Chapter 9

Nina snatched the telephone from Lucy so quickly that the receiver knocked against the side of the desk, nearly sending the whole thing crashing onto the floor, and she pressed it against her ear while staring at the front door handle that had begun turning without anybody touching it from inside. Her fingers tightened around the plastic until her knuckles hurt, because apparently even telephones had decided to become creepy little bastards today, and the man on the other end had somehow learned her full name without her telling a single person in the clinic who she was.

"Who the hell are you, and how did you get my name, because I have spent the entire morning watching people get bitten, dead bodies climb off hospital beds, and my best friend turn into something that keeps trying to eat me, so please don't waste my time with mysterious telephone calls," Nina demanded, keeping her voice low enough that Elise wouldn't start thrashing again.

The man didn't answer immediately, and the faint crackling in the receiver sounded horribly similar to the wet scraping noises coming from the treatment room, where Elise was shifting against her restraints while Rebecca checked the damaged bottle of sedative for the third time.

"The roads are closing, the hospitals are no longer receiving patients, and anyone displaying the symptoms your friend has shown will be treated as an active threat by the people responsible for containing this outbreak," he said, his voice so steady that Nina wanted to throw the telephone through the nearest window. "You need to leave the clinic before the authorities reach your location, because remaining there could force you into a situation that none of you will be able to undo."

Nina looked toward Rebecca, whose face had tightened at the mention of the hospitals, and then at Daniel, who had stopped fastening the lead around the examination frame to listen.

"Are you a doctor, a police officer, or some miserable bastard sitting in a room watching people die through security cameras, because you keep talking as though you know what's happening while everybody else is running around like headless chickens," Nina demanded, pressing the receiver harder against her ear. "If you want me to trust you, perhaps you should start by explaining why you know my name and why you're calling a veterinary clinic to warn us about roads that are closing."

"I'm trying to prevent you from making a mistake that will become impossible to undo," the man replied, avoiding every question she had asked, and Nina could hear the faint sound of an alarm somewhere behind his voice. "You have less time than you think, and when the roads are sealed, you won't be able to choose where you go or who gets to leave with you."

The line filled with a burst of static so loud that Nina jerked the receiver away from her ear, but she pressed it back when she heard him speak again, his voice now breaking apart beneath the interference.

"Do not let anyone take the girl away from you, Nina, because if they decide she's already gone, they won't waste time asking whether there's anything left to save."

The call ended with a sharp click, leaving Nina staring at the telephone while the dial tone hummed against her ear, and she nearly slammed the receiver down hard enough to break it.

Rebecca hurried toward her, demanding to know what the man had said, while Daniel pulled the lead tighter around Elise's wrists as she began twisting against the examination frame again, her teeth clicking together whenever she turned her head toward Nina.

"He says the roads are closing, the hospitals aren't taking patients, and the people in charge are going to treat anyone showing Elise's symptoms as a threat, which is a lovely little announcement considering we're sitting inside a clinic with no doctor and barely enough medication to knock out a bloody hamster," Nina snapped, rubbing her forehead as she tried to process everything. "He also knew my full name, and when I asked him how, he decided being mysterious was more important than giving me a straight answer."

Rebecca looked toward Elise, whose head had dropped against her shoulder while her fingers continued scraping at the metal frame, and something in her expression hardened.

"We need to leave before armed personnel arrive and decide that tying your friend to an examination table isn't enough to make them comfortable, because I am not allowing anybody to drag her away while she's still breathing," Rebecca said, reaching for the bag of supplies. "Daniel, help Lucy find another exit, and Nina, stop arguing with that telephone before you accidentally invite another problem into this building."

Daniel gave her a furious look but didn't argue, because the pounding against the clinic's front door had grown louder, and something outside was dragging its nails down the glass in slow, irregular strokes.

"We cannot drag Elise through the streets without knowing where we're going, because the last time we ran outside we nearly got ourselves eaten by half the neighbourhood, and I'd rather not repeat that experience before lunch," he muttered, lifting the hammer from the floor. "Lucy, find us a map or tell me which bloody direction leads away from the main roads, because I'm not interested in walking straight into a military checkpoint with an infected girl and a collection of stolen veterinary supplies."

Lucy hurried behind the reception desk and pulled a folded street map from beneath a pile of appointment cards, spreading it across the counter while Nina leaned over her shoulder to examine the streets surrounding the clinic. The paper was stained with coffee and marked with several old delivery routes, but Lucy pointed toward a narrow lane behind the warehouses that led away from the main road and toward a residential district with fewer shops.

"The clinic owner used that entrance whenever deliveries arrived before opening hours, and the lane behind the warehouses connects to a smaller road that runs toward the old residential blocks, so we might avoid the main junction if the military hasn't closed everything already," Lucy explained, tracing the route with a trembling finger. "I can't promise the gates are open, but I remember the last delivery driver complaining that nobody had bothered repairing the lock, which is probably the most useful thing I've remembered all day."

Before they could decide when to leave, Lucy's phone began vibrating against the counter, flooding the screen with notifications from social media accounts reposting the same hospital footage Nina had watched earlier. She opened one of the clips, and the screen showed an empty examination room where a motionless body lay beneath a white sheet while two medical workers argued near the door about whether the patient had been dead long enough to be moved.

The workers left the room, and the body remained still for several seconds before its fingers began curling beneath the sheet, followed by its head lifting slowly from the pillow as though something inside its neck had forgotten how bones were supposed to work.

Lucy dropped the phone onto the counter with a gasp, while Rebecca snatched it up and watched the clip again, her jaw tightening when the video disappeared and another account uploaded the same footage with a caption claiming that the hospital had been hiding reanimated patients for hours.

An official statement appeared beneath the next repost, assuring the public that the footage was misleading and that no verified case of a deceased patient returning to life had been recorded, but Rebecca's fingers curled around the phone until the plastic casing creaked.

"They're lying to everybody while people are being dragged out of their houses and eaten in the streets, and they expect us to sit here listening to cheerful announcements about misleading footage as if we haven't watched these things get back up after somebody has declared them dead," Rebecca said, tossing the phone onto the counter. "Whatever is happening, the people who are supposed to protect us have either lost control of it or decided that telling the truth would cause more trouble than letting us die confused."

Nina returned to Elise, who had become strangely quiet, her cloudy eyes fixed on the metal cabinets beneath the treatment table while her fingers slowly tightened around the lead.

"What are you looking at now, Elise, because if you're about to start another round of trying to bite somebody, I'd appreciate a warning before you throw yourself at my face again," Nina said, crouching beside her friend.

Elise moved her lips, and Nina had to lean closer before the words reached her.

"There's something moving underneath the floor, Nina, and it keeps scratching at the metal like it's trying to get out, but nobody else seems to hear it even though it's getting closer every time I breathe."

Daniel started to dismiss her complaint as another symptom, but Lucy suddenly backed away from the treatment cabinets when a faint scraping sound emerged from beneath them, followed by a wet, irregular thumping that made the metal doors vibrate against their hinges.

They pulled the cabinets away from the wall and uncovered a narrow maintenance hatch that had been hidden beneath the lowest shelf, its handle smeared with blood and its edges scratched deeply enough to expose the metal beneath the paint.

Daniel raised the torch while Nina grabbed Lucy's arm and Rebecca pulled Elise away from the opening, but before he could lift the hatch, something below struck it hard enough to make the entire cabinet jump.

He forced the handle upward, revealing a black opening beneath the treatment room, and a bloodied hand reached out of the darkness to seize the edge while its fingers dragged a hospital identification bracelet into the light.

Nina stared at the name printed across the bracelet, because the man who had begged her not to leave him at the supermarket was supposed to be somewhere inside a hospital, and now his blood-covered hand was reaching up through the floor beneath their feet.

MARTIN COLE.