“Help!” she cried, unsure if the men would be able to hear her from here. “Help me!”
A bang from behind told her that the zombie had pushed its way through the washroom door and was in pursuit. Nancy didn’t risk the second it would have taken to look back. Blood was sopping through her pant leg and she was finding herself running slower and slower with each passing second.
The sound of running feet made her whimper, but suddenly there was Ken, appearing from behind a display of motor oil. He had a tire iron with sale stickers on it in his hand. He flew past Nancy and she heard a two loud, wet sounds in rapid succession. A moment later Ken scooped Nancy up into his arms and took off for the car.
“Thank you!” Nancy gushed. Her voice trailed off when she noticed the look on Ken’s face. Then she heard a familiar sound from outside. “What’s going on?” she demanded. Ken didn’t answer, but as they flew through the gas station’s front doors she saw for herself.
They’d come, seemingly from nowhere, and were swarming from all directions. A wave, not as large as the one they’d left behind at the hospital but plenty large enough, was closing in on the car. Sarah was screaming from the back seat. Greg was hanging out the driver’s side door, holding Nancy’s katana in one shaking hand.
“I’ve got her!” Ken screamed.
Greg’s head whirled around. A half-second of relief passed over his face as he ducked into the driver’s seat. Ken hauled open the back door and Nancy scooped Sarah into her arms as they slid into the car.
“Go, go, go!” Ken commanded. Greg was half a step ahead of him, squealing the tires before Ken even had the door closed behind him.
As zombies bounced off their bumper for the second time in as many days, Ken began tearing strips of material from his shirt. He threw one of the strips around Nancy’s leg and pulled tight. The pain made her gasp; a moment later the gasp turned into a scream. Sarah wailed. Nancy tried to bite back the tears streaming down her face as Ken fastened another strip of material, but it was impossible.
“The bleeding isn’t stopping,” Ken groaned when he’d lost half his shirt. “The wounds are too deep! I need to close them up!”
“You’re not seriously suggesting that we stop at another hospital, are you?” Greg cried back, incredulous. “You saw how fast they appeared! We need to get out of this town as quick as we can!”
“I understand, Greg,” said Ken. His voice had become high pitched, desperate. “But do you want Nancy to bleed to death?”
Nancy’s eyes grew wide. Was it really that bad? Suddenly she found herself feeling very faint. Sarah’s tears were soaking through her shirt.
“A general practitioner’s office,” Ken was saying. “That would have the materials I need and wouldn’t be as difficult to defend as a large hospital. Few windows, smaller doors.”
Greg nodded. “Yeah, yeah...okay...” He began scanning the buildings as he drove wildly past. In a part of Nancy’s mind that was becoming giddy from blood loss, she wondered if Greg even had his driver’s license.
It didn’t take long before Greg shouted, “I see one!” and swerved madly to head directly for it. It looked ideal; a small brick building with one door and only three windows. A placard on the front of the building read, “Dr Barrie and Dr MacKinnon”.
Sarah seemed to run out of breath for crying and buried her face into Nancy’s chest as the car nearly toppled sideways due to Greg’s reckless driving. He came remarkably close to crashing into the building, but Nancy had to admit that it was the best parking job for the situation; he’d landed the trunk less than two feet away from the door.
The men flew from the car and put their shoulders together to plow through the door in seconds. Ken gently removed Nancy from the car, making sure that her grip on Sarah was still good, and carried her into the waiting room. He placed her carefully down in a chair and ran to help Greg. Together they ripped their supplies out of the car and tossed them unceremoniously into the building. They had almost all of them when the hoard reappeared from down the street; they abandoned whatever was left and rushed inside out of view. Then, as quickly as they could, they piled everything in arm’s reach - filing cabinets, chairs, a computer desk complete with the computer - in front of the door. As an afterthought Ken removed a large painting from the wall and affixed it up against the lone window in the room before lighting a candle from a box he’d grabbed from the supermarket.
Nancy, despite the dizziness that was coming down on her, seemed to be the only one to actually
look
at the painting. She groaned. “You guys... This is a god-damn dentist office.”
The men turned blank stares at her before looking at the painting and realizing that she was right. They were looking at a very detailed cut-away image of the inside of a molar.
Ken went pale for a moment, but recovered quickly. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” he shouted while rushing off to the back room. “Dentists have to suture wounds from wisdom teeth sometimes, right? Yes, I’m sure of it!”
Greg looked green. Nancy could tell that he was praying to God that Ken was right. If they’d trapped themselves in a building where they couldn’t even help Nancy...
The baby reached out and grabbed Nancy’s lip. She tried to smile, but her heart was hammering and she felt very faint. The strips of material that Ken had wrapped around her leg were soaked clean through. “Greg,” she cringed. “You’d better take the baby before I pass out.”
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Ken cried as Greg pulled the baby out of Nancy’s arms. He came running down the hall with what looked like spools of thread and several bottles of rubbing alcohol. There was a large, curved needle between his lips. Nancy felt her face drain of all color.
“Tell me there’s something back there that you can knock me out with,” she pleaded.
“No time!” Ken insisted. He laid his supplies at her feet. “I don’t have time to figure out the correct dosages. It could do you significantly more harm than good!” With that he shoved a rolled-up magazine in Nancy’s mouth and told her to brace herself.
Nothing in her world up until that point compared in the way of physical pain. Eventually Ken had to use his belt to strap her leg to the chair because she was struggling too much for him to clean and close the wounds properly. She screamed around the magazine in her mouth until her voice started to go hoarse. The rubbing alcohol that Ken poured felt like a thousand fires. The steady threading of the needle felt like the small, thin teeth of a vicious animal. By the time he was done Nancy was panting, pouring sweat, and very confident that she was going to pass out.
Greg found some gauze in the back and Ken wrapped Nancy’s leg. While she struggled to wipe the tears from her face Ken rooted through the supplies and found a box of cookies. He ripped the box open and shoved a handful at Nancy. “To get your blood sugar back up,” he explained. She didn’t feel anything that was like hunger, but she struggled to force the food down her throat.
“You should rest now,” Ken insisted. He lay down the gauze and picked up the katana. “Greg and I will keep watch for a while. I don’t think they saw us come in here, so hopefully they’ll wander away.”
Nancy shook her head vehemently. “You haven’t slept in almost 48 hours,” she argued. “And I doubt Greg got much rest either.” The look on the boy’s face proved her right. “You guys sleep, I’ll watch. We’re safe enough for now.”
Ken tried to dissuade her by pointing out that she was injured and weak, but she couldn’t be reasoned with. “You’re no good to us dead on your feet,” she reasoned. Her face was set and stubborn. That, combined with the fact that he did feel like he might collapse any minute, eventually convinced Ken. Looking much like a zombie himself, he dragged himself off to one of the back rooms to try and get some sleep in one of the dentist’s chairs.
“Help me into a corner,” Nancy asked Greg. He handed Sarah back to her and swiveled chairs around the room until Nancy was sitting in the corner, facing the door, with her feet up and outstretched on a second chair.
“I’ll watch from the window in the hygienist’s room,” Greg insisted. At a look from Nancy he added, “Until I get too tired.” He dragged several of the supply bags over next to her chair before he left. “Are you comfortable?” he asked on his way out. “Do you want me to take the baby?”
Nancy wasn’t comfortable at all, and her leg was throbbing horribly, but she snuggled a giggling Sarah close and nodded. “Wait for a few moments,” she asked.
With the energy she had left Nancy mixed some formula with some lukewarm water into one of the bottles she’d found and offered it to Sarah. The baby seemed confused by the bottle at first, but soon snagged on to it hungrily until her eyelids began to droop. The woman watched the baby for quite some time, losing herself in the innocence of the child while desperately trying to ignore the moaning and shuffling noises from outside the building. Once the baby had drifted off to sleep, Nancy handed her off to Greg and watched them wander down the hall.
Nancy wanted Sarah with her, but she couldn’t just at that moment. As she watched the candle that Ken had lit slowly burn out, she couldn’t help but remember the way the zombie girl’s teeth had entered the flesh of her wounded leg...
Chapter Eleven
When Nancy began to drift back into the waking world she was sweating a river and felt like a bass drum was pounding inside her skull. She thought she heard voices, but she couldn’t quite make them out. Something was touching her face, wiping away the sweat. Nancy groaned and tried to readjust herself but the world was shifting back and forth, up and down. She felt an immense desire to vomit, but barely managed to hold it back before she passed out again.
After what felt like two minutes but was actually more like two hours, she heard the baby crying and tried to open her eyes. Her head was throbbing, her body numb, and her vision blurred. There were two voices speaking nearby, but she still couldn’t make out the words. The baby’s wailing sounded like it was a hundred miles away. Nancy groaned and the voices got louder; they seemed to be panicked. She thought she made out a few words but her brain was so muddled that it all sounded like gibberish.
“Are you sure you should risk it?”
“I don’t really want to, but this is getting out of hand. She’s going to hurt herself.”
“You’re sure you’ve got the right dosage though?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I mixed it low just in case. Worst case scenario it’ll just be ineffective.”
In her confusion and desperation to understand what was happening Nancy let out a strangled cry; through her blurred vision she thought she saw two fuzzy figures jump and move closer to her.
“You hold her arm.”
“Do I have to?”
The last thing Nancy recalled from the strange conversation was a quick, sharp pain in her upper arm. Then everything faded away to black.
“You’re hurt, sweetie.”
Nancy looked down at her leg. The gauze was gone and she was staring at two circular series’ of hastily sutured lacerations that were bound to leave ugly scars. She looked back up at Gramma Sarah and gave her a sheepish smile. “I was careless,” she said. “I let my guard down and she caught me by surprise.”
Gramma Sarah was smiling, but it was a sad, disappointed smile. “You have to be more careful, my dear. You have a child to take care of and two young men who are very concerned for you.”
Nancy looked out over the city. It was decidedly different from in her last dream. Instead of fields of green and skies of blue she was looking down on a city of gray and red from the top of a burning apartment building. The city was empty, and yet she thought she could hear the echoes of screaming in the distance. The sky was filled with the black smoke from a thousand fires.
“I’m sorry, Gramma,” she said, gently tugging at a loose thread from one of her stitches. It didn’t hurt at all, but the surrounding skin instantly began to turn red. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Be sure that you do.”
Nancy turned to smile at her Gramma, but there was no one there. She frowned, sighed, and turned back to watch the world burn.
“Oh lord, my god-damn head,” Nancy groaned. She tried to lift her hand to her forehead but found that she couldn’t. Her eyes flew open and she balked to find herself strapped to a dentist’s chair via random cords and equipment. “What the hell is going on here?!” she shouted.
“Hey, it’s okay!” a voice insisted. “No need to yell.”
Nancy struggled to turn, but instead Greg and Ken stepped into her line of sight. They both looked concerned, but relieved.
“What the hell is going on?” Nancy repeated, more quietly but just as angrily. She struggled against her bonds and felt a bolt of pain run up her leg. She bit her lip to keep the shout back.
“You developed some kind of of infection,” Ken explained. “The zombie that attacked you left a piece of fingernail in one of the wounds that I missed when I was stitching you up. I managed to remove it but you ran an incredible temperature and started hallucinating.”
“And that explains the bondage, how?” Nancy asked, her voice more than a little tart.
Greg raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember anything?” he implored.
Nancy shook her head. Little flashes of words and shadows were blinking in her memory, but nothing that made any sense. “Just some fuzzy images and I remember you two talking but I couldn’t understand what you were saying.”
“We had to restrain you,” explained Ken, “because, well, to put it bluntly you were flipping the fuck out.” Greg nodded his agreement.
Nancy simply blinked back at them for a moment. When they offered nothing further she asked, “What do you mean?”
Ken looked at Greg and waved an arm as though to say, “Go on then.” Greg sighed and shuffled his feet before going on. “You started shouting something about having screwed everything up and how you didn’t deserve to live,” he said with a cringe. “And then you started kicking and screaming like you were being attacked. When we tried to calm you down you started tearing at your arms like you were trying to dig something out of your skin.”
Nancy’s gaze dropped to her arms; she was shocked to see the the proof staring back at her. Her arms both had long, dark red scratches all up and down them.
“We, well,” Ken started and then stopped, looking at Greg as though pleading for him to finish the sentence.
Nancy was too sore, confused, and tired to wait for clarification. “You
what
?” she demanded.
Greg glared at Ken for a moment before turning back to Nancy with a red flush growing under his cheeks. “We, uh... We thought you were maybe...turning into a zombie.” His eyes fell to the floor in shame.
Nancy’s mouth fell open. She stared at the men with wide eyes. Her mind flashed back to the moment the zombie girl had attacked her. And then a moment later she exploded into irresistible laughter. The men stared at her like she’d gone insane. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she coughed out between hoots. “I don’t even know why I’m laughing.” A few tears ran down her cheeks. “The truth is, I was worried about that possibility myself, and now that I know it hasn’t actually happened...” She felt like she was going mad with relief.
Greg blinked three times, very slowly. “I think she’s lost it, Ken,” he suggested. This caused Nancy to laugh harder. For a moment she thought she might actually be losing her mind. It seemed like a long time before she could choke back the giggles and straighten her face again. When she was finally composed she gave the men a genuine smile. “Well are we agreed that I am
not
, in fact, zombified?”
They nodded.
“Then kindly get me out of this chair, please and thank you.”
Almost startled, the men rushed forward to untie Nancy, and by the time she was free they’d all dissolved into giggles again. It was strange, and contagious. It felt good, after all they’d been through, and they didn’t stop for quite a while. Even Sarah joined in from the makeshift bed Greg had made for her from a desk drawer and some towels. By the time they started to calm down Nancy was holding her sides in agony and Ken was wiping a stream of tears from his eyes.
“So were you dreaming about kickboxing or something?” Greg snickered as he collapsed on the dentist’s stool.
Nancy shook her head. “Honestly? I was dreaming about watching the city burn with my grandmother. Not exactly conducive to kicking and screaming.”
“It must have been something else that you don’t remember,” Ken suggested. “Something about being attacked, maybe?”
Nancy shrugged. If she’d been out as long as they suggested, she guessed she could have had any number of dreams that had flitted in and out of her conscious memory. “That’s not really important anyway. You realize what this means, right?” She gave the men a moment to guess before she pointed out the obvious. “A bite doesn’t mean infection,” she explained.
Ken considered this, and Nancy could tell he was thinking of all the people Aria and her dogs had slaughtered. “Yes, you’re right,” he agreed. “So my theory is probably correct then; it’s all about dying, regardless of the manner.”
“That doesn’t sound good for the future,” Greg said with a frown. “I mean, we’re all still young, but everyone dies, so is it all just useless?”
Nancy clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got to try not to think that way,” she insisted. “We don’t know for sure that a death of any kind leads to becoming a zombie. And besides, maybe whatever caused this will pass over eventually.” The ‘maybe’ and ‘eventually’ in her sentence didn’t seem to make Greg feel any better, so she tried changing the subject. “Anything interesting happen while I was out cold?” she asked.
A funny look passed over the men’s faces that indicated a big, fat
‘yes’
, but neither of them said anything at first.
“Well?” Nancy prodded with a furrowed brow. “What is it? Fill me in here.”
In response, Greg gestured toward the nearest window. “Take a look,” he suggested.
A bit wary, Nancy pushed herself up out of the dentist’s chair and wandered over to the window. They’d pushed a filing cabinet in front of it to block most of the view, but she could see through a small slit on one side. What she saw made her eyebrows go up in surprise. The zombies were gone again. There wasn’t a single rotting corpse to be seen. For a moment she felt like she should whoop in celebration, but then she noticed something else, something that made her stomach clench.
Two or three streets over there was a larger building that hovered over all the smaller ones. On the very top of that building, looking out over the town, was a woman. She stood perfectly still, only her flowing skirt and long hair blowing in the wind. Her arms were crossed, her legs straight and glued together, her eyes staring.
Nancy stepped back from the window. “How long has she been there?” she asked.
Ken glanced at the clock. “At least sixteen hours,” he replied. “That’s when we first noticed her anyway. We noticed that the zombies were starting to disappear and were planning to get ready to move on once we knew what was happening with you, but then we noticed her. And to be quite honest we’ve been a little more than disturbed.”
“She just
stands there
,” Greg elaborated with a shudder. “We haven’t seen her move an inch yet.”
Nancy felt cold. “There was another one,” she said, “when we were leaving the hospital. A man who didn’t move an inch.”
Greg’s eyes widened. Ken frowned.
“I forgot to mention it because of all the chaos,” she admitted. “It was when you guys were trying to hot-wire the car. He was standing on the brick wall along the edge of the parking lot, just staring at us. At first I wasn’t even sure it was a person, until I noticed his clothes moving in the wind. But then everything went to hell and I just forgot to bring it up.”
Ken’s frown deepened.
“Who do you think they are?” Greg asked, the nervousness clear in his voice.
“Better yet, are they human or zombie?” added Ken.
“That’s the million dollar question, I think,” said Nancy, glancing back at the window. “They don’t act like zombies, or look like them for that matter. I mean, look at her.” She gestured toward the window, though no one moved toward it. “Even from here you can tell that she’s all in one piece.”
“But on the other hand,” Greg offered, “how many perfectly healthy humans do you know who can stand rock still for more than half a day?”
“The first guy you saw didn’t move at all?” Ken asked.
Nancy thought about it. It had been a traumatic few minutes filled with panic and confusion, but in the corner of her mind’s eye she could recall no instance when the figure had shifted in the slightest. “No,” she finally replied. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I remember that as we were driving away he was still just standing there and staring.”
The creepiness of it concerned them all. After all, if he
were
human, why would he stand calmly by while hundreds of zombies converged on a hospital full of survivors?
By the following morning the woman was still standing there, still staring out across the town, and Nancy was beginning to find herself seriously disturbed. Over a breakfast of cold vegetable soup they discussed the possibility of making a dash for their car and taking off out of town. It turned into an argument about whether the idea was reasonable or not. Here, Greg insisted, they had relative safety for the time being, as well as the stash of food they’d gathered at the supermarket. That food, Ken countered, would eventually run out, and it would be smart to be well on their way to an alternative food source before they ran too low. They could just return to the supermarket, Greg offered. And the last time they were there the zombies had poured out of nowhere, Ken reminded. Nancy listened as they fought, sure she was going to wind up being the tie-breaker. Greg and Ken both had good points, and although she was leaning in favor of Ken’s plan to move on, she couldn’t help but feel that the idea of running out there without knowing where all the zombies had disappeared to was a bad idea. Even though their car was presumably right where they’d left it, there were no windows in this building that allowed them a view of whether it was damaged by the zombie swarm. They’d have to open the door to find out, and if there
were
any zombies left wandering around, they might hear and come rushing back. And then there was that woman. Something about advertising their whereabouts to her felt like a terrible, terrible idea.