimeter as we speak. What’s the situation inside?”

A couple seconds of silence followed then Jack
spoke. He was a little apprehensive about the intentions of the bikers, but he
figured that he was probably outgunned and had better go with it.

“I’m Jack Conner, head of security. We’ve cleared
the second through fifth floors, but the first floor is overrun. Our plan was
to raid the cafeteria once Eric resupplied us with ammo. We’ve got some sick
and hungry people here on the higher floors.”

“Well, Jack, today’s your lucky day. My guys are
about to clear the first floor and there’s a couple of us who were medics in
‘Nam. We’re a bit rusty but we can offer our services if you need us.”

“Sounds good,” Jack answered, “I’ll check with our head nurse.”

“What’s she look like?” the leader joked.

“Oh, I don’t think you would be interested, but you never know.”

The man handed Eric his radio back.

“Well, you gonna help?”

“Actually,” Eric explained, “I have someone that needs my help. I’d better go.”

He unloaded the ammo onto the ground. “Could you make sure Jack gets this?”

“Sure thing,” the biker answered. “I’ll pray for you, Dude.”

“Thanks,” Eric replied as he drove off. He hoped
that Jack wouldn’t be mad when he found out he’d left, but at least he had the Bible thumpers to help him out.

~*~

With Lindsey’s help, Keith was able to save the patient in 312 and get the correct meds to the woman in 303. He sent Marla back
to the desk and had both Autumn and Lindsey help him finish up with the third
floor. They worked quickly and returned to the nurses’ station in less than an hour.

Jack saw the others approaching and he joined them.

“In my defense, some of those pills are very big,”
Marla said to Keith, while shrugging her shoulders. “How was I supposed to know which was which?”

“Never mind,” he sighed, not having the energy at the moment to explain it.

The elevator bell chimed. Keith turned to Jack. “Did you disable the override?”

Jack, who was already aiming his pistol at the door,
shook his head no. When the door opened, the sorry sight inside gave him no
motivation to lower his firearm. Two bearded men in leather jackets and skull
caps stepped out of the elevator. Both appeared to be in their sixties. One
held a sawed-off shotgun and the other sported an AR-15.

“Is that a pistol in your hand or are you just happy to see me?”

The man moved his shotgun to his left hand and offered his right to Jack.

“You must be Jack. I’m Snake, and I can’t tell you
why they call me that, yet,” he said, smiling at Marla.

“Keith Corbin,” Keith said, shaking hands with both
men. “How did you get the elevators working without a key?”

Snake pointed to his friend.

“Let’s just say my friend Wolf here, like most of my
crew, had a bit of a shady past. But he’s trying to use his talents for good
now, right buddy?”

Wolf smiled and held up a set of small screwdrivers
and a paper clip. “This was one of my easier jobs.”

“So, what does it look on the first floor?” Jack asked, hoping to change the subject.

“My men are clearing it out as we speak,” Snake
answered while handing them a couple of boxes of ammo that had been piled in
the back of the elevator. “Man, I’ve gotta warn you, we can clear them out
pretty easy, but there’ll be more coming; a lot more. The floor’s going to be
pretty hard to keep secure as it is, with all the glass doors and windows. The
dead seem to know where the people are, and they’re persistent.”

“You seem to know a lot about what’s going on,” Jack noted.

“Dude, I’ve just escaped from Hell’s furnace.
Midtown is swarming with these things. A couple days ago we were working at the
shelter and two of the guys from the streets came in with bite marks. When they
started getting sick, we took them to the emergency room, not here but at
Community Hospital, where they checked them out and sent them back to the
shelter. Well, a little while later they went nutso. They started tearing
people apart. We subdued them and took them back to the ER and they put them in
the psych ward. We left the newly injured, at least the worst of them, at the
hospital and a couple of hours later, some suits showed up. FBI, asking all
sorts of questions. They knew. From what I hear, one of the hospitals north of
here was hit hard enough that they had to close it. That was a week ago, though
they’ve been telling people it was black mold in the walls, or some other BS.”

Keith nodded. “Right, Mercy Hospital. We were told
that it was black mold, too. We had to take a bunch of their patients.”

“You think it was some kind of conspiracy?” Jack
asked, half testing the newcomer’s state of mind.

“Not a conspiracy,” Snake answered, “more of a cover
up. When more and more of these things started turning up and the crap really
hit the fan, I called my brother, who’s a cop here in Lansing. He spilled the
beans. The CDC and FBI have known about this for a while. It hit Colombia and
Central America pretty hard. It had been quietly festering down there in some
little villages for some time, maybe months. Remember the riots they reported
on TV several weeks back, in Nicaragua and Guatemala? They weren’t riots. That
was an outbreak. They kept it hushed pretty well. The CDC told my brother and
the rest of the LPD that it was a mutated strain of the bird flu. They said the
reason it spreads so quickly is because it moves to the adrenal glands and then
moves to the rest of the body, so a panic could cause it to spread out of
control. Don’t know if that’s true or if they were just trying to find an excuse
to keep the public in the dark, but I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“The adrenal glands?” Keith asked, skeptically.
“Sounds like a story to me. We had the FBI here today, too, and they wouldn’t
tell us anything. I’m thinking this is way bigger than a strain of bird flu.”

“It sounds like we’re going to be stuck here for a while,” Jack sighed.

“It’s a decent place to hole up,” Snake said. He hit
the walls with his fist. “Solid masonry. Ain’t no zombie going to bust this
down, but like I say, they’ll find their way into the first floor just by sheer
numbers. We had a couple hundred people holed up at the shelter. We thought
we’d be safe, since it was a metal structure, but they kept piling up outside.
I guess the building was old and not as sturdy as we thought, because the
weight of thousands of these goons pressing against it folded it like a taco.
Some of us were able to escape over a wall that had fallen on top of the mob
and get to our bikes. I think it was a miracle. Thank God they’re slow. Some of
the people that were pinned under the building we just couldn’t help. There
were just too many of those maniacs.”

“Any chance the military can wipe them out?” Jack asked.

“Dude,” Snake said in a manner that masked his
intelligence, “not any time soon. The number of walking dead is growing
exponentially. When they leave a place, there’s more than when they started.
They have no other drive than hunger, and they won’t give up. If you last a
week in here, you could be the only thing on the menu for about a million zombies,
and they’ll all be right outside, and, let me repeat, they won’t give up.”

“It sounds like a city is not the best place to be,
in that case,” Keith said, “but I can’t run out on my patients and I don’t see
how we could evacuate them.”