The Hospital (4 page)

His shotgun.

“What the hell?” Gus muttered. He picked up his boot, hopped down the steps, then scooped up the shotgun and held it close.
Now
, he thought venomously,
now, we’ll see
. He placed his back against the wall to check the safety and the breech. There was a shell in there, and he wondered if Alice had even fired the weapon.

There was a growing sound, a swarm of hungry mouths and dead eyes. He didn’t have much time. He turned and looked up to the opening of the stairwell one level above him. Alice popped into view, a fright of ripped clothing, blood, and craziness, her lips drawn back to expose a crunch of teeth. She spotted him. Gus fired the shotgun from his hip, blowing out a chunk of the cement frame and sending chips flying. Alice shrieked and withdrew as if yanked from behind. Gus stumbled, off balance from the blast, falling sideways. In a split second, he tried to keep his hold on the shotgun and get a hand out to avoid landing on his damaged elbow or his foot. He collapsed on his chest, huffing out his breath, with his forehead pressed against the gun barrel. The toe of his boot lay just ahead. He collected himself and got into a sitting position.

“You little prick!” came a screech from above. “God
damn
you to hell, you little piece of shit! They bit me! You made them bite me! I’ll have your fucking heart for that!”

In reply, Gus pumped another shell into the chamber. “Stick your head out, you fucking banshee, and I’ll make all it better,” he shouted. He gasped in pain and looked down at the wound in his belly. He prodded it with his left hand, though his fingers were still contrary. Blood seeped from the stab wound, but he didn’t think it was too bad.
Too much fat there
, it occurred to him.
Ha! Fuck the six-pack
! But it still hurt, and the rest of him looked like he was slashed to bloody ribbons. Knife fight wounds, but he had his
boom stick
with him now.

Then he heard the noise, and his defiance shrank. The newborns. They were coming. Whatever infected them was giving them the strength to motor along before they should even be able to. The idea of shooting them repulsed him. He couldn’t do it. Back when the world was still a world and he watched movies, he had an unspoken rule—
You never hurt the baby
. Not in any flick. Even the producers seemed to know this. It was a line that could not be crossed, and he couldn’t cross it now.

With a grunt, Gus got to his feet. He threw the boot down the stairs. Leaning heavily on the railing, he followed it. Above, he could hear Alice swearing at her brood. The youngsters were trying to kiss mommy again. Focusing on the stairs, he made his way to the landing below. He peered out into the darkness, and his heart fluttered. It was the main level, and, strewn about before him, he could see the rest of his gear. On the floor ahead of him was his other boot, and just beyond were his bat and backpack.

He gingerly kicked his boot across the floor to where the rest of his gear was. He couldn’t believe it, but there was everything the sly bitch had taken from him, jeans and leather pants included. Maybe she wanted those for herself? Regardless, he hopped over to his jacket, pulled it up and looked to his right. There, still where he had parked it, gleaming in the evening twilight, was his van with the doors hanging wide open. He shifted the shotgun under his left arm, freeing up the right. With a grunt, he threw the jacket over the chairs of the waiting area, toward the main doors. He checked behind him, looking for Alice, and knew that he was wasting time on the leather shit, knew he was breaking rule number one of
Don’t be stupid
, but his gear was a part of him, and damn if he was going to leave it for
her
to wear.

And there she was, flying at him from the dark cave of the stairwell; her marble eyes full of insane hate fixed on his. She screamed, obviously meaning to terrify him. Her hair was wild and streaming behind her, and the scalpel was coming down, aimed for the center of his bare forehead. Gus got his left arm up and blocked the down-thrust, but her weight was too much. They crashed to the ground, and the connection momentarily stunned him. She was breathing frantically, wildly, and on instinct alone his right fist connected with her jaw, snapping it shut and breaking off shards of rotten teeth. She screamed and fell back. Gus felt her scrabbling over him, like some evil crab, and then he felt her hands on his belly, groping for his thigh, homing in on his balls, fingers scraping them, cupping them…

He punched her, crossing his chest with his right hand. His fingers touched the gun barrel and gripped it at about the same time she touched his nuts again. He yanked the barrel forward and nailed her square in her temple, dropping her across his thighs. With a flurry of leg kicks, as if he were shooing off a huge black spider, he shrugged her dazed form off of him. One kick took her hard across her jaw. She moaned, but Gus didn’t feel like being merciful. How many others had she taken? How many others had she cut up and served to the newborns? He got to his knees, got a better grip on the shotgun, and took aim at her skull. She was unaware, breathing shallow. He tightened his finger on the trigger. She was dead anyway. He could see where the babies had punctured her skin in places. If a person was bit, there was no hope. They would become one.

But right now, she was still human and, God above, he could not shoot.

Swearing, he turned the shotgun and brought its hardwood butt down across her fingers, breaking several. He got the rest with the second smash. Alice only grunted softly. He broke the fingers on her left hand then, knowing full well he was torturing her, but the fury had a grip on him. He hadn’t killed her outright in his mind, as she still had both of her legs. She could jump off a building or something, but he wasn’t going to kill her. He wasn’t that far gone that he would take another life. Not yet.

He placed the gun on the floor, measured the distance, and slid it the length of the room with one mighty shove. Next, he threw his backpack and boots in the direction of the truck. Behind him, Alice was moaning louder, coming to her senses. He looked down and saw the scalpel. Pursing his lips, he kicked it away into the darkness, listening to the metal skittering on the tiles. He looked to see where it went.

There, standing at the drug counter was a gimp, a big one. It had come from the corridor with the blood streak down the middle of the floor. The thing regarded Gus with an open mouth, its lips missing. Fragments of gold teeth gleamed, and the fragrant stench of dead flesh hit him. The thing shuffled toward Gus, slowly, and he backed up. He scooped up his leather pants, bat, and shotgun, and fumbled with getting it all in his hands, but he stayed aware of the zombie. He backed up, and it came forward, looking at him, dead eyes unseeing yet
knowing
. Then it paused, probably having sensed the prone form of Alice lying on the floor.

Gus retreated. He wasn’t killing her. She was already dead. This was justice, he told himself.
Justice
.

The gimp moved in on Alice’s body. It didn’t bother with the man-thing anymore. There was an easier meal. It dropped to its knees, gathered up one of Alice’s arms, and bit slowly, deeply, ripping away flesh with those golden teeth as if it were fried chicken.

Gus looked away, but not before he glimpsed the blood spurting from the bite wound. He retreated, shotgun pointed at the famished creature, and tried hard to think of anything that might drown out the noise of its feeding. Then Alice screamed. She screamed and tried beating the thing away, but her fingers wouldn’t work. The thing piled onto her legs, keeping her in place. Gus heard her screams turn into sobs… and then he saw the last act.

Alice arched her back. She kicked and screamed and even with her wrecked hands, she managed to disengage herself from the zombie. Her cries hitching in her throat, she scrabbled away on her knees and elbows.

Right into the mass of newborns.
eHehhh

The first baby clunked against her forehead with a crack. Then, from the shadows, came the rest of the children. The stairs had most likely proven to be a challenge for their little limbs, but they had found their mother all the same. They crawled over one another to greet her. That was the opening the creature behind her needed. It grasped her head and sank its golden teeth into the stringy flesh of her neck. Alice howled and struggled, but the weight of her children bore her down. Alice died then, ripped apart by her adopted brood, who no doubt felt a greater connection to the dead thing with the gleaming mouth.

Gus heard the noise, saw the flurry of action in the shadows, but was spared the grisly details. He backed up to the open doors of his van and hurriedly threw everything in. He was gaining control now, as the things were focused on the easy meal and not him. He hop-skipped into the van and slammed the doors shut behind him. He struggled past the booty of supplies he had taken from the hospital and hauled himself into the driver’s seat. Starting the engine, the pain of his wounds reminded him how bad they were, demanding attention, but he grimaced, swore, and put the van in gear. It was almost dark, but damned if he was going to turn on the lights. Lights brought the gimps.

He drove away from the hospital hunched over the steering wheel as if he was a man of eighty. It was a long way, but he knew how to bypass the city. He would skirt around its rim, ignoring the beckoning off-ramps of the freeway, and never going any nearer. Not at night. Never at night. It was too dangerous. He drove in silence, struggling to keep his attention on the black lick of road that would take him back up his mountain, and finally home.

He drove a kilometer before he pulled over with a curse. He went into the back of the van where he grabbed a roll of the hoarded toilet paper and, grimacing, wiped his ass.

Enjoy the story? Try these other titles by Keith C Blackmore:

Horror

Mountain Man

Safari (Mountain Man Book Two)

The Missing Boatman

Cauldron Gristle

(novella—contains “ye Olde Fishing Hole” and “The Hospital”)

Heroic Fantasy

The Troll Hunter

131 Days
(novella)

White Sands, Red Steel

Science Fiction, Fantasy

The Bear That Fell From the Stars
(novella)

One Shot Short Stories

Ye Olde Fishing Hole
(also in Cauldron Gristle)

Children’s

Flight of the Cookie Dough Mansion

And please support Indie authors! If you enjoyed this story and have the time and inclination, please leave a review. It’s good advertising for me. :)

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