smooth, still clean and sanitary floors and went out from under him. He landed on his butt and said, 'Wha-what- what the fuck was that! What happened to you Juan!'
Juan stood there for a second, contemplating things, then said, 'Nothing, nothing Jack, I am okay amigo. I just found this one here and I think the babies are alive. I am okay. In fact I feel…just fine.'
'No, no something is not right, just for a second, it looked like your eyes were glowing, kinda yellowish or something. Must have been a trick of the light.', he said in a tone of voice indicating it was not a trick of the light.
Getting up and dusting himself off he pointed into the baby's room, the window was splattered with black ichor and cracked, but Juan could still see inside the room. Not only were most of the beds filled, but crouching down among the babies were their mothers, nurses, doctors and various other people, all of whom were looking at Juan as if he were some sort of incarnation of God.
'C'mon amigo. Juan?' Jack asked tentatively from behind Juan, getting up to his feet as he did so.
'Look.' said Juan, pointing through the splattered and cracked glass into the baby ward.
'Shit, I see, man, I see. Aw fuck. Remind me not to bet against your 'gut feelings'.'
Jack pulled out his radio, while Juan looked for a way in. One of the few men not dressed in hospital garb came to the glass and yelled, 'Through there, but they got three of the husbands they turned into zombies in there too, they can't get in, we can't get out.'
Nodding grimly Juan went to the indicated door and looked back at Jack.
Meanwhile Jack had contacted Terry and filled her quickly in on the situation. He put the walkie talkie back on his belt and moved over to cover Juan. Once he was in position Juan asked him, 'You ready?'
Jack answered, 'Si.' and Juan pulled the door open. The zombies were in a small room that looked like a nurses station and had a counter dividing it into two halves. All of the zombies were on the same half of the room as Juan and between him and the door to the maternity nursery.
Jack watched as Juan popped the door open, pulled his rifle into position and rapid fired three shots into the narrow half of the room before Jack even had a good idea of what was in there. He said quietly to himself, 'Holy fuck!' and Juan looked back at him while his hands automatically popped the magazine out of the rifle and reloaded it of their own accord. Juan's look was one of questioning.
'Did I say that out loud?' Juan nodded 'yes' to him. 'Well what the fuck was that? What happened to you? I mean talk about fast, you were a blur there man, you had the door open and those zombies were down before I even counted them up! What the hell is going on?'
The door at the end of the hallway opened up and several men and woman began running towards the two men, hailing them as heroes. Most were crying and upset. Two of the women stopped over a couple of the bodies, sobbing quietly.
Jack held up his hands and said, 'Whoa, whoa, people calm down here! We were just checking this place out, we were glad to save you, right Juan? Happy to do so!'
The small crowd forced its way into the hallway, with everyone clapping Juan and Jack on the back before heading to the rest rooms down the hall, a man in scrubs explained it had been awhile since they had been given bathroom breaks. Jack, concerned, ran ahead of the crowd and cleared both bathrooms before letting anyone in, then he stationed himself at one end of the hall while Juan stood at the other. Jack knew he was supposed to be watching for zombies sneaking up on them, but his eyes kept being drawn back to Juan. The man was standing larger than life at the other end of the hall. As the men and women finished in the bathroom they seemed drawn to Juan, before long the entire crowd, Jack included, had gravitated close to him.
The walkie-talkie on Jack's belt crackled to life, 'Hey buddy, what is the situation there?' came Terry's voice.
Jack pulled his up and responded, 'Hey Terry, we got about ten, no eleven adults and.. Uh doc? How many babies? Oh. Okay we got twelve kids, uh babies really. The doc says they can't move three of them, they were premature and need the equipment.'
'Shit. So what do we do? Hold on the cell phone is ringing, Mother Goose is calling for their status report. I will tell them the situation and see what they recommend.'
A few minutes later Terry got back on the Motorola and said, 'Can we hold out here and wait for a relief column with food and the walking wounded?'
Relief poured into Jack, and he was immediately ashamed because of it, however the mere thought of not having to leave the hospital again made him feel better, he answered, 'Sure, the ammo is low, but we can barricade the ER doors, check the other entrances and do a quick sweep of the hospital to see what we can see. Plus some of these guys are pretty able bodied, they could handle bats at least and maybe some of them are shooters. How is the crowd outside?'
'Minimal, we aren't shooting them, just clubbing them if they get too close. Mary is helping and she is bitching about her sore back again, maybe she will be okay, eh?'
'Yeah, sure thing, I mean Charlie dumped a gallon of disinfectant on her right? I am sure she will still be bitching about a sore back tomorrow. I will go over to the other side of this floor and see if the mob is still following us back up the hill, then I will come down, help you secure the doors and bring you up here.'
'Ten four and out.'
Juan and the other adults looked at him and Jack found himself taking charge, first he determined that none of the men, or women, had any experience with firearms, however almost all of them had been in youth sports and some of them still did adult recreation to this day, and could easily handle a bat or club of some sort. A couple of the women were new mothers and while modern medicine said they should be up and moving quickly, common sense said they should rest and recover, so he put them, the two doctors and three nurses back in the nurses station and the maternity ward. He took the other four people he had classified as adults and got them to work clearing the bodies out of the nurses station and moving the last man Juan had shot down the hall towards the ER. After that he took one of the 'men', a kid named John, who was just an older teenager really, with him to try and get a look outside the north side of the building. His goal was to see if any large groups of zombies were headed their way. They encountered no zombies, but did find several more corpses with terminal head wounds along the way.
'Say John, was there a fight at the hospital?' asked Jack pointing at the latest victim.
'Uh, no, not really, the zombies were kind of organized, um, they had a leader guy and he was uber scary, like a big demon, I friggin' pissed myself when I saw him, he was like telling them what to do and everyone did it. He left, like, this morning, told us he had to go kill a relief column and shut the radio dj up for good. You hear the dj?'
Nodding his head, Jack said, 'Yeah, who hasn't, Blake the snake, broadcasting twenty four seven until the zombies get his brain. One brave mother-fucker if you ask me. On what WWEB station right?'
'Yeah, thats the guy! They let us play it, but they laughed at us a lot, you know? Hey, Jack, what happened to Juan?'
'I dunno. You were gonna tell me about these bodies though?'
'I mean his eyes, they like…' seeing Jack's face, John paled and continued, 'Yeah, um, right, this leader guy, he was saying that they had to keep us 'meat', that's what he called us, 'meat', alive and not make any more zombies when they fed, there were already too goddamn many. He thought, well he sort of implied, that most of them would be 'used' up in something big coming up. He did this then, when they ate, they drained the blood, ate bits of the body and then bashed the heads in or shot them so they would not turn into more zombies.'
'This leader guy, he say anything else? Like where he came from or anything?'
'Ah, Disney Land.'
'What?!'
'No shit, no I mean really that is what he said, he said, 'My master sent me from Florida, not too far from Disney Land, to take over Denver.' He was totally talking to the doctor, but all of us heard it. Doc McAfee had a good conversation with him. That was back when there were like, eighty of us. The leader guy he kept feeding us, to the other zombies to make them stronger, better, smarter. He never said why this worked, but we could all see it working.'
For a few minutes both men were quiet as they made their way down a wing of the hospital to peer out the northern windows. Looking out into the afternoon heat Jack was relieved to see only a smattering of zombies wandering around the hospital grounds.
