Dead, but Not for Long (8 page)

Jack used his key to activate the elevator once they got inside.

When it stopped, Keith held his breath as the doors opened.

“Here goes nothing,” he said quietly.

~*^*~

The front teeth came out quite easily. Eric found that if he rocked them back and forth once or
twice, he could twist them right out. The molars were another story. There was
nothing but raw force that could remove them. Several of them cracked in the
process and had to be dug out with needle-nose pliers. He was surprised at the
small amount of blood, forgetting that there was no beating heart to move it.
Then he noticed something odd. The blood actually seemed to be clotting where
the teeth had been pulled, which seemed strange since the woman was dead.

Eric was almost disappointed when it was over. He had worked it out so perfectly. Cheri’s ‘headband’
had kept her upper jaw from clamping down, and his thumb, which had fit
perfectly into the space where her two bottom front teeth had been, had secured
her lower jaw. He was sure he could have been a dentist if he weren’t so drawn to action.

She seemed to take the operation well, as she was more concerned with eating Eric than
worrying about her dental work. He made sure to wash his tools and spray them
with disinfectant. He then approached her with the bottle. She instinctively
opened her mouth which he quickly filled with a disinfectant fog. She bit at
the spray, frustrated when she hit nothing but air. He almost felt pity for her or was it empathy?

“I’m hungry all the time too,” he admitted to his reanimated companion, “and now I took away
your ability to eat. Some friend, huh? Maybe we can take care of that.”

He went upstairs and returned to the room a few minutes later carrying a small package, which he
opened promptly. The label read
Tofu.

“Mom used to trick me into eating this,” he admitted to Cheri. “She said I ate too much red
meat. Supposed to be a good substitute. Let’s see if you like it.”

He put a chunk in front of her face, which she immediately snapped up, chewing with ferocity.

“That a girl!” he said with delight. Upon closer inspection, he saw that her chewing was
mechanical and the tofu flopped from her mouth. Then Eric had a breakthrough.
He returned upstairs to see his mother still sitting by the window, peeking out now and then.

“Those people are getting closer,” she said in a nervous tone. “There are some in the yard now.”

“It’ll be okay, Mom,” Eric assured her as he looked through the bathroom cabinets.
Disappointed, he went to the kitchen and checked under the sink.

“Bingo!” he yelled, pulling out a mousetrap with a recently killed rodent.

“What, Dear?” his mother asked.

“Bingo,” he replied. “That’s what I’m going to call the dog.”

He stuffed the dead mouse into his pocket as he ran back to the stairwell. Hesitating, he turned back.

“And Mom, stay away from the window!”

~*~

When Keith and Jack stepped out of the elevator onto the second floor, several pairs of eyes
turned their way, as well as a few single eyes. They moved down the hall,
dropping a couple of the infected right away to start clearing a path toward
the exercise room. Several more shots followed as the two men continued their grim work.

“Watch the ones on the ground!” Jack yelled. “Looks like half of them are crawling.”

Jack turned to run backwards behind Keith, watching for anything that might be exiting hidden doorways.

“Gotcha,” Keith said. He spun to his right when he caught movement there. His shot took the
back of the ghoul’s skull off and left most of its brains on the wall. He
barely had time to swing back around before another one was right in front of
him. He shot for the heart, instinctively, cursing to himself when he realized
what he’d done. He fired again, this time aiming for the head and putting the
creature out of its misery. Two more took its place.

“Jack!” he yelled, taking the one on the left. The one on the right dropped just a second later.

“Thanks, Man, I owe you for that,” Keith said.

“I have the feeling that the way this day’s been going, you’ll have plenty of chances to return the favor.”

They continued to work their way down the hallway and finally reached the exercise room. Keith
grabbed the handle to open it, only to find the door locked. He swore quietly,
realizing that the gunshots were drawing more of the infected; many more.

“Please tell me that you have a key for this room,” he said. The undead were swarming toward them from both directions.

Jack held out a chain hooked to his belt with a multitude of keys on it.

“I hope you have a lot of ammo,” he stated nervously while searching through the set.

“I’d like to tell you that I do, but I’d hate to give you false hope.” Keith carefully
picked his shots, taking only the closest ones. Once down, they caused some of
the others to stumble, though they always got back up.

Jack reached into a pocket of his uniform and pulled out a set of reading glasses. He put
them on and continued shuffling through his keys. “It’s hell getting old,” he mumbled without looking up.

“Well, if you don’t find those keys soon, you might not have to worry about that anymore,”
Keith replied, firing off another shot. “Not that I’m trying to rush you or
anything,” he added, taking aim at another one and squeezing off a round to drop it in its tracks.

“Ah ha!” Jack exclaimed as he held up a key and stuck it in the lock. “See? No problem.”

He opened the door and quickly but cautiously entered with Keith right behind.

“No problem,” Keith agreed with relief. Pushing the door closed again, he managed to turn the
lock from the inside just before dead hands began to slam against the door.

“We may as well wait until they’re all here before we let them in. I’ll go check the physical therapy room,” Keith said.

Jack started to search the exercise room. He was unnerved by the sight of the dead in the
hallway pressing their faces against the large viewing glass. Their numbers
seemed to be growing exponentially. He looked around the room for crawlers but
found nothing. Approaching a closet labeled “Equipment,” he jiggled the handle. He thought he heard a muffled scream.

“Hello!” he called out. “I’m with hospital security. We’re clearing this room.”

He started to pull out his keys but stopped when he saw the doorknob slowly turn.

The closet door opened to reveal a very frightened young woman and a child.

“Keith!” Jack yelled. “We’ve got survivors!”

~*~

Eric dangled the mouse in front of Cheri. She seemed to be much more excited about the rodent
than the tofu. As she strained to grab it with her mouth, she rocked the chair
wildly. He dropped it into her yearning jaws and she clamped down with her
gums. When the chewing stopped, the tail draped from the corner of her mouth.
Eric pulled on her lower jaw to see the rodent jammed in her throat. Yanking it by the tail, he pulled it out to examine it.

“You’re going to need help,” he told her as he drew a hammer from his tool box. He thought about
the blender for a second, but figured it would be too hard to explain to his
mother. Holding the creature by the tail, he began to pulverize it on his
bedroom floor. Some small pieces flew into various parts of his room and a
chunk of fur stuck to the hammer. Cheri became visibly agitated by the sight of the blood and flying meat.

Eric scraped up the pile of remaining flesh and dropped it into her mouth, and she quickly
devoured it. The morsel only seemed to make her hungrier, which led Eric to
conclude that her hunger must be more psychological than physical. He sat back,
satisfied at his attempts to take care of her. Watching her lick the remaining blood from her lips, he keyed his radio.

“Jack, you there?”

“You haven’t been eaten yet?” Jack answered back.

“Far from it, Boss,” Eric said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’ve run some experiments and have come to some startling conclusions.”

“What do you have?” Jack asked against his better judgment.

“Jack, they don’t like tofu.” Eric sounded like he’d just discovered penicillin.

There was a long pause on the radio before Jack answered back.

“Eric,” his voice was harsh and deliberate, “don’t call me unless you have something
important to say. If it has anything to do with tofu, don’t call. If you don’t
know if it’s important or not, don’t call. If you’re about to be eaten, don’t
call because I won’t be able to do anything about it. On second thought, call.
It may improve morale around here!”

The radio clicked off.

“Grouch,” Eric muttered.

Eric was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of breaking glass.

~*^*~

Jack looked at the radio and shook his head, before turning his attention back to the issue at hand.

Keith returned to the equipment room. He was glad to see that there were survivors on the
floor, but it was going to make their mission just a little riskier. He hated
to put the woman and child in more danger but now that they’d already drawn the
infected to the glass, there was nothing they could do besides stick to the plan.

“Have either of you been bitten?” he asked.

“No,” the woman replied.

Keith guessed that she was about his age, late twenties, maybe. Her long, light brown hair
was pulled back into a ponytail and though she wore a set of oversized scrubs,
Keith could tell that she was in excellent shape. He was relieved, since the
odds of completing their task would be higher with people who could run fast
and wouldn’t be a burden. He glanced at the child, not quite so sure about her.
She was thin and pale and while she didn’t exactly look like an invalid, she
didn’t seem to be in top shape, either. Hopefully she was healthy enough to run.

“I’m Lindsey,” the woman said. “I’m a physical therapist and I was putting Autumn through her
routine when a man went berserk and started tearing people apart out in the
hall. I locked the doors and we hid in the equipment closet. Did you catch the guy?”

Jack hesitated, realizing that the woman and girl couldn’t see anything from where they’d been
hiding. They probably didn’t realize the full extent of the crisis. It was also
unlikely that they’d heard the announcement that Keith had made over the intercom.

“You’d better prepare yourselves,” he said. “There seems to be an epidemic.”

“He’s right,” Keith added. “Whatever caused the man you saw to go crazy, it’s contagious and
it’s spreading fast. Most of this floor and the whole bottom floor are totally overrun by people like that.”

“We’re trying to clear the floor so we can get meds to the patients upstairs,” Jack added. “I’m
Jack, by the way, and this is Keith.”

Keith nodded then explained the plan to them as quickly as he could. “How do you feel about
being bait while we sneak back out to lock them in here?”

Jack noticed that the little girl called Autumn had wandered off and was staring at
something. He turned to see what had caught her attention. A mass of bodies was
pressed against the glass wall, biting and scratching at the barrier. Most were
missing various body parts and the wall was smeared with blood and mucus. Jack
figured the girl, who was no more than nine or ten, was probably in a state of
shock. He knew that a traumatic event like this could scar a person for life.
He directed her attention away from the wall and knelt down next to her.

“Honey, this may seem scary, but think of it like a movie. Those are just actors out there and it’s not real.”

Autumn looked at his name tag and addressed him matter-of-factly.

“Jack, actors don’t rip people’s arms out of their sockets and eat them. Zombies do.”

Keith and Lindsey walked over in time to catch the girl’s comment. When Lindsey got a glimpse of the window, she gasped in shock.

Turning to Keith, Autumn said, “If you need bait, I’m game.”

Jack mumbled, “They grow up way too fast.”

“You know,” Keith added, “Jack said that there might be an opening for a new security
guard. I think you’d do better than the old one.”

He turned his head when he heard a loud thud against the glass.

“I’m not sure how long that glass will hold,” Jack said, “so we’d better do this now.”

“If you two want to go into that room,” Keith nodded toward the Physical Therapy room, “I’ll go
unlock the hall door and let our ‘friends’ in here.”

He spotted a heavy metal bar from a set of barbells and hefted it in his hands. Deciding
that it would be a handy weapon, he brought it along with him.

“That door is going to open real fast,” Jack warned him. “Be careful. I don’t want there to
be one less of us and one more of them.”

“I’m with you on that one but if something happens,” Keith said, nodding toward Jack’s gun, “I
don’t want to become one of them.”

Jack nodded and secured himself, Lindsey and Autumn in the Physical Therapy room, readying his pistol.

Keith walked over to the door that led to the hall, knowing that as soon as he opened it, the mass of infected would be pushing through.

“Three, two, one,” The lock clicked and Keith turned to run, but had to dodge the weight
machines as the ghouls swarmed into the room behind him. For a moment, one of
them managed to grab onto one of his braids but he was able to shake the hand free and get into the other room, bolting the door.

“Maybe it’s time to shave my head,” he said, trying to calm his pounding heart, “or start wearing a hat.”

“They would be in for a surprise if they tried that with me!” Autumn pulled off her beanie, revealing a bald head.

“She had her third round of chemo months ago, but for some reason, her hair hasn’t grown
back,” the physical therapist explained. “The doctors are pretty sure she’s
beaten it this time, but you can see why being on death’s door is nothing new to her.”