Deathly Contagious Read Online Free PDF Page B

going to fight with him on that; if we got attacked, at least he’d be the first to go. Glass crunched under his boots. Someone had broken open the case that held back the fire axe. I cringed as the rubber soles of my camo colored combat boots crushed the glass, its breaking sound echoing down the dark, empty hall.
    Well, the used to be empty hall.
    Three zombies limped their way out of a waiting room. Alex motioned for me but I was already a step ahead. An arrow whizzed through the air, sinking into the rotten eye of a female S2. Ignoring the sting of the string slapping my unguarded wrist, I shot two more, dropping the other zombies. I clicked on my flashlight and looked with disgust at the kill.
    Careful not to press too hard, I put my foot on their festering chests to pull out the arrows. I shook off the lumpy parts and wiped them clean on the zombies’ dirty clothes before sticking them back in the quiver.
    “Nice work, Orissa,” Gabby said, her smile barely visible in the dim light. I smiled and nodded. We stepped over the corpses and continued down the hall, pausing to look at the directory.
    Alex had just opened his mouth to bark out an order when we heard the moans. My hand flew behind me, my fingers grabbing onto an arrow. My heart skipped a beat when the shuffling of feet drowned out the moans.
    I went for the M16 instead.
    A hoard of zombies snapped their dead faces in our directions, opening their decaying mouths hungrily at the sight and smell of us. We opened fire, dropping the first line. It offered little help; the zombies that tripped only crawled at us. Death calls came from behind us. Damn it, we were being surrounded.
    “Fall back!” Alex yelled.
    No. We were so close. I wasn’t leaving empty handed.
    “Cover me!” I yelled, eyeing a doorway.
    “No, get out Penwell!”
    “Twenty minutes! If I’m not back in twenty, assume I’m dead and go on without me. Now cover me!” I strapped the gun back to my leg and sprinted through the open door, the rapid fire blinding and deafening me. I tripped over a fallen IV stand, sending painful shock into my wrists as the heels of my palms smacked the cold, tile floor. I kicked the door closed and madly looked around.
    I was in a lab room. I scrambled up, shoving a file cabinet in front of the door. There was another door; I assumed it led into waiting room or, if I was lucky, a hall behind the exam rooms. It did both and I raced through the waiting room into the narrow pathway, running past the exam rooms. I slammed into the automatic doors that led to the ER.
    Several gummies moaned and made feeble attempts to come at me. I buried an arrow in their mushy skulls. Holding the flashlight in my mouth, I yanked back curtains. A nearly deteriorated gummy had oozed onto a hospital bed, permanent bed sores sticking him to the material. The smell choked me and I gagged.
    He reached at me, biting at the air. He had no teeth left.
    “You give ‘gummy’ a whole new meaning,” I said as I fired an arrow into his head. It went all the way through and stuck into the wall behind him. I wrinkled my nose at the globs of brain matter that oozed off it and decided to leave it.
    Padraic told me to look for a machine that dispensed meds. I frantically looked all over but came up empty handed. Refusing to leave with nothing, I filled a pillow case full of IV bags and antiseptics. I shot a zombified EMT in the skull with the M9 as I found my way to the exit. I kicked open the doors, rushed past an ambulance and jogged into the parking lot.
    “Seventeen minutes,” Alex said when I got into the SUV, hardly able to keep the smile from his face.
    “Told you,” I said, adding extra smugness to my voice on purpose.
    “Three more and I would have left you. What did you get?”
    “IV fluid and that chlorhexidine stuff Padraic wanted. I couldn’t find the meds.”
    “The next hospital,” Mac promised. I nodded and tossed the bags into the back of the SUV. “Where did you go