Empty Bodies (Book 2): Adaptation (5 page)

He started to turn around, and he heard someone walking down the hall from the direction he’d come, mumbling as they moved swiftly. David stepped back and stood with his back against the elevator, with the frame of the door hopefully hiding just enough of him to where he wouldn’t be noticed.

A woman appeared from around the corner, heading toward the double doors. She had a clipboard in her hand and was shaking her head as she walked, still grumping indistinctly to herself. David watched her as she pushed hard through the double doors, hearing them crash into the walls as they swung in.

At the end of another short hallway, the woman headed around a corner, disappearing from David’s vision.

He stepped away from the elevators and followed.

***

The hallway was only dimly lit. A sign on the double doors read “Employees Only” written on notebook paper with a black marker and then taped on with Scotch tape. He ignored it, curious to know where the frustrated woman was headed.

At the end of the room, he turned the same direction the woman had, and walked down the lengthy corridor.

On either side of him, there were closed doors. It looked very similar to the area he was staying in, only this part of the hospital was dark and cold. He opened a couple of the doors and noticed that they were simply abandoned hospital exam rooms. The two rooms looked identical, both containing the uncomfortable, table-like bed you’d sit on if you were a patient, the doctor’s small rolling stool, a sink, and a small cabinet.

At the end of the hall, he could only go left, which put him in another hallway. This time, though, he could see a glowing light at the end.

David crept down the hall, and as he made it near the end, he heard the woman scratching notes onto the clipboard while still mumbling to herself. He stood with his back against a door that was slightly ajar, and listened.

“They send me here to deal with this shit, but they don’t trust me to go outside,” the woman said, then sighed. “Such bullshit.”

She continued to mumble to herself, and David stepped out of the doorway and peeked around the corner.

The woman was standing there, as he’d imagined her, looking through a window and jotting down notes on the clipboard.

David narrowed his eyes when he heard something else. A faint sound was coming from near the woman, though he couldn’t make out what exactly it was.

The woman sighed again and then reached up and hung the clipboard on the wall in front of her.

David backed up around the corner, ducking into an open room just as the woman stepped away from the window and headed toward him.

From inside the room, he watched her walk away through the crack in the door.

David counted to twenty, then poked his head out of the room.

He looked out and saw that no one was coming or going, so he stepped out into the hallway. The noise he heard earlier became more distinct. Along with a low hiss, there was a repeated clatter.

His bare feet moved gently over the floor as he headed around the corner toward the lit room the woman had been standing in front of.

And as he approached the window and looked inside the room, his eyes went wide.

“Holy shit.”

All he could do was stare at it. The room appeared to have once been a gift shop, its contents pulled out so that the room was empty except for a bed, a small table, and some sort of machine. The thing was strapped into the bed, chomping its jaws and trying to break loose as it spit and hissed into the air. There were cords coming off of its body, hooked up to various machines. David looked at the clipboard, which had various numbers scribbled next to acronyms and initials that he couldn’t translate.

He stood there watching the Empty squirm and try to break free for what seemed like an hour.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

David jumped when the man’s deep voice came from his left, and his dark shadow loomed in the bits of light. As a reflex, he reached to his pants for a knife that wasn’t there. If it had been, the man in the shadow would have been dead.

Lawrence approached David, smiling and looking into the room.

“Her name is Joanne. She was a patient here when everything happened.”

David sighed and narrowed his eyes at the man. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry.”

David shook his head, then glared at it. “Why is it here?”

Lawrence looked over at David. “See, we got lucky. This woman was actually a very bad person. She was a criminal, a drug dealer. She had OD’d, and they had her strapped in so that, when she came to, she wouldn’t be able to escape and the police could arrest her. There was so much going on up here after everyone fell, that she was basically forgotten about. So, she remained unscathed. Once the rest of the area had been cleared out, Kristen—one of the nurses who is still here now—left her in her room and shut the door. When I got here, they wanted me to go in and kill her, but I figured we oughta keep her alive. Study her. So, we cleared out this gift shop and put her in here so we could look in on her through this large window.”

“Shit,” David said. “Have you found out anything?”

Lawrence raised his eyebrows and put his hands in his pockets, bouncing up and down on his toes. “Unfortunately, I’m not a doctor. While I have studied to become one, there are only so many things I know to do. The only thing we know for certain is that it’s not viral. We ran some tests, but couldn’t find any kind of strain. Other than that, we honestly don’t know much.”

David rubbed the stubble on his chin, and the creature made eye contact with him. He wondered if it actually knew that he was standing there, or what he even was. He’d assumed that whatever had caused everyone to change was viral, and was perplexed to find otherwise.
 

In regards to Lawrence, David was starting to see
some
value in him. The man was learning things about these new beings, and David decided it best to lay low and play along, at least for the time being. As hungry as he was to be in control and to obtain power in the new world, he knew that he first needed to survive, and blending in and understanding these monsters would go a long way toward reaching that goal.

“You can’t tell the others that you were here. Not everyone knows Joanne is here.”

David nodded.

“Can I walk you back to your room?” Lawrence asked.

“Sure,” David said, and the two men stepped away from the glass as the thing’s snarls faded behind them.

CHAPTER FIVE

Will

 
“Thank you for inviting us in here, Donny.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Will looked over at Gabriel, who was standing at the other end of the room, and then back to the shop owner. “And sorry my guy went all cowboy on you.”

Donny, the store owner, spit his dip into a plastic bottle, then said, “It’s okay. The way things been goin’, made folks a wee bit crazy. I understand. Hard to trust others.”

Donny had taken the group into a cellar located under the shop. There was a back room with a door in the floor that led down to it. Will was now sitting next to him with his back against a wall.

“He’s got a wife and kid in D.C. he’s had trouble getting in contact with. He’s pretty high strung, as you might imagine. You got any kids? A wife?”

Donny removed his cap and wiped his brow. He had his elbows over his knees, and his gut protruded further over his waistband because of how he was sitting. He put his cap back on, and then looked over toward Dylan. The boy had finished eating his portion of the canned soup that Donny had shared with the group, and was now sitting with Holly playing a game of Connect Four that Donny had had for sale in the shop above them.

“Cathy, my wife, she died four years ago. The cancer got her. And my daughter, she was fourteen. She got caught up in all this shit a few days back.” He began to cry now. “I left her in the double-wide we were livin’ in. She attacked me, but I couldn’t bring myself to put ‘er down. She’s still locked up in there now, I ‘magine.”

Will shook his head and put his hand over his eyes. “I’m so sorry, man.”

“Yeah.” It’s the only response that Donny could muster up. He changed the subject. “So, y’all headed to Knoxville?”

Will nodded. “Hoping to find my mom and dad there.”

“Then what?”

Will gave him a confused look.

“Where you gonna go after that?” Donny asked.

Will sighed and looked over to Gabriel again. “I imagine we’ll head toward the East Coast. See if maybe we can’t get Gabriel and Dylan back to their families.”

Donny shook his head. “That’s an awful long way to go.”

Will shrugged. “Not quite sure where else we’d go. Hoping maybe they’ve set up some kind of refuge out there. Or, at least, maybe that they have one planned. What about you? You just gonna stay here?”

“Don’t really see any reason to leave. I’ve got protection, shelter, food to last me a while. It’s pretty safe here.”

“As long as you lock the door,” Will said with a smile, and both men laughed.

The others in the room were talking amongst each other, while eating canned food that Donny had given them. He had a large supply of it down in this cellar, along with lots of bottled water and plenty of weapons that he collected through the pawn shop. Will wondered if Donny was one of those survivalist types that was always Doomsday prepping, but he didn’t bother asking. He was just thankful that the man had invited him and the group inside.

Gabriel stood up with his empty can and made his way over to where Will and Donny were sitting. He had a sour look on his face, but he reached his hand out to Donny, who took it and shook.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, “for bringing us in. And, I’m sorry.”

Donny smiled, letting go of Gabriel’s hand. “It’s alright. I pointed my gun first. Besides, your boy here filled me in on some of the shit ya got goin’ on. Sorry to hear ‘bout all that.”

 
Gabriel acknowledged the shop owner’s sentiment with a nod, then turned back around and walked over to where Holly and Dylan were sitting.

Will yawned and stretched his arms up over his head.

“You look exhausted,” Donny said.

“Just a little.”

“Get ya some rest.”

“Thank you for all this.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, seriously, get ya some sleep, friend.”

Will curled up on the floor where he sat. Compared to being stuffed in the car with five other people, the hard floor of the cellar with the single, thin blanket under him felt like a suite at the Hilton. And within minutes, he was fast asleep.

***

Gabriel

When Gabriel awoke the next morning, he noticed that Dylan was no longer beside him. The boy had fallen asleep right next to him, but now he was gone.

Gabriel stood up and scanned the room. Everyone else was still fast asleep on the cellar floor, except Donny, who had a small cot that he slept in. The shop owner had offered to sleep on the floor so that Dylan or one of the women could use the cot, but each had respectfully declined, understanding that they were in his space. Stepping over bodies, Gabriel headed for the steps that led up into the shop.

Once he reached the top, he looked out through the open door that led out into the main part of the shop. Empty cardboard boxes and shelves filled with pawned items that people hadn’t picked up yet—and likely, never would—cluttered the storage room, but there was just enough space left around the door to walk in and out of it. Through the open door, Gabriel could see that Dylan was sitting near the front of the store, looking out into the world through the large glass window. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, so only a little bit of light was shining into the building. Gabriel stepped into the main part of the shop and slowly made his way toward Dylan, rubbing his eyes as he tried to wake up.

Dylan kept his eyes focused on the outside world as Gabriel approached him. He was yawning, and his bare feet slapped against the tiled floor as he came up to
the boy. In addition, he was still wearing the pair of track pants he lifted from the sporting goods store, and they swished as they rubbed together with each step he took. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and could smell the foul odor coming off of his unbathed body, an odor that he hadn’t yet gotten used to. There was no doubt Dylan both heard and smelled him, but nevertheless, his eyes remained fixed on the parking lot.