"The Last Hurrah"
I took a long drag on my cigarette, leaning out over the tarred roof
of the old hospital. I blew out the smoke slowly, felt it curl around my
face and waft away in the crisp evening air. I surveyed the scene
around me. Stuck, smack dab in the middle of the city, low on
ammunition, low on supplies, and completely surrounded. I was also
safe from harm, however, having barricaded the stairwell that led me
to the roof. For now, I was locked in a stalemate, but I had one major
disadvantage--in a couple of days, I'd die of dehydration.
This was it, I thought. Finally fucked. After all the planning, the
patience, the (at times) raw willpower, all of it was going to go to
waste because of one stupid mistake.
I never should have come back to this town. I wouldn't have, if I had
a choice. But I needed supplies. What else could I do? I went in.
I spent the last few years avoiding this town completely. It held too
many weird memories for me. I preferred the countryside. The softly
rolling Appalachian hills, the mountain streams, the cowfields and
corn rows, all of that was what I considered to truly be home.
Besides all the quasi-romantic bullshit, it was much safer in the
country than in the city since the plague.
I don't know what they're calling the plague officially. Hell, I don't
even know if anyone else is left out there to call it anything officially.
All I know is it's a virus. One hell of a virus. You'd catch it, see, and it
drove you mad. You got a real high fever, you stopped being
yourself and you go rabid. I watched people who I would trust with
my life run at me and try to take a chunk out of my arm--I'm talking
real aggressive qualities, here. Predatory. And I haven't even gotten
to the good part, yet. The part that makes me wonder if the victims
are the sane ones and I'm the one who's lost it. Thusly: should you,
by some means, manage to bring down a carrier of the virus, be it
with a gun, a blunt instrument, electrocution, whatever--within a few
minutes that dead body gets back up and comes at you again,
though much more slowly. I figure, hey, if the laws of science have
gone haywire, at least the bastards are less dextrous after you've
offed them once.
And I figured this out, too. Shoot them in the head, and they go
down. Permanently. It's become a kind of official policy with me:
head shots or no shots. Ammo's precious.
That thought served to remind me of my current, untenable situation.
No food or water. Trapped on a roof. And I only had four bullets left.
I took a final pull on the cigarette between my fingers, then flicked it
out over the edge of the roof. I watched as it spiraled, end-over-end,
before finally landing in a shower of sparks on the flagstones of the
courtyard below.
It drew attention. Dozens of sets of eyes turned skyward, picking me
out against the backdrop of the evening sky. Voices drifted to my
ears, but they were no longer human. Feral growls and piteous
moans rose all around me, and rotting hands reached skyward. I
leaned down closer. They were three stories down. I was safe from
them. For now.
I had counted nearly fifty of the zombies in the courtyard, and I was
certain more were inside. I felt confident calling these things
zombies. They were dead, they were moving, they were zombies.
Their living brethren, on the other hand...
...they could prove a bigger problem.
Living carriers of the disease aren't hampered by such post-mortem
concerns as decay and rigor mortis. They're as fast as I am, and just
as strong. And I knew for a fact there were at least two of them
inside the old hospital beneath my feet. I was confident I could get
past the zombies in the courtyard, even on foot. A decent jog is
twice as fast as any of those rotting freaks could go. But I'd have to
deal with the living carriers first. They'd run me down faster than a
pack of dogs on a three-legged cat. Not that it mattered.
With the zombies as support, the carriers downstairs had an almost
certain chance of killing me before I got out the main door. I felt a
frown cross my face. Since when was I so fatalistic? Or, maybe, I was
merely being realistic.
I spun on my heels and walked briskly away from the edge of the
hospital's roof. I'd had to leave my rucksack and half my gear
downstairs near the access door I'd taken to get up here, but I still
had my weapon. I picked up the rifle, a nice lever-action Winchester
30-30, and racked a round into the chamber. Action was better than
inaction. I'd be damned if I was going to sit up here and slowly die of
dehydration. I'd be damned if I let them win that easily.
"You're going to have to work for it," I breathed, shouldering my
rucksack and cradling the rifle in my arms.
The sun was sinking lower behind the green hills to the west. It was
going to be dark inside the building. I had an old, chipped,
Army-issue crookneck flashlight clipped to the epaulette on my shirt,
and I flicked it on. It cast a swaying, dancing beam of light in front of
me. It would have to do. I had nothing else.
I pulled the rusty metal door that led to the hospital's stairwell open
slowly. The hinges cried out with a raspy, grating sound that
weighed heavily on my ears. Noise was what had gotten me into this
mess in the first place. I left the door standing open. Twilight cast a
bit of illumination into the dark stairwell, and I was thankful for that
much.
I let my eyes sweep the roof. In all likelihood, this would be the last
time I would be outdoors. At least, alive. I inhaled deeply, breathing
in the scent of autumn in Appalachia. It seemed a shame. Autumn
was always my favorite time of year.
Hallowe'en would be soon. The thought made my eyes narrow. This
year, the monsters were real.
With one last, longing look around, I turned and stepped into the
stairwell. My boots rang out on the hollow metal of the stairs as I
began my descent, rifle held out in front of me. They could be
anywhere inside the sprawling three-story structure. I had to be on
guard.
The hollow ringing of my steps ended abruptly as I arrived on the
third-floor landing, and stepped onto its concrete base. Here, I
halted.
There would be a throng of them waiting for me at the door on the
ground level. I would only hasten my inevitable death going that way.
I wracked my brain for an alternate route.
Elevators.
The hospital was undergoing renovations. During my harried ascent,
I had noticed two of the three elevator shafts were hanging open.
Apparently they were undergoing some maintenance just before the
plague hit. There might be a way to climb down that way. It would put
me across the building from the greatest concentration of the
zombie below, at the very least.
I turned my back on the stairs, reaching out a hand to the third
floor's doorknob and turning. It was unlocked. Now came a moment
of indecision--anything could be waiting on the other side. I took a
quick breath, primed myself, and swung it open, snapping my rifle
up. My flashlight's beam sliced through the darkness, illuminating
the empty, sterile corridor beyond.
I lowered the barrel of the Winchester, but kept it at the ready. I
stepped forward onto the cold white tiles of the ward, eyes roving
back and forth as I advanced. There were signs of violence here. An
empty wheelchair lay at my feet, tipped up on its side. A bloody
smear led away from it. I played my light over it, and saw it tapered
off to nothingness a few feet away. It might mean nothing. Or it might
mean I had company on this level.
I shoved the chair out of the way with my boot, sliding it across the
floor slowly so as to make as little noise as possible, and moved on.
Every open door I came to was inspected, flashlight dancing through
empty patients' rooms where disheveled beds and get-well cards
sat, here and there a lonely, forgotten rose in a vase, long since
dead, dried petals dotting the tiles below.
I reached the nurse's station near the center of the level, resting the
rifle on my shoulder and reaching up with my free hand to grasp the
dangling flashlight. I panned the beam across the walls, lighting up
the signs hung there.
And the mural painted on the wall behind them. It was a happy
scene drawn in bright pastels of a park in the sunlight, people
having a picnic, a boy throwing a frisbee to a badly-drawn dog.
Beneath it, in shaky black paint, was written:
"Painted by our favorite little patients, 2003!"
Jesus. I was in a children's ward. It was obvious the plague had been
through here, as everywhere else. I shuddered at the thought,
shoving the mental picture I had of carriers ripping into the sick
children out of my mind. Whatever had happened here, I had missed
it by weeks.
The signs on the wall said the elevators were further down the
corridor. I was heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, the
corridor ahead of me was blocked by an impressive attempt to seal it
off from the rest of the hospital. Beds, mattresses, crutches, gurneys
and I.V. trolleys were all thrust together in a heap. The last stand of
the third floor, I surmised. There was a gap torn through the middle
of the blockade. It wasn't much, but I knew it was enough for a living
carrier. They would pull themselves through the gap, one after
another, like sand through an hourglass. Whoever had been hiding
behind that barricade would not have survived.
Taking great care to keep my ambient noise down, I padded silently
up to the obstacle, sliding my eyes over it. I could climb through with
little trouble. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and propped my foot
up on a bedframe, reaching out my arms to pull myself up. For the
barest moment, my flashlight's beam flitted across the gap in the
obstacle.
It took less than a second for the carriers beyond, shrouded in the
darkness of the hallway, to react to the stimuli.
A hissing face with bloodshot eyes flew into the gap, bared,
glistening teeth shaped into a feral growl.
I yelled despite myself, and fell off the side of the barricade, landing
with a grunt on my back. The rifle slung on my back had dug
painfully into my shoulderblade. I rolled onto my side and drew
myself to my feet, unslinging the rifle and spinning to face the
barricade.
It was another carrier, a living host of the virus. She was maybe ten
years old, spasming frantically as she tried to pull herself through
the gap. Her arm was tangled in the debris, and she had lacerations
up and down her face. I knew those marks--they were caused by
human fingernails rending flesh. She had been infected by a living
carrier. And now she, in turn, would try to infect me.
I backed away slowly, rifle trained on her little form. I was breathing
heavily, adrenaline coursing through my system. My vision swam
and my trigger finger itched, but I reminded myself of the ammunition
situation, and slowly realized she wasn't going anywhere. She had
mired herself in the obstacle.
The girl growled and gibbered, foaming a little at the mouth as she
tried to get at me, throwing herself forward again and again, rattling
and shaking the entire barricade, but her arm held her back. The
pure, unsullied hatred in her eyes drove like a stake through my
heart. She was corrupted, body and soul. She was the Enemy.
"Bastards," I whispered. "You bastards."
I stepped towards her, raising the rifle above my head slowly. In the
last moment before I brought it down, I thought I saw comprehension
in the little girl's eyes. Perhaps, I thought, even a hint of humanity.
Then the rifle butt smashed into her forehead, snapping her head
back. She squawked once, a pitiful sound, and then fell limp and
silent. The light went out of her eyes. As I watched, rivulets of blood
ran down her now-peaceful face, dripping almost inaudibly onto the
tiles of the floor, a soft tip-tip-tip.
I took a long, shuddering breath, and wiped the rifle butt clean of
blood on one of the mattresses in the barricade. I turned to go, felt
my knees go weak, and I kneeled quickly, reaching out a hand to the
floor to steady myself.
Why was this happening to me? To the world, even?
What point was there in going on?
I let myself slump into a seated position, back against the barricade,
and leaned my head back. My eyes drifted to the right, where the
limp arm of the infected girl hung. I watched her blood pooling on the
floor. Soon, I thought, I would be like her. At peace. Or, perhaps, in
Hell.
Maybe, I thought, I should save one of my bullets for myself.
I furrowed by brow, glancing around the dim corridor from my spot
on the floor. What was I thinking? When the world is dead and
society is stripped away, all you have left are your principles.
Despair was not one of my defining principles, I reminded myself. I
needed those bullets for a more constructive use than suicide.
Rage, however, was always one of my vices. And even vices had
their uses. I pulled myself to my feet, dusting off my pants as I stood,
turning to face the body of the infected girl with the now-peaceful,
innocent face.
"I don't know who you were before all this," I said quietly, "but one of
those things turned you. You didn't deserve to die like this. No one
who's died like this deserved to. Today I'm going to do you a favor.
I'm going to go downstairs, now. And I'm going to kill as many of
them as I can before they get me. Today, you have your revenge.
And so do I."
Fuck the elevators, I thought. I want them to know I'm coming, now.
I strode forcefully back through the ward, rearing back and kicking
the fallen wheelchair I had passed on the way in. It clattered into the
stairwell and crashed down half a flight, smashing into pieces. I was
right behind it, slamming my booted feet on the metal stairs and
dragging my rifle barrel along the railing, making each step an
exercise in piercing noise. Even though they were two floors below
me through concrete walls, I could hear the bassic growling of the
carriers, and the dull thuds as they began to throw themselves
against the door to the stairwell. I had had the foresight to break the
knob off with my rifle butt on the way up. They couldn't get in. But
they knew I was on my way.
It would have been nice if I had more bullets. I laughed grimly. Now
that I was resigned to death, the prospect wasn't nearly as terrifying
as I thought it would be. Like Doc Holliday, I had nothing to lose. I
realized I felt good, heading for that confrontation. Better than I had
felt in a long time.
My 'tiny fucking mistake,' the error that had doomed me, began
instead to feel like the blessing that had released me.
Today was an exercise in irony, I thought as I reached the first
landing.
I had come here in hopes of securing gear to help ensure my
survival. I had brought with me, originally, a radio, in hopes of
contacting someone--also to help ensure my own survival. That my
choice of location and choice of equipment were both meant to help
me live, and that both ended up contributing to my death, was the
very definition of the old phrase, "an ironic turn of events."
You see, apparently someone with the feds decided it would be a
good idea to record a message telling civilians to remain in their
homes and seal the entrances. I guess it started getting played near
the beginning of the plague, when there were actually still people
alive to listen. Wherever it was broadcasting from obviously still had
power. I hadn't counted on either. And, naturally, Murphy's Law
ensured that I had forgotten to turn the volume on the radio down
before I went into town.
As I had entered the hospital, the message went back out across the
airwaves, was translated to sound through my radio, and came
blasting out of the speaker in a garble of static and frantic voices. I'd
ripped it off my belt and smashed it against the floor in my hurry to
silence it, but the damage was done. They were on me in moments,
running in from the grounds outside, or shambling slowly out of dark
patients' rooms and nurses' stations. I tried to run outside, but one
of them actually managed to grab me from behind, and I'd had to
slip out of the straps of my rucksack to escape it. The thing was
down there, somewhere, wandering around with my ammo and food.
I decided on the fly that if I saw him, I'd gun for him. I wanted my
rucksack back on general principles, now. I had finally managed to
run back into the hospital, barricade the stairwell, and go up and out
onto the roof to mull over what had happened.
I rounded the landing of the second floor, gritting my teeth. I'd been
hiding from these things so long, I looked forward to the showdown. I
could hear them more clearly as I got closer, pounding on the door
in an erratic pattern, distant moans and growls providing an eerie
backdrop to my descent.
How long could I push on before I was brought down, I wondered?
How many would I take with me? Five? Ten? Twenty?
I rounded the final flight and stopped. I was facing the door to the
lobby, highlighted in the dark stairwell by my flashlight's beam. It
quivered as the infected pounded on it from outside. I could see a
bit of light outside the door, dim and blue, the final effort of twilight
before true night. That was fortunate. The light would help me kill
them better. I guessed there were six or seven out there. Six or
seven. Four bullets. Then what? I'd have an unwieldy club. It would
have to do.
I lifted my foot outwards to head down the final few stairs, but I
stopped it in midair. My eyes glinted. I remembered my flashlight
catching a glimpse of red paint and glass as I had rounded the
corner. I slowly reached up a hand, grasped the light, and panned it
left. It came to a rest on a metal box bolted to the wall. I smiled. Not a
grim smile, but a genuine one.
It had to be a gift from a generous god, I guessed. The fire axe that
was illuminated in the case would make a much more suitable
replacement for my unwieldy club. I strode over to the case, sparing
a glance at the door that separated me from my enemies. They
continued to pound away.
"Emergency use only," I read out loud. "To be used only in event of
fire."
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my crumpled pack of cigarettes,
and opened the top. One left. I stuck it between my lips and lit it,
watching the reflection of the burning coal as it glowed brightly in the
glass.
Then I smashed through it with the butt of my rifle, sending glass
shards crashing to the ground. I swept the rim of the case with the
rifle butt, clearing away the shards still hanging there, and driving
the zombies on the other side of the door into a near-frenzy. Their
pounding increased. I reached into the case and pulled the heavy
axe out reverently, cradling it in my hands.
"Alright," I said, walking back over in front of the door. I leaned the
axe against the wall by my feet, and hefted the rifle. "It's time."
I took a drag on the cigarette between my lips, blowing out the
smoke in a quick sigh, ashes swirling in the air in front of me. Then,
before I had time to dwell on it, I reached out a hand, turned the
knob, and kicked the door with as much strength as I could muster. It
flew open, crashing into the besieging force and sending half
sprawling to the floor.
I leveled the rifle and narrowed my eyes. One of them had been
missed in the door's swing. It was an infected, a living carrier, a man
not much older than I. He glanced back at the fallen zombies, and
whirled on me, hissing inhumanly and baring his teeth. I barely
flinched as I pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening in the
enclosed space.
He seemed to fall back in slow motion, blood trailing from the hole
where his eye had been moments before. He hit the floor, a fevered
look of surprise notched on his frozen features. I worked the rifle's
lever, a quick clack-clack, and the empty brass flipped to the floor,
tinkling as it rolled against my foot and stopped. A wisp of smoke
blew away from the barrel, and I spat my cigarette out.
"Come on, you bastards," I said.
And come, they did. The second living carrier I knew to be in the
building had been among those knocked to the floor in my first
assault. She rolled quickly to her feet, launching herself through the
doorway at me, snarling. I fired a second time as she came at me,
and she jerked to a halt, falling first to her knees, then on her face in
front of me. I chambered my third round.
The undead compatiots of the carriers were on their feet now. I
raised the rifle to my shoulders, taking a careful moment to aim, and
fired, the round penetrating the temple of one of the undead,
spraying brain matter and shards of skull across the corridor. It fell.
Before it even finished twitching, I had sight-acquired and fired on
the fourth of them. It slammed into the far wall, sliding to the floor
slowly, leaving a dark red blood trail behind it on the white paint of
the wall.
I dropped the rifle to the ground, and retrieved the fire axe. Thus far,
I hadn't moved from my original position, but now I strode forward,
pushing the door all the way open and moving out into the hallway.
There was one more undead at my feet. It hadn't been able to pull
itself to its feet after the door had knocked it down. I felt my face
contort in rage as I slammed the axe bit through its skull. I put my
foot on the re-killed head and levered the axe out of it. It came free
with a sickening noise, and I spun around, facing the hall that led to
the main lobby, axe in my hands. I could hear them. More were
coming this way.
The first one rounded the corner a moment later. She might have
been attractive in life. Now, half her lower jaw was missing, and her
tongue hang out the side of her face, twitching as she moaned,
reaching an arm out towards me as she stumbled along. Behind her,
more appeared, of every race and age, with varying wounds and
post-mortem scratches and bruises. I stayed put, watching them
filter into the hall, lip curling in disgust.
A vision of the little girl upstairs flashed in front of my eyes as I
watched them, followed quickly by a vision of myself among their
ranks. I lowered my head, hands gripping the axe so tightly my
knuckles were white. When the first of them had crossed half the
distance to me, I charged.
I locked eyes with the female zombie as I ran at her. If zombie could
have expressions, I imagine she was elated for a moment. Her prey
was actually coming to her, instead of the other way around. Then I
decapitated her with a wild swing of the axe, and she was elated no
more. The axe embedded in the plaster of the wall, but I yanked it
out in a spray of dust and wound it up over my head, bringing it
down into the shoulder of the next zombie in line. It managed an
annoyed sound, and was brought to the ground by the force of the
blow. The next zombie took the axe bit in the face, the stroke
carrying through into the chest of a fourth. I yanked my weapon free
of the gory mess and plunged forward. Hack, slash, kick, shove,
slice--I rained death on all sides as I advanced.
I felt the anger and indignation in me begin to fade as fatigue set in.
I pried the axe from the neck of a foe and kicked the corpse back,
hunching over slightly as I panted for breath.
There were plenty more enemies in front of me. I took the moment to
glance around, and felt my heart sink. I had fought my way into the
lobby, and in the wider space the zombie had circled around me as I
had advanced.
I was surrounded. Behind the throng of zombies in front of me, I
could see the swaying trees outside on the grounds through the
building's wide windows. The front doors were no more than a dozen
feet away.
But I wouldn't be going outside. The circle closed in as vapid, empty
faces moaned, and cold hands reached out towards me. I drew in a
deep, shuddering breath, raising the axe in my hands and pulling
myself to my full height.
This was it, I thought.
I felt fingers grasping at my shoulders from behind.
The last stand.
I swung the heavy fireaxe, felt it bite into the crowd. I would go down
fighting, just as I wanted.
In the end, I reasoned as I felt the axe being torn from my grip and
the teeth sinking into my body, it's not such a bad way to die. To go
down swinging, with honor.
A woman couldn't ask for more.
of the old hospital. I blew out the smoke slowly, felt it curl around my
face and waft away in the crisp evening air. I surveyed the scene
around me. Stuck, smack dab in the middle of the city, low on
ammunition, low on supplies, and completely surrounded. I was also
safe from harm, however, having barricaded the stairwell that led me
to the roof. For now, I was locked in a stalemate, but I had one major
disadvantage--in a couple of days, I'd die of dehydration.
This was it, I thought. Finally fucked. After all the planning, the
patience, the (at times) raw willpower, all of it was going to go to
waste because of one stupid mistake.
I never should have come back to this town. I wouldn't have, if I had
a choice. But I needed supplies. What else could I do? I went in.
I spent the last few years avoiding this town completely. It held too
many weird memories for me. I preferred the countryside. The softly
rolling Appalachian hills, the mountain streams, the cowfields and
corn rows, all of that was what I considered to truly be home.
Besides all the quasi-romantic bullshit, it was much safer in the
country than in the city since the plague.
I don't know what they're calling the plague officially. Hell, I don't
even know if anyone else is left out there to call it anything officially.
All I know is it's a virus. One hell of a virus. You'd catch it, see, and it
drove you mad. You got a real high fever, you stopped being
yourself and you go rabid. I watched people who I would trust with
my life run at me and try to take a chunk out of my arm--I'm talking
real aggressive qualities, here. Predatory. And I haven't even gotten
to the good part, yet. The part that makes me wonder if the victims
are the sane ones and I'm the one who's lost it. Thusly: should you,
by some means, manage to bring down a carrier of the virus, be it
with a gun, a blunt instrument, electrocution, whatever--within a few
minutes that dead body gets back up and comes at you again,
though much more slowly. I figure, hey, if the laws of science have
gone haywire, at least the bastards are less dextrous after you've
offed them once.
And I figured this out, too. Shoot them in the head, and they go
down. Permanently. It's become a kind of official policy with me:
head shots or no shots. Ammo's precious.
That thought served to remind me of my current, untenable situation.
No food or water. Trapped on a roof. And I only had four bullets left.
I took a final pull on the cigarette between my fingers, then flicked it
out over the edge of the roof. I watched as it spiraled, end-over-end,
before finally landing in a shower of sparks on the flagstones of the
courtyard below.
It drew attention. Dozens of sets of eyes turned skyward, picking me
out against the backdrop of the evening sky. Voices drifted to my
ears, but they were no longer human. Feral growls and piteous
moans rose all around me, and rotting hands reached skyward. I
leaned down closer. They were three stories down. I was safe from
them. For now.
I had counted nearly fifty of the zombies in the courtyard, and I was
certain more were inside. I felt confident calling these things
zombies. They were dead, they were moving, they were zombies.
Their living brethren, on the other hand...
...they could prove a bigger problem.
Living carriers of the disease aren't hampered by such post-mortem
concerns as decay and rigor mortis. They're as fast as I am, and just
as strong. And I knew for a fact there were at least two of them
inside the old hospital beneath my feet. I was confident I could get
past the zombies in the courtyard, even on foot. A decent jog is
twice as fast as any of those rotting freaks could go. But I'd have to
deal with the living carriers first. They'd run me down faster than a
pack of dogs on a three-legged cat. Not that it mattered.
With the zombies as support, the carriers downstairs had an almost
certain chance of killing me before I got out the main door. I felt a
frown cross my face. Since when was I so fatalistic? Or, maybe, I was
merely being realistic.
I spun on my heels and walked briskly away from the edge of the
hospital's roof. I'd had to leave my rucksack and half my gear
downstairs near the access door I'd taken to get up here, but I still
had my weapon. I picked up the rifle, a nice lever-action Winchester
30-30, and racked a round into the chamber. Action was better than
inaction. I'd be damned if I was going to sit up here and slowly die of
dehydration. I'd be damned if I let them win that easily.
"You're going to have to work for it," I breathed, shouldering my
rucksack and cradling the rifle in my arms.
The sun was sinking lower behind the green hills to the west. It was
going to be dark inside the building. I had an old, chipped,
Army-issue crookneck flashlight clipped to the epaulette on my shirt,
and I flicked it on. It cast a swaying, dancing beam of light in front of
me. It would have to do. I had nothing else.
I pulled the rusty metal door that led to the hospital's stairwell open
slowly. The hinges cried out with a raspy, grating sound that
weighed heavily on my ears. Noise was what had gotten me into this
mess in the first place. I left the door standing open. Twilight cast a
bit of illumination into the dark stairwell, and I was thankful for that
much.
I let my eyes sweep the roof. In all likelihood, this would be the last
time I would be outdoors. At least, alive. I inhaled deeply, breathing
in the scent of autumn in Appalachia. It seemed a shame. Autumn
was always my favorite time of year.
Hallowe'en would be soon. The thought made my eyes narrow. This
year, the monsters were real.
With one last, longing look around, I turned and stepped into the
stairwell. My boots rang out on the hollow metal of the stairs as I
began my descent, rifle held out in front of me. They could be
anywhere inside the sprawling three-story structure. I had to be on
guard.
The hollow ringing of my steps ended abruptly as I arrived on the
third-floor landing, and stepped onto its concrete base. Here, I
halted.
There would be a throng of them waiting for me at the door on the
ground level. I would only hasten my inevitable death going that way.
I wracked my brain for an alternate route.
Elevators.
The hospital was undergoing renovations. During my harried ascent,
I had noticed two of the three elevator shafts were hanging open.
Apparently they were undergoing some maintenance just before the
plague hit. There might be a way to climb down that way. It would put
me across the building from the greatest concentration of the
zombie below, at the very least.
I turned my back on the stairs, reaching out a hand to the third
floor's doorknob and turning. It was unlocked. Now came a moment
of indecision--anything could be waiting on the other side. I took a
quick breath, primed myself, and swung it open, snapping my rifle
up. My flashlight's beam sliced through the darkness, illuminating
the empty, sterile corridor beyond.
I lowered the barrel of the Winchester, but kept it at the ready. I
stepped forward onto the cold white tiles of the ward, eyes roving
back and forth as I advanced. There were signs of violence here. An
empty wheelchair lay at my feet, tipped up on its side. A bloody
smear led away from it. I played my light over it, and saw it tapered
off to nothingness a few feet away. It might mean nothing. Or it might
mean I had company on this level.
I shoved the chair out of the way with my boot, sliding it across the
floor slowly so as to make as little noise as possible, and moved on.
Every open door I came to was inspected, flashlight dancing through
empty patients' rooms where disheveled beds and get-well cards
sat, here and there a lonely, forgotten rose in a vase, long since
dead, dried petals dotting the tiles below.
I reached the nurse's station near the center of the level, resting the
rifle on my shoulder and reaching up with my free hand to grasp the
dangling flashlight. I panned the beam across the walls, lighting up
the signs hung there.
And the mural painted on the wall behind them. It was a happy
scene drawn in bright pastels of a park in the sunlight, people
having a picnic, a boy throwing a frisbee to a badly-drawn dog.
Beneath it, in shaky black paint, was written:
"Painted by our favorite little patients, 2003!"
Jesus. I was in a children's ward. It was obvious the plague had been
through here, as everywhere else. I shuddered at the thought,
shoving the mental picture I had of carriers ripping into the sick
children out of my mind. Whatever had happened here, I had missed
it by weeks.
The signs on the wall said the elevators were further down the
corridor. I was heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, the
corridor ahead of me was blocked by an impressive attempt to seal it
off from the rest of the hospital. Beds, mattresses, crutches, gurneys
and I.V. trolleys were all thrust together in a heap. The last stand of
the third floor, I surmised. There was a gap torn through the middle
of the blockade. It wasn't much, but I knew it was enough for a living
carrier. They would pull themselves through the gap, one after
another, like sand through an hourglass. Whoever had been hiding
behind that barricade would not have survived.
Taking great care to keep my ambient noise down, I padded silently
up to the obstacle, sliding my eyes over it. I could climb through with
little trouble. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and propped my foot
up on a bedframe, reaching out my arms to pull myself up. For the
barest moment, my flashlight's beam flitted across the gap in the
obstacle.
It took less than a second for the carriers beyond, shrouded in the
darkness of the hallway, to react to the stimuli.
A hissing face with bloodshot eyes flew into the gap, bared,
glistening teeth shaped into a feral growl.
I yelled despite myself, and fell off the side of the barricade, landing
with a grunt on my back. The rifle slung on my back had dug
painfully into my shoulderblade. I rolled onto my side and drew
myself to my feet, unslinging the rifle and spinning to face the
barricade.
It was another carrier, a living host of the virus. She was maybe ten
years old, spasming frantically as she tried to pull herself through
the gap. Her arm was tangled in the debris, and she had lacerations
up and down her face. I knew those marks--they were caused by
human fingernails rending flesh. She had been infected by a living
carrier. And now she, in turn, would try to infect me.
I backed away slowly, rifle trained on her little form. I was breathing
heavily, adrenaline coursing through my system. My vision swam
and my trigger finger itched, but I reminded myself of the ammunition
situation, and slowly realized she wasn't going anywhere. She had
mired herself in the obstacle.
The girl growled and gibbered, foaming a little at the mouth as she
tried to get at me, throwing herself forward again and again, rattling
and shaking the entire barricade, but her arm held her back. The
pure, unsullied hatred in her eyes drove like a stake through my
heart. She was corrupted, body and soul. She was the Enemy.
"Bastards," I whispered. "You bastards."
I stepped towards her, raising the rifle above my head slowly. In the
last moment before I brought it down, I thought I saw comprehension
in the little girl's eyes. Perhaps, I thought, even a hint of humanity.
Then the rifle butt smashed into her forehead, snapping her head
back. She squawked once, a pitiful sound, and then fell limp and
silent. The light went out of her eyes. As I watched, rivulets of blood
ran down her now-peaceful face, dripping almost inaudibly onto the
tiles of the floor, a soft tip-tip-tip.
I took a long, shuddering breath, and wiped the rifle butt clean of
blood on one of the mattresses in the barricade. I turned to go, felt
my knees go weak, and I kneeled quickly, reaching out a hand to the
floor to steady myself.
Why was this happening to me? To the world, even?
What point was there in going on?
I let myself slump into a seated position, back against the barricade,
and leaned my head back. My eyes drifted to the right, where the
limp arm of the infected girl hung. I watched her blood pooling on the
floor. Soon, I thought, I would be like her. At peace. Or, perhaps, in
Hell.
Maybe, I thought, I should save one of my bullets for myself.
I furrowed by brow, glancing around the dim corridor from my spot
on the floor. What was I thinking? When the world is dead and
society is stripped away, all you have left are your principles.
Despair was not one of my defining principles, I reminded myself. I
needed those bullets for a more constructive use than suicide.
Rage, however, was always one of my vices. And even vices had
their uses. I pulled myself to my feet, dusting off my pants as I stood,
turning to face the body of the infected girl with the now-peaceful,
innocent face.
"I don't know who you were before all this," I said quietly, "but one of
those things turned you. You didn't deserve to die like this. No one
who's died like this deserved to. Today I'm going to do you a favor.
I'm going to go downstairs, now. And I'm going to kill as many of
them as I can before they get me. Today, you have your revenge.
And so do I."
Fuck the elevators, I thought. I want them to know I'm coming, now.
I strode forcefully back through the ward, rearing back and kicking
the fallen wheelchair I had passed on the way in. It clattered into the
stairwell and crashed down half a flight, smashing into pieces. I was
right behind it, slamming my booted feet on the metal stairs and
dragging my rifle barrel along the railing, making each step an
exercise in piercing noise. Even though they were two floors below
me through concrete walls, I could hear the bassic growling of the
carriers, and the dull thuds as they began to throw themselves
against the door to the stairwell. I had had the foresight to break the
knob off with my rifle butt on the way up. They couldn't get in. But
they knew I was on my way.
It would have been nice if I had more bullets. I laughed grimly. Now
that I was resigned to death, the prospect wasn't nearly as terrifying
as I thought it would be. Like Doc Holliday, I had nothing to lose. I
realized I felt good, heading for that confrontation. Better than I had
felt in a long time.
My 'tiny fucking mistake,' the error that had doomed me, began
instead to feel like the blessing that had released me.
Today was an exercise in irony, I thought as I reached the first
landing.
I had come here in hopes of securing gear to help ensure my
survival. I had brought with me, originally, a radio, in hopes of
contacting someone--also to help ensure my own survival. That my
choice of location and choice of equipment were both meant to help
me live, and that both ended up contributing to my death, was the
very definition of the old phrase, "an ironic turn of events."
You see, apparently someone with the feds decided it would be a
good idea to record a message telling civilians to remain in their
homes and seal the entrances. I guess it started getting played near
the beginning of the plague, when there were actually still people
alive to listen. Wherever it was broadcasting from obviously still had
power. I hadn't counted on either. And, naturally, Murphy's Law
ensured that I had forgotten to turn the volume on the radio down
before I went into town.
As I had entered the hospital, the message went back out across the
airwaves, was translated to sound through my radio, and came
blasting out of the speaker in a garble of static and frantic voices. I'd
ripped it off my belt and smashed it against the floor in my hurry to
silence it, but the damage was done. They were on me in moments,
running in from the grounds outside, or shambling slowly out of dark
patients' rooms and nurses' stations. I tried to run outside, but one
of them actually managed to grab me from behind, and I'd had to
slip out of the straps of my rucksack to escape it. The thing was
down there, somewhere, wandering around with my ammo and food.
I decided on the fly that if I saw him, I'd gun for him. I wanted my
rucksack back on general principles, now. I had finally managed to
run back into the hospital, barricade the stairwell, and go up and out
onto the roof to mull over what had happened.
I rounded the landing of the second floor, gritting my teeth. I'd been
hiding from these things so long, I looked forward to the showdown. I
could hear them more clearly as I got closer, pounding on the door
in an erratic pattern, distant moans and growls providing an eerie
backdrop to my descent.
How long could I push on before I was brought down, I wondered?
How many would I take with me? Five? Ten? Twenty?
I rounded the final flight and stopped. I was facing the door to the
lobby, highlighted in the dark stairwell by my flashlight's beam. It
quivered as the infected pounded on it from outside. I could see a
bit of light outside the door, dim and blue, the final effort of twilight
before true night. That was fortunate. The light would help me kill
them better. I guessed there were six or seven out there. Six or
seven. Four bullets. Then what? I'd have an unwieldy club. It would
have to do.
I lifted my foot outwards to head down the final few stairs, but I
stopped it in midair. My eyes glinted. I remembered my flashlight
catching a glimpse of red paint and glass as I had rounded the
corner. I slowly reached up a hand, grasped the light, and panned it
left. It came to a rest on a metal box bolted to the wall. I smiled. Not a
grim smile, but a genuine one.
It had to be a gift from a generous god, I guessed. The fire axe that
was illuminated in the case would make a much more suitable
replacement for my unwieldy club. I strode over to the case, sparing
a glance at the door that separated me from my enemies. They
continued to pound away.
"Emergency use only," I read out loud. "To be used only in event of
fire."
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my crumpled pack of cigarettes,
and opened the top. One left. I stuck it between my lips and lit it,
watching the reflection of the burning coal as it glowed brightly in the
glass.
Then I smashed through it with the butt of my rifle, sending glass
shards crashing to the ground. I swept the rim of the case with the
rifle butt, clearing away the shards still hanging there, and driving
the zombies on the other side of the door into a near-frenzy. Their
pounding increased. I reached into the case and pulled the heavy
axe out reverently, cradling it in my hands.
"Alright," I said, walking back over in front of the door. I leaned the
axe against the wall by my feet, and hefted the rifle. "It's time."
I took a drag on the cigarette between my lips, blowing out the
smoke in a quick sigh, ashes swirling in the air in front of me. Then,
before I had time to dwell on it, I reached out a hand, turned the
knob, and kicked the door with as much strength as I could muster. It
flew open, crashing into the besieging force and sending half
sprawling to the floor.
I leveled the rifle and narrowed my eyes. One of them had been
missed in the door's swing. It was an infected, a living carrier, a man
not much older than I. He glanced back at the fallen zombies, and
whirled on me, hissing inhumanly and baring his teeth. I barely
flinched as I pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening in the
enclosed space.
He seemed to fall back in slow motion, blood trailing from the hole
where his eye had been moments before. He hit the floor, a fevered
look of surprise notched on his frozen features. I worked the rifle's
lever, a quick clack-clack, and the empty brass flipped to the floor,
tinkling as it rolled against my foot and stopped. A wisp of smoke
blew away from the barrel, and I spat my cigarette out.
"Come on, you bastards," I said.
And come, they did. The second living carrier I knew to be in the
building had been among those knocked to the floor in my first
assault. She rolled quickly to her feet, launching herself through the
doorway at me, snarling. I fired a second time as she came at me,
and she jerked to a halt, falling first to her knees, then on her face in
front of me. I chambered my third round.
The undead compatiots of the carriers were on their feet now. I
raised the rifle to my shoulders, taking a careful moment to aim, and
fired, the round penetrating the temple of one of the undead,
spraying brain matter and shards of skull across the corridor. It fell.
Before it even finished twitching, I had sight-acquired and fired on
the fourth of them. It slammed into the far wall, sliding to the floor
slowly, leaving a dark red blood trail behind it on the white paint of
the wall.
I dropped the rifle to the ground, and retrieved the fire axe. Thus far,
I hadn't moved from my original position, but now I strode forward,
pushing the door all the way open and moving out into the hallway.
There was one more undead at my feet. It hadn't been able to pull
itself to its feet after the door had knocked it down. I felt my face
contort in rage as I slammed the axe bit through its skull. I put my
foot on the re-killed head and levered the axe out of it. It came free
with a sickening noise, and I spun around, facing the hall that led to
the main lobby, axe in my hands. I could hear them. More were
coming this way.
The first one rounded the corner a moment later. She might have
been attractive in life. Now, half her lower jaw was missing, and her
tongue hang out the side of her face, twitching as she moaned,
reaching an arm out towards me as she stumbled along. Behind her,
more appeared, of every race and age, with varying wounds and
post-mortem scratches and bruises. I stayed put, watching them
filter into the hall, lip curling in disgust.
A vision of the little girl upstairs flashed in front of my eyes as I
watched them, followed quickly by a vision of myself among their
ranks. I lowered my head, hands gripping the axe so tightly my
knuckles were white. When the first of them had crossed half the
distance to me, I charged.
I locked eyes with the female zombie as I ran at her. If zombie could
have expressions, I imagine she was elated for a moment. Her prey
was actually coming to her, instead of the other way around. Then I
decapitated her with a wild swing of the axe, and she was elated no
more. The axe embedded in the plaster of the wall, but I yanked it
out in a spray of dust and wound it up over my head, bringing it
down into the shoulder of the next zombie in line. It managed an
annoyed sound, and was brought to the ground by the force of the
blow. The next zombie took the axe bit in the face, the stroke
carrying through into the chest of a fourth. I yanked my weapon free
of the gory mess and plunged forward. Hack, slash, kick, shove,
slice--I rained death on all sides as I advanced.
I felt the anger and indignation in me begin to fade as fatigue set in.
I pried the axe from the neck of a foe and kicked the corpse back,
hunching over slightly as I panted for breath.
There were plenty more enemies in front of me. I took the moment to
glance around, and felt my heart sink. I had fought my way into the
lobby, and in the wider space the zombie had circled around me as I
had advanced.
I was surrounded. Behind the throng of zombies in front of me, I
could see the swaying trees outside on the grounds through the
building's wide windows. The front doors were no more than a dozen
feet away.
But I wouldn't be going outside. The circle closed in as vapid, empty
faces moaned, and cold hands reached out towards me. I drew in a
deep, shuddering breath, raising the axe in my hands and pulling
myself to my full height.
This was it, I thought.
I felt fingers grasping at my shoulders from behind.
The last stand.
I swung the heavy fireaxe, felt it bite into the crowd. I would go down
fighting, just as I wanted.
In the end, I reasoned as I felt the axe being torn from my grip and
the teeth sinking into my body, it's not such a bad way to die. To go
down swinging, with honor.
A woman couldn't ask for more.
Z.A. Recht
