Prit rested his hand on my arm, forcing the barrel down. “It’s useless. That’s security glass, nearly three inches thick. It wouldn’t break if you ran a truck into it.”
I punched the glass, enraged. So close, yet so far. We were just a few inches from getting out of there. We could see the way out…and we were still trapped. Damn it to hell!
Calm down, I told myself, think for a moment. On the way there, we’d felt a breeze, right? That gust of air came in somewhere. I just had to find where.
I dashed across the lobby and stood in the middle of the room, on top of the Galician Health Service shield engraved in the floor. I closed my eyes and stretched out my arms, trying to detect any puff of air. A slight breeze ruffled my hair. I opened my eyes. It was coming from the left, behind the reception desk.
I hooked my arm through Prit’s and dragged him over to that point. The Ukrainian seemed to draw strength out of weakness and despair. He contemptuously refused to use the wheelchair anymore. “If we’re fucked,” he said very seriously, looking into my eyes, “I want to die like a man, standing up, not sitting in a fucking chair.”
Despite his brave words, I noticed that the glow in the Ukrainian’s eyes had faded. Something had broken inside him when we walked through that room with all the children’s bodies. Seeing that boy’s body lying in the hallway had been the last straw. Under so much emotional pressure for months, he’d snapped. His nerves were shot. That tough soldier who’d survived the slaughter at the Safe Haven, the cold-blooded guy who slowly hacked off a woman’s neck without blinking, was falling apart. I’m sure any psychiatrist would’ve diagnosed PTSD. What good would that diagnosis do now?
There was a narrow corridor behind the front desk. Large metal cabinets were lined up silently against the walls, half-hidden in the shadows. Internet servers, I concluded, when I noticed the huge bundle of wires that ran along the baseboard.
The corridor led to a square room. At the back of the room was a big red door with EMERGENCY EXIT painted on it. Thick chains crisscrossed the two push bars. I rattled the door but couldn’t open it with my bare hands. I’d need an acetylene torch (before all this happened, I wouldn’t have even known what that was). Since I didn’t have one in my backpack, we were screwed.
A staircase disappeared into the shadows to the floor above. The flashlight’s beam reached the next landing, but no farther. I could only speculate where those stairs went, but that’s definitely where the breeze was coming from.
Cautiously, we started up the steps. Prit carried the AK-47 across his chest, strapped to his belt. I held the gun with one hand and the flashlight with the other. Lucullus skittered along, half-strangled by the cord tied to my wrist, glued to my ankles.
We had to climb three more sets of stairs before we reached the next floor. Before us was a cavernous, gloomy room. A row of overturned beds formed a bunker. Someone had tried to mount a defense there, but it mustn’t have worked. The left half of the row was completely pushed to one side.
A strange, watery slurping sound coming from behind one of the overturned beds put us on alert. We approached quietly, Prit on one side and me on the other, trying not to make any noise. I tied Lucullus to the leg of a chair so I had both arms free. Then I swapped the pistol for the speargun. We’d made so much noise on the ground floor, I didn’t want to make any more noise here.
Prit was already alongside the bed, waiting for me, looking disconcerted. He nodded. For so long, he’d seemed to be in another world. Now he was ready.
I took a deep breath and shone the light on the other side of the bed. Crouched on the floor, an orderly or a nurse (I couldn’t tell which, but it was wearing a hospital uniform) was bent over something I couldn’t see. I focused the flashlight on the thing’s head. When he noticed the light, he whipped around, and I saw two things. First, his face was covered with burst veins, his skin was a dead, yellow color, and fresh blood trickled down his chin. Second, a huge black rat lay on the floor, ripped open, its guts spilling out. The monster glared at me with bloodshot eyes. He’d been so engaged in his prey, we’d taken him by surprise.
I squeezed the trigger about eight inches from his forehead. The spear pierced his skull cleanly, splashing putrid blood all over my face. Sick to my stomach, I set the flashlight and the unloaded speargun on a bed and frantically began to wipe myself off with the sheet.
I was so absorbed in what I was doing, I didn’t see the second undead guy rush me from behind. He was a young guy with a horrible haircut that reminded me of an ashtray. He wore lots of gold chains around his neck like a Latin Kings gang member.
A weak cry from Prit, who watched the scene, glassy-eyed, warned me, but it was too late. Ashtray Hair grabbed me by the armpit as I turned around and sank his teeth into my shoulder. His bite couldn’t penetrate the thick neoprene, but I got a close look at those teeth. I needed to keep him from scratching me with his bloody hands.
I held tight to the undead’s waist and tried to push away from him, but the beast was very strong. We spun around the room, colliding into everything in our path. I screamed for help, but Prit was curled up on the floor, moaning, rocking back and forth.
The undead guy and I struggled furiously, linked together. We looked like a couple dancing cheek to cheek, all the while trying to rip each other’s throats out. I was in trouble. If I let go to grab the pistol hanging from my waist, that monster would overpower me and finish me off. If I didn’t, sooner or later he’d succeed in biting me, and that would be the end of me.
I don’t know when we bumped into the flashlight, but it smashed to bits on the floor and plunged us into total darkness. That’s when the situation became really desperate. We were now wrestling in silence. The beast kept trying to bite me through my wetsuit. I tried to wrap one arm around his hands, grab his neck, and immobilize his head with the other hand.
We stumbled against something hard and lost our balance. I teetered around like a drunk, desperately waving my leg around to regain my balance, but inertia was unstoppable. I realized we were falling, still cheek to cheek. A sharp edge drove into my bruised side. I screamed in pain, but that was all I had time for. Our mortal dance had brought us to the edge of the staircase, and we tumbled down those stairs at top speed.
For several minutes, I didn’t know what happened. I don’t even know how much time elapsed. I just know I woke up in a haze. Pain spread over every inch of my body. I had a salty taste in my mouth. Blood. I gingerly touched my lips and found I’d bitten my tongue. I tried to sit up, but a stabbing pain on my bruised side coursed through me like an electric shock. The pain was bad before, but now I was on fire.
Gradually my mind cleared. I remembered Ashtray Hair. Where the hell was that bastard? I groped around in the holster strapped to my leg and pulled out the Bic lighter I’d found in the nurse’s purse. That lighter felt like it was running low on fluid. When I clicked it, a faint blue flame weakly lit the scene. The creature was lying on the landing, his head smashed against the wall. At my feet lay his body in the throes of strange seizures. Between bursts of pain, I managed to sit up so I could take a look.
That son of a bitch had gotten the worst of it in the fall. I surmised his spine was broken, since he couldn’t move his arms or legs. The bastard jerked his head from side to side, his teeth snapping like a trap. He looked at me with hatred in his dead eyes. Fuck you, you dumbshit, I thought. You’re no threat to me now.
I kicked him hard and sent him rolling down the next flight of stairs, hoping his head would split open on a sharp corner. Sore and exhausted, I stood up. My right ankle was swollen to a size that didn’t bode well. Every time I breathed, I felt a knife in my side. My mouth was bleeding, and I had a colossal headache. I was a mess.