Jose smiled at that, leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “So where are you from, Veronica?”
“Amherst. We stuck it out there as long as we could but looters came and fires sent us out on the road. We ran out of gas just outside of town. You?”
“Portsmouth,” Jose said before nodding at Travis. “He’s from Lincoln. We met up outside of the evacuation centre at Fort Lee.”
“What sent you up here?” Fort Lee was hours away from the area.
“Fort Lee fell.”
That was the exact reason her father had demanded they remain at home instead of heading to the evacuation centres. If a military base couldn’t maintain order on their own ground, makeshift camps at schools and gyms were sure to be death traps. Not that his foresight had helped him in the end. He had fallen in his home, the one place he had thought he would be safe.
“Shitty all around, isn’t it?” she said with a wry twist of her mouth.
“So what did you do before all of this, Veronica?” Jose asked.
“High school history teacher. How about you?”
“I’m retired now but I worked at the post office before that.”
She looked to Travis with a raised eyebrow. “I had a small landscaping business. Nothing fancy, mostly clearing lots for housing developments.”
The sound of a car alarm going off outside had all of them jumping to get their weapons and Jose went out into the lobby, Travis waiting at the door to the bullpen.
“We’ve got visitors,” Jose said when he returned to the doorway.
“The rednecks?” Travis asked.
“No, infected. There’s at least ten of them out there.”
“Okay, the lobby doors are toast,” Travis said, pulling Jose into the bullpen and shutting the metal door. “Long as we keep quiet they won’t know we’re in here and they’ll eventually move on.”
They stood there in silence, holding their breaths as the car alarm finally turned off and they could hear the crunching of shattered glass and guttural growls. Travis looked out the small window in the bullpen door and gagged, turning away quickly, a hand going to his mouth.
“They’re eating the dead one out front,” he whispered to them and Veronica shuddered. God, even their own kind weren’t safe from being eaten.
The sound of metal and glass crashing against each other cut through the air and Claudia whimpered loudly. Veronica shot down behind the desk, clapping a hand over her sister’s mouth to keep her quiet as she began to shake. Veronica cradled her in her arms, quietly whispering reassuring noises into her ear as she rocked her little sister. Travis’ head popped around the side of the desk, his eyes wide when he spotted Claudia. He crawled behind the desk to join them, nodding his head at Claudia before looking at her with a ‘what the hell?’ expression on his face.
Veronica shrugged her shoulders, not able to offer up more of an explanation without speaking, and he shook his head ruefully before glancing back to where Jose was watching the door. Travis made a few gestures, whatever he was trying to say to Jose was completely lost on Veronica so she kept her attention on Claudia.
Finally Jose turned away from the door and came over to join them.
“Something caught their attention outside and they headed off. Good thing they’ve got short attention spans.” He looked down at Claudia, his face twisting with concern. “Who do we have here?”
“Claudia, my sister,” Veronica told them. “She’s having a bit of a rough time.”
“Is she hurt?” Jose asked, easing himself down to look at her.
“Not physically,” Veronica said, stroking her hair. “She’s been nearly catatonic since we left home.”
Memories of what had happened when they had fled flashed in her mind, the sounds of her mother’s screams flooding her ears, making the sheriff’s station disappear, replaced by the memories of the carnage in the backyard. Veronica fought back the memory, trying to focus on the here and now. She couldn’t lose herself to that place again.
“She, uh, saw some things when we ran. Some bad things,” Veronica said, fighting valiantly to keep any tears at bay. She didn’t want to show any weakness to these men who were still virtual strangers. “Our parents didn’t make it out with us.”
They looked at her with sympathy and thankfully neither one of them asked her to elaborate.
“I think it might be best for us to get out of here,” Travis suggested. “We don’t know if those things will come back this way again and I don’t want us to get pinned in here. There are a couple of cruisers in the parking lot, we can take them and head to the clinic.”
He was right. The body in the front door was like a $5.99 buffet to any infected passing by. Even if that same group didn’t come back, new ones could pick up the scent just like the others did. They weren’t safe here. Still, that meant trusting these two men with both her and Claudia’s lives.
Travis noticed her hesitation. “Look, I get what you are going through. My brother went with them to the clinic and I’m worried about him. I want to protect him like you want to protect your sister. He’s got a pregnant wife back at our camp and I want to make sure my niece or nephew has a daddy around.”
She tried to tell if he was selling her a line but all she saw in his eyes was sincerity. “All right, let’s go. Grab up the weapons, we can split them up between our groups when we get to the clinic.”
The offer to split the weapons was her gesture of good faith, letting them know that she understood they were risking their own safety to help her. Like it or not, they were going to have to trust each other to make it out.
Subject File # 742
Administrator - You seem to wear responsibility like a glove.
Subject - Yeah, I suppose that’s true. I’ve always had to be responsible for something or someone. It starts to come naturally after a while.
Administrator - Do you ever want to step back, let someone else take responsibility?
Subject - I’ve tried. It didn’t work so well. I can tell myself it’s on someone else’s shoulders again and again but I still feel responsible. I guess that’s my tragic flaw.
The hiss of the respirator echoed in the operating room followed by the electronic beep of the heart monitor that sounded off in a steady rhythm. Craig had been under for thirty minutes and things seemed to be going well. Malcolm knew very little about surgery but he could tell by Quinton’s steady and sure movements that he knew what he was doing.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Quinton said, eyes staying on Craig’s open abdomen. “Your man Jose said that the guys who attacked called you looters and claimed that the town was theirs.”
“Makes sense. Anyone who ignored the evacuation order made the choice to make a stand. They aren’t going to want outsiders to come in and take what they see as theirs.”
“Exactly. And if you were in their shoes, wouldn’t you have your men guarding the stores? Jose said they came out of nowhere in a truck. To me, that sounds like they have a mobile patrol instead of a standing guard. Why though?”
It was a good point. Had they been fifteen minutes later, they would have been long gone and the patrol never would have spotted them. If the supplies were so important, why leave them out for easy access by strangers?
“Maybe they are just psychopaths who get off on killing people,” Alan said from his reclined position on the floor, his face pale due to the blood they had taken. “They leave that shit out as bait to lure people in.”
It was possible. Disasters could bring out the good in people and they could also bring out the very worst. He wouldn’t put it past the kind of men who would try to kidnap a woman to lure innocent people to their deaths.
That added another wrinkle to their already messy situation. They were a man and a vehicle down. Their group was split across town and they had a roving band of lunatics out there looking for them. The radio on his hip beeped, signalling an incoming message and the others all stopped to listen.
“
Malcolm, it’s Travis. Over.
”
“What’s up?” he asked, holding his breath as he waited in the silence.
“
Some freaks showed up here to gnaw on the body outside. They didn’t make it inside but there might be more that show up. We’re going to come your way.
”
“Hold up, I want to talk to my sister before you do anything,” Quinton called out while his focus still remained on his patient.
“Doc wants to talk to his sister,” Malcolm said. “Put her on.”
“
Quint, it’s okay. We’ve got to move out of here. Those things already spooked Claudia and I don’t want to make it worse. Just keep working and we’ll be there soon
.”
Apparently that was enough for the doctor because he nodded at Malcolm and went back to work on Craig.
“Doc’s on board,” Malcolm radioed back to them. “When you come out of the station take the first street on the right, three blocks will bring you to Chestnut, hang another right and you’ll find Mulberry. We’re just a bit over half a click from the turn, on the left, right across from the car dealership, you can’t miss it. Pull around back to the loading dock.”
It was Travis who answered him. “
Got it. We’ll radio in when we’re close.
”
Malcolm put down the radio, settling back in his chair, watching Quinton work.
“So, who’s Claudia?”
He could see the doctor’s shoulders tense and that got him even more curious. Malcolm knew that whatever he was hiding, it didn’t pose a risk to the group or Travis would have said something.
“She’s my younger sister. She was hiding behind the desk at our feet when you found us,” Quinton told him.
Malcolm chuckled as he rubbed a hand over his chin. “I had no idea. Must be getting rusty in my old age.”
“What, you some sort of hide and seek expert?” Quinton quipped.
“Not quite but finding people was part of my job description.”
“Were you a private eye or something? Spying on cheating husbands and disability frauds?”
“I was a special agent with Central Intelligence.”
Quinton looked up at that, giving Malcolm a once over before glancing to Lorraine, who nodded to his unvoiced request for confirmation. The doctor looked back at him and burst out laughing.
“The CIA agent got schooled by the prom queen, I love it,” he said with a shake of his head and Malcolm had to assume he had a shit eating grin hiding underneath the surgical mask.
But despite the humour to be found in that moment, it reminded Malcolm of missing the freak that had been hiding in the gas station. While missing the young girl hadn’t had any negative consequences, that mistake in the gas station had nearly cost Kim her life. And now he found himself doubting the sweep he had done of the clinic.
“I’m going to go keep a watch from the lobby,” Malcolm said and headed out of the operating room.
It was just an excuse to sweep the clinic again without telling the others he was doing it. He didn’t need them knowing he was doubting his own skills. They needed to see him as confident and decisive. If they saw him doubting himself, they would start to doubt him as a leader and then they would all be in trouble.
He double checked every nook and cranny he could find, even climbing up to remove a ceiling tile to check that nothing had made it’s way up into the rafters. To his relief, all of it was clear, nothing and no one to be found inside.
With that reassurance, he moved into the lobby and went to the window, pulling down one of the slats in the blinds to take up his watch. The scene there had his stomach bottoming out.
There were a dozen or more freaks out there, several of them congregating at the corner of the building where the ventilation unit was humming.
The mobile patrol, the deserted main street...it all made sense. This town hadn’t been evacuated. It had fallen to the infected and the survivors had pulled out.
Malcolm moved carefully to the lobby door, double checking that the locks were in place. He looked around for something to put in front of the door. There were a couple large filing cabinets behind the receptionist desk but they would make too much noise if he moved them. He settled on one of the metal chairs in the waiting area and jammed it under the door handle. It would have to do for now.
He went back to the operating room, only Lorraine glancing up when he came in, Quinton focused on his work and Alan having dozed off.
He went and grabbed up the radio he had left on the floor.
“Travis, pick up right now!” he barked into the radio, holding his breath and praying that they hadn’t already headed out.
“What’s going on?” Quinton called out but Malcolm ignored him, focused on the radio as he waited for a response.
“
What’s up, Malcolm?
”
“Don’t come to the clinic. We’re surrounded by freaks.”
He could hear the others in the operating room talking but he focused on the radio.
“
No problem. We haven’t left the station yet, we’re still packing up some things. Where do you want us to go
?”
“You’ve got to get out of the town. I think the whole town was infected. Head back to camp and we’ll meet you back there when we finish up here.”