Cherish Applebottoms's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

The scrape came again from the dark hallway. Cherish raised her crowbar and stepped between it and her group. Lisa lifted her machete. "Don't," the nurse breathed. "I'm not one of them." She lowered the hammer an inch. Her eyes flicked across them, nervously looking around. "For six days I've been locked in here. You’re the first living people I've seen. Since the clinic became infested." "Who are you?" Lisa asked. "Gale. I worked here." Her voice cracked. "I watched the staff turn." Her eyes were raw from crying. "We're not hostile or infected," Cherish said. She kept the crowbar low but ready. "We're looking for two people. A man named Marcus. A woman named Victoria?" Gale shook her head. "Nobody came. It’s just been me." "We hold here tonight. We regroup, then we—" Gale gripped Cherish's arm, and her fingers shook. "You have to leave! This place isn't safe." "We just got here," Liz said. "We can't—" Gale quickly interrupted. "The whole clinic has turned. The back rooms, the cafeteria. They're full of them. I locked every door I could. The doors are failing." Cherish's stomach dropped. No Marcus. No Victoria. She had led her group to an empty trap. A crash answered from down the hall. Doors slammed. Gale's eyes darted to the hallway. "You don't understand. The staff..." Her breath came fast. "They hunt strategically. There's also something in here that isn't like the dead you know!" It took the others. As if it was on a whole different level of intelligence. It doesn’t only stalk or feed, it preserves its prey," Gale said fearfully. A wet shriek answered from the back rooms. Wood cracked behind the front desk. The break room door split. A hand punched through, gray and clawed. Then the nails gave all at once. Zombies poured out. The closed door burst open. "Doctor," Gale breathed. "Run. Run!" "Back!" Cherish shouted. She swung the crowbar into the first one as it lunged. Cherish struck its jaw. It barely slowed. It clawed at her arm and she stumbled back into the desk, but Cherish then bashed the nurse's skull, dragging her crowbar free from its limp body. Two more filled the gap. Lisa's machete flashed. Graves put her baton through a skull, then another. Pieces of bone and debris scattered everywhere. "Back room!" Graves shouted. The group fell back into a half-barricaded office. Lisa jammed a filing cabinet against the door. It held, barely, but bought seconds. Cherish counted fifteen, maybe more. Too many for a room this size! The dead slammed the barricade. Hands reached through. Liz swung her bat and crushed a wrist. Lisa's machete took a nurse zombie through the eye. Graves cracked her baton across a bloody corpse's skull. Gale drove her hammer down again and again, teeth bared. A fast one rushed the window and seized Lisa by the hair. She screamed. Graves grabbed the creature and wrenched it off. The three of them fought in a tight knot, back to back, drowning in the dead. Lisa hacked at the second nurse-thing. Liz smashed a chair across its back. The things fought like they felt nothing. The dead kept coming, climbing over their own fallen. A runner darted low and fast. It hit Gale, the nurse, and wrapped around her. She screamed, swinging the hammer wildly. Cherish lunged, crushed the runner's spine, and Graves yanked Gale free. "There's too many! We can't hold this!" Liz yelled. Blood ran down her arm. The cabinet slid back. Zombies spilled through the gap. A nurse pinned Liz to the counter. Gale brought her hammer down on its spine, while Graves was cornered by two nurses. Meanwhile, a nurse dragged Lisa down by the hair. Then a runner lunged from the side. It caught Gale's arm and yanked her down. Gale screamed, hammer skidding across the floor. Then the yellow-eyed doctor shoved past the cabinet. It came straight at Cherish. She swung and missed. It drove her against a desk. Its yellow eyes locked on her throat. Its mouth opened wide, teeth blackened with age and blood. Cherish shoved the crowbar sideways against its chest, but it pressed closer, inches from her neck. It was stronger and kept forcing her back. Its jaws snapped closer with each lunge. "Marcus!" she thought and gasped, not knowing why his name came to her mind. The front door banged open. A gunshot cracked the air and split the room, and the doctor's head jerked back. It slumped onto her, dead weight. Cherish shoved it off and looked up. Marcus stood in the clinic doorway, pistol smoking, Victoria behind him. Victoria smashed another one. "Found you," Veronica said. Cherish met Marcus's eyes. Marcus pulled her up by the arm. Cherish stood over the dead doctor, chest heaving. "You're late," she said. "Horde slowed us," he said flatly. "You're welcome." They cleared the rest of the clinic of the dead. Silence. Bodies covered the clinic floor. For one moment it felt like safety. Then, from the sealed back rooms, came a dry clicking. Slow. Deliberate. Something moving on the walls, not the floor. Gale's face went white. "That," she whispered, "is why it isn't safe."