The Real Night of the Living Dead (9 page)

The nervous feeling came back again. I turned to Billy and said, “Grab her, I’ll get him.”

“My pleasure,” Billy said and lifted the woman off the ground and began carrying her across the field.

I walked with Melvin, but we were a few feet behind Billy, moving
slow
. My right arm was around his waist, and my left arm was carrying the mop and broom. We were near the edge of the field now and almost at N-5.

The creatures were a good hundred yards behind us.

With the rain hitting my eyes, I squinted at the woman in Billy’s skinny arms. From the looks of her filthy uniform I could tell she was a nurse. The rain was crashing against her face and was washing some of the mud away. She was very attractive, even with
all that
gunk covering her beauty. I couldn’t help myself; I kept staring at her golden blonde hair. No matter that mud was soaked in it; it still had a way of shining through. It was like a light at the end of a tunnel, a way out, reassuring me that everything was going to turn out all right for us.
All of us.

With that outlook fresh in my mind, I got my second wind and marched on.

We stepped off the field and onto the road that looped from N-3 to N-5. From here, I could not see any cars, but I did see three creatures, spread out, moving about at a slow pace. They hadn’t seen us.
Yet.

Christ, my fresh outlook was beginning to dimmer. The infected patients already reached this building. How far out had this disaster spread? And where the hell was Haas’ car? That was the whole reason why we hiked in this direction.

As we moved to the parking lot, I said, “I don’t see his car.”

“This is shit,” said the injured Melvin. “We’re done for. What do we do now?”

Then, an eruption of high-pitched screams and shrieks began to drown out the sound of the falling rain.

I turned back to see what it was and almost passed out from the shock. My jaw hung, and I could not utter a word.

Billy wasn’t bothered at the sight at all. He said, in a very casual tone, “Well, grab your paddles, boys. We headed up Shit’s Creek and in for a dog of a night.”

Coming from behind N-3, where the women’s group was located, and behind the small mob that had been chasing us since N-3, was a wave of at least fifty of these things.

That fresh outlook rotted away in a beat of my quaking heart.

Chapter Thirteen

We ran.

Even Melvin broke loose from my support and ran; although, his was more of a jog, and even that was draining him of energy. He was breathing heavy. The circles under his eyes were growing darker by the minute.

Billy was in good shape. He moved fast, even with the pretty woman, whose eyes were closed, in his arms.

In the parking lot now, we hustled toward the front entrance of N-5. The three infected patients took notice and began to move our way. One of them was running, another was moving very slow and stiff.

We ran up the steps of N-5. I pulled the door open. We entered and waiting for us at the security guard’s desk was a creature.

We stopped. Water was dripping off our clothes and onto the faux marble flooring.

The creature looked at us and moaned. Then he moved forward, slowly. He appeared to be in pain every time he attempted to move an arm or a leg. His skin color was dull and grayish blue. There was a putrid, rotting smell seeping through his pores. I had no doubt that these creatures were dead, but still walking. However insane that may sound. I mean, here was a man, walking around, his eyes open, but decomposing before our own eyes.

He was moving so slow that I wasn’t scared at all, or maybe that had to do with what was headed our way? I approached the infected patient, whose hands were behind his back, and whacked him upside his head with both the mop and broom.

He dropped face first to the floor. Blood began seeping from his ears.

I looked at his back and noticed his hands were handcuffed. It was the patient who started it all. He managed to spread his reign of terror all the way to this building. Who knows how many people he slaughtered in here?

“So what now then?”
Billy said.

“We need to find a safe place to catch our breath,” I said.

“Sounds good,” said Billy.
“My arms are
gettin
’ numb from
carryin
’ this dirty
lil
’ angel.
Not only that, I
gotta
take a whiz real bad.”

“Melvin, you worked this building before,” I said. “Any places you can think of?”

His head hung as he leaned against the wall behind us. He raised his eyes and said, “Kitchen. There’s a storage room back…there.”

“Which way?”

Billy interrupted, saying, “Down this way. Can’t you smell the taters?”

Melvin nodded, agreeing with Billy.

We walked down the cold hallway, in the direction of the kitchen. I helped Melvin again, while Billy carried the exhausted nurse.

After about five minutes, we reached the spacious cafeteria. It took an extra few minutes, because we stopped a couple times so my friend could catch his breath. Along the way, we heard moans coming from the stairwell, but we didn’t encounter any of the maniacs.

The cafeteria was a good forty fifty yards wide and was lined with picnic tables. And the entire place was empty, although, I did notice a few puddles of blood and a nurse’s cap on the floor; the only sign I could see that these things made their way through here.

“Back here,” said Melvin.
“Behind the counter.”

Me
and Melvin walked across the empty floor and behind the counter, to the kitchen. Billy and the nurse trailed.

There was a door against the back wall with a square foot window near the top. We moved toward it.

“Where do
youse
guys think you’re going?”

We were startled by the voice. We turned, and the person that Billy hated the most was pointing his gun at us.

Chapter Fourteen

He laughed once he recognized who I was. “How’s this for karma?” Hank said. “The son of a bitch convict from
Holmesburg
is staring down the barrel of my forty-four. You know, I could put a bullet in that no good head of yours and wouldn’t even be threatened with seeing the inside of a prison. What do you think of that?”

“Relax, mug,” I said. “This
ain’t
no
time to be throwing your authority around.”

Billy, still carrying the nurse, said, “Yeah, Hank the Tank, put your toy back in your pants before you hurt somebody.”

He turned the gun to Billy, saying, “Shut your mouth, you crazy shitter. I got half a mind to shoot you dead right here. You’re not supposed to be walking the premises without proper supervision.”

“I’m
carryin
’ the proper supervision.
Ain’t
she a peach?”

Hank looked over the mud caked nurse; at first, having a hard time figuring out who she was, then realizing she was a nurse, he said,
“
What’s wrong with her?”

“
Found’er
in the field
comin
’ over.”

“The hell did
youse
bastards do to her?”

I said, “We didn’t do a thing. She was lying in the field. That’s how we found her. If anything, we saved her life.” I paused. He still had the gun on Billy. “Look, we need to take a load off.”

He was contemplating on what to do. He saw the wounds on Melvin and said, “What happened to him?”

“He was bitten,” I said.

He stared at Melvin, then said, “Go ahead, through the door.”

We entered the storage room. It was about twenty-five feet wide and forty feet in length, and the walls were lined with racks filled with all types of food: bags of coffee beans, canned foods, baskets of vegetables and fruits, potato sacks, pudding, bread, stuff like that. To the far wall was a door that was a back exit to this building.

Hank was the last to enter. He shut the door, locking it from the inside,
then
slid a six foot high empty metal rack against it as a barricade.

I dropped the mop and broom on the floor, grabbed a small stack of empty potato sacks and laid them on the cold floor. Then Billy placed the nurse over the sacks. Melvin was sitting on the floor, his back resting against the wall.

Hank hadn’t been the only person hiding in here. There was an older male patient, wearing a hospital gown that was open down the back, standing at the racks, eating an apple, and a doctor, young guy, coming toward us now from the back of the storage room. He said, “Where did you come from?”

“We were in the therapy building. That’s where this all started,” I said. “I’m surprised they reached here so fast.”

“It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes ago,” said the doctor. “We were in the kitchen, feeding patients and some of the staff.”

Hank interrupted, saying, “Yeah, that’s when that crazy walked in and started biting whoever he could get his mouth on. Kept falling everywhere ‘
cause
his hands were cuffed behind him. Everyone screaming and running, like a damn riot.”

“It took no more than five minutes before this place was cleared out. Hank, the patient and I were the last to try and flee, but once we reached the door there were a few people there waiting for us. They appeared to be sick, like the man who started the attack. So we had no choice but to come back. Once we reached the dining area, the same man was waiting for us. That’s when we hid in here.”

I said, “Are there any cars around here that we can get to?”

Hank said, “There were probably two or three cars parked out here to begin with. And they’re gone.”

“Doctor Haas was with us. He said he left his car here,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hank said. “It was parked right out front. I saw one of the attendants driving off. Beats me on how he got his keys.”

The whole reason why there weren’t more cars than the few that had remained was that, not only were we into the night shift, but most of the employees here used Philadelphia Rapid Transit as a means of transportation. A couple of reasons behind this: one, most of the employees were attendants and didn’t own automobiles (for every doctor there were twenty attendants, for every nurse, seven attendants, so attendants far outnumbered doctors and nurses), and two, a lot of the nurses and attendants lived here, in the dorms, from Monday through Friday, then would return home for the weekend. Usually, they’d get a friend or loved one to drop them off on Monday and pick them up on Friday.

The doctor had a curious look on his face and said, “So where is Doctor Haas now?”

“He didn’t make it,” I said.

“What? He’s dead?” said the doctor, sounding upset.

“Yeah,” said Billy. “
Ol
’ fart tried to take a bite
outta
me.”

“Who said you could
talk,
kook?” said Hank.

I jumped in, saying, “No, he’s right. The doctor was bitten by a patient who was injected with a polio vaccine…”

“Wait just a second,” said the young doctor. “You mean to tell me this madness is the result of a vaccination experiment?” I nodded. “So, it’s a sort of virus that’s being spread?”

“Yeah, and I know this sounds crazy, but I’m almost sure that these people are dying.” I paused, looking at the expressions on the guard and doctor’s faces,
then
continued, “And then…they return to life and become one of these maniacs.”

Hank and the doctor laughed. The older patient, chewing his apple, broke his silence, saying, “My good man, you are even crazier than I am.”