The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum Read Online Free PDF Page B

power-cut!"
    Crispin turns to look.
After a few seconds, it is evident that there is no emergency power
to save the day. Even the street-lighting over the car-park starts to
fizzle out, one by one.
    "My housemate!"
I gibber. "Whatsername… Cock-hazard… she's in
surgery!"
    "We must go back,
Sarah Bellummm ," Crispin groans sympathetically. "To
ensure that all is well."
    He grabs his take-out box
from under the piano, and helps me to my feet. The waiters barely
take notice, as we hurry out of Hookah's Restaurant.
    We shamble as quickly as
we can across the road, back into the hospital grounds. They are
eerie and forbidding, without the phosphorescent lights.
    The electronic doors are
no longer functioning. But no matter – the glass in them has
already been smashed – into a million pieces.
    "What the f…?"
I begin to say, thoughts of a siege appearing, uninvited. Crispin's
hand on my arm stops me.
    "Emergency shatter,"
he remarks – pointing to a device in the doorframe.
    "What does it do?"
    "It fires
high-velocity metal ball-bearings into each panel of glass, from
inside the double-glazed unit," he shrugs. "It is old
technology now, but effective, in corporate building fire safety."
    Aha. Clever. I seem to
recall something like that having been patented, on Tomorrow's
World …
    We step through the empty
frames, feet crunching on the shattered fragments. I take another
piece of old technology – by Trevor Baylis – out of my
pocket, kept attached to my keyring. Wind it up with its tiny handle
for a few seconds to charge the battery, and switch it on. The bright
LED torch beam illuminates the pale walls of the hospital corridor.
    We head for the Emergency
Room. Distant cries, and groans of distressed patients echo in the
building. I wonder how many life-support systems have just been
abruptly cut off.
    More torchlight greets
us, as we find the Reception desk, exactly where we left it.
    "My housemate,"
I pant, my nerves making me breathless. "Er… you know…
looks like she lost a fight with a bulldozer. Bad taste in men. Talks
like she still reads too much Brothers Grimm for her age. Miss
Fuck-Knows. Went to have her thumb reattached…"
    "Oh, yes," the
receptionist nods, her spectacles reflecting the torchlight. "The
psychiatric biohazard case. Her bloods and swabs came back as
positive for syphilis, gonnorrhea, chlamydia, T-parasites, ringworm,
impetigo, herpes, HPV, and HIV – so she's been put in the
Isolation Ward following her surgery."
    "What?" I make
a mental note to keep my toothbrush and toothpaste separate from hers
in the bathroom, from now on. Preferably locked in a strongbox,
somewhere else. Like Switzerland. "How on Earth could she have
EVERYTHING?"
    "Well, apparently,
she never went to the GUM clinic, and always just took her
boyfriend's word for it when he said he didn't have anything
infectious, before having unprotected sex with him. Including the
boyfriends who admitted to paying for sex, and to group sex in the
past," the receptionist shrugs, with an expression of 'what a
stupid twat' that I fully understand. "You can go and check up
on her – it's at the far end of the hospital, lower ground
floor, next to the morgue. You'll have to use the stairs."
    Of course. Corpses aren't
at risk of catching anything. Makes sense to put the biohazard cases
down there.
    "Will you be all
right on your own here, ladies?" Crispin asks, his voice
concerned. The receptionist, and uniformed HCA on duty, look at each
other and smirk.
    "Sure," says
the receptionist. "Any trouble comes looking for us, they'll be
met with the almighty force of this armed and fully operational
nursing station."
    The assistant twangs the
fingertips of her latex gloves meaningfully. Ouch .
    I think they'll be just
fine.
    * * * * *
    We avoid the WET FLOOR warning signs and head through the swing doors, down the stairwell.
High above us, I can hear shuffling and groaning, about three floors
up.
    "Maybe a
sleepwalker?" I suggest in a