Dead Living (4 page)

The hospital was a lost cause.

All it took was bite wound victims being
moved all over the hospital. The creatures were everywhere. She
cringed as she watched people running for their lives down the
halls, doctors that once cared for patients eating those same
patients' intestines.

“I'm sorry, guys. But I can't go with
you.”

Frank nodded. “I understand. Get your loved
ones and get some place safe.”

A sad thought crossed Denise's mind. Her
mother was drunk somewhere in a bar in California. She hadn't
spoken to her father since the day he'd walked out on her and Mom,
almost ten years ago. Six years of having her nose in medical books
didn't leave her with a lot of time to make friends.

She had no one.

Frank opened the door and sprinted across the
empty waiting room. Joe was a step behind. They knew it was empty
now, but it could be full of those creatures at any second. They
had to be quick and quiet.

They went up the stairs without incident.
When they got to the door leading to the second floor Frank peeked
through the glass window. He pulled his head back when he saw a
head pass by.

Frank saw two men and a woman kneeling next
to a man on the floor. One of the creatures used to be a patient.
His robe was open in the back, revealing a slice that went from his
tailbone all the way to the bottom of his neck. Frank could see the
muscle tissue exposed.

He put a hand on Joe's shoulder, not wanting
him to look. Joe felt ridiculous. He still carried the spare
keyboard, while Frank had a gun.

“This is my stop,” Frank said.

Doubt started to creep
into Joe's mind.
This is crazy,
he thought.
I'm not
gonna make it.

He had to try. His wife and child, and
Margie, needed him.

Joe just gave Frank a nod. Frank pulled open
the door and took his first steps onto the second floor. As Joe ran
up the stairs he heard Frank shooting.

His hopes fell. How far did he really expect
to get with a keyboard?

He looked through the window leading to the
third floor. Down the hall he could see someone walking, his back
facing Joe. For a moment, he thought it was a normal person. Then
he noticed the slow, unsteady gait. In a closet just behind the
creature, a mother burst the door open and fell to the ground. Her
young daughter, whom the parent had spent the last hour hiding in
the closet with and treating her wounds, tore a chunk of flesh out
of her mother's back. The other creature turned and joined in the
attack.

“My God, this can't be happening.”

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind.

Joe spun around and cocked the keyboard back,
ready to strike. Denise held up her hands and shielded her
face.

“Hey, hey! It's me!”

He let out a breath and lowered his weapon.
“Shit, lady! What are you doing here?”

“I, uh, don't really have anywhere else to
go. And you need help. You gotta find your family. Hell, that's my
job here. I'm supposed to help people.”

Joe was surprised. He didn't expect help from
anyone. He gave her a smile and looked at the fire extinguisher she
carried. It was no doubt a little sturdier than the keyboard he
had.

He stuttered. He didn't know what to say. “I
. . . well . . . thank you. I owe you one.”

“I'm Denise.”

“Joe.”

Denise pushed her face to the glass. She
looked away when she saw the disgusting feast still happening at
the end of the hall.

“Okay, the maternity ward isn't too far away.
It's just two halls over to the right. But . . . I don't know what
we're gonna find there.”

He took a breath. “You ready?”

She nodded.

Joe opened the door. The two creatures at the
end of the hall looked up. They climbed to their feet and started
walking quickly.

“Come on,” Denise said.

They took the hall slow but steady. It took
everything Joe had not to break into a run. He heard the two
creatures trying to catch up behind him, but he told himself they
were slow. If they ran, they would make noise, and who knows what
they would run into.

As they approached one hall intersection Joe
saw a hand grab the corner of the wall, then pulled around the
corner. Denise recognized the man as Doctor Jay, a nice man who
always told her how pretty she looked.

He looked at her now and wailed. His eye hung
halfway out of the socket. When he opened his jaw to moan, the eye
fell out completely, held only by the optic nerve.

Denise was convinced now they were walking
corpses.

Joe, who hadn't kept track of the news, was
stunned. He knew they didn't feel pain, but this was too much.

He raced toward what used to be Doctor Jay.
He swung the keyboard as hard as he could across his face, breaking
the cheap plastic. Doctor Jay stumbled backwards and fell awkwardly
on his leg. Joe heard it break.

That still didn't stop the doctor. He slowly
crawled toward them, drooling blood on the floor.

“The ward's one more hall over,” Denise said,
grabbing his arm. “Let's go.”

As they passed an exam room, Denise saw a
nurse she used to eat lunch with ripping the tongue out of
someone's mouth. The nurse, with the scent of warm flesh in her
nose, left her cooling meal and stood up.

“We have to hurry before we attract too much
attention,” Joe said.

“We're here. Just this next left.”

When they reached the intersection they
stopped. Joe looked down a long hall with rooms on both sides. A
creature had a woman pinned to the wall, teeth in her throat, about
halfway up the hall.

“Doctor Blair would have brought her
here.”

Joe looked behind him. Three creatures were
still slowly approaching, their arms outstretched. He took the fire
extinguisher from Denise.

“I guess we have to look in every room,
right?”

She nodded.

They started searching rooms. The first room
they saw that wasn't empty had a creature eating someone's foot.
Joe ran forward and smashed him in the head with the
extinguisher.

The noise attracted the attention of the
single creature ahead of them. The three others still tailed them
as well.

“They're gonna pin us in,” Denise said.

Joe wasn't worried too much about the
creature ahead. He could simply knock him over and run. But Denise
was right, they needed to hurry.

They approached a large room to their left
with a huge viewing glass, and a mini lobby across from it. The
single creature was twenty yards away. Joe took a quick look.

It was the hospital nursery.

It wasn't a nursery any longer.

Rows and rows of tiny beds were knocked over.
He couldn't see what the creatures were doing, but they were on
their hands and knees, reaching into the beds. Not a single baby
made a sound.

Joe lost it. He leaned over and vomited. The
creature approaching them was getting dangerously close. It
actually seemed to get faster as it drew near.

“Joe, we gotta move. Come on.”

He snapped. As he wiped
his mouth, he could only think one thing.
Is my baby in there?

He ran forward and swung the extinguisher as
hard as he could. The creature fell to the ground, a huge dent
where its forehead used to be. But Joe didn't stop. He hit the
thing eight more times, until its brain leaked out of its crushed
skull.

Denise was crying. Joe was hunched over,
vomiting again. Thick, almost coagulated blood was smeared on his
chest from destroying the thing. She ran up to him and grabbed him
by the shoulders.

“You have to get it together!” she almost
screamed at him. “We have to keep-”

She cut herself off when she saw movement to
her right. She looked into the room next to them, and recognized
Doctor Blair.

Joe's murder of the creature attracted the
attention of five more of them, all coming out of different rooms.
They were moving much faster than the others. Joe and Denise were
trapped now.

“Come on!”

She dragged Joe into the nearby room and
locked the door behind them.

Doctor Blair was standing near the window,
just swaying back and forth, with his back toward them. Blood
covered the bed and walls. There was movement on the floor. The
angle they had from the hallway didn't let Denise see it, but
someone else was in the room.

Joe thought maybe he had died and gone to
Hell. He thought back to his chaotic day. The warehouse, then the
hospital. He didn't remember dying along the way. But that was the
only way to explain what he was seeing.

His beloved wife Sarah crawled out from next
to the bed. The gown she had on was twisted and covered in blood,
and showed most of her front. Her stomach was split open.
Intestines drug along the floor as she let out a moan that
threatened to send Joe over the edge.

He couldn't move or think. All he could do
was look into the hollow face of his once beautiful wife. He didn't
hear the crowd of walking dead gather outside the locked maternity
ward room. He didn't hear Denise next to him urging him to do
something. He wanted to crawl to the corner and die, but his legs
refused to carry him anywhere.

He thought of the last time he saw her. It
was at the front door, where they hugged and kissed goodbye before
he left for work. He had no idea it was the last hug and kiss they
would ever share.

Denise plunged the scalpel she found on the
table next to them deep into the skull of Sarah Thompson before she
could crawl any closer. She fell lifeless to the floor, the womb
where their baby once grew exposed.

Doctor Blair shuffled forward. He had more
bite wounds than when Denise saw him earlier. His neck was ripped
open, exposing tissue and muscle. Joe didn't even realize Denise
had taken the extinguisher from him. She beat Blair in the head
till he fell, then beat him some more.

Denise looked at Joe. She knew he was out of
it, just leaning against the locked door. He seemed oblivious to
the pounding coming from the other side. She gently grabbed him by
the shoulders and leaned him against the closed bathroom door.

She knew they weren't getting out the way
they came in, not with all the creatures on the other side. She
stepped over Blair's dead corpse and looked out the window. The
emergency waiting room was its own little addition, and the roof to
it was just outside. The window didn't open large enough to walk
through. It only cracked a little, to get air. She swung the
extinguisher through the glass, being careful not to cut herself.
She ran back to get Joe. The pounding on the door was getting
louder.

“Let's go,” she said. “We can climb out on
the roof here and jump down. It's not a short fall, but we'll
figure something out.”

Joe blinked twice. Tears stained his face.
“I-I think I'll stay here.”

“What?”

“Sarah . . . she's gone.”

Denise grabbed his face gently. She had just
stabbed a woman in the head and beat a man to death. She was amazed
she was keeping it together as well as she was.

“Joe, she would not want you to die
here.”

Before he could respond, there was a voice in
the bathroom behind him. “H-Hello? Is someone out there?”

Joe thought he recognized the voice. He
turned the handle to find the bathroom locked.

“Yeah. Unlock the door.”

The door opened to reveal Margie. She was a
mess. Her shirt was torn, blood smeared down her face. Her pretty
blue eyes were bloodshot from crying.

In her arms, she held a baby boy. He slept
peacefully, wrapped in a blue blanket.

“What in the
hell
is happening?”
Margie asked.

Denise shook her head. “People are dying, and
getting back up. We have to get out of here.”

Margie looked at the locked door in front of
them. It actually shook from the pounding.

“Not
that
way.”

“No. We can get out through the window.”

As Margie moved out of the bathroom Joe
pointed at the newborn baby. “Can I hold him?”

She gently placed the hour old baby into his
arms. “Of course. He's yours.”

Joe was lost in his own world for a moment as
he looked at his son. The baby yawned for just a moment, then went
back to sleep.

The sounds of fists at the door brought him
back to the real world.

“Joe!” Denise called from the window. She had
already put a sheet over the sill to cover the shattered glass.
“Come on!”

Margie was out on the roof. She helped Denise
climb through. Joe moved with new-found purpose. He very carefully
handed over his son through the window to Denise, then climbed
through himself. He heard the door splintering behind him. He
almost expected something to grab his foot as he stepped onto the
roof, but that didn't happen.

They had a better view of the surrounding
area. Buildings were on fire. The hospital parking lot was empty of
people, except for a few bodies littered about. Some car alarms
went off, and they could see the ambulance that had crashed into
the hospital earlier was completely engulfed in flame. There was
the occasional scream and some small explosions off in the
distance, plus the wails of the creatures.

Margie ran to the edge of the roof. It was a
good twelve foot drop to the ground. She had no idea how they'd
pull it off with a baby.

She turned and screamed when she saw the
creatures at the window. Joe spun around.

They weren't coordinated or organized enough
to get through. They tried to climb out at the same time, bumping
into each other and falling down. But one did manage to make it.
Joe acted fast. He ran forward and grabbed the creature before it
could stand. He dragged it along the roof and slid it right off the
side.