Running with the Horde Read Free

were doing odd physical contortions and repetitive movements while others just laughed or cried manically. Some were bleeding from horrible wounds, others simply appeared to be dead on the floor. It was like a convention of serious stroke victims all decided to drop acid at the same time and have a party at the hospital.
    There was no sign of Dr. White but I could tell from their uniforms that some of the people were obviously members of the hospital staff. They were behaving just as strangely as the rest of the people were. I was sweating profusely by this time and wanted nothing more than to get out of there before I caught whatever was making them all act this way.
    I made it to the automated door s, the place I’d been found gurgling on my vomit. A little girl, around seven or eight years old, was just lying there as the doors opened and shut repeatedly on her head. She was clearly having some type of seizure.
    Her eyes flittered back and forth at the doors every time they hit her and she was softly singing to herself, though it was anyone’s guess what song it was. Her feet were kicking like she was doing the doggy paddle.
    I stopped in front of her . I couldn’t just leave her there, she was just a little kid. I set my stuff down and dragged her into the waiting room. She didn’t respond to any of my questions and would not stop singing. Like Rita, she was burning with fever, almost too hot to touch.
    There was no one around who wasn’t acting like they were high, sick and crazy all at the same time. I was in desperate conflict with myself with deep qualms about just leaving a little girl on a dirty hospital floor but there wasn’t anywhere to put her and hell, it wasn’t like she was the only kid in there.
    I thought about carrying her to a room with a bed in it but there was no way I was going back inside the IC U, I had some serious paranoid thoughts brewing in my head. If I went back in there, I was certain I would never make it back out again.
    So I made an executive decision. I looked around the room until I spotted a favorable candidate. He was a young man probably somewhere in his early twenties. He was out cold, sprawled in a chair, one of many arranged in a row surrounding the entire waiting room. His head was resting against the glass of the window behind him.
    Stepping gingerly over people on the lying on ground, I made my way over to him with the little girl in my arms. I set her down on the floor and tried to wake him as politely as I could.
    He wouldn’t wake up even as I got ruder about it. I wondered if he was dead. I couldn’t tell for sure , my medical training was limited to what I’d learned from watching television dramas.
    I grew tired of waiting so I gently pulled him from the chair and laid him out on the floor. It seemed like it would be fine, maybe even more comfortable for him in the long run.
    I re trieved the girl and placed her in the chair. She entertained me with song during this process. When my further attempts to talk to her proved useless I decided I had done my civic duty towards her and she would have to be happy with the chair arrangement.
    As I walked away I heard her switch from singing to growling. When I looked back I swear she was trying to bite the arm of the lady seated next to her. That was enough for me, I picked up my bags and ran out the door.

Chapter 3
    “A Stroll through Town”
    The dash outside the hospital left me breathless and sore though I only ran about twenty yards. My body was reminding me that I’d been bedridden for two months.
    O nly when I heard the doors close behind me did I remember I had no ride, no shoes and no underpants on.
    My exit strategy was poor but there was no way I was going back inside the hospital, not for all the money in the world. I tore open the bag with my wallet and phone in it.
    The wallet went into the front pocket of my scrubs, the phone I tried to use but it was both broken and dead. I threw it in a nearby trashcan