Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness (13 page)

Six floors up, Jeremy and Josh walked through
the dark maternity ward halls. They had encountered several zombies in the
stairwell, but their current floor had been eerily quiet. While the rest of the
hospital looked like a warzone, the maternity ward looked as it did the day the
dead started coming back to life.

Jeremy tried not to think about what happened in
this particular part of the hospital on that day. A small shudder ran down his
spine.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?” He asked.

“Kinda. I know what everything’s called, but
what they all look like? Not so much,” Josh answered.

Jeremy followed Josh into one of the rooms. It
looked untouched. The bed still made; the blinds shut.

Josh stopped in the middle of the room. He
looked at all the equipment next to the bed. How was he going to get this stuff
to the truck? Most of it had wheels, but since there were no elevators, they
would have to take the stairs again. He rubbed a hand over his head.

What am I going to do? I can’t mess this up,
he thought.

“This stuff looks kinda bulky,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about that,” Josh
responded. “We can probably get something around the house to hang the IV bags
on, so we won’t need the stand. It’s just this other stuff, I’m worried about.”

He held his hand out towards the medical equipment
surrounding the bed. Getting the wheeled carts down the stairs would be
challenging. And noisy.

“Okay, you know what we need to get, but do you
know what any of this stuff is?” Jeremy asked.

“Kinda. My mother-in-law showed me a few
pictures in the books she’d been reading. They were a little dated, but I think
I know what everything is here.”

Josh pointed towards one machine on a cart.

“That’s the heartbeat monitor. It monitors both
the mother’s and the baby’s heartbeat. We’ll somehow need to get that
downstairs.”

“Oh, jeez,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah. Tell me about it,” Josh muttered.

“What else do we need here?”

“Well, we need oxygen, but it’s all piped into
the room. We’ll have to find some spare tanks. Preferably on wheels. We can
grab this breathing mask though.”

He walks over to the wall by the bed and
releases the mask from its connector on the wall. There is a loud hiss of air
as the remaining oxygen in the hose leaks out. Both men look at each other with
eyebrows raised, then at the door. After several beats of silence pass, both
release the air from their own lungs.

“Let’s not do that again,” Jeremy said,
chuckling to hide his anxiety.

Josh nodded.

There was a moan from the hallway.

“Shit,” Jeremy said under his breath.

“Poop,” Josh whispered back.

In the doorway, a silhouette appeared in the
darkness of the hospital. Josh moved towards the window and opened the blinds.
Light flooded into the room for the first time in weeks. The figure in the
doorway stumbled back, shielding its eyes from the sun.

It at one time was a nurse. Still dressed in its
scrubs, the woman’s black, lifeless eyes fell on the men.

“Don’t you do it! Don’t you moan,” Josh said,
pointing his finger at the zombie.

She moaned.

“Typical zombie…” he muttered.

She stumbled towards them, with her hands up in
an iconic zombie pose.

“Really? Hands all reached out? Could you be any
more cliché?” Jeremy asked. “I bet you want to eat us too?”

Both men shook their heads and swung their
weapons. Josh planted his hatchet square between the last few wisps of
eyebrows, while Jeremy slashed at the neck. This resulted in the head being
removed from the torso… and hanging from the end of Josh’s hatchet. The nurse’s
body slumped over to the floor, the congealed blood gunk of her head dripping
into pools on her scrubs.

“Nice,” Josh said, as he did his best to shake
the head of his hatchet.

Jeremy nodded and used the end of his machete to
give the head a little extra push. It fell and rolled out into the hallway.

“Alright, enough goofin’ around,” he said.

He slid the machete back into the sheath
attached on his belt.

“Let’s get this stuff down to the truck before
we get any more visitors.”

***

After making a quick stop at a nurses’ station
and gathering up the last few odds and ends, they pushed the cart carrying the
heart beat monitor and duffle bag full goodies. Josh explained to Jeremy that
they had everything they needed, except for the oxygen tanks and the
resuscitation equipment. The oxygen, as well as a defibrillator, could probably
be found on a lower level, so they would not have to come all the way back for
that.

The special defib unit for the baby on the other
hand, for that, they would have to return. Josh saw it on their way towards the
stairs and made a mental note of its location. Again, it was another machine on
a cart.

I guess I should be thankful it at least has
wheels,
he
thought.

“How are we gonna get this thing down the
stairs?”

Jeremy’s question brought Josh back into the
moment.

“I suggest quietly,” Josh replied.

“Well, yeah… but how are we gonna do that?”
Jeremy said, as he held open the door to the stairs.

Josh scratched his head. He lifted up one side
of the pushcart. It was heavy, most likely the reason the machine was on wheels
in the first place.

“We can try and carry it down. When it gets too
heavy, I guess we can roll it down, step by step,” he finally proposed.

Jeremy let out a deep breath.

“I was afraid you were gonna say that.”

They pushed the cart to the edge of the stairs
and stopped.

“I’ll go backwards,” Josh offered.

“Not gonna fight you on that one.”

They lifted the cart off the ground by the
handles and began making their way downstairs.

***

“Where do you think they keep the Viagra?”

Tori just silently shook her head as she scanned
the pharmacy for the painkillers.

Demerol… Demerol… Where the hell is the Demerol?
She
thought, as her fingers scanned through the rows and rows of medicine.

“Got it!” Lexx said.

“You found the Demerol?!” Tori said, turning to
look at him.

“Nope. Found the Viagra. Sorry, still looking
for the… what did you call it?”

“Demerol! I could kick you Lexx!”

She turned back to the shelves in front of her.
So much medicine. Her eyes started running up and down the rows again. Not like
it was a big deal for them to get it or not. Laura could just have a “natural”
birth.

Tori shuddered at the idea.

She liked the idea of having kids one day, but
when it came to the actual mechanics of how those children came out, well, she
was a big pussy when it came to that. She’d admit it. Plus, she kinda liked the
way her “situation” was set-up the way it was. Normal. She had heard horror
stories about what happened down there. Made this whole zombie-apocalypse seem
like a breeze.

She looked over at Lexx. He was bent over, his
ass-crack showing out of the “borrowed” scrubs, looking at some of the lower
shelves of prescription drugs. She caught herself smiling.

He’d be a good father.

Maybe not husband material, but she could see
him being a decent man to raise children with. Especially in this world. She
knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would do anything to protect her and
their would-be children.

Would-be children? What the hell am I thinking
about?

She shook the thought from her head and went
back to her search.

Although, they had been screwing like bunnies and
it’s not like they’d been using any protection. The last day she took the pill
was the day she met Lexx.

What would happen if she did get pregnant? She’d
be in the same boat Laura was now. And maybe by then, they would at least know
what they were doing. Plus, if Josh and Laura’s baby could come into the world
with no problems, then why not one of her own? If the group could deliver a
healthy, happy baby in this world, what could they not do?

“What was that stuff called again?” Lexx asked
behind her.

She let out an exasperated breath.

“Demerol, Lexx,” she said.

“Thought so. Found it.”

She spun around to see him holding up a small
box and smiling.

“YES! I COULD KISS YOU, YOU BIG GOOF!”

“Kiss me? Just a second ago you wanted to kick
me…” He said.

“My emotions towards you have changed!”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his right
hand.

“Emotions, huh? You sure you’re not the one
that’s pregnant?” He said, with a light chuckle afterwards.

“Would you have a problem if I was?”

He grin faded and his face went pale-white.

“Oh my god, Lexx. Don’t look so sick!” she said.

Maybe the joke was too much for him. She knew
guys could be squirrelly about these kind of things.

“It’s not that. It’s just…” He started.

“It’s just what?”

“I don’t know. What if you were? Y’know?”

She smiled at him gently. He wasn’t scared for
his own sake. He was scared for
theirs
.

“Well, then we better help get this baby out
okay so we know what’s up,” she said, as she pushed herself into his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin
on the top of her head. She breathed in deep, taking in the scent of his skin.
The scrubs they wore were soft. She felt safe.

KA-BOOOM!

There was an explosion downstairs, shaking the
whole building.

They shared a quick look of worry and began
running for the stairs.

***

“What the hell was that?!” Jeremy yelled after
the explosion rumbled throughout the hospital.

“I don’t know, but we better go find Lexx and
Tori!” Josh shouted back.

“You don’t think it was them, do you?”

“Lexx didn’t have any explosives did he?”

They summoned what strength they had left and
began to carry the machine faster down the stairs. Their arms grew heavy, their
muscles aching for relief.

Almost there, almost there,
Jeremy thought to
himself.
One more floor…

“You guys up there?!” Lexx yelled from below.

Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. They were
alive.

“Yeah! Almost there!’ Jeremy yelled back.

They met on the platform of the second floor.
Lexx looked at the heart rate monitor suspiciously.

“We gotta take that thing?” he asked.

“Yeah, did you get the medicine?” Josh asked,
ignoring Lexx’s looks.

“Yes, it’s in the bag. What was that noise? Was
that y’all?” Tori said.

“No, we thought it was you guys,” Jeremy said.

Tori shook her head.

“It sounded and felt like it came from the first
floor. It shook the whole damn building,” she said.

“Well, we have to go down there anyway, so we
might as well get a move on,” Lexx added.

Lexx grabbed one of the sides of the cart and
the three of them began to carry the cart down the stairs. Tori pulled the
rifle from around her shoulder and flipped open the guards on the scope. No
night vision for the stairs, but once they reached the main hallway, she would
not need it anyway.

When they reached the bottom, Josh stopped them
and went up to the door. He felt it with the back of his hand.

“It’s not hot, so we should be safe,” he
whispered.

He pushed the door open and light rushed into
the stairwell. Their eyes adjusted and Tori stepped out into the hall first.
With the rifle raised, she scanned back and forth. Using her two fingers, she
motioned for them to follow.

“I always wanted to do that,” she whispered.

Gunshots burst from the main foyer.

They all looked at each other with confused
looks before running towards the sounds of gunfire.

When they reached the front lobby, they all
stopped.

Crashed into the front of the building was a
police cruiser and two police officers were fighting off the dead attracted to
the noise.