The Oasis of Filth (9 page)

“It’s a person,” I said. I could see a man standing just off the parking lot in the scrub brush. He wasn’t moving, but something about him was off. “Looks infected.”

“No
way
,” Hank said, slowing the jeep and following my gaze. “We cleared this place out.”

“Couldn’t one of them just walk in from somewhere else?” Rosa asked.

Janine turned to look as well. “It’s possible, but we come through here a lot. We took everything the least bit valuable out of that supermarket before we knocked it down.” Hank turned the jeep back toward the parking lot. I had my eyes trained on the spot where I’d seen the zombie. Another one appeared. A woman, from what I could tell.

“There’re two now.”

“Shit.” Hank pulled into the lot, jumped out of the idling jeep. He grabbed a metal baseball bat jammed into a tube on the jeep that was probably originally meant for a fishing rod. “Where?” I pointed. Hank looked, saw the two zombies, began walking toward them. “Wait here,” he said without turning back to us.

We watched Hank approach them. As the zombies noticed him, first the man, then the woman, they became enraged. They rushed at him side by side. His first swing probably destroyed the left patella and lower femur of the woman, young and pale, with a rat’s nest of black hair. She gave an inhuman shriek and fell. Hank looked to finish her, but the other zombie — an older, pudgy bald man with dark skin that might have once been brown but was now a sort of gray — was already upon him. With an upward swing, Hank shattered the zombie’s jaw into his skull, killing him instantly. He fell in a lump. Beside Hank, the female zombie gnashed and flailed, reaching for him, pushing toward him with her good leg. Hank took a second to plan his attack. Deliberately, he swung hard into the left side of her head, and we heard a combination crack and pop. Her dead body dropped beside the other zombie.

As we continued to stare, Hank inspected the scene, then turned to walk back to the jeep. He made it three steps. “Behind you!” he yelled, pointing.

Rosa and I turned and ducked in a fear-induced reaction, looking toward the cemetery on the other side of the road. Janine was better trained. As she pivoted in the direction that Hank was pointing, she pulled out her handgun, saw a tall, skinny infected man rushing at us from between the grave markers, and fired. The first shot grazed his shoulder, and he kept at us like nothing happened. Janine fired again, hitting him in the throat, and he fell in a gurgling rage of blood, flipping his body left and right on the ground next to a pockmarked gravestone. Hank climbed into the jeep, got it moving. When we looked back, we saw another zombie shambling in our direction.

Hank turned to Janine. “Radio it in. I don’t know what the hell’s going on around here, but we need to re-sweep McCormick.” Janine picked up the CB.

After hearing what happened, Harvey made his decision. “You all keep going,” he said, his voice as sure as ever, even through the crackle of the radio. “We need that equipment. I’ll get some others out to McCormick to clean it up. Good luck.”

* * *

We took 221 south along the eastern side of the lake until finally, at the southern tip, we turned right and crossed over the dam. It was still in one piece, although from the dead quiet I’d say its hydroelectric generators must have ground to a halt years ago. We continued south and west through the woods until finally we connected with Interstate 20. That took us almost due east, into the western fringes of Augusta. Marian had told us to look around the hospital there, because there were several labs in the area. We found the first of them behind the hospital, off Wheeler Road, in a collection of small, evenly separated brick buildings with neat, long parking lots — the standard configuration for medical buildings before the outbreak.

“Which one?” Hank asked Rosa.

“How the hell should I know?” She shrugged. “Let’s try this one.” She pointed to a small, ornate, tan building with a sign out front that identified it as a medical lab.

Hank pulled up in front, turning the jeep back toward the road for the fastest getaway in case it was needed and we got out. The plan was for Janine to stick with the jeep. We each had a walkie-talkie that had been charged at The Oasis. They only had six total, so the four they handed out for this mission was a testament to the importance of what we were doing. We checked all four of them to be sure they were in working order. I grabbed a tire iron from the jeep, and Hank got his bat. At his side, he also had a pistol. Rosa refused to carry any sort of weapon, saying she wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. Then the three of us headed toward the door. The day was bright, and we could see into the building through a panorama of large broken windows. While the place was a complete mess, it seemed to be empty. I thought it must have been ransacked dozens of times, especially in the first year or two of the outbreak, and began to wonder how many labs we’d have to hit to get the supplies we needed. Hank peered in the open windows, then went to the front door. He tried the handle, and the door swung open easily. He looked back at us, maybe trying to reassure us, maybe gauging our mettle. Probably both. He must have been satisfied with what he saw; he went inside, and we followed, Rosa in the middle and me bringing up the rear.

We passed through the destroyed atrium of the front lobby. A large corporate logo was half on the wall, half strewn across the floor in pieces. A desk of some dark wood sat topped with marble where a receptionist would have sat. Wires remained, but the computer that must have been on the desk was long gone. For a moment, although the space was larger and much more corporate, it reminded me of the waiting room at the office of my practice, and another lifetime of memories sprang up. Giving an amoxicillin prescription to a worried mother whose son was wheezing with a sinus infection, setting a broken tibia for a man who fell from the loading dock at his job, recommending an oncologist for an old woman who came to see me thinking she’d eaten something rotten. I realized I’d paused in the lobby as the others moved ahead, so I shook the cobwebs out of my head and continued after them.

Hank led the way through a door and down a hallway, but without the swagger he’d shown earlier. I could tell this wasn’t his bread and butter. He was unsure of himself, looking for things he didn’t really understand in a place he’d never seen before. As he moved away from the lobby, the light grew dim, so he turned on his flashlight. We each had one, plus a backpack to carry things out. Hank looked back at us. “In here?” he said, gesturing to a doorway.

“Try it,” Rosa said, nodding. Hank prepared himself, pushed open the door, holding his pistol forward and swinging his light through the space in an arc. The room was narrow, with counters on each side and rows of shelves above them. A small sink beset with some sort of mold was embedded into the countertop on one side. The room had been gone over, who knows how many times. There were supplies strewn everywhere, hanging from shelves, on the floor, many torn open. After a quick check, Hank let Rosa enter the small room. She looked around quickly with her own small flashlight, grabbing a few items, mostly for sanitation, and stuffed them into her backpack. In a couple of minutes, she turned back to us. “That’s all in here.”

Hank radioed Janine to tell her all was well, then pushed forward down the hall, passing an open bathroom and an office with a debris-covered desk. He rounded a corner, leading us farther into the back of the office. The light from the front windows all but vanished. On the left, a door read STORAGE. Hank waited for us to join him, then opened the door with the same sweep of light as before. The room had been tossed, but remained full of supplies. “This looks promising,” Rosa announced with a smile, pushing past Hank. “Come in here!” We all entered the room, and Rosa grabbed boxes, test tubes, a tabletop centrifuge, plastic bottles, and an assortment of sealed paper packages, jamming them into any backpack where they would fit. “Wow. We lucked out here,” she said. “This stuff must look useless to most people.... Well, I guess it actually is useless for most people. But we’re lucky to find all of it intact.”

“Did you find everything you need?” Hank asked, hopefully.

“Yes and no.” She swirled a plastic bottle in her hand, peering closely at it with her flashlight. “This agar powder is the biggest question mark. Conditions in here may have turned it bad. I want to get as much as we can before we leave. Can we look for more here?” Hank and I looked at each other and shrugged.
Why not?
We zipped up our bags full of everything Rosa had found.

Hank led the way again, into the hall, deep into the back of the building. On the left, he saw another closed door and moved toward it.

As he opened the door, we were immediately blinded by light. How was that possible, here in the back of this dark building? Hank swung his pistol and flashlight in an arc, but for a moment we were all blinded by the piercing glare. After a moment our eyes adjusted, and we could see we’d reached the far side of the building and were standing outside a room full of medical equipment. The light came from a door on the far side of the room that stood open onto the back parking lot. Machines glinted in the sunlight. Hank squinted and turned back to us with a wry smirk. “Guess we could’ve just come in that door,” he said. Then we all heard a low rumbling.

Not a rumble. A
growl
. Hank jerked to attention, whipped the flashlight back through the room. In the back, under a space in the countertop probably meant for a chair... there were
eyes
looking back at us. First two large ones, then additional pairs, smaller, all catching the light. Hank pointed the pistol and flashlight directly at the eyes, and we saw... dogs. Or
a
dog. A momma dog, I presumed, and several pups. The pups looked at us in surprise and fear. But the mother bared her teeth in a vicious snarl. The growl grew louder as she realized how close we were to her litter. Hackles pleated her back as she took a step toward us. She looked to be a mutt, but a bulky, powerful one. Maybe part Rottweiler, perhaps part Bull Terrier. Her coat was a mix of black and brown. We stepped back, jamming the space with our bodies. I positioned myself between Rosa and Hank, putting her at the back of our ranks. If anything happened to Hank or me, it was important that Rosa get back alive. That the supplies get back, too. As we moved, the mother dog leapt forward a foot or so, asserting her authority. Could we blame her? Three strangers had just invaded her home.

Suddenly a shadow fell across the back doorway as another dog stepped into view. The daddy, I presumed. He was huge, much larger than the momma, skin bursting with muscles, and now he too began to growl, teeth bared. We stepped farther away. And they came for us.

I had my own gun, but only Hank had any kind of shot through the doorway. The female broke to our left, while the male went to our right, forcing Hank to decide which was the eminent threat. He chose the male. Not really aiming, he fired two or three times toward the rushing dog, hitting it more than once and ending its attack in a high-pitched yelp of pain. Whether dead or just injured, we didn’t know. There was no time. We turned and ran, Rosa leading me, with Hank following behind. The female caught him at the turn of the hallway, grabbing his ankle with her teeth. Hank fell to the floor, his gun and flashlight clattering out in front of him. Rosa and I turned as Hank kicked at the dog with his free foot. She twisted and shook his leg in a rage, seemingly trying to tear it off his body. Hank screamed in pain.

Without thought, I raised my pistol and fired, hitting the female in the hindquarters in a broad splash of blood that sprayed the white walls. Another pained yelp. The dog released Hank, and he pushed himself up and lurched toward us. “Go, get out of here!” he yelled. We turned and ran, Hank limping beside us. He still had the sense to radio Janine. “Look alive, we need to move!” he said into the walkie-talkie. We passed back through the lobby and made for the front door. Through the shattered front windows, we could see Janine had backed the jeep up directly to the door and was waiting for us. We pushed outside, jumped into the waiting jeep, with Hank last of all. Rosa and I helped pull him into his seat as Janine gunned the engine. At that moment, the wounded, bloody mother dog ran out of the slowly closing front door and leapt at the side of the jeep beside my leg. Janine thrust into another gear and the jeep accelerated, leaving the dog behind. As we burst onto the main road and pointed toward home, Hank looked back toward the building, where the dog stood still barking at us. “I wish I had brought the damned grenades,” he said.

* * *

Hank took off his boots and inspected his ankle. It was red and swollen, but there were no puncture wounds. Luckily, he had taken to wearing very thick construction boots, and while the pressure from the strong jaws was intense, I could see there would be no lasting damage. Janine guided us back the way we came as Rosa inspected the backpacks in the daylight.