Ty knew it too. The kid wasn’t stupid. “I’m going with you. Mojo can stay here. With both of us, it’ll go a lot faster. I can distract the zombies while you grab the food. Then we can run out. I’ll lure them into the dining room, since it’ll be less cramped.”
“No,
I’ll
lure them and
you’ll
get the stuff,” I insisted. “Although I still wish you’d stay put.”
Ty said quietly, “Maybe I was a kid a few days ago, but the last few days have made me grow up fast. You’re not old, but I know one thing—I’m still a lot younger and faster than you are. I’ve got a better chance of making this work.”
“Okay,” I reluctantly agreed. Then I said, “Hey, why don’t you see Nana real quick before we head over to the Zombie Lounge?”
Ty studied me out of slitted eyes. “Why? So that she can talk me out of going in there?”
Actually, yes. But I realized that Ty wasn’t going to buy it. As I said before, he was a smart kid.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” I said grimly. I pulled off the small backpack that I’d grabbed that had the .22 and ammo. I hesitated and then asked Ty, “Do you know how to use this? Otherwise, I’ll take it and try to provide you with cover.”
“My dad was pretty anti-weapons,” Ty said. “But I had a friend whose dad took us to the shooting range. He thought my dad knew. Plus I was in scouts, so I’m good with rifles, too.”
I was satisfied enough to hand the gun over to him. In any other scenario, I couldn’t picture myself giving a fifteen year old boy a gun. But other scenarios didn’t include zombie infested retirement homes.
The grim nurse pointed us in the direction of the kitchen. “There should be some empty packing boxes in there that you can use to throw the food in,” she said.
The wide halls lined with handrails were eerily silent as we walked down them. Mojo whined when I tried to make him stay, so I reluctantly allowed him to come with us. If we ran into trouble, we wouldn’t have been able to return and get him anyway—it was better to have him with us.
Ty and I walked in silence, not wanting to attract any attention. Just the same, though, I still felt like we could be jumped on at any second from any of the adjoining rooms. It was a tense five minute walk to the dining room and kitchen.
We could hear the moaning sounds before we got to the dining room. Mojo’s fur raised on his back and his eyes were steely. Whether it was true or not, Mojo seemed to think that he could take on zombies with no problem.
There was a hallway and a door that led to the kitchen. Ty and I listened outside the door for a few minutes to see if we could hear anything directly on the other side. Not hearing anything, I slowly pulled open the door and Ty aimed the gun inside the room. There was nothing there.
We moved quickly into the kitchen. Ty bobbed his head silently to me to indicate a stack of produce boxes that were wide and long enough to put a bunch of cans in.
We worked our way into the kitchen, pulling cans and other nonperishables off the shelves and putting them in the boxes. The boxes quickly grew very heavy, so we carried them out to the hallway when they were filled.
A warning growl from Mojo made us freeze. Sure enough, hovering in the doorway was a zombie employee moaning at us. I glanced at Ty. The original plan suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. It would be tricky to squeeze past this guy and distract the rest of the zombies by luring them into the far side of the adjoining dining room. Besides, we’d already filled up six or seven flat boxes of supplies. I shook my head at Ty and pointed out the back of the kitchen, the way we’d come in. We had enough food for a while. Enough food to give the nurse what she wanted so that she’d tell Ty about his sister.
The zombie’s wandering had somehow grabbed the attention of the other zombies. Now there were others, some former residents and some former staff, that were pushing into the kitchen behind the first one, swinging their heads to look around.
“Let’s get out of here,” breathed Ty.
I agreed. I wasn’t even exactly sure how we were going to lug all the food we’d already gotten. We exited the door we’d first entered, and Ty and I barricaded it with a heavy armchair from a nearby sitting room. We spotted an abandoned motorized wheelchair and Ty hopped in. I piled food into the basket on the front of the chair and stacked it on Ty’s lap. I held the other boxes of food, my muscles straining with the weight.
Driving the chair seemed pretty easy, but it was pretty painfully slow. Ty kept stealing glances behind us. “Think they’ll bust out of that door?” he asked as the chair, now really weighted down, crawled down the hallway.
“I doubt it,” I lied. It was only a matter of time, really, considering how many infected people we were talking about. If nothing else, they could use brute force to push through. They weren’t so good at reasoning, but the brute force part they had down pat. The big thing I didn’t want to do was to lead the zombies to the memory care unit of Crofton. That would make getting the supplies in even harder.
Luckily, we got all the way over to the unit without any zombies on our tail. I shifted the boxes over to one arm, knocking with the other. My arms were shaking by this time with all the weight I was holding.
A suspicious voice from inside asked, “Yes?”
I rolled my eyes at Ty, but this time he didn’t give me that conspiratorial grin that he usually did. He just looked worried. “It’s us,” I told the nurse. “Naturally. Since zombies don’t knock.”
The woman slowly opened the door and peered out, looking down the long hallway first to ensure that no zombies were shambling toward her. She glanced down at the food that we were holding and her eyes briefly lit up. Then her gaze flickered. “Is this it?”
Ty said, “This is it. This is as much as we could carry and as much as we could get from there.”
I was just glad that Ty had been the one to answer. I was getting pretty steamed up by this time with this nurse and I was tired of holding a hundred pounds of food. I raised my foot and kicked the door open wide.
The nurse’s mouth was an O of surprise.
Ty and I walked in and set the stuff down right inside the doors. I saw that there were various residents, mostly women, peering from doorways and standing in the hall.
One of them said in a tremulous voice, “Thanks for getting food for us.”
I have to admit, this warmed my heart. The nurse had really soured me on the whole getting-food mission and this lady helped remind me that I was actually doing a good deed.
Ty was looking down the hall, trying to see if he could spot his grandmother. The nurse noticed this and said quickly, “What about our medications?”
Her rudeness immediately got under my skin again and my lips tightened to keep from saying what I really thought.
She amended her request, trying to soften it. “As you can see, we’re in dire need of help here and you’re our only hope.”
Well, when she put it that way—
Ty was already heading back to the hall. “Charlie, let’s just get this over with. Then I can catch up with my grandmother after we’re done. And find out where Ginny is.”
I nodded, but I was thinking everything through. Was this really the best place to offload Ty? The whole place was compromised—the infection was rampant. The food supply was apparently limited to what Ty and I had been able to scavenge and we didn’t even know how many residents it was expected to serve. It sounded to me like the better plan was just to find Ty’s Nana, convince her to come with us, and leave the facility to find Ty’s sister. Then maybe we could find a better location for the three of them to hang out together.
For now, though, I kept my thoughts to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was to complicate the issue. The nurse gave us directions to the infirmary and we set out. This time we left Mojo behind. He wasn’t happy about it, but the residents were enchanted with him, so that helped. The infirmary was a different sort of situation, from what we’d seen on the monitor in the office. It looked like there were zombies in the hallway leading up to and past the infirmary. Basically, there was no easy way to get in or get out.
Ty gripped the gun. “Same plan?” he asked in a low voice. “I divert and you grab the medications?”
This plan still gave me heartburn. “I guess. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to handle it. But I reserve the right to change the plan in the middle of the mission.”
We came up to the spot in the hallway where we needed to make a left turn and head down a different hall. Ty and I kept our backs up against the wall and I carefully peered around the corner.
There was a zombie right there.
I got a split second impression of a disturbing grin from the infected staff member before I barked at Ty to run off and I felt the zombie grab onto me in a surprisingly tight grip and bite down on my forearm as I tried with all my might to push him away.
I heard an alarmed cry from Ty.
“Get out of here!” I yelled to him.
But Ty wasn’t listening. As I pulled hard away from the zombie, I heard the gun fire and saw the zombie shoot backward from the impact of the bullet. Finding my chance, I ran back with Ty along the hallway in the direction we’d just come from.
When we got up to the memory care unit, the hall was still deserted. I was panting, as much from the intense feelings coursing through me as from the run. “Hey,” I said to Ty between gasps. “Leave me out here. I just wanted to get away from that guy. Now let me stay here. I’m going to turn and I don’t want you or your Nana or anybody else around me when I do.” The thought that I would start attacking Ty or old folks or anybody at all made me feel physically sick. Or maybe I was feeling physically sick because I was already turning. I wasn’t sure.
Ty was already shaking his head and knocking on the door. “Cover that up,” he said, motioning to my bloody arm. “We’ll get some sheets or towels or something in there to make a tourniquet. But if the nurse sees it, there’s no way she’ll let you in there.”
I said gruffly, this time putting more of an edge in my voice, “Didn’t you hear me? Leave me here. You know as well as I do what’s going to happen next.”
But Ty refused to listen. This was a side to him that I hadn’t seen yet. It was a typical bullheaded teen. He knocked at the door again. “Got your meds out here! Open up!”
This wasn’t going to go well. For one thing, we didn’t have any meds. For another, they were going to find out I’d been attacked by an infected person. The chances of Ty finding out where Ginny was were looking slim. Unless Ty’s Nana knew.
The nurse’s sour face peered out. “Where is it?”
Ty bulldozed his way through the door, grabbing me by my uninjured arm and pulling me through.
The nurse gaped at me and I noticed too late that the blood was now dripping onto the floor. “You’ve been bitten!” The expression she turned on Ty was white with fury. “Get him out of here! Immediately!”
“Negative,” said Ty coolly. He patted Mojo, who was bounding joyfully around us.
“Where are the medicines?” she hissed.
“In the infirmary. We ran into a problem getting them,” I gasped.
“Clearly!” The nurse’s eyebrows drew down ferociously. “Since the young man won’t see sense, surely you will. For
his
sake,” she said, jerking her head in Ty’s direction. “Walk out that door.”
“You see, I have a plan,” said Ty, raising his hand to interrupt her. “Here’s my plan.” He lifted up the gun and the nurse recoiled. “I’m going to talk to my grandmother. You’re going to tell me where Ginny is. I’m going to take Charlie with me and get him bandaged up. If or when Charlie starts turning into one of those
things
, I’ll put him out of his misery.”
I was filled with relief mingled with gratitude. He had a plan, for sure.
“And no one is going to stop me or tell me that I owe them anything else for that information,” said Ty in a measured voice. “Do we understand each other?”
The nurse eyed the weapon and nodded slowly.
“Good,” said Ty. “Which room is my grandmother in, since she’s not in her regular room?”
The nurse’s eyes glinted. “At the end of the hall. Last door on the right.”
Ty motioned to me and we walked down the hall. Residents popped back into their rooms as we came toward them. All except the actual memory care residents. The ones that weren’t in bed stayed right where they were and stared at us as we hobbled by.
“I’m still not so sure this is a good idea,” I mumbled to Ty.
His hand tightened on my arm. “I wasn’t leaving you behind. You’d have done the same for me.”
He was right, but I still didn’t feel good about it. On the way down the hall, Ty stopped by a nurse’s station that had a few supplies left. He took a bottle of rubbing alcohol and removed the top. He was looking for cotton balls when I said, “Just pour it right over the top.”
Ty winced, but did as instructed. I gritted my teeth at the strong stinging of the alcohol hitting the damaged skin. Then Ty pulled off some gauze and medical tape and quickly helped bandage me up.
“I’m going to stay with you to keep an eye on you,” said Ty. We walked briskly to the end of the hall and Ty rapped on the door.
A lady with a sweet smile and somewhat wild hair answered. She beamed at us.
“Nana!” said Ty. He reached for his grandmother and enveloped the small woman with a big hug.
I could see his Nana’s face. She gave me a bemused look and I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach that I didn’t think had anything to do with the fact that I’d been bitten.
“What a nice boy,” she said in a gentle voice, reaching up a hand to absently rub Ty’s hair.
He abruptly leaned back to study his grandmother. “Nana? Are you okay?”
But his grandmother clearly wasn’t. She was gazing at Ty with a sort of milky, confused expression. I don’t know if she’d been like this for a while and Ty’s parents didn’t
know
, or if she’d been this way and they just didn’t want to tell their kids. Ty was staring at his grandmother in disbelief. Then he gave her a quick hug. “It’s okay, Nana. Don’t worry.”
She gave him a searching look as if trying to place him and seemed worried that she couldn’t. Realizing she must be slipping somehow, she asked, “Want to come in for water?”