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warm. There was an old newspaper in the recycling bin in a closet of an office. It was dated four years ago. This place had gone out of business before the town even ghosted out.
    At two AM, Gabby said she’d switch me. I crawled inside my sleeping bag but was unable to warm up. Cold and tired, I drifted to sleep easily. I dreamed that we made it safely back to the compound but as soon as I stepped inside the faux brick estate, I was taken back to my grandparents’ Kentucky farm. Raeya was sitting in the living room crying. I walked past her and slowly ascended the stairs.
    Hayden was laying in my bed, his eyes cold and lifeless.
    I startled awake, my heart racing. “Stupid nightmare,” I mumbled to myself, as I rolled over to try to get comfortable. Hayden wasn’t dead. Well, he wasn’t as far as I knew. Only one person had died in that house and I refused to think about her.
    I got only a few hours of on and off sleep over the night. I dozed off in the car. I had no idea where we were when Mac shook me awake. I instantly became alert when a large hospital loomed ahead. There was a fresh dusting of snow over the parking lot.
    “There are no foot prints,” I stated.
    “You don’t know that,” Alex spat.
    “Yes, I do. There either are or there aren’t. And I don’t see any.”
    “That doesn’t mean anything.”
    “I didn’t say it meant anything. But I’m telling you, I do not see any footprints.” I clenched my fists. If it came down to it, I’d so trip Alex if zombies were chasing us.
     As far as we could tell, nothing new had left or entered the building since the snowfall. The hospital looked new. The lobby was big and thankfully bright due to large glass windows. There was a large atrium off of the lobby, with high glass windows and a glass ceiling, giving a full view of the thick forest that sat behind the hospital.
    Weapons raised, we eased our way through the hospital, making our way to the oncology floor. Bodies littered the hall, but they had not been killed by zombies. They were neatly layed with sheets covering them, all with the same bloodstain in a similar spot on the head; they had been executed.
    I stopped counting after fifty. The smell was horrendous; we all covered our noses and did our best not to gag. We reached the end of the hall. Mac pushed on the doors revealing that they had been chained off from the other side.
    “Son of a bitch!” Alex swore, glaring at me as if it was my fault. I opened my mouth to say something catty back when we heard the growl.
    The smart thing to do would be to kill the sole S1 silently. Dressed in bloodstained scrubs and a dirty lab coat, the crazy doctor bared her teeth when she saw us. Her ankle was twisted and broken and two of her fingers had been chewed off. She wasn’t even worth an arrow. I pulled the knife from its sheath on my belt and ran forward, prepared to send the blade deep into her damaged brain.
    The bullet was faster.
    Faster, and louder. Once the crazy dropped, I turned to stare down Alex, who had his pistol raised. He had a smirk on his face, satisfied he had gotten the kill before I did.
    “What the hell?” I yelled, seeing no point of keeping my voice down now.
    “Three points for me,” he said smugly.
    “Yea, three point for being a dumbass!” I waved my arms at the end of the hall. “Why the hell would you do that? We are at the end of a locked hall!”
    Alex’s face twitched when he realized that. “You could thank me for saving you.”
    “You didn’t save me. You just endangered us all you moron!”
    “Stop being so dramatic,” he jeered. “Obviously we’re fine.”
    Mac and Gabby exchanged nervous glances. They agreed with me. “Let’s get the stuff,” Gabby suggested. “It’s cold and I want to go home.”
    “Good plan,” Mac agreed. We double backed, going down a different hall to get into the ER. Adrenaline coursed through my veins so much my hands almost shook. I kept expecting something to jump out