fire.
Jack managed to shake off the effects of the pain. He turned his head to look at Martin, who removed his hand from Jack’s mouth.
“How did you…” Jack began.
“I am what I say I am,” Martin replied. “Do you yield?”
Jack nodded and Martin released him as Vince fought to calm everyone down. Jack’s betrayal he could deal with later; right now, he had a riot to prevent.
Hours later, Jack sat with his arm in a cast, facing Laura and Vince. His men had been disarmed and confined to their quarters.
“Where do we go from here, Jack?” Laura asked, shaking her head in disappointment.
Jack didn’t even bother to look at her. He stared off into space.
“How could you do this to us, Jack, and at such a critical time for us all?”
“Forget him, Laura,” Vince said. “We’ll confine him like the others.”
“And how do we do that?” Laura snapped. “His goon squad represents about half of the men defending this place. The other half is busy watching them, except for Daniel and Gregory. Who’s going to keep an eye on those things outside? Much less make up the team to go check out Martin’s base.”
“Take it easy, Laura.” Vince laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her as she doubled over into a coughing fit. “Hey, are you okay?”
In a voice devoid of compassion, Jack said, “She needs her medicine. She’s dying of lung cancer, you idiot.”
Vince saw Laura’s surprise, as if she believed no one knew her secret; she couldn’t deny it though, couldn’t even speak she was too busy wheezing. Vince wanted to believe Jack was lying, but Laura’s shock told him otherwise. “Where is it, Jack? Where’s her medicine?”
“She keeps it hidden all over the place. Try the back of the cabinet over there.”
Vince darted to the cabinet, jerked it open and began throwing its contents onto the floor in a desperate search for the meds. He found an inhaler and helped Laura use it.
“How did you know?” she asked Jack as her breathing began to stabilize.
“I know a lot of things, Laura. For example, I know you’re going to kill us all if you don’t deal with our new guest. Even if he is what he claims to be, that just makes him more dangerous. We have to kill him now before it’s too late.”
“Vince, would you please see to it that Jack gets locked away like his men?”
Vince smiled, leveling the barrel of his .38 at Jack. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
With the help of Martin and one of the hospital’s remaining defenders, Vince escorted Jack and his goons to one of the hospital’s larger waiting rooms and locked them inside. The room made a poor makeshift jail, but at least it only had one way in and out. The guard sat in a chair facing the door, a fully loaded AK-47 in his hands.
With the matter of the prisoners settled, Vince refocused on assembling a team to escort Martin to his base in the morning, and Laura held a second meeting to restore some order and sense of peace to the hospital. Jack’s treason—and it couldn’t be called anything less—had woken everyone up to how quickly things were falling apart.
On the roof of the hospital, Alyson stood with an empty syringe at her bare feet. She had finally found her way out. Martin couldn’t save them. No one could. The world was dead and the only thing left to do was die. At least she would be going out happy. She giggled and danced as the night wind caressed her naked flesh. She could feel them already, the fingers of the dead running over her skin, the teeth of the dead taking chunks of her into their mouths. She spun on the roof’s edge like a ballerina and raised her face as rain began to fall and wash over her. The water trickled between her breasts and slid off her shapely thighs. The end, the real end, was finally here. She hoped Mitchell had found peace with it as she had, then dove off the roof, gliding like a wounded bird toward the street below.
The dead ate her splattered remains.
One of them, a woman wearing a tattered wedding dress, stood from the feast and stumbled through her brethren toward the hospital. One of her legs was broken beneath her bloodstained gown. It barely held her weight.
She looked up at the hospital, catching the scent of living flesh above. She opened her mouth to scream as the hunger burned hotter inside her, but sprayed blood and stale bile instead. The corpse woman staggered, fell to her knees and thrashed about as her body rippled and spasmed, leaving red patches upon the street until at last she lay still.
The other dead close by quit howling and turned to look at her. Her eyes sprung open once more, only now they glowed a pale blue in the darkness. Had a living human been able to see her face, they would have sworn she smiled.
The woman pushed herself up, and without a single stagger, she walked to the nearest zombie and vomited blood into his face.
Daniel sat in the hospital’s stairwell, watching the dead. His head hurt from one too many beers. He’d finished off his entire stash, but it had been worth it. It wasn’t every day he got to see an asshole like Jack get what he deserved. Sure, it had really messed things up around the place, and he was pulling watch instead of sleeping because the person who was supposed to be out here was locked up with the rest of Jack’s men, but oh well.
Daniel wished for an aspirin, which, unlike his beloved cigarettes, were nowhere near running out. The damn things were all over the place, but he couldn’t leave his post to get one.
He turned his attention back to the dead, hoping to see one of the idiots fall off the broken stairs below.
Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. His knuckles went white as he clutched his rifle.
The dead had stopped howling. They weren’t pushing and shoving each other or trying to jump across the gap in the stairs. They were all just standing there, staring at him with glaring blue eyes.
A sudden warmth filled Daniel’s jeans and trickled down his legs. “Oh hell…” he whispered and raised his rifle. As the dead saw him taking aim, they opened their mouths in unison and screeched . Daniel dropped the rifle. It fell, spinning toward the ground floor below as he jumped to his feet and raced up the stairs.
Vince, who had been coming to check on him, was nearly smashed in the face by the stairwell door as Daniel came bursting out.
Seeing how freaked out Daniel was, Vince grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall. “Are they on their way up? Answer me, damn it!”
Daniel shook his head wildly and managed to stutter the word “No.”
Relief washed over Vince. “Then what the hell is wrong?”
“The dead are fucked up, man! They’re just really fucked up.”
Daniel broke free and darted off without looking back.
Vince turned to the stairwell door and knew he had to go down there, had to see. He drew his .38 and checked the chamber. Pistol in hand, he entered the stairwell.
It hit him then, sinking in, that the dead were silent. He stepped onto the stairs and peered over the railing into a sea of cold blue eyes. The dead stood motionless, as if they were all locked in some sort of waking dream.
Vince carefully backed into the hall and then broke into a run. Laura had to see this. Maybe she’d know what was going on; he sure as hell didn’t.
Daniel had run all the way back to the makeshift communications room.
In an effort to stop shaking, to take his mind off those dead blue eyes, he switched on the radio and listened to R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” as he went to work trying to boost the hospital’s signal. His head bobbed to the music as his fingers danced through the wiring of his radio. A cold cup of black coffee sat at his side. He took a sip, grimacing at the bitterness and almost spit it out when the incoming signal light lit up.
He shut off the music and tried to tune in the radio, but remembered he’d just taken it apart. The light had
