Last Stand (The Survivalist Book 7) (13 page)

That charm faded, however, as the bars, restaurants, and two-story brick boutiques gave way to impersonal office buildings, banks, embassies, and hotels. The scavengers also thinned as the tall buildings cast ominous shadows over the street. Both Tanner and Samantha tightened their grips on their weapons, ready for anyone, or anything, that might step from the shadows.

In an attempt to break the menacing mood, he said, “Whistle us up a tune, why don’t you.”

“Why? So we can let them know we’re here?”

“Them who?”

“I don’t know. Just them.”

“Brain-eating zombies?”

“Probably.”

“Werewolves? Vampires?”

“You never know.”

He snickered.

“Laugh if you want, but I’m not ruling anything out. Not after what we’ve seen.”

Despite his ribbing, Samantha’s fears were closer to the truth than he cared to admit. The line between fantasy and reality had become blurred to the point that neither of them would have been surprised to see Frankenstein lumber out into the street, juggling flaming torches while singing “Send in the Clowns.” The intuition they’d once had about what was possible and impossible no longer held true. Every day offered the possibility of discovery, something that was both exciting and terrifying.

When they finally arrived at 2301 M Street, they discovered an eight-story building set between a Park Hyatt Hotel and a large conference center. A royal-blue awning stretched out over the sidewalk with the words “Kaiser Permanente Medical Office” printed on its side.

She eyed a small flight of stairs leading up into the building.

“This doesn’t look like any hospital I’ve ever seen.”

“Let’s see what’s inside.”

Tanner took the stairs two at a time, and Samantha hurried after him. At the top, they came to a large sliding glass door. The glass plates had been smashed in, but a few shards still clung to the metal frame.

He bent over and carefully stepped through the broken doors.

“Careful not to cut yourself,” he said over his shoulder.

She chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s like the bulldog telling the mouse to watch his head on the pet door.”

“And I suppose I’m the bulldog?”

“Well, you’re not the mouse,” she said, snickering.

On the other side of the doors, the space opened up into a short hallway. To the left was a waiting area littered with overturned chairs and magazines. At the opposite end of the room, they could see elevator doors. Men’s and women’s bathrooms lay directly ahead, and to the right was a small pharmacy.

Tanner immediately turned right, figuring that the dispensary would be the most likely place for Jarvis to find medications. As he rounded the corner, he found himself in another small waiting room. The back wall had several built-in shelves, a few of which still contained cough medicine, antacids, eye drops, Epsom salts, and vitamins. Directly across the room were four counters, each with their respective number hanging above them. Behind the counters was a large glassed-in area from which the pharmacists had once worked.

Samantha called out. “Dr. Jarvis, are you in here? It’s me, Samantha.”

There was no answer.

She looked to Tanner. “I don’t think he’s here.”

“Watch the door while I take a look.”

Samantha reluctantly turned to face the entryway with her rifle at the ready.

“Okay, but hurry. This place is creepy.”

“You say that about every place.”

“That’s because they’re all creepy!”

Tanner slid across one of the counters and discovered that the room containing medications had been cordoned off by a thick, sliding Plexiglass door. Unable to break the glass, looters had resorted to knocking it off its track, and then squeezing through a gap at the bottom.

Amateurs.

He gave it a couple of good kicks, and it the entire door fell in with a loud crash.

Samantha hollered, “Practicing your ninja training again, I see.”

He grinned but said nothing. He was too busy studying an assortment of tall shelves, no doubt once piled high with life-saving pharmaceuticals. Now, however, they sat empty except for a few asthma inhalers, aluminum finger splints, and clear plastic jugs of something that looked like a mixture of corn syrup and powdered milk. He carefully navigated the small room, his boots crunching on pills scattered across the floor. When he was satisfied that Jarvis wasn’t hiding behind one of the shelves, he returned to Samantha.

“Find anything?”

“Nope.”

“So, this was all a complete waste of time.”

“Not necessarily. It’s a big place.” He led her back to the entryway and studied a large directory hanging on the bright red wall. Tanner ran his fingers up and down the sign. “It looks like there are four floors. This one houses the pharmacy and records management. The next one up offers behavioral health, which probably wouldn’t have drugs. Then comes x-ray and imaging services, again no drugs. That leaves this one.” He tapped the sign.

“Obstetrics, gynecology, and internal medicine,” she said, carefully reading the words. “I’m not really sure what any of those mean.”

“People in pain, darlin’. That’s what they mean.”

“Okay,” she said, leaning around the corner to spy the elevators, “but that’s three flights up. Are we going to pry the elevator doors and shimmy up the cables?”

Tanner chuckled and pointed to a sign at the far end of the corridor that read
Stairs
.

“What do you say we take the easy way just this once?”

“Sure, whatever,” she said with a shrug. “But you have to admit that the elevator thing would’ve been cool.”

“That it would have.”

He turned and led her through a waist-high saloon-style door, whose only purpose had been to keep irritated patients from getting too close to the equally irritated receptionists. At the far end of the hall, they found a wide set of stairs leading up. As soon as they entered the stairwell, they detected the stench of decaying bodies.

“You smell that?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Nothing we haven’t smelled before.”

“True, but it means there are dead people up there.”

“Dead people can’t hurt you.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

Tanner didn’t argue the point any further. The truth was that she was right to be a little nervous. Their day so far had gone far too smoothly, and both of them knew it.

They crept up the stairs, stopping only when they got to the fourth floor. As with the other levels, there was no door, only a large doorway that opened up into a brightly painted hallway. Much to their chagrin, the worst of the odors seemed to be coming from within.

Still standing in the doorway, Tanner leaned his head around to get a quick peek at what lay ahead. The hallway was strewn with overturned laundry carts, medical records, and spent needles. Blood and human waste were smeared across the walls and floor, making it look more like a slaughterhouse than a hospital. Worse yet, fresh footprints revealed that someone had recently walked through the slimy gore.

He pulled his head back.

“Well?” she said, nudging him.

“Let’s just say it’s a good thing we ate a few hours ago.”

“That bad?”

“See for yourself.”

Samantha mimicked what he had done, and when she leaned back around, her eyes were watering.

“That’s disgusting.”

“And then some.”

“Do we really have to go in there?”

“Those footprints could be Jarvis’s.”

“Even if they are, how do you know he hasn’t already left?”

“Look down. What do you see?”

She studied the stairwell landing. Nothing looked out of place.

“Nothing.”

“Exactly. If Jarvis had come back out, there would be bloody footprints going down the stairs.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You want to wait out here?”

“Of course not.”

“All right then. Hold your nose. It’s going to get nasty.”

Their shoes made a sickening
squish
as they carefully picked their way through the filth. The hallway looked like the site of a massacre, butchered hands and feet tossed into corners, eyeballs dangling from light fixtures, and buckets of blood splashed everywhere. The addition of urine and feces created a veritable cornucopia of all that was revolting.

Samantha had pulled her scarf up over her mouth and nose, and refused to remove her sunglasses even though the hallway was barely brighter than a broom closet. For his part, Tanner did what he always did. He put one foot in front of the other and listened for anything that might want to hurt them. Everything else was but a distraction.

As they walked around a corner, they came face to face with an infected woman. She was barely in her twenties, naked except for one of those thin medical robes that tied in the back. She knelt in front of a half-eaten body, a doctor by the looks of it. His arms had been chewed off and his belly ripped open. The young woman rifled through his intestines, occasionally picking up pieces to chew.

Samantha brought her rifle up and whispered, “Told ya.”

The woman turned to face them, her obsidian eyes glowing a silvery white in the diffused sunlight.

“Tanner?” Samantha said, her voice catching in her throat.

Two hours earlier, Tanner would have shot the woman without a second thought. But that was before Issa. It could just as easily have been her kneeling in the hallway, doing what she had to do in order to survive.

“Tanner,” she said again, slowly stepping back, “we really need to get out of here.”

It took Samantha’s scream to break him out of the trance. She had caught sight of a man racing up behind them, his mutated hands extended as he prepared to rip flesh from bone. Tanner wheeled around and fired the shotgun. A fist-sized load of buckshot caught the man in the gut, and he staggered back. Samantha took aim and fired her .22, the tiny slug popping a neat hole through the man’s eye. He teetered for a moment and then collapsed onto the floor.

A second man barreled around the corner, but before Tanner could get off a shot, something grabbed him from behind. Claws raked across his cheek, and teeth bit into the side of his neck. It was the woman! She clung to his back, riding him like a wild bronco as she ripped away at his flesh.

Tanner’s first reaction was to try to elbow her off, but each time he turned, she turned with him, pulling ever tighter. Despite the threat of the man charging toward them, Tanner knew that he had to do something about the woman before she managed to bite into his carotid artery. He turned sideways and drove backwards, smashing her into the closest wall. The plaster crunched inward, but she continued to cling to him.

Accepting that it was up to her to stop the man running toward them, Samantha shot her rifle once, twice, three times, cycling the bolt as fast as she could. All three bullets caught him in the chest, but they did little to slow his advance. No doubt he would die in a few minutes from internal bleeding, but by then, Tanner and Samantha would be lying on their backs with the mindless creatures munching their innards.

As Samantha backpedaled, preparing to take her final shot, Tanner had an idea. It was a one-shot deal that would either work, or not. Without warning, he leaped into the air and arched backward as he fell. He hit the floor like a paratrooper with a bum chute, sandwiching the woman between his backpack and the thick ceramic tiles.

She moaned as her ribcage gave way, but still, she refused to let go.

Hoping to take advantage of Tanner’s awkward position, the infected man dove forward. He was in mid-air when Tanner lifted his shotgun and fired it one-handed. The blast caught him under the chin, disintegrating his throat and vertebrae. The man’s head folded back and fell away, leaving his decapitated body to land at Tanner’s feet.

Tanner started to roll over to finish off the human bloodsucker when Samantha stepped forward, put the muzzle of her rifle against the woman’s temple, and fired. She twitched once and then lay still.

“Are you okay?” Samantha asked, fishing around in her pocket for spare cartridges.

Tanner slowly sat up and slid his feet away from the growing pool of blood still seeping from the headless corpse. He rubbed his fingers across the bites on his neck. There was blood, but not enough to really worry about.