Fall of the Seven Cities Saga (Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wail. Taylor lowered his weapon but he didn’t holster it.
    At the sound of commotion, several of the nurses had appeared; they’d all heard what Taylor said. Now Matt could feel their animosity growing like a living thing. Everyone was either glaring in Taylor’s direction or they looked like they were going to be sick. A lot of people didn’t like cops on an average day, let alone a cop who’d just sentenced a friend to death. It didn’t matter if Taylor was right.
    “We have to help her,” Cheryl, the nurse who’d changed the code on the door, said. She crossed her arms, like she was ready for a fight.
    A doctor dressed in scrubs made a move for Taylor’s gun but Matt saw him coming and tackled him into the ground, planting a knee on the back of his neck to hold him in place. Taylor placed a boot on one of the doctor’s wrists so he would not be able to grab at Matt with his hand.
    “We could open those doors real fast and get her inside,” the doctor said through clenched teeth.
    “This is the way things are,” Matt said, making sure his voice carried to the rest of the onlookers. “If you have a problem with that, too bad. Miss Jade is infected. If we open those doors everyone in here will die. You. Me. The mothers. The babies.”
    The doctor was silent and no one else said anything. The decision was made.
    At the door, another man had appeared beside Miss Jade. He had a long cut down the side of his face and lacerations and bite marks on his neck. He started yelling and pounding on the door with his fists and feet.
    The infected came scrambling around the corner right behind the man, some upright, some on all fours. When they saw Miss Jade and the man they went crazy, a pack of hyenas that stumbled upon two wounded antelope.
    One of them grabbed Miss Jade by the braids and pounded her face against the small glass window, using it like a battering ram. After the second impact, Miss Jade’s front teeth broke and the skin above her eye separated like the Red Sea. Blood covered the reinforced glass, making it difficult to see.
    Matt couldn’t see the other man—the infected had tackled him to the ground—but he could hear rhythmic thuds as they pounded him against the tile floor. The nursing staff looked on in horror, but this time none of them made a move to open the doors.
    When the infected were finished with Miss Jade and the man, they turned their attention to the maternity ward, pounding savagely on the doors and throwing their bodies against it with no regard for injury.
    “Damn it,” Matt muttered. “They led the infected right to us. We need to do something to block that entrance.”
    “I’m on it.” Taylor raised his voice to address the medical staff and families, who had begun trickling out of the hospital rooms. “I need a few people to give me a hand so we can block those doors.”
    Matt and Taylor ran to the waiting area with a few nurses and some of the men who were visiting their wives. Together, they started moving furniture to pile in front of the doors. Chairs, couches, anything that could be used to block the entrance. When the waiting room was empty they removed the plastic reclining chairs from each hospital room and stacked them against the door.
    Taylor pulled Matt aside. “Those doors aren’t gonna hold forever and when they go there’s gonna be a flood of infected in here. We both know what they’re going to do to these mothers and babies.”
    Matt passed a hand over his eyes. “We need a plan to get these people out of here. Where’s the rest of your department? Shouldn’t they be providing back up? People have been hurt.”
    “The department is only staffed to put out a certain number of fires at once. People have been hurt all over the city. I don’t know what’s happening out there.””
    “I didn’t think about that.” Matt grimaced. “Any ideas on what we should do with these people then?”
    “If there weren’t infected pounding on that door I