The Infection

Chapter 22

"Are you insane!" Tony practically shouted, as he quickly followed Ben into the map room. "You can't do this, not with what just happened out there!" Ben grabbed some guns and threw them in a bag. Tony continued, "They are probably waiting for one of us to walk out of here right now, so they can shoot us down!"

Ben tossed the bag aside, turned around and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shoved him up against the wall. "The love of my life is dying!" He yelled. "If I don't get what she needs to keep breathing, she will die! I am nothing without her."

He let Tony go, then turned around and continued to pack his bag. He grabbed a map, a few grenades and smoke bombs, then zipped it up. "Let me come with you," Tony said. "You can't do this alone."

Ben shook his head. "No, they need you here." They walked out of the map room and started for the gate. "Take Adrien or Richard...hell, even Rob! Just take someone with you." Ben stopped in his tracks and looked around. "I'll take Rob and Richard," he said. "Tell them they have five minutes to get to the gate."

Tony ran off to let them know, while Ben set his things by the gate. He took a deep breath, then walked over to the medical tent where Cassie was. He slowly went up to her and sat on her bed. "Hey you," he said, as he took her hand. "I'm going to be gone for a few hours, a day tops. You're going to wake up and we are going to get away from this place. Just you and me against this fucked up world."

He brought up her hand to his lips and kissed it. "No amount of words can describe how much I love you, Cass. You stay with me. I'll kill myself if you leave and that is a promise. Without you, I have no purpose in this world." He kissed her hand one more time. "I'll see you soon." 

He put her hand down, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips, then her forehead. After quickly wiping a few stray tears, he got up and went back out to the gate where Rob and Richard were waiting.

"Ready?" Ben asked, picking up his bag. They both nodded. "Let's go save our girl," Rob said. Ben smirked and said, "Let's go save our girl."

**

Rob looked over the map to determine how much further they needed to go. It was freezing, they were tired, and for the moment, they were lost. "How much further?" Ben asked. Rob quickly looked everything over. 

"Not too much further," he said. "We need to take a right on Kramer and it's about a mile after the underpass. Shouldn't take more than three hours." Ben nodded, then looked to Richard, who was keeping a look out with his gun raised. 

No one has been following them so far, but they refused to show that they were vulnerable. "No resting, no breaks," Ben told them. "We go straight there, we come straight back. I don't know how long she can go breathing on her own, so every minute counts." 

They continued forward, always having their guns ready. They encountered a few of the infected, but nothing they couldn't quietly handle. They stopped at some shops (Ben giving them one minute to grab anything they needed), before stopping just before the underpass. 

It was filled with wrecked cars, some on top of others from falling off of the freeway above them. A lot of them were hanging right above them, getting ready to fall at any second. When the military dropped napalm, the freeways got destroyed.

This one was just hanging on. 

"Stay close," Ben said, "and don't touch the cars. The alarms will go off if a needle drops on them. And watch your twelve because those cars can drop at any second." He made sure they were both ready, then led them into the wreckage. 

The cars above them creaked and swayed, trying to hang on to the last of their lives, as the men passed underneath them. They moved slowly, stealthily and were so close to getting to the other side. After passing a mountain of cars, a wide smile came up on Ben's face. 

"I can see the hospital," he whispered. "It's just around the--." Suddenly, bullets started flying and he, Rob and Richard threw themselves to the ground. Car alarms were going off left and right, making the infected very well aware of their surroundings. 

They men all sat up against the side of a car as bullets flew past them. Rob examined one of them on the cars. "One of them is using a .22 Caliber and the other is using a .38," he said. "They're going to run out in a few seconds."

As if on cue, a few seconds later, the shots stopped and they could hear the men hastily re-loading their guns. Ben smirked, then quickly positioned is gun upward towards the car handing off of the under pass. 

He shot once at the back tire, causing it to blow. He watched as the car fell onto the two men that were shooting at them. He let out a deep breath and breathed, "There. Problem solved...oh my God." 

Richard and Rob looked past the car that smashed the two men and saw an army of the infected sprinting towards them. "Run," Richard said, as he pulled on Ben and Rob's shirts. "Run!" They all ran for their lives towards the hospital. 

It was surrounded by a fence because it used to be a sanctuary, until they decided to take a bus with all the patients in it and leave the city. The bus didn't make it three miles, before one of the nurses (who was hiding her infection) caused a chain reaction of infections on the bus.

The fence was still up, but they were flimsy and useless against the horde that was coming at them. Nevertheless, they hopped the fence and ran inside the hospital. "Barricade the doors!" Ben shouted, as he pushed over a bench against the door. 

Richard pushed a file cabinet and Rob pushed a magazine stand. It wouldn't hold, but it would have to do. "Rob, you know what these things are," Ben quickly said as he handed him the list Susan gave him. 

Rob took it and looked it over. "Most of these will be in the pharmacy," he said. "This way, come on!" They ran to the pharmacy in the urgent care ward and started throwing viles and needles and pills into Ben's bag. 

They then split up. Rob gave Richard one part of the list, himself another, and Ben the last part. Ben had never run so fast in his life. He could hear the infected taking down the fence by now and quickly went into the surgery prep room that Rob pointed him to. 

He grabbed oxygen tanks, odd looking tubes, scalpers, other surgical supplies, odd looking tubes, anesthetics, and everything else on the list. He quickly ran out to meet the other's, who had just come back from their run. 

"Ready?" He breathlessly asked. They nodded and turned to where the exit was...only to have guns pointed at them. "Where do you think you're going with all of that?" Gary asked, as he stood unarmed in front of four other armed men, including his son and assassin, Sebastian. 

Ben knew this was going to be a fight, but there wasn't any time for this! He needed to get back to Cassie! So, he slowly put his hands up in the air and said, "Gary, please...let this go. I just need you to let this go for one day and I will give you whatever you ask."

Rob and Richard were looking at him like he was crazy, but so was Gary. "You can't be serious," Gary scoffed. Ben nodded and told him, "I am. We have an emergency back home and I need to get these supplies there."

He was practically pleading on his knees! He could hear the infected breaking through the front doors, so that just added to the stress! Gary looked back and forth between the men, then said, "I want Cassie, too. Both of you."

Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Cassie's dead," he told him. "She was shot by one of our own. She died before I could get her back to base." Though that was obviously not true, Gary seemed to believe it because Ben started lightly crying from the memory of it all. 

Once the infected started screaming from downstairs, Gary and his men got distracted. Ben's sad face quickly went cold and shouted, "Now!" Richard and Rob both shot at the four men, killing three instantly...except for Sebastian. 

When Ben and the other two started running, Sebastian took after them. They shot at him, threw stuff at him, knocked over things in his path, but he dodged every single thing that came his way. 

"We can't outrun him!" Richard shouted. They could hear the sounds of snarling and screaming coming from behind them and saw the infected sprinting down the hall. "Or them!" Richard shouted. 

They were running out of hallway to run down and were now heading towards a window. "Jump out the window!" Ben shouted. "What?!" Rob shouted. Ben thought about how he needed to get back to Cassie, how he needed to save her...and that the only way was out that window.