Monster Island(14)

Back then, no matter how bad things got, there was still some possibility of safety. There would always be a United Nations, and a Red Cross, and an Amnesty International. There were people somewhere who would work night and day to get you released from captivity or transferred to a clean well-run medical facility or airlifted out of harm’s way. Since the Epidemic all that was gone. Being a westerner got me nothing here, no help, no relief. Even in the middle ofNew York I was helpless.

Ayaan and her squad could have sympathized-that was the only kind of life they’d ever known. As we entered the stairwell and started up the stairs I tried not to hate them so much for being so calm.

Clang, clang. Clang, clang. Every step on the stairs rattled and banged with noise. The echoes rolled up and down the seemingly limitless vertical shaft of the stairwell, the sound shivering the cold air that we climbed through. It was loud enough to wake the dead, you know, if they hadn’t already been… damn, even dumb jokes couldn’t help.

I was scared shitless.

It was some kind of help to me, then, when we rushed the doorway to the second floor and I pointed my flashlight right at a sign that pointed us towards theHIVCareCenter. We’d made it. We had nearly reached our destination. Now we just had to grab the drugs and get back out the way we came.

We attacked another door and just like all the others there was nothing beyond it but more darkness and nasty-smelling hospital. More carts on casters and more piles of soiled linen. Nothing moving, nothing voicelessly screaming for our flesh. No sound at all. I took a step into the hallway and saw the reception desk for theCareCenter right ahead of me in the yellow stab of my flashlight. I took another step but I could tell the girls hadn’t followed. I spun around to demand why.

“Amus!”Ayaan hissed. I shut my mouth.

Nothing. Silence. An absolute lack of sound so distinct I could hear my own breath pulsing in and out of my chest. And underneath that something dull and atonal, and very, very distant. It was getting louder, though. Louder and more insistent.

Clang. Clang. Clang clang clang.

We heard silence for a while. None of us moved. Then we heard the noise come back. Slow, painfully slow but loud. Very loud. Clang, clang. Pause. Clang, clang. Clang, clang.

Something was coming up the stairs behind us.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Twelve


“First we find the drugs,” Ayaan said, pointing her rifle at me. “Then we can run.” I tried to grab the muzzle and push it away, certain she wouldn’t shoot me but she took a deft step backward that left me lunging at air. “They are slow. We have the time, Dekalb.”

In the light of just a couple of flashlights I couldn’t read her face very well. I could hear the dead men coming up the stairs behind us just fine, though.

I pushed past the girls and into the clinic lobby, my light stabbing through the swirling dust in the corridor. A ward of double rooms stretched to the right-I had no time for this!-to where a nurse’s station connected two hallways. Move, I told myself, move, and I broke into a dash. I splashed light across every door I saw. Tub room. Patients’ Lounge. Linen Services. Dispensary. Okay. Okay. Yes.

The door had a hefty lock on it, the kind you would need a keycard to enter. With the power out it probably sealed automatically. I ran my hand along the jamb hoping there was some kind of emergency release mechanism and nearly yelped when the door fell open at my touch.

No, I began to howl in my head but I shelved the thought-it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe the door automaticallyopened when the power stopped. I stepped inside the closet-sized room and something crunched under my foot. I pointed my flashlight down and saw a couple of dozen pills in bright orange and dull yellow and that powdery pink so beloved of pharmaceutical companies. Looking up again I saw bare cabinets with their doors hanging morosely open.

To be sure I searched every cabinet with fingers made clumsy by stress. I found a bottle of Tylenol in one of them. Tylenol.

“Looters,” I told Ayaan as I raced back around the corner. She just stared at me. “It makes sense-there were patients here, living patients. They couldn’t survive for long without their medicine. When they were evacuated they must have taken everything with them.” She didn’t move. “There are no drugs here,” I shouted at her, trying to grab her arm. She shied away from me again.

The sound of the dead coming up the stairwell had grown deafening, their heavy feet smashing down on the metal risers. They would be here any second.