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with
later; right now, he had a riot to prevent.
    ***
    Hours later, Jack sat with his arm in a cast,
facing Laura and Vince. His men had been disarmed and confined to
their quarters.
    “Where do we go from here, Jack?” Laura
asked, shaking her head in disappointment.
    Jack didn’t even bother to look at her. He
stared off into space.
    “How could you do this to us, Jack, and at
such a critical time for us all?”
    “Forget him, Laura,” Vince said. “We’ll
confine him like the others.”
    “And how do we do that?” Laura snapped. “His
goon squad represents about half of the men defending this place.
The other half is busy watching them, except for Daniel and
Gregory. Who’s going to keep an eye on those things outside? Much
less make up the team to go check out Martin’s base.”
    “Take it easy, Laura.” Vince laid a hand on
her shoulder, trying to comfort her as she doubled over into a
coughing fit. “Hey, are you okay?”
    In a voice devoid of compassion, Jack said,
“She needs her medicine. She’s dying of lung cancer, you
idiot.”
    Vince saw Laura’s surprise, as if she
believed no one knew her secret; she couldn’t deny it though,
couldn’t even speak she was too busy wheezing. Vince wanted to
believe Jack was lying, but Laura’s shock told him otherwise.
“Where is it, Jack? Where’s her medicine?”
    “She keeps it hidden all over the place. Try
the back of the cabinet over there.”
    Vince darted to the cabinet, jerked it open
and began throwing its contents onto the floor in a desperate
search for the meds. He found an inhaler and helped Laura use
it.
    “How did you know?” she asked Jack as her
breathing began to stabilize.
    “I know a lot of things, Laura. For example,
I know you’re going to kill us all if you don’t deal with our new
guest. Even if he is what he claims to be, that just makes him more
dangerous. We have to kill him now before it’s too late.”
    “Vince, would you please see to it that Jack
gets locked away like his men?”
    Vince smiled, leveling the barrel of his .38
at Jack. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
    With the help of Martin and one of the
hospital’s remaining defenders, Vince escorted Jack and his goons
to one of the hospital’s larger waiting rooms and locked them
inside. The room made a poor makeshift jail, but at least it only
had one way in and out. The guard sat in a chair facing the door, a
fully loaded AK-47 in his hands.
    With the matter of the prisoners settled,
Vince refocused on assembling a team to escort Martin to his base
in the morning, and Laura held a second meeting to restore some
order and sense of peace to the hospital. Jack’s treason—and it
couldn’t be called anything less—had woken everyone up to how
quickly things were falling apart.
    ***
    On the roof of the hospital, Alyson stood
with an empty syringe at her bare feet. She had finally found her
way out. Martin couldn’t save them. No one could. The world was
dead and the only thing left to do was die. At least she would be
going out happy. She giggled and danced as the night wind caressed
her naked flesh. She could feel them already, the fingers of the
dead running over her skin, the teeth of the dead taking chunks of
her into their mouths. She spun on the roof’s edge like a ballerina
and raised her face as rain began to fall and wash over her. The
water trickled between her breasts and slid off her shapely thighs.
The end, the real end, was finally here. She hoped Mitchell had
found peace with it as she had, then dove off the roof, gliding
like a wounded bird toward the street below.
    The dead ate her splattered remains.
    One of them, a woman wearing a tattered
wedding dress, stood from the feast and stumbled through her
brethren toward the hospital. One of her legs was broken beneath
her bloodstained gown. It barely held her weight.
    She looked up at the hospital, catching the
scent of living flesh above. She opened her mouth to scream as the
hunger burned hotter