Whenever You're Ready - Chapter Nine [nanofic]
I was originally going to post this part plus another big part as a huge chapter in its entirety, but I think it'll be too big and unwieldy. And I found a good way to end this chapter (at least, I think it is!) So here's a new chapter.
Title: Whenever You're Ready
Chapter: Nine
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Rating: PG to R throughout the series
Word Count: 5495
Whenever You’re Ready
By Severina
* * *
Chapter Nine
A gurney lying on its side props open the door leading to the ward. A small black and white sign identifies the area as Ward 2B.
The second floor is eerily quiet.
Justin gestures toward the door with his chin, then points to the gun tucked in Brian’s waistband. Brian shakes his head and points instead to the bat held loosely in Justin’s hand. He lifts his index finger to his lips in the universal sign for silence.
There is no sound beyond the half-open door. No shuffling steps. No hungry moans.
Brian shrugs before sliding his own baseball bat from the unzippered half of the gym bag.
They each take a deep breath before pushing the door open the rest of the way. It creaks loudly in the hushed stillness and they freeze.
Silence. And silence.
Justin learns to breathe again. He almost wishes for the guttural groans of the zombies, for the whoosh of the bat through the air before it connects with flesh and bone. The bat has become, already, a second appendage. The bat, he understands.
They step tentatively over the overturned gurney.
The ward corridor is painted in pale yellows and warm golds. Generic artwork lines the walls. No doubt the effect is meant to be soothing. Justin flashes back to the décor in his ward, so long ago. Vibrant colours and inspirational prints, designed to “energize and encourage” according to his physiotherapist. They only made Justin want to hit something.
The hallway is strewn with debris. Justin’s feet shuffle through sheets of paper, computer printouts, supplies almost certainly left abandoned and unneeded as the men and women working in the ward fled for their lives.
And still there is no sound but the careful tread of their feet on the polished tile floor.
Brian reaches the nurses station a little ahead of Justin. Justin watches him take a breath and set his shoulders, adjust his grip on the bat, before he darts quickly to the side.
There is nothing -- no one -- behind the counter.
Justin pivots slowly in place. The layout is one that he’s seen before. The nurses station is the hub, and hallways branch out from it in three directions. Justin scans slowly and carefully down each one. And see the same signs of frantic flight, of once important paperwork flung to the ground and of a mad dash for safety.
There is a smear of dried blood marring the yellow wall a third of the way down the corridor on his right.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Justin murmurs.
“Sunshine,” Brian says just as softly.
Justin turns back to see him holding up a leaflet -- no, a hastily printed newspaper, perhaps four or five smudged pages.
The headline screams “The Dead Walk” in large bold 72 point font.
Brian smirks and lets the paper flutter to the ground at his feet.
“There should be people,” Justin says, crossing to Brian’s side. “Something happened here. It’s obvious they were frantic to get out. And there… that…” He shrugs and points out the blood.
“Elevators?” Brian suggests.
Justin takes in the double set of elevators standing still and silent across from the nurses station. “If the people left by the elevators,” he points out, “the zeds could also get up here on them.”
Brian shrugs, at a loss.
Maybe Ward 2B got lucky. Maybe they managed to kill all the zombies before making their escape. Maybe only one or two zeds made it this far. Maybe people who had been bitten were taken to the ward, in the early hours of the infection, before anybody knew just how they‘d received their bites and exactly what they would become. Maybe the presence of only a few shambling zombies was enough to cause wide-spread panic among the nurses and patients.
They’ll never know.
There is so much now that they’ll never know.
Brian tugs on Justin’s windbreaker, pulling him out of his fugue both physically and mentally. “Come on,” he says, “we need to find the ambulance bays.”
They have no idea which way to go. Justin’s one and only trip to the emergency room had been strapped to a gurney, bleeding and unconscious. Brian had done his level best to block out all memory of that night.
So Justin randomly chooses the corridor on the left. The one farthest away from that glaring blotch of blood.
He holds Brian’s hand tightly in his.
They tense before each open doorway, easily carefully and cautiously past, only daring to breathe again when they are beyond each breach in the wide expanse of the hall. They scan each room quickly as they edge by but see only empty beds, privacy curtains pushed back and bright noonday sunlight catching the dust motes in the air.
Justin can’t stop looking back over his shoulder.
Silence. And silence.
Justin starts to breathe easier.
They are more than halfway down the chosen hallway when Justin stubs his toe on something half buried underneath the mounds of paper that seem to line the corridor. He releases Brian’s hand and bends to slides the paper aside. He comes up with an oversized brightly painted puzzle piece.
His eyes go wide. “Oh shit, you don’t think this is a children’s ward--”
“No kids here,” a voice says loudly to his left.
Justin drops the wooden jigsaw piece and spins to his right, the bat already coming up to swing. At his side, he senses more than sees Brian do the same thing. His shoulder tenses, the bat starting its rapid descent--
Brian’s hand comes up quickly to block its path.
And Justin gasps out a shocked breath at how close he just came.
The lady is… well, it’s hard to tell how old she is. Her face is painted with elaborate streaks of makeup, round red circles on her cheeks and her lips a garish state of purplish-red. Her hair, grey and springy from what looks like a bad home perm, looks like it hasn’t seen a hairbrush in weeks. Her face is a roadmap of wrinkles.
She is clad only in a sagging green hospital gown and matching paper slippers.
“No, no kids here,” she repeats. “Sometimes Margaret brings Lance and Jemika. Now what kind of name is Jemika? That ain’t no name found in the Bible, I’ll tell you the truth. Shooooot, do they run up and down the halls! Scare ol’ Martin to bits!” The woman’s laugh is chainsaw loud and just as grating.
Brian side-glances Justin. “Ma’am, you need to--”
“Did you bring my pills?”
“Ma’am--” Justin tries.
The woman takes a shuffling step toward them. She smells like urine, like unwashed skin and feces with an overpowering overlay of lavender perfume. Justin tries not to gag.
“I like the pink ones,” the woman confides conspiratorially. “They taste like candy floss.”
Brian pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is there anyone else here? Anyone who can help--”
“Shoooot, the only person here is ol’ Rebecca, and she ain’t moved for days n’ days! Lazy bitch!” The woman leans forward and spits out a wad of phlegm. Justin flinches.
And when the woman raises an emaciated arm to indicate her room with a flourish, Justin is reminded of those old television game shows where the scantily clad hostess presents a potential prize to an excited polyester wearing contestant. He meets Brian’s eyes before they both peer tentatively around her frail frame to the room beyond.
The woman’s roommate -- Rebecca -- lies with open staring eyes on a rumpled and stained sheet. She most definitely has not moved for days. She’d been restrained to the bed rails, thick leather straps holding her down.
Her chest has been ripped apart. Her skin is grey and mottled.
And when she sees them, she lets out a low keening moan.
She’s hungry.
Justin draws in a ragged breath. “Jesus.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Brian says.
Justin swipes a hand through his hair, reins in the panic -- his brain screaming run! -- with great effort. “Okay,” he says shakily. “Okay. Ma’am? You need to come with us.” He ignores the flabbergasted look that Brian shoots his way.
“Do you got my pills or not?”
“No,” Brian says evenly, “she really doesn’t.”
“Brian!” Justin rests a hand soothingly on Brian’s arm. “We can’t just leave her here! She‘s--”
“Deranged?”
“Traumatized,” Justin corrects. “And she needs our help.” He smoothes a hand along Brian’s chest, feels the tension thrumming through his frame. And he doesn’t need a Manual to know what Brian is thinking. Another responsibility. Another body to protect. A helpless victim.
And the thing is… Justin knows that Brian is right. The woman will be dead weight, unable to fight, probably unable to run. Protecting her might get them killed.
But there’s no way he can leave her behind.
He knows that Brian knows it too. Knows that Brian could never do it, no matter what he says.
He turns back to the woman and smiles in what he hopes is a comforting manner. A don’t worry, we’ll take care of you type smile. He’s pretty sure that he just looks terrified.
The woman’s eyes flit between the comforting hand he has resting on Brian’s chest to his face, and then back. “You ain’t no doctor,” she says, her eyes narrowing.
Justin can feel his patience fraying. Rebecca‘s body in the room beyond is an unspoken reminder -- time is of the essence. Their abandoned ward is not so abandoned after all. “No ma’am,” he says tightly. “But we’re going to take care of you. If you’ll just--”
“I know you!” the woman suddenly shouts out. “I seen you in the papers! Margaret brings me the papers, oh yes she does. The Pittsburgh Gazette! Lance n’ Jemika was running around like banshees, little brats, and there you was, right there in the papers!”
Justin blinks. He looks at Brian. “The Gazette did an article on me?”
Brian shrugs. “Don’t look so proud. They compared you to Sam Auerbach.” He smirks. “Unfavourably.”
“Fuckers,” Justin says.
“You!” the woman snarls. “You look so smug, so hoighty-toity! You think you’re the sheee-it! But I know about you. Oh yes, I know all about you! You’re the boy that paints those naughty pictures!”
Justin lets his hand drop from Brian’s chest. His grip on the bat tightens subconsciously.
“And you… you…” The woman sputters, suddenly so angry she’s spitting. He watches the spittle fly from her mouth in some kind of perverse fascination. “You fornicate with MEN!”
They back up as she advances, fingers curled into claws.
“SINNERS!”
Her eyes glint dangerously, maliciously. And Justin knows he could break her in half without trying, knows that those brittle bones would snap like twigs… and also knows that he could never lay a hand on her. So he continues backing up the hallway, palms upraised in a conciliatory gesture, and tries to find his voice. Tries to find the words that will calm her and make her see reason.
And knows, deep down inside, that the words don’t exist. Knows that they’re going to have to leave her here.
“It’s your fault I didn’t get my pink pills!” she screams.
Justin senses Brian moving to the right. Brian’s arm lifting above his head. And for one brief scary moment he thinks Brian has snapped, that Brian is going to smash the bat into the woman’s head. Crush her skull.
And he thinks… maybe… it might be the right choice.
There are different kinds of mercy killing.
Then he sees the zed stumble from the open doorway behind the woman… and Brian isn’t fast enough.
The zombie’s teeth fix on the woman’s shoulder hard enough for Justin to hear the bone crack. Blood arcs from the wound in great spurts, spattering the floor like raindrops at Justin’s feet.
He blinks, stunned, still with one hand outstretched to the dying woman.
And in the hallway behind them… more shuffling feet.
He feels like he’s moving in slow motion as he turns to face the oncoming zombies. He meets Brian’s eyes. Reflexively clenches his bat, testing his grip.
“Past them?” Brian asks.
Justin nods.
And then they are running toward the zeds, and Justin thinks he might be screaming. He chops his bat down on the shoulder of the nearest, a woman wearing a bright yellow nurses uniform emblazoned with dozens of smiley happy faces. He pushes past another, sending the tall male zed tumbling to the tiles. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Brian’s bat pulverize the skull of a short Hispanic man clad in patients green pyjamas. He goes down like a felled tree, dead before he hits the ground.
A skeletal hand tangles in his windbreaker and he yelps and twists away from the clutching fingers. He hears the fabric tear and then he is free.
They break through the last of the zombies and slide around the corner and…
His brain can’t comprehend it at first.
The large open space must have been a dayroom, or a visitors centre. Prints depicting coastal beaches and moonlit marinas dot the walls. Large overstuffed chairs and a long sofa in complimentary ‘soothing’ colours of pale blues and yellows fill the room. The sizeable television sits in a corner oak cabinet and is still turned on, its screen showing only flickering static-snow.
The room has become an abattoir.
Blood paints the walls, the furniture. Soaks into the carpet in the middle of the room, and runs in partially dried rivulets on the tiles. Liberally coats the hands and arms and faces of the zombies who revel in it. Who dine leisurely on the victims that they have literally pulled apart.
Justin swallows down the bile that rises in his throat.
This, he thinks distractedly, is why the other corridors are mostly deserted. The zombies have no inclination to search out other survivors. They have no reason to leave such a feast.
He can’t look away.
He slaps at Brian’s arm weakly. “We have to move.”
Brian says nothing.
Justin closes his eyes for just a moment. Makes a fist and digs his nails into the skin of his palm until water comes to his eyes. He blinks away the tears and ignores his own rapid heartbeat, the ache in his chest that is part sorrow for all that is lost and part pure unadulterated horror. He wonders how much shock the mind can take before it shatters.
He turns his back on the slaughterhouse, on the zombies that are already struggling to rise.
The stunned look in Brian’s eyes reflects the anguish and revulsion in his own.
“Brian,” he repeats softly, “we need to move.”
And Brian blinks. Nods. His chin comes up, defiant. Always the one in control, Justin had called him once, a long time ago. The one on top. How difficult must it be to let that control falter, to know that sometimes there are things that are simply out of your command?
Justin’s glad to see it back now. That look in Brian’s eye.
“Fucking zombies,” Brian sneers.
And Justin smiles. Takes his hand. And they run.
Their feet skid on the tiles as they pass the corridor -- and though Justin doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t want to, he looks, and he sees the crazy old woman struggling to her feet, her hospital gown drenched with blood, and she looks up and sees him and she snarls -- and take a right, pushing past another zed, and another. They slide around a second corner and Justin is completely turned around now, lost, and then Brian is pulling on his arm, slamming him into the wall and Justin sees it, a non-descript brown wooden door with a small glassed in window.
The tarnished handle turns easily under Brian’s grip.
And then they are inside -- storage closet, locker, he doesn’t know what the fuck, but it’s small and dark and most definitely empty -- and Brian has slammed the door and flicked the lock with his thumb. Justin drags the shiny yellow curtain across the window, blocking out the bright fluorescent light from the hallway.
He has no idea where they’ll go from here.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Emmett doesn’t like hospitals.
It has nothing to do with the fact that this particular hospital is filled with bloodthirsty undead creatures that want to eat his brains -- or at least, that’s not the only reason. The hospital is where Michael almost died. It’s where Ted nearly didn’t come out of a drug-induced coma. It’s where his treasured Aunt Lula fought her throat cancer, it’s vice-like grip preventing her from even being able to dispense her beloved down-home wisdom at the end.
Emmett hates hospitals.
And as he dashes through the zombie-clogged corridors, praising both the zeds poor coordination and his own dashing way with a metal club, Emmett doesn’t think his opinion is going to change anytime soon.
He has no idea where he’s going. His arm feels like it’s going to give out at any moment. The zeds keep coming.
And he really has no idea what an ‘ambulance bay’ even is. Or where it would be. Or--
Emmett crashes through a set of swinging double doors. He takes in his surroundings in a quick glance -- a skill that he honed in Hazlehurst, when sizing up the mood of the room (and knowing where all the exits were located, in case a quick escape was required) was second nature.
Oversized desk -- check.
Hallway that branches in two directions -- check.
Six… no, make that seven… zombies -- check.
And at the end of the corridor on the left, a door. A closed door. A door that, probably, the zombies won’t be able to open.
He realizes that he has no idea if zombies can open doors. He should have asked Michael. Or maybe they can find that George Romero fellow and ask him.
One of the zeds comes in on his right, a burly fellow that would have been attractive in a slightly dangerous Russell Crowe kind of way had it not been for the dreadlocks. Half of his right cheek is missing, long tendrils of flesh hanging in loops against his jaw. Emmett braces himself and swings, long and low and smooth. The metal club clips the zombie against the forehead, and he goes down, already dead.
“It’s for the best,” Emmett tells him. “That look really did not work on you.”
Three other zombies are stumbling in his direction. The corridor to his right is clear. The corridor to the left is blocked by the three zeds.
Emmett makes a decision. He breaks for the door.
He skates by the first zombie without incident, its short legs and stubby body unable to reach him fast enough. The second moans and opens a gaping mouth and Emmett slams the club into its cheek, hearing the bone shatter. Not a killing blow, but enough to get him past.
The third zombie wraps her fingers around his shirt and holds on.
Emmett struggles in her grip -- a thin wiry woman of later years in life, her glasses still dangling by one arm from her ear, her nametag smeared with blood. Her neck arches as she tries to get closer. Her teeth snap together inches from his chest.
He’s barely holding her back with his left arm, numb pain shooting up to his shoulder from the effort. His every attempt to raise the club in his right hand is met with failure.
The gun feels heavy and warm in his waistband, but he hasn’t yet had the opportunity to reload it. Not that he could, he remembers, since the bullets are in their gym bag and the gym bag is with Ted.
The other zombie is pulling itself to its feet. Beyond it, he can see two more anxious to join the fray.
In the end, he decides to risk it all on one ballsy move. Because if there’s one thing he has, it’s balls.
He lets the club drop from his hand, not even hearing it smash on the tile. He relaxes his thin frame, ignoring the dank smell of the zombies breath, the gnash of her teeth ever closer as she senses victory. And then he lets loose with a roundhouse punch to the woman’s jaw, like he did once before, to a certain homophobe who was threatening his friends. The punch connects better than he’d hoped, sending a zing of pain up his arm and the woman’s head smashing back into the wall. Her grip loosens… and Emmett wiggles free.
He flings open the door and dashes into the next room, slamming it shut behind him just as the second zombie thumps against to the wood.
Emmett leans back against the door, breathing heavily. “I am,” he says breathlessly to no one, “a lean, mean zombie killing machine.”
Something -- some thing -- thuds against the door. Emmett lets out a yelp and jumps back, his eyes going to the door handle.
There is another bang, and then another… but the handle doesn’t turn.
“Ha!” he crows.
And feeling safe -- or safer, anyway -- he turns his back on the wooden door and surveys the new and currently zombie-free room.
A whiteboard hangs askew on the wall behind the large nurses station, the blue and red lettering smudged but mostly still readable. “Kieslowski - 7 - Bypass” reads one message. Another name next to the first is illegible. A second message: “Wiler - Stanton - 7:30 - Recon Rhino”.
Emmett cocks his head and squints at the board. “Okay,” he says quietly to himself, “this is the operating room. Or, no, the area that you go to before the operating room. What’s that called? I can’t remember. Those poor bastards on the table.” He shakes his head, catching the final message on the board. “And somebody has a twisted sense of humour.”
“End of the World,” it reads. “Last stop. Everybody out.”
A zombie slams into the door.
“You don’t give up, do you?” Emmett mutters.
A second, louder thump is his answer.
Emmett decides to ignore it.
“The first thing you have to do is find a weapon,” Emmett continues his monologue softly, his own voice serving to keep him calm. He moves slowly into the room, edging behind the nurses station and through the room behind it, hoping that he’s heading away from the actual operating rooms and not towards them. Because the last person he wants to meet is Kieslowski - 7 - Bypass.
“And what will you find for a weapon in a hospital? Hmmm.” Emmett pauses in front of a small grey wall divider, thinking. “Splints? No, too flimsy. Oh! Crutches!”
He smiles at his cleverness -- and that’s when the strong pair of arms reaches from behind the divider and seizes hold, lifting him off his feet.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ted and Michael don’t look back.
They hear the pursuing zed slam into the glass lobby door of the apartment complex. They hear the glass crack with the force of the body.
They fly down the narrow hallway and hit the door leading to the staircase at a dead run. Take the stairs two at a time, gym bags crashing against their legs as they pump in staccato rhythm. They don’t stop until the reach the third floor stairwell. Where they collapse, chests heaving.
“Didn’t know,” Michael gasps out, “I could run that fast.”
“Knew I should’ve done more cardio at the gym,” Ted wheezes.
There are no sounds of pursuit.
Finally Ted raises himself to a standing position, still breathing heavily. “Well,” he says, “this is just great.”
Michael grasps at his arm, fingers digging painfully into his flesh. “Did you see Ben?”
Ted remembers the chunk of metal sticking out of Ben’s thigh. The look of agony on his face. Brian pulling him from the lopsided mail truck, Ben’s eyes clenched tight against the pain.
“I saw him with Brian. I’m sure he’s fine,” Ted says softly.
He knows there’s no guarantee. And from the look on his face, so does Michael. So he does what he can. What he does best. “What now, oh great and powerful zombie knowledge wizard type person?” he asks.
Michael bites his lip, but the vacant scared look goes out of his eyes. A little. “Well, we need to get around to the back of the hospital, to the emergency room. There’s a little… sort of… covered shed where they keep the ambulances.”
“The infamous ambulance bay of which you were shouting so exuberantly.”
“Right.”
“And you know this, how?” Ted asks. “Not that I’m doubting your prescience, of course.”
Michael rolls his eyes. “I used to volunteer here. With Uncle Vic. We hid in that ambulance bay when we stuck out for smoke breaks.”
He looks sheepish. Ted thinks it’s somewhat adorable.
“Somehow that seems like something you’d do with Brian,” Ted points out.
“Uncle Vic and Brian were a lot more alike than you’d know,” Michael says. He takes a breath. “Okay, so…”
“Through the door?” Ted asks.
“Through the door,” Michael confirms. “But quietly! This place could be crawling with zombies.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
The door to the third floor opens silently when they give it a push. The long, narrow corridor is deserted. Cautiously, they leave the tiled landing behind and step onto the ragged carpet of the hall.
“What is this place?” Ted hisses.
“It used to be a factory,” Michael answers. He points to the oversized freight elevator, at least double the size of the one at Brian’s loft. An equally large garbage chute is barely discernable at the far end of the long hall, it‘s steel metal door hanging askew. “See? Then they converted it into apartments. Brian was considering buying here when he was searching for a place. He chose the loft instead.”
Ted takes in the faded and stained carpet on the floor, the peeling and dingy brown paint on the walls. The entire dwelling smells vaguely of three day old curry. “Good call,” he says dryly.
They edge their way carefully along the hall, barely enough room for them to stand shoulder to shoulder.
The first door they pass is closed. Ted stops outside the battered wood; presses his ear to the thin panel and listens. “Nothing,” he whispers.
The second door, on the opposite side of the hall, is also closed. This time Michael does the honours. And gets the same response. Nothing.
Ted feels the tension easing just a little. Not a sound from Apartment 3A or Apartment 3B. Now all they had to do was successfully pass Apartments 3C to 3 -- he glances down the hall, and does a quick count in his head -- Apartments 3C to 3M, and they were set. Then they could just go--
“Wait,” he says. “What are we looking for, exactly?”
“A back stairway,” Michael explains. “We can’t go out the way we came! The lobby will be filled with zombies by now.”
“And what if there isn’t a back stairway?” Ted yelps.
Michael pauses, considering. “Then we’re fucked,” he finally says.
Ted sighs. “Oh Michael.”
“Look, be confident!” Michael says quietly. “We’ve just got to-- oh shit.”
“Wha--” Ted begins. But then he sees.
A zombie is shuffling out of Apartment 3C. And down the hallway, another. From Apartment 3G, from what Ted can tell. Two, three, four more from apartments further down the hall.
“Oh shit,” Ted repeats.
Michael hefts his bat experimentally. “Think we can take them?”
There is no room to manoeuvre. Hardly any room to swing a bat, let alone land a killing blow to the head. The zombies have already started their ubiquitous moaning, and no doubt more would soon be heeding the call. Ted would like to remove the voice box of every damn zed, preferably with a rusty spoon. “Do we have a choice?” Ted asks.
“Not really.”
“Exactly,” Ted says. He lifts the bag from over his shoulder and abandons it on the dirty hall carpet. Then he rolls his shoulders in his best Dirty Harry impression. “Let’s do it.”
They almost make it.
It’s exactly like he imagined. The cramped conditions make it almost impossible to swing the bat, never mind connect with any kind of accuracy. They are resigned to pushing the things back, to plunging under reaching arms. At one point Ted dives through the legs of an oncoming zombie, his shirt riding up and the flesh of his stomach burning across the carpet.
He’s not sure how he manages to get to his feet or when he loses his bat.
He slams his fist into the chin of an emaciated dark-skinned female seconds before her ragged yellow teeth would have come together on his arm, sending her head crashing against the filthy wall behind her with a satisfying crack. Blood smears on the wall as her legs crumble beneath her.
And then Michael is pulling on his arm. Michael is shouting “Retreat! Retreat!” like some crazed army colonel.
And Ted dives into Apartment 3J moments before Michael bangs the door shut behind them.
“Holy fuck,” Michael pants.
Ted pushes himself to his feet, reeling and feeling faint and possibly about to vomit but not down for the count. “No time to rest, mister,” he says. Then all he can do is point.
The male zombie is Caucasian, blond, and wearing a red flowered kimono. And being a zombie, he’s not too concerned about modesty.
“Zombie-san,” Ted breathes out.
Michael’s eyes dart about the floor. “Where’s your bat?” he asks frantically.
“Mine?” Ted squeaks. “What about yours?”
“Shit.”
“Double shit.”
Michael swipes a hand through his hair. “Okay, we can take him.”
Ted’s eyes grow wide. “How, exactly?”
“I don’t know!”
The zombie takes another shuffling step toward them, and lets out a low, mournful moan.
“Oh, will you please shut the fuck up?” Ted cries.
“Okay,” Michael says. “I’ll lead it -- there!” Michael points excitedly to an open door halfway down the hallway. “And then you push it in!”
“I just push it in,” Ted repeats scornfully.
“You’ve had some experience with pushing it in, Ted,” Michael snaps. “I’ve talked to Emmett.”
“Fine!” Ted huffs. “Lead away, maestro!”
Michael shoots him a look before dancing in front of the zed, waving his arms. The zombie’s head swivels slowly to watch before it ponderously alters its course to veer in Michael’s direction.
“It’s working,” Ted says wondrously.
“Quiet! You’ll distract it!” Michael warns.
Ted mimes zipping his lip, watching as Michael makes his way gradually down the apartment hallway. The open door gets closer and closer. It’s a small closet, Ted now sees, filled to capacity with clothes and linens and various other junk. There will be hardly enough room for the zombie to fit.
Ted follows behind the shambling zed, chewing his lip.
And then the big drawback to the plan hits him.
“Jesus, Michael, you’re going to have to be practically inside that thing before you can move out of the way,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“But--”
Michael lifts his gaze from the zombie for a brief moment to meet Ted’s eyes. “I’m counting on you, Teddy.”
Ted gulps. “Give me a signal.”
Michael nods, his attention focused again entirely on the zed.
Closer. And closer.
Ted sees Michael’s ass nudge the lowest shelf. He tenses.
“Now!” Michael screams.
Ted thinks they couldn’t have synchronized their movements better if they’d had a choreographer and a month of training. Michael tucks his chin into his chest and dives to the side beneath the zombie’s outstretched arms just as Ted slams both palms into its back, sending it crashing in to the shelving. He pushes the door shut with a decisive bang before the zombie can even begin to recover.
“Teamwork,” Ted says.
“We rock,” Michael says, breathing heavily. “Let’s never do that again though, ‘kay?”
Ted laughs shakily. “Deal.”
The door thumps behind them, making them jump.
“Geez,” Michael says, “imagine spending your whole life in a closet.”
Ted shrugs. “Like Clay Aiken.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The fire escape is part of the old building, before the hospital went through extensive renovations. It’s rusted and falling apart, probably forgotten.
Ben’s only been able to make it to the first landing. Removing the piece of metal embedded in his leg almost made him pass out, and he can’t risk that. He’s ripped apart his shirt in an attempt to staunch and bandage the wound, and now he’s naked from the waist up, shivering even in the warm summer sun.
He knows he’s in shock.
He can’t stop the bleeding. It drips in slow, weighty drops, inciting the horde of zombies on the sidewalk below to a frenzy.
29943 / 50000 words. 60% done!
Thank you once again to everyone reading and commenting. I'll do my best to catch up on comments very soon! *kisses*
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Title: Whenever You're Ready
Chapter: Nine
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Rating: PG to R throughout the series
Word Count: 5495
Whenever You’re Ready
By Severina
* * *
Chapter Nine
A gurney lying on its side props open the door leading to the ward. A small black and white sign identifies the area as Ward 2B.
The second floor is eerily quiet.
Justin gestures toward the door with his chin, then points to the gun tucked in Brian’s waistband. Brian shakes his head and points instead to the bat held loosely in Justin’s hand. He lifts his index finger to his lips in the universal sign for silence.
There is no sound beyond the half-open door. No shuffling steps. No hungry moans.
Brian shrugs before sliding his own baseball bat from the unzippered half of the gym bag.
They each take a deep breath before pushing the door open the rest of the way. It creaks loudly in the hushed stillness and they freeze.
Silence. And silence.
Justin learns to breathe again. He almost wishes for the guttural groans of the zombies, for the whoosh of the bat through the air before it connects with flesh and bone. The bat has become, already, a second appendage. The bat, he understands.
They step tentatively over the overturned gurney.
The ward corridor is painted in pale yellows and warm golds. Generic artwork lines the walls. No doubt the effect is meant to be soothing. Justin flashes back to the décor in his ward, so long ago. Vibrant colours and inspirational prints, designed to “energize and encourage” according to his physiotherapist. They only made Justin want to hit something.
The hallway is strewn with debris. Justin’s feet shuffle through sheets of paper, computer printouts, supplies almost certainly left abandoned and unneeded as the men and women working in the ward fled for their lives.
And still there is no sound but the careful tread of their feet on the polished tile floor.
Brian reaches the nurses station a little ahead of Justin. Justin watches him take a breath and set his shoulders, adjust his grip on the bat, before he darts quickly to the side.
There is nothing -- no one -- behind the counter.
Justin pivots slowly in place. The layout is one that he’s seen before. The nurses station is the hub, and hallways branch out from it in three directions. Justin scans slowly and carefully down each one. And see the same signs of frantic flight, of once important paperwork flung to the ground and of a mad dash for safety.
There is a smear of dried blood marring the yellow wall a third of the way down the corridor on his right.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Justin murmurs.
“Sunshine,” Brian says just as softly.
Justin turns back to see him holding up a leaflet -- no, a hastily printed newspaper, perhaps four or five smudged pages.
The headline screams “The Dead Walk” in large bold 72 point font.
Brian smirks and lets the paper flutter to the ground at his feet.
“There should be people,” Justin says, crossing to Brian’s side. “Something happened here. It’s obvious they were frantic to get out. And there… that…” He shrugs and points out the blood.
“Elevators?” Brian suggests.
Justin takes in the double set of elevators standing still and silent across from the nurses station. “If the people left by the elevators,” he points out, “the zeds could also get up here on them.”
Brian shrugs, at a loss.
Maybe Ward 2B got lucky. Maybe they managed to kill all the zombies before making their escape. Maybe only one or two zeds made it this far. Maybe people who had been bitten were taken to the ward, in the early hours of the infection, before anybody knew just how they‘d received their bites and exactly what they would become. Maybe the presence of only a few shambling zombies was enough to cause wide-spread panic among the nurses and patients.
They’ll never know.
There is so much now that they’ll never know.
Brian tugs on Justin’s windbreaker, pulling him out of his fugue both physically and mentally. “Come on,” he says, “we need to find the ambulance bays.”
They have no idea which way to go. Justin’s one and only trip to the emergency room had been strapped to a gurney, bleeding and unconscious. Brian had done his level best to block out all memory of that night.
So Justin randomly chooses the corridor on the left. The one farthest away from that glaring blotch of blood.
He holds Brian’s hand tightly in his.
They tense before each open doorway, easily carefully and cautiously past, only daring to breathe again when they are beyond each breach in the wide expanse of the hall. They scan each room quickly as they edge by but see only empty beds, privacy curtains pushed back and bright noonday sunlight catching the dust motes in the air.
Justin can’t stop looking back over his shoulder.
Silence. And silence.
Justin starts to breathe easier.
They are more than halfway down the chosen hallway when Justin stubs his toe on something half buried underneath the mounds of paper that seem to line the corridor. He releases Brian’s hand and bends to slides the paper aside. He comes up with an oversized brightly painted puzzle piece.
His eyes go wide. “Oh shit, you don’t think this is a children’s ward--”
“No kids here,” a voice says loudly to his left.
Justin drops the wooden jigsaw piece and spins to his right, the bat already coming up to swing. At his side, he senses more than sees Brian do the same thing. His shoulder tenses, the bat starting its rapid descent--
Brian’s hand comes up quickly to block its path.
And Justin gasps out a shocked breath at how close he just came.
The lady is… well, it’s hard to tell how old she is. Her face is painted with elaborate streaks of makeup, round red circles on her cheeks and her lips a garish state of purplish-red. Her hair, grey and springy from what looks like a bad home perm, looks like it hasn’t seen a hairbrush in weeks. Her face is a roadmap of wrinkles.
She is clad only in a sagging green hospital gown and matching paper slippers.
“No, no kids here,” she repeats. “Sometimes Margaret brings Lance and Jemika. Now what kind of name is Jemika? That ain’t no name found in the Bible, I’ll tell you the truth. Shooooot, do they run up and down the halls! Scare ol’ Martin to bits!” The woman’s laugh is chainsaw loud and just as grating.
Brian side-glances Justin. “Ma’am, you need to--”
“Did you bring my pills?”
“Ma’am--” Justin tries.
The woman takes a shuffling step toward them. She smells like urine, like unwashed skin and feces with an overpowering overlay of lavender perfume. Justin tries not to gag.
“I like the pink ones,” the woman confides conspiratorially. “They taste like candy floss.”
Brian pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is there anyone else here? Anyone who can help--”
“Shoooot, the only person here is ol’ Rebecca, and she ain’t moved for days n’ days! Lazy bitch!” The woman leans forward and spits out a wad of phlegm. Justin flinches.
And when the woman raises an emaciated arm to indicate her room with a flourish, Justin is reminded of those old television game shows where the scantily clad hostess presents a potential prize to an excited polyester wearing contestant. He meets Brian’s eyes before they both peer tentatively around her frail frame to the room beyond.
The woman’s roommate -- Rebecca -- lies with open staring eyes on a rumpled and stained sheet. She most definitely has not moved for days. She’d been restrained to the bed rails, thick leather straps holding her down.
Her chest has been ripped apart. Her skin is grey and mottled.
And when she sees them, she lets out a low keening moan.
She’s hungry.
Justin draws in a ragged breath. “Jesus.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Brian says.
Justin swipes a hand through his hair, reins in the panic -- his brain screaming run! -- with great effort. “Okay,” he says shakily. “Okay. Ma’am? You need to come with us.” He ignores the flabbergasted look that Brian shoots his way.
“Do you got my pills or not?”
“No,” Brian says evenly, “she really doesn’t.”
“Brian!” Justin rests a hand soothingly on Brian’s arm. “We can’t just leave her here! She‘s--”
“Deranged?”
“Traumatized,” Justin corrects. “And she needs our help.” He smoothes a hand along Brian’s chest, feels the tension thrumming through his frame. And he doesn’t need a Manual to know what Brian is thinking. Another responsibility. Another body to protect. A helpless victim.
And the thing is… Justin knows that Brian is right. The woman will be dead weight, unable to fight, probably unable to run. Protecting her might get them killed.
But there’s no way he can leave her behind.
He knows that Brian knows it too. Knows that Brian could never do it, no matter what he says.
He turns back to the woman and smiles in what he hopes is a comforting manner. A don’t worry, we’ll take care of you type smile. He’s pretty sure that he just looks terrified.
The woman’s eyes flit between the comforting hand he has resting on Brian’s chest to his face, and then back. “You ain’t no doctor,” she says, her eyes narrowing.
Justin can feel his patience fraying. Rebecca‘s body in the room beyond is an unspoken reminder -- time is of the essence. Their abandoned ward is not so abandoned after all. “No ma’am,” he says tightly. “But we’re going to take care of you. If you’ll just--”
“I know you!” the woman suddenly shouts out. “I seen you in the papers! Margaret brings me the papers, oh yes she does. The Pittsburgh Gazette! Lance n’ Jemika was running around like banshees, little brats, and there you was, right there in the papers!”
Justin blinks. He looks at Brian. “The Gazette did an article on me?”
Brian shrugs. “Don’t look so proud. They compared you to Sam Auerbach.” He smirks. “Unfavourably.”
“Fuckers,” Justin says.
“You!” the woman snarls. “You look so smug, so hoighty-toity! You think you’re the sheee-it! But I know about you. Oh yes, I know all about you! You’re the boy that paints those naughty pictures!”
Justin lets his hand drop from Brian’s chest. His grip on the bat tightens subconsciously.
“And you… you…” The woman sputters, suddenly so angry she’s spitting. He watches the spittle fly from her mouth in some kind of perverse fascination. “You fornicate with MEN!”
They back up as she advances, fingers curled into claws.
“SINNERS!”
Her eyes glint dangerously, maliciously. And Justin knows he could break her in half without trying, knows that those brittle bones would snap like twigs… and also knows that he could never lay a hand on her. So he continues backing up the hallway, palms upraised in a conciliatory gesture, and tries to find his voice. Tries to find the words that will calm her and make her see reason.
And knows, deep down inside, that the words don’t exist. Knows that they’re going to have to leave her here.
“It’s your fault I didn’t get my pink pills!” she screams.
Justin senses Brian moving to the right. Brian’s arm lifting above his head. And for one brief scary moment he thinks Brian has snapped, that Brian is going to smash the bat into the woman’s head. Crush her skull.
And he thinks… maybe… it might be the right choice.
There are different kinds of mercy killing.
Then he sees the zed stumble from the open doorway behind the woman… and Brian isn’t fast enough.
The zombie’s teeth fix on the woman’s shoulder hard enough for Justin to hear the bone crack. Blood arcs from the wound in great spurts, spattering the floor like raindrops at Justin’s feet.
He blinks, stunned, still with one hand outstretched to the dying woman.
And in the hallway behind them… more shuffling feet.
He feels like he’s moving in slow motion as he turns to face the oncoming zombies. He meets Brian’s eyes. Reflexively clenches his bat, testing his grip.
“Past them?” Brian asks.
Justin nods.
And then they are running toward the zeds, and Justin thinks he might be screaming. He chops his bat down on the shoulder of the nearest, a woman wearing a bright yellow nurses uniform emblazoned with dozens of smiley happy faces. He pushes past another, sending the tall male zed tumbling to the tiles. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Brian’s bat pulverize the skull of a short Hispanic man clad in patients green pyjamas. He goes down like a felled tree, dead before he hits the ground.
A skeletal hand tangles in his windbreaker and he yelps and twists away from the clutching fingers. He hears the fabric tear and then he is free.
They break through the last of the zombies and slide around the corner and…
His brain can’t comprehend it at first.
The large open space must have been a dayroom, or a visitors centre. Prints depicting coastal beaches and moonlit marinas dot the walls. Large overstuffed chairs and a long sofa in complimentary ‘soothing’ colours of pale blues and yellows fill the room. The sizeable television sits in a corner oak cabinet and is still turned on, its screen showing only flickering static-snow.
The room has become an abattoir.
Blood paints the walls, the furniture. Soaks into the carpet in the middle of the room, and runs in partially dried rivulets on the tiles. Liberally coats the hands and arms and faces of the zombies who revel in it. Who dine leisurely on the victims that they have literally pulled apart.
Justin swallows down the bile that rises in his throat.
This, he thinks distractedly, is why the other corridors are mostly deserted. The zombies have no inclination to search out other survivors. They have no reason to leave such a feast.
He can’t look away.
He slaps at Brian’s arm weakly. “We have to move.”
Brian says nothing.
Justin closes his eyes for just a moment. Makes a fist and digs his nails into the skin of his palm until water comes to his eyes. He blinks away the tears and ignores his own rapid heartbeat, the ache in his chest that is part sorrow for all that is lost and part pure unadulterated horror. He wonders how much shock the mind can take before it shatters.
He turns his back on the slaughterhouse, on the zombies that are already struggling to rise.
The stunned look in Brian’s eyes reflects the anguish and revulsion in his own.
“Brian,” he repeats softly, “we need to move.”
And Brian blinks. Nods. His chin comes up, defiant. Always the one in control, Justin had called him once, a long time ago. The one on top. How difficult must it be to let that control falter, to know that sometimes there are things that are simply out of your command?
Justin’s glad to see it back now. That look in Brian’s eye.
“Fucking zombies,” Brian sneers.
And Justin smiles. Takes his hand. And they run.
Their feet skid on the tiles as they pass the corridor -- and though Justin doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t want to, he looks, and he sees the crazy old woman struggling to her feet, her hospital gown drenched with blood, and she looks up and sees him and she snarls -- and take a right, pushing past another zed, and another. They slide around a second corner and Justin is completely turned around now, lost, and then Brian is pulling on his arm, slamming him into the wall and Justin sees it, a non-descript brown wooden door with a small glassed in window.
The tarnished handle turns easily under Brian’s grip.
And then they are inside -- storage closet, locker, he doesn’t know what the fuck, but it’s small and dark and most definitely empty -- and Brian has slammed the door and flicked the lock with his thumb. Justin drags the shiny yellow curtain across the window, blocking out the bright fluorescent light from the hallway.
He has no idea where they’ll go from here.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Emmett doesn’t like hospitals.
It has nothing to do with the fact that this particular hospital is filled with bloodthirsty undead creatures that want to eat his brains -- or at least, that’s not the only reason. The hospital is where Michael almost died. It’s where Ted nearly didn’t come out of a drug-induced coma. It’s where his treasured Aunt Lula fought her throat cancer, it’s vice-like grip preventing her from even being able to dispense her beloved down-home wisdom at the end.
Emmett hates hospitals.
And as he dashes through the zombie-clogged corridors, praising both the zeds poor coordination and his own dashing way with a metal club, Emmett doesn’t think his opinion is going to change anytime soon.
He has no idea where he’s going. His arm feels like it’s going to give out at any moment. The zeds keep coming.
And he really has no idea what an ‘ambulance bay’ even is. Or where it would be. Or--
Emmett crashes through a set of swinging double doors. He takes in his surroundings in a quick glance -- a skill that he honed in Hazlehurst, when sizing up the mood of the room (and knowing where all the exits were located, in case a quick escape was required) was second nature.
Oversized desk -- check.
Hallway that branches in two directions -- check.
Six… no, make that seven… zombies -- check.
And at the end of the corridor on the left, a door. A closed door. A door that, probably, the zombies won’t be able to open.
He realizes that he has no idea if zombies can open doors. He should have asked Michael. Or maybe they can find that George Romero fellow and ask him.
One of the zeds comes in on his right, a burly fellow that would have been attractive in a slightly dangerous Russell Crowe kind of way had it not been for the dreadlocks. Half of his right cheek is missing, long tendrils of flesh hanging in loops against his jaw. Emmett braces himself and swings, long and low and smooth. The metal club clips the zombie against the forehead, and he goes down, already dead.
“It’s for the best,” Emmett tells him. “That look really did not work on you.”
Three other zombies are stumbling in his direction. The corridor to his right is clear. The corridor to the left is blocked by the three zeds.
Emmett makes a decision. He breaks for the door.
He skates by the first zombie without incident, its short legs and stubby body unable to reach him fast enough. The second moans and opens a gaping mouth and Emmett slams the club into its cheek, hearing the bone shatter. Not a killing blow, but enough to get him past.
The third zombie wraps her fingers around his shirt and holds on.
Emmett struggles in her grip -- a thin wiry woman of later years in life, her glasses still dangling by one arm from her ear, her nametag smeared with blood. Her neck arches as she tries to get closer. Her teeth snap together inches from his chest.
He’s barely holding her back with his left arm, numb pain shooting up to his shoulder from the effort. His every attempt to raise the club in his right hand is met with failure.
The gun feels heavy and warm in his waistband, but he hasn’t yet had the opportunity to reload it. Not that he could, he remembers, since the bullets are in their gym bag and the gym bag is with Ted.
The other zombie is pulling itself to its feet. Beyond it, he can see two more anxious to join the fray.
In the end, he decides to risk it all on one ballsy move. Because if there’s one thing he has, it’s balls.
He lets the club drop from his hand, not even hearing it smash on the tile. He relaxes his thin frame, ignoring the dank smell of the zombies breath, the gnash of her teeth ever closer as she senses victory. And then he lets loose with a roundhouse punch to the woman’s jaw, like he did once before, to a certain homophobe who was threatening his friends. The punch connects better than he’d hoped, sending a zing of pain up his arm and the woman’s head smashing back into the wall. Her grip loosens… and Emmett wiggles free.
He flings open the door and dashes into the next room, slamming it shut behind him just as the second zombie thumps against to the wood.
Emmett leans back against the door, breathing heavily. “I am,” he says breathlessly to no one, “a lean, mean zombie killing machine.”
Something -- some thing -- thuds against the door. Emmett lets out a yelp and jumps back, his eyes going to the door handle.
There is another bang, and then another… but the handle doesn’t turn.
“Ha!” he crows.
And feeling safe -- or safer, anyway -- he turns his back on the wooden door and surveys the new and currently zombie-free room.
A whiteboard hangs askew on the wall behind the large nurses station, the blue and red lettering smudged but mostly still readable. “Kieslowski - 7 - Bypass” reads one message. Another name next to the first is illegible. A second message: “Wiler - Stanton - 7:30 - Recon Rhino”.
Emmett cocks his head and squints at the board. “Okay,” he says quietly to himself, “this is the operating room. Or, no, the area that you go to before the operating room. What’s that called? I can’t remember. Those poor bastards on the table.” He shakes his head, catching the final message on the board. “And somebody has a twisted sense of humour.”
“End of the World,” it reads. “Last stop. Everybody out.”
A zombie slams into the door.
“You don’t give up, do you?” Emmett mutters.
A second, louder thump is his answer.
Emmett decides to ignore it.
“The first thing you have to do is find a weapon,” Emmett continues his monologue softly, his own voice serving to keep him calm. He moves slowly into the room, edging behind the nurses station and through the room behind it, hoping that he’s heading away from the actual operating rooms and not towards them. Because the last person he wants to meet is Kieslowski - 7 - Bypass.
“And what will you find for a weapon in a hospital? Hmmm.” Emmett pauses in front of a small grey wall divider, thinking. “Splints? No, too flimsy. Oh! Crutches!”
He smiles at his cleverness -- and that’s when the strong pair of arms reaches from behind the divider and seizes hold, lifting him off his feet.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ted and Michael don’t look back.
They hear the pursuing zed slam into the glass lobby door of the apartment complex. They hear the glass crack with the force of the body.
They fly down the narrow hallway and hit the door leading to the staircase at a dead run. Take the stairs two at a time, gym bags crashing against their legs as they pump in staccato rhythm. They don’t stop until the reach the third floor stairwell. Where they collapse, chests heaving.
“Didn’t know,” Michael gasps out, “I could run that fast.”
“Knew I should’ve done more cardio at the gym,” Ted wheezes.
There are no sounds of pursuit.
Finally Ted raises himself to a standing position, still breathing heavily. “Well,” he says, “this is just great.”
Michael grasps at his arm, fingers digging painfully into his flesh. “Did you see Ben?”
Ted remembers the chunk of metal sticking out of Ben’s thigh. The look of agony on his face. Brian pulling him from the lopsided mail truck, Ben’s eyes clenched tight against the pain.
“I saw him with Brian. I’m sure he’s fine,” Ted says softly.
He knows there’s no guarantee. And from the look on his face, so does Michael. So he does what he can. What he does best. “What now, oh great and powerful zombie knowledge wizard type person?” he asks.
Michael bites his lip, but the vacant scared look goes out of his eyes. A little. “Well, we need to get around to the back of the hospital, to the emergency room. There’s a little… sort of… covered shed where they keep the ambulances.”
“The infamous ambulance bay of which you were shouting so exuberantly.”
“Right.”
“And you know this, how?” Ted asks. “Not that I’m doubting your prescience, of course.”
Michael rolls his eyes. “I used to volunteer here. With Uncle Vic. We hid in that ambulance bay when we stuck out for smoke breaks.”
He looks sheepish. Ted thinks it’s somewhat adorable.
“Somehow that seems like something you’d do with Brian,” Ted points out.
“Uncle Vic and Brian were a lot more alike than you’d know,” Michael says. He takes a breath. “Okay, so…”
“Through the door?” Ted asks.
“Through the door,” Michael confirms. “But quietly! This place could be crawling with zombies.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
The door to the third floor opens silently when they give it a push. The long, narrow corridor is deserted. Cautiously, they leave the tiled landing behind and step onto the ragged carpet of the hall.
“What is this place?” Ted hisses.
“It used to be a factory,” Michael answers. He points to the oversized freight elevator, at least double the size of the one at Brian’s loft. An equally large garbage chute is barely discernable at the far end of the long hall, it‘s steel metal door hanging askew. “See? Then they converted it into apartments. Brian was considering buying here when he was searching for a place. He chose the loft instead.”
Ted takes in the faded and stained carpet on the floor, the peeling and dingy brown paint on the walls. The entire dwelling smells vaguely of three day old curry. “Good call,” he says dryly.
They edge their way carefully along the hall, barely enough room for them to stand shoulder to shoulder.
The first door they pass is closed. Ted stops outside the battered wood; presses his ear to the thin panel and listens. “Nothing,” he whispers.
The second door, on the opposite side of the hall, is also closed. This time Michael does the honours. And gets the same response. Nothing.
Ted feels the tension easing just a little. Not a sound from Apartment 3A or Apartment 3B. Now all they had to do was successfully pass Apartments 3C to 3 -- he glances down the hall, and does a quick count in his head -- Apartments 3C to 3M, and they were set. Then they could just go--
“Wait,” he says. “What are we looking for, exactly?”
“A back stairway,” Michael explains. “We can’t go out the way we came! The lobby will be filled with zombies by now.”
“And what if there isn’t a back stairway?” Ted yelps.
Michael pauses, considering. “Then we’re fucked,” he finally says.
Ted sighs. “Oh Michael.”
“Look, be confident!” Michael says quietly. “We’ve just got to-- oh shit.”
“Wha--” Ted begins. But then he sees.
A zombie is shuffling out of Apartment 3C. And down the hallway, another. From Apartment 3G, from what Ted can tell. Two, three, four more from apartments further down the hall.
“Oh shit,” Ted repeats.
Michael hefts his bat experimentally. “Think we can take them?”
There is no room to manoeuvre. Hardly any room to swing a bat, let alone land a killing blow to the head. The zombies have already started their ubiquitous moaning, and no doubt more would soon be heeding the call. Ted would like to remove the voice box of every damn zed, preferably with a rusty spoon. “Do we have a choice?” Ted asks.
“Not really.”
“Exactly,” Ted says. He lifts the bag from over his shoulder and abandons it on the dirty hall carpet. Then he rolls his shoulders in his best Dirty Harry impression. “Let’s do it.”
They almost make it.
It’s exactly like he imagined. The cramped conditions make it almost impossible to swing the bat, never mind connect with any kind of accuracy. They are resigned to pushing the things back, to plunging under reaching arms. At one point Ted dives through the legs of an oncoming zombie, his shirt riding up and the flesh of his stomach burning across the carpet.
He’s not sure how he manages to get to his feet or when he loses his bat.
He slams his fist into the chin of an emaciated dark-skinned female seconds before her ragged yellow teeth would have come together on his arm, sending her head crashing against the filthy wall behind her with a satisfying crack. Blood smears on the wall as her legs crumble beneath her.
And then Michael is pulling on his arm. Michael is shouting “Retreat! Retreat!” like some crazed army colonel.
And Ted dives into Apartment 3J moments before Michael bangs the door shut behind them.
“Holy fuck,” Michael pants.
Ted pushes himself to his feet, reeling and feeling faint and possibly about to vomit but not down for the count. “No time to rest, mister,” he says. Then all he can do is point.
The male zombie is Caucasian, blond, and wearing a red flowered kimono. And being a zombie, he’s not too concerned about modesty.
“Zombie-san,” Ted breathes out.
Michael’s eyes dart about the floor. “Where’s your bat?” he asks frantically.
“Mine?” Ted squeaks. “What about yours?”
“Shit.”
“Double shit.”
Michael swipes a hand through his hair. “Okay, we can take him.”
Ted’s eyes grow wide. “How, exactly?”
“I don’t know!”
The zombie takes another shuffling step toward them, and lets out a low, mournful moan.
“Oh, will you please shut the fuck up?” Ted cries.
“Okay,” Michael says. “I’ll lead it -- there!” Michael points excitedly to an open door halfway down the hallway. “And then you push it in!”
“I just push it in,” Ted repeats scornfully.
“You’ve had some experience with pushing it in, Ted,” Michael snaps. “I’ve talked to Emmett.”
“Fine!” Ted huffs. “Lead away, maestro!”
Michael shoots him a look before dancing in front of the zed, waving his arms. The zombie’s head swivels slowly to watch before it ponderously alters its course to veer in Michael’s direction.
“It’s working,” Ted says wondrously.
“Quiet! You’ll distract it!” Michael warns.
Ted mimes zipping his lip, watching as Michael makes his way gradually down the apartment hallway. The open door gets closer and closer. It’s a small closet, Ted now sees, filled to capacity with clothes and linens and various other junk. There will be hardly enough room for the zombie to fit.
Ted follows behind the shambling zed, chewing his lip.
And then the big drawback to the plan hits him.
“Jesus, Michael, you’re going to have to be practically inside that thing before you can move out of the way,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“But--”
Michael lifts his gaze from the zombie for a brief moment to meet Ted’s eyes. “I’m counting on you, Teddy.”
Ted gulps. “Give me a signal.”
Michael nods, his attention focused again entirely on the zed.
Closer. And closer.
Ted sees Michael’s ass nudge the lowest shelf. He tenses.
“Now!” Michael screams.
Ted thinks they couldn’t have synchronized their movements better if they’d had a choreographer and a month of training. Michael tucks his chin into his chest and dives to the side beneath the zombie’s outstretched arms just as Ted slams both palms into its back, sending it crashing in to the shelving. He pushes the door shut with a decisive bang before the zombie can even begin to recover.
“Teamwork,” Ted says.
“We rock,” Michael says, breathing heavily. “Let’s never do that again though, ‘kay?”
Ted laughs shakily. “Deal.”
The door thumps behind them, making them jump.
“Geez,” Michael says, “imagine spending your whole life in a closet.”
Ted shrugs. “Like Clay Aiken.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The fire escape is part of the old building, before the hospital went through extensive renovations. It’s rusted and falling apart, probably forgotten.
Ben’s only been able to make it to the first landing. Removing the piece of metal embedded in his leg almost made him pass out, and he can’t risk that. He’s ripped apart his shirt in an attempt to staunch and bandage the wound, and now he’s naked from the waist up, shivering even in the warm summer sun.
He knows he’s in shock.
He can’t stop the bleeding. It drips in slow, weighty drops, inciting the horde of zombies on the sidewalk below to a frenzy.
29943 / 50000 words. 60% done!
Thank you once again to everyone reading and commenting. I'll do my best to catch up on comments very soon! *kisses*
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