Free Unfed by Kirsty McKay Page A

really wish a whole lot more that I had fought Alice for the sweatpants.
    I take the first few rungs as fast as I dare. It’s slippery going, and I’m grappling with the towel rail. The ladder is attached so close to the wall there’s barely room to find a decent foothold without feeling like you’re falling backward. I glance down. Pete is on the ladder after me, with the best view in the world, and Russ remains on the ground with Alice, doing the persuading. I feel a wave of dizzy from looking down, and turn my attention back to where I’m headed. Gotta keep moving.
    The roof looms up at me, and for the first time I wonder what will be waiting for us. I don’t relish being met by a dribbling fiend.
    There’s a crash below, and a shattering of glass.
    Crap . They’re through the door. I chance another look. A flow of Undead, big and small, stream into the courtyard. It doesn’t take them long to spot us.
    “Frigging hurry up!” Alice screams, halfway up the ladder.
    I pull myself over the low wall at the top and step out onto a crunchy surface, eyes darting to see what foes we’ll have to face.
    Hard to be sure, but I think we’re alone up here. The courtyard is a hollow square below, at the center of the hospital. There are some air-conditioning vents rising out of the surface of the roof and some bricked blocks with small doors set into the side — probably electrical junction boxes or something like that. But beyond the odd adventurous butterfly, there’s nothing moving.
    And then there’s this glass ceiling above us. I suppose I expected to reach the top of the ladder and find a hatch, open it, and emerge out ofthe tropical oasis into gloomy old freezing-cold Scotland again. But that’s never going to happen. The glass ceiling covers the entire roof area. Weird. We’re still inside. The ceiling is not far above me. Put it this way: If my current escape gang formed a human pyramid with a sulky Alice at the top, even she wouldn’t have to strain to touch it. And what’s more, the glass rises out of the outside edge of the building, like the whole hospital is a miniature model inside one of those terrarium things that you grow plants in. I look around again. Where’s the exit?
    There’s something more than a little off. If I think about it, I kind of knew it as soon as I fell into the courtyard the first time round. The light is weird, and as I was lying there on my back holding back the zombies behind the door, I knew it just didn’t look real somehow.
    I look across the roof in search of a horizon in the distance, and my brain can’t quite compute what I’m seeing.
    I run to the far edge of the roof, the outside wall, and look beyond the glass.
    There’s nothing out there.

The sky really is the limit.
    Behind the glass walls is blackness. Not as in outer space or anything like that. A cavity, then solid matter. Rock. I can see texture, cracks, roughness.
    Why in the Name of Butt would you have a hospital surrounded by rock?
    I rub at the glass. It’s slightly frosted, and above us there are lights behind it, giving the impression of daylight. If I squint I can actually make out the individual bulbs.
    Pete joins me, panting hard.
    “Status update?” he gasps, pushing his goggles up onto his head.
    “OMG, today I’m, like, totally inside a giant fishbowl,” I suggest.
    He looks at me impatiently. “What on earth are you talking about?”
    I point up to the glass. “The outside has gone.”
    I watch his face as he follows the ceiling along to the far wall … and he sees what I see.
    “I think we’re surrounded by rock. Like we’re in a cave or something.”
    “This is incredible! Why would they … ?” He runs — and it takes a lot to prompt Pete to run — to one of the walls, feeling the glass likethe original Marcel Marceau. He shouts back at me, “We’re completely encased!”
    As if on cue Alice arrives, with much fanfare and overdramatization, seeming to fall at the last