Her voice was amazingly steady.
Why aren’t I afraid? I should be afraid, right?
The man did as she ordered, bending slowly at the knees. He might even have been shaking a bit inside the suit. Gaby reached back with one hand and closed the door behind them.
“Benny,” she called. “Get out here.”
She heard the bathroom door opening, then the poster fluttered as Benny hurried out. “This is your plan?”
“This is it.”
“So now what?”
“Put your gun on him.”
Benny aimed his rifle at the man in the hazmat suit while Gaby freed his sidearm from a holster, then unsnapped the gas mask from his belt.
The man looked to be in his mid-thirties, with the kind of face that made her think he might have been an accountant in a past life. She knew the type. Her father was a taxman, and he’d had the same pudgy and pale complexion from working in an office for most of his life.
“I need your suit,” Gaby said.
This is stupid.
I’m an idiot.
This will never work.
I’m going to get killed.
God help me, I’m going to get killed.
Those were some of the thoughts that raced through her head as Gaby walked down the hallway in the hazmat suit. She was at least comforted by the fact that the suit’s original wearer wasn’t fat despite his slightly pudgy face, and the suit wasn’t too big for her. With the gun belt strapped around her waist and the M4 in her hands, she could almost pull it off.
Hopefully.
Benny gave her an ‘okay’ nod when she asked him how she looked, but she could tell by his eyes that he was scared. Not for himself, but for her. Which was both sweet and worrisome. Was he scared because he liked her and didn’t want her to get hurt? Or frightened because she didn’t look convincing in the suit?
She couldn’t tell how she looked, and frankly, she didn’t want to. She concentrated instead on how she felt, which was surprisingly calm. With the combat boots on, she wouldn’t necessarily look out of place. And the gas mask hid most of her face, if not the blonde ponytail.
They’re going to see the ponytail…
But not if she kept in front of them. It was hard enough to see the eyes of someone wearing a gas mask; maybe they wouldn’t notice what was behind her, either.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
I am so going to die.
She kept walking, because if she stopped for even a second she might change her mind and run back to the lounge. And then what? Hide in the old bathroom? Sure, that might work for a while…until nightfall. Then the ghouls would be all over the tenth floor, and the idea of being surrounded by those things, with just a fridge, a poster, and a flimsy door as protection made her skin crawl.
She made it halfway to her destination without meeting another person on the floor, though she saw plenty of bodies. Some of Mike’s soldiers, but a lot of the civilians, too. Men and women, some still in their teens. Blood smeared the walls and open doors, and the entire floor had the thick aura of abandonment and death.
She turned another corner and slowed down.
The rooftop access door was at the end of the hallway, and there was a man in a hazmat suit standing in front of it, eating from a can of beans, his gas mask hanging off his web belt. But it wasn’t the man that startled her. It was the door to the man’s right, the one that accessed the other nine floors of the hospital. The lumber that had been nailed across the door, keeping it barricaded, had been pried loose and was piled nearby on the floor.
The door was open.
She could see blackness inside the stairwell door, and it was…moving.
Quickly, she checked the windows along the hallway. The blinds were pulled up and sunlight filtered in, illuminating large swaths of the tiled floor. That was why the ghouls hadn’t come out of the stairwell yet. Still too much sunlight. She wondered if the men in hazmat suits had left the windows uncovered intentionally.
Maybe they’re still human, after all.
She was halfway to the man when he finally looked up. He licked at brown stains around his lips, before saying, “What are you still doing up here?”
“Are we leaving already?” she asked.
My God, how is my voice so calm?
“You didn’t get the signal?” the man asked. “That’s what the radio’s for, genius.”
Gaby looked down at the radio clipped to her hip. “I think mine’s dead. Where is everyone?”
“Downstairs, loading up the Humvees.” He glanced down at his watch. “We got five hours to bag all the supplies before this place goes dark. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna be here when that happens.”
Gaby was thirty yards away now. She moved her head around to purposefully avoid looking him in the eyes because she could see him trying to get a better look at her. He had also subtly let his right hand drift toward his holstered handgun. His rifle, another M4 (Where did they get all the M4s?), rested on the wall behind him.
“That’s you, right, Janice?” the man said, peering at her. “I thought you were on the roof.”
“I was,” Gaby said. “I came down for some food.”
Keep walking. Don’t stop.
Keep walking…
“You’re supposed to be on the roof,” the man said. Then a flicker of alarm crossed his face. “Bullshit. You’re not Janice.”
The man reached for his handgun, dropping the can of beans at the same instant.
Gaby had been walking with her rifle in her arms the entire time, and all she had to do was lift it and shoot the man in the chest. She was so close — less than fifteen yards away — that it wasn’t much of a shot and she barely had to aim or use the red dot sight.
It was the sound of the gunshot that startled her. It was too loud.
The man slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor. He sat awkwardly with his head hanging against his chest, as if he were asleep. A small, thin trail of blood dripped out of the white hazmat suit.
Gaby looked back down the hallway, hoping Jen and the others had heard that. Of course they had heard that. Everyone must have heard that shot.
She moved toward the dead man, saw the darkness shifting in the open stairwell door to her left, just barely visible out of the corner of her eye. She could feel the intensity growing, the sudden squirming of bodies jammed inside, the almost palpable vibe of growing excitement.
Ignore them. They can’t come out.
Ignore them!
She looked away as the radio clipped to her hip squawked, and a man’s deep voice came through: “What the fuck was that? Where did that shot come from?”
A female voice answered, “That’s from the tenth floor.”
“Gary,” the man said. “Come in, Gary.” When no one answered, the man said, “Mark, are you there? Where the fuck are you guys?”
Mark and Gary. Probably the man with the pudgy face whose suit she was wearing, and the dead man in front of her. Not that it mattered.
She ripped the gas mask off and tossed it, then glanced back down the hallway, expecting to see Jen and the others charging toward her at any second.
But there was no one back there except an empty hallway.
Come on, guys.