“Sounds like you’re right man, I need to call my wife then and make sure everything is all right. She’s watching some kids today also,” he said. His normally jovial face had turned serious.
He looked a little scared. Kyle thought, “Hell so am I.”
They had come to the end of the path which split in two directions. They started to turn left toward the building with the medical office when the double doors burst open, followed by a security officer who immediately fell down and tried unsuccessfully to regain his feet. His actions were hampered by his constant looking over his shoulder. The three of them stopped and were staring in wonder at the strange sight.
Yolanda spoke first, “Yo, Johnson, what’s wrong with you?”
The man recoiled visibly as his name was called. He took one more look backward, stumbled to a tree, and fell over. He was out of breath, “We need to get out of here. Brian has gone crazy, and the doctor also.” Kyle could see Johnson shaking and instinctively began to look him over.
“Where are the sergeant and Scarrow?” he asked.
Johnson seemed to be about to panic, he came right up to Kyle and grabbed his vest. “They’re dead!” he screamed.
Yolanda started to move up beside Kyle but he saw it and shook his head slightly. Kyle gently removed his hands. They were covered in sweat and rigid. “Tell us what happened?”
“We tried to get Brian first but we could hardly get in the door. He was trying to bite us, but Scarrow was able to hold him down and we restrained him. We called it in and were told to check on the doc. We walked in the nurse’s office and he was…” Johnson hesitated. His cheeks bulged a little and he doubled over, emptying his stomach on the grass. Yolanda and Patrick took a step back from the sick man.
“The doctor was eating them! One of the nurses was lying in a pool of blood by the door. Her face was gone! The doctor was already eating the other one. He had his face in her neck. Chewing.” He turned and retched again in the grass.
Kyle passed him some water. Pieces of food and liquid covered his chin and knees where he had been kneeling, he didn’t seem to care. “The sergeant jumped in the room and tried to pull the doctor off, but the doctor just grabbed his arm and bit it also. He didn’t just bit it though, he started chewing it. The sergeant started screaming…. trying to get free. He was hitting him in the head with his other hand but couldn’t break the hold on his arm. Scarrow moved to help and was able to pull the doctor off. I tried to help the sergeant but his arm looked like it had been through a meat grinder, and where was I going to take him? I tried to call it in, but the sergeant ripped my radio off when he was trying to get up. By the time I got the sarg into the hallway, Scarrow was yelling and screaming also. The dead nurse had grabbed his ankle and was biting his leg. Scarrow was kicking her around like a dog. He kicked her across the room but the doctor had also grabbed his leg and was biting him. I pulled my sidearm but just couldn’t shoot. I…” He looked pleadingly at Kyle. “I didn’t know what to do… was scared.”
Kyle looked down at his hip and noticed his sidearm was missing. He heard a disgusted noise coming from beside him. “You turned and ran didn’t you?” Yolanda sneered. “And left your gun as well?”
He gained his feet again, his face turning red. “You weren’t there!” he screamed, all reserve of dignity slipping away.
Kyle held up his hand and was going over things in his head, he looked back at Johnson. “It seems you’re doing better now,” he said. He also felt disgust at what Johnson had done, but he wasn’t there and couldn’t judge the guy. He had never cared for him much anyway, and was trying to not let that cloud his thinking. “We need to go in there and check on Scarrow and the sergeant,” he said.
“You’re crazy, I’m not going in there. They’re dead, I saw them.”
“You’re going and we are also,” he said. Oddly, he felt calm but he did take a look at his watch. He didn’t have time for this, but he couldn’t leave someone in there if they needed help. It wouldn’t take too long, and then he would go and talk to the lieutenant.
“We have to hurry, if we want to get out of here,” Patrick said, giving voice to what he was thinking.
Kyle led them back to the door which Johnson had exited. He had his hand on Johnson’s upper arm, who now seemed resigned to going back in. They were being followed by Yolanda and Patrick.
“Draw your sidearms,” Kyle said, looking back at them. He saw Patrick take a look at Yolanda. They had never pulled them in the plant before, other than to clean them or to turn them in. They were for people attacking the plant, not for the office spaces.
Kyle opened the door and looked into the hallway. There were noises coming from toward the other end but they didn’t sound like people eating other people. “I’ll go first and you follow me. Patrick watch our six.”
“I wasn’t in the army Smalls,” he said grinning, “I was in the rebellion.”
“We don't have time for that, idiot,” Yolanda said, “We need to try and get this done”
Kyle smiled at the obvious response coming, he wasn’t disappointed.
“Not try, do,” came a solid Yoda impersonation. Kyle moved further into the hall. A loud consistent banging was coming from down the hall.
“There’s the doctor’s office,” he said, as he slowly walked down the hall. He had his sidearm extended in front of him, trying to walk without shaking his arms too much. He was painfully obvious of the noises coming from behind him. Guess they were not going to sneak up on them, he thought.
They approached the door to the doctor’s office, staying on the far side of it. A knocking noise was steadily coming from inside the room. Kyle pushed Johnson to one side and motioned for him to be quiet. He looked back toward his friends and moved closer to the door from the front. He pushed down the doorknob and waited a second for a reaction. His nerves were stretched thin at this point and he just wanted it done. An attitude that could get him killed he knew it. He pushed the door open and moved back against the far wall, moving into a kneeling position. His 9mm was aimed at the door. Nothing happened.
He breathed a sigh of relief and stood up again. Quietly, he moved to get a better look in the room to see Brian standing with his arm still handcuffed to the wall. His face looked horrible, a bloody ooze-filled disaster. His stomach clenched from the sight.
“Brian, is that you?” he asked quietly. In response Brian jerked forward so violently that when his arm caught, he was swept from his feet. He let out a loud, guttural growl that filled the hall. Kyle had to forcibly keep himself from jumping back at the movement. Johnson showed no such effort as he fell backward into Yolanda who was berating his cowardice with enthusiastic effort.
That’s not good Professor,” Yolanda said, not feeling bad about stating the obvious. Kyle agreed wholeheartedly, especially since there was more of the same kind of moaning coming from further down the hall.
“Oh shit! I told you man,” said Johnson. He was visibly shaking and was starting to retreat down the hall away from the noise. He was stopped by Yolanda moving behind him.
“Not yet hero,” she said.
It only took seconds for the growl’s source to appear. From down the hall, a woman crawled out of a door. Her movements were sloppy and unsure, reminding Kyle of a toddler trying to crawl for the first time. Her face was also gone, leaving behind a pulp of tissue and bloody lumps where pieces of her face used to be. Her head was turned toward them when it let out a screeching inhuman growl that was too much for Johnson. He took off running down the hallway. Yolanda made to run after him, but her attention was caught by the second person to exit the room.
Scarrow was walking unsteadily out of the room, right on top of the crawling nurse, his large feet pushing her unsteady body to the floor. His pant leg was torn and gashed where one of them had latched onto it. His arms were also covered in blood and gore. He quickly finished walking over the nurse and turned toward them.
“Holy frak,” said Patrick backing up. “He’s turned into a zombie. Kyle wondered if Patrick was just happy to see a real zombie or scared it would eat him. Kyle wasn’t sure how to deal with this one. He didn’t think he was a real zombie, but how would he stop the big guy who had gone crazy?
“Gonna have to shoot him,” Yolanda stated simply. Kyle looked at her questioningly. She looked back. “Have any better ideas?” He didn’t.
“Scarrow, if you can hear me man, turn around,” he said it in his best command voice. He knew he had a good one also, finely tuned over the years for people to listen. Scarrow didn’t seem to get the message. Kyle again felt fear try and grab on to him, to freeze him. “Stop and get down, or we’ll shoot,” he figured it couldn’t hurt to try again.
He needed time to think. To decide what was right, he wanted to call somebody and ask for permission, to lay the responsibility on someone else. He didn’t. Two quick shots rang out of his 9mm. The deafening sound faded, leaving a continual tone filling his ear. The two bullets entered where his heart was, but fazing Scarrow not at all, and barely stopping his forward momentum. Even though Kyle wondered if that would be the case, he was still seized by fear. He hadn’t dropped his weapon. Another two shots rang out, this time the head of Scarrow exploded as it was jerked back by the force of the bullets. His body followed and collapsed onto the floor.
Kyle felt the emotion of what he had just done coming up from his insides. He pushed it down for another time and focused on the scene in front of him. The nurse with no face was still crawling toward him, her face a nightmare on its own. The other nurse had also joined the party, now coming up behind her co-worker. Kyle had less qualms about putting two quick shots through each of their heads. He knew it really wasn’t getting easier, just that he had already made the decision on how to deal with them. After all the internal arguments were finished, only action was left for him. The second-guessing would come later if he let it he knew, but that time was not now.
“Holy frak, my ears are on fire!” Patrick shouted. Kyle didn’t turn around to look at him but kept his eyes on the people he had just shot.
“We just shot three people we work with, and all you care about are your ears?” Yolanda asked, full of astonishment. Kyle appreciated her use of “we” in her statement. He doubted Patrick even caught it.
"I think they were zombies and that's the only way to kill a zombie," Patrick informed them with a serious tone. Yolanda rolled her eyes at him.
Kyle pulled his sidearm back and released the magazine inside the well. The magazine dropped out and he replaced it with a fresh one. He had used six bullets, but you never know when you would need another six. Or at least that is how he had been trained all these years. He holstered his gun and walked up to Scarrow, trying to avoid the black blood that was starting to pool around the body. He reached down without looking at his face and snagged the chain around his neck. He knew Scarrow was former Marine. Maybe he could return the dog tags to his family one day. He unclasped the chain and took a second to put it next to his.
The sound of rifle fire reached down the hall, a reminder that things were happening outside of this gruesome hallway.
“Sounds like trouble outside,” Patrick said helpfully. He had remained farther back from the scene than Yolanda, who had walked up next to him.
“Good call on that one, Star Wars,” she said, already moving beside him.
Kyle took a last look at Scarrow, checked his watch, and turned around.
They stepped outside to the sound of gunfire in multiple places. Black smoke had started to rise like Indian signals from a few of the buildings in the distance. People were running everywhere, some carrying bags or briefcases, while others just ran directionless.
“What the hell? How long were we in there?” Patrick started to rush off.
“Wait,” said Kyle, checking his watch. “I’m going to check with the lieutenant and then get out of here. If it’s this bad here then it may be getting bad everywhere. You’re welcome to come, but you both have families to take care of.”
“I got nobody here, I’m with you Professor. Besides, I’m gonna get with Abe, he’s hot and a good dancer.”
“I’ll tell him you said so if we make it,” Kyle laughed. It felt good. Had it been that long since he was joking with everyone this morning?
“I’ll tell him myself, I’m a big girl,” she said with a wink at Kyle. Patrick just laughed which earned him a nasty word or two from Yolanda.
“I wonder why we haven’t heard anything on the radio?” Kyle asked. He had a bad habit of turning it down and just relying on his friends to call him on the phone if they were trying to get a hold of him. It was annoying to listen to the radio every two minutes when you were trying to sleep.
There were some frantic calls, but I turned mine down so I could concentrate,” said Patrick looking a little guilty.
“Same here,” echoed Yolanda, not at all looking guilty. Kyle didn’t feel as bad, as he had also turned his radio off. The garbled and distressed voice of someone came reaching out as they each turned their radios back on. The voice was from Central Security System directing units to different places.
“Dude, they didn’t even hear us when we called,” Patrick accused, staring at his radio. “We could have used some help then.”
“Everything is falling apart here and it’s from the inside,” Kyle said turning his radio back down. He had regained his composure and was trying to formulate a plan. He was torn between helping out or getting to his brother. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to help with people going crazy all over the place. He just needed to make a decision.
“Ok, let’s go then,” Yolanda decided before Kyle could make a decision. And with that, she started to walk to the security building leaving Kyle and Patrick to catch up.
Abe threw the phone down at the end of the bed, extended his arms out to his sides, and stretched, giving a contented sigh as he did. He had lied to his brother when he told him that he was up already.
He doesn’t need to know everything
. He had muted the TV but left it on as he threw his legs over the side of the bed. He was still watching the newsflash that was on. He couldn’t hear it, but it showed riots and disturbances at more than one place. He was wondering if his brother was playing another elaborate joke on him. He did sound sincere, but didn’t he always? And there was something going on out there, riots and fights could be problematic on their own, much less some zombie apocalypse. He decided to think about it during a shower.