Till The World Ends: Dawn of Eden / Thistle & Thorne / Sun Storm. Julie Kagawa
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across that ruggedly handsome face. Taking a deep breath to calm my rage, I spoke in a low, controlled tone. “Fine. I don’t know what this is about, or why you want to deface your friend, but I will help you this one last time. And then, Ben Archer, you are going to tell me what the hell is going on before you leave my clinic forever.”
He might have nodded, but I was already marching back into the hall, fighting a sudden, unexplainable terror. The unknown loomed around me, hovering over Nathan’s corpse, the sick ward full of the newly dead. The body on the table looked...unnatural, with its pale shrunken skin and blank, dead eyes. It didn’t even look human anymore.
The sick ward was eerily silent as I walked in, searching for the gurney I’d left at the edge of the room. In the shadows, bodies lay under sheets in their beds, mingled with the few still living. Jenna glanced up over a patient’s cot, her cheeks wasted, her eyes sunken. Lightning flickered through the plastic over the front door, illuminating the room for a split second, and thunder growled a distant answer.
Something touched my arm, and I jumped nearly three feet. Bristling, I spun around to come face-to-face with Ben.
“Sorry.” His gaze flickered to the darkened sick ward, then slid to me again. “I just... How are we going to do this? Do you need help with anything?”
I yanked a gurney from the wall. “What I needed is for you to have told me why you were here the first time I asked, not when all my patients started bleeding from the eyes and dying around me.” He didn’t respond, too preoccupied with the current tragedy to take note of my anger, and I sighed. “We’ll transport the body to the empty lot,” I explained, pushing the cot back down the hall, Ben trailing after. “Once we’re there, you can do whatever you want.”
“Outside?”
“Yes, outside! Preferably before the storm hits. I’m not starting a fire indoors so my clinic can burn down around me.”
He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind and followed me silently down the hall, our footsteps and the squeaking of the gurney wheels the only sounds in the darkness.
I sneaked a glance at him. His face was blank, his eyes expressionless, though I’d seen that look before. It was a mask, a stoic front, the disguise of someone whose world had been shattered and who was holding himself together by a thread. My anger melted a little more. In my line of work, death was so common, but I had to remind myself that I wasn’t just treating patients; I was treating family members, friends, people who were loved.
“I’m sorry about Nathan,” I offered, trying to be sympathetic. “It wasn’t your fault that he was hurt, that he was sick. Were you two very close?”
Ben nodded miserably. “He was my roommate,” he muttered, briefly closing his eyes. “We went to Georgetown together. I was working on my Masters in Computer Engineering, and he got me an IT job at the lab where he worked. I was never about that biology stuff. When the virus hit, the lab threw everything else out the window to work on a cure. They kept me on for computer stuff, but Nathan was with them for the really crazy shit. He couldn’t tell me much—everything was very hush-hush—but some of the things I heard...” Ben shivered. “Let’s just say there were some very dark things happening in that lab. Even before the—”
He stopped in the doorway of the last room, his face draining of any remaining color. Blinking, I looked into the corner where Nathan’s bed sat, where the corpse had been lying minutes ago.
The mattress was empty.
Chapter Four
I stared at the empty bed, the logical part of my brain trying to come up with a way for a dead body to vanish from a room in a few short minutes. One of the interns must’ve come in and moved it. Perhaps Maggie had whisked it down to storage, by herself, without a gurney. Improbable. Impossible, really. But that was the only thing that made any sort of sense. It wasn’t as if the corpse got up and walked out by itself.
Ben staggered back, shaking his head. I could see he was trembling. “No,” he muttered in a low, anguished voice. “No, it isn’t possible.”
“I’m...I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,” I began, trying to ignore the chill creeping up my back. “Maggie probably took it away. Come on.” I turned, suddenly eager to leave to room. The silent, empty bed, sitting motionless in the shadows, was starting to freak me out. The once-familiar walls of the clinic seemed darker now, closing in on me. “We’ll check storage,” I told Ben, leading him back down the corridor. It seemed longer, somehow. I could hear the groans of my patients, drifting to me from the main room. “This is nothing to worry about. She’s probably down in the basement right now.”
Ben didn’t answer, and my words felt hollow as we reached the stairs to the sub-basement level. The door at the bottom of the steps was partially open, creaking faintly on its hinges, and the space beyond was pitch-black.
I fished the mini-flashlight from my coat and clicked it on, shining it down the stairwell. That faint smell of rot lingered in the corridor, but it could be coming from the bodies in storage.
I pushed the door to the basement open and was hit by a wave of cold, dry air that made me shiver. As usual, the scent of death was thick down here, like stepping into a tomb, and tonight it seemed even more ominous. There was no light, no need for electricity except to keep the freezers running, and everything was cloaked in suffocating darkness.
“Maggie?” My voice was a whisper as I eased inside, Ben following at my heels. The door groaned as it swung behind us, closing with a soft click. I swept the flashlight around, scanning the rows of cluttered shelves, the thick white columns that held up the building. I’d never thought about what a maze this place was until tonight. Against the far wall, barely discernible in the weak light, the huge freezers with their grisly contents gave off a faint, low hum.
“Maggie?”
Something clinked to the floor nearby, and an empty can rolled out from between the aisles, stopping at my feet. It caused a chill to skitter up my back.
“Maggie!” I hissed again, sweeping the light around. “Are you down here? Maggie!”
“Yes?”
Ben and I both jumped, swinging around as Maggie stepped between the aisles, holding several sets of folded sheets, a mini-flashlight stuck between them. She frowned at our reaction, looking confused. “Sorry, Miss Kylie. We ran of sheets to cover the bodies, so I came down to get some more. Are you all right?”
“Geez, Maggie!” I released Ben and slumped against the wall, my hand going to my heart. “You scared me half to—”
Something lunged between shelves and slammed into the girl, dragging her down with a screech. Her flashlight spun wildly, clinking to the floor before flickering out. Stumbling back, I caught a split-second glance of a spindly, emaciated creature that faintly resembled a man before it bent its head and sank its teeth into Maggie’s throat.
I screamed. Maggie’s body jerked and flopped to the cement, twitching, and the coppery smell of blood filled the room. My mouth gaped again, but nothing came out. In the flashlight beam, the thing raised its head and stared at me with Nathan’s face, no recognition in its dead white eyes, nothing but the flat, glazed stare of a predator. It hissed, and I couldn’t tear my gaze from its gleaming, jagged fangs, smeared with the blood of my intern.
My mind had gone blank. This wasn’t happening. That thing couldn’t exist, it was dead! The stress had finally gotten to me, and my mind had cracked.
Frozen, I stared at it, subconsciously knowing I was about to die. But the thing turned and started savaging Maggie’s corpse, tearing her open with long fingers, ripping into her with its fangs. Blood splattered everywhere, painting the walls with wet ribbons, and I threw myself backward, hitting the edge of a shelf.
Something grabbed my wrist, yanking me away. I cried out and fought to break loose, hitting the arm with the flashlight, barely conscious of what I was doing, until I realized