Kelly was confused for a second. As dread filled her, she got to her feet, rushed to the roof where Dr. Thomson had gone, and looked around frantically. A white sheet hung over a ledge tied to a metal bracket. She looked down to see the tail of the improvised rope gently dangling low enough to allow someone to drop easily to the pavement below and enter the DDC through the hole in the wall of the music store.
“You don’t remember me, you ungrateful pieces of shit!” the voice came back again.
Kelly had never heard Dr. Thomson in the throes of rage. She barely recognized his voice. She gripped her hair with both hands and pulled as a sense of helplessness washed over her. Dr. Thomson was sacrificing himself, luring the ghouls away from the stairwell, to give everyone a chance to survive.
“You took my wife!” sounds of gunfire followed his scream.
“You took my children!” more gunfire echoed from the store into the streets. The small bands of undead that roamed the area began to take notice and wandered over.
“Come and get ME!” Dr. Thomson screamed. His voice was filled with anguish and anger.
A few quiet seconds passed, filled only with the moans and growls of the undead, and Kelly wondered if they had gotten Dr. Thomson.
Another explosion from inside the store knocked Kelly off her feet and sent a plume of debris and dust rocketing into the air. Kelly’s ears rung from the blast, and she rolled over and began crawling on her hands and knees toward the door. Exhaustion overcame her about twenty feet from her goal, causing her to collapse in a heap on the gravel roof. There she lay, staring into the purple dawn sky.
A million thoughts raced through her head. She thought of all the people she had cared for these past few months that were now dead, her friend, Dr. Thomson, who was also now dead, the hopelessness of the situation they were now in, and the face of her husband, Henry, that she had not seen in far, far too long. She lay there in silence, overwhelmed by the burden Dr. Thomson had placed on her shoulders. She hadn’t slept in weeks, but in this moment, she could sleep for a year.
“Dr. D?” A voice called out. A blonde woman stood not far from where Kelly lay. Her hair hung in ragged strands, her arm pits were soaked with sweat, and she braced herself against the wall in exhaustion.
Kelly turned her head to acknowledge the woman, but said nothing.
The woman stumbled over to Kelly and plopped down next to her. “I’m Nicole. You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve been here for a couple months with my son, Vince.”
Kelly heard the words, and summoned a lucid response. “Thanks for helping with the door. We couldn’t have held it without you.”
“We all would have died. No thanks necessary. Thank you. My son and I would be long dead without you and Dr. Thomson,” Nicole replied.
Kelly sat quietly as she struggled to form the words. “Dr. Thomson’s dead.” A tear began to streak down her cheek.
Nicole sat quietly nodding for a minute, a look of sadness on her face, “Yeah, he was a great man.”
“Mom?” A child’s voice rang out.
Kelly and Nicole looked over to the door. A small child, about five years old, stood peeking out.
“There’s a dead man talking in Dr. D’s office.” The child continued.
Kelly and Nicole looked at each other in confusion and then in fear. The living dead didn’t talk, but the child could have heard a sound from a newly risen ghoul that he mistook for words. Panic drove the women to their feet despite their exhaustion, and they marched back into the clinic.
The families had all retreated back into the living areas that they had called home — minus the cots and furniture. Small groups sat huddled under blankets on the floor, recovering from the night. As they made their way down the hallway to Dr. Thomson’s office, Kelly could hear a familiar voice. “Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there?”
She passed the barricade still piled in the hall. It was by no means impenetrable considering the condition of the door beneath it, but it would defend against a small handful of zombies. As long as they remained quiet, that should be all the protection they would need. Another undead frenzy, however, would spell doom for everyone unless a backup plan was developed quickly.
Kelly entered the room and looked around. Two dead bodies lay on the ground. Blood pooled beneath them, and they stared back at her with lifeless eyes. They were soldiers — men who had provided DDC security for months as the world fell apart. They had stayed at their posts and given their lives for her and the few remaining survivors.
The grenades clipped to the soldiers’ vests were gone. Dr. Thomson had intended on taking as many ghouls with him as he could, and grenades were not only a loud distraction that would catch the ghouls’ attention, but they were also a good way to avoid a painful death by tooth and claw.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there?” The voice of Private Stenson repeated over a walkie-talkie the dead soldier had fixed to his belt.
Kelly grabbed the radio, and pressed the button. “Private Stenson? Is that you?”
“Dr. D?” Stenson asked with a mixture of relief and confusion.
“It’s me,” Kelly answered. “Where are you?”
Private Stenson paused for a moment as if considering where he was. “I’m in the sound-proof office with two civvies. What the hell happened? Where are you?”
“I’m upstairs in the clinic with almost twenty people.” Kelly answered. “How’s the situation down there?”
“Situation isn’t great, but we’re alive and no one’s bit,” Stenson answered.
“We have to figure out a way to get you up here.” Kelly realized that there may be other civilians trapped in the music store offices.
“I’m open to ideas, Dr. D. There’s a shit-ton of those dead fuckers down here,” Stenson replied. “Unless you have a plan, we might be stuck down here for a while.”
Chapter 11
The suburbs of San Diego were always much quieter than downtown. Where the densely packed population of the city had resulted in an apocalyptic urban environment of cramped oppression, the suburbs always maintained a sharp contrast — quiet and lifeless. Ghouls roamed the streets, yards, and sidewalks alone or in small packs. Carl hated the tranquility– it was seductive and comforting… and made it impossible to keep your guard up. The adrenaline had left him, and his mind drifted to the men and women who had been killed under his command: seven more at the roadblock. He and every other soldier in the convoy had learned to shut most of the grief out, but it always tickled at the back of their minds. There was no family to tell, and no remains to send home, just the emptiness that each man or woman left behind, and the gnawing guilt that they now numbered among the enemy.
“Do you think we could have helped any of those people?” Specialist MacAfee‘s voice rang out across the communications relay. Someone always broke the silence when the convoy hit a quiet patch. Being alone with one’s thoughts for any length of time was too much to bear for most people.
Pam adjusted the global positioning system on her laptop. “This is wrong; the road is blocked up here. Keep straight.” She instructed Carl, before responding to Specialist MacAfee. “The only way to get to the fleet is if you’ve been cleared by a DDC doctor. It looked like about half those people were bitten, and even if we somehow found the ones who weren’t and gave them a ride… they’d be turned away at the docks anyway.”
“We coulda taken them to a DDC and then back with us.” Private Barona’s voice came back.
“Why do you think we have orders not to do that?” A hint of anger rose in Pam’s voice. “Did you hear what happened in convoy six? Picked up a family on the road with four young kids — looked unhurt, desperate, just like everyone else out here. The dad had a hidden bite. He turned JUST as they got to the DDC and attacked the driver. The hummer went right through a fence, killing the crew and punching a hole big enough for every goddamn WD in the city to walk through. Lost the whole DDC and half the convoy… those are innocent people who died because some driver felt sorry for a complete stranger. I don’t like what we have to see on this job, but we have to do it and we have to do it the way we’re supposed to do it… or bad things happen.”