I pulled a marble from my pocket after checking with Charlie to make sure he was ready. We were in a good position. No hallways led to either left or right and no doors were any closer than twenty feet. Our backs were to the bright opening of the canal, so we had a decent amount of light to see. I threw the marble down the hall, listening to it bounce loudly on the tile floor, clacking along the hallway before smacking loudly against the window on the far end. I waited for a full twenty seconds, then watched as several dark shapes slid from doorways and hallways in response to the noise. A low, hungry moan began from the nearest one, echoed in chorus by the crowd behind. I could see movement near the floor as additional Z’s dragged themselves forward.
“Mine,” Charlie said, moving his rifle around to his back and pulling out his tomahawk. I hung back, but kept my carbine trained on the advancing ghouls.
Charlie stepped around a stain on the floor and advanced on the zombie. It was wearing hospital scrubs and raised a rotting arm towards Charlie. Its face was skeletal with large holes showing dark bone underneath. Black stains streaked its clothing and its left arm dangled uselessly. A large chunk was bitten out of its neck, I imagined this might be one of the first zombies in this area.
With a meaty smack, Charlie crushed the zombie’s skull. His tomahawk easily broke through the head and exited out the other side. Charlie nearly over swung and had to check himself as the corpse fell to the side.
“Damn,” he said, looking down at the body. “These older ones are barely holding themselves together.”
“Good,” I said, pulling out my pickaxe and adjusting my rifle so it hung down my back. “This should be better than I had hoped. If they’re that delicate, then we can save some ammo.” I moved ahead of Charlie and popped a crawler in the noggin, stepping around its grabbing, skeletal hands. I was amazed at how easy it was to penetrate the skull. It seemed the oldest zombies were decaying to the point where they were increasingly fragile. Anywhere they hit their head could literally kill them. For some reason, this seemed to make them a little less scary.
My reflections were interrupted by the advance of the rest of the zombies. Charlie and I were busy for the next few minutes, letting them come to us and putting them down. I had an awkward moment when a crawler and walker came at the same time. I wound up hitting the walker and stomping the crawler on the head.
“Hey, a twofer,” Charlie said as he slammed a zombie against the wall, crushing its skull and leaving a brain smear as it slid down.
“It’s a gift,” I said as I nailed a zombie with a baseball swing, picking off another that crowded close with the backswing. Black splatter covered the hallway and Charlie and I were hemmed in by a small hedge of now-motionless dead.
“Deja vu,” I said, remembering Coal City as I swung at what used to be a hospital security guard. His large gut was a gaping maw of shredded flesh and hunks had been bitten out of his arms and legs.
“It seems like all we do is hunt zombies and kill zombies,” Charlie said, knocking down an elderly man. “We never do anything fun anymore.”
“What are you talking about? I’m taking you on a cruise, aren’t I?” I said, knocking a nearby corpse over a crawler.
“It’s not the same. We’re still killing zombies,” Charlie said petulantly.
“What do you want, then?”
“You wouldn’t care if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Charlie sighed. “I just want to do something that lets me know I’m special to you, that’s all.” He batted his eyes at me, something I never thought he could do.
I couldn’t help myself and burst out laughing. Charlie joined me after a second and we both finished the last zombie.
“Don’t tell me Rebecca is already giving you that nonsense.” I said, wiping off my stained pick.
“Must be a female thing. The world ends and I still have to entertain her. Simply surviving is just not enough, I guess. Next thing you know, she and Sarah will start a book club or something and we’ll have to go find books for the town.” Charlie wiped off his ‘hawk.
“God help us.”
I moved forward, keeping an eye on the hallway as I climbed over the corpse pile. I didn’t expect to see anything more in the immediate vicinity, since our little fight would have attracted every zombie within earshot. Coming up to a janitor’s closet, I stopped and tried the door. It was locked, so I spent a minute breaking it open. Charlie looked at me, then kept his eyes on the hallway. We could hear shuffling sounds coming from the cross hall, but nothing was coming into sight yet.
Opening the door, I looked around quickly at the cleaning supplies, wrinkling my nose at the bleach and ammonia smells, as well as the anti-bacterial cleaner that made hospitals the world over smell like a jar of handy-wipes. I grabbed a small bottle of ammonia and headed out, Charlie in tow.
We reached the hallway junction and I looked around the corner, jerking back as a bloodstained hand shot forward, trying to grab my face. I took a step back as a zombie came around the corner. It was a woman in nurse’s clothing, the stethoscope still dangling out of her jacket pocket. Her lips were peeled back, revealing cracked, yellowed teeth. Her slightly glowing eyes were open wide and her nostrils would have been flaring, if she still had a nose. A huge hole was in the center of her face, and it dripped black mucus down her face. I had a bad moment when she first appeared, since she was roughly the same size as Ellie, but I relaxed a bit when I saw she was too old. I avoided her grasping hands and rapped her in the forehead with my pick. She stumbled back, giving me enough room for a more forceful hit. When she bounded off the wall and came at me again, I was ready and planted her for good.
Charlie was finishing off another zombie who would have caught me from behind had I been alone. “Thanks, man,” I said.
“No trouble,” Charlie said. “Any idea where we are going? If you plan to check every room, three hours ain’t gonna be enough.”
Actually, I had thought about that. Ellie had told me the designer of the building had a wife who was a nurse. She influenced him enough to make sure there was a decent lounge for the nurses, as well as the doctors. The designer went one further, giving the nurses of the hospital not only a lounge, but a balcony as well. Most of the other staff, especially the doctors, never knew it existed, since they had their own little world. Ellie had said the balcony was her favorite place since she could sit out there and feel the world go by. The balcony faced south and she told me she liked to “pretend she could see our house and watch over her little boy” even though she was at work. If she was anywhere, she would be on that balcony. I braced myself for the possibility that if she was there, she wasn’t going to look good after a summer and winter exposed to the elements.
“We need to head to the third floor, then look for the nurse’s lounge.” I squirted ammonia down one hallway, then the other. The scent was nearly overpowering and Charlie and I ducked into the stairs. I hoped the ammonia would mask our scent and prevent us from having to fight our way back to the boat. We only had about two hours left before we had to go swimming.
24
In the stairs, it was fairly dark, with only a little light filtering down from a skylight on the roof. I could smell death on the stairs, but it wasn’t the decaying smell of the zombies. There also wasn’t any blood smell lingering in the stairs, so I wondered what the story was. I pointed my flashlight down towards the basement and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I looked at the doors and realized the zombies would never be able to breach this sanctuary given the steel doors and small windows. As long as they couldn’t operate a doorknob, we were pretty safe.
We moved cautiously up the stairs and saw on the second floor landing what the cause of the smell was. A hospital worker had apparently been trapped on the stairs by the zombies, dehydrated, and then died there on the landing. Charlie quickly went through his pockets, but came up empty. “No keys, huh?” I asked.