Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End (9 page)

23

The lobby is shockingly quiet, save for the moaning coming from the ER and echoing screams down the corridors. Luke takes the stairs up to the fourth floor, hoping that he isn’t too late.

Susan is nowhere in sight as he enters the unit, more moaning greets him along with the shuffling of feet. He calls out, “Suzy!” in desperation.

The sliding strides pause and start drawing closer the more he calls out to his daughter. At the nurse’s station he waits for a sign. He’s exhausted, but knows he has to keep going for the boys.

A rustle from behind the desk has him peering over the top. He poises his axe to defend himself from whatever may lurk. “What are you doing here?” a familiar voice inquires, setting him immediately at ease.

“Oh, Suzy!” Luke exhales. “I got the boys. They’re waiting. Let’s go.”

“You brought the boys?” she asks astonished. “Where’s Mrs. K?”

“Dead. Same as the rest of the city,” he tells her as the slow scraping feet draw even closer. “That’s why we’re leaving.”

“I can’t leave!” she counters. “I have patients. Josh is very sick now, too!”

“He was bit. He’ll be one of those things soon, if he isn’t already.”

“’Those things’?” she questions.

“Zombies,” her father tells her so matter-of-factly that it makes her laugh.

“Have you been drinking?” she asks. “What am I saying? Of course you have.”

“How do you explain the people you’re hiding from?”

“With science, not science fiction,” she retorts. The rough scrapes of hospital slippers dragging along the floor are almost upon them. “Where do you propose to take us anyway?”

“Out of the city. Someplace safe.”

“This is an epidemic, it’s everywhere.”

“I have the police organizing an evacuation to the reserve depot in Waterloo…”

“Waterloo will be just as bad as… Where exactly are my kids?”

“In the old bat’s car, waiting outside,” he tells her.

“You left them outside?” she asks, horrified.

“They have a blanket, and my…gun,” Luke realizes neither item will ease her maternal fears. “They’re sleeping and well hidden. Can we go?”

“Josh,” she insists, gesturing towards the treatment room she had left him resting in.

The sliding footsteps increase in speed as they zero in on the talking pair. Luke pulls his daughter safely away just in time as a woman in hospital pajamas lunges from the shadows.

“Ms. Jackson!” Susan says with alarm after watching the person in her care fall hard to the floor. She goes to help her back to her room but her father has a tight grip on her arm, keeping her from aiding her patient.

“Hold on, Suzy,” he tells her, keeping the axe between the woman on the floor and himself. The patient rises, reaching for them with a moan. Luke holds her at bay with the head of the axe against her chest. “Don’t you find her behavior a bit odd?”

Ms. Jackson has been a patient off and on for the past year, bouts with Dementia often result in her splitting her time between Intensive Care and the psych ward. She has never been shy about complaining or asking for things, treating her visits like trips to the spa. Now she is strangely quiet as she claws the air.

“I’m just going to put her in a room,” Luke says carefully pushing the lady on the end of his axe towards an open suite. “We have to get to the boys.”

“All right,” Susan surrenders. She’s concerned about Killian and Hippocrates, but also her husband. “I’ll get Josh.”

Just as Luke is shoving Ms. Jackson into a dark room for safe keeping he has to shout for Susan to wait. The patient is roughly hurled into the shadows so he can grab the handle and close the door. Luke races to his daughter as she opens the treatment room where her husband rests.

“Josh,” she says tenderly, finding him standing near the door.

Luke arrives as Doctor Newton takes a step towards his wife. He keeps Susan from going to him. “Dad, I have to check his wound before we go.”

“I told you, he was bitten. He’s one of them now,” the father explains. He holds Josh back with the axe as he had Ms. Jackson. The man he hates reaches for them making pitiful sounds.

Susan tries to push past her father but he won’t let her through. She shoves against him which causes the axe to slip. Josh falls forward onto his wife. The embrace is anything but tender, Josh grips her tightly. Susan screams, all her father’s talk about ‘the bite’ makes sense all of a sudden as the man she married brings his head to her body.

The doctor’s grip releases suddenly. Opening her tightly closed eyes, Susan looks at the axe buried in her husband’s face. Horrified she recoils out from under him. Her father has just killed her husband before her eyes, she isn’t certain who exactly the monster is.

Luke pulls his axe free from Josh’s skull, he has never liked him, never actually gave him much of a chance, but he feels bad for Susan. He turns to see his daughter backing away until she reaches the nurse’s station desk. Once distance is put between her and her father, she collapses to the floor.

“Suzy, I’m sorry I had to do that…”

“No you’re not!” she accuses. “You hated him.”

“That’s true,” he agrees. “But, I didn’t want this. I would never hurt him unless I had to. We have to go. Now.”

A thump from one of the open rooms is followed by an ungodly screeching. The man Luke had helped subdue appears in the doorway. He has wiggled out of his straps save for one ankle, the feat has left his hands skinned down to his wrists and his one free leg without a foot. The man so eagerly wanted off the bed he used enough torque to pop his foot off at the joint and tear the attached skin. Still tethered to the bed he drags it behind him. The sight is enough for Susan to offer her father her hand so he can lead her out of this nightmare and to her boys.

####

“Santa, Baby!” Rocky Roadkill says on the stairwell when a man rears back to strike her with an axe. “Relax.”

“You’re alive,” the man in the blood stained Santa suit observes with relief.

“Yeah,” Rocky confirms. “Just looking for my friends.”

Santa continues down the stairs with a woman in scrubs in tow. “Good luck with that. If you find them, get out of the city. There’s a reserve station in Waterloo, that’s where we’re heading.”

She doesn’t say thank you, Waterloo is where she was intending to go to anyway. Looking into the hallways and units of a few more floors, all she finds are the same odd people, slow moving folks, many with grizzly wounds. She heads back down to the lobby.

Santa is long gone. She makes for the reception desk and finds the phone. On the black device are buttons to reach the various sections of the hospital, also there are instructions on how to use the intercom. She follows the directions that had been affixed to the phone long ago to aid new employees.

After a tone, she delivers her message. “Will Man’s Ruin please come to the reception area? Man’s Ruin to the reception area. Your ride is leaving.”

She sits back on a swivel chair and waits.

####

The chilly night air cuts through Susan’s scrubs, she shivers as she follows her father across the street.

“Passenger side is open,” he tells her while keeping his eye on a small group heading their way. “You’ll have to unlock my door.”

Luke enters the alley. The dome light illuminates the inside of the Caddy for a moment, in that instant he can see the boys are still asleep in the back. His door lock is lifted, the second he is in the driver’s seat he turns the key.

“Mommy?” Hippo dreamily asks from the back. “Where’s daddy?”

24

A sudden commotion raises Rocky to her feet as a set of doors are barged open. Shuffling feet come her way, along with their owners moaning and groaning. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”

Cherry Bomb has Jan Slaughter’s arm draped over her shoulder to take the weight off of her injured ankle. “Rocky! Thank god!”

The team Captain rolls the chair she had been sitting in to the pair for the downed player to rest in. “Yeah, he gets all the credit. Where’re my other bitches?”

“Dead,” Cherry Bomb says sadly.

Rocky can’t believe it, she shakes her head. Silence from her teammates only confirms the truth.

“It was horrible,” Jan Slaughter recounts from the chair. “People biting each other. Eating…”

“We got away,” Cherry states the obvious. “Ducked down that hall and hid. Sadie was with us but she just… she was bit and it wouldn’t stop bleeding…”

“She died. Then we heard you,” Jan finishes. “Penelope was taken down over there,” she points to a pool of blood on the floor, puzzled that she isn’t seeing her friend’s body, or any bodies for that matter. “Where’d she go?”

“KB was talking crazy on the bus. Said that she heard on the radio that these things are dead, like they’re getting’ up and trying to eat the living,” Rocky tells her girls.

“Zombies?” Cherry clarifies. If not for what she has seen, the unimaginable horrors, she’d say it was impossible.

“Get on the bus,” Rocky instructs her team. They comply, heading towards the exit. Rocky lingers behind debating something. She scratches her head with her tire iron.

“Rock, ya coming?” Cherry Bomb calls at the door, about to push it open with Jan hanging from her shoulder once more.

“I’ll catch up,” their leader simply says as she heads for the door they had emerged from. A firm believer in never leaving a man behind, she sure as hell won’t leave one of her girls to turn into a monster.

25

Watching from the bus, Killer B has just seen the scary Santa again with a woman in tow, now she can see two of her teammates through the glass doors. She pushes the lever to open the bus door for them in preparation. Before she can wonder where the rest of the team is, or Rocky, slow moving figures converge on the women walking together like conjoined twins.

Cherry Bomb keeps herself between the alleged zombies and Jan Slaughter. Killer B yells for them to run to her, but it’s too late. The dead bar the way, and she has only drawn attention to herself. As Cherry and Jan fight a losing battle, the dead bringing up the rear of the swarm turn to where the blonde woman screams.

Rocky has ‘Ugly’, Killer B looks around for a weapon to help her friends but comes up with nothing. Cherry and Jan, having only one free arm each to defend themselves, are overtaken. The ladies are on the ground, all Killer B can do is shut the door before the dead reach her. All she can do is watch her friends get ripped apart and eaten. All she can do is cry.

####

Rocky finds Sadie Sadist in a closet down the hall her teammates came from, dead on her feet. She stands in the dark, swaying slightly. She turns to her captain who remains in the doorway.

The sight horrifies Rocky, the blocker wasn’t just bitten, her arm has been torn down to the bone. She can hear Sadie’s new teammates not far away, wandering distant halls with their pitiful wails. She knows she must do this fast.

The dead derby girl advances, eager yet sluggish. Rocky, not usually one to pull her punches hesitates. She had her trusty tire iron reared back but couldn’t commit to brining it down on her friend’s skull. Sadie shuffles within an arm’s reach before lunging. Her hands are ice cold as they clamp around Rocky’s forearms, the Captain of Man’s Ruin can’t shake her off, she backs away bringing her one time teammate into the hall.

Sadie struggles to get her head close enough to bite, all that keeps her from her goal is the tire iron Rocky has slid between them. Rocky uses all her might to increase the gap of safety so she can get her foot up and kick her friend away. Free of danger for the moment, Rocky thinks of all the movies she has seen, they always suggest going for the head. It makes sense to the life hardened woman, but even she is having a difficult time committing to the deed. She has known Sadie a long time, fought many battles with her on and off the track.

The dead girl lunges again, this time Rocky steps to the side and lets her fall to the ground. The others are coming, she can hear them closing in from the connecting halls, drawn to the noise. It’s now or never.

“Sorry, girl,” Rocky laments. She steps down on Sadie’s back to keep her from rising and strikes.

Two swift blows are all it takes to still the undead derby girl. The feeling of her pal’s skull giving way sends a dreadful shiver through her that she must shake off. Shuffling feet are seconds away from rounding the corner, she has to go lest she be outnumbered. Regrettably, she won’t be able put Penelope Bruise to rest.

The fresh air relieves the nauseous feeling she has from destroying her friend’s skull. The brisk breeze is a welcoming sensation as it raises goose bumps over her exposed skin. Not a welcoming sight is that of her other teammates under a pile of zombies.

The bright lights of the lobby created a glare on the doors that shrouded the activity going on beyond, the horrible feast happening between her and the bus. Cherry and Jan are still and lifeless as several ghouls tear away their flesh, devouring them greedily. It angers her beyond common sense. She screams at the scene.

Instead of driving the zombies away like a flock of birds, her wailing only informs them that there’s fresher game to be had. The ghouls rise, facing the new arrival. They advance, more of them are coming from the street.

Seeing red, Rocky welcomes the chance to brawl. This isn’t like the derby where it only feels like a life or death situation, this is the real thing. However, like the derby, she will retaliate with equal or greater force the roughness shown to her teammates. She doesn’t know these corpses, they are strangers, giving her no reason at all to hesitate.

Rocky clobbers the first one to reach her as hard as she can with Ugly, stilling the ghoul before it even hits the ground. The second isn’t as easy, her first blow staggers the large man but he’s able to correct himself and try again for the lunge. Rocky steps away and swings her iron like a bat crushing a pitch.

Killer B watches her Captain smash in the skull of another assailant. The odds are getting bleak as more arrive off the street. She opens the bus door having found herself a weapon, not much of one but it will have to do if she wishes to help. Killer B is armed with something that has gotten her through a lot of trouble in the past, her umbrella. No sooner does she set her feet on the pavement do the wandering dead come at her. She jabs the pointed end of her trusty accessory into the eye socket of one of them, not far enough to reach the brain. The man remains on his feet coming for her with outstretched arms.

It takes two tries to get the metal tip of her umbrella into the man’s other eye, this time she keeps it there. The zombie presses against it as if he doesn’t notice, driving it deeper until it’s in as far as it will go. Killer B can feel the resistance of the man’s socket and yet he persists to try and get her. She is startled by a hand on her shoulder.

“Get back on the bus, KB!” Rocky commands at her side. “Start ‘er up. I got this.”

Rocky stabs the prying end of Ugly into the man’s forehead, straight through the bone and into his brain before KB can comply with her order. His body falls to the ground taking the umbrella from her hands. She leaves it behind.

The bus rumbles to life as Rocky bashes another ghoul hell bent on eating them. She backs up the stairs and seals the door, her hand shakes on the lever. She can’t remember a time she’s felt this way, her senses on edge like a jungle cat, hyper alert and aware of her surroundings. The exhilaration of all the brawls she’s experienced in her many years in the derby can’t compare to how she feels right now. It’s better than the best sex she has ever had, she lights up a cigarette in the afterglow. “I need a drink.”

Killer B sits behind the wheel, her hands firmly planted to it. She doesn’t share her mentor’s thrill for the kill, she looks all around at the gathering figures. They come from every angle, can be seen in all her mirrors. All she can do is ask, “Are they really…?”

“Yeah,” Rocky confirms, unsure if her teammate is referring to the rest of Man’s Ruin, or the people that crowd their tour bus, either way the answer is the same. “They’re dead.”

“Gotta game plan?” Killer B asks with hope, her voice cracks as she cries for their fallen friends, and for all the walking dead around them.

“Your pal, crazy Santa, mentioned a reserve station up in Waterloo. I guess we head there.”

Killer B had already planned their route to Waterloo, intending to head out of Breckinridge by its northwest corner. That was when the world seemed to make sense and all they were going there for was a match, not survival. The road before her is full of dead, a frightening sight that freezes her hand on the gear shift, unable to bring herself to move.

“I’ll drive, baby,” Rocky tenderly says to Killer B’s relief. The younger of the two is eased out of the springy driver’s seat and led to the back. It’s Rocky’s turn to take care of her. “You just lie down, relax. We’ll be someplace safe before you know it.”