“Time begins now,” Clatter said simply, and the air went dead.
“Go!” Josh called out, and ran for the doors.
He burst through them into a small room. Two beds were against the wall, their metal frames rusted and the stained mattresses on them bursting open. Four torches lay on one of the beds.
“Could these be any older?” Scrawl asked as he picked one up and slung it over his shoulder.
“Another advantage for the other team,” Josh joked grimly. He turned his flamethrower and checked the fuel level. It was at half of what it should be.
“Do you know how to use that?” Scrawl asked Firecracker, who was looking at his torch.
“I’m not sure,” said Firecracker. “Where do the arrows go again?”
Despite himself, Josh laughed. He’d missed his friend’s careless sense of humor. He suspected Firecracker wouldn’t be joking once he saw his first zombie up close, but for now his attitude helped ease the tension, at least a little bit.
“Ready?” Josh asked.
“Ready,” Charlie said as the other two nodded.
“Let’s go find us some zombies,” said Josh.
22
The first zombie was waiting for them right outside the door. Because they weren’t expecting one so soon, none of them were prepared for it. Charlie, who went first, walked right into it. The zombie, a huge man in a coverall with HOWARD stitched over the pocket, wrapped his arms around her and immediately went for her neck. Charlie didn’t even have time to scream.
Scrawl, following behind her, butted the zombie in the face with his torch, causing him to fall back a step or two. It was enough for Charlie to slip out of his grasp, and with a fierce yell she kicked the zombie squarely in the stomach. It doubled over, and she delivered a roundhouse kick to its shoulder. A moment later the zombie was in flames as Scrawl torched it.
“Come on!” Charlie shouted, waving Josh and Firecracker out of the room.
They skirted around the zombie. Josh saw Firecracker stop and stare at the man, who was on all fours crawling slowly toward them. Firecracker wore a confused expression as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing was real. For a moment he even started to go back toward the zombie.
“Firecracker!” Josh yelled. “Move!”
Firecracker tore himself away from the site of the flaming zombie, and the four of them moved down the hallway. “It was alive,” Firecracker said as they went. “It had a name. He had a name.”
“You can’t think about it,” Josh told him, although he knew this was impossible. How could they not think about it, especially now that they knew how the zombies had been made? But they had to try. Josh reminded himself that nobody would want to live that way, and that if he and his friends wanted to get out of there, they had to do what they had to do.
“Here’s our starting point,” Scrawl said as they reached the end of the corridor. “Josh, you and Charlie go right. Firecracker and I will go left. We’ll meet at the stairs. Remember, we’ve got eleven to go.”
They split up. Josh and Charlie walked side by side as they began their search. The fourth floor seemed to be nothing but patient rooms. Every door they passed opened into a room very much like the first one, with two beds and one small window covered by thick bars.
“Where would a z even hide in one of these?” Charlie asked when they were halfway down the hall and hadn’t found anything.
“Could be a small one,” Josh reminded her. “A kid.”
Charlie looked at him. “Even Clatter wouldn’t do that,” she said. “Would he?”
“I don’t know,” Josh answered. “Until a few hours ago I wouldn’t have believed any of this.”
They reached the end of the first hallway without finding anything, and the second hallway seemed to be a mirror image of the first. By the time they’d checked the fourth room on that side, Josh was getting anxious. Where were all the meatbags? He looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. They had five left.
“This is like one of those nightmares where you’re trying to get out of a place and keep coming back to the same door,” Charlie remarked as they approached the next room.
The next second Josh was on the floor and a horribly disfigured face was hovering over his. He recognized it as the woman whose cell he’d looked into in the lab. She gnashed her teeth, flecking him with spit. He noticed that most of her tongue had been chewed off, leaving her with a bloody stump that twitched from side to side as she tried to talk.
Charlie grabbed the woman by the collar and pulled her back. With a ripping sound the woman’s dress tore, and Charlie slipped sideways. Josh could smell the woman’s breath as she bent closer and closer. It was worse than the smell in the sewers, reeking of blood and decay.
Josh heard footsteps, and suddenly the woman was pulled away from him, her bloody fingertips clawing at him as she was lifted up. He heard Firecracker yell, “Stay down!” and then felt heat on his skin as a stream of fire erupted over him. A gurgling scream filled the air, followed by the horrible stench of burning meat.
Josh rolled over and onto his knees. As he stood, he saw something on the floor and picked it up. It was a name tag, the kind that people wore at meetings or parties when they wanted to identify one another. HELLO, it said. MY NAME IS. Below this someone had printed, in perfectly even letters, ALICE.
“What is that?” Charlie asked as she peered over Josh’s shoulder.
“He wants us to know their names,” Josh replied. “He’s reminding us that they’re human.” For reasons he couldn’t understand, he folded the tag in half and tucked into the pocket of his jeans. “First Howard, and now Alice,” he said. “I wonder who’s next.”
“Did you guys find anything?” Charlie asked Scrawl.
“Just our friend Howard,” Scrawl answered. “Is she your only one?”
Josh nodded. “Ten more,” he said.
“And three floors,” added Charlie. “Why do I think most of those ten won’t be on floors three or two?”
“He’s saving them for us,” Josh agreed. “But we still have to check every floor. He’s making sure we don’t have much time when we get to the end.”
Charlie looked around, scanning the hallway for cameras. “Are you having fun?” she yelled. “Are you getting all this, you sick bastards?”
Josh took her arm. “Come on,” he said gently. “Time’s up for this floor.”
They took the stairs to the third floor in single file, with Josh leading. As they descended, the condition of the walls deteriorated. Huge chunks of plaster were missing, exposing the wood beneath. Broken pipes protruded like bones from the splintered ceiling, and only a few bulbs still emitted any light. What little they did was thin and watery. Josh turned on the light on his flamethrower, but nothing happened. He clicked it half a dozen times to make sure. The others did the same, with no better results.
“Great,” Josh said.
As planned, they switched partners, and Firecracker gave Charlie his watch. Josh, now with Firecracker, took the left-hand hallway. Unlike the fourth floor, the third was a mixture of rooms. The first one they came to was an examining room. The floor was cluttered with old instruments, and a tattered eye chart hung on one wall. A discarded hospital gown, stained and torn, lay across the examination table. Other than that, the room was empty.
Another exam room sat next to the first. As Josh swung the door open, a figure turned toward him. It was a man holding something in his hand. The light in the room was burned out, and it was impossible to see exactly what it was, but Josh thought he saw something wet hanging from the end.