Chapter 7

We were into the Start Room before anyone even began to put on their armour. Nobody knew if we could leave stuff here and come back for it later so we all just figured we would take the bags along with us and dump them off when we arrived.

There was a lot of griping about putting on smelly old neck guards, shin guards and gloves.

“Remember the story of the big strong guy who got injured, fell behind, dragged down, and then got eaten? Don’t be that guy! You need to be able to move. You need some protection” I reiterated for the hundredth time. It was like talking to infants. One of them was going to have to die to get this idea through to them. Maybe more than one.

Duct tape was used like crazy; the pads were affixed more or less permanently by the time we’d used most of the roll. Our archer wore the least armour, but even she got an old soccer shin pad taped to her left arm. It didn’t get in her way or even weigh much, so she got it (over her protests). Ankle and calf guards were mandatory. Better mobility and protection was probably available, but not at these guys’ price point.

I sighed as we repacked what was left into backpacks and linked up. Mine was rolled-up and stuffed into Jays. I knew that I was going to need to be agile, probably right off the bat (if the stories I’d heard were even slightly true). As soon as I hit the portal at bottom of the staircase, we were all there, standing in what looked like the waiting room for the Emergency department.

‘Please check in” was on a clean sign hanging above a desk that fully enclosed by some sort of glass and a Zombie was standing in it, just starting to bounce off the glass wall as it saw our group. The rest of the place was absolutely filthy. Even the worst day at Xavier’s was nothing like this. Oddly, I recognized some of the stuff around me. On a second look, this didn’t look like an emergency ward, but more like an admitting department for a psych ward.

“Ok” I spoke quietly, “we planned this. Firestick, you’re up first” and I gestured to Jay. We wanted to see what a fire ball could do to a Zombie, word on the ‘Net was that one of them would need 3-4 basic fireballs to kill one, and then only if they hit the head. Jay pushed on the one-way door, shoving the half rotten nurse a step or two back. Then having it swing wide and letting the thing stagger out. Our spear men skewered it in the shoulders while Jay hit it in the head once, badly toasting it and probably wrecking what was left of its vision.

“Again” I called out.

“She’s not going to kill it,” one of the spears complained “she’s just not strong enough”

Sure enough, the second little ball of flame mangled the creatures face more, but it still waved its arms forward trying to grab anything within reach. The smell was horrible. “Archer, you’re up. Target the head.” I quietly called out, Jay stepped off to the side with a pissed off grunt. A single arrow through the head killed it, and we took some comfort from that. My issue was that these ceilings were about 10 feet tall, but our archer was only 5’6”. Getting a clear shot over my head wasn’t going to happen, and ‘friendly fire’ was a real possibility.

“Ok, so far the battle plan remains unchanged. We stay silent, ranged weapons engage when they can and then retreat behind the lines and watch our backs as well as look for clear openings! You accidentally drop one of your frontmen, and you can probably kiss all our asses goodbye...”. I may have been exaggerating, but I needed them to calmly assess a shot before taking it. Fat chance with a bunch of stoners in a mental hospital filled with zombies.

The other good thing about putting our fire-staffs right up front was that they used their staffs to slowly prop doors open, or quietly slide curtains back. Our next zombie was actually restrained to a bed, wide buckled straps slowly wearing through its forearms and ankles but still holding it firmly.

“Mine.” I whispered. I needed to see if I could remove a head with a single strike of my knife.

I could.

Barely.

I pulled the Silver with the new technique I’d been using lately, and kept quiet about it. Both Zombies had ‘donated’ 2 nuggets of silver each. If the forums were right, there’d be 22 more of these and one big bad guy, all in black.

Oddly, the two we’d found so far had been all alone, and one had been tied up. The warnings were that these things would swarm, and that they’d initially be in groups of three or four. I was worried that having a few ‘singles’ would lead to the remaining zombies being in a few larger groups.

The place wasn’t Xavier’s, but it was set up in a similar way. There were two wings and a central block. As far as I could tell, there was only one floor though.

The groups next encounter was two zombies and they shuffled towards us down a long hallway once we opened the door to the first wing. Jay gave a stifled shriek and I prayed that she’d bit it off fast enough to not attract the attention of the rest of whatever was left in here.

No further instruction was needed, and our ranged weapons lined up for their first real ‘live fire’ exercise. Every one of them shot high, and I groaned inwardly when the glass windows at the end of the hallway shattered. To their credit, they each ‘reloaded’ and fired again, each hitting their (now closer) targets. The one with an arrow through her head dropped immediately while the other ‘toasted’ one continued its determined walk towards us before being dropped by yet another round of two fireballs.

We were impressed with the stopping power of our archer. What I wasn’t impressed with was the rest of us. Stupidly we just watched the action instead of looking about for further danger.

Someone managed to catch some movement out of the side of their eye and gave a startled yelp. I spun around quickly and intercepted an arm reaching for the neck of one of the spearmen. I caught the hand at the wrist with my blade and removed it, but the zombie basically ignored that just kept advancing. Our ‘clueless’ spearman finally caught on to the danger behind us and while turning around, managed to strike me with the butt of his spear right in the temple, knocking me out cold even though I had a helmet on. I have no idea what happened next.

I came to, and was trapped under an overturned gurney. Through the bars on the side a zombie face snapped at me and its hand-less arm poked me over and over. After getting my bearings and letting the pounding in my head subside somewhat, I recalled my knife, got my arm into position and stabbed the things head back through the bars until it lay still and then I think I passed out again.

Coming around again, the first thing I noticed (besides a pounding headache) was the quiet. No voices nearby or in the distance, no dragging or stepping sounds of the undead nearby. A quick check and I determined that I still had a massive headache, but nothing else seemed off. Unbelievable if it was true. Next up, I had to get out from under here.

I couldn’t squeeze out (good thing really, the zombie couldn’t squeeze in either) I also couldn’t seem to ‘drop’ one of the side rails either. I’d seen these types of beds many times before but the mechanism seemed jammed. Only option left was to push it over and hope I could get ready for anything that was attracted by the noise. There was lots of room to my right, and having it fall onto the zombie corpse next to me might deaden some of the sound. I remembered to pull the silver from the body and was surprised to get another odd ‘unidentified’ marble instead. I shrugged internally and pushed up as hard as I could into the mattress above me with my left arm, and knee. The gurney eventually went over with a thud (and a gross ‘squish’) and I scrambled up, half pushing myself up with one hand on a plastic chair nearby. My left foot felt weird and slipped around a whole bunch. A single glance at it determined the cause. It’d been a zombie chew toy, but those rotten teeth were unable to get through the steel toe and sole which were now exposed and I was sliding around on. I grabbed the duct tape off my arm and as quietly as I could (which is nearly impossible with duct tape) reattached the half-torn-off sole. If I made it outta here, I was going to send ‘BigRed’ safety boots a huge thank-you letter.

Standing up again, I took in my bearings. I was in a ward room, the three other beds were empty and nothing else seemed really out of place, but an odd juice box standing on a windowsill was perfectly clean. I picked it up and on a hunch, I managed to store it.

Pulling my knife and shield I quietly made my way out the door and peeked into the hall. It was the same hall as I remembered being in earlier. The two dead bodies of zombies were nearby in the floor. I checked them and found someone else knew about pulling out prizes without getting their hands dirty. File that one away for later.

I came across the first of our party when I turned the first corner. I’d had a quick peek before pulling my head back, hoping it would be enough not to be noticed if any undead were silently waiting. It took me a second to understand what I’d seen and slowly sliding my head past the corner of the wall, I confirmed it. Our Stoner with the fire staff lay on his back, neck ripped apart staring blankly at the ceiling. I poked his corpse with my toe, wondering if this was a prelude to him also becoming a zombie, but the corpse held its peace.

I sat down on a nearby chair and considered my options. My ‘pickpocket’ didn’t activate, but I figured that was because he hadn’t any Silver left (it hadn’t activated on him earlier in the day either). His staff was in the corner, but I couldn’t store it. I left it leaning up against the corner, unsure what I’d be able to do with a fire staff anyways.

Getting up again, I circled the wing I was in, hoping to either find some survivors or at least ensure I wasn’t going to be ambushed from behind. I found one more zombie corpse, already looted, and nothing else of note.

Backtracking into the Center block of admissions, I found another lifeless zombie (also looted) besides the nurse one we’d found right when entering. This one had no fire damage at all, just two spear holes in its upper chest. At least those two were helping out.

I snuck on, once finding two moving zombies behind a locked door in a ‘padded room’. I’m not sure of the motivation to the setup at this place, but Xavier’s never put two patients inside one of those at the same time. There were four more ‘dead’ ones also. A combination of arrows and spears had felled these ones. Jay must have been staying out of it ... or ‘they’ were dead.

A slow dragging sound snapped me out of my thoughts about Jay. From below a curtain to my left, two corpses were dragging themselves across the floor on arms toward me. I readied my shield and knife, then circled them so I could drop onto them one-at-a-time. A boot on the arm, a shield in the face, and big fucking knife through the heart and the crawling stopped. Both of them had their knees wrecked and their pants burnt. I guess Jay was still alive at one point.

I pushed back the curtain that the crawlers had come out from and found one of the spearmen (not the one who ‘brained’ me earlier) on a gurney, a heavily damaged leg bleeding all over the place.

Aware of the fact that I was all alone, I quickly scouted around the rear of this section before returning to bleeding out stoner. Xavier’s had us go through first-aid training annually and I recognized that I’d have to apply a tourniquet if I was going to have a hope of saving him. I stripped off his shredded pants with my knife, finding a heavily bleeding calf. The telephone cord was ripped out of the wall, and I wrapped it around his leg, holding down a broken piece of handrail which pressed in at about the place where I thought the (artery?) might be. The flow stopped (mostly) but our guy here was still out of it. I pulled his Silver, and went exploring, fully expecting for him to die before I could get back to him.