Infected by Anthony Izzo

paperclips from the nurses' station.
     
    They left the surgical ward and Maria heard a heavy door slam. It was followed by the clop clop of several sets of footsteps. They wound through the hallways, the stairway door behind them. She could smell them as well as hear them, a stink she associated with the sick and dying.
     
    The doors to the west wing were straight ahead. Maria turned and saw their pursuers, a dozen strong, pushing and shoving along the corridor, pressed in wall-to-wall. Through the glass in the door, she saw Megan peering back at them.
     
    “Open the damn door!” Rebecca said.
     
    Maria saw Megan reach up and unbolt the door. She swung them inward and the two women slipped inside. Maria shut the door and bolted the top as the zombies slammed into the door. Maria saw their pale gray faces and drooling mouths as they pressed against the glass. One of them licked the glass, leaving a trail of yellow mucous. Maria wrinkled her nose.
     
    “What'd we get?” Megan asked.
     
    “Not much. Take your pick,” Maria said.
     
    “I'll take the hand sledge, I guess.”
     
    “How long will that door hold?” Rebecca asked.  
    They let that question hang in the air.
     
    The things pounded at the doors and they started to buckle. One of them got a hand through the opening between the doors. Maria hefted the Sawzall, pulled the trigger, and the blade buzzed to life. She brought it in a downward arc, slicing into the things wrist. The blade bit through the skin and muscle, stopping at the bone. She pulled it up and swung it back down, taking two of the zombie's fingers. They plopped on the ground and wiggled. The creature yanked its hand back.
     
    They surged forward again, causing the doors to buckle. One of them stuck his face inside, a bearded freak with bits of gristle in the hairs. This time it was Rebecca who stepped up, swinging the sledgehammer like a baseball bat and obliterating the thing's face.
     
    “We need to shore up the door,” Maria said.
     
    “There's nothing heavy enough. Gurneys and supply carts aren't going to cut it,” Rebecca said.
     
    They came at the door again, this time an elderly woman with greasy white hair sticking her face in the space between the doors. Her mouth opened and closed reflexively, as if trying to chomp on something in mid-air. Maria took the drywall knife and jammed it all the way into the back of her mouth. It stuck and she made wet, gurgling noises before pulling her face from the opening. Maria felt sick. They were supposed to save lives, not mutilate people. Though she supposed they ceased to be people when the disease got a hold of them. Still not pleasant work.
     
    The zombies backed away from the door and Maria peered through the window, which was about four inches wide and a yard tall. They were retreating around the corner, perhaps coming up with some rudimentary new plan of attack. Either that or they had realized they would be mutilated with power tools. If they could even think.
     
    The old woman lay on her back, the drywall saw's wooden handle jutting from her mouth.
     
    “Who wants to watch the door and who wants to check on our patients?” Maria asked.
     
    “Go. I'll watch it,” Rebecca said. There was almost a gleam in her eye. Something that told Maria the tall nurse was the last person she'd want to fuck with in  a bar fight.
     
    Maria went down the hallway and found Christopher in one of the empty rooms. He was sitting in the wheelchair.
     
    “What's happening out there?” he asked.
     
    “The things loose in the hospital were at the doors. We fought them back for now.”
     
    “Is help on the way?” he asked.
     
    “We've called the police. There might be a few cops in the building already,” Maria said.
     
    “I guess if the cancer doesn't get me, at least I can say I was eaten by zombies,” he said, smiling.
     
    “I'm pretty stringy,” Maria said. “Don't think they'd like me.”
    “You have blood on you,”