Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (46 page)

Tobias followed him, also keeping low.  He passed Cillian who kept going backwards until he bumped into something.  Cillian turned around and saw that it was just Tobias, who had stopped not long after getting ahead of him.  Tobias was standing next to a door with a metal push bar.  He pointed at the door, a question in his eyes.  Cillian looked at it and frowned.  It said on the door that it was an emergency stairwell, only to be used in case of a fire.  If the door were opened, an alarm would sound.

Cillian glared at Tobias and slowly shook his head.  Tobias frowned back and lifted his hands in a ‘why not?’ gesture.  Cillian thought it was obvious and pointed back at the zombies, then at the word ‘alarm
.’  Tobias rolled his eyes.  He pointed at the alarm word next, then waved a pointed finger around the ceiling.  Apparently, he thought the alarm would sound throughout the whole mall.  Which it might.  Cillian looked back at the zombies, considering the options.  He turned back to Tobias just in time to see him press the bar.

* * *

After their attempts to be dead silent, the alarm blaring to life was deafening.  Cillian quickly followed Tobias into the stairwell.  He had no idea if the zombies spotted them or not.  Both of them hurried down the multiple flights of stairs as fast as they could, taking some corners so sharply they bumped into the walls.  There was no way to tell if they were being followed, the alarm was so loud.  At least it seemed to be blaring all over the mall and not just in their vicinity.

They made it to the bottom of the stairs without running into any problems.  Thankfully
, there was an emergency door that led directly outside.  They burst through it, out into a sunny alley.  Tobias kept running, leading Cillian through the alley.  There was a chain link fence ahead and Tobias climbed up on a big dumpster next to it, and then hopped over the fence.  Cillian had to hand it to him; he could really move, even though he was in a lot of pain.  He followed him up and over the fence.  Tobias stood panting on the other side, a huge grin across his face.

“You’re an idiot,” Cillian told him.

“I’m an idiot, you’re insane, but together we make a great team.”  Tobias actually laughed giddily.

“Did you know the alarms were going to go off all over the mall?” Cillian wondered.

“Not at all.”  Tobias crossed his arms again and rubbed his shoulders.  He winced slightly.

“You stupid shit.”  Cillian pushed him lightly, trying to keep a smile off his own face.  It was hard not to be happy now that they were outside again, in the somewhat fresh air.  “Come on, we’re almost there.”

Cillian walked to the open end of the alley with Tobias dogging his steps.  At the end, he stopped and looked around, getting his bearings.

“Well, at least we’re across Jalice.”  Tobias pointed up the street.  It connected with Jalice Ave, where the man on the bus had been.

Cillian suddenly remembered Tobias’s habit of filming everything.  “Hey, you didn’t film my ass in the air ducts did you?”

Tobias shook his head.  “Not deliberately.  I did a bit of filming at that shaft from hell, but I didn’t focus on your butt.”

“Good.”  Cillian thought about it for a moment.  “Wait, is that why you lost my helmet?  You were filming?”

Tobias shrugged and took a step back.  “Maybe.”

“You bitch,” Cillian sighed.

“It’s not like I did it on purpose.”  Tobias took another step back.  “Besides, you’re the one who lost the axe
, remember?”

Cillian mumbled to himself, counting to ten.  He had a point; he had lost the axe, which had more value than the helmet.  Tobias had given him a lot of reasons to leave him behind
though; the boldness with the door, the loss of his helmet because of his filming, the injury, but Cillian wasn’t going to do that.  He had also saved his ass.  And gotten him through the mall.  He was useful despite sometimes being a moron.

“Come on.”  Cillian headed onward.

He noticed Tobias let out a held breath before following.

Being out on the street at first felt nice, especially after being trapped in the
ductwork.  It didn’t take long though for Cillian to start feeling too exposed.  Apparently, there was no amount of space he would feel comfortable in.  There were a lot of zombies in the mall clumped together, but that didn’t mean there weren’t hoards out here.  He just had to think of the bus incident; there were a lot of zombies there.  Although there was running space out here, there wasn’t really anywhere to hide effectively.  On the other hand, a zombie could be hanging around just out of sight.  Thank God they weren’t very far from the hospital.  Cillian could see its chimney in the distance.  Maybe it would have the right amount of space.

As they approached the front, a side of the building Cillian had seen only once before, they spotted a small collection of people.  Suspicious, the pair crouched down behind a car.

“What do we do?” Tobias whispered.

“I don’t know,” Cillian shook his head
,  “observe first, I guess.”

They stayed in their hiding spot, watching the little group of six.  Cillian noticed they were standing in a circle, looking at each other.  One was gesticulating wildly.

“They’re not zombies,” Cillian told Tobias,  “it’s a group of people, and I think they’re arguing about something.”

“Should we go over there?”

“I don’t want to get into the middle of an argument.  Do you?”  Cillian turned to face Tobias.

“No, but they should just let us pass by them, right?”

“Maybe.”

Tobias got up and headed toward the hospital.  Cillian reluctantly followed.  He figured either Tobias was going to get him killed, or he was going to get Tobias killed.  At some point, their collective luck would run out.  He just hoped it wasn’t now.  They were almost to the hospital door when one of the six acknowledged them

“Hey you!” one of them shouted.

Cillian turned with an inward groan.  A huge, white guy covered in tattoos and waving a gun at them was walking toward them.  He and Tobias stood very still.

“Where are you going?” the tattooed man asked.

“Into the hospital,” Cillian answered calmly.  “My friend is hurt.”  He gestured to Tobias.

Taking his cue, Tobias showed the tattooed man his shoulder with its scarf bandage.  It was an even darker red than when Cillian last looked at it, but not so much that it was worrisome.

“You’re going to loot the hospital?”  The man pointed his gun at Cillian’s chest.

“No, I am not.”  Cillian slowly raised his hands and shook his head.  “We’re just trying to get my friend fixed up.”

“Where did all that blood come from?”  The tattooed man was twitchy.  Cillian was afraid he might fire the gun purely by accident.  “What’s the crowbar for?”

“B!”  Another man from the group walked up to the tattooed man.  “It’s okay, I know that guy.  He’s the fireman I told you about.”

Cillian looked away from ‘B’ toward the new guy.  “Sam?” Cillian frowned.  Guess he hadn’t gotten to his kid yet.  “What the hell happened?  Where did you go?”

“Look, ah, just forget about it.”  Sam looked as his feet and shuffled them.  He was ashamed of what he had done.  “Come on, B, leave them alone.  Let’s just get out of here before more of those things come.”

“I still think we should pick up some meds,” B argued.

So that’s why he didn’t want Cillian raiding the hospital.  The guy wanted to do it himself.

“No, come on, we all want to go.”  Sam gestured to the other four.  They huddled together like lost sheep.  One of them couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

“Fuck you!”  B pointed the gun at Sam.

Sam threw his hands up like Cillian and took a step back.

“Look, buddy, we’re not involved in this.  Just let me and my friend go into the hospital now.”  The gun came back to bear on Cillian.  He regretted saying anything.

Sam then did something both very brave, and very stupid.  He rushed at mister tattoo, but B was faster.  He swung the gun around to point at Sam and pulled the trigger.  Sam’s head was blown away.  A little girl somewhere had just lost her father.  B seemed just as stunned as everyone else at what he had done.  Cillian took the opportunity.  He turned, grabbed Tobias, and charged through the hospital doors.

“Hey!  Get back here, you fuckers!” B shouted.

A bullet passed through the doors behind Cillian and Tobias, nearly clipping their asses.  Cillian didn’t stop.  He kept running into the hospital nearly dragging Tobias behind him.  He heard the doors open behind them and another shot fire
d.  Great, why the hell did the guy have to chase after them, Cillian thought.  At least the four scared sheep were safe from the lunatic.

After a quick turn, Cillian headed up a flight of stairs.  Tobias
finally seemed to catch on to the fact that they were fleeing again and ran up them under his own power.  They didn’t get very high before B reached the bottom of the stairs and fired upwards.  He probably wouldn’t be able to hit them directly, but the ricochet was dangerous.  The next floor they reached they decided to get off.  It was the third floor.  Cillian briefly wondered why they always ended up on the third floor.

He led the way, not really knowing where they were going.  He just kept trying to keep walls and doors between them and B.  Rounding a corner, he spotted a door almost hidden by a wire rack of supplies.  He squeezed around it, moving the shelf a little bit and ducked through the door.  After Tobias followed him in, Cillian closed the door, then pressed his ear to it, listening carefully.  He heard B run past them, shouting obscenities, and sighed with relief.  He turned away from the door and urged Tobias up the steps there. They were lucky they didn’t run into any zombies on the way in but that didn’t mean that there weren’t any lurking behind them.

At the top of the stairs was a hallway lined with windows.  The hallway was zombie free, so Cillian approached the first window and looked through it.  Maybe he could figure out where they were within the hospital.

He was terribly confused.  “Jessi?”

* * *

“What?”  Tobias joined Cillian at the window.

It looked down on a room with an operating table.  A man with a cast sat on the table, but on a stool next to him sat Jessica, and on the other side another woman.

“Jessi!” Cillian shouted, totally caught off guard.  She was uncharacteristically dirty and dishevelled, but it was clearly her.  No one in the room reacted to his cry; they must not be able to hear him.

Suddenly, Jessi and the other girl rose to their feet, looking toward the door.  It had to be B they were reacting to.  Cillian didn’t know how to warn them, but it looked like he didn’t need to.  Jessi picked up a blood-covered shovel and stood to one side of the door while the other girl went to the other side with a weird stick.  It made Cillian think of a baseball bat that was partly flattened with a curl at the end.

Cillian could just see through the glass in the doors.  B was walking towards them, gun pointed forward.  The man in the bed was visible to him and raised his arms.  B looked like he was shouting something but Cillian couldn’t hear what.  He could only stand there and watch.  As B kicked the doors open and stepped through, the unknown girl reacted lightning quick with the stick thing, knocking his gun upwards.  A shot was fired, and it blew out the large surgical light hanging from the ceiling.  Jessica immediately swung as well.  Her shovel connected with B’s face, and it took him off his feet.  She didn’t stop with one swing either, she just kept hitting him while he was down.  Cillian knew how she felt about men with guns.

The other girl tried to stop Jessi, but she just pushed her away and kept going.  It was unlikely that B was alive after so many hits.

Tobias stepped forward.  He was filming, but lowered the camera from his eye.  He slapped a hand on the glass.  Those inside turned as one to look, startled.  They had heard that.  Jessica and Cillian locked eyes for a moment.  Cillian saw raw fear there first, then confusion, then they softened into something Cillian hadn’t seen for some time.  She stepped toward them, mouthing something and pointing to the side.

“What?” Cillian frowned.

“The box.”  Tobias pointed to a box attached to the glass.

Cillian hurried over to it and pressed the button.  “Jessi?”

“Cillian!”  Her smile lit up Cillian’s world.

“How do I get down there?” Cillian asked, half frantic, all their fights forgotten in an instant.  All this time he kept hoping that she was safe in Australia, but hearing her voice made him realize he needed her here.  As selfish as it was, he felt a hundred times better upon hearing his name come from her lips.  It was a weight off his shoulders knowing exactly where she was.

“Just run around.”  Jessi gestured.  “It should be the first set of doors on the left.”

Cillian let go of the button on the box and ran for the stairs.  He didn’t even care if Tobias was following him or not.

He found the doors and burst through them into a room lined with sinks.  Jessi stood at the other end.  She was grimy, her long blond
e hair was a disaster, her skirt was torn, her boots were unusual and ugly for her tastes, and she was covered in a misting of blood.  She was still the most beautiful thing Cillian had ever seen.  They both paused for a moment, as if unbelieving, and then with three steps each, they reached each other.  Cillian gathered her into his arms, holding her tight.  She was still holding her shovel, he his crowbar.  How could he ever let her go to Australia without him?  How could he have let them fall apart like they had?