Chapter 4

End of the World as we Know It

We sat in the Mercy Hospital Safe room for a while. I guess we were all tired out from that crap in front of the hospital. There was no food this time and we had to put up with Francis complaining about it and hearing him say "I hate being hungry," every five minutes. Bill was on watch at the door leading into the actual hospital, watching the infected wander about outside and lost in his own silent thoughts. Zoey and Francis had drifted to sleep, but it was a miracle that Los Angeles didn't hear Francis snoring, much less the zombies outside our room. Louis and I were over by the door we entered through, checking and cleaning our weapons for lack of anything better to do.

He was putting 9mm rounds for his SMG into a dry clip and I was making sure my M4 was as clean as a hospital ward. Well, not the hospital we were in at the moment, but you get the picture. "Hey Louis, what did you do before all this?"

"I worked in the IT department of Franklin Brothers downtown with my friend Ray." Working that would have killed me faster than any of these things could. It just sounded so boring. "Do I even need to ask what you did?"

"I was part of the National Guard, did two tours overseas and I was going to leave next month, but this damn zombie apocalypse got in the way." We both laughed at that, like it was a funny joke you would hear some guy at work say on break or something. There wasn't much to laugh about these days. At the time I thought that was the only reason we kept Francis around.

Louis began talking again. "So what is the army doing about all this? Do they even know how bad it is?"

I looked away, yet again recalling the battle at the apartments. That shit was going to rule my mind if I didn't get it the fuck together. "No, probably not. You know them 'Hurry up and wait.' Same old shit as in the war."

"This is a war son, don't mistake it for anything but." We glanced over at Bill, sitting in a chair and unmoving, never taking his eyes off the door with his M-16 in his lap, ready to fire.

We just slowly turned back to what we were doing, completely unsure how to respond to that. "So," Louis piped back in "you like video games?"

"You could say that. I spent a lot of my teen years playing them."

"Holy shit man, you ever play Half-Life?"

"Yeah, that and a lot of Doom." We spent the next half hour talking about games, what we liked or didn't like, and we really got along well. The only real thing Louis said he was worried about was how long it would take them to get Xbox Live up and running again after things went back to normal.

"Hey Cal, I'm going to hit the hay, alright?" I nodded to him and prepared to check my rifle again as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. A shout suddenly rang through the air and he nearly jumped to the ceiling.

Bill's voice thundered through the room. "ALRIGHT LADIES WE ARE MOVING! GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND STOW YOUR SHIT!" I literally fell out of my chair when he yelled that due to how loud it was. The zombies at the door began trying to reach through and grab him but that steel wasn't budging. In complete contrast to us Zoey slowly got up as if she had woken up from a nap completely unfazed by the cranky old man spewing insults and profanities at us. Francis still didn't wake up, I guess his snoring muffled it for him. You could hide a gunshot under his snoring.

Bill came over and kicked Francis in the chest, startling him awake. "Move it kid, we don't got any time to waste." Then he looked at us as Francis slowly, reluctantly, rose from the ground. "That chopper should still be around here but we can't afford to waste any more time. Francis, you take point with that shotgun of yours, Cal you get the rear, and the three of us will cover you from the center of the formation. Clear?" We all mumbled an affirmative as he lit another cigarette and without another word we began our trek through the hospital.

It was slow going. We had to clear every room we passed for fear of attacks from behind, but we never killed them all. More than once I had to take out straggling zombies poking their heads out of rooms looking in our direction. What we were doing was slow, but safe, and it took us awhile to reach the elevator on the fourth floor. Walking up the stairs Bill was muttering. "Goddamnit, stairs."

"Stairs are a good workout." Louis was trying to make the situation better. Would you expect any less from an optimist like him?

"I hate stairs." Francis hated everything he could lay his eyes on, but it was funny as hell to hear him say it.

"Then you and I are two, kid." That's why we took the elevator, because Bill's knee injury flared up badly on stairs. I guess it was also because we couldn't find any stairs for the life of us on the fourth floor that weren't destroyed or barricaded. We walked through a hallway with another barricade at the end of it, surrounded on all sides by alcoves with hospital beds in them with IV pouches filled with blood and "CONTAMINATED" stamped on all of them. Bodies lined the halls in various states of infection, all of them with either bite or scratch marks on them. They were all up against the wall with bullet holes and blood covering the plaster above them. I guess the army was shooting anyone who got hit.

We made it to the elevator, finding more piles of executed, infected civilians along the way. "Alright people, search these rooms but don't take too long. Stick together." We carried out Bill's orders and came up with some painkillers and two first aid kits, never opened. Francis and I made it back first and heard Zoey call out that they were coming back when Francis hit the button. The ground vibrated slightly, then a noise that almost sounded like a crash was heard followed by the tormented wails of an oncoming horde. In a second they were on us, cutting Francis and I off from Bill, Zoey, and Louis. The wall to our side collapsed as well as soon as I tried to put another clip into my rifle, and a punch to the gut sent it flying down the hall.

Francis began screaming at them, his face contorted in rage and fear at once. "GODDAMN VAMPIRES! What the hell kind of elevator makes this much fucking noise?" I was nearly certain I heard him say vampires, but instead of asking him about it I pulled out my handgun and kept shooting. A zombie hit Francis in his bad shoulder and he screamed, picked it up by the throat with one hand, and threw it back into the crowd. We heard the ding behind us as the elevator opened and the two of us stepped inside. I nearly pushed the button when I noticed something odd.

"FRANCIS," I yelled over the gunfire and screams, "WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?" It registered on his face a second before mine. The horde swarmed us before the other three could get back, and now they were cut off and alone or worse…

"Stay here brother! I forgot something at the end of the hall!" And with that he topped off his shotgun and stormed into the crowd, using his bad shoulder to help clear the way. In a second he was enveloped in the mass of bodies rushing down the hall. His laughing could be heard above the din off battle along with his swearing and insults toward the "vampires" that he was yelling at. The horde cleared out slightly and I glanced him on the other side of it holding his auto-shotgun by the barrel like a club, and using it as such. My Berretta spit bullets down the hallway striking the zombies running for Francis. The biker began pushing back toward me with three figures behind him firing into the crowd. A hunter leaped down from the vent in the ceiling and pounced straight at him, but the butt of his shotgun connected with its face in midair and it hit the ground in front of him.

"COME ON!" That all you got?" He was laughing and taunting the horde as he made his way to me with the other three in tow, swinging his shotgun like mad. A fat one came up from behind, looked at Louis, then puked. The boomer showered him and Bill with bile and the zombies immediately changed direction. I immediately ran out to help them, reloading my handgun, and plunged into yet another horde that had just showed up and was heading for my friends. It was like a mosh pit among the cold bodies and I was pushed, punched, and kicked at least fifty times. I reached the group just as Francis swung his shotgun yet again, but this time it slammed into the head of one of the zombies and damn near snapped in half.

The surprise on his face was so sudden and blaring that he didn't have time to the bullet that grazed his arm and ultimately sent him face first to the floor. Bill grabbed something from Louis's belt at that moment and began shouting. "Come on you big stupid bastards! Follow me!" With that he lit the pipe bomb in his hand and ran toward the hole in the wall next to the elevator. There were way to many zombies around us to throw it, or throw anything for that matter. It was still hard to see him do that. He was nearly suicidal.

Zoey nearly flipped when she saw this and actually began fighting through to horde to him on her own. This all happened in the span of about two seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to me. She cleared a hole just barely small enough through the horde so Bill could throw the pipe bomb down the corridor and the horde went screaming after it. Bill and Zoey picked up Francis and headed to the elevator with Louis and I covering them. As they passed us Francis meekly tapped my arm and handed me something. "You forgot something too soldier Boy…" The bomb detonated and sent zombie parts flying back at us through the hole as we turned and ran through the elevator doors. I slammed the button and we began to rise.

Bill was the first to speak. "Even being in a war don't prepare you for this. They just keep coming at you and they never goddamn stop."

"Game over man, game over!" Louis Zoey and I laughed at that while Bill swore, something about those "damn kids these days" if I'm right. Francis was cradling his wounded arm- again – as Bill took out the supplies from the first aid we found. Yet again Francis was lecturing Bill on how to properly "administer that bandage thingy" on his arm, and told him not to "strain my phalanx with that piss poor technique you're using, old man."

We were at the 10th floor. "Zoey, Bill, Cal, when this is over I'm going to get you three jobs. Francis, I'm going to teach your ass how to read!" We all laughed at that, except for Francis who responded in kind. "And I'm going to teach your ass how to shoot straight."

"Man, I hate hospitals. I hate helicopters. I hate elevators. And doctors, and lawyers, and cops…"

Bill finished wrapping his arm and helped him stand up. "Francis, is there anything you don't hate?"

"You know what I don't hate? I don't hate vests."

"The zombies seem to."

"I ain't gonna let these goddamn vampires beat me."

Bill put his face in his palm as we prepared to disembark. "They're zombies Francis."

I threw the biker my handgun and some mags as the doors slid open. "Whatever."

The construction area was surprisingly sparse of zombies or "vampires" or whatever you want to call them. We made our way to the safe room and sat down as we barricaded the way behind us. Bill checked on the four of us as we rested and Zoey began handing ammo to us. I walked over to Francis and took off his blood stained dressings to replace them with new ones. Louis was in the corner making another pipe bomb. "Hey man, thanks for getting my gun back."

He snorted. "That ain't how you do it, let me- DAMNIT!" I tried to suppress my smile as I put his new, cleaner dressing back on and he clenched his fist in pain. Bill walked over, smiling himself, holding a brand new shotgun in his hands. He set it next to Francis. "Don't break this one too. These things are hard to come by these days." I tried not to laugh again before he turned his now weathered gaze to me. "And don't lose yours either."

I left Francis and walked over to Louis, who promptly put a pipe bomb in my hands. I put it in my belt as he began working on another and he struck up a conversation that we probably shouldn't have had. "Hey Cal, you got any family around here?"

"No. My parents live up in Oregon next to the coast where I was raised. What about you?"

"You sure as hell don't sound like it, and no. My mom died in a car accident two years ago, and my dad was an alcoholic who left home when I was ten. I became the man of the house after that. What about any friends?" His face took on a tone I never thought to see in him, sadness and even a little anger.

I remembered the phone call with Samantha one week ago and how she could be dead for all I knew. "That's because I was born in Canada, and yeah. In Riverside my friend has a house with her parents. That's not far enough away is it?"

He finished the second pipe bomb. "I don't think anywhere is far enough away."

"Alright girls, that's enough time. We're moving." Bill took point this time as we covered Francis in the middle of our formation. We walked through the hallway and came to the elevator shaft. We crawled through a small grate leading to the edge of the shaft and began climbing up the ladders. We could see the sky now, we were within arm's reach of safety! Bill climbed out first and looked around, signaling us to come up. Francis struggled a bit but made it with no help from us, insisting he was fine. Ever since I learned that we were heading this way, I wondered what I would see up here. A full corner of the helipad was destroyed with no sign of the helicopter. It must have fallen off after the crash and landed on the side of the building we didn't come from. Zombies, both civilian and military, littered the helipad as Zoey and Louis began picking them off.

"Hold up guys, There's something I have to do." Louis stayed with me as I searched the bodies looking for dog tags. I found many of them, but not the ones I was looking for. I couldn't find Captain Jensen's body anywhere, which filled me with hope and dread. He could be alive…or he could have turned into one of them and wandered off. He was the last survivor from my unit, if he was alive, the last man I'd served with in the war. He was a good officer with a family living in Iowa that he wanted to go back to.

"Cal, I think the others are ready. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No. I have no idea if that's good or bad."

We jogged over the small building on the roof, complete with a weapon's locker, ammo, first aid supplies and a minigun. Bill was making more plans as he surveyed our supplies and position. "Louis, you and me will go out and look for more supplies, maybe we can set some traps or something. Cal, you know how to use that minigun?" I shook my head. "Don't that just figure? Ok, we can-"

"I'll do it." Francis was standing now on his own power, drawing from the seemingly infinite well of stamina he possessed. "Just show me where the trigger is."

"Ok then. We'll call the chopper when Louis and me get back. That bird's gonna make a hell of a racket when it comes in so we need to be prepared. Cal, get up there and find the trigger on that beast with Francis. This building is our holdout people so if you get snatched or pounced or anything call out. Stick together, keep a cool head, and we'll make it out of this hell hole. Clear? Good." I got Francis set up on the gun upstairs and began hauling the ammo up while Zoey was taking the weapons up, and set a few near each of our positions so we could grab one and keep firing if we didn't have time to reload. I heard Bill on the radio down below and he shouted up to me. "Cal! What was the hospital's call sign?"

"No idea! Take a guess, if it even matters anymore!"

"This is Mercy One to any aircraft in the area, we have some…uh…"

He went back to trying to convince any aircraft in the area to pick us up, after all, we didn't know if the original chopper was still around.

He came back up with the last of the supplies from below, his pockets stuffed with ammo and a propane tank in each hand. Hank Hill would have been proud. "I called the chopper. There's a Blackhawk on the way with full escort. I managed to convince them that I was the Colonel in charge of the EVAC." We both chuckled while the others started at us, not getting the joke. Military humor, am I right?

The horde began its assault and Francis opened up with the minigun. Shouting more profanities and insults much of the horde fell before making it halfway. We kept the special infected off his back and he kept the common ones off ours. We were doing well until we heard a mechanical clicking sound. "Aw shit…" Francis slapped the minigun as a new horde began to charge. As they grew closer he began kicking it while the rest of us opened up with our rifles. They began to claw at the doors we closed on the ground level and started spilling into the stairwell. "Bill! The stairs!" Louis ran into the stairwell followed by Bill and they each took turns firing while the other reloaded. The zombies were climbing now, coming from both directions while Francis was still trying to get the gun to work. A smoker appeared on the helipad and its tongue shot at Zoey like a bullet. She moved just in time, but it snatched the gun right out of her hands.

With no weapon to defender herself with she was swarmed in seconds. I threw my pipe bomb and shot the stragglers that didn't run for it. Zoey helped herself up and grabbed one of the spare guns, an M-16, next to her. Out of nowhere a thundering roar cascaded throughout the rooftop and a huge block of cement flew at us. Francis dived right as it slammed into the minigun destroying it and a portion of the building. Grasping his shotgun he turned to face the tank that was advancing, no visible fear on his face.

Another horde had come from behind, and now we were joined by Bill and Louis. The tank tried climbing but we unloaded our weapons into his face. We didn't see them behind us, or the hunter that pounced on Bill until it was far too late. It degenerated into hand to hand combat, and I took out my knife as I heard Bill screaming. "Get it off! Get it off!"

They just kept coming and coming, and Bill was screaming and screaming. I saw blood fly but was swarmed an instant later shortly before the screaming abruptly stopped. I lost my knife in the chest of one of them, a woman bleeding from her eyes. I was punched in the head more than once and collapsed on my back as they closed in. I didn't know what to do, we were overrun. For a split second I was blinded by a light, and then the zombies all ran back to the helipad. The light was from the helicopter as it circled overhead, with its speakers blaring.

"Six O'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign towers-"

Bill stood up, almost unscathed but with a fearful look in his eyes as another tank roared.

"Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate, light a candle light a motive-"

"GET TO THE LZ PEOPLE!" We ran down the stairs and sprinted to the chopper with another horde surrounding us, but they were focusing on the noise that the helicopter was spewing.

"A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies-"

As we edged closer I saw that the helicopter was hovering past the edge and that many of the zombies were running off the building and falling to their deaths below. That bastard was a genious! We set up on the helipad as the chopper hovered closer. We opened fire cutting down the zombies running at us, as the ones running past us were still falling off the building. The tank roared again and more concrete flew at us, narrowly missing the helicopter.

"Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline."

The tank wasn't tricked by the music, unlike the others. He ran at us and we opened up. Louis lit the pipe bomb and cooked it like a grenade. He threw it and the tank stumbled when it detonated as we continued to fire.

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"

The song made the whole experience almost supernatural in a way. It was the only thing I could really hear, nearly blocking out everything else. It was close now and the zombies were running at it. The pilot's window opened and a handgun was shoved out and began firing. The tank was upon us now, almost looming over us.

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!"

Some common infected jumped from the roof, two of them landing in the rotors. They were cut to pieces and the result was showered on us. Zoey shot three dead with her rifle to my left while Francis loaded his shotgun and fired at the tank again. I chambered a round and went full auto along with Francis trying to take down the behemoth. Bill and Louis were shooting the infected on the flanks as they closed in from all sides.

The helicopter hovered a foot above the ground behind us, and the rotor wash blew the cigarette from Bill's lips, and Zoey's ponytail came undone and her hair flew everywhere. My helmet wasn't secured and was lost in the windstorm. The tank's fist rose to strike, and the beast seemed to be the Spectre of Death as it loomed above us.

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! And I feel fiiiiine…"

We jumped into the helicopter as the muscled fist slammed into the helipad where we just were. The helicopter pulled away from that Hell Hospital with Francis, Louis, and I still pumping lead down on the infected below. Through the rain we could see the silhouette of the tank raise its fists and slam the ground in frustration.

The pilot switched the music off and we sat down. "Damnit, I loved that song."

"Did anyone else hear Francis say that?" I joked, trying and cope. I had come closer to dying than I ever had before. I kicked back and closed my eyes. We were finally safe.

"I thought this was a Blackhawk? This thing's just a damn news chopper."

The pilot spoke up, his voice quivering. "Yeah, and I thought you were a damn soldier or something. We laughed.

"My soldiering days are over son. Thanks for coming to save us."

A gunshot echoed throughout the helicopter's cabin and the pilot screamed an almost demonic, inhuman scream. My eyes snapped open as I saw his hands drop from around Zoey's neck. The helicopter plummeted from the air and smoke clouded our vision. The last thing I saw was the ground rushing up to meet us from the window, and everyone reaching for something to hold on to.

A jolt of pain shot through my leg and up to my head. Then nothing.