I shuddered at the thought; goose bumps broke out on my flesh. For a moment the world lurched and swayed, my stomach heaved violently at the thought of being trapped like that. It was the worst thing I could ever imagine happening to me. The endless torture they were enduring if they were aware of their surroundings. I’d rather be dead.
I didn’t want to die.
The thought slammed into me. For the first time I realized that it was completely true. I had been going through the motions, surviving because it was expected, hoping because there had been hope to have, but all the while there had been a deadened hole inside of me. There had been an emptiness that kept me teetering on the edge of a dark precipice. The hole, the emptiness would always be there, I knew that. But I wanted to live, I wanted to survive. I wasn’t ready for this to be the end and I was very afraid of what the hospital held for us. I should be elated we had reached our goal, I was nearly certain that we wouldn’t be leaving the building.
Tears burned my eyes and throat; I kept my head bowed as I watched every step I took carefully. I didn’t realize we had made it to the bottom of the hill until the ground leveled out before me. The day was growing steadily darker. Lloyd stopped to survey the buildings, his eyes narrowed as he knelt to rest one hand upon the ground.
“Does anyone know the layout?”
“I’ve been here once before, when my mom’s friend had a baby. If you want to know where the maternity ward is, I’m your guy.”
Lloyd scowled at Bret before turning his attention back to the hospital. “Bishop said that the pathology and laboratory departments were where we would find the things we need. They’re probably located in the main building, basement. Hopefully,” I added.
“Now that is useful info,” Lloyd muttered.
We slipped silently through the darkening day, hurrying through the deepening shadows as we stayed low and scurried across the ground. Lloyd reached the doors first. He didn’t hesitate, as I would have, before plunging into the dark interior. Bret followed swiftly behind but Jenna balked slightly before disappearing after them.
I took a deep breath and plunged forward, half afraid that something was going to snag me as soon as I stepped inside. Instead, I entered a world of utter chaos and destruction. I skid to a halt behind Bret; the squeak of my sneakers on the linoleum floor as loud as a gunshot in the eerily silent hall. I winced involuntarily, bracing myself for something to come rushing at us out of the dark. Nothing moved, nothing stirred; there was nothing left to make a sound.
“What the hell?” Jenna whispered.
The hall was a mess. There didn’t appear to be one inch of floor that wasn’t littered with some type of debris. Papers, medical tools, clothes, blankets, mattresses, pillows, and so many other numerous things covered the floor that it was hard to differentiate one from another. It looked as if a bomb had gone off, but I knew it was something far worse and far more sinister.
“My God,” Jenna breathed her hand flying to her mouth as she came to the same sickening realization that I just had.
It wasn’t a bomb that had gone off in here, but a feeding frenzy that had left the halls devoid of any life, devoid of any hope.
“Let’s get this over with, quickly.” Lloyd’s words made sense, but no one moved.
I didn’t want to move through the blood that splattered the walls and floor, didn’t want to pick my way through the discarded clothing; didn’t want to touch the remnants of the dead. I wanted to close my eyes and block out everything before me, but it was now seared permanently into my mind. I did not want to hear the resounding screams that had once filled this hall, but they echoed through my mind. I was shaking as I took a step back. The blood, the horror, the massacre that had occurred here nearly drove me to my knees beneath the crushing weight of despair that was trying to consume me.
The pain. Remnants of it lingered on the blood streaked walls. Remnants of it pulsed with an answering rhythm in the very marrow of my bones. The horrendous agony of what these people had experienced would forever be absorbed into the sterile white walls of this institution. The place felt haunted, as if the lost souls were trapped here. Forever ensnared within the last horrifying moments of their lives. I could feel their lost souls brushing against me; feel their misery and torment as they remained caged within this awful place. For eternity. They’d had no chance, no hope of escaping. Whatever had swept through here had been rapid and it had been devastating. And it had relished in hurting them.
Almost as bad as the lingering agony, and lost souls, was the smell. The copper tang of blood filled the hall; it was potent within my nostrils and on my tongue. There was something rotting somewhere, multiple something’s probably, multiple things that I did not want to see. Jenna was so pale that the blue veins in her eyelids were sharply visible. Her lips were nearly the same color as her face as they trembled; her eyes were filled with unshed tears.
Lloyd had started to move, but his steps were hesitant, weary. Bret followed behind but Jenna and I hung back for a moment. We had not come through the front door; these rooms all belonged to patients. These doors held endless possibilities, and none of them were good. It was like a funhouse, but this one was full of horrors straight from hell.
Slowly we began to follow Bret and Lloyd down the hall. I tried to keep my gaze focused ahead, but every once in awhile it would stray into one of the rooms. So far they all appeared empty, devoid of all human remains, but judging by the increasing rancid smell I didn’t think it was going to stay that way. The three of them were lucky enough to be able to pull their shirts up over their noses, I wasn’t so lucky. I knew I sure as hell didn’t smell good right now, but I definitely smelled better than this damn place and I definitely preferred my own odor over the hospitals right now.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Jenna whispered.
“There’s no going back now.”
Bret’s tone of voice was far harsher than normal, tension radiated off of him; there was a bleakness in his eyes that I despised. Jenna recoiled slightly, wounded by his cold attitude and demeanor. I wanted to reach out to her, to soothe her, but I could barely keep the gun in my shaking hand let alone comfort someone. A strange buzzing reached my ears; I frowned as Lloyd stopped suddenly. His face turned three shades of green as he gaped into the room on his right. His hand trembled as he reached forward and pulled the door shut. I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to see what was in that room as I now understood the source of the buzzing.
Flies.
“Please don’t let us find the maternity ward,” Jenna whispered.
Bile rose up my throat; I gagged softly but somehow managed to keep it suppressed. My hands were shaking. My palms were so sweaty that I was beginning to fear I would not be able to keep hold of my gun if something did attack us. The thought of stumbling across innocent babies was atrocious; I wouldn’t be able to handle it. For the first time I realized that there were children out there, completely defenseless children that had died when The Freezing had occurred, and not all of their deaths had resulted at the hands of the aliens. Some of them had occurred because there had been no one left to care for them, no one left to feed, bathe, and change them. They had been alone, frightened, and unable to defend themselves against the monsters that had taken our world from us.
A sob lodged in my throat, I blinked back the tears that clogged my eyes. I hadn’t thought of the defenseless before. There hadn’t been time through the all consuming need to survive. There hadn’t been time through my own grief and loss. Now, I could not shake the thought, or the fury that came boiling up with it. The aliens would be made to pay, one way or another, I would help find a way to make them pay for everything they’d done, and everyone they’d hurt.
I just didn’t know how, or where, to start. As long as we stayed alive there was always hope, always a chance that we would one day destroy them as surely as they were destroying us. We just couldn’t let them succeed first.
Lloyd took a turn in the hall
, going in low and fast as he moved swiftly to the other side. He nodded to Bret before sweeping further down the hall. We moved more rapidly through the hospital, driven swiftly on by the hollow emptiness and desolation surrounding us.
The pharmacy was the first thing we came across. The door was open, not because it had been left that way, but because it had been bent in, bowed at the bottom and then ripped upward. The metal frame of the door had been ripped half off, it hung at an angle to the floor. Lloyd pocketed his gun to pull his pack from his back and swing it forward. He held it against his chest as he crawled under the twisted metal remains.
“Grab as many essentials as you can,” he commanded as we followed him into the large room.
Shelves lined the room, dividing it into different sections and blocking Lloyd as he disappeared into the back. Some of the shelves had been knocked over, broken bottles and discarded pills littered the floor. I grit my jaw as pills crunched and snapped softly beneath my feet. I knew that the crunching wasn’t that loud but it seemed as loud as gunshots to me in the hushed building. I searched the shelves but they had already been picked over, either by other survivors, or stripped on purpose by the aliens. Then again the aliens had brought life saving, advanced medicine, with them upon arrival. For all I knew we had stopped making any drugs that could have helped us months ago in favor of what the aliens had to offer us. Fury simmered through me at the sheer ignorance and stupidity we had shown by believing the line of crap they had fed us.
It had gotten us nothing but heartache and death.
I ignored the white tennis shoe lying on the ground, struggling not to think about the person that had left it behind as I moved past the row of antacids. I supposed heartburn sucked, but it wasn’t on my list of priorities for lifesaving necessities. Neither were birth control pills or prescription vitamins.
“Here.”
I caught the bottle Lloyd tossed at me and turned it over in my hand to read the label. Doxycycline. I nodded as I twisted the top off and dry swallowed one of them. I hoped it was enough to fight off whatever microbes might be multiplying in my body right now due to that hideous thing. There was no way to know what kind of germs those things might be carrying with them. The label said to only take one, but I decided to take another. I was probably going to want some of those antacids afterwards, but I didn’t care I wanted whatever germs might be lurking within me dead.
I was frightened that even now there might be something taking up residence in my body, changing me, or even destroying me. Perhaps eating me from the inside out. I had seen the Alien movies, and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, far too often for me not to have all kinds of frightening and creepy thoughts. I shuddered, and though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I took a third pill before capping the bottle.
I stuffed some extra strength Tylenol and Ibuprofen into my bag but all of the harder painkillers were gone. I found five boxes of antibiotic cream. I eagerly opened one, bracing myself for the sting as I gently wiped it over my heated and bubbled flesh. My breath hissed out of me, my teeth grated sharply together, but I fully intended to keep dousing my shoulder with the crap if it would help kill off anything that creature had left on me. I hoped someone found some burn cream somewhere; it would be nice to have something that soothed the fierce sting of my tortured skin.
I shoved the rest into my bag and took a deep breath as I zipped it closed. Everything seemed to be going too fast, too rapidly. I felt as if I hadn’t had a chance to just stop and think since we had set out on this mission. But then, what was I going to think about? My father, my mother, Cade, the lost children? Abby and Aiden? Was I going to drive myself crazy with worry about them?
It was better not to think, but it was also exhausting. There were so many suppressed emotions roiling around within me that I could barely breathe sometimes. There was so much pain and loss lingering within me that there were times I wasn’t sure I could go on. And in this moment, at this time, I was trapped within that feeling.
It hit me out of nowhere, the weight of my grief rolled up to bury me within its cloak of oppression and pain. Though I tried to stop it, the sudden longing for Cade surged up out of nowhere. It rose up like a tsunami, towering above me for a moment before crashing down and burying me within its crushing depths. Pain choked my lungs and throat as surely as ocean water would have choked me. My hands fisted tight, I inhaled a shaky breath as I struggled to reign in the crushing agony trying to consume me.
“Shit,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Bethany?”
I shook my head, shrinking away from Bret’s hand as it landed on my shoulder. I could feel the hurt that the sting of my rejection inflicted upon him, but I was so buried beneath the swirling misery of my own pain that I couldn’t acknowledge, or ease, his. I inhaled sharply, slowly reigning in the surge of emotions that had threatened to disintegrate me. It took me a few more moments, but I was finally able to regain enough control to open my eyes.
“Are you ok?”
“I’m fine.” I didn’t look at Bret, I simply couldn’t right now. It was too hard, it was all so hard, but there was always hope I forcefully reminded myself. There would always be hope for mankind, and we were a big factor in helping to aide in that hope. I had to keep it together, I could lose it later; I could grieve when we returned to everyone because that was what I needed. I had been trying so hard, struggling so much to keep in control that I had not allowed myself to grieve for all of my losses. And I had to grieve if I was ever going to regain some control of myself, if I was ever going to truly begin to move on.
As much as everything inside of me revolted against losing control, I knew that it was slowly starting to happen. I just had to keep it together until this mission was over, and then I would find a nice secluded spot and cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. After that I would cry some more and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t feel so dead inside.
Though I knew there was no way that I would ever feel fully alive again.
I inhaled sharply and straightened my shoulders. We had to get moving, I wanted out of this damn place as soon as possible. I slipped my pack onto my back, easing it gently over my wounded shoulder. “Looks like a bunch of damn vultures came through here,” Lloyd muttered.
“Survival of the fittest.” They couldn’t hide their relief as they focused their attention on me. Apparently the precipice I had been teetering upon had been clearly visible to them, judging by the looks on their faces my control had been closer to snapping than I’d realized. “We should go.”
I avoided Bret’s hand as he reached for me, dodging him swiftly as I made my way to the ruined door. Lloyd stopped me before I could duck back under the twisted frame. “Are you going to be ok?” he inquired so quietly that even I could barely hear him.
“I’ll be fine.”
His eyes were bloodshot, there were shadows under them, but he was far more alert than his bedraggled countenance suggested. “This is not the time to fall apart.”
I shot him a hard look, angered by his words, but angrier at myself for allowing them to catch even a brief glimpse of my weakness. “I’m fine.”
I slipped out of the doorway, wanting to escape more than anything at the moment. I kept my gun by my side as I moved. “Slow down,” Lloyd hissed behind me.
I didn’t want to slow down, I wanted to run, wanted to bolt down the halls in search of something, anything other than this unending quiet and lingering agony. I slipped around a corner, freezing instantly as a strange noise reached my ears. It wasn’t buzzing this time, not flies, but a soft ding that rang out every ten seconds or so.
“What is that?” Jenna asked quietly.
“The elevator.” Lloyd pushed past me, keeping low as he swept down the hall before poking his head around the corner. He tried to shove me back again, but it was too late I had already seen what was causing the elevator to repeatedly open and close. My hand flew to my mouth; vomit surged up my throat as I took a stumbling step back. I could fe
el the blood draining from my face, for a moment I thought I was going to pass out.
“Just a boy,” I breathed trying to shake the image of the mangled body from my mind. He was so broken, so twisted and mauled. Hardly recognizable as a human except for his small Nike sneakers, his close cropped flaxen hair and the bloodied stuffed bear by his side. “Why would they do that?”
Lloyd grasped hold of my shoulders as he pushed me back. “Monsters.”
“He wasn’t one of the frozen ones,” I realized.
“No.”
I shuddered in revulsion; I was trying hard not to throw up. Jenna had retreated, her eyes were haunted, lost, and she hadn’t even seen the broken body of the child. “We need to get out of here.”
Lloyd’s eyes were hard. “Yes.” He pushed me back further, nudging me toward another long hallway. “Find some stairs.”
CHAPTER 9
I tucked the bulky microscope under my arm. It was heavier than I would have liked and would soon become tiresome, but I had finally found my prize and I wasn’t ready to relinquish it. Not yet anyway. We had come so far, struggled so much, all for this, and a few other supplies. It seemed so insignificant as I adjusted it under my arm, but it could be mankind’s salvation. Bret and Jenna were busy scooping up vials, petri dishes, and microscope slides. Lloyd’s hand was resting on the hematology analyzer.
“This thing’s going to be a pain in the ass to carry,” he mumbled as he studied it from all angles.
“We need it,” Bret responded.
I glanced at all of the equipment, there was so much of it, and so few of us. Bishop had explicitly requested the microscope, analyzer, and other supplies but I wanted to take everything. I was afraid that if we left even one thing behind, it would turn out to be the one thing we needed most. And there was no way in hell that I was ever coming back to this place again.