Unfed (8 page)

He slowly rises, arms dragging up his body, head lolling until the last second, when it pops up to reveal it’s half blown away. The remaining eye sees us, and, I SWEAR, he smiles. Arms out, he advances.

I grip the towel rail. I feel Russ stiffen beside me.

“He’s only one. We can get past him.”

Upstairs a door slams.

“The soldiers!” Pete squeaks.

“Stay calm, folks,” Russ says. “Bobby, give me the towel rail.”

I hold it up to give him, but at that moment the door behind Ponytail opens, and a surge of Undead spills through. In shock, I clatter the rail against the metal banister on the stairs. The vibration travels through my hands, up my arm bones, and into my shoulders, and in shock I drop the rail. It falls down the stairwell and lands somewhere below with an almost tuneful clanging.
For whom the bell tolls
. I lean over the banister, as
if somehow I can take back the loud noise. And then comes the buggy feeling. I turn round quickly and look up though the stairwell, feeling eyes burning into the back of my skull.

A head, in a black balaclava, is hanging over the banister several floors up.

A second head appears, a little farther down.

Then a third, a mere two or three floors above.

“Run!” I screech, not trying to be quiet anymore, because I clearly failed the silence thing. Down is not an option, so we run up a flight and through the doors and into another short corridor, round a bend, and keep on running. But as we near the end of the corridor, a mob appears in front of us, doctors and nurses freshly turned, hungry-looking, as yet unfed.

“Fall back!” Russ cries. We sprint back to the bend in the corridor, and I spy a door with a small sign by the wall. I can just make out the letters.

“There! The door doesn’t have a handle.” There’s a keypad entrance system, but the door is already ajar. We can get in and shut it behind us. I point down the corridor. We race for it, Russ pulls the door open, and we bundle inside.

The room is very small, with lockers and shelves storing boots and clothing. And a doorway leading to something else beyond.

“We’re trapped again!” Alice screams. “And they know where we are!”

Russ shakes his head. “We were too fast. The zoms didn’t see where we went. As far as they’re concerned we melted into the wall.”

“Now all we’ve got to worry about are the soldiers,” Pete says grimly.

“No doubt, but they won’t look here,” I say. “At least not for a while.”

“What makes you so sure?” Alice says.

“They’ll assume we won’t hide here.”

“Why?” Alice frowns at me. Then her pretty little nose curls up in distaste, and for once, it’s not me that is provoking the reaction. “God, what’s that smell?”

It hit me as soon as we came in here, but then again, I knew to expect it. It’s strong, so overpowering that it’s making my eyes water.

Pete knows. As we rushed inside, I saw him clock the word written in small letters on a subtle plaque on the door. He walks to the doorway to the other room, and peers around tentatively. Below his feet is a tray with some kind of liquid in it.

“Disinfectant,” he says, lifting each foot up and watching the stuff drip off into the tray. “That’s the top note, anyhow. With a base of rotting flesh. The main smell, however, is … formaldehyde.”

“For … what?” Alice still doesn’t get it. But Pete’s face is whiter than ever, and Russ knows, too. I decide to put Alice out of her misery.

“This is the morgue.”

“The what?”

Alice ruins the effect of my announcement. I look at her face; she genuinely doesn’t know.

“The morgue,” I say. “Don’t tell me this is a new word for you. It’s where they keep dead people. You must know that.”

“What, like I’m some expert on deadness suddenly?” she says. “Of course I’ve heard the word before, but I thought the morgue was that place in Europe where all the bad people go to court.”

Russ bites his lip. “That’s the Hague.”

“Oh.” Alice flushes red. “Same diff. It’s not like I’m some saddo who cares. Such crapocity.” She shoots a look at me. “Hang on a minute.” She points at me. “So she’s led us into some room where all the dead people are stored?” She balls her fists, and I can see the blood boiling behind that peaches-and-cream complexion. “Are you out of your little shaved head?”

I ignore her and push past Pete into the next room. The smell gets worse, and the smell behind the smell. The thing that it’s supposed to be hiding. The fish-sick smell, so familiar to me now.

Bright light contrasts with the gloom of the little room I’ve just come out of. This is a far bigger space. There are a dozen or more empty
gurneys scattered across the floor, some turned over on their sides. A scattering of black vinyl body bags, with a few sheets draped upon and around them. A bank of huge lockers lines one side of the room. Square doors set into a wall, stacked three high. I quickly count ten across. Thirty body lockers? That’s quite a lot; they really planned for the worst case scenario when they designed this place. And just as well they did.

To the right of the body lockers, there’s an open door. I wind my way through the gurneys and peep through into a large, empty room with ceramic-tile floor, walls, and ceiling — and nothing else. There are smears of blood here and there. I stand at the doorway, not wanting to go in any farther.

“This is where they kept them.”

It’s what I had been counting on. Because yes, if we are underground in a military hospital, this place probably
is
quite secure. No one is getting down here without some serious effort, and some even more serious firepower. And zoms — even the new, souped-up ones — haven’t really shown themselves to have guns, in my experience. So once I knew the hospital had been overrun, and given that,
DUH, it’s a hospital
, it seemed oh-so-much more likely that the threat had come from within.

They were here, but now they’re gone.

“Clever.” Russ appears behind me, making me jump. “You figured that if the dead peeps were running the halls, they wouldn’t be in here anymore. Nice call.”

“Pretty much.” I can’t help but feel a flush of pride. Stupid, but it kind of matters to me that Russ likes me. Heaven knows, with Smitty gone, I need all the fans I can get.

I turn back into the main room and eye the big locker things on the wall. I hope they’re empty, too.

*  *  *

“So what now?” says Alice. “This is not the exit.” Obviously she can’t be seen to be appreciating me on any level. And that’s fine. I’m totally comfortable with that.

“We wait. Don’t touch anything.” I turn to my little group. “I mean, nothing that looks bodily-fluidy. I think we’re safe enough for a while, as long as we’re sensible. We can charge the phone and make a plan.”

Pete’s not happy. He’s shaking his head and the goggles are threatening to come off. “But we’re giving them time to secure the exit. They know we’re here, they’ll search high and low, but ultimately all they have to do is seal us in here.”

“What’s the alternative?” I feel a panic coming, because I kind of know he’s right. They could lock us in down here for good and let the zoms do the rest. Or starve us. Or implement the fail-safe thingummy — drowning, gassing, whatever.

“We plan quickly,” Russ says. He looks around him. “Look at the stuff here — there’re things we can use as weapons, protective clothing.” He opens a cupboard, then a drawer or two. “Everyone gather whatever you think could be useful, then we’ll scoot.”

“The phone charger.” I look at him. He reaches into his pocket and tosses it at me. I quickly locate a socket and jam the plug in. Then I fish the phone out of my boot.
Please, please, make this the right one
.

Every so often, something goes right. And this is one of those times. It’s a match; phone and charger are totally making whoopee. The pin fits snugly into the little hole on the bottom of my phone, and a tiny pyramid of bars begin to build in the corner of the screen.

“Yes!” I stamp my foot, then instantly feel a tad ridiculous. “We are getting juiced.”

“Great,” Russ grunts. “Five minutes, tops — then we’re gone.”

“One second, Russ,” Pete intones. It’s a unique mixture of irritating and hysterically funny when he tries to do bossy. He turns to me. “Let me take another look at those numbers on the phone.”

“Can it still charge while you do that?” I ask.

“Of course.” He looks at me as if I’m clueless.

“Then go crazy.”

Pete dives into decoding. Russ is searching a cabinet. Alice is pulling open drawers.

All busy being useful, except me. I know the other reason I wanted to hit this room, and now that we’re in here, I’ve got to find what I’m looking for, even if it gets me killed. There’s a PC terminal on a desk, but I ignore it — no doubt there will be passwords and protected stuff — and I head for the good, old-fashioned filing cabinets. Having grown up with two medical people as parents, I know that docs can be alarmingly technophobic, and I’m hoping that the info I’m searching for will be found on paper.

I pull open a drawer, and look inside. Alphabetized files hang within. I pull one out at random.

“Hey,” Pete calls out. “This second number doesn’t work at all. It’s a load of nonsense with a dot and zeros — you can’t have a zero, a zero’s just a space.”

“Nice one, Mother dearest,” Alice sneers.

“Just give me time …” Pete thumbs away at the phone again, and I return to the file in my hands.

Hard copies of medical records. I scan the one I happened to pull out — a female, ten years old, name: Alderson, Isabel.

I pull out a couple of sheets. There are photographs, and they are
gross. A brain. A swollen purple chunk of meat that is probably a liver or something. It’s all kind of OK, until I see one more pic — a photo of her face.

It’s Red, the young girl who wrestled with me back in my room. Isabel Alderson. The curly-whirly corkscrew hair is unmistakable.

Gulp
. Now I know why she had that hideous half a head. Someone had opened up her skull with a saw and photographed the brain like a toy from an Easter egg.

“Cracked it!”

Pete’s voice shocks me and I jump out of my skin. I look over to him, and he’s jigging up and down like he’s got a ferret in his knickers.

“The third message, ‘Poffit’?”

“Yeah?” I answer.

“‘Underbridge.’” He beams happily. “That’s what it says.”

“So is that where Smitty is, then?” Russ asks me. “Under a bridge? Or a place called Underbridge?”

“Way to be specific,
Mom
,” drawls Alice.

I can’t help feeling excited. This is making sense. I mean, it makes no sense — but at least we’re getting answers. Even if we don’t know what they mean. “Keep at it, Pete!”

“Not half.” He taps pen to paper, double speed.

I start to skim through the notes, but it’s pretty much all gobbledygook to me. Except one thing jumps out.

Hot damn
. There it is in writing.

“Osiris.”

I hardly realize I’ve said it out loud.

“What?” Russ says.

“This is a medical record from one of the kids who attacked me in my
room.” I face the others. “It says it here in black and white, she was ‘Infected, tested positive for Osiris.’”

“Yeah, so?” Alice says. “Newsflash: She was a zom.”

“But don’t you see what this means?” I look to Pete. “Osiris.” I stab a finger at the documents.

“The hospital has to be Xanthro,” Pete says, putting the phone down.

“My god.” Russ walks up to me and looks over my shoulder at the file.

“How come?” Alice says.

“Because the only people who know that the virus has a name are Xanthro,” I say. “My mum and her team named the possible cure Osiris 17, and the stimulant Osiris Red.”

“Possibly,” Russ says. “But for all we know, that’s what everyone’s been calling it in the last few weeks. We can’t be sure.”

“Look at the clues, they’re right there,” I say. “The men in black who came to the crash site, they had little yellow
X
s on their lapels, I remember now. That’s the Xanthro logo.”

“You sure you saw that?” Russ said.

“I think …” I say. “I was pretty out of it, but would I dream that kind of thing?”

“Yeah,” he says simply. “You might.”

“What about that guy in the stairwell?” I say. “Long hair and military doesn’t add up, we know — but if he’s Xanthro, then he’s free to rock the ponytail.” I hike a thumb in the direction of the door. “Biggest clue of all. They’re shooting at us. That’s a clue right there, with your name on it. I refuse to believe that the army would fire on uninfected kids.”

Pete nods. “I certainly hope not.”

“Maybe this is an army hospital, but there must be a Xanthro presence here.” I point to my phone, which Pete has put on the counter. “Mum
monkeyed with my phone. She must have taken it away from me at the crash site, then smuggled it in here somehow. Or maybe given it to someone else to plant. Either way, she must have connections with this hospital.”

“Either way, can we get going?” Alice says, not unreasonably.

“Two minutes. I need to check something.”

“Make it quick,” Pete says.

I nod, and get back on task. I place Red’s file back in its place and look farther, in several drawers, until I find the place where they keep the
S
surnames. I’m looking for something specific.

Smitty, Robert.

I run my finger along the tops of the files. There are lots of
S
s. Lots of Smiths … then a Snaith … I check back again to be sure. No Rob Smitty.

“Time to wrap this up,” Russ says. “We’ve been here long enough.”

“Nearly there.” My hand reaches out, and I look for Lindsay, Dr. Anna. Mum always used her maiden name for work.

There’s nothing there.

I check the
B
s …
B
as in Brook, as in my surname — my dad’s name — in case they have her listed there. But there’s nothing.

In spite of all the evidence that she’s alive, I had to check. I feel a rush of relief and a little side order of happy, but mainly, I’m pissed. Furious. The nasty bastards lied to me.

I slam the drawer shut. “We go. Now.”

“Oh my god.” Alice is holding something up at arm’s length. It looks like a bundle of cloth, wrapped in plastic, red and blue visible within. It looks … strangely familiar. She takes a breath, and delicately opens the package with her fingertips, shaking the contents to the floor. We all stare at it.

Alice’s pep squad skirt has come back to haunt us.

“How did
that
get here?” Her eyes bulge, tears starting to form.

“I guess you were wearing it when they picked us up, after the crash.” I move to get a closer look. “Where did you find it?” It’s hers, for sure. I mean, how many cheerleading skirts do you find in a morgue in an underground Scottish hospital?

“It was in that drawer.” Alice glares at me, like I hid it there. “Do you think they were testing it? For traces of
zombie
?”

I shrug, deliberately casual. “Maybe one of the lab techs just likes to dress up.”

“Yeah, well,” Alice snorts. “Solves your little problem, doesn’t it?” She kicks the skirt off the floor. It flies into the air and lands on my chest.

High holy sheep shit
. She expects me to wear it.

It slides down my front, back onto the tiled floor.

I look at Russ. He nods encouragingly — perhaps too encouragingly. Pete has already lost interest and is back at work with my phone. Damn, it
is
clothing. I can’t really refuse it.

I pick the skirt up, shake it out a little, and step into it, fuming. Alice is elated. She’s frickin’ loving this. I turn on my heel and walk away from her.
Oh, gah
. The skirt flounces as I move. I don’t think I have ever felt so low.

“Drat it!” Pete cuts through my misery. He’s staring at the phone, shaking his head. “The other two numbers, I can’t work them out.”

“You got ’em on paper?” I say, glad to move on. He nods. “Great, then we go.”

I look around for a weapon, and find my companions have grabbed all the best stuff. It’s very scary. Alice has chosen to be driller killer with some kind of cordless implement tucked under her arm.

Russ has scored a heavy-duty battery-powered Stryker saw — you know, one of those things they use to cut through people’s skulls on the crime autopsy shows?
Yeah, nice
. And Pete has the biggest butcher’s knife I’ve ever seen.

I would have loved me a power tool, especially as there should never be a situation where Alice has a better weapon than me. This time, I’m just going to have to manage with the dregs. I open a drawer under the counter and settle on a large chisel. Might not be sexy, but it’ll be handy in a tight spot, and it’s definitely an improvement on the arsingly crap towel rail that was. Plus I probably won’t cut my own arm off, which is a definite risk for Alice.