Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (58 page)

Tobias didn’t bother trying to count them all.  He quickly withdrew the camera, turned it off, slung the strap back over his neck, and stood up.  When he looked back at the others, his wide eyes probably told them everything, but he shook his head anyway and gestured back toward where they had come from.  After grabbing Cender off the wall, they started making their way back toward the OR.

The next time they stopped was due to a shrieking up ahead, followed by the sound of a door being slammed several times.  Their retreat was cut off.

Cender directed them down what looked like a short, blind alley of a hallway.  It actually led to a bank of elevators.  Cender started pushing the call button rapidly, as if that would make the elevator come faster.  The shrieking got closer, as did the sound of a different door getting slammed open and closed repeatedly.

Tobias was tempted to shove Cender aside and begin pushing the button himself, but he couldn’t stop remembering the mall with its zombie-filled glass elevator.  If an elevator like that was to open up before them, they would all be killed, devoured by the masses.  Or at least infected enough to become part of the masses.

The larger hoard near the staircase must have heard the door slammer; a metal tin came skittering down the hall from that direction.  Everyone huddled closer together, eyes darting from each of the four elevator doors to the hallway.  Tobias kept glancing at the space above the doors, where a little window usually told you what floor the elevator was on.  Not here though.  There was nothing to look at, nothing to indicate whether an elevator was even on its way.  Weren’t hospital elevators supposed to be faster than normal elevators?  Tobias thought they were.

A soft ding caused them all to jump like a single frightened animal as opposed to a group.  A pair of doors slid open and they all rushed in without bothering to check the contents.  They got lucky.  There was only a dried bloodstain on the floor in one corner.  Cender hit the button for the fifth floor and then repeatedly jammed the ‘close door’ button.  This one he pressed even more fervently than the call button, the strain from his repetitious application of force evident in his face.  A single bead of sweat trailed down the side of his face and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his scrub shirt.

Tobias was at an
angle, which allowed him to see the end of the nook they were in.  The shrieker rounded the corner.  Her piercing screams were so loud and high pitched they were probably tearing her throat to pieces.  A silent runner from the group on the other side rounded the corner just after her, surely followed by more.  Tobias unconsciously pressed himself back into the elevator’s wall.  If just one of them got in there, they were screwed.  The doors began to close and everything seemed to slow down for Tobias.  He could see the shrieker reaching forward, hand extended toward him with its ragged nails.  The elevator doors slowly came together, narrowing his field of view.  They weren’t going to make it; the shrieker’s arm was going to reach them before the doors would finish closing.  Her arm would reach through the doors and the safety feature would cause them to spring open again, letting her and her friends inside.  If only he could reach forward himself and close the elevator doors faster somehow, but Tobias couldn’t even move.  His veins had become like ice, his muscles like stone.  As the elevator doors limited his field of view, so did a creeping blackness at the edges of his vision.  All he could see was the shrieker and the doors.

At the final moment, Abby’s stick lunged through the gap and hit the shrieker square in the forehead.  The shrieker’s head was flung back, dragging her arm up with it.  The stick pulled back into the elevator lightning quick, making it inside before the doors finished closing.  There was a slight thump as they came together and an even louder thump as the shrieker slammed into the outside of them.  Then the elevator jerked and they began their ascent.

Somebody sighed loudly with relief, possibly all of them.  Everyone turned their faces toward Abby, giving her big, bright smiles.  The woman was as quick as a damn scorpion.  No one knew quite how to word their thanks, but she probably got the idea.  She smiled back and made Tobias’s world feel almost right again.  Everyone was panting as if they had just been running a marathon.  Tobias thought that maybe it was because they had been holding their collective breath.  He knew he had been.

* * *

Tobias started worrying again as the elevator neared its destination.  Something similar to what they had left behind could just as easily be waiting up ahead.  The elevator slowed and came to a stop.  The doors dinged and slid open with a slight whooshing sound.  The space beyond was empty.  Tobias stuck his head out and looked around.  There were no zombies in sight.

“Someone should stay here and keep the elevator from leaving,” Cender suggested in a whisper.

“No,” Abby shook her head, also whispering,  “we should stick together.  Here.”  She laid the stick that saved them all down on the elevator’s door tracks.

“You think that will hold?” Cillian asked her.

Abby shrugged.

“We’ll chance it.”  Tobias didn’t like the idea of someone staying behind either.  He stepped over the stick and out of the elevator, leaving the crowbar with those still inside.  This elevator had opened up into a nook like the last one.  He went to the end of it and carefully spied around the corners.  These halls appeared zombie-free as well.  Looking back toward the
elevator, he saw everyone but Jessi huddled at the entrance watching him.  Tobias gave them a thumbs up and waved them forward.

Cillian supported Cender this time, but Jessi still stuck right to his other side.  Abby was once again in the rear, but now she was armed with Cillian’s crowbar.  Tobias took point but he had to keep looking back at Cender to make sure he was leading them the right way.  He could interpret only about a quarter of the directional signs.  One sign he saw mentioned a maternity
ward, which caused Tobias to shudder.  That was something he never wanted to think about.

Finally,
they reached their destination and ducked inside.  It was a small and badly lit room full of cabinets stacked with various medical hardware.  If Home Depot had a medical section, it would probably be stocked with the same things as this room.  Cillian and Jessi stuck by the door while Tobias helped Cender over to a stack of crutches in the corner, and Abby looked around the room.  While Cender picked out crutches the right size for him, Tobias decided to take a look around too.  He had no idea what most of the stuff was for, and some it looked almost scary.  He figured it was all rehabilitation gear or something, but there were a lot of wires and metal struts making them look akin to torture devices, especially in the low lighting.  Eventually he came across something that didn’t look scary, but it was still odd.  He picked up what looked like a cross between a big clunky snowboarder’s boot and a sandal.

“Oh
, hey, I totally forgot those would be in here too.”  Cender noticed what Tobias had found.  He made his way over on his new crutches.

“What are they?”  Tobias handed him the boot thing when he held out a hand for it.

“You ever hear of a walking cast?”  Cender compared the boot to his casted leg.  He must have decided it wasn’t the right size and started looking through the others.  “I’ll still need the crutches, but this’ll help me be more mobile.  Which, let’s face it, is probably the most important thing to be right now.”  He found a size he liked the look of and compared it to his foot again.  This one seemed to be the right size and so he started strapping it on over the cast.

“Do you have a plan on how to get to this friend’s house of yours?” Tobias wondered what the next step was.

Cender shrugged, “Head to the parking lot and find a car I guess.  Actually, did you happen to see any ambulances parked outside?  They sometimes leave the keys in them.”

“Cillian and I came in through the front entrance,” Tobias told him.

“There aren’t any out there.”  Abby had overheard them.  “Jessica and I came in that way and there were no ambulances.”

“Then the parking lot it is.  Here, take this.”  Cender handed Tobias a metal cane.  “You might as well be somewhat armed if you’re going to be the one in front.  Come on now, let’s get a move on.”

Tobias held the cane and tested its weight.  It seemed fairly sturdy although the lightness of it worried him somewhat.  If he was going to have to bash a zombie’s brains in, he didn’t want the thing breaking on him.

As Cender crutched his way toward the door, Tobias noticed how much sound he made.  Every step clacked as he went.  They weren’t going to be able to sneak around nearly so well now.

As the group headed out, the way still appeared clear.  Although a new, large streak of blood down one hall reminded them it may not stay that way for very long.  A sharp and terrified scream came from the opposite direction they were headed, and it was cut off brutally short.  Tobias wondered if the victim was a recovering patient or a hiding nurse.

Clack, clack, clack, was the only other sound as they went.  Like the ticking of a clock in the middle of the night, or the beating of the telltale heart under the
floorboards, it was slowly driving Tobias insane.  By the time they got back to the elevator, he was ready to kick the crutches out from under Cender.

Abby’s stick in the elevator had held.  As the group approached, the doors tried to slide close again but once they bumped into either end of the stick, they
retreated into the walls.  The elevator was still unoccupied so they all crammed in, and Abby picked her stick back up, handing the crowbar off to Cillian.  If you counted Cender’s crutches, they were now all somewhat armed.  The elevator doors finally closed, and Cender hit the button for the ground floor.  Tobias was so relieved that they were finally leaving the hospital; he might have done a little dance if he wasn’t so tired.  Despite the fact that it had seemed like a great plan at the time, coming to the hospital had turned out to be just the opposite.  He was hoping that Cender’s plan wouldn’t end up being equally bad when they reached the ground floor and the doors opened.

The best words Tobias could think of to describe the sight were
feeding frenzy
.  Somebody, or somebodies, must have come into the hospital and gotten swarmed.  A large mass of people, of zombies, were clumped together around something.  They were reaching over each other, shoving each other, trying to get to the middle of the mass.  There was a tearing sound, and a squishy sound, and lots of shrieking and groans.  Off to one side, the doors that led into the ER waiting room had been broken in.  If Tobias had noticed them, he would have realized that that was where they had come from.  But as it was, he couldn’t take his eyes off the writhing mass.  They were so busy and consumed with… consuming, that they didn’t even notice the elevator doors had opened.  Someone pushed another button, but Tobias didn’t know who, or for what floor.  He didn’t even realize the button had been pressed until the doors closed again, and the elevator began moving upward.

No one said anything.  They all stood there silently and stared at the elevator doors.

* * *

When the doors opened again, Tobias got a shock of a different kind.  A cool gust of wind blew in through the opened doors and filled his lungs.  He didn’t realize just how badly the hospital smelled until then.  Suddenly, he needed more.  More air, more space.  Rushing out of the elevator and onto a cement pathway, he went straight to a railing and grabbed hold of it, using it to steady himself.  He closed his eyes and took large gulps of air.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and he spun quickly, cane half raised.  It was just Cillian.  He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask if he was okay.  He understood that Tobias wasn’t really and that asking was pointless.  None of them was okay.  None of them may ever be okay ever again.

Tobias finally looked around to take in their surroundings.  They were on the roof of the hospital.  The cement walkway led from the elevators to a rooftop helipad.  He briefly wondered if Cender knew how to fly a helicopter, but then noticed that there was no helicopter to fly.  He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“I hate roofs,” Tobias muttered loudly.

“Don’t worry, I won’t pull you off of this one,” Cillian grinned.

The others gave them a strange look because Tobias hadn’t filled them in on the particulars of how he and Cillian had first met.

“Why do we always end up in high places together, Cillian?” Tobias wondered aloud. 
First, the roof of the pizza place, then the air ducts in the mall and now here.  Cillian just shrugged in response.

“There should be a ladder over this way.”  Cender led them off the path that headed to the helipad.  They made their way across the roof, avoiding air ducts, air conditioning units, and other things cluttering the rooftop.  After making their way around the distinctive chimney, they came to a side of the
hospital, which had a long ladder leading down to ground level.

“You just happened to know this was here?” Tobias questioned Cender.

“Some of us used to come up here sometimes to escape for a bit.  We aren’t actually supposed to hang out up here and have had to hide from security a few times,” Cender shrugged.  “So who’s going first?”

“Can you even climb down that with your leg?” Abby pointed out.

“Sure, but I’ll need someone else to carry the crutches.”  Cender held his crutches out to the other four.