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“I promise not to show up looking like a cop.”

I looked at him from shined shoes to short, clean hair. “In what alternate reality would you NOT look like a cop?”

I heard the door open behind us, but neither of us turned. We were too busy making major eye contact.

Jarman yelled, “Ramirez!”

There was a tone in that one word that whirled us both around. Doctor Evans was leaning against the wall, holding his wrist upright. Blood gleamed like a scarlet bracelet around his arm.

Ramirez and I started running at the same time down that short space of hallway as if we had farther to go and less time to get there. Jarman and Jakes were disappearing through the door. Bernardo hesitated at the door, holding it open long enough for the screams to cut through the hospital silence. Low and wordless and panicked, and I knew without knowing that it was a man screaming. I was almost at the door, almost to Bernardo, Ramirez pacing me like a shadow.

Bernardo said, “This is a bad idea.” But he went through the door, a heartbeat before we reached it. God, I hated being right all the time.

39

THE WHITE STERILE ROOM had been a quiet corner of hell. Now it was a loud, chaotic corner of hell. A skinless hand snatched at me. I slashed at it with the big blade that I’d pulled from the spine sheath. The hand bled and jerked back. They could feel pain. They bled. Good.

I had the blade raised for a neck blow as the corpse came at me again. Ramirez blocked my arms. “They’re civilians!”

I looked at him, then back at that raw thing that was held to the bed only by one last wrist restraint. It launched at me again, slashing the air with its bloody hand, screaming wordlessly, butchered tongue flopping like a worm in the lipless ruin of its mouth.

“Just stay out of reach,” he said and pulled me past it.

I had time to say, “They’re corpses, Ramirez, just corpses.”

He held up the asp. “Don’t kill them.” He moved into the fight, though it wasn’t a fight yet. Most of the corpses were still restrained to the beds. They struggled, screaming, wailing, jerking their ruined flesh to bloodier ruin against the restraints, bodies bucking as they thrashed to free themselves.

Ben the nurse was beating at the head of one patient. It had sunk teeth into his arm so deeply that he couldn’t free himself. Jarman was with him, beating the thing’s head with his baton from far back like you’d hit a baseball. You could hear the soft, melon-like thunk even over the screaming.

Jakes and Bernardo were at the last bed near the windows. The African-American nurse was held in the embrace of a corpse that still had one hand and one ankle attached to the bed. Its head was buried into her chest. Blood plastered her gown to her body like someone had spilled a can of red paint down her. Where the thing was gnawing shouldn’t have been a killing spot, but there was too much blood. It had reached something vital.

Jakes was beating at the thing’s head so hard that he was rising on tiptoe, his body almost leaving the ground with each blow. The corpse’s head was bleeding, cracking, but it wasn’t letting go. Its head was buried into her chest like a monstrous child, feeding.

Bernardo was stabbing the corpse in the back over and over. The blade came free in a spray of blood, but it didn’t matter. The one by the door had reacted to pain, but once they started feeding, they were just meat. You couldn’t hurt meat, and you sure as hell couldn’t kill it.

I walked between the beds with the corpses screaming, bodies writhing, and all the eyes looked the same. It was as if there was only one personality looking out of every pair of eyes. Their master, whatever that was, watched me walk between the beds, watching me go to the far bed, away from Ramirez, and his cautions. He still didn’t understand what was about to happen when they all freed themselves. We had to be out of this room before that happened.

I moved in beside Bernardo, moving him back a step. I wiggled the blade underneath the thing’s jaw. I took a deep breath, centered myself the way you do in martial arts class