Vanessa squeezed her eyes shut tightly and allowed herself to be guided through the parking lot toward the front doors of the clinic.
She had heard the cries of the angry people even before Gregor parked the car. The voices only grew louder as Gregor took her hand and they began the walk. The walk was the hardest part of the whole damn thing.
“Heaven don’t got no place for mamas that kill they babies, you godless slut!”
“There’s still time to turn back, to repent and beg His forgiveness. It’s not too late!”
“You stupid cow! The entire fucking planet is dying, all of the people are dying, and you want to kill an unborn baby?”
Vanessa heard Gregor. “You’d better back the fuck off, sir. I won’t hesitate at all-”
“To what, shoot me? Ha! Go ahead and do it, pal, you’d be doin me a big favor!”
Vanessa felt something cold and wet explode against her skull, drenching her hair, her face, her crinkled eyes. Someone had thrown a full beverage at her head; cola, by the sticky sweetness of what she inhaled through flared nostrils.
“Take that, you baby murderer!”
She felt Gregor let go of her hand; she heard the scraping struggle of people on pavement. She couldn’t help herself any longer, not with Gregor maybe being hurt. She opened her eyes and saw a dog pile of bodies, all scrambling about on the ground of the parking lot. Someone screamed in pain; someone else screeched in panic.
Gregor emerged from the melee, a cut over his left eye, and grabbed Vanessa’s hand once more.
“Come on! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
They ran the last twenty yards to the building. As they scrambled up the cement stairs, the glass doors swung open. A large man stood in the doorway; he was wearing a black suit and a blood-red tie.
“This way folks, hurry up now. Be careful, be careful now.”
Once the couple were safely inside, the big man closed the glass doors once more and reached up to grip a large metal handle; he pulled down a mighty steel gate as one would pull down a garage door; it slammed the floor loudly, automatically locking with a satisfying chunk.
“Are either of you hurt?” the big man asked as he looked them up and down.
“He is, he’s bleeding, there’s a big cut, oh god there’s so much blooood!”
And Vanessa fainted.
“What are we doin, Steve? Why we in a dumpster? They don‘t put the dead babies in here no more.”
”The hell they don’t! They only want you to think that. These people are fucking savages, through and fucking through, don’t you know?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, man. But if there are dead babies in here, what if they…”
“What if they turned, you mean? I doubt it, my friend. I seriously fucking doubt it.”
“And why’s that.
The two men were waist deep in bags marked Hazardous Material/Medical Waste/CAUTION; the gigantic green dumpster sat behind the clinic, and could only be accessed by ladder. The two men had brought their own, a rusty painting ladder from younger days spent chasing dollars, twelve hours a day.
“You heard that chemist guy at the meeting last night, didn’t you?”
“No, I guess I fell asleep for that part…”
“Well, had you listened, you would know that the ones who’ve turned are all young adults or older, not younger. The chemist said that the creatures are full of hormones that, in theory, are only produced once a person begins puberty. I forget what the hormone is called, but. You know, fuck it, we’ll be fine.”
As they rummaged through the trash in search of the coveted bio- materials, it began to rain; lightly at first, then a downpour of ice-cold drops. The men groaned in anguish but continued to dig; they did not want to return empty-handed. Finally, pay-dirt was struck.
“Here, I got it!”
“Where? Show me, show me. Show it to me you fucker!”
The angry man looked through the cardboard box and rifled through the stack of papers bound in plastic; then he handed the items back to the idiot man and began to climb out of the dumpster. He was wearing a triumphant expression. Above him, the sky flashed, white and spectacular, and menacing. The angry man straddled the edge of the dumpster, turned back to yell at the idiot.
“Alright, dummy, alright! Let’s get the hell out of here. Unless you like crawling around in fucking dead baby goo.” he laughed at this.
“Yeah, right. No way, man.I’m coming, I just gotta find my backpack…”
“You lost your fucking pack? You fool! Well, shit, man, its probably a goner now. Leave it and come on.”
“wait! Here it is,” the fool shouted, reaching into the depths for something to grab hold of. “I can see it, I can…almost…reach it….”
Suddenly the idiot began shrieking, ear-splitting howls that were terrifying in their likeness to an animal caught in a hunter’s trap.
The angry man wasn’t angry any more; he was scared. The blood had drained from his face and his eyes were wide as he called the man’s name over and again, while the other man flailed in the dumpster, sending up sprays of blood and cardboard and broken syringes. And there was another noise, just below the rapid screams. It sounded like…
The frightened man spun too fast for his own feet, and nearly toppled, but caught himself with the heel of his hand, scraping it against raw pavement, leaving several layers of skin and tissue and thin blood behind. Then he ran, yelling his head off, around the side of the building. He had gone to tell the others.
A minute or so passed. The man inside the dumpster died. He twitched once, twice. Then he came back to life. He crawled out of the dumpster, pack slung over one shoulder. When the others came running, they turned the corner to find the undead idiot licking the pavement with a swollen purple tongue, trying to get every last shred of his friend’s skin; he looked up when he sensed the others.
He began crawling on hands and knees towards the mob of protesters, some still holding poster board and picket signs. One woman fainted, splitting her face open upon the wet ground.
When the creature came within a yard or so from the group, the men and women began to hear the cries. The mothers in the crowd recognized the sounds first, but before they could utter anything intelligible, the things were upon them; dozens and dozens of undead, aborted fetuses, in various stages of growth and decomposition. Several of the creatures fell on them from above, an insane rain of mutilated babies, teeth sharp and minds ravenous for death.
The protesters barely stood a chance to begin with, and soon became utterly hopeless; the alley behind the clinic was teeming with the reanimated, the dead, the dying; it was an orgy of screams and moans and horrible gurgling giggles.
From a window high above the carnage, Vanessa looked on, hands pressed to the cold glass. Gregor stood behind her, nodding silently to the large man in the suit. A doctor stpped out into the carpeted hallway and looked up from his clipboard.
“Are you Vanessa?”
“yes, I am.”
“Wonderful. Shall we begin?”
