Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Tracks

“Spread out and check the rest of the area?” Sam asked.

“It may be faster to look through the log files. Security has cameras in most public places.”

The Chief’s terminal woke at my touch, the display showing several views around the Hospital. A small horde was being beaten back by the turrets, a thick and expanding cloud of organic debris telling a tale. This attack had been underway for some time already.

Zombies did not swarm like that for nothing. They had sighted prey. Recently.

“Reload your weapons from the armory and grab any gear you need,” Doctor Delveccio said, looking at the video feed. “She’s in the Hospital.”

Everyone hurried back out and snatched up fresh magazines. I picked up a rather small but thick looking knife to replace the vibroknife that was still somewhere in the tangle of cut up bulkheads back in engineering. It had been a good tool.

“Why the Hospital though? I thought she was supposed to wait up here for us,” Quenton took three magazines. From the look of things, his over sized knife still only had the blood of small trees and vines on it.

So far I’d been the only one to engage the zombies in melee. The others were more susceptible to the infection. Still, a smaller bladed weapon was easier to use up close in my admittedly untrained opinion. But telling him just then would be an unproductive use of limited time.

“There are people down there in stasis pods. I found this out when several of them were on the verge of failing. It may be that one of the pods was experiencing another failure.”

Vera nodded at this. She seated a new magazine and secured her bag of tools and explosives.

“Makes sense. Ileane wouldn’t just let someone die like that if she could do something to save them.”

Then we all ran to the food service elevator. The shaft stood open with just a thin safety bar blocking our path.

“I thought there were zombies in all the elevator shafts,” Vera whispered.

“There are. They tend to nest in the cafeterias, near where they can find food and water.”

“Wild animals tend to make their dens away from where they eat and drink, don’t they?” Sam said with a frown.

“They do in nature. On Earth, the smell of a fresh kill will draw scavengers. You don’t want that near where you are sleeping. And watering holes tend to be dangerous places. All animals need to drink.” Doctor Delveccio’s catlike ears twitched.

A moment later the sound of the elevator reached us. It rose quickly into view, only slowing at the last second. Old bloodstains made the exterior look rusty in places.

“I don’t understand. What does that mean for the zombies? Doc Z says they hang around food and water here,” Quenton looked between me and the veterinarian.

“They do the same on Earth, from what I have been able to ascertain.”

“Wait. You’ve been watching Earth for the last few years, right? Are there any recordings here on Walker? I don’t think that anyone in the outer system has any more than the few vids that passing traders or military scouts were able to get as they passed by.”

“I have several. There may well be others. My access to the exterior imaging equipment was quite limited.”

“No one comes as close to Earth as we are now anymore. If we can get those to the scientific community on Europa, it could be a big help,” Vera said.

“This only makes me even more certain. We need to get communications back as soon as possible. Between this, the information on the nanites, the detector, and everything else, we have to. This could change everything.”

“First we rescue Ileane, though,” Sam said.

No howls or turrets broke the quiet of the cafeteria as we exited the elevator. A soft patter, almost like rain sounded from up ahead.

“What’s that?” Quenton asked in a hushed voice.

“Blood and viscera impacting the deck and the bulkheads. We must proceed slowly. There are far more than what you see here in the warehouses nearby.”

No one else spoke as I eased my way forward into the cafeteria proper. The cloud of blood and bits of flesh continued to expand. The debris was not as thick as the one near the factory, but enough remained to obscure much of the area.

“We will remain close to the bulkheads as we go. There may yet be zombies hidden in the cloud. Remain prepared for combat. If we do get into a fight, we will retreat into the Hospital proper if possible.”

Sam grunted in response and the rest voiced their assent.

There was no way to avoid getting covered in gore as we advanced. The soft click-clack of mag boots did not appear to carry far. At least, I hoped it did not. The relative quiet did not continue as long as I would have liked, however.

“So what do we do if Ileane has gone zombie on us?”

“Fuck’s sake, Q. Can you not keep your trap shut for five damned minutes?” Vera’s voice was harsh, but low. Everyone had been whispering for some time now. Local coms would not carry our voices outside our suits, but I could understand the impulse.

“There is no going back once you zombie. You know that, Q.”

“So we’re just going to kill her if she turns?”

“Yes,” I said. “The infection process destroys parts of the brain. There is no going back once it happens.”

“It only makes sense, Q,” Sam said. “If I start to turn, I’d hope one of you would shoot me right quick.”

“It has been seven years for all of you,” Doctor Delveccio remarked with some bite in her voice. “You have all lived through the apocalypse. Have you not even considered such a thing until this very moment?”

Quenton did not reply.

The closest bulkhead finally appeared through the cloud as we shuffled forward. The local zombie population continued to remain absent. The eddies our passage made in the floating mass of debris caused a slight uptick in the sounds we made.

Something made me stop just as the shadow of one of the turrets came into view. I waited. Nothing looked to be amiss that I could see.

Then I heard it. A sound that did not fit. It was faint, a sort of metal on metal clanking noise. A familiar noise. The sound of a hospital bed bouncing off a metal bulkhead.

The last time I’d heard it was during my first nearly disastrous attempt to save the people trapped in the hospital pods. I’d bounced off a hospital bed on my way there, and once more on my way back after getting bitten.

“There may be zombies in the hospital. I just heard something.”

“So did I,” our catgirl veterinarian said from the back of the line. “Sounded like metal on metal.”

“It is likely a hospital bed in one of the halls. I remember it from the last time I was here.”

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Blood beaded and ran off my visor as the Hospital lobby finally came into view. It was empty and silent. The debris cloud began to thin out inside as we entered. Sam stopped me before I turned the corner to enter the Hospital proper.

“Let me take a look first. If there are zombies there, they might not react to my gun camera. I just figured out how to enable it today,” he said.

“Alright.”

I could tell Sam was still excited by the combat suit. A younger me, the one that had been enthralled with spaceships would probably have shared that excitement at one time. His voice held only a faint echo of that joy now. Everyone was worried about Ileane.

Every living human being was precious now. If she could be rescued and saved we would do so.

“Bodies up ahead. Zombies. Two in the hall. One at the far end.”

“Are you quite certain they are dead, Sam?”

“Yeah. Holes that big in the back, they’re not getting back up any time soon. Whole lot of blood floating around there, too. But it’s clear enough.”

I detached from the deck and flew around the combat suit to take the lead again. This time I wasn’t fleeing a horde or running back in a panic. All the doors along the bulkheads remained closed. The bodies were there, just as Sam said.

The clanking noise sounded again. In the distance, a hospital bed spun lazily. As I approached the corner, a zombie foot drifted into view.

I grabbed it and tried to drain it. A moment later I felt it writhe in my hand as whatever was on the other end tried to kick. Then it died, disintegrating in seconds.

“Well, that’s one way to kill them quietly,” Doctor Delveccio remarked wryly.

Sam checked the corner for us again and pronounced it clear both ways. The door to the pod room at tge end of the hall was open, though. I was quite certain that I had closed it on my way out the last time to make sure no zombies would find their way in again.

“Are we sure that there’s no one else on the station, Z?” Vera asked as we turned the corner.

“Not completely certain. I did run an announcement to see if there were other survivors before going down to the docks and meeting Sam and Doctor Delveccio, but I received no response. It is not beyond the realm of possibility.”

“But we know Ileane, and from what we can tell she probably went this way.”

“Anyway, where else would she be?” Vera asked.

“If there is someone else on the station, anywhere,” Sam said grimly. “There were assholes before the apocalypse. Bound to be a few that survived.”

“Let’s stay focused here, people.” Doctor Delveccio’s voice was firm. There was no point inventing scenarios only to worry people more.

I entered the pod room first, scanning around to see if there had been any changes to indicate where Ileane might be. One change announced itself immediately when something slammed into me from the side. My unknown assailant latched onto me as we spun through the air. I grabbed at it to try and drain it. A bullet ricocheted off the ceiling near my helmeted head.

“Watch your fire! We don’t want to hit any of the active pods!” Doctor Delveccio shouted as someone fired. I did not see where the bullet went as the figure grappling with me kept trying to wrench its claws out of my grip.

It managed to get a foot in between us and kick hard, but all it managed to do was free one limb and spin us into one of the tall racks. It struck hard and for a moment seemed to be stunned.

I finally got a good look at the thing. Silvery metal covered the left side of its skull, both forearms, and parts of its chest. Implants of some kind. With one of my hands free and the thing still shaking off the impact, I tried to grab my knife to stab it with.

A split second later a gunshot hit the thing in the chest. This only seemed to make the thing mad as it refocused on me in an instant, swiping at me and knocking my knife out of my grip. The blow was so fast I barely was able to register it before it happened.

A part of me noted Sam trying to get close so he could grapple with the thing as well, but between its wild swipes and my attempts to protect myself and drain it at the same time we continued to bounce across the pod room erratically.

After an interminable few moments it began to slow as the drain began to kick in. My nanites seemed to almost stretch before they rebounded back into me, bringing with them a by now familiar energy, and something else that seemed to settle into my guts like a hot coal.

Almost instantly I felt sweat break out and my stomach begin to howl with hunger while the queasy pressure of nanite bloat made me ache. But there was no time for that yet. I had a suspicion as to why Ileane hadn’t answered yet.

“Check all the active pods. If she’s here, she might have retreated into one to hide from that thing.”

The glint of silver caught my eye as I turned around to help in the search. The implants that the zombie had were still there, floating between the racks. I filed that detail away to think about later.

“There’s a zombie in here!” Quenton yelled over the open com.

“Some of them do have zombies in them. I suspect they were placed in here during the early hours when the full import of the infection was not yet known.”

“What if it is Ileane, though?”

“Shut up and keep looking Quenton. If Ileane got infected, how do you think she’d have been able to put herself in a pod and activate it herself while she was a zombie?” Vera’s voice cut him off.

“I didn’t think of that...” he replied.

“Obviously.”

The first one I came upon was a familiar looking older man. Not Ileane. Next, a young woman, but again, not the one we were looking for. The rest of the aisle was full of people that weren’t her. I was just beginning to check the last aisle on my side when Doctor Delveccio spoke.

“I found her.” Her voice did not hold the relieved tone that I had expected.

“What’s wrong Del?” Sam asked for all of us.

“She’s hurt. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it doesn’t look good.”

I flew over to find the catgirl and Vera’s tall form looking down into a pod on the lower level of the racks. A zombie body floated nearby, shot in the head. The wound looked recent, but not just-been-shot recent.

Inside the pod Ileane’s face was pale even in the blue light of the stasis field. Her left arm was frozen in the process of bleeding heavily. Her right shoulder was bruised.

And under her right hand was a messy wound on her abdomen.

“I think she might have been bitten,” Doctor Delveccio said.

“Then how is she not a zombie yet?” Quenton asked anxiously. The silver haired catgirl shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know.”

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