Free Infected by Anthony Izzo Page B

and he stared at Weiss with those bleached-out eyes. He smiled a mirthless smile, exposing teeth with bits of bloody flesh stuck in them. Weiss recoiled in disgust.
     
    He lunged at Weiss, who managed to grapple the freak to his knees. His head was half in the ambulance and Weiss slammed the door on the creature's skull. It took five times before the paramedic stopped moving. After dragging the body out of the way, he got back in the ambulance.
     
    Lori started it up, and they pulled out of the ambulance bay.
     
    Emma and George swept the fourth and fifth floor and found no one alive. There had been several bodies, all with chunks and bites taken out of them. She'd worked a murder case about five years ago. Teen who'd gotten lost up in the woods, fallen from a cliff, and broken his neck. The animals had got at him, nibbling away pieces. That's what the corpses reminded her of.
     
    She was beginning to lose hope of finding anyone alive.
     
    Until they reached the sixth floor and heard someone calling for help. It came from down the hallway, the sound of someone moaning, long and low.
     
    They tracked the noise to a large conference room. Inside was a highly-polished cherrywood table with enough room for two dozen chairs. There were several framed motivational posters hanging on the wall with words like Excellence and Dedication on them.
     
    They found the moaner in the corner. It was a man in a lab coat and scrubs. He was dark skinned and dark haired, and his identification badge indicated he was Doctor Ajay Gupta. The good doctor's scrub shirt had been ripped open, exposing a circular ring of teeth marks on his side.
     
    “Doctor Gupta, can you hear me?” Emma asked.
     
    Gupta opened his eyes and looked at Emma. “I'm sick. Burning up.”
     
    “What happened?”
     
    “A pack of them – those things – came through here. Bit me, but I managed to elude them. They might still be around.”
     
    Emma looked at the wound and saw the teeth had gone deep. The doctor might be infected but she had no idea how fast or when he might change into one of the freaks. “Can you get up, doctor?”
     
    The doctor nodded and sat up, wincing at the pain in his side. Emma saw the sweat beading on his forehead and the ashen color of his skin.
     
    “How soon after you were bit did you get sick?”
     
    “Not long. Fifteen minutes.”
     
    George said, “Where did they go?”
     
    “I heard them down the hall. I heard more screaming,” Gupta said. “Are they all over the hospital?”
     
    “Hospital's crawling. It started in the emergency room,” Emma said.
     
    “We've got to get you out of here,” Emma said.
     
    “I can do it. I'll get to the elevator,” Gupta said.
     
    They dragged Gupta to his feet and urged him out of the room and down the hallway. He said, “Where are you headed?”
     
    “Upstairs. There might be more patients.”
     
    Gupta shook his head. “I came from seven. It was a slaughter. I'm the only one that got out.”
     
    Mom was on eight. She had to get up there. “There's one more floor after that. We can't chance leaving anyone up there.”
     
    “People are changing. They get bit and come back to life,” Gupta said. He looked down at the bite on his side. “I'm a danger to you. I'll turn like the others.”
     
    She glanced at George, who was beginning to sweat. “George, how you feeling?”
     
    “Like I have a bad flu. Nauseous. Chills.”
     
    “Take the doctor downstairs. I'm going up to the eighth floor.”
     
    George said, “I'm not leaving you here.”
     
    “That's an order. “
     
    She watched the big man begin to sway. Slowly at first, then rocking back and forth, his eyelids fluttering.
     
    “Faint,” he said, and crashed to the ground, his head cracking against the tile. Blood pooled on the floor underneath him.
     
    Gupta knelt down, took a penlight from his pocket, and pried open one of George's eyelids. It was Emma had feared. George's normally blue eyes had