The Screaming (Book 2): Refuge Read online

  “Hello Janet.” Zac uttered.

  Janet turned and looked at the thin hobbling man who stood in front of her.

  “You’re alive! But…” Janet said as a lump formed in her throat.

  “How?” She managed.

  Zac laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I see you’re popular.” He said, gesturing with his crutch to the massing crowd beyond the doors.

  “I could barely mass a dozen on a Sunday back in London, but as the world dies people find comfort in God.” Janet replied.

  Janet stepped forward, placed both her hands on Zac’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’m so happy to see you.” She said.

  Zac looked at Janet’s hands as they gripped his shoulders. LUKE, 9.39 was still scrawled on the back of her hand and had in fact been reapplied several times with pens of differing colour and thickness. Noticing him looking at her hand once again she dropped them to her side and swiftly struck up a new line of conversation.

  “So, what do you think of my new digs?” She said turning on the spot and raising her hands to her surroundings.

  “Lovely!” Zac giggled.

  “It’s not exactly Westminster Abbey, but it’s a start.” She replied.

  “What’s with the Stars and Stripes?” Zac quizzed.

  “This was an American base.” Fee said.

  “Oh I see. Yee Hah!” He teased.

  “We’re going to go and see Max. We thought you’d like to join us.” Fee said to Janet.

  The dull veneer of large grey plastic panels cloaked the dated three story 1960’s hospital building. The extensive medical facility was clearly much newer than the majority of buildings on the base, but appeared strangely old fashioned in comparison. Paint flaked from ageing window frames and patterned concrete walls bordered the broken automatic doors. A large blue sign read, 501st COMBAT SUPPORT WING, MEDICAL SERVICES. Parking bays were crammed with various types of ambulances. Camouflaged American Humvee’s with red crosses, the British Landrover counterpart and civilian ambulances sat waiting for their crews to return from within the huge hospital.

  The foyer was a large imposing room with a concrete spiral staircase forming the centre piece of the space. In front of which was an unoccupied reception desk and to its rear the later addition of modern lifts, each conned off and affixed with a sign reading, OUT OF ORDER.

  “Just like the NHS!” Zac joked to a scowling Fee.

  “So where is he?” Zac moved on from his flop of a joke.

  “Third floor!” Janet replied.

  “Of course he is.” Zac said, as he turned to the stairs and braced himself for the painful ascent.

  The hallway at the top of the stairs appeared equally as vast as that on the ground floor, this despite much of the space being used for storage of medical supplies, bedding and a small kitchen space. Two corridors lead off from the hallway. Signs pointing to the left read, NURSES STATION, ADMINISTRATION and DOCTORS LOUNGE. Signs pointing to the right said, MATERNITY and PAEDIATRICS. Fee lead them through the double doors and into the ward.

  “Blimey, it’s more serious than I thought.” Zac joked again.

  “That’s enough!” Fee snapped.

  “Sorry.” Zac offered, suitably chastised.

  Zac’s jovial defence mechanism soon faded as the reality of the wards current use became apparent. Line after line of beds, heart monitors and equipment filled the dimly lit room. Doctors and nurses summarily tended to seriously injured people. One man appeared severely burnt, another was missing an arm, a young woman had a large abdominal injury and a small boy cried at her bed side as he grasped her hand. A lingering stench of a bloody vomit and excrement cocktail hung in the air like a cloud of death. They made their way through the dark stuffy room, past bed after bed of suffering and pain and through another set of doors into a corridor of small rooms intended for individual patents. Fee bee-lined for the room at the bottom left and stopped just before the door to compose herself before taking Zac by the hand and entering the room.

  A single bed dominated the room. To the left an array of beeping machines and monitors subjugated the back left corner. Wires reached from the life preserving equipment connecting to the figure that laid on the bed. To the right of the bed, a line of steel medical tables arched around the back right corner of the room and an abundance of medical supplies, bandages, disinfectant, drugs and towels lay with obsessive neatness atop the worktops. Fee immediately squatted on a stool next to the patient and took hold of his hand and kissed it before holding it to her forehead.

  “Look who’s here!” Fee whispered.

  Zac moved closer and smiled at the figure laid out in the bed, but quickly realised that the smile had dropped from his face. He tried to regain it but his awkward shock was already out. It was Max, he knew that, but it didn’t look like Max. The broken mass that filled the bed knocked Zac like a pan to the face. Max had severe burns. Half of his face had almost melted to the bone, with strands of warped muscle supporting a welded eye socket. His left arm and torso suffered much the same fate, but worst of all, both his legs were missing from the groin down.

  “He’s conscious!” Zac said.

  “Yes. They had to perform three operations on his legs. They were crushed. They had to remove them. He has full thickness burns to seventy percent of his body from an aviation fuel fire. He’s conscious, but very heavily sedated, to ease the pain.” Fee said.

  “Aviation fuel?” Zac probed.

  “From the crash! After the Army found us we took them to the crash site.” It had been devastated by a pack of screamers, but we found Max hidden under some fuselage.” Janet contributed.

  “He’s a very lucky young man.” A voice said from the corridor.

  “Doctor Wang.” Zac announced as he recognised the scruffy physician.

  “He’ll need several more operations, but I’ve seen soldiers in far worse condition take back their lives.” Wang reassured.

  The moment of heartening silence was shattered in an instant as the whining wail of a bellowing siren howled into life. Speakers in the corridor burst with the buzz of the siren. Soldiers and personnel instantly altered their routine into well practiced drills.

  “What is it?” Janet asked Wang.

  “Perimeter alarm!”

  Chapter Nine

  “Stay here!” Wang ordered as he flew from the room and dashed down the corridor.

  Blinding white luminosity flooded the room through the dominating Georgian windows. Janet rushed to the sizeable aperture, closely followed by a hobbling Zac. The darkening dusk beyond the fence line had been cut into segments of striking white blaze from the sequence of flares that hung from the sky like a string of Christmas lanterns. Fee hardly moved from Max’s side, clinging ever tighter to his hand, but looked up at Zac, expectantly awaiting information.

  “What’s happening?” She eventually enquired.

  Zac looked over at Fee with his now well tested encouraging smile and opened his mouth with a reassuring explanation already prepared in his head. No word passed his lips as he was prematurely silenced by a thunderous blast that shook the buildings very foundations. He abandoned his comforting waffle and turned his wide eyed gaze to the bright orange eruption igniting some 500 yards away at the fence line. The repetitive drone of the perimeter alarm continued to fire through the hospital speakers and echo through the boulevards of neighbouring buildings. Below in the streets, troops rallied and mustered, darting to various locations of military advantage and fixed gun positions situated on street corners and junctions. Others boarded large green military trucks which then sped off towards the unravelling mayhem at the fence line.

  Another booming explosion rapidly shadowed by a volley of further blasts rocked the room. Zac strained his eyes on the fence line at the far end of the street, immediately opposite the hospital. Apprehension turned to fear as a swarming black shadow engulfed the far side of the fence like an expanding wave of dark miasma. T
he mammoth gloomy mass morphed and swelled as it fiercely advanced. Suddenly the roaring repetitive crack of heavy machine guns cut through the darkness. Several rapid streaming lines of tracer rounds tore through the street, impacting on the marauding bulk and illuminating the metamorphic form in a barrage of blood filled carnage.

  “We have to go!” Zac demanded as he flung himself around and barked at the room.

  “How many?” Janet anxiously enquired.

  Zac looked at her and shook his head. He didn’t need to reply, the look on his face provided all the information she needed. Heavy footsteps pounded up the corridor and Wang appeared panting in the doorway.

  “There’s been a penetration at Crash Gate B! It’s okay. You’re safe here.” Wang detailed before setting off up the corridor once more.

  Janet poked her head into the corridor and watched as Wang flung himself through the double doors at the far end of the hallway. But once through, he abruptly turned and to Janet’s dismay, he rapidly attached something around the door handles.

  “What are you doing?” Janet challenged as she yelled at Wang and started making her way down the corridor.

  Another thunderous explosion resonated across the base and Zac flung himself back towards the window. The fence line was ablaze with activity. Rapaciously insatiable infected lurched at the wire mesh fencing and were immediately crushed and pulped as the sheer weight of those that followed grinded and splintered bone before mashing pulverised flesh through the substantial metal grid. As more and more bodies piled against the hard-wearing barrier, its upright supports began to bow and warp. Until suddenly one gave way and spiralled, clanging down the road. Instantly the bulk of hundreds of Screamers flooded through the expanding breach. Another upright was instantly flattened as hundreds of creatures stampeded onto the base. Many soldiers turned and ran, while others who stood their ground, were floored and instantly disembowelled as fracturing hands tore through clothing and armour alike.

  Guns fell silent and the high pitch child-like screams of the charging infected monsters governed the air as they swelled through the camp. Below, nurses, doctors and troops ran for their lives but were charged down and buried under the bodies of the piling hunger driven beasts. The occasional shot rang out, but instead of deterring or fending off the attackers, only seemed to provide them with a target.

  Zac could do little but watch as the camp was rapidly overrun. The quarantine compound through which he had earlier passed was flattened, the cherry pickers toppled and their occupants consumed. Beyond the compound, the hangar in which he had earlier woken, burned in a blaze of white flame, clearly at the hand of some military weapon deployed to cleanse the ageing structure of Screamers. Zac watched on, his fingertips gripped the wooden windowsill and flakes of white gloss paint wedged themselves under his finger nails, until he felt a warm wet tear fall from his face onto the back of his hand, plunging him back into the here and now.

  “We must go!” He pleaded.

  “We can’t!” Janet replied as she appeared back in the doorway.

  “Wang has padlocked a chain around the doors. We’re locked in!” She concluded.

  “They’ll get in. They always get in. We must go!” Zac demanded.

  “We can’t!” Fee tearfully contributed.

  “We can’t leave Max!” She added, squeezing the frail hand of the bedbound patient.

  Max slowly turned his head towards Fee and through the excruciating agony of his smelted face, managed to turn the right side of his mouth upwards in a distressing attempt at a smile.

  “Go!” Max pleaded, with a laboured wheeze.

  “No! You’re coming with us!” Fee defiantly responded.

  Max maintained the quasi smile and turned his head towards Janet, who hung in a nervous limbo by the doorway.

  “You have to take her!” He implored.

  “Okay!” She tearfully replied as she stepped to Fee and placed her hand on her shoulder.

  Zac stared through the window down into the engulfed street below and tried to project the image of duty, while simultaneously avoiding the repulsive dilemma unfolding within the room. Zac knew what was about to be asked of him. He knew because he would ask the same if he was in Max’s place. Suddenly the echoing thunder of weapons fire pulsated through the walls and the boom of the wooden doors at the front of the building splintered as they were brutally breached. Janet took the opportunity of the distraction to shepherd Fee towards the door, poised, ready to move. Zac, turned to Max, who was already looking up at him with tear filled eyes.

  “Please!” Max uttered.

  “I… I… can’t!” Zac replied.

  Max agonisingly raised his head, lifted the supporting pillow from under his neck and handed it to a trembling Zac.

  “I don’t want to be the main course Zac, please!”

  Zac wiped his face with his sleeve and reluctantly took hold of the pillow. Fee buried her head into Janet’s shoulder and burst in to tears. Ear splitting screams boomed up the stairwell and blended with the heavy footfall of ascending infected.

  “I’m so sorry!” Zac blubbered as he lowered the pillow over Max’s face.

  The doors at the end of the corridor shuddered violently like a localised earthquake. Janet strained her eyes towards the increasingly violent judder of the double doors. The stretch of the thick metal chain placed on the doors by Wang strained as the wooden panels bowed with the pressure of hundreds of frenzied screamers, fighting for primary position at the doorway. A familiar face lead the pack, his heaving breath formed condensation on the narrow windows in the door. Viscous blood seeped from his tear ducts, coating his eyeballs with a red film. His mouth gaped with a satisfying recent feed coating his teeth and chin. It was Doctor Wang!

  “We’re out of time!” Janet explained.

  Zac looked at her as Max started to struggle. His natural survival instinct kicked in as he frantically grabbed at the air, trying to prevent his demise. His desperate flailing hands located Zac’s arm and he gripped it tightly drawing blood with his nails. Zac winced, but held firm. The door slowly fractured with a splintering ease and the corridor opened up before the hunger driven infected who flew into the corridor and fanned off into room after room.

  “We’re out of time!” Janet cried as she dragged Fee back into the room.

  “Quick under here!” She said ushering Fee under one of the steel medical tables that dominated the corner of the room.

  “Zac! Come on!” She barked.

  Max’s arms dropped to his chest as his strength drained away. Zac released the pillow, his hands shaking uncontrollably from the pressure he had placed on it.

  “Zac!” Janet yelped.

  He turned and darted under the table, curled his feet up under his bum and clung to Fee, who in turn clung to Janet. A split second later Wang rounded the door, rapidly followed by three or four more infected. A vale of dreaded anxiety covered the three. They desperately struggled to control their breathing as every tear or ounce of mucus that dripped from their faces, amplified every miniscule irritation, tempting their every urge to move and potentially reveal their hiding place.

  Their seemingly minor irritations were abruptly forgotten, as suddenly Max gasped into life. Zac looked up at the fragile man above them on the gurney. Clearly his efforts to help Max on his way without the painful indignity of being eaten had failed. Only allowing him the time to slip into a temporary unconsciousness. Max had barely seconds to realise his surroundings, before he was pounced upon by the infected. Wang sliced his teeth into his neck, blood gargled through his gnawing mouth. Max hardly moved, no screams of pain or cries of desperation. His morphine filled veins offered a slight initial relief. Tears rolled down the cheeks of Janet, Fee and Zac as they sat powerless to stop the suffering. More and more infected flew into the room at hearing the dinner bell and set about slicing into Max’s torso. The late arrivals stood momentarily confused by the lack of legs on which to feed, before battling for space on his right arm. />
  Wang suddenly raised his head and released a harrowing scream of defiance before returning to his meal and tearing at Max’s distorted muscular shoulder. Max excruciatingly turned his head in a shocking display of his inner strength. His eyes fixed on his three comrades, cowering under the medical tables. The sounds of tearing flesh, popping muscles and snapping bone vaulted from wall to wall in the small room. Suddenly a new fear dawned on Zac and he leaned across to Fee and Janet.

  “If he turns, we’re dead!” He whispered.

  Within moments of Zac quietly voicing his concern, a small trail of blood trickled from Max’s right eye, across the bridge of his nose and into his left. A vacant, empty glare filled his swelling flushed eyes as what was left of Max evacuated his rapidly hollowing shell. His jaw dropped and the kinetic build up to the inevitable shriek began. The trio cringed as they pushed their backs against the wall, bracing themselves for the onslaught that would immediately follow. But no scream came. The collective atop Max had worked their way through his chest cavity and severed his speech cords and lungs in a melee of fraught consumption. His jaw dropped and face turned lifeless and pale.

  Chapter Ten

  A fowl stench of shredded bowel, intestine and discarded stomach contents hung in the air. The excessively soiled bed stood isolated in the centre of the room, apparently held together by little more than the blood drenched sheets that almost appeared to weep with gore filled trickles of Max’s residual entrails. Two younger, weaker Screamers hoovered the bed for the smallest scraps and slops of the dominant pack that had beaten them to the main course. A crimson halo of grisly splatter on the polished tile floor encircled the rickety gurney and sparkled as the dawn sun rose and penetrated the gloomy slaughter house.

  Zac had endured excruciating cramp in his right leg for well over four hours, biting his jumper against the pain, too afraid to move and alert the hunger driven infected of their presence. White tear tracks glazed Fee’s mucus covered face and Janet battled to keep her eyes open and alert as she fought the extreme fatigue that plagued them all. The hours of constant fear, anxiety and grief had devastated all three.