The others took notice and their maddened eyes grew wider.
They all stampeded out of the cellblock like wildfire…
Free at last!
As soon as they exited, they saw the back of Cozine at the end of the corridor as he descended the staircase to the first floor. Now they had a target to pin their anger on.
They ran faster.
David shivered like a child and had his ears covered from the cacophony of the living cannibals that ran by, within inches of the desk as dozens of putrid feet splattered by.
They didn’t see him under there; he was lucky, for now.
Cozine had just reached the north wing entrance. He unlocked the doors, but didn’t open them. Instead, he threw his keys away, turned around and faced what came behind him—the shadows of the cannibals swelled at the top of the stairs—an avalanche was coming…
Cozine held out his arms to welcome his fate.
He welcomed it with a smile.
Ardent, Bear and Alan had just passed the north wing doors, but they didn’t bother to investigate because they didn’t hear anything. They headed to the reception area down the corridor.
Lauren had just emerged from the cafeteria in the main building as John trailed behind her. They ran into the reception area and saw Ardent and Bear come in from the main corridor.
“Did you find them?” Ardent asked.
“No. What about you?” Lauren replied.
“No sign of them,” Bear answered.
John caught up, still struggling to shake off the drug in his system.
“You gonna be alright, John?” Ardent asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. We should get the hell out of here.”
Joe and Maggie appeared, but there was no sign of Tom, Anthony, Milla, or Derek.
“Did you find Corina? Did any of you see her?” Maggie shouted.
“No, we didn’t,” Bear said.
The rest of them shook their heads to confirm that none of them had seen her daughter.
“What was that scream? Did you guys hear it too?” Joe asked.
“Don’t know what it was,” Ardent said.
“It sounded like one of those dead things,” Alan said.
“I think it was one of the psycho patients in the north wing cellblock,” John added.
“But how?” Lauren said. “You can barely hear them in their cells, unless…?”
Lauren’s eyes widened and they knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Let’s go. Now!” John said.
The group headed down the main corridor toward the north wing entrance and had only taken a few steps before a strange noise caught their attention—a low rumbling that grew louder with the pace of their worried heartbeats—emanating from behind them.
“What is that?” Joe said.
“I don’t know, but it’s freaking me out!” Alan said nervously.
They turned back toward the front of the hospital in hurried steps as they realized the noise came from outside in the courtyard. They reached the doors and what they saw terrified them instantly under the rising sun of this dawn of the dead—
There was an undead swarm thrashing in the dirt by the front perimeter wall, inside the courtyard. Like a disturbed colony of ants, dozens of stenches emerged from the ground as if out of their graves.
Derek and Milla appeared and joined the group in awe and horror at the sight. “Oh…fuck!” Derek gasped.
“Oh no! Shit!” Milla exclaimed.
“We have to get to the boat. Now. Right now!” John yelled.
They all backed away from the doors, but kept their eyes on the impending doom that manifested outside. Some of them gasped when they saw the outside wall crack from the dead pressure underneath it and it began to crumble.
“Move! Move it now! Go!” Ardent ordered.
They ran from the doors just as the first of the dead reached it and pounded to get in. The sun was blocked out as the stenches covered all the hospital’s front windows. A couple hundred splashed against the entire hospital front in dark outlines of horror.
John produced a remote detonator from his pocket and depressed it—several explosions went off in the courtyard but, with so many dead, they were puffs of smoke in a hurricane.
“God! Oh my lord!” Maggie sputtered in terror. “Corina! We have to find my daughter!”
“There’s no time!” Joe shouted.
They ran faster with Maggie trailing behind as she looked for her daughter in every room she passed.
“Goddamnit, Maggie, come on!” Joe ordered.
At the end of the corridor the sun shone through the closed back doors. Their freedom was golden as it reflected off the linoleum floor; so close and yet so far when what happened next exploded their hopes of escape—
The doors of the north wing suddenly burst open off their hinges by the pack of psychotic cannibals, the sound of broken wood and twisted metal matched only by the cries of the insane patients as they plowed through the doorway like a mine cave-in, filling the corridor and blocking it completely.
“Jesus!” Bear shouted.
The group stopped in their tracks as they watched their lifesaving artery clog a hundred feet ahead of them. The bloodthirsty psychos had rammed into Cozine, who waited for them at the door. They slammed his puny body on the other side of the corridor against the wall as they tore him apart and consumed his wicked flesh. Cozine turned to the group and shouted with everything that he had left. “I’ve got something to tell you!” then one of the patient cannibals ripped part of his throat out, blood sprayed all over. “You’re…not going…anywhere!” he yelled and then choked. Cozine tried to laugh with blood-covered teeth as the patients ripped his face apart; the rest of his throat was torn out. They clawed and ate every part of him they could reach. Lions ate with less savagery.
“Shit! What the fuck are we gonna do?” Milla gasped.
They looked behind them at all of the undead at the windows and doors. One of windows in the double doors
cracked
, and then some of the windows
splintered
into spider webs.
Maggie saw something and her eyes widened, “Corina!” she shouted.
The little girl walked carelessly in the reception area, along the bank of windows, looking at all the undead banging fiercely on the glass. She stopped with her back to the group, fascinated by the dead stenches that were about to break in at any second.
“Corina!” Maggie repeated and ran to her daughter. Joe grabbed her.
“No! No! Maggie!”
“Let me go!”
The little girl turned toward them—
And looked at her mother with milky-red, infected eyes—
“NOOO!” Maggie screamed in horror.
The front doors broke open—
The windows shattered—
The dead were in, moving forward like a wall—
The cannibal psychopaths turned their attention toward the group—
The thing that was Corina sprinted for her mother—
The group was surrounded on both sides—
“Run!” John shouted.
“Where the fuck to?” Derek answered.
“Go, go, go, go!” Bear shouted.
“Get to the roof!” Ardent yelled.
They separated and scattered like cockroaches as they ran to both sides of the corridor, into offices, over counters, side hallways, anywhere to get away. It was every person for his or herself.
The horde of the dead trampled over Corina and she disappeared under tons of pounding feet. The group was gone, but now the horde and the cannibal patients had new targets—each other. They charged with monstrous rage, the psychotics had no idea what they were against, though they didn’t care. The undead saw warm, fresh flesh before them. The screams and roars from both sides reached a fever pitch and then they collided in a crash more vicious than any medieval war. They did not fight in the name of God, but for the sake of feeding.
The collision produced a horrendous, instant splatter of coagulated blood from the dead and red mist spraying everywhere from the living cannibals. Feet swung into the air as individuals were tackled to the floor. The crazies made the first kills as they rammed their fingers into the eye sockets of the dead, penetrated their brains, and began to eat the stenches. The dead made their kills of the patients by biting into their throats and any major artery they happened to gnaw into. Even as patients bled out from their wounds, they continued attacking any undead within their reach.
Some of the dead and the crazed patients didn’t attack each other, instead running after the group of survivors. They wanted them bad enough to coexist, so focused on catching them they didn’t care who or what they ran beside, especially since the patients smelled worse than the corpses. Suddenly, from under the horde, Corina dragged herself out and went after the group; she was an undead speed demon. They poured into every doorway throughout the first floor and fanned out everywhere.
John ran as fast as he could, the adrenaline shooting through his veins superseding the drug David had injected him with. He was back in control of his muscles, but his heart and lungs were out of control as they worked feverishly to keep up with his physical demand. He glanced back to make sure Lauren was still with him—she was—and got a quick look of Ardent and Bear heading another way. Surprisingly, Ardent was running faster than John and had to go another direction so they could get away quicker. Behind them, John saw the dead or some of the psycho patients; he couldn’t tell what was what, chasing after them. He did know that they were just a dozen feet behind them and gaining…
Milla and Derek had ran to the other side of the corridor, rocketing through cubical offices, out into hallways, sprinting into other offices—anywhere—as long as their path didn’t come to a dead-end. That would literally be it.
“Where the fuck are we going?” Derek yelled to her ahead of him.
“The roof! We need to find stairs to the roof!” Milla answered.
Derek fired his weapon blindly behind him at several undead and patients that chased them. One was hit in the chest and fell dead, making it obvious what it was, but the rest kept on coming with bullet holes in them.
“Don’t waste the ammo! Run!” Milla shouted.
In another area, Joe, Maggie, and Alan ran for escape. Alan held back tears of absolute terror. Even though he had his shotgun, it was no match for the dozen or so things that chased them. They ran chaotically through any door to get away, dodging into offices, wherever they could. Maggie followed Alan closely, uncertain where to go. Joe was at the tail end and—behind him—twenty of the undead. The fastest spearheading the group was crazed patients, three of them, and they were gaining on Joe fast. He fired his pistol at them, but couldn’t aim running scared.
One cannibal patient almost caught him, until he slammed a door in its face. The creature’s impact splintered the door down the middle—it wouldn’t hold long—and even though it was futile, Joe engaged the lock on the knob. He turned and ran to catch up with Maggie and Alan, but when he got to the hallway where he saw them last—they were gone—“Fuck! Fuck!” he shouted. “Maggie?” but she didn’t answer.
Joe didn’t know where to go, so he chose a random direction and ran like hell when he heard the door behind him crash open.
John and Lauren made their way to a stairwell and, even though they knew it was there, Lauren got angry at the barricade of desks and tables that blocked the exit leading out to the back employee parking lot. Tom and his people had blocked it to prevent the stenches from getting in, and now it threatened to seal them in their tomb. “Goddamnit!” she shouted, furiously trying to pull the desks out of her way, but there was no time. The approaching echoes of the undead clawed at them.
“We don’t have time!” John said and grabbed her arm. “We have to go up!”
She refused out of desperation. “No, we can do it! Help me!”
He pulled her away. “Come on! They’re here!” John pulled her up the stairs and, a moment later, dozens of ghouls and patients burst into the stairwell. There was nowhere to go but up and they climbed after them. John and Lauren got to the second floor and, when they opened the door, a few of the undead were already there from other stairwells. They slammed the door and kept going up as the swarm of death swelled beneath them.
Ardent and Bear were running up another stairwell, and had just passed the fourth floor landing when Ardent stopped and gave Bear a hand signal to be quiet. Ardent heard something above them; a few of the undead had broken through the fifth floor door and into the landing as they searched for something to feed on. Ardent signaled Bear that he counted five of them and they could take them. Bear agreed and they readied themselves to attack, but then a group of the crazed cannibals appeared two floors beneath them and headed up. The five above heard the ones below and ran down. Ardent and Bear had to run. They went to the fourth floor and closed the door. The fourth floor was empty for now, so they took off to find another stairwell.
Joe ran down a back corridor looking for any stairwells he could go up, but none were in sight. He could hear undead everywhere—it was a matter of moments before they found him. Hope filled his eyes at the sight of a service elevator with its doors partly open. He got to it and squeezed through the doors into the shaft. He looked down and saw the elevator car in the basement, which meant it was clear all the way to the roof. The elevator car cables were his only escape and he prepared to jump for them but, just before he could, a slow moving corpse clawed at his back, scaring him. He jumped out of fright and flew awkwardly into the dark shaft, his hands barely grabbing hold of the grimy, thick cables. His body spun around like a tetherball on a pole, and he held on dearly as the walker pushed in through the elevator door and fell as it reached for him. More came, fast movers, and they jumped farther to get at him. They missed as Joe kicked them away and, before they could get him, he began to pull himself up the cable, arm over arm, to get to the roof.