Bad Blood (Battle of the Undead Book 1) (6 page)

We ran to the hospital. On the way, we encountered hardly anyone, alive or dead. Where were they all? When we arrived at the hospital car park, I understood. Zombies
were pack animals. A massive crowd of them were crammed in and around the main building like they were waiting for a concert to start, all barely paying attention to their surroundings and seemingly swaying against the force of gravity. The other thing was the smell. When watching horror films filled with shuffling zombies, the horror came from their ghastly looks—the reminder that death has a tight grip on us all, well, most of us. But what the filmmakers should focus on—if they could—was the acidic rank odor zombies gave off. They had been dead barely twenty-four hours. It took a normal human body at least thirty-six hours to really start to smell, and that was with a vampire’s heightened senses. These guys smelled like they’d been out in the sun for three weeks covered in rubbish and besieged by wily maggots. They were mostly intact, though. Maybe this hospital had been Zombie Ground Zero. Most had turned so quickly their comrades hadn’t had time to feed.

“Maybe we should try a less populated target.” Nicholas twitched his nose and turned away from me to dry retch.

“Maybe you should grow a pair.”

“Maybe you should act like a lady.”
He now had his hands on his hips, squaring up for yet another argument.

“Acting like a lady isn’t going to help now, is it? What do you want me to do? Drop my handkerchief in front of the zombies and watch them fight one another to scoop it up for me? Moron!”

“Always to the ‘nth degree with you, isn’t it?”

“Shut up. Look, the doors are holding, and they’re outside, not inside, which means there must be some people left in there alive to have barricaded this place so tight.”

“Or maybe there are just more zombies in there.”

“Well, there’s definitely a blood bank in there, and that’ll help matters no end!”

Nicholas looked thoughtful then nodded. He of course didn’t want to actually say aloud that I’d had a good idea. “So, how do we get past them?”

I assumed it was a rhetorical question
, so I started down to the car park entrance, where most of the zombies were mobbing. I opened the outer door as quietly as possible.

“Ladies first,” Nicholas whispered in my ear.

“I thought we’d agreed I wasn’t a lady.” And with that, I shoved him as hard as I could into the throbbing throng of zombies.

Chapter Four

Nicholas fell back into the zombie mass with such force he turned them into an undead domino line. Half-gnawed limbs flailed in the air, and annoyed grunts echoed through the hospital car park. If he’d fallen into their waiting arms, Nicholas would have been killed instantly, but instead, I’d pushed him into their backs. With more speed than I thought he could muster, he was leaping back over the fence and bowling straight into me. I jumped forward out of his way and onto the back of one of the flailing zombies. I then used their fallen bodies as stepping stones to quickly reach the hospital door. Narrowing his eyes at me, Nicholas followed suit.

“You might have let me in on your plan!” He bumped my shoulder as he strode past me into the hospital. I spun round and slugged him. He lost his balance like a drunk on a trampoline then threw his hands in the air.
“Will you stop hitting me?”

I raised an eyebrow. “No.”
Honesty is always the best policy.

Nicholas caught me by the elbow and turned me round to face him.
“Look, I’m not sure if you’ve figured this out yet, but we are eye-deep in the mire right now.”

“I’m no fool, Nicholas.”

“Well, that’s not how you’re acting, Brianna.”

I could feel another ball of violence beginning to roll around in my belly.

He sighed. “Britannia. I am acutely aware that you hate me. I am equally aware that our survival”—he motioned around us—“is dependent on you not being such a bitch.”

I wanted to smack him, but he had a point. My bitterness needed to take a back step
…for now. I shifted uncomfortably beneath his touch, and he took his hand off my elbow.

“Okay. But I’m not giving up. I’m just momentarily giving in, on this one point.”

Our eyes met, and a strange pull tugged at my insides. He sighed and smiled, not a patronizing “I’ve won” smile, but a genuine look of relief.

“Thank you, Britannia. So, next time, you’ll tell me your plan before throwing me to the zombies?”

“Of course I will.” I didn’t dare tell him now that I really hadn’t had much of a plan. Well, not until I’d seen them all crumple like biscuits dunked in hot tea.

I let him take the lead. Who knew how many of them would be randomly roaming in the building? Better they attack him first.

In the past, I’d avoided hospitals where possible. Vampires don’t get ill, and feeding on sick people appeals only to the more deranged of our kind. The machinery and technology was mind boggling, and all it did was serve to remind us just how fragile humans really were. The smell of acidic chemicals mixed with living decay was never a pleasant cocktail for someone with enhanced senses. I’d been to only one hospital in my long years, back in the Second World War. I’d been brought in after a rather uneven fight with a land mine. No one had guessed what I was. I had healed so quick I was up and out before they’d filled in the Jane Doe paperwork. I still heard the other soldiers screaming, though. Langdon had been a soldier, so I had always done my duty in times of war—for Queen/King and country, for the memory of a love lost, and a life torn away before it had been made.

We walked the hospital halls pulling down useless barricades and killing lone, wandering zombies
. I’d seen neater battlefields. It would appear that only a few hours had elapsed between normalcy and undead havoc.

“Someone must still be alive here. They made these.”
Nicholas pulled at another flimsy barrier.

“Want to point out anything else that’s obvious?”
I pushed past him to have a look at a floor plan mounted on the wall. The blood bank was two floors down next to the morgue. I guess the hospital’s architect hadn’t envisioned Zombie Palazzo, or that the humans’ reluctant protectors would need as much blood as they could get their grubby little hands on.

“Blood first, then people.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for Nicholas to object, but he didn’t. Instead, he bowed and swept a hand to indicate I should lead. A pang of nostalgia stabbed at me, followed by a wave of renewed worry. Philippe. Nicholas wasn’t being chivalrous, he was being calculating.

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it
. Age before beauty.” I made my bow lower and more overtly patronizing.

“Please, what sort of gentleman would I be to push in front of such a
”—he looked me up and down—“colorful lady?”

I shook off the urge to knee him in the nuts and sauntered forward.

I fully expected the lower levels of the hospital to be overrun with the undead, but the corridors were eerily quiet. I tried to keep myself a foot or so in front of Nicholas. It wasn’t that I didn’t want my back to him. I hated to admit it, but I trusted him not to attack me first. It was more that I didn’t want him staring at my ass as I walked. I noticed his sly looks at me. Funny, this disaster was probably the most time we’d spent together since he turned me some 450 years ago. After I’d left him, I’d made a definitive decision to annoy him from a distance. Who’d have guessed the repercussions of a zombie invasion could have such an unsettling effect on a vampire’s social life?

“Here.”
He pointed at another stairwell, and we moved further down into the dark bowels of the hospital. We gingerly passed the morgue—if anything nasty went down at this hospital, this would have been the flesh-munching epicenter. But it was still quiet. I poked my head through the door to find bodies on their trays, tags dangling from their blue big toes. Everything was where it should be—although, my knowledge of morgues came solely from the myriad of cop shows I’d watched on TV. I probably shouldn’t have trusted
Law and Order
to be completely accurate, but it was my only frame of reference.

“So the dead didn’t actually rise?” Nicholas edged past me and threw a nearby white cotton sheet aside to reveal a half-autopsied corpse beneath.

“It would appear not.”

I poked the body’s leg. It was gelid and firm, yet its hairs tickled my skin. Both Nicholas and I had seen plenty of dead bodies in our time. We’d both been to war—although
, I doubted we had fought on the same side.

“So the virus can only affect the living?” He bent and pulled the cotton sheet back over the corpse, tucking it in like he was putting it to bed.

“Wow, you’re just king of the obvious today.” I couldn’t help my eyes tracing the outline of the hollowed-out chest below. The smell of chemicals mingled with day-old exposed flesh made me want to gag, but I choked it down.

“Then why are vampires affected? Vampires are children of magic—necromancy of a sort. Clearly, the zombies were born of science and do not retain their former personalities or intelligence.”
He turned to me and raised his eyebrow. It was a perfect arch. I hate well-groomed men.

“What are you getting at, Nicholas?”

“We are still very much dead. I would have thought that, after all this time, this fact would be quite obvious to you.”

“Are you looking to get your ass kicked in a morgue?” I asked.

“Not at all, I’m just spit-balling some ideas.”

“Well, spit them somewhere else.”
I turned and walked out toward the much more inviting sign that read “Blood Bank.”

The image in my head involved a large vault of some kind with a massive wheel latch and a complicated locking system. In reality, the
blood bank was pretty much a cold metal echo of the morgue. Small drawers were stacked floor to ceiling, all filled with dark red plastic baggies.

“I thought there’d be more security,” Nicholas mumbled as he walked in behind me.

“It’s not an actual bank, moron.” I inwardly chided myself for my own childish notion of a vault. I guess people’s perceptions of security altered in comparison with the preciousness of their stash—blood was nowhere near as important to humans as their paper money was. Even though I had been human, I’d never really understood that. Although, I did have a very real appreciation of the things that money could buy—designer handbags, shoes, weapons…

I hadn’t
realized how hungry I was until I had one of those juicy plastic bags in my hand. I couldn’t smell the blood, but the sight and feel of it made my fangs ache. I lifted it to my mouth and was about tear it open when Nicholas put a firm hand on shoulder.

“We can’t carry all of it. Let’s drink some and take the rest, Mr. Controlling,” I snapped.

“No, Brianna. It’s bad blood.”

“What?” I dropped the bag to the floor.

“Can’t you smell it?”

Now, I could be honest and say that my senses weren’t as attuned as his, or I could lie and say
…what? It was a test? I wanted it anyway? Crap.

“No, I can’t smell
anything,” I admitted.

“It’s infected blood.” He picked up the bag from the floor and inhaled
its odor. “If you had drunk this, you would have become one of them.” He threw the bag at the metal drawers. As it exploded, a tang of something strange hit my nostrils.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I smelled it,” he replied with a shrug.

Nicholas was a liar. He had always been a liar. A screaming voice in my brain told me not to trust him. But a strangled whisper deep behind it reminded me he’d just saved me from being infected.

“Well, the blood bank is a bust. It would appear it has already been looted.” Nicholas shrugged.

The smell from the burst blood splatter was starting to tickle my gag reflex, so I pushed past him and out of the
morgue.

I started making my way through the corridors, corridors that suddenly and inexplicably went dark.

Chapter Five

Darkness doesn’t bother vampires. Our vision is actually better at night. But the abruptness had my hand twitching over my scythes.

“The power
’s out.” Nicholas swept by me.

“No sh—”
Hearing a noise behind us, I turned.

“We need to move,” Nicholas said.

He reached for my hand, but I pushed him aside and thundered up the hallway. We ran to the stairwell. The stairs were loaded with zombies, but they were slow and we were fast. Nicholas shouldered through them like a bowling ball, throwing groaning undead over the banisters and clearing a path up to the next floor.

There, we found yet another broken blockade. We stopped. The power was on and still going strong on this floor.

“Someone is still here,” Nicholas said as he found another wall map. “It would appear this is the children’s ward.”

“Makes sense that this one has the most security.”

I saw a shadow scurry from one room to another. I moved to intercept it and found a little girl. She had wedged herself underneath a table.