Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End by Daniel Cotton Page B

Waterloo…”
    “Waterloo will be just as bad as… Where exactly are my kids?”
    “In the old bat’s car, waiting outside,” he tells her.
    “You left them outside?” she asks, horrified.
    “They have a blanket, and my…gun,” Luke realizes neither item will ease her maternal fears. “They’re sleeping and well hidden. Can we go?”
    “Josh,” she insists, gesturing towards the treatment room she had left him resting in.
    The sliding footsteps increase in speed as they zero in on the talking pair. Luke pulls his daughter safely away just in time as a woman in hospital pajamas lunges from the shadows.
    “Ms. Jackson!” Susan says with alarm after watching the person in her care fall hard to the floor. She goes to help her back to her room but her father has a tight grip on her arm, keeping her from aiding her patient.
    “Hold on, Suzy,” he tells her, keeping the axe between the woman on the floor and himself. The patient rises, reaching for them with a moan. Luke holds her at bay with the head of the axe against her chest. “Don’t you find her behavior a bit odd?”
    Ms. Jackson has been a patient off and on for the past year, bouts with Dementia often result in her splitting her time between Intensive Care and the psych ward. She has never been shy about complaining or asking for things, treating her visits like trips to the spa. Now she is strangely quiet as she claws the air.
    “I’m just going to put her in a room,” Luke says carefully pushing the lady on the end of his axe towards an open suite. “We have to get to the boys.”
    “All right,” Susan surrenders. She’s concerned about Killian and Hippocrates, but also her husband. “I’ll get Josh.”
    Just as Luke is shoving Ms. Jackson into a dark room for safe keeping he has to shout for Susan to wait. The patient is roughly hurled into the shadows so he can grab the handle and close the door. Luke races to his daughter as she opens the treatment room where her husband rests.
    “Josh,” she says tenderly, finding him standing near the door.
    Luke arrives as Doctor Newton takes a step towards his wife. He keeps Susan from going to him. “Dad, I have to check his wound before we go.”
    “I told you, he was bitten. He’s one of them now,” the father explains. He holds Josh back with the axe as he had Ms. Jackson. The man he hates reaches for them making pitiful sounds.
    Susan tries to push past her father but he won’t let her through. She shoves against him which causes the axe to slip. Josh falls forward onto his wife. The embrace is anything but tender, Josh grips her tightly. Susan screams, all her father’s talk about ‘the bite’ makes sense all of a sudden as the man she married brings his head to her body.
    The doctor’s grip releases suddenly. Opening her tightly closed eyes, Susan looks at the axe buried in her husband’s face. Horrified she recoils out from under him. Her father has just killed her husband before her eyes, she isn’t certain who exactly the monster is.
    Luke pulls his axe free from Josh’s skull, he has never liked him, never actually gave him much of a chance, but he feels bad for Susan. He turns to see his daughter backing away until she reaches the nurse’s station desk. Once distance is put between her and her father, she collapses to the floor.
    “Suzy, I’m sorry I had to do that…”
    “No you’re not!” she accuses. “You hated him.”
    “That’s true,” he agrees. “But, I didn’t want this. I would never hurt him unless I had to. We have to go. Now.”
    A thump from one of the open rooms is followed by an ungodly screeching. The man Luke had helped subdue appears in the doorway. He has wiggled out of his straps save for one ankle, the feat has left his hands skinned down to his wrists and his one free leg without a foot. The man so eagerly wanted off the bed he used enough torque to pop his foot off at the joint and tear the attached skin. Still tethered to the bed he drags