Author: Keith C. Blackmore
Date: 2012-10-02 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Thriller; Science Fiction; Fantasy
Description: Series order: Book 1: Mountain Man Book 2: Safari Book 3: Hellifax

The Hospital

By

Keith C Blackmore

The Hospital

By Keith C. Blackmore

Copyright 2012 Keith C. Blackmore

Cover by Kit Foster

Edited by Lynn O’Dell

Formatted by Jason Anderson

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

The sun was directly overhead, but blotted out by low storm clouds as depressing as suicide. Underneath this, a single Chevy van pulled off the main road and approached the low expanse of the hospital. The van had no windows in its sides, and all of the lights had been smashed. The rear windows were also shattered, with heavy planks of wood patching the gaps. It pulled into the parking lot, did a quick u-turn, and backed itself up to the main doors with a huff of gas. The vehicle idled for a few moments, wary, ready to bolt if anything seemed dangerous. A small freight carrier in the old days, it was now war on wheels with enough scratches and dents in its hide to give any carjacker pause. It had a “Don’t fuck with me” menace about its battered bulk and might have been the inspiration for many a poster in the late ‘80s.

The engine died, and its drone evaporated into stillness. The van shook on its chassis, as if the beast were having a mechanical seizure. It continued for less than a minute, then thumps and other sounds emanated from within the Chevy’s guts, slowly making their way toward the rear. After a pause, the doors swung wide, and two motorcycle boots were shat to the pavement.

He wore black leather, from neck to shin. Knee pads and elbow pads protected his joints, a dark brace covered his neck. Dark, fingerless gloves covered his hands to allow a better grip on his shotgun. An aluminum baseball bat was slung across his back, Samurai-style, in a crude scabbard next to a large backpack He held a twelve-gauge shotgun before him, its butt tucked firmly against his shoulder, its strap dangling in a loop below its length. He pumped a round into the chamber, the schlack as loud as thunder. A motorcycle helmet and visor hid his features. He was protected against the horrors of the world, as it would take a strong bite indeed to gnash through the leather. He wore an extra layer of denim jeans underneath the pants, which he had taken from the same leather goods shop where he had gotten the jacket and boots. Only his fingers were at risk, but he needed those bare. He hadn’t found a pair of gloves that were both thin and strong enough to resist a bite, anyway.

Augustus Berry studied the double doors to the hospital for a moment. He listened. He could see no movement beyond the glass; the dark corridors inside seemed empty enough, but he didn’t think they were. He quickly patted his pockets, feeling the extra shotgun shells, and then reached over his shoulder and felt the bat, ready to grab if needed. He had combat knives sheathed in both boots, but it was rare that he got to use those. He brought them along nevertheless, remembering the old line, it was better to have and not need, than need and not have.

Gus shook his head once, clearing it, then moved forward, the barrel of the shotgun wavering ever so slightly to and fro, like the dark head of a Doberman giving fair warning. If anything not living came into line of sight, Gus would blow its fucking head off with extreme prejudice. Another line from another old movie, but he didn’t care. It was truth. And if it was living, he would exercise caution. People in these desperate days were not to be trusted. He had heard stories. There were bad people about, scavengers like him, but worse.

He reached the doors and peered into the shadowy interior. He huffed once, not liking the darkness in the least, and flicked up the visor of his helmet. His eyes were an alert blue, with lines at the corners. He took another contemplative breath. Of course they were in there, somewhere, waiting for him. For anyone. But he needed what the hospital potentially offered.

He cursed and looked behind, taking in the open doors of his waiting van and the empty space of the land to the tree line beyond. There was nothing else in sight, but he couldn’t be certain it would stay that way. And the hospital was big. The medical supplies could be anywhere in there. It would take time, and he was wasting it thinking.

“Shit,” he muttered, and pushed at the doors. They didn’t budge. He glanced up and saw the dead motion detector mounted just over the frame. There was a push door at the right, however, and he eased it open with his shoulder, his shotgun ready.

The hall was empty and shadowy, with the only light coming from a skylight at the far end of a waiting area. Debris cluttered the floor: newspapers, half-torn pamphlets, broken glass and shredded bits of clothing. Bulletin boards hung halfway to the floor on single nails. Vending machines had been raped and punished. Dark splashes stained the walls, and Gus did not give them any more attention than necessary. Dried blood was commonplace these dreary days. It was the fresh stuff he was more concerned about. The faded stench of something rotten lingered in the air.

He proceeded cautiously, drifting close to the right wall, and headed deeper into the gloom of the hospital. His shoulder rubbed against broken glass, making it tinkle, and he turned to see a receptionist’s room behind a counter that had been assaulted. It was darker there, but he could make out the floor smeared with blood, dried in gruesome swirls done by fingers and bare hands. Bloody palm prints decorated the walls, on and over a photocopier with its lid ripped off. Paper littered one corner like a foul nest, and Gus could see bones sprinkled there, dried, old-looking, and gnawed.

He moved to the corner, listened, and peered around it like he had seen U.S. marines do in action movies, side first rather than the top of his head. The corridor was long and empty. A wide blood smear from something being dragged went in that direction and disappeared into darkness. Gus pulled back. He wouldn’t hunt the thing if he could get what he wanted without incident. Two more corridors branched off from the foyer, leading off to places unknown and two stairways, one going up while the other led to the lower level. The place was big, too big to explore in a single day, and the medicinal supplies he sought—bandages, splints, and drugs—were not as visible as they would have been in a convenience store or supermarket. He would have to root around more. He’d already tried the drugstores, but those he found had already been looted, their shelves and back rooms picked clean as if devoured by a swarm of something huge and famished.

Gus knew the hospital might have had its resources taken as well, but he had to make sure.

“Just don’t be stupid,” he told himself. He had watched a fair amount of horror movies in his time, when the world was merely crazy and not fucking insane with things that bit and chewed living flesh. In watching as many movies as he did, he quickly gave up on the ones with the cliches, the action sequences and the stupid-as-fuck characters who, as soon as he or she died, caused the audience to cheer. Stupid mistakes. It was his code these days, and in reflection, he now knew those movies were more like visual survival guides. What to do and what not to do in an apocalypse. Gus learned from every God awful flick he ever had the misery to sit down and endure. Be prepared. Be protected. Watch your corners. Stay away from dark places––especially at night. Be quiet and talk in whispers. Clean your weapons, maintain your ride’s engine. Stay calm, and don’t be stupid. Being stupid got characters dead.

With that in mind, he left the long dark corridor alone. There was no need to place himself in further danger by wandering off where his vision would be further lessened. And there were the drag marks in blood heading down in that direction. Chances were, whatever was doing the dragging was still down there, dormant and just waiting for the sound and smell of fresh meat. Gus looked about and saw the stairways across the way.

Shotgun first, Gus headed toward a corridor to the right of the stairways. Tensed and ready for anything shambling toward him, he passed under the skylight. He turned a few corners carefully and saw a long row of seats laid out before open and closed doors of examination rooms. Across from them were men’s and women’s washrooms. The whole area was covered in debris, as if a tsunami of garbage had swept through the place.

Gus listened. Behind him, a strong wind rattled the skylight. The hospital was otherwise dead. Or sleeping. Do the dead sleep? Really sleep? Gus wondered, tapping the shotgun against his helmet-protected cheek. He shoved the thought aside and proceeded into the waiting area. He noticed a third door just before the washrooms and went to it. It had a doorknob, where the others were simply push-opens.

He paused at the door, breathing through his nose and taking in the stench of dried blood that permeated the air, as recognizable as coffee. It wasn’t so strong here, but it was still present. Keeping his weapon level, he reached down and opened the door with a jerk. He went into a firing stance as he pushed his way into the room beyond.

And hit gold.

It was a service room. Stacked as neatly as bullion in Fort Knox was the one commodity that Gus would have never guessed would be as valuable as water, gasoline, food, or even ammunition. It was a luxury that was, like all things, greatly underappreciated back when the world was only crazy.

Toilet paper. At least forty rolls of ass-cleaning goodness. There was toilet paper to spare in fact, and Gus smiled at the sight. He grabbed a roll with one hand and inspected the label. Two-ply. Goddamn. He’d hit the shitter jackpot. If assholes could smile, his would be grinning across both cheeks.

He kept the door open and searched for a power switch. When he found it, he wasn’t surprised that there was no electricity. He propped the door open and searched the rest of the room by the meager light of the hallway. There was an old Time magazine with an article on Vikings. That went into his backpack, as did a full bottle of Javex bleach and a number of toilet paper rolls. He found a box of latex gloves, opened but three-quarters full, and grabbed those as well. Two mops, a broom, and a push-bucket were located just beyond the doorway. A large wheeled hamper lay farther in toward the back of the room, partially hidden by the dark, and it took him a moment to realize how fortunate he was to have found it. Checking outside periodically, he slung his shotgun over his shoulder and piled the treasures inside the hamper, making it ready for transport.

When all was packed away, he went to the door and peeked out. Empty. The wind had picked up outside, sighing impatiently against the glass and making it rattle. But there were no gimps. That’s what he called them now. Gimps. It fit.

Gus pulled the hamper out of the supply room with his shotgun laid across a solid pile of Puffy two-ply rolls, his right hand never far from the grip. Once clear, he pushed the hamper, then cringed at the sound of a squeaky wheel. Well, Jesus, he thought, and froze. He looked about, any second expecting gimps to come tumbling out of the doorways across the way, arms outstretched and moaning their shit, but they didn’t.

After a few more seconds, Gus realized he was wasting time. He pushed the hamper through the corridor and back to the van without incident, the wheel whistling its tune the whole way, like a high dwarf going home to see Snow White. He got to the outer door and shoved the hamper through. Loading it onto the van proved to be no trouble at all. He backed it up to the open doors and started throwing things in until the hamper was light enough to haul inside. Once packed, Gus stepped to the lip of the chrome bumper and regarded the dark doors of the hospital. He hadn’t expected to find the toilet paper. He hadn’t even been looking for toilet paper. But when you were the only game in town, you took what you found, when you found it. He stood, hunched over in the doorway of his beast, and considered going back in. He still had plenty of room in the van. If he went back in, he might possibly find more toilet paper and the medical supplies he had come for. He only had to go back in. What was that Shakespeare line? One more time into ‘er, buddy. Or something like that, anyway.

Being greedy? another voice asked him.

No, being real. There’s still daylight left to do this.

Being stupid?

Fuck off, Gus projected back, but he would be wary. He remembered the squeaky wheel. Anything could have heard it. Anything could be awake in there and waiting. He paused again, weighing the risks. Then he grabbed his shotgun and went back in.

He was halfway into the first waiting room, in plain sight of the skylight, when he heard it. It wasn’t loud, but it was there. A thump, dull and clumsy, came from the stairwell. Gus froze and pointed his shotgun in the direction of the stairs. He waited and listened, listened hard, willing something to drop again, for the other foot to strike the floor. But it didn’t.

Eyes narrowed, Gus closed the distance between him and the stairwell then hugged a corner. He whirled around it, pointing the shotgun down the stairs, then up. He stretched his neck out over the railing, peering down as far as he could see, and saw only the darkness of an empty well. He looked up and repeated the action, then he remembered where he was and spun around on the hallway with his finger on the trigger.

Empty. All empty.

His danger sense was perhaps at three now, on a scale of five. Gus felt uneasy, but not afraid. He eased out into the open and walked forward. He cautiously made his way back to the storeroom he had recently plundered. There were no corners to hide around, but there were doors aplenty. He squinted at the dark signs above their frames, Internal Medicine. Gus moved to one of the open doorways and glanced in, shotgun first. The doctor, thankfully, wasn’t in, but the room was a mess. The desk was upended, making a low barrier. Two flat, smashed LCD screens were on the floor. Discarded books, papers, and other stationary debris were covered in a fine dust. Dried blood dappled everything, like arterial spray gone wild, but there were no bodies. No sleeping gimps.

He moved through the room, picking at the desk and prodding through the wreckage of whatever siege had occurred. He noticed some fragments of bloody cloth and realized it was a doctor’s white coat lying in tatters, ripped from the victim, no doubt. Gus hoped the doctor had already been dead at the time. He hoped he wouldn’t remember the sight. Augustus suffered during the nights when he tried to sleep. He used booze when he had it, drinking heavily. It would knock him out, but then the nightmares would come, and they were worse than the insomnia. They brought their own private movies, with mouths full of rotting teeth.

Gus became still, listening for anything beyond the room. He moved to the doorway and glanced about. All clear. He possessed a healthy fear of being ambushed. It hadn’t happened yet, and he meant to keep it that way.

He rooted around the office for a few more minutes, picking up functional pens and a notebook which he stuffed into his backpack. He kicked aside the discarded keyboard lying behind the desk. Computers had no place in the new world. There was a paperback, the one book still on a shelf, detailing vitamins and minerals, what they cured or staved off, and what foods to find them in. It was the only book that wasn’t covered in maroon and seemed like an easy read. Posters dangled from walls clearly outlining digestive tracts, which caused Gus to frown. He didn’t want to think of digestive tracts. He left the office, carefully going to the next, the second of four, but found nothing there. In the third office, stashed away behind some files in a desk drawer, was a small bottle of Jack Daniels. Gus’s grimace was one of pleasure. He hefted the bottle, practically full, wondering to God above how this treasure had been missed, then carefully stashed it in his backpack. He moved through the offices with little noise, past examination tables and medicinal items he didn’t recognize and had no idea how to use, always careful not to knock things over, scavenging what he could. He found rolls of gauze and bandages and took them all. He took a full bottle of antiseptic and a box full of alcohol pads. There was very little else, it seemed. The whiskey was the definite prize.

He left the offices and stood in the middle of the waiting area. There were no other rooms to explore in this section, and he thought about the time. He made his way back to the main hallway and once again looked toward the long corridor where the blood smears disappeared into the sepulchral gloom. Gus figured that if there was anything of real value, it would probably be down there. Murphy’s fucking law.

Then, he stopped in his tracks. Just off that dark tunnel was another wing. He took a few steps, and saw, just behind a counter, a wall of what looked to be medical supplies.

“Well, goddamn,” Gus breathed. This was turning out to be a very fruitful day. He returned to his van, dumped the contents of the backpack into the hamper, and quickly retraced his steps to the hospital’s interior. His senses again filled with the dead air and the smell of something long gone bad. Gus pushed past it, however, and walked with care toward the hospital drugstore. He suspected there was a gift shop in there somewhere as well, chock full of items for the sick. He rounded the corner and––

Thump.

Gus froze. There it was again, coming from the stairs. He turned in that direction, shotgun poised, and backed toward the counter. At one end was a swinging door, waist-high, and he edged that way. He glanced around and found the shadows beyond the counter to be clear. Something upstairs, he thought, but you just stay there, and we’ll get along just fine.

He pushed the door open with his buttocks, and only semi-focused on his immediate surroundings. The sound from above had distracted him, so it was relatively easy for the hand to snake out and claw into his testicles. His leather and denim pants prevented his balls from being totally crushed, but the sudden sickening agony brought Augustus to his knees. His shotgun wavered and fell to the ground. He got one hand on the white wrist of the hand hooked onto him, but before he could summon his strength, what little he had remaining, the fist squeezed again. Hard.

“Oh, there’s a good boy, yes, such a healthy boy,” a voice trilled.

A sickening weight had attached itself to him, pulling down on his testicular nerves like five-hundred-pound granite blocks, deep down where his senses buckled and warped and were only concerned with pain. Gone were thoughts of looting. Gone were thoughts of the noise from above. As if submerged under sixty feet of water, Augustus slowly bent at the waist, landing on his elbows. His breath left him. The pain… the pain was crippling. He opened his mouth to vomit, forgetting he still had his helmet on. His consciousness retreated, but never fully left, as the roaring fire of nausea and pain in his stomach and balls staved off any real release. Gus groaned, his lips pulling back from his teeth as if his flesh was being sanded from his skull.

“What’s that?” the voice asked sweetly somewhere above him. “What’s that?” it demanded, squeezing his jewels even further. Gus collapsed, going fetal, knowing nothing except that paralyzing, gut-contracting agony that did not lessen in the least. Then, right on the cusp of rupture, the hand released him.

“I’m sorry,” the voice said in a pitying tone. “I didn’t introduce myself.”

He felt his helmet being pulled off, powerless to stop it as both of his hands cupped his screaming balls. His eyes closed in agony, and he tucked in his chin, just before a boot kicked his head back, knocking him out cold.

Blackness as deep as the Atlantic Ocean enveloped him. He came close to surfacing once, as if in a pictureless dream. He was aware of a thumping noise and a pounding at the back of his head. Something scraped at his back. He moved upward in jerks and heaves.

A voice pierced his semi-consciousness. “Big man, big man, coming in here. Didn’t know Alice was here, didja? Didja? God, you weigh a ton. A ton. What have you been eating? The natives?” A cackle of icy laughter. “That’d be sumthin. The natives. Dead eat dog eat dead!” Another eruption of frightening mirth.

Augustus retreated into the depths of his skull, drawing back from his offline senses, away from the rant, and hiding in the comforting dark.

He drifted, unborn, in a cold place where he couldn’t see. He didn’t know anything in this place, except that it was cool and without a sun. His senses floated close to waking, close enough that he felt the pain flash through his night, like an angry thunderbolt. His eyelids flickered, and he moaned. Another cut of agony, and his eyes came open—ceiling, dark with stains. He tried moving his arms, but they were secured at his sides. Augustus’s chin touched his bare, hairy chest. A woman with a wild mop of white hair wearing the dirty scrubs of a nurse knelt before him, swishing a scalpel at his shins.

“Hey! Fuck off!” Gus blurted, and instantly regretted it.

The woman jerked up as if goosed and fixed him with eyes as shiny as marbles. The scalpel came up, and she hissed like a vampire being exposed to the sun. She stared at him, transfixed in the dim light, and Gus knew the woman was bug-nuts crazy. He tried lifting his arms again, couldn’t, and examined himself to see why. His arms were tied to metal railings by rubber tubing. A gurney––he was strapped to a gurney. He also discovered he was completely naked.

And the mad bitch before him was slicing him up like a piece of Japanese sashimi.

“You crazy bitch!” Gus swore and struggled to free himself of his bonds. The tubing wouldn’t give, and when he cried out a second time, the nurse in the soiled scrubs pounced at his face. She came in close, placing the edge of the scalpel to the curve of his chin, and breathed into his face. Mints. She smelled of mints.

“You shut up! You shut up right now, or I’ll gut you here!” she fired back, beady eyes blazing. “I’ll gut you right here, I swear to holy Jesus!”

Gus shut up, baring his teeth at the cold contact of the surgical instrument at his throat.

“That’s better.” She smiled a horrible grin. Her teeth were yellow, traced with black, and set in spongy-looking gums. “That’s better, you little bastard. Old Alice got ye. Alice got ye fine. You can be fresh, or you can be dead, doesn’t matter to me. The kids’ll mind a bit, but not for long, I wager. Not for long. Then I can get back to me flowers on the roof. Heeee! The flowers are in bloom up there. You should see ‘em. But you can’t. Youcan’tyoucan’tyou can’t, Heeee!”

With each can’t, the scalpel came away from his throat and jabbed toward his right eye. In terror, Gus squeezed his eye shut, expecting at any moment to have two inches of blade lick his cornea.

“That’s it, that’s it, shhhhh shhhhhh,” Alice coddled him. “You be fine. You be quiet. It won’t be long now anyway. Shhh.”

Whump.

The sound made Gus open one eye just a crack. Alice was still above him, her eyes all-a-glitter and smiling.

“You hear that?” Alice asked. “My kids. My little darlings. A mother has to take care of her children, you know. Any way she can.”

Whump.Whump.

His breath quickened. His eyes got wider and flicked from side to side. How long had he been out? Long enough for the crazy bitch astride him to tussle him onto a––Whump! Patpatpatpat.

Then he heard the sound of something being smeared across glass. Gus dared not take his eyes off the woman. She moved in closer, until her right eye was over his. He breathed in, smelling mint again.

“Don’t you move now,” she whispered. “Don’t you move.” The point of the scalpel moved to the base of his neck, down between his man breasts, the steel slowly making a line over his belly. It paused at his navel, then continued to his pubic area.

“Don’t you move,” Alice instructed. He felt her fingers do a little dance in his hair down there. “You make a sound now, and I’ll cut it off. You hear me? I’ll cut it off in the name of Jesus. You hear? Nod if you do.”

Gus nodded and felt his balls go for high ground.

“Now here comes the hard part.” She grinned, close enough that for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. She studied his lips, and licked her own. Then her mouth opened slightly and, he knew, as God was his witness above, she was going to bite his lips off. She was going to fasten onto him and shake her head from side to side until they were ripped from his face. “Here it comes, here it comes, no noise now.”

Gus had been a big man, not the biggest and not tall, but fat. He had lost an incredible amount of weight since the world went insane, perhaps ninety kilos or more, enough that he could presently get into a waist-size of thirty-eight. He still had something of a gut which, only a year ago, he joked that he had invested a lot of money in it. The rest of him still had some excess fat, but he figured that, as food became scarcer, his body would burn it off naturally. He still had a double chin, but his biker’s beard concealed it well.

He felt Alice gouge into the fat of his belly with the surgical instrument, digging it in, and then cutting vigorously across his pubic area in a jagged C-section.

Augustus Berry screamed.

He yelped loud enough that it startled Alice. She screwed up her face for a moment, then brightened, and once again gave his already tortured testicles a devastating squeeze and yank. The wind went out of Gus as if his lungs had been punctured, and he whimpered like a dying pup.

“That’s what you get,” Alice hissed. “I told you not to make any noise, and you did, so that’s what you get. I didn’t want to do that.” But her grin said otherwise.

Another whump and several more squeegee-like noises came from beyond. Gus distantly thought they were increasing in force. Red-faced from agony, he puffed out his breath but said nothing to his captor. Alice’s arm came up, and she placed it on the other side of his head. Gus saw enough to know she didn’t have the scalpel in that fist anymore. Then his features paled. He looked down at himself, and a cry of horror caught in his throat. The crushing of his nuts had diverted his attention away from the pain, but now his own eyes verified what Alice had done to him. She had left the scalpel in his belly, at an angle, like a bent-over buggy antennae.

There was a hard slap at the other end of the room, and Gus looked past the nurse in an attempt to see. There was something bad back there, something that raised his alert level and made him shiver. He couldn’t see anything. With the pain he was in, he couldn’t concentrate and, in the end, his head plopped back and fell on something cushiony. He turned his head, the pain of his lower body shrieking and remembered he was tied to a hospital gurney, a lowered hospital gurney. He felt air hook the flaps of his cut flesh.

“I gotcha in tight there, mister.” She giggled a long reedy laugh. With a grunt, she got to her feet and looked to her right. The noise was coming from that direction, even in his pain-livid state, he could discern that. But what was making that noise?

“I saw you drive up from the roof, ya see. I saw you, but you didn’t see me. That’s cuz I do this,” and the dirt-black bottom of a bare foot thrust into his face. “And I knew you were down below. Probably coming for medicine or whatever. Just like all the rest. Oh, plenty come here. I just let them scrounge around below. Usually they go into the basement, and that’s that. Only one way down there, and I can close the door and lock it when folks are down there. And oh, the squeals! It’s a metal door, but you know something? When someone is scared enough, they put dents in that thing. Not for long, though. Never for long.”

As Alice went on, Gus looked to his left. There on the padding was a clump of what look to be a human scalp, complete with a few strands of hair. His stomach went cold. Who was this woman?

“Not for long at all. But the ones in the basement are greedy. I have to wait for the stragglers to come along, someone I can handle by myself. You were heavy! Too much shit on you. That’s why I stripped you bare.” She winked, sizing up his prone form, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lots of fat on you. Not like the others. The kids like fat.”

Whumpwhumppatpatpatpatpat!

Gus’s features twisted. What in the hell had he gotten into? He could feel the air tracing the edges of his cuts, the cuts Alice had made, and he bared his teeth.

“You’re probably wondering why I cut you so many times,” she said idly. She yanked the scalpel out of his belly, getting a hiss out of him, and slashed open his right arm with one flick. Gus bucked against his bonds. “It’s because they smell, you see.” She slashed the other white arm, as neatly as opening a fish. “That’s why they’re making a racket. My babies are hungry. Sooooooooo hungry. Am I bad for doing this? I don’t think so. I’m cleaning the world of shitheads like you. What did the babies ever do? Huh? What? Nothing. They just… they just… were here. Not fair. Never fair.”

With that, she sat back on her haunches and looked off in the direction of the noise with a sad expression. A big sigh left her and she shrugged, as if confused by it all. The commotion coming from beyond didn’t confuse Gus. His senses were returning, along with his need to get the hell away from this place… and Alice’s children. He suspected now—oh Christ, how he suspected—but he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be here to find out. He knew why she was cutting him up, like a deep sea shark fisherman throwing fish entrails and pig blood over the side of the boat.

Chum. The word popped into his mind.

“They can… smell you,” Alice confirmed with obvious satisfaction. “Mommy’s brought suppers. Mommy’s brought suppers!”

She struggled to her feet.

Gus glanced around urgently. He’d never been in one, but he knew by the chairs and the soft pinks and blues, that he was in a waiting area of sorts. A waiting area in the Maternity Ward.

“Suppers!” Alice suddenly yelled. “Mommy’s got suppers for you! One big fuckin’ roast tonight, my little sweets!”

She stepped back. The hand with the scalpel dropped to her side, as if she was mesmerized, and then she walked away. Gus knew he didn’t have much time. He heaved against his bonds again. He yanked upward, kicked, and felt the tubing slip into his wounds. Firecrackers of pain went off, and he bucked again, gritting his teeth.

“Hungry, aren’t you? Yes, you are. Yes, you are!”

The drumming and squeaking of flesh on glass intensified.

Gus relaxed, just for a moment, to catch his wind. He heard Alice calling out to her children at the far end of the room—her unholy children that he did not want to see. He had seen enough of the dead walking around to forever have nightmares where only alcohol would let him sleep, and where the alcohol still brought the nightmares. The sound got louder, and Christ almighty above, he could hear them now; he could hear their little whiney vocal chords crying out that yes, yes, they were famished! They were ready to eat the whole damn thing once dear old Alice let them into the waiting room. They would stampede him then, and he wouldn’t be able to do a goddamn thing while their little mouths fastened onto his body and ripped and tore and suckled.

“Go get him!” Alice screeched from beyond.

Upon hearing those words, Gus did something for the very first time. He defecated himself right there and then. He was careful, so very careful about what he did and how he proceeded in town, and by sunny Jesus, if he got out of this one he was going to get so fucking shit-faced drunk, it would be a thing of legend, and fuck the dreams, but right now, right this very moment, he could feel the pitter-patter of bare hands and knees as they scurried about the tiled floor, like the charge of newborn sea turtles trying to reach seawater before starving gulls swooped down and snapped them up. He could hear the brazen sound of dead flesh being forced into movement by a will that he didn’t understand, but knew was frightful and unholy. The tiles trembled as this tide rushed toward him as fast as their little limbs could carry them along, and he could hear Alice, that bitch from hell, cackling like a vamp in heat. She commented proudly on how her children from the abyss were growing, as if such a thing was possible! And he heard their voices, their little infant voices, making the sounds of something so incredibly hungry. Starving, the word popped into his head; they were actually starving for him.

And they were coming.

That last thought threw Gus into such a fit of pure, adrenalin-injected terror, that he bucked, thrashed, twisted, roared, and shook against his bonds until his right arm came free with almost enough force to punch through steel plate. He immediately found the tubing holding his left arm and ripped it free. He sat up, and his mouth dropped open.

He didn’t have a chance.

The door to the chamber where the newborns were incubated or placed just after birth was dark, dreary, and flung wide open like the red painted steel doors to an abattoir. Alice had made some sort of pulley system to open the sliding doors, with some effort on her part no doubt. But that really didn’t interest Gus at the moment. What interested him was the black oil stream of babies, coated by the slick gloom of the room. Dead babies came at him on their hands and knees, their bald heads gleaming in the sparse light like rotten eggs. He couldn’t see their features yet and, God help him, he had no desire to as he knew he would have nightmares aplenty from this evil burst of flesh crawling toward him at top speed. Gus’s fingers hooked into claws and, he tore at the bonds across his lower legs. Somewhere he heard Alice shriek in protest. She had seen what he was doing. He felt himself moaning now. The sound of little feet and hands grew in his ears. Alice was cursing and screaming oaths that would embarrass Satan himself. He raked fingers over the tubing, but it wouldn’t give. It would not release him. What the fuck did they make this shit out of? He lost several fingernails on the tubing, railing, and his own flesh, but still he couldn’t free himself. The babies, the bloated corpses of the babies, were no more than a leg length away, and he could smell the dried blood on their little bodies. Gus thrashed and pulled and clawed and one leg came free. Alice was screaming, “You fucker! You fucker!” But he got to his feet and, with a strength born of an animalistic fear of being eaten alive, he whipped the gurney about with his free leg into the oncoming tide, just as he saw the first of the little monsters’ eager grins. The gurney smashed into them, and he pressed its length against the rush. He reached down and freed his second leg, straightening just in time to see Alice, her face full of diseased gum hatred, stabbing downward with the scalpel. He felt the blade pass through the meat of his left forearm, and his fingers went funny, like guitar strings snapping, but his right arm was free. He slammed his fist into the side of the slut-bitch’s head with as much power he could muster, and Alice flew away from him, unconscious upon impact as if hit dead-on by an out-of-control Mack diesel truck. Into the rush of dead bodies she went, and the babies immediately crawled over their adopted mother, adoring her with their ghastly affections. Gus caught a glimpse of the dead newborns tangled in her wild scrub of hair, biting with lipless mouths, gnawing with black gums. Little hands covered her face, and she slipped as quickly as that underneath the grey-black skin of her children.

Naked, trailing shit and blood, Gus ran.

He bolted out into a hallway. He tried to turn, but slipped and fell hard on his right side. His elbow smashed into hard tile, and the tip of the bone punched through the baggy flesh located there. Baring his teeth, he got up and looked behind him. Nothing pursued him yet. Not yet, and he wasn’t hanging around for whoever was in the basement, as they sure as fuck had to have heard Alice’s screams. Gus stood in the crux of an L, with both corridors leading off into the shadows. Without thinking, he ran up a hall, stumbling over the debris covering the floor. Alice seem to have made the whole section her nest. He ran, feeling the air lift the sliced flaps of his flesh and grimacing against the pain of his many wounds, yet star-bursting with relief of having escaped. He padded his way down the hall, the dark offices zipping by, feeling the cold tiles, and slowed down. Ahead of him there were stairs heading up.

Jesus Christ, Gus thought, both of his hands clasping the bald crown of his head. Where was he? He looked around frantically. Was he in the basement already? No, he could remember being hauled upwards by his ankles with his head smacking against the metal-lipped stairs. He wasn’t downstairs, he was up. But how far? He looked back the way he came, and without pondering anymore on it, he ran back, back through the gloom of the corridor. He cringed upon hearing the feast when he turned the corner and went the other way. Down a short hall he went, past paintings still hanging on the walls, past trolleys and stretchers pushed to one side, and broken––

The glass sliced through the padding of his right foot, stabbing into the flesh between his big toe and the one next to it, spurting out between both like a shard of dark crystal. Shrieking, Gus hopped on one foot and collapsed over another gurney. Glass! He flipped onto his back, and held up his foot. Even in the dim light, he could make out the piece embedded in his foot. He could clearly see the gleaming rivulets running from the wound and the multitude of slashes inflicted by mad-bitch Alice.

Snarling, he reached up and tried to grip the glass. It was small, and the blood made both it and his fingers slippery.

“Piece of shit!” Gus winced, sat up, and dug into the space between his toes. The pain sparkled, and the gurney began to whirl. As he fought against the dizziness, he heard something, a shout maybe. Then he was digging in again, and again the glass refused to come free. Taking in huge gasps of air and squeezing his eyes shut, he flopped backward on the gurney. He had no time for this. He had no fucking time. Once more, he sat up, grabbed his gashed foot, and with all of his might remaining squeezed the flesh until enough of the glass oozed out, and he could get a hold of it. He yanked it out with an agonized squeal. He lay flat again, taking in deep great breaths and staring up at a blue-black ceiling. He knew that he had never been in such a dire situation. He felt giddy from blood loss, but forced himself to sit up. He placed weight on his forgotten elbow, and that reminded him not to fuck around.

He looked back the way he had come and, as if in a dream, a bare head, all in shadows, came around the distant corner. It turned his way and began crawling toward him in a low, rumbling shuffle of flesh and bone on floor, like a box of oranges spilled across a wide expanse. The sound grew. Behind the lead baby, obviously the quickest of the bunch, two more turned the corner, followed by three others, then a storm surge. They came like a broadening wedge. Gus took a breath, blinked, and then moved to get off the stretcher. When his foot hit the floor, it crackled with pain. With a sigh, he started skip-walking away with one hand against the wall and his eyes set on the far wall. He shot a look over his shoulder, taking in the close-to-the-ground mass hunting him. There were low squeals emanating from them, little sounds of newborn discontent that could only be comforted by the meat on his bones.

Then, a shriek stabbed the air, stopping Gus in his tracks like a sword to the chest. He stopped and glanced back. There, at the far end of the corner behind the advancing horde, stood the disheveled form of Alice. Her features were swathed in shadow, but Gus could feel the evil emanating from her. She stood hunched over like a mythical troll, with one hand low at her sides and fingers flashed wide as if extending talons. The other hand held something Gus just knew was the scalpel.

Another scream, one with both lungs behind it, and the inky outline of Alice started after him. She quickly caught up with the infants in the rear and pushed past them. She booted dead toddlers out of her way. The mother presently had no love for her adopted ones.

Mommy fuckin’ Dearest, Gus thought as he pulled his carcass around a corner, out of view. He squinted in the gloom, realizing that it was darker than the rest of the hospital. A third scream lit up his spine and senses, prompting him to hop-skip ahead. Blood continued to dribble from him, and he could smell his own excrement. The tip of his elbow resonated as if someone was tapping the raw bone with a rock hammer.

Then he saw one of his boots. It was right before a stairwell, left on the landing. Just ahead on the stairs, there was something else that made him blink in astonishment.

His shotgun.

“What the hell?” Gus muttered. He picked up his boot, hopped down the steps, then scooped up the shotgun and held it close. Now, he thought venomously, now, we’ll see. He placed his back against the wall to check the safety and the breech. There was a shell in there, and he wondered if Alice had even fired the weapon.

There was a growing sound, a swarm of hungry mouths and dead eyes. He didn’t have much time. He turned and looked up to the opening of the stairwell one level above him. Alice popped into view, a fright of ripped clothing, blood, and craziness, her lips drawn back to expose a crunch of teeth. She spotted him. Gus fired the shotgun from his hip, blowing out a chunk of the cement frame and sending chips flying. Alice shrieked and withdrew as if yanked from behind. Gus stumbled, off balance from the blast, falling sideways. In a split second, he tried to keep his hold on the shotgun and get a hand out to avoid landing on his damaged elbow or his foot. He collapsed on his chest, huffing out his breath, with his forehead pressed against the gun barrel. The toe of his boot lay just ahead. He collected himself and got into a sitting position.

“You little prick!” came a screech from above. “Goddamn you to hell, you little piece of shit! They bit me! You made them bite me! I’ll have your fucking heart for that!”

In reply, Gus pumped another shell into the chamber. “Stick your head out, you fucking banshee, and I’ll make all it better,” he shouted. He gasped in pain and looked down at the wound in his belly. He prodded it with his left hand, though his fingers were still contrary. Blood seeped from the stab wound, but he didn’t think it was too bad. Too much fat there, it occurred to him. Ha! Fuck the six-pack! But it still hurt, and the rest of him looked like he was slashed to bloody ribbons. Knife fight wounds, but he had his boom stick with him now.

Then he heard the noise, and his defiance shrank. The newborns. They were coming. Whatever infected them was giving them the strength to motor along before they should even be able to. The idea of shooting them repulsed him. He couldn’t do it. Back when the world was still a world and he watched movies, he had an unspoken rule—You never hurt the baby. Not in any flick. Even the producers seemed to know this. It was a line that could not be crossed, and he couldn’t cross it now.

With a grunt, Gus got to his feet. He threw the boot down the stairs. Leaning heavily on the railing, he followed it. Above, he could hear Alice swearing at her brood. The youngsters were trying to kiss mommy again. Focusing on the stairs, he made his way to the landing below. He peered out into the darkness, and his heart fluttered. It was the main level, and, strewn about before him, he could see the rest of his gear. On the floor ahead of him was his other boot, and just beyond were his bat and backpack.

He gingerly kicked his boot across the floor to where the rest of his gear was. He couldn’t believe it, but there was everything the sly bitch had taken from him, jeans and leather pants included. Maybe she wanted those for herself? Regardless, he hopped over to his jacket, pulled it up and looked to his right. There, still where he had parked it, gleaming in the evening twilight, was his van with the doors hanging wide open. He shifted the shotgun under his left arm, freeing up the right. With a grunt, he threw the jacket over the chairs of the waiting area, toward the main doors. He checked behind him, looking for Alice, and knew that he was wasting time on the leather shit, knew he was breaking rule number one of Don’t be stupid, but his gear was a part of him, and damn if he was going to leave it for her to wear.

And there she was, flying at him from the dark cave of the stairwell; her marble eyes full of insane hate fixed on his. She screamed, obviously meaning to terrify him. Her hair was wild and streaming behind her, and the scalpel was coming down, aimed for the center of his bare forehead. Gus got his left arm up and blocked the down-thrust, but her weight was too much. They crashed to the ground, and the connection momentarily stunned him. She was breathing frantically, wildly, and on instinct alone his right fist connected with her jaw, snapping it shut and breaking off shards of rotten teeth. She screamed and fell back. Gus felt her scrabbling over him, like some evil crab, and then he felt her hands on his belly, groping for his thigh, homing in on his balls, fingers scraping them, cupping them…

He punched her, crossing his chest with his right hand. His fingers touched the gun barrel and gripped it at about the same time she touched his nuts again. He yanked the barrel forward and nailed her square in her temple, dropping her across his thighs. With a flurry of leg kicks, as if he were shooing off a huge black spider, he shrugged her dazed form off of him. One kick took her hard across her jaw. She moaned, but Gus didn’t feel like being merciful. How many others had she taken? How many others had she cut up and served to the newborns? He got to his knees, got a better grip on the shotgun, and took aim at her skull. She was unaware, breathing shallow. He tightened his finger on the trigger. She was dead anyway. He could see where the babies had punctured her skin in places. If a person was bit, there was no hope. They would become one.

But right now, she was still human and, God above, he could not shoot.

Swearing, he turned the shotgun and brought its hardwood butt down across her fingers, breaking several. He got the rest with the second smash. Alice only grunted softly. He broke the fingers on her left hand then, knowing full well he was torturing her, but the fury had a grip on him. He hadn’t killed her outright in his mind, as she still had both of her legs. She could jump off a building or something, but he wasn’t going to kill her. He wasn’t that far gone that he would take another life. Not yet.

He placed the gun on the floor, measured the distance, and slid it the length of the room with one mighty shove. Next, he threw his backpack and boots in the direction of the truck. Behind him, Alice was moaning louder, coming to her senses. He looked down and saw the scalpel. Pursing his lips, he kicked it away into the darkness, listening to the metal skittering on the tiles. He looked to see where it went.

There, standing at the drug counter was a gimp, a big one. It had come from the corridor with the blood streak down the middle of the floor. The thing regarded Gus with an open mouth, its lips missing. Fragments of gold teeth gleamed, and the fragrant stench of dead flesh hit him. The thing shuffled toward Gus, slowly, and he backed up. He scooped up his leather pants, bat, and shotgun, and fumbled with getting it all in his hands, but he stayed aware of the zombie. He backed up, and it came forward, looking at him, dead eyes unseeing yet knowing. Then it paused, probably having sensed the prone form of Alice lying on the floor.

Gus retreated. He wasn’t killing her. She was already dead. This was justice, he told himself. Justice.

The gimp moved in on Alice’s body. It didn’t bother with the man-thing anymore. There was an easier meal. It dropped to its knees, gathered up one of Alice’s arms, and bit slowly, deeply, ripping away flesh with those golden teeth as if it were fried chicken.

Gus looked away, but not before he glimpsed the blood spurting from the bite wound. He retreated, shotgun pointed at the famished creature, and tried hard to think of anything that might drown out the noise of its feeding. Then Alice screamed. She screamed and tried beating the thing away, but her fingers wouldn’t work. The thing piled onto her legs, keeping her in place. Gus heard her screams turn into sobs… and then he saw the last act.

Alice arched her back. She kicked and screamed and even with her wrecked hands, she managed to disengage herself from the zombie. Her cries hitching in her throat, she scrabbled away on her knees and elbows.

Right into the mass of newborns. eHehhh

The first baby clunked against her forehead with a crack. Then, from the shadows, came the rest of the children. The stairs had most likely proven to be a challenge for their little limbs, but they had found their mother all the same. They crawled over one another to greet her. That was the opening the creature behind her needed. It grasped her head and sank its golden teeth into the stringy flesh of her neck. Alice howled and struggled, but the weight of her children bore her down. Alice died then, ripped apart by her adopted brood, who no doubt felt a greater connection to the dead thing with the gleaming mouth.

Gus heard the noise, saw the flurry of action in the shadows, but was spared the grisly details. He backed up to the open doors of his van and hurriedly threw everything in. He was gaining control now, as the things were focused on the easy meal and not him. He hop-skipped into the van and slammed the doors shut behind him. He struggled past the booty of supplies he had taken from the hospital and hauled himself into the driver’s seat. Starting the engine, the pain of his wounds reminded him how bad they were, demanding attention, but he grimaced, swore, and put the van in gear. It was almost dark, but damned if he was going to turn on the lights. Lights brought the gimps.

He drove away from the hospital hunched over the steering wheel as if he was a man of eighty. It was a long way, but he knew how to bypass the city. He would skirt around its rim, ignoring the beckoning off-ramps of the freeway, and never going any nearer. Not at night. Never at night. It was too dangerous. He drove in silence, struggling to keep his attention on the black lick of road that would take him back up his mountain, and finally home.

He drove a kilometer before he pulled over with a curse. He went into the back of the van where he grabbed a roll of the hoarded toilet paper and, grimacing, wiped his ass.

Enjoy the story? Try these other titles by Keith C Blackmore:

Horror

Mountain Man

Safari (Mountain Man Book Two)

The Missing Boatman

Cauldron Gristle

(novella—contains “ye Olde Fishing Hole” and “The Hospital”)

Heroic Fantasy

The Troll Hunter

131 Days (novella)

White Sands, Red Steel

Science Fiction, Fantasy

The Bear That Fell From the Stars
(novella)

One Shot Short Stories

Ye Olde Fishing Hole (also in Cauldron Gristle)

Children’s

Flight of the Cookie Dough Mansion

And please support Indie authors! If you enjoyed this story and have the time and inclination, please leave a review. It’s good advertising for me. :)

Visit www.keithcblackmore.com for news and announcements.