The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious (3 page)

Before the cops are close, the door gives and the infected pile into the man’s room. Screams roll down the corridor. The cops turn and run back our way. Once they’re through, the double doors wheeze shut, the noise of the hall recedes, and we stand in the sane, quiet world, watching the nightmare approach. An old man slams his mouth against the window. A long brown tooth dislodges and travels down the glass in a frothy river of pink foam. A doctor with glazed eyes hits the glass hard enough to break his nose.

The ponytailed man turns from the doors. “We have to go.”

My relief is so great that I stumble more than walk. He leads us along the hall and through a set of windowless double doors to where an elevator waits. It’s bigger and its sides are marked with black streaks—the service elevator. Grace and I back into a corner.

He spins a key in the panel. The doors close and he looks us over with kind, if anxious, light brown eyes. The tag clipped to his maroon scrub shirt lists his department as Environmental Services and names him as Jorge. “You guys okay?” he asks.

Now that we’ve left them behind, I’m sure I must have been wrong. There has to be a reasonable explanation—it’s the virus, obviously, but there’s a non-zombie explanation for how someone could walk around with an organ hanging by a thread. I must have imagined those eyes and dull pallor. I was scared out of my mind. Out of reason.

The older cop, Kearney, pushes a button and the elevator jerks to a halt. He points his gun our way. “Did you get bitten?” His accent is all Brooklyn, and his eyes are narrowed as though he won’t believe us no matter what we say.

We shake our heads and huddle closer. I didn’t think the weapons were for us, but my world has begun to spin in a new direction in recent minutes. I have rules for unfamiliar places and people. The first is to avoid the unfamiliar, especially people. Wear my bag at all times. Walk down a dark street with my longest key clenched between two fingers. Always look behind me. Pay attention. Don’t get trapped in an elevator with strange men, especially ones who look ready to slaughter me.

Grace says I have trust issues like it’s a bad thing.

“What was that?” I try to sound forceful, but it comes out a breathless whisper.

“Zombies,” Kearney says. His mouth is almost a sneer under his gray mustache.

I stare at him. So much for a reasonable explanation.

“What?” Grace whispers.

“Zom-bies,” Kearney says, extra slowly and completely devoid of patience.

He reminds me of the cop who once came with Child Protective Services. That guy hadn’t had time to explain to a nine-year-old why she was being taken from her apartment to a waiting car. Like then, I dislike him immediately and feel meek in the presence of authority with a gun. I force myself to straighten my shoulders—I’m no longer nine years old and I haven’t done anything wrong.

“Stop pointing your gun at us,” I say. Grace squeezes my arm, and I bite my tongue. The old key-between-the-fingers trick makes me feel safer, but I’m certain it wouldn’t be very effective against a bullet.

“Everyone just chill out,” the baby-faced cop says. He’s in his thirties, with a nameplate that reads Clark. He motions at Kearney, who holsters his gun unenthusiastically.

“Can someone just explain this?” My voice has taken on an annoyingly desperate note. “Where are we going?”

Kearney sets the elevator moving again with a jab of his finger. “This has taken up enough of my fucking time.” He turns to Jorge with a snarl. “That was the last time I leave the basement. I could’ve been killed trying to help those people. Wasted bullets trying to get a headshot for no good reason.”

Judging by his uniform, helping is the better part of his job description. I know Kearney’s type. He likes to wield his power—how little of it he has—but he won’t do anything to earn it.

“Hey, I didn’t send you up there.” Jorge turns to me. “We’re going to the cafeteria. The street and a lot of the floors are full of infected. We can’t leave until the cops clear them out.”

“Thank you,” I say to Jorge, although his words don’t fully sink in until Grace whispers, “We can’t leave?”

“Not yet,” Jorge says. “But we will.”

The elevator is freezing, but that isn’t why I shiver. I have to ask the question, even if it’s preposterous. I keep my eyes on Jorge. “They’re really dead? The zom—infected?”

Obviously, the infected attack others, maybe even eat them, but they can’t be zombies. They can’t be
dead
. That would mean we’ve morphed from reality into a full-scale horror movie. And that’s about as likely as Superman saving us from the zombies.

Jorge blows out a breath. “That’s what they say.” I can see how reticent he is to admit it, how a little bit of crazy—alive crazy—flashes behind his gaze.

“And no one in the basement knows that except for the staff,” Kearney says. “So keep your mouths shut.” His gray eyebrows rise in challenge. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who jokes around. Maybe the kind of guy who tortures kittens, but definitely not the class clown.

The hamster on the wheel in my brain dashes to keep up with this new information.
They’re dead and they want to eat us
. It’s called a dawning realization for good reason—the prickle of horror starts at my feet and rises until my entire body is flooded with it.

The elevator thumps to basement level. Jorge holds a finger on the Door Close button. “We don’t want everyone to panic. They’re going to find out, but we want them to find out after the cops get here. So keep it quiet for now. All right?”

The elevator doors slide open. I step from the recessed area of the elevator bank and into the hall on numb feet. At the other end of the corridor, a nurse bends over one of the gurneys that line the wall near the visitor elevators and a stairwell door. A few people sit on the floor. Every face is washed-out, no matter its previous skin tone.

“Come sit down in the cafeteria,” Jorge says, and lifts his ID tag. “I’m Jorge, although you probably figured that out.”

Grace and I mumble our names and stagger through the wide cafeteria entrance down by the gurneys. The large room has been cleared by pushing the tables to the walls of the windowless dining area, leaving an open space where over twenty gurneys sit in rows. The off-white walls are hung with posters promoting New York City services and a few prints done in cheap motel style.

Nurses tuck patients into their beds. One table holds medical supplies, another food and cups and pitchers of water. A few people in street clothes sit on chairs beside patients, and almost every one of them lifts a cell phone and listens before dropping it to hit redial. A man in a blue jacket with FEMA emblazoned across the back is bent over a silver briefcase in the corner, a chunky phone pressed to his ear. His expression makes me think he isn’t getting good news, but it does look as if he’s getting something.

Jorge points to the food service area. “You want a drink?”

My throat crackles when I swallow. Grace and I nod and make our way into the serving area. A woman with bottle-red hair stares into space behind a glass-fronted counter full of hot food, her fingers curled around a serving spoon held forgotten in mid-air. Refrigerated shelves display pre-packaged salads and sandwiches. Metal racks hold chips and baked goods. Soda and coffee machines and a long row of beverage refrigerators sit against the wall by the registers.

I reach into one for water and a soda, then wait while Grace, who without a doubt has some sort of stress-relieving tea bag on her person, fills a cup with hot water. We plunk it all on the counter and wait until a small woman in an orange sari appears. She waves away the ten-dollar bill I fish from my jeans pocket and says, “No charge.”

I sit on the floor against an empty wall in the far corner. Grace drops beside me and pulls her knees to her chest, her skin tinged a green that can’t be attributed to the fluorescent lights. I poke around in her big purse until I find her tea tin, drop a bag in the cup, stick on the lid and set it in her hand.

She sips with her eyes closed, then snaps out of her daze and pulls out her phone. “I’m calling Logan and my mom.” She dials as unsuccessfully as everyone else and then sets it on her knee. “It won’t go through. Do you think they’re okay?”

“They’re not at a hospital, so I’m sure they’re okay.”

But I’m not sure. Based on what I’ve seen so far—zombies and complete mayhem—I’m sure of nothing except things aren’t looking up.

“But then why can’t I make a call? All the lines shouldn’t be blocked if it’s just the hospital.”

I want to believe it’s a simple matter of moving the infected away from the hospital doors, but I don’t think it’ll be that easy. I pretend not to be concerned and dial Logan and her mother on my phone. Fast busy signals. I try a text that hangs. Data is useless. That could be the basement, but my phone worked down here early this morning.

“Logan should be home by now.” Grace examines her phone as if it holds the answer to everyone’s whereabouts. Which, in reality, it does. “He wasn’t going out tonight.”

“He knows you’re here, right?” I ask, and Grace nods. “I’m sure he’s home waiting for you. He’s probably trying to call you, too. We’ll go straight to your house when we leave.”

She taps her fingers on her phone, then winces and rubs at her left elbow.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing. My arm bent weird when I hit the wall.”

“Let me see.”

Grace lifts her sleeve. It’s slightly swollen and pink, but she pulls the fabric down with a shrug before I can look close. “Syls, I’m scared. This is crazy. How can they really be…” She dips her head and her fingers dig into her forehead, as though massaging her overwhelmed brain.

Soda sloshes in my stomach. “I don’t know. But you saw them. They were…”
Dead
.
Zombies
. I don’t want to say either of those words. “Not normal.”

I have a handle on my emotions much of the time—hell, I have them in a straitjacket—but this is too much. I put my arm around her while I think, unsuccessfully, of something comforting to say. The wheel still spins, but the hamster has kicked the bucket.

“We have to get out of here,” Grace whispers.

“We’ll get out, Gracie. Even if we have to steal that idiot cop’s gun and blast our way out.”

Grace sniff-laughs. She may tend toward the sensitive side of the emotional spectrum, but Grace is tough, and she won’t lose her sense of humor without a fight. We watch nurses scurry and people battle with their phones. The FEMA man has hung up his and now stands staring into space. He’s gone monochrome. Skin gray as his hair. Gray as a zombie.

At least it’s quiet.

Chapter 3

Ten minutes later, the quiet is broken by screams from the hall. An ashen nurse runs into the cafeteria. Grace and I jump to our feet and press ourselves to the wall. There’s nowhere to go except the food service area, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go near the hall. I know what to do with zombies—everyone does: Get the head. But I don’t have a weapon unless you count the miniature Swiss army knife in my bag that can barely slice cheese.

The cops and a security guard rush for the entrance. Gunshots blast far away enough that I retain what’s left of my hearing. Jorge strides for the hall, cleaver in his swinging arm. Things crash and bang. A deep voice yells a command. People shriek.

“Lock the door!” Kearney calls.

Grace and I edge to the hall in the silence that follows. Most of the people who were in the hallway now lie on the floor in gallons of blood. They’re dead, but freshly dead. Sprinkled amidst them are paler bodies with black-edged wounds and exposed viscera. All are still but for two who struggle on their backs in slick fluids. Kearney kicks one in the head and jabs his collapsible baton into its eye. Clark does the same with the other, sans the kick.

The cafeteria entrance is mobbed with nurses, visitors, the patients who are able to get out of bed and a few who might drop at any second. Kearney stands in front of us with his hand on his holster. “Listen up! Anyone tries to open that fucking door again, I swear to Christ I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

Heads nod. Hands go to mouths. The FEMA man slides through the muck. He gives off the vibe of being in charge and, seeing as how his shirt and jacket are covered in FEMA logos, I guess he is.

“Some dumbfuck opened the door,” Kearney says to him.

FEMA frowns at Kearney and then turns to us. “It’s very important that we not—”

Fresh screams erupt as one of the fresher bodies on the floor, a middle-aged woman, sits up stiffly. She could almost be alive if it weren’t for her twisted neck and the river of blood that spilled from a tear above her collarbone. Clark cracks his baton over her head once, twice, and then a third time, until her skull cracks louder than the impact and hits the floor with a thud. Kearney gives the crowd a thin-lipped grimace.

People shout. FEMA raises his hands for silence and then points to the stairwell door. “Make sure it’s locked this time.”

“Don’t have that key,” Jorge says.

FEMA sighs. “All right, they can’t get in if it’s closed. Someone guard it until we can get tables in front for a barrier. We have to clean this up first.”

A burly, bearded man in a hospital gown limps to the front of the crowd. “You tell us what’s happening!” he yells in a Russian accent. The blond woman next to him—his wife, maybe—links her arm through his and murmurs in a soft voice.

FEMA nods to Jorge—now stationed at the stairwell door—and leads us into the cafeteria. “I’m Bart Capra. I work for FEMA. I know you have a lot of questions, and I’m going to answer them. Was about to before…” He gestures to the hall and waits for us to gather.

There are fewer than ten visitors total, including me and Grace. Three nurses, the cops, security guard, and a few other hospital employees like Jorge and the kitchen staff. Most of the patients have returned to their beds, but all give him their attention. A hum fills my ears as I wait for the inevitable announcement. Grace and I are one step ahead of those who will hear it for the first time.

Bart clears his throat. “The virus, Bornavirus LX, kills everyone who contracts it.
Everyone
. One hundred percent mortality. That means if you get it, you die. And you
will
get it if you’re bitten and, possibly, scratched by someone who’s infected.”