“You’re injured!” The woman cried out in alarm, pointing to Lucia’s nurse’s uniform. “This is an isolation zone! You could get contaminated!”
Before Lucia could utter a word, shots rang out on the other side of the door, followed by grunts and banging noises, then more shots. Then Basilio Irisarri’s booming voice shouted, “Eric, help me the fuck up!” And then silence.
The older woman approached the door and pressed her face to the small window. What she saw made her jump back.
“They’re out! The Undead are out! Six cubicles are open!” She turned to Lucia, her eyes flashing with anger. “Did you let them loose? Answer me!”
“Hey, calm down,” the girl replied, coolly. “Those two guys out there are—”
“I can’t see anyone out there,” the woman muttered, as she rushed over a computer and keyed in a code. A siren immediately started blaring.
A doctor in the next office, also dressed in a hazmat suit, stuck his head in, clutching a gun, disoriented by the alarm. “Eva! What the hell’s going on?” When he caught sight of Lucia, his eyes grew wide. “Who’s she?”
“I don’t know,” Eva said and turned to Lucia. “That’s a good question. Who are you, young lady?”
“My name’s Lucia and I work in this hospital. People are shooting at each other on the upper floors. It’s a madhouse. There’re dead and wounded everywhere! Two men followed me down here and are trying to kill me. They killed Sister Cecilia! You have to help me!” Lucia realized her story didn’t make any sense, but she couldn’t calm down after being so close to dying.
“Calm down. Security will be here soon and they’ll handle everything, okay?” Eva put a hand on Lucia’s shoulder. “While we’re waiting, why don’t you take a seat and try to calm down?”
A wave of relief flooded Lucia’s body. She was safe. Everything would be okay.
She dropped into a chair, exhausted. As she stretched, she felt the sting on her leg where she’d cut herself with the scalpel. She looked up to ask those nice people for a little hydrogen peroxide, but the woman had her back to her.
She focused her attention on the other doctor as he stood under some bright lights; his visor reflected the female doctor like a mirror. Just as Lucia was about to open her mouth, Eva made a gesture that struck terror in Lucia. The doctor pointed to the man’s gun, then drew her hand across her neck.
The woman said, “I think we’d better wait inside that—hey! What’re you doing?”
Lucia sprang to her feet and threw her arm around the woman’s neck, holding the scalpel at eye level. Then it dawned on her that she didn’t have a clue what to do next.
“I want outta here. Now!”
“Calm down! Let Dr. Mendez go! Please!” The other doctor’s voice trembled as he raised his gun.
Lucia was pretty sure that this guy, probably a lab assistant, didn’t have the nerve to shoot. “You have to be a special breed to shoot someone as you’re looking him in the eyes,” Prit once said. Lucia was pretty sure the assistant didn’t have what it took. So she took a deep breath and squeezed the doctor’s neck tighter.
“I want outta here. Now! Or I swear to God, I’ll slit her throat from ear to ear.”
“Listen, you can’t leave!” Dr. Mendez gasped. “The Undead in the lab have hurt your leg; you may be infected. Just let me go.”
“Nobody hurt my leg,” said Lucia, tersely.
“You’re bleeding,” the other doctor pointed out, as if that wasn’t obvious.
“I cut
“Sure, sure you did. You cut yourself with half a dozen infected Undead surrounding you. I heard that story at the Valencia Safe Haven a million times.” Eva gasped. “Hey… you’re…choking… me…”
“Is there another way out?” Lucia asked slightly loosening her grip on the doctor’s neck. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she had to escape. If they thought she was infected, she knew all too well what the “treatment” was.
“There’s another airlock that leads to the dispatch area.” The lab assistant’s voice wavered as he pointed to the door behind him.
“Dammit, Andres! Shut the fuck up!” Eva snapped, her eyes shooting daggers.
At that moment, Lucia loosened her grip. That was the chance Dr. Mendez had been waiting for. The doctor drove her head backwards, bashing her headgear against Lucia’s forehead. For a moment, colored spots danced before the girl’s eyes. She elbowed Lucia in the chest, knocking the wind out of her, then broke free and jumped to one side.
“Shoot, Andres, shoot! She’s infected!”
“I can’t shoot, Eva! I can’t! You do it!”
“Give me that, asshole,” Dr. Mendez growled and yanked the gun out of his hand.
That struggle gave Lucia time to slip into to the next room, whose open door beckoned to her. She flung herself through the airlock and slammed the door behind her. At the last moment, a hand appeared through the door, clutching her arm.
“I’ve got her, doctor, I’ve got her!” The assistant’s voice sounded triumphant until Lucia plunged the knife deep into his forearm, forcing him to withdraw. “Aaayyyy, I’m hurt, doctor! I think she bit me!”
Lucia slammed the door and pressed the button on the wall. Seconds later, the chemicals burned her eyes again. After two long minutes, the light turned green and she entered a cluttered office with papers and books piled everywhere. Lucia stumbled through the mess and came to a window that opened onto a dimly lit ventilation shaft. Attached to one wall was a fire escape ladder that led to the upper floors. Without hesitating, the girl started to climb up to street level.
Outside there was chaos. Hordes of people pushed their way through the crowd and shoved each other down the stairs, stumbling, shouting hysterically. A group of nurses were trying to treat the wounded in the hallways, but the flood of people overwhelmed them. Gunshots still came from inside the hospital. Some of the security forces must not have realized they were chasing their own shadows.
“Hey, you, come here!” A stocky, dark-skinned male nurse grabbed her arm. Terrified, Lucia tried to break free, but the man was too strong. “Calm down, honey, I just want to help you! Here, let me see those cuts.”
Before Lucia realized what was happening, the nurse swept her into a garden area where a doctor had set up a makeshift hospital.
“The cut on your leg isn’t very deep, but your forehead took a good hit. What the hell did you get in your eyes? Someone must be spraying tear gas,” he said as he flushed her eyes out with distilled water. Lucia instantly felt relief.
“I’m fine, thanks, I’m fine,” was all Lucia could mutter.
“You don’t
A few feet from the hospital, she stopped, hoping her head would stop spinning.
She leaned against an empty shop window and stared at her reflection. She looked like she’d been through a hurricane. Her hair was matted from the chemical showers, her white pants were stained red from the cut, her eyes were red and swollen, and she had a huge bump in the middle of her forehead.
A group of civil guards came running down the sidewalk. Lucia’s first impulse was to tell them what had happened. Sister Cecilia and Maite had been killed before her very eyes. The police needed to catch the killers. They might still be in the area. She shuddered and glanced around fearfully.
She started to cross the street, but a dark thought stopped in her tracks. If you tell those guards that crazy story about gunmen, a nun, and some Undead, they’ll probably lock you up while they investigate that mess. Especially looking the way you do. Those doctors in the lab (the Zoo, they’d called it) were probably giving the hospital guards a detailed description of a nurse with red eyes who was “wounded” by the Undead.
