Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 17 - Surgery

It was a long wait behind the desk. The footsteps boomed on and on outside the door, punctuated only by the erratic thumping of a zombie banging up against the plexiglass.

This latter sound came far too often for his liking, knowing as he did that if the zombies were pushed into searching the building for him, he would very likely be out of places to run.

So he did nothing but lie there, curled up, doing his best to remain completely invisible from the glass doors he had entered through, for what felt like hours as the zombies rumbled by.

Finally the rolling thunder of footsteps began to fade into the distance, and the sounds outside dropped to a slow, stiff staccato until they were gone completely.

Still Eli waited for what felt like an equally long time as he had already waited before finally risking peeking out from behind the desk.

The courtyard outside the doors was completely clear of zombies.

He breathed a sigh of relief, rolling onto his back and spreading out on the floor. He felt exhausted already, and wished half-heartedly that he could just lay there forever.

Reluctantly he pushed himself up to his feet, once more risking the barest glance around the side of the desk to make sure it was safe before allowing himself to stretch out fully. Still no zombie eyes watching from outside.

He considered his options, favoring the one that said he could just wait there for the others to show up. But he didn't know how long that would be and there was some good he could do inside the building while there.

So taking a deep, steadying breath he pushed his way through the nearest doorway and headed deeper into the hospital.

The hallways were dark, which was expected, but that expectation didn't stop them from being especially eerie. Somehow, here and there, some emergency lights still clung desperately to life, flickering on and off at random times, throwing long, twisted shadows where they could span across the walls and floors, and leap out from around corners. The daylight provided sufficient illumination to counteract the lack of interior lighting, but as all the windows on the ground floor seemed to be either heavily tinted or located where the light bounced first off of walls before entering the rooms, the bluish glow it created only added to the ominous mood of the hospital corridors.

Most disturbing of all was the blood on the floors and walls, the severed limbs and splattered innards dotting the ground, and the mounds of equipment cluttering the walkway, whether they stood upright or were turned over with their contents spilling out.

Clearly there had been an outbreak in the building. A bad one. The rotten stench of decaying flesh filled his nostrils, but what disturbed him the most was the complete lack of dead bodies. They couldn't all have turned into zombies. And not all of the zombies would've likely made it out with their heads intact. Which seemed to suggest someone, or something, had cleared out the intact corpses.

But for what reason?

It didn't take him long to find the pharmacy. As he suspected it was on the ground floor, and looked sizeable enough to contain an absolute wealth of different medications. This was a veritable gold mine in these times. Treatments that would never be made again, but that largely would not have yet expired. Claire could no doubt do a lot with what was left still inside.

But the door was locked, and the window shuttered.

He didn't have anything that could break the handle, and he didn't want to just start kicking in the attempt to break the door down. The door looked pretty sturdy. He wasn't sure he'd even have the strength, anyway. But if the outbreak had been quick enough, then it was entirely possible the keys were still in the building somewhere. Likely, in one of the offices.