K. T. Swartz Read online

  She glanced down the hall. Shadows slid from around the corner. Unable to go forward, she snatched up her bow and ran for the door. Looked both ways. The building’s smooth sides offered no traction; neither did the overhang provide a place to perch out of reach. Leafy green bushes rustled, betraying shuffling footsteps of another zombie. Its moan was so loud, barely ten feet and closing.

  ‘I had no time to think, only react. Hand-to-hand combat would be impossible, so I ran around the corner. I knew this hospital, knew about the garden on its north side – and the lattice-like brick wall around it. The moans of those zombies behind me drowned out the sound of my running footsteps.

  I’d taken a chance sneaking into the hospital without scouting out the surrounding area first, but the sun was only hours away from setting, and I hadn’t even found a place to camp for the night. I was desperate, so I acted rashly.

  Ahead of me, yet another zombie stood in the garden entrance. My footsteps, of course, attracted his attention. I veered to the left and looked over my shoulder. I had attracted a small crowd. Including the one ahead of me, there were six. And I’d run out of time.

  I grabbed the brick wall, stuck my toes in the holes, and started climbing. The zombie in the entrance was a tall one, easily a head above the others. His long arms and long legs closed the gap between us. Fingers closed around the sole of my shoe. I jerked my foot hard. Flinched when I smacked my toes into the brick. The zombie’s decaying muscles were the only reason I survived, and I climbed higher, to the top of the wall. Barely six or seven inches across, the bricks were uncomfortable to straddle.

  My bow would take too long, so I set a spare magazine on the bricks and aimed my gun at the taller zombie. His eyes were clear; he still clung to life, still breathed, because the Out-Break hadn’t killed him yet. But he was too far gone to save. His hand-eye coordination still worked though, which encouraged him to lace his fingers through the brick. He started to climb. I shot him through the forehead.

  He got stuck in the brick, his head lolling forward as the five from the hospital finally shuffled into view. Their moans punctuated the air. I held still, counted the bullets I’d used and the ones I had left – four and nine. Nine against five. Four chances to miss. I’d already used two on one zombie – one too many, so I had to be careful. I couldn’t begin to guess at how many zombies still roamed the hospital’s floors.

  So, I waited until their hands reached up for me like so many adoring fans.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  Only two feet of distance separated her from their grasping fingers. They clawed at the wall, fingers catching on the brick. And held. She stared. The female that pulled herself up brushed her fingers along the bottom of her shoe. She dug her toes into the lattice holes and aimed. One bullet for one zombie. No misses, and she had to do this quickly. She squeezed the trigger. The bullet from her gun tore the female zombie from the wall. Bone snapped as they reached up. Decaying muscles stretched and tore from tendons. She aimed again and fired. One zombie fell.

  This had gone on long enough, to the point where their moans had completely blown her hopes for a silent entry, but she couldn’t chance looking up to check if their moans had attracted others. The trip shouldn’t have gone so badly. But it did. She fired three times, in rapid succession. And they fell. Nine bullets used; four left. If this continued, she’d run out of ammo before she made it to the blood bank.

  She lifted her knees higher, giving herself more distance now that she didn’t need to compensate for the gun’s kick. She shook so badly the 9mm shivered in its holster. Both hands pressed against the warm brick, her eyes roamed the street, to yet another hospital parking lot full of vehicles. Inside one of the SUVs, something moved. But the window tint made it impossible to determine what.

  ‘I remember the first vehicle I saw with a zombie trapped inside. It was also an SUV, with its driver still belted into the front seat. I’d watched its hands drag across the glass, and they smeared the window tint. Only then did I realize that what I thought was tint was actually the fluid from its own body coating the window. The zombie had tried to claw its way through the glass and only managed to wear its fingers down to the bone.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  Other than the zombie trapped in the SUV, nothing else moved. She didn’t wait for her good luck to end. With the gun magazine in her pack, she climbed down the wall. Instead of staying in the street, she knelt behind the foliage, slunk along the wall back to the patient’s entrance. No more rushing, even if she was running out of time. She popped the magazine out and refilled it.

  Her binoculars zoomed in on the hall. No movement. She darted forward, slowed only at the entrance. Stopped, closed her eyes to listen. No shuffling footsteps. No moans. Maybe those five were the only ones in her immediate vicinity. In any case, she needed a directory. The gift shop hadn’t had one, so she started walking toe-to-heel, stepping over sections of glass and a fallen gurney and a wheelchair. At the end of the hall, she knelt by the wall and took out her mirror.

  The empty hall reflected oddly in the glass. Disjointed and broken angles ran together. Metal blended with white walls, white floor, and white ceiling. She adjusted the angle to start from the floor – and spotted a table on its side, a large shelf lying perpendicular to the wall. Halfway up was a sign for the restrooms, and higher up were room numbers: 201, 203, and 205. No zombies. Blood smears streaked the far wall, showing a T-junction. She flipped the mirror around to look down the other hall. More rooms: 199, 197, 195. A janitor’s closet. An elevator. No zombies.

  She stood, stuck her mirror in her pack. Crowbar in hand, she stopped in front of the janitor’s closet. Tried the handle. Locked, of course. But this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Chemicals were high on her list of things to get, and a locked door meant it hadn’t been pilfered yet. She looked again down the hall before slipping the crowbar’s teeth through the gap between door and frame. The metal left scratch marks in the white paint. She put a foot on the doorframe, tightened her grip on cold metal. And pushed.

  The door protested, groaned loudly, and buckled. She jerked the crowbar down, splintering wood. The door popped open. A shadow behind it surged forward. The zombie grabbed her shoulders, buried its face in the thick leather of her collar. Teeth bit down on her shoulder, sending a jolt of panic through her. Fear clawed at her as much as the fingers on her shoulders. She gasped as the janitor slammed her into the wall. Her crowbar’s metal teeth caught the zombie in his left eye. The rotten organ burst like a squeezed grape. But his teeth jerked off her shoulder as she pulled his face away.

  The zombie stumbled, only to rush at her again. She swung the crowbar with both hands and caught him across the jaw, sending him colliding into the wall. She slammed cold metal into his skull. Kept pounding until fetid blood sprayed the walls and floor. The zombie janitor, his head a ruined mess, toppled backwards.

  She didn’t move, kept the crowbar tight in her grip. Her lungs demanded air, and she stared at the dead zombie as if somehow afraid he would stand. Logic told her that once a zombie’s brains painted the floor, or whatever object happened to be close by, it was dead. But fear whispered that maybe this time would be different, that maybe there was no real way to kill a zombie, and those that she’d killed would only rise to their feet again.

  But the zombie in front of her lay flat on his back. Keys hung at his waist. She knelt and ignored her shaking hands, the gasp of fear escaping her lips. The janitor’s ring of keys felt good in her hands, something solid besides the crowbar, something that couldn’t kill. She kicked the door open, jumped back with her 9mm ready, but no more shambling surprises waited for her. Shaking her head, she stepped into the closet.

  ‘I really could have kicked myself for being so stupid then… I should have knocked first.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  She closed the door behind her; its metal latch wouldn’t catch, only popping out again, so she sli
d a narrow table in front of it. Turned on her flashlight to read the labels on the cleaning supplies. Ammonia, bleach, dishwashing soap, toilet bowl cleaner… in large jugs, they lined the shelves but were too heavy to carry all at once. So, she took the spray bottles out of her pack and filled them up. She grabbed a couple bars of soap, rags, and gloves, and shoved them to the bottom of the pack, to fill the gaps, and then cleaned out the first aid kit on the wall.

  She shrugged her pack on and moved the table out of the way. Gun in hand, she slid down the wall, opened it just a crack. If she’d only found a directory she’d have some idea how far she had left to go to reach the blood bank. She could only assume it was on the basement level, because of the other hospitals she’d searched.

  She shook her head. Doubt killed quicker than a zombie’s bite, speaking of which… she fingered the leather collar; slight indentations but nothing punctured. Yet. She’d have to be on the lookout for more leather to supplement should something fail. As it stood, her suit still held up. Layers and leather, with a healthy coating of zombie gore.

  She listened for shuffling feet. Sometimes it seemed that shuffling feet were all she ever heard – all that she expected to hear. Since reaching the Danville city limits, she found that the birds stopped singing. No wild dogs or slinking cats ducked between the buildings. No other living, breathing, cognizant beings existed in Danville anymore. Maybe she was an idiot for having come back, but this was her hometown. She’d grown up here. This had been her and her husband’s end goal, even if she was too late to save her family. Nostalgia and foolish pride had brought her here – and would keep her here – until she’d wiped this city clean of the infestation too, even if the sound of shuffling feet drove her mad.

  She opened the door all the way, as silence settled over the hall. With her mirror she searched where her eyes could not. An empty hall. She headed downstairs but skipped the steps where gore dripped and puddled. She stepped over the patient’s staring corpse. Tugged on the arrow protruding from his forehead, but the tip caught on the front part of the skull. The metal edges pecked against bone, the patient’s head jerking with each tug. Unable to work it free, she left it but pulled the second arrow from the nurse’s shoulder. Undamaged, it went back in its quiver.

  She knelt, hands on cool tile to look through the railing, into a wide open area with tables and chairs, food carts, heaters to warm up food, and coolers with bottles of soda still in them. The ice had melted and evaporated long ago; the heaters stopped heating when the electricity failed. Behind the counter came a low moan. Shuffling feet bumped it. A bloated zombie wearing a hair net was missing most of the right side of her body. The arm and shoulder were gone; protruding ribs showed clearly where the apron no longer covered. The zombie lay stretched out on the counter, her feet uselessly scraping the floor.

  ‘I’ve seen many zombies like that, too eaten or mauled for even their revived bodies to compensate. They’ve lost too much to do more than weakly flail at me, their eyes on me as I approach. I usually use my crowbar or hammer to crush their skulls. Bullets are too precious to waste. But standing over them, watching them struggle, reminds me of that scene in Ol’ Yeller, where the dog’s owner is forced to put down his beloved pet because of rabies. I’ve never actually seen the movie, and though I don’t know these weakened zombies, I still have to put them down, because like that dog, they’ll turn on me given half a chance.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  She took her crowbar from her belt. The zombie waved feebly at her, as if to attract her attention, even when she was looking right at her. She drove the crowbar’s pointed end into the zombie’s cranium, and it caved in like fallen cake. The zombie’s brain splattered inside her skull. The body relaxed, arm drooping over the counter. On the corner of her jacket, she wiped the gore off, stuck the crowbar in her belt. And moved on.

  Rows and rows of moldy food lined the carts. Gnats buzzed around fruit so rotted, its stench mingled with the dead zombie and overpowered it; brought tears to her eyes. She moved away, back to the bottled drinks and aluminum cans. Bags of chips, muffins, whatever she could find, she tossed in a pile to go through. She turned over each drink, each food item for the expiration date. Sugared foods she pushed aside, but packed the salty items, the water, and a few bottles of soda for energy. Dried cereal she took, pulled the plastic bag out of the cumbersome boxes.

  If she kept this up, she was going to have to make a second trip, and considering how dangerous the situation – until she’d had time to clear out the town a bit – that was a bad idea. Her eyes spotted a sign hanging on the wall. A map. She pulled it down, her eyes devouring it. It laid out the floor-plan, stairways, elevator locations, and a listing of every department on this floor, including the Blood Bank. Perfect. She packed away the food and followed the map.

  The halls to the Blood Bank were eerily quiet. All in disarray, all dark. Her flashlight beam played across the bloody walls and the trails of gore that led deeper into the hospital. But hospitals weren’t meant to be so silent, where only the shush of her soles made the barest whisper of sound. To protect her back, she closed every door she passed. To search them all would waste too much time, and she was quickly running out of that.

  Another sign pointed the way to the Blood Bank; she followed it. To the sound of shuffling feet and soft moans, to the sounds of an undead crowd. She knelt by the corner of the hall, angled her mirror to what had been a glassed-in room; its door was missing from its hinges. But between her and the sign that read ‘Blood Bank’ was a hall choked with shadows. Like spectators at a game, they milled around, occasionally bumping into each other. They even called out to one another, their soft moans echoing back and forth, until the whole cycle started over. Their backs to her, their attention focused on the smells that brought them there, they were packed so tight she’d never be able to get through.

  She sat down. All this trouble, all those bullets, all this time wasted… She needed that blood, had come so far, only to have her goal be tossed aside. Without any way of finding another blood bank, she couldn’t do a thing against Danville’s population of over 14,000. She absolutely had to have that blood. But there were simply too many zombies.

  She retreated to a room with a closed door. With nothing inside, she locked it, emptied her pack onto the bed, to pull out a long, squat box. A parting gift from her husband and the instructions on how to make more. In some strange way, it meant almost as much as the rings hanging around her neck. This was his creation, something he insisted she know how to make, because in a situation like this, a weapon with a wide range could even the odds. An aggressive defense, he’d told her. And she lived by that, protecting herself at the cost of damaging as many enemies as she could.

  She opened the box that had at one time held four semi-complete pipe bombs. The fuses and ingredients were in tightly sealed containers beside the last remaining bomb. She opened her emergency toolkit and unfolded the directions. She could almost hear his voice as she read them again. With repetition and practice, they’d been drilled into her skull until she could recite and create them herself.

  ‘Jeremy loved all things explosive, and to feed that love, he’d joined the army. He used to tell me stories of his experiments as a kid, in his grandfather’s barn… which he eventually and unintentionally burned down. If it went ‘boom’ he knew how to make it, and pipe bombs were no exception. Had he lived in a city, there was no way he’d gotten away with this love, but that boy was country to his core and so smart I knew he wouldn’t have stayed a sergeant had there been no Out-Break… as long as he didn’t blow himself up first.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  Pack it tight. The more densely packed the powder was, the better the explosion. Nerves got the better of her. She kept tamping until she could fit no more in the pipe. She held the fuse steady as she fastened the cap. Knuckles white, she closed her eyes. If this didn’t work she was out of options and out of time. And probably dead, woul
d wander Danville just like the thousands of others that once called this small town home. Only this time, no one was there to give her a Viking funeral, nor keep her from turning into the thing she hated most. Unless she felt like pulling the trigger first.

  With her pack slung over her shoulders, she unlocked the door. Listened. The sports crowd hadn’t spilled into the hallway yet, so maybe her presence hadn’t been noticed. She opened the door a crack, turned on her flashlight, but kept it behind her. Such darkness hid too much, and so very little of it could she see. She felt like a child waiting for the monster under her bed and the globins in the closet to attack her all at once. She set the flashlight face down on the floor and took out her lighter. If she judged correctly, the bomb would only have a ten second fuse, barely enough time for her to throw it and run and hope the building didn’t fall down around her ears. If nothing else, she’d go out with a bang, even though she didn’t want to go out at all.

  The fuse sparked, a brilliant flicker of light in the darkness. For an instant, spots danced in front of her eyes. She counted the seconds under her breath, as she stepped in full view of the zombie-infested hall. She tossed the bomb into the crowd. And ran. The moans behind her grew louder, insistent. She didn’t dare look back, not until the floor under her feet shuddered.

  The concussive blast rolled through the concrete walls and over the floor. The air vibrated, hummed like a plucked string. Clouds of dust chased her down the hall, as she ran through the cafeteria. As it rushed close behind, she pulled her gasmask over her head. One hand on the stair’s railing, she climbed halfway up, let the dust wash by like water. The entire building groaned. Only when it settled did she pull out her crowbar. She slid along the wall, staring down the hall.