Voidborn

Chapter Two

The boy peered out from the shadows of the storm drain, squinting against the brightness. He waited, listening carefully, but heard only birdsong and the sound of the river meandering past a couple of metres below him. He crept forward out of the culvert and for the first time in months felt the sun on his face. In the past it might have been a wonderful feeling, but now it was doing nothing to stop the clammy chill slowly creeping across his body. He tried hard to ignore the voice at the back of his head telling him that this was more than just an infected wound, that the Drone had done something to him, something bad. He scrambled up the riverbank and at the top lay flat, peering across the park. He normally preferred to use one of the less exposed exits from the sewer system, but today he needed what was on the other side of the park. It was one of the hospitals in London - one of the places that he tried to stay as far away from as possible. It was a magnet for Walkers and where there were Walkers there were always Drones. His body was suddenly shaken by another coughing fit and the burning pain in his chest drove him to his feet.

He made for the hospital's main entrance. The doors were open and there were multiple trails of muddy bootprints leading inside. Walkers had definitely been here, but he had no idea how recently. He crept into the gloomy reception area. His own breath seemed impossibly loud as he listened carefully for sounds coming from further inside the building. He heard nothing but the smothering silence that he had become used to over the past months. The boy read the signs on the wall and quickly spotted what he was looking for. He headed off down the corridor to his left, following arrows to the pharmacy. A couple of minutes later he was at the top of a flight of stairs that led down to basement level. He peered into the darkened stairwell and pulled the torch from his backpack. Without any electricity the only light inside the building was what bled in through the windows, but down there it would be pitch-black. He made his way down the stairs, shining the torch on the ground just a metre ahead of him. The muddy bootprints headed towards the pharmacy and the boy realised with a sense of creeping despair what that meant. The pharmacy would be empty.

He continued to follow the signs on the wall and the bootprints on the floor until he arrived at a small waiting area lined with tired-looking plastic chairs and a serving counter sealed by a rolling steel shutter that was set into the wall. Further along the corridor was a door that led into the dispensary area. It had already been forced open, the frame around the lock splintered and cracked. He pushed the door further open and peered inside. There was nothing here. He made his way to the rear of the room, hoping that something might have been missed. He found several shelves still filled with medical supplies, but he could not find the antibiotics needed. He did, at least, find a couple of large plastic tubs filled with painkillers and after popping a couple of pills in his mouth to try to deaden the pain in his chest, he shoved the rest into his backpack. He took several packets of bandages and other dressings and tubes of antiseptic cream, anything that might prove useful in the future. It struck him as odd that these shelves had been left untouched by the Walkers.

Heading back to the counter he looked around for anything that might give him some clue to where he still might be able to find the medication he needed. He spotted an empty trolley off to one side with a clipboard hanging from its handle. He picked it up and read the top sheet of paper. It was a list of medicines to be distributed to various departments of the hospital, and as he read it he saw that the majority of the antibiotics were sent to either the children's ward or the geriatric ward. That made sense – the very young or the very old would be most vulnerable to infection. He just hoped that the Walkers hadn't looted those wards as efficiently as they had the pharmacy. He hurried back up the stairs, grateful to leave the darkness of the basement, and headed towards the reception area when he heard a sound that sent a chill down his spine. At first it was hard to make out, but slowly it became clearer. It was the sound of marching boots and it was getting louder with each passing second. That sound could only mean one thing: Walkers were coming. The boy looked around desperately for somewhere to hide. He hurried to the glass wall at the front of the reception area and looked outside. There, just a couple of hundred metres away, a column of marching people was entering the hospital car park. Their bizarre assortment of dirty clothes and long ragged hairstyles gave them a dishevelled appearance that was at odds with their strangely disciplined lockstep march. The boy knew that the other thing they would share was a haunting, vacant expression that showed no hint of the personalities they had all once had. There was nothing behind a Walker's eyes, no indication of the humanity that had once been there.