This Book is Full of Spiders (36 page)

Josh said, “On three. One. Two…”

The view shook. There was the crack of a boot kicking a door. This was
not
coupled with the sound of a doorjamb shattering. Instead, the boot gave it another try, and another. Finally the door swung in.

The view whipped around as everybody piled into the room at once. It was a huge room, full of rusting pipes and machinery and barrels and crates.

“THE FLOOR! THE FLOOR!”

The view panned down. Amy yelped.

Someone or something was writhing on the floor of the room. Grasping hands appeared in the flashlight beam. A face. The thing on the floor reached out at Josh’s leg and he kicked it away. People were screaming. Josh was screaming.

“DONNIE! GET THE—”

“HEY! NO!”

Through the gun cam came the sound of rustling—scraping shoes and gasps and shouts. The flashlight beam was spinning. The camera swung over to it and something had Flashlight Guy, throwing him around. The flashlight swept the back wall of the room—

Zombies. Wall to wall. Shambling, caked with mud, advancing.

“THEY’RE COMING OUT OF THE WALLS! THEY’RE COMING OUT OF THE FUCKING WALLS!”

Flashlight Guy was spun around again and his machine gun roared. Amy heard it through the laptop first, and echoing from the building a half second later. That jolted her into the realization that this was happening
right inside the building across the yard,
behind exactly zero locked doors. The same thing seemed to occur to Fredo, who ran back up behind the wheel and buckled in.

The video window was black. The flashlight has gone out. Screams.

“MIIILLLSSS!”

“JESUS CHRIST GET BACK!”

“RON IS DOWN! THEY GOT RON! GET OUT!”

More rustling and jostling around the gun cam. Finally, light appeared. It was the hallway, the lantern still on the floor in front of the oozing door where they’d left it. The view was bouncing. Josh was running away.

The gun camera spun around to face the
MAINTENAN
room door again. No one was following. The view just froze there, the sound of Josh breathing hard, muttering, “Oh-Jesus-oh-Jesus-oh-Jesus-oh-Jesus—”

From behind the door came screams. Then gunshots.

The view swung again, and Josh was looking into the camera, looking into the barrel of his own gun. He looked like he’d aged ten years. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Blood was running from his lip.

Into the camera, Josh said, “Mom, Dad, Hailey. I love you. To the rest of the world, my name is Joshua Nathaniel Cox. I have just witnessed the first shots of the Z War. Amy, go. Now. We’re going to hold them off as long as we can but if we can’t stop them, they’re going to be right on your tail—”

Something thudded heavily against the door. Josh closed his eyes and swallowed. The camera view swung back around, the view plunging forward, fast, Josh running into the battle. He stopped to scoop up the lantern, then kicked in the
MAINTENAN
door. He threw the lantern into the mass of thrashing limbs.

The flying lantern illuminated absolute chaos. Bodies falling on top of bodies. Strobing bursts of flame from gun barrels. Gunsmoke filling the room.

From the melee lumbered a big, bloody female zombie with matted hair that made it look like Medusa. The camera, and the gun barrel with it, drew dead center on the target and unleashed a burst of hellfire that tore into the beast. It let out an inhuman shriek and fell, flames sputtering across its ragged clothes.

The view swung to the left. A dark-skinned zombie was trying to wrestle the gun away from another member of the squad. Josh unleashed the Dragon’s Breath once more, clipping the target on the shoulder. It stumbled back, and Josh fired again, and again. Each shot blazed out like a lethal Roman candle. Josh was screaming, a battle cry. Donnie was next to him and he opened fire with his Vietnam gun. Side by side, the two unloaded into the room.

“JOSH! IT’S ME! DON’T SHOOT!”

The view swung over to show Flashlight Guy, stumbling over the tangle of smoking bodies on the floor. He joined the other two, raised his gun and the three turned the room into a shooting gallery.

Josh yelled, “WHERE’S MILLS?”

“THEY GOT HIM. THEY GOT EVERYBODY BUT US!”

“I’M OUT! I’M OUT OF AMMO!”

Josh screamed, “GET BACK!”

The camera leveled at the lantern laying on the floor. The barrel jutting up from the bottom of the frame roared once more. The lantern burst into a ball of flame.

The screen flared white, then to total darkness. The sounds of the battle faded to a trio of hurried footsteps and frantic breathing. They emerged into the hall.

“AMY! FREDO! CAN YOU HEAR ME? PREPARE FOR EVAC!”

TWO HOURS EARLIER …

At the sight of Molly and her bloody hunk of meat, TJ screamed, “Holy shit, stand back! Get back!”

I said, “Okay, I
really
don’t think she tore that spine out of a living person.”

“And how do you know
that
?”

“Because she doesn’t have any blood on her paws or her face. I think she just found it. So, you know, let’s figure out whose spine it is.”

Hope was already walking down the hall, past the bank of dead elevators. Watching the floor as she went.

Blood. A smeared trail of it, where Molly had been dragging the spine. TJ followed Hope, put his hand on her shoulder, and took the lead. I made Molly drop the spine, and grabbed her collar. I dragged her along while we all followed TJ like we were the Scooby-Doo gang. We went down two flights of stairs, and arrived at a
STAFF ONLY
door in the basement. Behind it was a dark hallway—no windows and no lights. Without a word, Hope clicked on a flashlight and handed it to TJ.

The blood smear ended partway down the hall, presumably at the point before the spine got too heavy for Molly to keep it aloft in her jaws. But there were only three doors: an employee restroom, a break room, and a door that read
BOILER ROOM.

The bathroom was clean. Well, not clean, but there were no corpses in there. People were eating calmly in the break room, by candlelight. We went back into the hall again, and stared at the boiler room door.

TJ said he’d go check it out first, since he had the only flashlight, and I thought that was a good plan. He leaned his shoulder against the door, the flashlight held at the ready like it was a gun, when he turned to me and said, “You comin’, Spider-Man?” So apparently I was an extension of TJ somehow, which was not mentioned when he apparently volunteered on behalf of both of us.

With Hope and Molly behind us in the hall, TJ pushed the door open and expertly shone the light in one corner, then the other. Ambush points, I guess. Nobody home. There was a massive, dead machine to our right, a pair of huge, armored barrels laying on their side, sprouting pipes big enough for a raccoon to crawl through. Boiler. TJ edged over, checked behind the cylinders, and swept the flashlight across the concrete floor. Nothing. Then the light found another metal door on the opposite side of the room, paint peeling around the edges and stained with rust, and I realized we weren’t finished.

The door was standing partially open, wide enough for a dog to slip through. The floor was streaked with red. TJ edged over toward it, and I wondered why we didn’t just go get Owen to lead the way with his pistol. What were we going to do if some spidered-out zombie came leaping out at us? Die, to serve as a cautionary tale to the others? Was that our role here?

TJ pushed the door in. Same procedure with the light—corner clear, clear behind the door. Suddenly we were in a room from an earlier century—exposed bricks on every wall, black with grime and patched with cobwebs. A remnant of the original building, buried by multiple renovations. TJ swept the flashlight across the floor and hit a pair of dead eyes, staring up from a white face wreathed with matted bloody hair. A woman, middle aged. Her torso was still wearing a green jumpsuit, but everything from her rib cage down was white bone draped with shredded crimson ribbons.

“Shit. That’s Rhonda.”

“Okay. And who’s the other one?”

TJ hadn’t noticed the other body yet, but I pointed and he found it with the light, facedown next to the far wall. It was a guy who looked like his ass had been blown out with a grenade. His abdomen had a flat, deflated shape, disemboweled from the back end. Spine was missing.

TJ sighed and said, “Carlos got ’em.”

He approached the facedown corpse and lifted the head with his foot.

“Don’t know this guy.” TJ did another sweep with his light to make sure that “Carlos” wasn’t in the room with us.

I said, “Who is ‘Carlos’ by the way, other than the monster who eats people’s assholes?”

TJ shrugged. “Don’t know him in any other capacity. Suave little Latino dude. We identified him as infected, but he didn’t show any signs and he didn’t seem to know. So we didn’t tell him. Then one day with no warning, he transforms right in front of us, like Optimus Prime if he was made of meat. Turns into this wicked corkscrew worm thing and digs into the dirt. Comes up when he gets hungry. Or when somebody sits down. Look.”

I followed the beam to a hole in the back wall large enough for a man to crawl through, a pile of brick bits scattered on the floor below. TJ approached it and I said, “Hey, let me get Owen. This operation needs a gun—”

“You’re gonna want to see this. Check it.”

I very slowly edged closer, trying to see into the jagged hole. “Is there another room back there or—”

“Look.”

A tunnel. Leaking, muddy and twitching with insect life. It was lined with red brick and arched at the top, extending to infinity. It was maybe five feet wide and high, but much of the space was filled with ancient, rusting iron pipes that ran along the walls.

He said, “Old steam tunnel. To service another building.”

“What other building?”

“Don’t know. Maybe one that’s not even there anymore. Crawl in there and find out.”

“No, thanks. We know it ends past the perimeter, though. And outside where anybody patrols. Man or robot.”

“Because your dog got in through here.”

“Yep.”

For the benefit of the woman waiting tensely in the hall, TJ said, “ALL CLEAR IN HERE, GIRL! WE’RE COMIN’ OUT!”

I headed for the door and said, “Am I allowed to call a quarantine-wide meeting, or is Owen the only one who gets to do that?”

“Well now wait, why does this need a meeting?”

I stopped to face TJ just short of the door to the hallway. I lowered my voice and said, “To … see who all wants to try to escape from this freaking prison?”

“You want everybody to know about this?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Even the reds?”

“I don’t think the color teams means anything outside these fences, TJ.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about taking a hundred and fifty or so high-risk patients out of quarantine.”

“Now, come on. The ‘red equals high risk’ thing, that’s just talking about the new people, right? Everybody out there has been spider-checked.”

“Owen hasn’t. A lot of people haven’t. They had you check all the new arrivals but a lot of people got grandfathered in because when we suggested a check of everybody, Owen started waving his gun around.”

“But if they haven’t, you know, monstered out by now then we know they’re not—”

“You sure about that? We got no idea when Carlos got infected. The girl you almost missed, she was walkin’ around like you and me, parasite and all, for a week or so. Isn’t that what she said? How many more like her could we have in here? Think about that, now. You lead somebody outside these gates, you’re responsible for whatever they may do once they’re out.”

“But if I leave uninfected people behind and they get incinerated if the air force nukes this place, then I’m also responsible.”

“That’s right.”

“Goddamnit, TJ.”

“Listen. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say they intend to turn this whole facility into a crater. What that means is, somebody’s got to get them to change their mind about that. Whoever gets out of here, the first thing they got to do is get the word out to the chain of command that there’s innocent people in quarantine, uninfected. So that group that gets out, it’s got to act as a representative of what’s inside. Got to put a good face on the quarantine. So it’s got to be people we
know
are clean. They’re gonna be our ambassadors to the outside world, right?”

“But we don’t know how much time we have—”

“I’m not done.
If
, on the other hand, we help infected leak out into the town and they start wreaking havoc, and multiplyin’, then the same dudes looking at a map with a little red circle around this hospital are gonna draw a bigger red circle around this whole
town
. Right? And you think your girl is out there. And John, and whoever else in this town you care about.”

“That place that makes those Cuban sandwiches.”

“Yeah, Cuba Libre. You had their coffee, man? No way we can let ’em bomb that place.”

“You see the waitresses?”

“Mmmm-hmm. Whoever does the hiring there, he definitely an ass man.”

“All right, all right. So who gets to go?”

“Well, see, Spider-Man, now there’s a tough-ass decision we got to make.”

*   *   *

Seven people were waiting for TJ and me out in the hall outside the boiler room. In addition to Hope, Wheelchair was there, along with Corey (the curly haired kid who’d come in on the truck earlier), an old guy whose name I didn’t know, Lenny (a short balding white guy who looked like Vizzini from
The Princess Bride
) and the two women who heard the commotion and wandered in from the break room.

We told everyone about the tunnel, and the two bodies. Old Guy said casually to TJ, “Which wall is it on, nigger?”

Without blinking TJ said, “North.”

Old Guy nodded thoughtfully and said, “That’s what I thought. Same boiler used to service the other buildings, before they tore down the old hospital and built this one up on top of it. Probably, oh, fifty or sixty years ago. Now back in those days, if a black so much as brushed past a white woman on a sidewalk, they’d have had him hung by torchlight come nightfall, but of course a lot has changed since then. Me and my friends, we had a bluegrass band back in the 1960s—”