Free The Lazarus Impact by Vincent Todarello Page A

hatred, hunger, and bloodlust.
    “BJ?” She says with a quiet lunacy shaking through her voice. There’s no response; nothing but a distant stare. “Come to mommy, BJ.” I must sound so stupid . I know what he is, but my heart hurts . She cries in her mask, and it begins to fog. She hears a growl and a shuffle. BJ shambles toward her. Sheryl stumbles back in fear, dropping the plunger handle. She grabs for it blindly as the inside of her mask clouds up almost completely. Her hand grasps a cold metal rod. She gets her footing and pulls it over. It’s heavy and connected to something else. The fog clears and she sees that she has hold of the small wheeled shelf containing medical tools.
    BJ lunges at her. She yanks on the shelf and it rolls in front of her just before BJ can reach her with his cold grasp. The corner of the table meets with his delicate head. He falls lifeless to the blood-muddied tile floor, his frozen eggshell skull cracked like thin ice. She whimpers over his corpse for a moment. Goodbye, my baby . She places a gentle hand over his heart before leaving him.
    In the last minutes of daylight, Sheryl hurriedly exits the hospital through the ambulance bay, leaving the plunger handle behind. She sees a nearby cop car with its lights flashing, parked with the door open. A man in uniform slumps at the wheel. She lightly shakes him a few times. When there’s no response she flops him to the ground beside the car. She fiddles around looking for the car keys. They’re not in the ignition, not in the car . They must be in his pocket . She looks over at the corpse and studies him. He’s not wearing a gas mask . He has no wounds, and there’s no blood on him . He choked from the debris . With apprehension in every step, Sheryl approaches him. I have to move quickly before he comes back to life or wakes up . Fear grips her.
    She feels around his body for the keys, and finds them in his front pocket. She reaches in, glancing at his empty gun holster. As she pulls the keys out she hears him moan. His eyes burst open, glazed and clouded with white, but also bloodshot and slightly glowing yellow. He sits up sluggishly and Sheryl falls backward into the driver’s seat with her legs out the door, facing him. He stands up and shambles toward her. He walks into the car door and it shuts on her legs, hurting her, trapping her there as he pushes forward, trying to claw at her face from above the door window. Sheryl starts the car. Her jeans rip as they scrape against the metal of the door jamb when she tries to yank her legs inside. When blood starts to flow from the cuts underneath, the beast begins to frenzy. He looks down and sees her legs, turning his attention from Sheryl’s head to the meat sticks that dangle from the bottom of the car door. He reaches for them. For a split second the door is freed and she pulls her legs in a bit further, but he has hold of one of her ankles. She can feel his teeth gnawing at the rubber on her sneaker. His grip is tight like a vice. She yanks and yanks with everything she has left in her.
    Then, in that moment, she hears footsteps quickly approaching on the asphalt, running toward her. She panics. More zombies are coming to get me . They’ll pry the door open and drag me out for dinner . In a flash she sees an axe arc down from above. Blood sprays across the car windows and the cop falls to the ground, dead again. The maintenance man buried the fire axe into the zombie cop’s head.
    “Lemme in,” he says, trying the door that Sheryl quickly closed and locked as soon as she had the chance. Sheryl looks him over as he circles around to the passenger door, checking for wounds or bites. He seems alright, but his clothes are soiled with a crimson stench. “Come on lady there’s more of those things coming!” Sheryl lets him in and they speed off into the dusk.

CHAPTER 14
     
    The hospital is quiet, seemingly empty. Wolf tried the cell phone for hours to no avail. His battery is