Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (33 page)

Everything happened in slow motion. I raised the AK-47 to his face. Curiously relaxed, I pointed the gun at his neck to compensate for the kick, something I’d learned from the Pakistanis. I let him get barely a yard away and pulled the trigger.

The bullet left a gaping red hole in the old man’s forehead. Splinters of bone, brain, and blood splattered the wall behind him.

The old man collapsed like a sack with a wet, gurgling sound, dragging along a pile of folders as he fell. The smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils, and a piercing whistle rang in my ears from firing in such a tiny space. I’d have a headache in the hours to come.

Once again, I’d had a close call. But that shot would’ve been heard for more than a mile. Every being, living or not, in the hospital would know we were there. Jesus, what a day...

As I calmed my heartbeat, I cursed myself. How could I have been so stupid? The speargun hung over my left arm. If I hadn’t
been in such a hurry and as scared as a hysterical old woman, I could have taken out the old man with a silent spear instead of the noisy AK-47.

I’d had to act fast. I hadn’t had the presence of mind to think about the speargun. The assault rifle was the first thing I got my hands on, and I acted instinctively.

Now I had other things to worry about. The shot triggered a wave of sound throughout the hospital. Doors banged, things crashed on top of each other, something fell noisily to the floor (a stretcher?), and there were dull, muffled thuds against the walls. It was one lethal symphony. And most of all, the fucking groaning. How could I forget that? It was an indistinct, deep echo, as if someone was trying to talk but had forgotten how to move his tongue. It was impossible to explain the sound if you’d never seen those monsters. It’s a chilling roar, human and inhuman at the same time.

I scooped up all the drugs on the metal tray and ran back to where I’d left Prit. He was awake, sitting bolt upright in the wheelchair, his right hand cradling his left hand, which was covered in bandages. He was dazed by the morphine and white as a sheet, but otherwise fully conscious and alert. And scared. As fucking scared as I was.

He asked me what had happened and where the hell we were. Quickly, I brought him up to speed from the time he had the “accident” until I’d left him sitting in that chair in the middle of a deserted, dark room. Then I realized the tremendous shock he must’ve felt when he regained consciousness, all alone, wounded, in the dark, in a strange place filled with terrifying noise. If it’d been me, I’d have had a heart attack.

I hesitated about whether to tell him about his injuries. Hell, he’s got eyes, he’s not an idiot. I told him he’d lost two fingers on his left hand, and the ring finger didn’t look good. The Ukrainian
didn’t blink. He coldly asked if he still had his thumb. I nodded. He seemed to relax a little. He matter-of-factly said that wasn’t so bad, as long as he still had his thumb and two fingers to oppose it. “I’ve seen worse,” he added. “You should’ve seen my friend Misha in ninety-five after his helicopter was hit with a thirty-seven-millimeter grenade. Now,
he
had a problem. So I’m okay. I’ll make it. Now, pass me the AK-47 and stop making all that bloody racket, by God. Our ass is on the line here.”

My relief was so overwhelming I nearly cried. I knew Prit’s apparent calm was only a front, but just hearing his voice made me feel less alone. I handed him the heavy AK-47. The Ukrainian deftly crossed it over his wounded arm and felt for the magazine with his good hand. He seemed perfectly capable of defending himself with one hand.

I was already calmer. Knowing I didn’t have to keep one eye glued to an unconscious Pritchenko was a big relief. And knowing that he had my back again was an even bigger relief. But as much as he played the tough guy, I could read fear and anxiety in his eyes. Plus, I couldn’t forget that the guy needed urgent medical attention. More than I could give him. And he needed it now.

It was time to get the hell out of there before things got uglier. I left Lucullus in Prit’s care (my cat looked distressed to lose sight of me) and walked back down the hallway to the ER. I had to find out if the path was clear.

The hallway was even darker than when we got there, lit up by only the lightning. The worst of the thunderstorm had passed, and there were fewer lightning bolts. But the rain was far from stopping. Sheets of rushing water fell from a dark violet sky. The wind was gradually reaching hurricane speeds. Broken branches, bark, and dozens of unidentified objects whirled around the parking lot. Swirls of rain reduced visibility to a few yards. That was the least of our problems, by a long shot.

Outside dozens of undead staggered in the downpour, taking up the entire parking lot, moving slowly toward the hospital. I was stunned by the scene. I hadn’t seen such a concentration of those beasts since the early days of the plague.

There were men, women, and children of every age and condition. Some looked unscathed; others had terrible wounds that went far beyond what a normal human being could endure. The majority wore the clothes they’d had on when they mutated. Others were stark naked, or their clothes were in shreds due to the weather, accidents, or God knows what, making the sight doubly disturbing. A couple of them were scorched and blackened all over, as if they’d been set ablaze. The fire had disfigured their features to the point I couldn’t identify their sex or age. Others had ghastly amputations, as if those body parts had been blown off by an explosion. The variety of horrors was endless.

From the huge multitude rose a chorus of creepy groans. The scraping noise made by hundreds of feet, in shoes or barefoot, dragging across the ground, was drowned out by the boom of thunder. Spectral rays of lightning lit up the scene.

Water dripping off the edge of the tunnel rolled down my neck, but I didn’t feel it. Even hidden in shadows, I turned all my attention to the sea of humanity (not human, I corrected myself bitterly) that slowly encircled an area as far as I could see.

I racked my brain, trying to understand where such a crowd could have come from. The obvious answer popped into my head. The hospital environment, the scene of extensive carnage, must’ve had dozens, maybe hundreds, of those things. The roar of the engine as we approached had drawn them back here the way a light attracts moths. But instead of continuing our journey, we’d stopped, giving them time to catch up to us. And we were in no shape to get the hell out. Great.

The first monsters had already reached the SUV. I cursed my stupidity. When I got Prit out of the SUV, my arms had been full, and I’d forgotten to close the passenger door. Now, a couple of those things—a tall, thin man with a big gash down his back and a young boy about fifteen who was missing the calf of his right leg—had crawled inside. Maybe they were drawn by our scent.

It was just a matter of time till that multitude surrounded our SUV, making it completely inaccessible. And it would only take them a little while to figure out what path we’d taken into the hospital. There was no way we could shoot our way to the SUV and make our getaway. That’d be suicide. Even supposing all of our shots hit the target (doubtful in my case), it was too great a distance for Prit and me to cover at once. There were just too many of them.

I understood the pure terror the defenders of Safe Havens must have felt when they faced a flood of those monsters in even greater numbers. Trying to kill them is like trying to keep ants off your blanket at a picnic. You can step on dozens of them, but more keep coming...and coming. They’re fucking unstoppable.

Their overwhelming numbers and the fact that they’re dead make them a formidable foe. They don’t hesitate, don’t sleep, don’t rest; they have no fear, and nothing stops them. They have one goal: to capture anyone who isn’t one of them.

A huge weight lay on my heart. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was as dry as straw. I couldn’t make a sound or breathe or think clearly. I’d never felt so much like prey. And I’d never been so aware of how hopeless our situation was.

The world is no longer ours. It’s theirs. How long will this situation last?

A little jingling to my left me brought me out of my trance and back to reality. Pressed against the wall, propped up by one hand, a guy in his early twenties with long hair, wearing loose, baggy pants, inched along. A long silver chain with a bunch of keys hung from where his right pocket should’ve been. His keys dragged along behind him, bumping against his legs, making the jingling sound that had alerted me.

Like all these monsters, the boy’s skin was waxy and transparent. Myriad small burst veins traced a grotesque map on his skin. His left arm hung limp, and he had an ugly gash on his bicep. He was wearing a dirty, stiff shirt. I could clearly see three or four bullet holes in his chest. One of the bullets had entered his heart, and the other bullets were in his lower abdomen.

That sight made my head spin. That creature had already faced a survivor, who’d shot him in defense. But the guy was still on his feet, so I didn’t figure the gunman had survived. Now the guy was headed for me.

Instead of coming to the hospital by the access road, like most of those walking corpses, he’d entered through a side entrance. While the crowd was swarming over the sandbags, he was already inside the perimeter, and he’d found me.

A moan escaped his throat. He picked up his pace and rushed toward me. That time, I took things more calmly. When he was fifteen yards from me, I took the speargun off my shoulder and checked the bolt and the rubber band. I also checked the gun in case something went wrong. Then I leaned against an overflowing, smelly trash can to steady my aim. When he was just three yards from me, I pulled the trigger.

The spear entered above his upper lip, near his cheekbone. The tip went through his occipital bone, making a crunch like a
dry branch breaking. The monster stopped suddenly. Putrid blood gushed from the wound as the guy wavered. The shaft of the spear was in his line of vision, and he tried to grab it. However, as with all the undead, his coordination left a lot to be desired. He swatted the air in front of the spear as black, smelly blood streamed down his face and chest, staining them a dark purple. His movements became slower and more erratic.

With a strange gurgle, he extended his good arm and fell forward. If it weren’t such a lurid scene, I would’ve laughed at the way he fell. But this wasn’t the time for joking around. I lunged toward the body to retrieve the bloody spear. Just as I was about to grab it, I froze. I remembered I had a cut on my finger, and I wasn’t wearing gloves. I looked helplessly at the spear that stuck out like a flagpole from the back of the guy’s head. So close, yet so far.

I vacillated. I only had three spears left in the quiver strapped to my leg. Leaving the spear behind was a huge loss.

I weighed the possibility of finding some latex gloves somewhere and coming back for the spear, but one glance at the crowd convinced me there was no time. Thirty or forty undead had broken through the defensive line and were headed in my direction. I stood out clearly against the white wall of the hospital. I had to get out of there.

After one last look outside, I ran full speed back down the dark corridor, my footsteps echoing in that cavernous tunnel.

A leak in the roof had formed a puddle in the middle of the hall. I’d seen the puddle before, but I was so crazed when I came back through, I forgot about it. I slipped and took one hell of a fall. I lay there for several seconds, the wind knocked out of me, trying to catch my breath. When I tried to get up, a sharp jab in my side made me scream in pain. I slumped back down, cursing a blue streak. Just what I needed—a broken rib. For sure I had a
big, fat bruise. Fucking puddle! I was going to sue that fucking hospital.

Just the thought of a lawsuit, in this dire situation, made me double up with laughter, and that set off new spasms of pain. A lawsuit. What a joke! I struggled to my feet, whimpering in the pain, laughing hysterically, and kept going.

No doubt about it—my nerves were shot.

I pushed open the swinging doors with my good side and reloaded the speargun, still hiccuping with laughter. I took a quick look around me. Double doors opened in both directions. On one side of the doors were some steel hooks attached to two brackets on the walls. The hospital staff had used those hooks to prop open the doors to keep from having to constantly push them open.

I had a different use in mind for those hooks. Next to the door, on the floor, under a pile of discarded medical supplies, lay an IV pole with two empty IV bags hanging from it. I had to kick aside a mountain of gauze, boxes of tranquilizers, and used bandages to get to it. I slid that pole through the hooks to bar the door closed. I frowned, my heart heavy. It always worked so well in the movies. That pole wouldn’t withstand the pounding for long. That crowd would be through the door in two minutes.

I was breathing hard when I reached Prit. He studied me with a worried face as I leaned on his chair and caught my breath. I brought him up to speed with the huge problem we were facing. It was impossible to leave through that door. Besides, I was pretty sure the undead would make it into the lobby very soon. We had to find another way out. A big complex like the Meixoeiro Hospital must have dozens of entrances and exits. That hospital was a maze of rooms and corridors that confused even the personnel who worked there every day. We had to find one on a different side of the building. To get on the other side, we’d have to go down into the bowels of the building.

We had no choice. I asked Prit if he could walk. The Ukrainian struggled to get up. Very brave, but futile. His legs failed him in a few seconds, and he collapsed back in the chair. The morphine still in his system and his blood loss, coupled with fatigue and not enough food for weeks, held him back. I’d have to push him.

I set Lucullus in Prit’s lap. I held a flashlight in one hand and gripped the back of the wheelchair with the other, and off we went, just as we heard the first blows against the ER doors.