The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) (3 page)

“How many do you have here?” They were now at the front of the building and Ron saw that the sidewalk had been completely cleaned of weeds and shrubs, and had been swept and washed down with military precision.

“Patients? Or everyone involved?”

Ron could only stand in place as the officer stopped in his tracks and looked up at the eight floors looming over them. “Here we have about one thousand souls.
Maybe a hundred patients. Most minor injuries and sicknesses, but a few are critical.” He half turned and looked back at Ron.

“Do me a favor, son.” He indicated his left pocket on his jacket with a nod of his shaved chin. “There’s a whistle in there. Could you retrieve it for me and stick it in my mouth? I don’t wish to let go of their little hands just now. I think they’re just this side of hysteria, and I want to keep them that way as long as possible.”

Ron did as requested, unbuttoning the flap with his left hand, keeping his right one clasped tightly to Mrs. Lund’s fingers. Producing a glittering chrome metal whistle, he held it out while Dale took it in his teeth and turned to face the building with it clenched tightly there. He breathed in and then blew briskly through the little instrument. The sound was piercing and quite louder and more intense than Ron had suspected it would be. If not for Mrs. Lund, he would have put his hands to his ears to block the offending shriek.

Immediately a double-door opened just in front of them, on the far side of concrete barriers that had been staggered to create a bit of a maze. Cutter followed the Colonel’s lead and before any of the lines of undead could move within a hundred yards of the building
, they were inside and the stout doors were quickly shut and locked tight. Stopping only for a brief moment, Ron looked back at the door, at the locks and metal bars reinforcing it. To his eyes, it didn’t look strong enough to hold back what he suspected was coming. He wanted to ask about it, but before he could they were joined by four women and two men—all of them roughly in their late 20s or early 30s—who took charge of the Lund Family and took them through another door and down a hallway where all three of them vanished.

Allowing just a second or two of relaxation, Ron let the muscles in his shoulders
relax and he took in a deep breath. The place smelled clean and antiseptic. “Damn. Is this…is this a hospital?”

Dale nodded. “It is, now.” Taking a few steps to his left, he turned down the hallway, moving in the opposite direction from where the others had taken the
Lunds. When Ron hesitated, the Colonel motioned to him. “Come with me. We need to speak.”

And so Cutter followed the older man down hallways that were clean, that glistened in the electric lights that were keeping even the darkest corners revealed.
“You have a generator going?” He thought to ask, moving quickly to keep up with the brisk pace his companion had set.

“Yes,” Dale told him.
“Big ones. We run them on diesel for several hours a day. Whenever the doctors are going to do surgery we fire them up, or just to let the patients feel extra comfortable when we think they need it,” he added.

As they walked, other doors opened as people went about their ways. Some of them were dressed in street clothes, some in military fatigues, others in white smocks that marked them as either physicians or nurses or nurse’s aides. “You’ve got doctors here,” he said, amazed.

“Twenty, last time I spoke to the head physician,” Dale told him. “Six certified physician’s assistants and fifty-three nurses. Not sure how many certified surgical techs and nurses’ aides. A fair number, but not enough. We never have enough of anything, really.”

And then they were at a door that Colonel Dale opened. He held it wide and once again motioned, this time for Ron to precede him. It was an office, furnished with a large oak desk, swivel chair, a couple of leather easy chairs in front of the desk. “Not really my own office,
” the Colonel told him. “But I share it with a couple of the doctors. I try to stay out of their way, but they’re all on duty just now, so it’s mine.” He closed the door behind Cutter.

Going to the desk, he produced a key from his pocket and used it to open one of the drawers in the big desk. “The office and desk might not be all mine, but this drawer by Jove surely is,” he told his guest. With a flourish
, he produced a bottle of whiskey, the bottle mostly full, light shining through the vital liquid as if through gold. “Have a drink with me,” he told Ron.

“Not a problem,” Ron said.

From somewhere, suddenly they heard gunshots. Ron stiffened, but Dale continued as if nothing was wrong, pulling a couple of shot glasses from the same drawer and filling them. He handed one to Cutter. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Guards and snipers taking care of the curious deaders who were stupid enough to follow us here.”

“The shots will draw them here, you know,” Ron said. “It always does.”

Without immediately replying, Dale tipped the glass up and downed the contents. “Ah,” he said, smacking his lips. “Good stuff. Pretty soon we’re going to have to learn to make it ourselves. We have a few people around who say they’re good at it.”

“Moonshiners?” he asked.

“If you want to call them that. They think they’re craftsman. I prefer to think of them that way, too.” He turned and drew the blinds aside just a bit to take a look. There were more shots. “You know, the shambling monsters out there won’t stay around very long. They’ll all turn tail soon enough.”

“Turn tail?” Ron was still standing there, holding his full shot glass. “What are you talking about? They’ll fill the street out there. Then they’ll start pounding on all of the doors and trying to climb up here to these windows. You’d better have a shitload of bullets handy.” Finally, he seemed to realize the whiskey was in his hand and he put it to his lips and drank it, savoring the flavor. God, he loved a good whiskey, and this was about as good as it got. It had been weeks since he’d chanced across a sealed bottle of anything decent.

“They do learn, you know.”

“What? What the Hell are you saying?”

“They learn. Certainly you’ve noticed…well, perhaps you haven’t. Living almost alone as you have been. Until recently, though, right?”

Ron squinted suspiciously at the Colonel and wondered if he should be worried. Something told him that he was safe, though, and so his hand did not creep toward any of the host of weapons he carried. “Have you been spying on me?”

“I like to think I keep up with everyone here in our fair city.” He stopped to fill their glasses once again. “You have Oliver with you, now. I have to admit that I don’t know the young lady who’s with you these days, but I have seen her. She’s very attractive.” The Colonel downed his whiskey again with an efficient tilt of his wrist.

A clumsy moment of silence followed before Ron began to sip at his whiskey, savoring it and hoping that Dale would offer him at least one more sample. “Her name is Jean,” he told, without giving up her last name. “She was outside Charlotte and came in just a few days ago.
Crack shot, that woman. Made it all the way here from Matthews with a bag full of .22 shells and a single-shot pop gun her dad hand-made for her.”

“A woman of some talent, then,” the Colonel replied.

“You’ve got that right,” Ron told him, and finished off his drink. He held out the shot glass again, raising his brows expectantly. He smiled as Dale filled it a third time.

“Much as you want,” he said to his guest.

“Just one more. I don’t want to get shit-faced if I’m going to have to fight my way back home.” Looking around, he located one of the stuffed chairs and setting his rifle aside, he fell into its leather comforts. Sighing, he eyed his host as the other man also settled into the chair behind the desk and tipped another serving into his glass.

“You said something about them learning,” Ron said.

There was another fusillade and then silence. The two waited to see if there would be any more shots fired. A minute passed. Two. Then three.

“Are you telling me that they’re leaving?” Cutter asked.

Colonel Dale nodded and smiled. “They’re not as completely stupid as we first thought they were. Or, to put it another way, they’re not as stupid as they were when they first came back to whatever state in which they find themselves.” Dale, too, had taken to sipping this latest glassful of whiskey, tasting it and allowing it to slide over his palate slowly.

“I don’t  even have to look out there right now to tell you that the crowds following the ones in the lead
, saw their fellows’ heads explode and decided that most basic of instincts; that being that discretion is the better part of valor.” He thought for a second. “Not that they have any idea of something as complicated as valor, mind you.” And then he nodded at Ron.

“But you do. I know that you know all about valor.”

“What are you talking about?” Ron lifted the shot glass again and sipped, enjoying every damned molecule of the whiskey.

“You saved that girl. I heard all about it. You put yourself at risk to save her, and I know it wasn’t for her looks, because from what I’ve been told
, she was not the picture of beauty when she came stumbling into Charlotte’s downtown.

“And then you went out and brought Oliver back to your place. I wondered if he would let you, but I didn’t wonder if you’d try. I’ve been watching you for months. I knew it was in you.”

Ron put the glass on the desk and slid it across to Dale. He had decided not to ask for a fourth hit. “Have you had people watching me? And how many of you are there?”

“To answer your first question, I don’t have anyone spying on you. But things are seen. You see people moving about the city and take note of it, don’t you? That’s all the people who told me about your rescue of this Jean said to me. They saw it happening, saw that you were doing what needed to be done, and they didn’t have to take a hand themselves.
Even if they were in a position to do anything, which they may not have been. I didn’t ask them that.” He took the now-empty shot glasses and put them away, stoppered that gorgeous bottle of liquid life and put them all back in the drawer.

“As for your second question, there
is no
you,
not in the way you mean it. I don’t command anyone and no one is going around bossing anyone else around, or trying to
be
the boss. We help one another. People are making an effort to put something back together. That’s all.” He clasped his hands together and waited for Ron to respond.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Cutter said. “How many of you are there? Once you told me there were over a thousand people here. Is that how many of you are here?” He waved his arms to indicate the building.

“The current living population of the city of Charlotte is roughly ten thousand souls,” Dale said, his perfect accent clipped and suddenly turning very efficient and very British.

Ron sat there in stunned silence for several seconds. “There’s no way,” he said.

“Way,” Dale said, with the hint of a mischievous smile on his lips.

“Are they all in this building?”

“Oh, no. Here and there. Sitting in safe places. Bunkers of one type or another. People are bound and determined to reorganize things.”

“Like before?
Like when they told us to go about our regular business and that things were going to be fine and dandy? That the problem was going to be handled? That kind of reorganization?” He tried to suppress the edge in his voice, but wasn’t quite successful.

“No,” Dale told him. “Not like that. What we…what they…want to do is to save something of what we had before it’s too late. We’ve already lost so much, and we have to act soon or we’re going to lose everything.” He stood again and moved to the window, peeling the blinds back once more and peering out. Satisfied with what he was seeing, he actually pulled the cord and raised the blinds.

“Come here,” he said. When Cutter was by his side, he pointed down the eight feet or so to street level. The zombies were almost all gone, and what few he could see had turned their backs on the hospital and were shambling away, going elsewhere, to places where their heads would not explode.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Ron said. Then another thought occurred to him. “But that means…that means that they learn. They could…”

“They could become even more dangerous, yes,” Dale said. “Hasn’t happened so far, but one never knows.” He clapped his hands together and the sudden movement and sound startled Cutter. “The bottom line is what I was talking about. We have a small window of opportunity remaining to us to save some things. We’ve lost an awful lot, but there’s still much that we can save.”

“What are you talking about?” Ron asked him.

“I’m talking about everything. I’m talking about our ability to produce things. To manufacture things. To make medicines. To create tools. To grind lenses. Even now, if we could walk out right this second and into any structure we picked, we’re at a point where we’d be at a loss.

“There are thousands of medicines that are lost to us, now. We’ll have to start from scratch to produce all sorts of things. We won’t be making any computer chips for a very long time, even under the best of circumstances. But there are things that we can do.”

“Such as?”

“Mr. Cutter, you’re looking at the tip of the iceberg right here, right now. We can’t treat cancer here, but when the penicillin runs out
, we can make it. We have enough men and women here who know how to produce it with the tools we have at hand. But if we’re not careful, then we’re going to lose the knowledge and the ability to do that kind of thing.