Eric Brown - Season of Rot

Jack stared at him, gritting his teeth. “You brought this, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Martin answered painfully.

“Fuck you.” Jack pumped a round into the shotgun’s chamber. “Let’s go kick some dead ass.”

Martin grinned, and twin auto-pistols like something out of science fiction appeared in his hands.

The door to the stairwell opened as the first stream of the undead poured into the halls. Martin, Jack, and Jack’s men stood in the hallway like old-fashioned minutemen. They hadn’t had time to build any sort of barricade.

As the dead raced towards them, Jack screamed the order to fire. The hallway echoed with gunshots and howls as the men tore the first wave of the dead to shreds. The hospital’s defenders held their ground for a few seconds until they were forced to reload. Martin, in an effort to buy time, charged into the ranks of the dead. His guns blazed, each shot perfect, splattering rotting brain matter everywhere.

Jack and the others held their fire as Martin tossed aside his empty weapons and dove deeper into the midst of the enemy. He bent his hands downward at the wrists, and blades shot out from beneath the sleeves of his uniform. He sliced the closest creature’s skull open with a single swipe and plunged the other blade into another monster’s face. He yanked the blade free as the thing leaked blood from between its eyes and collapsed.

Martin gave Jack the signal and dropped to the floor, rolling away from the mob. Jack’s shotgun thundered, and Mitchell opened with his AK-47 on full auto; the other men hit the dead with everything they had. The bodies piled up throughout the hallway as Martin rejoined them, but more of the dead raced to take the place of the creatures who had fallen.

“We can’t hold them forever like this!” Jack shouted. “Our ammo isn’t going to last forever.

“Fall back,” Martin ordered. “Fall back and reload.”

Not all of the dead followed them as they retreated. Many chose the easier route and headed off down the hall in the other direction.

Daniel locked himself in the communications room when the gunshots started. He frantically searched around in his pockets. “Oh God, where is it?”

He finally grasped the butt of the cigarette buried in his coat pocket and pulled it out. It was his last one, the last one he was aware of in the whole hospital. He’d been saving it for a special time, for when he really needed it. He ran it under his nose, inhaling the scent of unlit tobacco, the scent of heaven.

He dug out his lighter and flicked it, but it didn’t ignite. He flicked it again and again, pausing only to bang it against the wall desperately.

Disgusted, he threw it down along with the cigarette and slumped against the wall. Tears slid down his cheeks. His sobs were quiet at first, but soon he wept openly, alone in the darkness as he listened to the howls of the dead and the gunfire on the floor below.

Vince held tightly to Laura’s hand, almost dragging her with him as she tried to keep pace. He had already sent someone to find Daniel and get him up on the roof, but Laura insisted they find Chris and Natalie before they headed up to the helicopter. Vince had no choice but to go along with her; she wouldn’t leave without the child, and wherever they managed to escape to, they would need Laura’s skills for as long as she could fight off the cancer. Besides, given time and the proper tools Laura might one day put an end to the dead virus once and for all.

Vince wondered if she’d be able to make it the rest of the way to Chris’s quarters, but ever the fighter, Laura gasped for air and pushed on. Her strength amazed him and gave him hope.

They found Chris’s door barred. Laura struggled vainly with the knob.

“Move!” Vince screamed, and she stepped aside as he kicked open the entrance.

Chris glanced up at them as they made their way inside. He sat rocking Natalie, hugging her tightly to his chest. “Save her,” he said, crying. “Someone’s got to. She doesn’t deserve to die like this.”

“Okay, Chris. Okay.” Vince helped him to his feet. “We’re certainly going to try.”

Daniel selected a heavy wrench from his tools and tested its weight. It would have to do. Like an idiot, he had dropped his gun in the stairwell.

He cranked up the stereo, and Michael Stipe’s voice blared; the room rattled to the tune of “The Great Beyond.” It was one of Daniel’s favorite songs, and somehow it seemed to fit. The music covered the noise of the dead as they tore the door off its hinges.

Daniel adjusted his glasses and stood his ground. Two dead things rushed into the room. He swung the wrench and clobbered the first one in the head. It lurched sideways and fell with a crash into one of Daniel’s worktables. Its left eye dangled from its socket as the thing thrashed about on the floor.

The second intruder came at him too fast, and he couldn’t get a good swing at it. It grabbed him, strained against him, tried to sink its teeth into his flesh.

Daniel threw the thing off and darted for the door. He nearly collided with a third creature in the hall. He gave a quick hard kick to one of its knees, then fled, not bothering to look back as the creature toppled to the floor.

As he rounded the bend in the corridor, a voice cried out. “Daniel!” One of the hospital’s defenders, a man whose name he couldn’t remember, was running after him. Daniel skidded to a halt as the man caught up.

“We need to get you up to the roof!” the guard said. “You need to fly the helicopter!”

Shit , Daniel thought.

Vince, Harold, Laura, and any other survivors were all counting on him. Counting on him to fly a type of helicopter he’d never even sat in until today. He remembered the time he’d spent going over its controls and knew he could do it, even if just barely. It would be enough.

The guard shoved a rifle into his hands as they raced toward the roof. The weapon brought Daniel no comfort. If they encountered a large pack of the dead on their way, it wouldn’t make any difference whether or not they sent a few of the creatures back to hell. They’d be overwhelmed and that was that.

They rounded another corner and jerked open the door to the stairs that led to the roof. A decaying woman in a bloodstained wedding gown leapt out at them, slashing the guard’s throat with her long decorated nails. Blood spurted from the wound with every beat of his heart.

Daniel didn’t have time to take a shot at her, so he barreled into her, pushing her back inside the stairwell and over the railing. She hissed, still groping for him as she fell into the darkness below.

Daniel glanced back at the guard’s corpse, wishing he could remember the poor guy’s name. Then he shut the door to the stairs and sprinted up to the roof.

Most of the hospital’s defenders were dead and had switched sides in the battle. Mitchell had disappeared in the fray, leaving only Martin and Jack to hold back the dead long enough for Vince and Laura to escape.

The dead had them cornered now two floors below the roof, backed into a waiting room with no way out. Martin was fighting the creatures hand-to–hand, holding them at the door while Jack tried to reload. A purple blood-like substance oozed from numerous wounds and bites covering his body. He punched one of the things in the head, which flew off and landed on the floor to be trampled under countless feet.

Jack raised his gun and shot a creature that had made it past Martin. The blast hit it in the chest, knocking it to the other side of the room.

“It’s no use Jack!” Martin wailed as a wounded dead thing, its lower spine shattered, sank its teeth into his thigh.