How I Survived The Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter Thirteen - Good Luck Doesn't Exist

In the end we went with the glass wall. I'd said I could handle the stairs, of course it was a lie, if anything attacked us I was likely to stay in that stairwell forever, Kitty took one long look at me and shook her head, decisively stating that we would cut through the entrance hall.

There was a lot of debris littering the floor and a sickening amount of dead bodies with their brains blown out. The stench was horrid. I tried not to gag as we picked our way through the carnage, trying to walk as normally as possible. I knew that limping was probably not helping my ankle. After a few steps the pain did ease a little, the power of positive thinking folks.

About halfway through the hall disaster struck, I'd just taken another tentative step when I felt something grab my foot. I gasped and looked down, feeling the panic swell in my chest, I had to bite down on my bottom lip to keep from screaming. After months of fighting ferociously to stay alive, doing things that I had never thought I'd have to do in a million years every once in a while something would catch me unaware and have me jumping out of my skin, screaming like a baby. You just can't get rid of your instincts.

I don't know what to call it. Zombie is just too generous, the thing was made up of two arms, shoulders, head and half a face. I would have stamped on it's skull if it hadn't have been for my bad ankle. As it was I had to make do with bringing my axe down hard onto the back of the things head. Instead of feeling the sickeningly soft resistance of brain tissue the head of my axe glanced off something hard, giving a metallic clink, a very loud clink which echoed through the large open space.

I kicked it over and tried again, going for the face this time. It worked and a second later the miserable creature was finished but Kitty was staring wide eyed. I bent down to inspect the things skull, again with the blade of my axe I essentially scalped it and found a metal plate bolted to the skull.

"That was loud." Kitty stated in a whisper. I nodded my agreement, standing up straight and straining my ears for sign of movement.

We were all clear through the windows but I thought I could hear something. A quiet tapping, somewhere bellow us. We hurried the rest of the way across the hall until we were hidden from the windows before I carefully lowered myself to one knee and listened, a hand resting on the cool linoleum floor. The tapping was now more of a banging and after I felt the first slight tremor through my hand I stood up quickly. I knew what was right bellow us and that knowledge made my stomach churn. The morgue.

"We have to move, now!" I said, already setting off through the maze of corridors that led to the pharmacy.

I was both urging Kitty to go faster and battling to keep up with her, one bad step and my ankle collapsed beneath me, I ended up sprawled on the ground, my cheek bone hitting the hard floor with a thud.

Kitty picked me up as I groaned and cursed under my breath. She helped to take most of the weight off my ankle and together we moved fairly quickly towards the pharmacy.

We found it deserted yet surprisingly well stocked and split the list in two before getting to work. When I came across the boxes of codeine I tossed one into my mouth with a sip of water and held my nose as I bit down on the pill, gagging at the taste. For good measure I found a lidocaine patch like the one's my Dad used when his back used to play up, when that was the worst of his problems, and stuck it to my ankle, securing it with tape.

I'd gathered most things on my list when we heard the huge crash far bellow us. Kitty swore loudly and we raced for the door without another word, the time for gathering medicine had been and gone.

"Which way?" I asked once we were in the hall.

"I don't know, the opposite direction to whatever it is making all the noise." She pulled out the hospital map and began inspecting it, I noticed that her fingers were shaking. "Ok, the only way to the morgue is at the front, we should take this corridor to the back and then prey we can find a window to climb out of."