Tomorrow Land (34 page)

Her GPS marked the old hospital not a quarter-mile from the highway, and the faded blue signs they’d passed confirmed she was on the right track. She headed down the street, keeping a careful watch for any Others. She was pretty weak and didn’t want to fight unless it was completely necessary.

Luck was with her. She made it to the hospital without incident. The glass doors had been smashed and so Peyton didn’t have to open them to step inside. She adjusted her lenses to compensate for the low light and scanned the area, searching for signs of living or undead. Nothing. She headed down the long, cobwebbed hallway, wondering where she should start her search. There had to be some sort of pharmacy somewhere on the premises. She just prayed that it hadn’t been stripped entirely bare by looters.

The hallway came to a dead end, turning to the left and right. She chose left and headed down the passageway, creeped out by the eerie silence. Maybe she should have brought Helga with her…

But just as she neared freaking out, she noticed a sign for the pharmacy and followed it, coming eventually to a door. Wrapping her hand around the knob, she tried it. Locked. She’d need to break it down. Hopefully she still had enough strength to do that.

But just then she heard a noise. A groaning. There were Others behind this door, in the pharmacy, mingling with the drugs she needed. How was that possible, that they’d be locked where she needed to go?

Scratching her head, she tried to decide the best plan of action. Maybe she should just call off the whole thing, head back out while she still could. After all, if there were Others in the pharmacy they were bound to be elsewhere in the hospital as well. And she knew for a fact that she wasn’t strong enough to take any on in her weakened state.

She should leave. Find a new hospital in a new town. One without zombies lurking in their medicine cabinets. But, Peyton realized, tomorrow she’d be even weaker, and the next day weaker than that. Soon she wouldn’t be able to leave the camp alone and then she’d be totally reliant on people she could no longer trust.

It had to be here. It had to be now.

She raised her foot and kicked in the door.

The wood cracked, the door separating from its hinges and crashing down. She still had some strength, at least for now.

The razors extended from her fingers and she took up a fighting stance. As the dust cleared, she gasped. What had she done? The place was crawling with Others. There must have been two dozen of them milling about, moaning and growling. A hornets’ nest of horror. Even at full strength she knew there was no way she’d be able to fight all of them. And definitely not now.

Medications sat on the shelves a few mere feet away, mocking her. So close she could almost reach out and grab them. But they might as well have been on Mars for all the good they would do her.

She turned and started running, her feet moving as fast as they could away from the monsters. She could hear them following, not far behind, making their chomping noises. Hadn’t Chase told her once they didn’t run? Maybe these were particularly hungry Others. It certainly sounded like they were psyching themselves up for dinner.

She whipped around a corner, then another, heading for the entrance. But soon she realized that in her haste to get away, she must have taken a wrong turn. She smacked into a dead end. Crap. She turned around. The Others were at the end of the hall, swarming toward her, slower now but arms outstretched and mouths open as they moaned. Peyton’s heart pounded in fear as she shrank against the wall. There were too many of them. And she was too weak. She was royally screwed.

She should have never gone off on her own. What an idiot. She’d been so concerned with being strong that she’d put herself in a position where she was especially weak. And now, after all her group had been through, after how far they’d come, she was going to die here in a hospital less than a hundred miles from Disney. In a place where no one would ever look to find her body.

Oh, Dad…

The monsters drew closer. She could see saliva dripping from their fangs. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for death.

But then, something inside her forced her to open her eyes again. It forced her to hold up her hands, readying her razors. She thought of Chase down in the Thunderdome. He was totally outmatched but he hadn’t given up. She knew she couldn’t, either. If she had to go down, fine. But it wouldn’t be without a fight.

She was a razor girl, after all.

Making a few threatening sweeps with her arms, she stepped forward. It was kind of ridiculous, stupid posturing they’d laugh at if they could understand humor. But they couldn’t, and they just shuffled closer, looking oh so hungry.

Here went nothing.

She charged forward, kicking out at the first one on the left, slamming her foot into its chest. He flew backward. Without stopping she whirled around, blades flashing, slicing through another’s throat. The razors easily cut through, the skin as giving as rotten fruit.

She turned to the next. On and on she fought, like a cornered tiger, desperate to survive. She was beating them one by one, forcing herself to stay focused, using every last ounce of strength.

But in the end, it wasn’t enough. The zombies kept coming, endless and ready to tear her limb from limb.

This was it. The end. There would be no miracle this time around. She thought about Chase. What would he do when she didn’t come back? Would he assume she just took off without them? Would he miss her at all? Would he even care?

Suddenly, the zombies stopped advancing, putting their hands over their ears. Peyton looked around, trying to figure out what was distressing them. She saw and heard nothing. And yet, the Others started dropping to their knees, groaning in apparent agony. Some of them turned and ran away.

She had no idea why this was happening, but she couldn’t let her chance pass. Letting out a fierce battle cry, she slammed the side of one hand into a zombie’s head, knocking him sideways. Another she stabbed in its eyes, withdrawing the razors only to slice another in the face. Blood sprayed everywhere as she stabbed and sliced, stabbed and sliced, praying that this distraction was her salvation.

A few excruciatingly long minutes later, she found herself surrounded by dead bodies. She lowered her hands, her arm muscles aching, and looked around, trying to discern what had happened. She felt exhausted and sick and covered in gore.

But she was alive and unbitten, and that was what mattered.

“Are you okay?”

She whirled around, shocked to hear another person’s voice. A man dressed in a white lab coat stood behind the pile of bodies she’d made. He had a trim brown beard, black-rimmed glasses and some sort of strange-looking whistle hanging around his neck.

“What did you do?” she asked, leaning over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. She pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and starting cleaning her blades.

He held out the whistle. “They hate high-pitched noises,” he explained. “We all carry dog whistles when we leave the hive.”

Right. She remembered Chase mentioning something like that. But… hive? What was
that
about? She straightened up. Was there some new sort of society here? Hopefully they weren’t as crazy as the last one.

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” she said, pulling out disinfectant to wipe down her blades. She’d taken to carrying it everywhere in her jacket pockets, just in case. “For a minute I thought I was a goner.”

The man stepped over a zombie corpse and held out a plastic-gloved hand, then retracted it as he saw her razors. He laughed. “Well, I guess we can dispense with the formalities,” he said. “I’m David. I’m a scientist here at the Hive. Where are you coming from? Nowhere local, I assume. We’ve scouted our surroundings pretty thoroughly.”

“A small town in northwest South Carolina. We’re making our way down to Orlando.”

“I see. How many are you?”

“Ten. Mostly children.” For some reason she had a strong sense that she could trust this man. It helped that he’d just saved her life.

“And what brings you to Florida?”

“My dad. He’s waiting for us at Disney.”

“I see,” David said again. He stared at her thoughtfully.

A loud inhuman screech echoed through the hallway. David glanced in its direction then turned back to Peyton. “We’d better get downstairs,” he said. “It’s not safe up here. They’ll come back eventually.”

“Actually, I’m on my way out,” Peyton said. “I just came here for some medication. I really need to get back to my friends before they realize I’m gone and send out the cavalry.”

“What kind of medication?”

She explained what she was looking for. “Unfortunately, the Others were swarming the pharmacy, so I wasn’t able to get any.”

“Well, don’t worry,” David said, kicking one of the dead ones. “We have plenty of medications downstairs. I can get you what you need. Just follow me.”

Seeing no other option—she really needed those drugs—she agreed, praying this society was more civilized than that of Paradise, and followed him down the hall. After a few turns, they came to an elevator. David pressed his thumb against a small gray pad to the side and, after a beep, the doors slid open. They apparently still had power. He motioned for her to join him inside.

The doors slid closed and they began to descend. “You guys live underground?” Peyton asked, still feeling bit wary.

“Yes. We feel it’s safer. As you’ve seen, things can be dangerous up on the surface.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Three hundred and twenty-three.”

She stared him, shocked. She’d been expecting him to say a dozen.

“Actually, make that three hundred and twenty-four. We had a birth the other day. Cute little fella. Parents named him Joey.”

“So you’re like… a little underground town?”

David nodded. “We call it The Hive—mainly ‘cause of all the twisty passages and little cells, just like a wasps’ nest. Before the plague it used to be a huge, top-secret underground prison. A place for political criminals to live out their life sentences. But the super flu swept in and wiped them all out, just like everyone else. We figured it’d be a good place to hole up in—after we got rid of all the bodies, that was. Deep underground, it’s safe from the creatures. And the former cells, tiny as they are, make perfect little apartments for our residents.”

“That’s great,” Peyton said. It was encouraging to hear things like this. New seeds of society developing amidst all the death. She wondered how many others there were spread over the world. Little tribes, little governments. It was enough to give a girl hope, especially if they were led by kind and educated men like this one.

“We’re lucky. We’ve been able to scout a lot of scientists and bring them here,” David continued. “Together we’re working on a cure. Of course, we need test subjects. Which is why we had those Others contained upstairs in the pharmacy.”

“Oh.” She cringed. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to let them out.”

“It’s okay. Sadly, there’s hardly a shortage.”

“So, you’re trying to cure them?” It hadn’t occurred to Peyton that other groups might have the same hopes and plans that her father did.

David nodded. “We’re still a long way off,” he confessed. “Right now we’re trying to decode the creatures’ DNA. Once we have that, we’ll be able to see how it’s mutated from that of a human’s. Maybe then we can do some kind of gene therapy to help them regain their humanity.”

“My dad and his scientist friends are doing something similar,” she said. “Down at Disney World.”

David considered this. “That’s interesting,” he said. “We’ve been sending out radio messages for a while now, inviting others to join our research. We haven’t heard anything from anyone in central Florida.”

“Well, they’re down there,” Peyton said, realizing she probably sounded defensive. Still, she didn’t like the implication.

David put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure they’re just not on our frequencies. Or maybe they’re not using radios. I think it’s great if there are others working on the same project. We need all the help we can get. When you get there, you’ll have to tell them about us. Maybe we can all collaborate.”

“Sure. Good idea.”

The elevator doors swung open, revealing a fluorescent lit hallway leading off into the distance. They walked down it and through a door, which opened into a large mess hall. Peyton’s eyes widened as she surveyed the place. She hadn’t seen so many people since the Thunderdome. All hanging out, eating, chatting, as if none of them had a care in the world.

David led her to what appeared to be a head table. A group of about ten men and women sat behind it, eating their dinner. They looked up.

“I’d like you to meet Peyton,” David said to them. “She and her friends are heading down to Orlando. She tells me that there’s another hive down there, also looking for a cure.” He turned to Peyton. “This is our council,” he told her. “The think tank behind all our work.”

“It’s good to meet you all,” she said, still awed by the whole thing.

While the council quizzed her on her father’s work, David walked over to a serving window and spoke quietly to the man behind it. He returned a moment later with a bowl of steaming soup. Peyton sat at the table, wolfing it down. Delicious. Real food. It felt a little bit like paradise here. And not the crazy zombie-gladiator-town type either.

“We have a gym here and a school even,” David said. “Everyone works. And everyone eats. People come here bedraggled and half-dead and we take them in. We’ve grown so much in the last year. It’s great. We’ve even had four babies born! As I think I mentioned, the last one was yesterday. We’re busting at the seams a bit, but everyone’s happy. A few weeks ago we opened a lower level to add more housing for the families.”

“That’s so wonderful,” Peyton said between bites. “As is, of course, your work on finding the cure for the Others. How would you distribute it if you were able to create one?”

“The hope is to build a factory to mass produce it and then pour it into lakes and rivers—places the creatures use for drinking water,” explained a twenty-something bearded councilmember. “It’ll take a lot of manpower, which is why we’re gathering as many people as we can down here. And once we start curing them, we can rehabilitate and bring them here. They’ll be productive members of society again, and in turn they can help cure more of their kind.”