LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (102 page)

“There are a lot of
ifs
in that statement.” Lexi looks at the building with doubt burning in her frigid eyes, like frostbite taking over her corneas. I don’t feel as skeptical as her. I think that we’ll be lucky and if not, then there are other vet clinics near that we can investigate. Pretty much every farming community has one. I take a deep breath and look at the building.

The thing that sticks out at me is the fact that there is a dumpster dragged over to the front entrance of the building. I look at the paw prints in the windows that barely peek out over the giant metal bin and I feel remarkably cautious about everything. I don’t doubt that there are supplies in there, but the question is why someone would drag a dumpster in front of a building, let alone a vet clinic. I take a deep breath and look at the dumpster cautiously. There’s nothing about it that needs an overabundance of explanation. After all, isn’t it obvious now? I look at the dumpster and shake my head. Of course something like this would be waiting for us.

“What do you think?” Lexi asks, looking at the same dumpster with me.

The smarter part of me tells me that we should drive away, look for another clinic and put this place behind us. But the risky, terrified, dying version of my mind is screaming at me that there isn’t enough time. For what it’s worth, this is a rural community, more inclined to have morals than the dog-eat-dog world we’ve seen behind us. But that doesn’t mean much when survival is dependent upon keeping strangers away. They might kill us just because we’re not from these parts. I hate this dark world and these wretched quandaries. I look at something like this and I can’t help but feel like we always face these kinds of situations and we always choose wrong. Why haven’t I learned my lesson by now?

Because in the end, I’m an optimist. Maybe I’m a fatal optimist, but so be it. Because as I look at that dumpster, I can’t help but wonder if the people who are fortified in there might know Jason, or might be allies of his. Maybe they know where he’s gone or what’s going on with that house that we left Greg and Charlie at. The might have answers that we need. Heck, they might just be friendly because they haven’t seen another human being in a very long time.

They might be just like us.

Chapter Thirteen

With a twist of her fingers, Lexi kills the truck. The rumbling, rattling, shaking beast comes to a stop and I listen as the engine clinks and clatters its way to silence while we stare at Dr. Dunshire’s Veterinary Clinic, waiting to see if there are any signs of movement. If there is anyone in there, they clearly know that we’re outside. Of course, this is all just speculation from a dumpster. The windows are coated in dust and it all looks abandoned and forgotten, just like the rest of the town. Maybe there were people living inside once, but they’ve moved on, just like we once lived in a beach house. That might just be the power of positive thinking, but I think we might actually have a chance of getting in there.

I look at Lexi, who isn’t confident in the plan at all. She looks at the building and I can see it written on her face that she’s less than excited about the prospect of going inside what could be a stronghold for hostiles. But if Greg and I are to live, some chances are going to have to be taken. I wonder what it is that she would prefer to do right now. Would she rather go to an actual hospital or a pharmacy? Places that have undoubtedly been looted and ransacked, probably infested by bandits and murderers waiting for stupid travelers like ourselves to stumble into their trap before raping us and slicing our throats when they’re done with us. No, we’re doing things my way, because I’m not willing to get us into any more trouble at the moment, and smaller and secluded seem right. I take a deep breath and reach behind my back to feel my Sig.

We don’t have much ammunition and what we do have could be better spent in a dozen different ways other than raiding a vet clinic. It doesn’t matter though. This is happening. I feel the handle of my faithful pistol and know that it needs to be cleaned soon or I’m going to risk it misfiring on me. With all the dust in the air, it’s not good for guns to go this long without being cleaned, or ourselves for that matter.

Throwing open the door to the truck, I dangle my legs over the edge and gently push myself off of the seat, feeling the asphalt beneath me and knowing that I’m home, I’m safe for now. I’m on hard earth. I feel like a sailor who has been on a long voyage. Maybe I’m just delusional.

“Take the keys with you,” I say to Lexi before reaching up and hitting the lock button. The doors all click loudly before I shut my door, listening to the boom of it shutting echo down Main Street, like it’s bouncing off the walls of a canyon. I smile at it. I resist the urge to cup my hands to my mouth and shout something stupid like “Hello” just to hear the walls shouting back to me.

We take our steps with caution, our hands nervously grasping the grips of our guns as we walk toward the doors, looking into the windows for any signs of movement. I can hear the breeze howling in my ears, but I turn my head as I limp toward the front of the store, hoping that I can hear footsteps or the sounds of a hasty person slamming into a shelf as they scuttle into hiding. But I can’t hear a thing. In fact, all I can hear right now is the wind and I look at the dusty windows, seeing only my haggard, terrifying presence reflected back at me. If I were the one hiding inside of that building, I would definitely run for cover. I would think that I am one of those zombies coming to try and eat me.

The glass entryway is completely blocked by the dumpster that is jammed and wedged into the entrance to keep someone from getting to the door. I look at the windows, wondering why they didn’t board them up. The simple answer would be that the glass is extremely thick and it would take a car to crash through them. I quickly weigh the pros and cons of just driving the Dodge through the glass windows and welcoming ourselves in that way. But Lexi puts her hand on the old dumpster that still reeks of rancid filth and starts trying to shove it out of the entryway.

I help her the best that I can, but unsurprisingly, I’m useless to her. I grip my stomach with one hand and push with my free hand, trying to use my arm muscles and my shoulders so I can avoid using my back and tightening my abs. Leaning against the dumpster, I push with my legs, and with a loud rusty moan the old castors break loose and we easily push it out of the way of the entryway, rolling it to the side. I’m surprised at how easily it moves once it’s free. The wheel—a grand invention indeed.

Something is wrong. Nausea surges through me as a crippling pain begins shooting through my entire body like lightning bolts. Gripping my knotting stomach, my whole body tenses and I freeze, trying my hardest to remain in control, to keep my heart steady. I take deep, slow breaths. As I suck in the air, I hold it, charging it with all the pain and hurt before exhaling it out into the world around me. I can feel Lexi’s eyes on me as I feel the pain crackling in my arms, chest, and back. My abdomen is killing me and it’s definitely reminding me of how fragile I am. I hate this.

“You’re not okay to do this,” Lexi tells me, like she’s a doctor.

“I’m fine,” I tell her with resolve steeled in my throat, coating my tongue. I look at her with the fire of determination in my eyes, but she’s too concerned for me to see it. I watch her shaking her head at me, looking at me like I’m a little kid trying to do an adult’s job and I’ve just ruined everything. That’s fine. I don’t need her approval. “Come on,” I say to her, standing up straight before I turn toward the entryway, trying to hide my watery eyes.

To my utmost surprise, the front door is unlocked, which leads me to assume that this place was abandoned in the madness. Whoever owned this place, probably Dr. Dunshire, must have left in a hurry, wanting to get home to his family as the world was crumbling around him. That, or whoever was the last person inside forgot to lock the doors. I look at the door as I pull it open, using my foot to hold the door agape while Lexi enters first. If someone was camping out in here, they weren’t the owners and definitely didn’t have the keys to this place. Looking at the bolt lock, I wonder why they didn’t just bolt it from the inside. Why jam a dumpster in the entryway? It seems kind of pointless.

Looking out to the street, I imagine what the walking horde of the shuffling cannibals might have been like here. Maybe they didn’t want them crashing through the front door and kept them at distance by putting the dumpster in the way. After all, it comes maybe five feet high, definitely high enough to cover most of the door. Even if they climbed on top, it wouldn’t do them any good.

Inside the clinic, I look around and see exactly what I expected. There’s a wall that’s entirely dedicated to products that customers might buy for their pets. I look at the empty shelves, the ancient, stale pieces of dog food scattered across the floor and the floating trees of dog toys that no one bothered to take when the end came. All of the food and dog treats are gone, but other than that, the place seems relatively the same. I look at the receptionist desk, feeling a wave of nostalgia hit me as I follow Lexi behind the counter. Pushing open the door leading into the back, I grab a stack of Post-It notes off the desk and wedge open the door, casting a sliver of what grim light is available down the hallway to give us some light. There’s not much available, but I’m grateful for what there is.

I lead the way into the hallway, knowing pretty much what every room is before I enter it. Turning and pushing open a swinging door, I look into the break room that looks like it was cleaned out pretty heavily. There are a few packets of sugar on the floor and a peppershaker. I grab both of them and stuff them in my pockets. Who knows when we’re going to need something like that? Lexi throws open all of the cabinets, looking at the supplies that they have for the front desk and the receptionist. There are lots of reams of paper and boxes of pens, but that’s about it. I feel the frustration wafting off of Lexi as she calmly closes the cupboards, trying to hide her anger and frustration from me. I know that she thinks this is a mistake, but I’m going to prove to her that it isn’t. I walk back out of the room, making my way to the next doors.

Twisting the handle, I push open the door and walk into the exam room and look at the table in the center of the room. There are lots of great things in here that I know only too well, but aren't of any immediate use to Greg and me. I hand Lexi a box of gloves to stuff in her pack and search the cabinets for anything else. I see lots of cotton swabs, cleaning tips, and other basic supplies that would be great, but we already have all those things, what I really need is not in this room. We need to keep looking.

I follow Lexi to the next room, as she takes the cotton swabs and Q-Tips that I had ignored before stuffing them in her bag with another box of gloves. For whatever lies ahead, we’re going to be able to clean out our injuries, that much is certain. I can tell that Lexi thinks that this is a huge waste of time and I still don’t blame her. As of right now, I haven’t exactly wowed her with our findings.

Room after room, we loot every exam room that we go into. This place has four of them and with each door thrown open, casting light inside the gloomy hallway, it almost feels like this place is inviting, welcoming. I wonder who was here last. There are plenty of general supplies here that are still useful, but we are limited on how much we can carry and need to save room for the essentials. I should have brought my pack, but I’m afraid that if it got too full, it would drop me just trying to put the thing on.

I look at the door at the end of the hallway and I know that there has to be an operating room in here, even if we have yet to find it. I walk toward the door and open it, looking out on an empty courtyard that is now just a patch of dirt. Chain link fencing borders each side of the pathway through the courtyard to another building. There has to be an operating room and if it isn’t in this building, then it has to be in the other one. Every reputable vet has an OR stocked with everything from anesthesia to antibiotics. If not, then they’ll at least have a bone saw in there and the supplies we’ll need to amputate Greg’s leg. I cringe at the thought of it.

“What is this place?” Lexi asks me, looking at the huge fence that no doubt leads to another street where patients would be able to drop off their larger animals like horses, pigs, or goats. The large courtyard is where they would kennel their most common patients too, the dogs.

“It would have been a yard,” I tell her, walking up to the fence and putting my fingers through the links. There would have been dogs back here in their kennels, wagging their tails, barking to their other guests, or crying as they longed for their owners. This is where they would take the dogs for walks to observe them or let them stretch their legs so that they weren’t locked in a cramp kennel for too long. I used to love the yard at the vet clinic I’d interned at. “It’s where they’d make sure the pets had good mobility and could get around without limping or hurting too much.”

“This place gives me the creeps,” Lexi says, dismissing everything about it. I suppose that it makes sense that people would have the same sort of aversion to a veterinary clinic as they would to a hospital. The same principles apply—or applied—at these places. The sick, ill, injured, and dying were all brought here. I don’t hold that against her.

The rows of chain link pens draw my attention and I head over to the kennels that are stacked on top of each other like large metal crates with tiny, caged windows that the dogs could peer out of. I look at most of the kennels that have the doors open. Some of the thin, metal bars of the cages are bent and twisted, like something was ripping open the cages. I don’t like the look of it. I don’t like the feeling that’s flashing in the back of my mind, like a storm brewing, filling my mind with haunting thoughts of zombies feeding upon the flesh of helpless puppies.

I look at the pens and see that the fences have been torn open, metal wires sticking out and twisted in horrific shapes. I take a step toward them and look down through the film of dust that covers the lawn that is as hard and unyielding as concrete. There’s a dark, rusty stain on the parched earth that has collected dust over the passing months, but I can see it. It’s brown and black, the kind of stain that would be left behind by blood. Looking at the torn open fencing of the cages, I see that there’s the same kinds of stains on the tips of some of the wires. The inhabitants of these kennels were torn out of these cages and I can easily guess by whom.

I can picture the zombie creatures making their way into the veterinary clinic and I can see them going from operating room to operating room. How quickly they turned is now brought to question in the depths of my mind. Was this an immediate sort of thing? Were the zombies coming up before the collapse of the government? Whatever was happening, the poor creatures in these kennels and these pens were victims to the monsters that must have marauded through this place, eating and killing everything they came across. I shudder at the thought, but fail to force it from my mind.

The shudder ripples through my body, nearly crippling me as I grip my stomach and feel like everything inside of me is about to come roaring up through my esophagus. Bending over and putting my hand on my knee for support, I look at the stain on the ground, breathing as slowly as I can to keep myself from freaking out. I have to keep my distance emotionally. I can’t just let this sort of thing get to me. I’m part of this world now. I have to be stronger. I have to be harder. The sight of some stains and carnage can’t send me over the edge. Heck, they were just animals and in the end, people are always vastly more important. I take another breath, slowly exhaling.

“You all right?” Lexi asks me, her voice seemingly devoid of any genuine concern. She’s grown stronger and harder already.

“Fine,” I say as quickly as I can, trying to push away any doubts that she might have about me. I realize how vain and pointless it is the moment the word escapes my lips, but it’s out there and I can’t just call it back.