it is. It's changing them,” Emma said. “How many more in the emergency room?”
George said, “Don't know. We'll want to find the doc and ask him how many infected.”
There were six bays in the corridor. If you turned the corner, there was an open area with room for seven more gurneys around the walls. From this area came a series of crashes and screams. They couldn't wait any longer. She drew her Glock and said to George, “We've got to go in.”
George nodded. They turned the corner and saw five more of the things. Two were hunched over dead bodies, chewing the necks and stripping away muscle and flesh. Emma drew a bead on one of them, put two shots in its head. The other one, hearing this, turned its head. She blew half its face off. That left three more.
The other three tore out of the main room, busting through the double doors. Emma followed to the door, opened it, and squeezed off three shots. They missed, and the creatures loped around a corner and disappeared. Son of a bitch .
She felt a hand on her shoulder and was wound so tight, she spun and backhanded the man across the face. Her face went red as she realized she'd just clocked Doctor Weiss. He stood rubbing his cheek, which had sprouted an angry red welt.
“Hello to you, too, Sheriff,” Weiss said.
“Sorry. Wound tight.”
“Why are you at the door?”
“Three of those freaks just took off that way. Towards the main lobby.”
“We can't let them get to the upper floors.”
Emma said, “How many patients with this. Would you guess?”
“We have a hundred beds. Almost all full with this...whatever it is. So figure at least eighty to ninety, plus what was in the emergency room.”
“Dammit. That's a lot to handle.”
George sidled up to Emma. “I just called for backup. Orr's tied up?”
“I sent him to the Ramsey building,” Emma said.
Their backup choices were thin to begin with. Orr was the only other one on duty tonight. Her other deputies were either off tonight or away on vacation. And she didn't have time to track people down.
“We need to get the riot guns from the cars. Doctor Weiss, what floors would the non-infected people be on?”
“Generally seven and eight. Those are the surgical floors. There's a kid on nine, too. I've seen him a number of times. Chris. He'd be in peds.”
“What about the military?” George asked.
“The nearest base is two hundred miles away,” Emma said. “We need help now.”
“Might be worth calling,” George said.
“The shotguns, George. Time's wasting. I'll have Orr call them.”
Tim Orr pulled his cruiser up in front of the Ramsey building. He parked, got out, and headed for the front door. Chief Ross had sounded panicked on the phone, telling him something about a pervert assaulting her daughter. And that some weird stuff was going on at the hospital. She couldn't say what, though.
Tim was the newest member of the force, on for a little over two years. He liked the job well enough, but you could only break up so many fights at Yancy's Tavern or write so many speeding tickets before things turned deadly dull. Maybe this case would be different, something exciting. He might even get to chase a suspect.
He radioed to the Chief that he was on scene. The building seemed quiet and he approached the front doors and went inside. The building didn't seem much warmer inside. In fact it almost matched the cool October air outside. The lobby was all marble and granite, giving the place a cool feeling.
He heard an elevator ding and then some voices. From a corridor off the main lobby, two men and a woman appeared. One man had white, bushy eyebrows and dressed in a suit that probably cost more than a month's pay. The woman was in her early twenties, wore a short skirt, and walked like she was advertising ass for sale. The other guy was a twenty something with a nose piercing