“Same as before. If the infected are outside the chapel, we might have a clear shot out. We need to keep quiet and head for the main entrance.”
“We can’t leave them.” Miranda was only half-stunned that he’d suggested it.
“I’m not going to argue with you. We’re getting you out of here. If I can, I’ll come back for the others. Right now, you’re my priority.”
Neither said a word as they descended and this time, when the phone backlight went off, Miranda kept it off. She felt her way down the railing, careful so that if Scott opened the door the light wouldn’t catch the zombies’ attention. Darkness heightened Miranda’s other senses even as her eyes struggled to find shapes in the blackness. Their footfall was heavier, the metal railing colder, and the moans louder when they reached the last door standing between them and the exit. There was no way of knowing how many infected there were, but from the varying tones and shuffling footsteps it was clearly quite a few.
Miranda pressed herself to Scott’s back, holding his shoulder. She was sweat-soaked and felt like her heart was leaping out of her chest.
“Are you ready?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.
“Ready.” She took a slow breath.
The catch released. Scott pulled the door open and Miranda held tight to him, his breathing and heartbeat steady compared to her own. The air was thick with feces and decomposition and it was hard to breathe. There was no moonlight, no power, not even a strike of lightning with which to gauge the horde’s numbers. The lingering thought of Penny’s desperate mother at Porter’s returned. Miranda intended to see the girl home. If there were a clear path to the front door, Scott wouldn’t let that happen.
He was going to leave them behind.
She had to do something.
She lifted her pistol and fired.
55
.
The toilet water turned cranberry red. Liver-like clots sank to the bottom and blood dotted the white plastic seat. Billy curled forward, pressing his hands into the cold tile floor, and braced himself for another round of vomiting that never came. His insides were dry and his body ached from the thrust and force of what felt like being turned inside out.
Part of him wanted to die. The rest believed he was dead already.
His fever spiked and his clammy skin ran the gamut between extreme heat and freezing cold. He had so much to be sorry for, but there wasn’t time to repent. Staying at the cabin put Amy in danger and the last two injections had no effect on the virus. A torturous bout of cramps and raging hallucinations replaced the temporary relief he’d come to expect after taking them. He staggered to the sink and stared at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. Flakes of skin fell from his face and hands like snow. His lips receded, the muscle and tissue dissolving as if by acid, leaving him a gaunt, haunted, undead thing.
It was a terrifying look into his future.
He’d have screamed if he thought it would help, but there was someone else to consider. He looked through the doorway at Amy, the one person he’d ever sacrifice himself for. Asleep on the couch and covered in blankets, she was fighting a different kind of infection.
One she could recover from
. Billy stumbled into the living room, grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the end table, and sat on the floor by her side. A disturbing new craving emerged when he lit the match.
He blew it out and held Amy’s hand to his lips.
Bite her.
He imagined her pale flesh between his teeth, the satisfaction of ripping through it, tasting and turning her. His love for her overtook the primal urge and he let go of her arm, horrified by what he’d been thinking.
Amy startled, but didn’t wake up. She drew a deep breath, and in that moment, he knew he couldn’t be trusted to care for her.
His eyes wandered to his grandfather’s shotgun propped against the wall in the corner. A box of shells collected dust on the shelf above it.
It was only a matter of time until he was dead anyway. Better that it happened on his terms.
He pulled the blanket his grandmother had crocheted up to Amy’s chin, grabbed the shotgun, and struggled against his tightening hands to load it. He was taking control before it was no longer an option and briefly considered the best place to do it.
He went back into the tiny bathroom already covered in blood, closed the door, and dropped the toilet’s lid. The shotgun weighed heavy in his shaking hands and he sat with his feet propped on the side of the old claw foot tub in front of him. He didn’t want to die, but he knew he couldn’t live, either. He was condemned and had no intention of putting that fate on his sister.
This was too heinous an end for her.
The guilt of a thousand bad decisions made him wonder if he earned this. He braced the gun between his boots and lowered his mouth on the muzzle. The metal radiated cold into his teeth. He commanded his finger to the trigger, but it would not obey.
Don’t be a fucking coward, Billy. You can do this.
He closed his eyes and prayed for a misfire to end his suffering.
Please, God, take me.
Tears streamed down his pimply cheeks and his greasy hair fell in front of his face. He bit down until his jaw ached, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.
There was another option.
He propped the gun against the vanity cabinet. “It’s for your own good.” He wrote the words on the mirror in toothpaste and wiped his running nose on his sleeve. There wasn’t much time. He took the washcloth from the rack by the sink and soaked it with cold water. He held it to his forehead and it quickly became warm.
Clean up the mess. Get rid of the infection.
It would do no good to leave her and accidentally contaminate her with the blood all over the bathroom. He flushed the toilet twice, gagging as he wiped the bloody surfaces clean, and set the shotgun next to the couch. “Take care, girl.”
I love you.
Words he’d never said, even once, in his life.
He was going far enough away that he couldn’t hurt her.
He opened the cabin door, stumbled into the storm, and stopped when he realized the van was still there. Grey smoke billowed out of the ailing exhaust.
“What the hell’re you doin’?” He mumbled, sure they had abandoned them.
A pistol pressed to his temple. Frank stepped out of the shadows, his wrinkled face drawn by the thinning hair plastered to it. “What I should have done in the first place.”
Billy closed his eyes.
This was the help he had prayed for.
“Thank you, Lord.”
He grabbed for Frank’s throat to make him pull the trigger.
* * * * *
The flash of the gunshot illuminated the horde and Miranda had temporary full view of the sea of undead filling the hallway. There were fifty or more infected, an army of patients in hospital gowns and robes—their nursing staff in scrubs. She swallowed the softball-sized lump of fear in her throat and prayed Scott understood why she fired.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Scott took the pistol, grabbed her arm, and dragged her toward the main entrance only feet away.
Miranda momentarily lost her balance, hitting one knee and then recovering. A shooting pain radiated up her leg and a new limp slowed her down “We can’t leave them here,” she pleaded. The sharp ache increased with each step and the closer she got to the door, the nearer the horde became. Lightning flashed through the center’s glass façade, and even though it halted her further, Miranda looked over her shoulder. Each individual infected scrambled for purchase and the lead position in the pack. They snarled and moaned. A young boy, maybe fifteen, clawed past an elderly man and tore off the man’s ear in the fray. The old man was unfazed as the murky blood poured out of the wound.
The flashes of light disoriented Miranda. Her eyes could not adjust to the constant change and when the hall went and stayed dark, her perception was, again, altered. The front door felt miles away and her pace seemed impossibly slow.
Scott was all but carrying her by this point.
Miranda felt the change in the floor texture. The carpeted mat under her feet that would normally have the automatic door opening did nothing in the darkness.
Scott let go of her, grabbed the manual handle, and pulled. “What the…?” The door didn’t budge. He tried the next and the one after than until he came to the fourth in the row. “Dammit, they’re locked.” Scott kicked and crashed into the nearest one with as much strength as he could muster after Reid’s beating. He was in survival mode and, for a brief moment, Miranda thought about giving up.
She closed her eyes to allay the panic of being in forced darkness. She needed, for one minute, to be in control.
Scott pressed the ax handle into her hand. “Back up. Get away from the window.” He fired three rounds into the glass and it barely left a mark. “Bulletproof glass, you have to be kidding me.” He pulled Miranda’s sleeve and headed toward the encroaching horde. “Come on,” he said. “Follow me.”
Her knee wanted to buckle, but she ran, ignoring the pain and unsteadiness and choking up on the ax.
Another flash of lightning showed three of the infected breaking out ahead of the pack; two middle-aged males and a teen female wearing a foam neck collar covered in blood. Scott fired four rounds--one miss, one in the girl’s chest, and one into each of the males’ heads. The bodies dropped and the horde climbed over them. The noise had them going insane.
“In here!” Scott opened a door and Miranda ran inside.
Her chest burned, short of breath, and the ache in her leg was on the threshold between extreme pain and numbness.
Scott clicked the lock and pushed his back to the door.
Miranda dropped the ax and put her hands on her knees, drawing several recovering breaths.
“What the hell were you thinking, Miranda?”
She sat on the floor and shook her head. Answering him would only bring an argument so she opted for avoidance. “Back in this goddamned bathroom again.” She flipped open the cell, illuminating the carnage, and rebooting the recent, gruesome memories. “What do you think happened to Billy?” The room still smelled like shit.
Scott squatted down, put his hands firmly on her shoulders, and clenched his teeth as he spoke. “What do you think is going to happen to
us
?”
She refused to feed into him. Six years of marriage said that one-sided arguments fizzled quickly. She settled on discussing the obvious. “The doors are locked,” she said, weighing her own words. “Bulletproof glass. Nixon doesn’t let anything get out of his control and he knew how dangerous this research was. We’re rats in a maze, Scott. This is some sort of activated contingency plan, it has to be, and we’re stuck. No matter what I did, we weren’t getting out of here.” She dialed the last number in the phone’s call log and held it to her ear.
Scott huffed, wrapping his arms tightly around his ribs, and sat down with his back to the door. He planted his feet firmly against a metal support to the first bathroom stall and groaned. He was coming down off the adrenaline rush, the inevitable soreness of his injuries settling in. “What are you doing now?”
Miranda shrugged. “I’m calling for reinforcement.”
56
.
A shot rang out, the echo of which hummed in the dark chapel for several moments after. Zach’s panic increased tenfold. It had to be Miranda.
If she was hurt or worse, he’d lost his bargaining chip.
Penny crumbled, their bleak situation whittling her to an annoying, defenseless child.
Even Foster, who in Zach’s mind had been overly compassionate and supportive, was beginning to lose his patience. “Pull yourself together,” he said.
She clung to him, sobbing.
Zach grunted and lifted the end of a heavy, wooden pew they’d used to barricade the door. The scratching and growling had stopped, the gunshot drawing them away toward new targets. Zach made sure his pistol was fully loaded. “It’s now or never. Are you all set?” he asked Foster, nervous to get going.
Foster thumbed two rounds into his clip, Penny’s weeping shaking his arm and making it difficult.
“There has to be another way out of here,” she said. Fear made her voice louder and more shrill.
“Foster, please, shut her up.” Zach swung the pew wide away from the pile. His sweaty hand slipped from the wood and he caught it before it crashed.
Foster took Penny by the shoulders. “There’s no other way out,” he said. “We’re going to open this door and I want you to stay as close behind me as you can.” Penny nodded and wiped a clear string of snot from her nose. “The main entrance is at the other end of this hallway. It’s a straight shot. My truck’s not far from the door. End of the first row, Black Jeep Grand Cherokee. Okay?”
Penny sniffled. “Okay.”
“Foster, come on. Grab an end.”
Foster tripped, knocking the pew out of Zach’s hand and sending it crashing into the pile.
“Goddamnit, Foster!” Zach froze and listened for the infected’s return. He pushed the sole of his boot against the bottom of the chapel door, using it as a stop.
Penny covered her mouth with both hands and stifled a whimper.
Zach wondered if he wasn’t better off without them.
No one moved. Tension, fear, and anticipation took over the room and was only broken when Zach’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Startled, he scrambled to answer it in case it was Nixon. It wasn’t.
“Scott, is Miranda okay?”
Penny and Foster exchanged glances.
“Zach, it’s me. I’m fine.”
“Miranda.”
Thank God.
The tension melted from his shoulders. “Where are you?” He kept his voice low.
“In the bathroom, down the hall. Is Penny okay?”
He wondered that, himself. “She’s fine. What happened to you two?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re trapped.”
“The main entrance is right there. I’ll try to distract them…”