And there was a nice surprise in that place, too.
Josh drew his Glock and took hold of the glass door. When he tried pulling it, the door opened without resistance.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gaby asked behind him. “I know we don’t want to go back empty-handed, but this seems like an awfully bad idea, Josh.”
“It’ll be okay,” Josh said, trying to convince himself, too. “We have the right ammo this time.”
This is so stupid. Stop right now and go back.
“But just to be safe,” he said, “stay behind me, okay?”
“My hero.”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe we should turn back now.
God, this is so stupid.
But he had come this far, and he hated to turn back now. Will was right about one thing — no one would have put money on him surviving the end of the world. He had proved them all wrong. Even Matt, who was bigger and taller and stronger, eventually went, too. And yet, here he stood, persevering, with Gaby next to him. Who would have seen any of this coming?
Josh pulled the door open to reveal the lobby. It was just as empty as it had looked through the window, with enough natural light to illuminate every corner and nook. The lack of dark shadows made him feel better, and Josh relaxed a bit and stepped inside.
“Stay here,” he said, and hurried over to the window with the closed blinds. He grabbed the long stick dangling from the top of the window and twirled it and the blinds opened up, throwing more sunlight into the room.
As with the pet clinic, there was a reception counter directly ahead of the front doors, and cheap, flimsy-looking chairs lined the lobby walls. The counter had a sliding opaque glass door left partially open, and Josh glimpsed a messy desk with papers everywhere and a splash of brown that he took for long-ago dried blood. There was a single hallway leading into the back and doors into rooms on both sides. The sunlight didn’t reach farther than five yards into the hallway, so everything else after that was a mystery.
Josh looked back at Gaby, standing nervously at the door. “You didn’t, uh, bring a flashlight, did you?”
She shook her head. “You didn’t say anything about a flashlight.”
“Yeah, my bad.”
She smiled. “Your bad?”
He smiled back. “My bad. People still say that, right?”
“You mean the dozen or so people we’ve met since the world came to an end? Then no, I don’t think people say that anymore.”
“I—” he started to say, but he never finished because he heard it, the sound of movement, and he turned his head back toward the hallway, just as a dark shape rushed out.
Before Josh had time to fully process what he was seeing, something big and heavy and monstrous crashed into him, knocking every ounce of breath out of his lungs. Josh flew backward and fell to the floor on his back with a solid crunching sound, and the figure was already on top of him, looming large.
Stupid. You should have stayed outside. God, you’re so stupid!
The Glock was gone. It had flown out of his hand even before he hit the floor. He didn’t know where it was now. He might have heard Gaby screaming, but that could just be the ringing in his ears. That, and the immense pain from his back, where he had slammed into the hard floor, and from his chest, where the figure had smashed into him.
It wasn’t a ghoul. It was a man. And he was wearing a dark gray hazmat suit — the thin kind worn by soldiers. The man inside was much bigger than Josh, and a hell of a lot heavier, too. Josh felt as if he had been broadsided by a speeding car, not by a man whose face was blurred behind some kind of gas mask.
Josh processed the information in the three or four seconds it took the guy to scramble up and sit on Josh’s chest and punch him in the face. He hit Josh once, then again, and again. Josh knew he was bleeding before he felt the blood trickling down his face. His nose was definitely broken, and maybe one lip was cut. Or both.
He tasted blood.
Just for good measure, the guy punched him a fourth time before slowly climbing off him. From his vantage point, the guy looked like a giant, stretching, stretching, almost touching the ceiling with his height. The man reached down and started pulling out his holstered sidearm. It looked like a Glock. Josh saw dark brown eyes behind the wide gas mask lens looking down at him, and he wanted to ask the man what the hell he was doing, why he was wearing that stupid suit to begin with.
Josh couldn’t get the words out. His chest and back were racked with involuntary spasms, his face throbbed, and it felt like every bone in his body was broken. He ached all over.
He thought about looking for his gun, but he didn’t know where to start. He wasn’t sure he was even still lying on the floor looking up at some stranger in a hazmat suit about to shoot him. Maybe he was just imagining all of this. Or dreaming it. Maybe he was actually still in the semitrailer, trying not to make too much noise, or even breathe at all, so afraid the ghouls might hear him.
Maybe—
He heard a gunshot. It was booming, massive, and it added to the chaotic ringing in his ears. First there was just one gunshot, then there was a second one, and Josh thought, Well, that’s it. I’m dying now.
But he didn’t die.
He didn’t feel the new set of pains from his chest, where he expected them. The guy was aiming for his chest, so that’s where the bullets would have gone. Only there were no bullets, because the guy hadn’t fired.
Josh watched, unable to really comprehend, as the man in the hazmat suit fell to the floor next to him in a crumpled heap of dark gray, shiny fabric. There was no blood at all, though Josh did see two holes in the man’s back, spaced about two inches apart. When Josh raised his head a little bit, he saw the blood inside the man’s suit.
He looked over at Gaby standing nearby, holding her Glock in both hands. She was staring down at the dead man on the floor, before pulling her eyes away and looking at him.
He remembered Gaby from a few days ago, with the bloody key gripped between her fingers like a weapon, stabbing Betts’s neck. That Gaby had been on the verge of tears, and had shaken for hours afterward.
This Gaby, looking back at him, was strangely calm. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He managed to nod, but when he opened his mouth to answer, pain shot through him. He laid his head back down on the floor instead and stared up at the ceiling.
Idiot, you should have stayed outside.
You’re such an idiot…
CHAPTER 21
LARA
She hadn’t thought she would see another one, or maybe she had just been hoping she wouldn’t see another one. But there it was, lying on the floor of the clinic with two bullet holes in its back.
A man in a hazmat suit.
Another man in a hazmat suit.
This suit looked different from the ones she had encountered with Will and Danny in Dansby, Texas, all those months ago, but Will said it was the same type of suit. Level B, he called it. Not the big, bulky Level A with its own breathing apparatus. Back in Dansby, they had encountered ten men in Level B hazmat suits, determined to keep their loyalties to their ghoul masters. Here, there was just one. Or at least, just one they could see. Lara couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“It must be nearby,” Will said.
“Do we even wanna find it?” Danny asked.
“Yes,” Lara said. “If we know it’s around here somewhere, we have to look for it.”