Part XX

They kept following the bloody trail down the hallways until the blood on the floor covered all the stretch of it, their shoes getting stickier on the linoleum with each step they took. The sound of the beating pulse that the thing had was only getting stronger, beating so hard that they could see the ripples in the blood below them.

Suddenly it came to a stop. The intestine-like thing they had been following went out of sight under a closed door.

Kurt and Puck tried to pick the door, thinking that if it was a pin-tumbler or a wafer-tumbler they'd be able to do it with one of Tina's hairpins or try to move the latch with Kurt's driver license.

"Shit, try to move the door" Puck said, pointing his flashlight to the numeric pad on the wall, that they had missed when they got closer. Kurt took the lever in his hands and used it to try and open the door a few times. It didn't even budge. "It's a fail-secure. It can only be opened from the inside if there's an electric failure. Our trail ends here" he said, shrugging. "Let's go back upstairs and clear some other floors"

They turned and went back the way they had used to go down, all the time looking around just in case they found another zombie, or whatever those things were, and trying not to get too scared with the usual double takes (shadows, reflections, etc.)

They made it back to the lobby without trouble, thought they had been on edge more than they were comfortable with, mostly because now their fears had a name and a face. Scratch that, their fears had several faces, those of their friends and family, those of the people that had disappeared and those who they were sure were dead. Nobody was completely free of turning, and everyone was fair game to the infection.

Kurt was mostly worried about how the odds of finding his family were getting thinner and thinner; how, wherever his family was, they'd have to find a way to fight for their lives because Kurt couldn't help but remember that, when he went with Finn to get his father's guns he knew immediately that they were all there. Wherever his dad and Carole were, they were defenseless.

On the other hand, there was Puck and his missing family; there were Lauren and Britt who were both terribly hungry when they found them, even if they didn't know yet if the blond was bitten. They never checked.

It was a mistake that was going to cost them all dearly if she really was infected and something happened at Puck's house while they were there.

"We should try and get supplies from the pharmacy while we are here, shouldn't we? It seems like we might as well stock on everything we could possibly need instead of having to make trips if someone gets injured" Hiram said, looking longingly to the indoor store.

"You know more about wounds than we do, maybe you and Tina should stock on that stuff while we look in the upper floors?" Puck asked, scratching his mohawk awkwardly.

"I can do it by myself, don't worry. You could use more help" Hiram said, shrugging.

"No, we don't split. We should make it a rule, we don't leave anyone alone. If something happens to you there has to be someone who can be there to protect you or run to get someone else, no matter how old you are in comparison to us" Kurt said, firmly.

"Ok, you go check out the second floor while we put everything we can think of in bags. Then you can come back and we can load them to your car" Hiram said, rolling his eyes but smiling at the kids, mostly because he knew they were right.

Puck and Kurt looked at each other and took a look outside. So far so good, it didn't seem like any hoard of zombies was going to appear while they were separated, so there wasn't really any reason not to trust them to be able to defend themselves.

They went upstairs in silence, trying to use their eyes and the little sunlight these upper floors had because there wasn't really any reason to go around overusing the batteries. Who knew when they were going to find themselves without any? All resources right now should be considered scarce, even if they could still get them in almost any store.

The second floor had as much blood as any other place they had visited until then, blood and no bodies. Kurt couldn't help but imagine now that the reason there didn't seem to be bodies around was because those zombies, or whatever they were, just took the bodies with them instead of feeding right where they were. That would explain why there weren't bones or loose parts. God. If he wasn't careful he was going to make himself sick.

Second floor was just private rooms for people who had been hospitalized, so there weren't many things around. This hallway was mostly empty of overturned furniture at least; just a couple of broken pictures that used to hang on the walls were all the things they had to dodge. No weird bottles or trays on the floor, no tubes or carts in their way. Besides the obvious dark splatters of blood on the ground and awful green walls… it wasn't that bad.

What did worry him was the way that most of the doors were open, still, but open.

Except for one in the middle that looked like someone was moving it from the inside.

Puck and Kurt took their guns and pointed in front of them before walking to the different rooms. While one of them looked inside the room, just in case someone was hiding there waiting for help, the other was still in the hallway, pointing to that moving door but still looking to where they had come from.

Kurt could feel his heart on his ears, beating strongly. He was way more scared than he was willing to admit.