Sorrow's Gift

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Crash

Something hard slammed into him, sending his body flying across the room like a ragdoll. He crashed into Noah and tumbled to the floor, his head smacking against the tile.

Dazed, Crash brought a hand to the side of his head. The lights above him flickered, and he struggled to hold onto his connection with them. A scream pierced the silence, sending a wave of pain through his already throbbing head. Beside him, Noah popped off six rounds of shots from his handgun.

Crash forced his eyes open. His vision blurred, but there was no mistaking the red eyes.

He scrambled backward until his back hit the wall. The machine gun pressed into him. His fear attempted to paralyze him, but he pushed through it, forcing himself to react.

He struggled to grab his weapon and pull it around his body, but his hands were shaking so badly he could hardly find the trigger.

The nurse they'd found slumped over the med cart had been transformed into some kind of monster. Her skin oozed a foul-smelling acid that dripped from the sores on her arms and face onto the floor. The tiles at her feet sizzled.

Pointed teeth that looked like they belonged on a shark more than a human being stretched her lips wide as her mouth snapped open and closed.

The monster lunged toward Noah with terrifying speed, pouncing on his chest and clawing at his arms.

Shit, he couldn't shoot this thing with enough accuracy to hit it without hitting Noah too.

Crash stood and vaulted over the hospital bed, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. His eyes landed on the cracked monitor on the floor by the nurse's cart. He picked it up and swung it as hard as he could at the nurse's head.

She screamed as her head jerked sideways.

Noah rolled over, using the momentum of the hit to push her off his chest. He gripped the edge of the windowsill and catapulted himself toward Crash.

"What do we do?" Crash asked.

Noah leaned down to grab his bat from the floor. He reared back and slammed the weapon into the nurse's head. Her skull cracked and more acid poured through the wound, but it didn't kill her.

Crash finally found the trigger on his machine gun and sprayed the monster with bullets. He had a hard time keeping it steady and ended up unloading half his magazine into the wall just above her head.

The bullets that actually hit her seemed to do some damage, and she fell face-first onto the floor. For one brief moment, he thought he might have killed it, but she pushed up on her hands, attempting to stand.

And she was pissed.

"We run," Noah said. "Go."

Crash didn't need to be told twice. He sprinted from the room, waiting until Noah was clear to slam the door shut. That wouldn't hold her for long, but at least it would buy them some time.

"Which way?" he shouted. If they ran toward the girls, they'd just be leading this thing straight to them. At the same time, if they ran outside, they'd be leaving the girls inside alone.

What if they were being attacked, too? Those damned radios were crap. They should have done a test before they split up, but he just hadn't thought about it. He tried to connect to the signal in his mind, but it was too much to keep the power going and manage it all at once.

"This way," Noah said, making the decision for him as he ran in the direction of the ER.

They'd only made it halfway to the next turn before the nurse's scream echoed down the hallway. The sound seemed to reach inside his mind and twist it. He lifted his hands to his ears and doubled over, the pain so intense he could barely think straight.

When it was over, the nurse was already on them again, her mouth open wide and her red eyes locked on Crash.

Before he could steady his aim to shoot her again, Noah had grabbed his shotgun from his backpack. He blasted the nurse at close range, taking off the entire left side of her face.

Acid spewed from the wound, a single drop landing on Crash's foot. He screamed as it burned a hole through the top of his boot.

Thank God for steel-toed boots, because he did not want to find out what would happen if that stuff got on his skin.

The nurse fell to her knees for a moment, but wasn't giving up. She crawled toward them, the bottom half of her jaw hanging loose. Crash aimed and pulled the trigger on his machine gun, spraying her with bullets until he heard the click of his empty magazine.

The nurse screamed again, but this time the sound gurgled as acid poured from her throat and cheeks. She lay completely on the ground now, still clawing her way across the floor.

Noah stepped forward and smashed what was left of her head in with his bat, the acid eroding parts of the wood so fast it disintegrated the entire end of the bat before he could pull it away.

Crash doubled over, bracing his palms against his knees and trying not to lose his lunch.

"She was normal when you moved her, right?" he asked. "I mean, dead, but normal?"

Noah nodded. "We need to get to the girls," he said. "I think we just got our answer about Lily, which means the girls are in trouble."

Crash bowed his head, tears of frustration and anger welling in his eyes. He'd really hoped they were wrong about her. This was all his fault.

"Come on," Noah said.

They ran down the corridor and followed the signs toward the emergency room, but there were rotters everywhere. From the looks of it, all the dead bodies that had littered the floors earlier were now up and walking around. Crash loaded another magazine into his machine gun and sprayed the hallway, taking down ten or eleven that stood in their path.

Noah's bat was gone, so he'd started blasting heads with his shotgun, but they hadn't brought enough ammunition for all this. Crash cursed. He had another duffel full of guns and ammo back in the truck, but it wouldn't do them much good now.

They kept fighting their way forward, but when they rounded another corner, the double-doors leading to the next section of the hospital came into view. The windows were covered in blood, but Crash could hear the moans of the undead on the other side of the doors.

He jogged toward them, but about ten feet before he reached the end of the hall, something leapt at him from the shadows and knocked him to the ground. Pain burned through his arm as something sharp ripped his skin apart.

He couldn't hold onto his connection with the building's power and all the lights switched off.

Anger and fear surged through him. He'd come too far to die here, but if this was the end, he was going to take whatever this thing was with him.

Without thinking, he reached up and wrapped his palms around the face of the zombie who had attacked him. It was another woman, her long hair falling against his arm and face as she hovered above him.

She struggled, clawing at his arm with fingers that were sharp as knives.

Deep inside him, something new awakened, like a flame igniting. He poured that fire into his palms, meeting the zombie's eyes dead-on.

Jolts of high-voltage electricity shot through his fingertips. The zombie's body jerked and twitched, sparks flying from its eyes and mouth, but he didn't let go. He sat up, lifting the thing off his chest as it bucked against him, cooking from the inside.

He didn't let go until it had burned to ashes in his hands.