The Fifth Day Read online

  And in the middle of the circle was a stone chair, white as alabaster, and a woman sat in it. Her age and appearance were uncertain. One of the travelers saw her as an old hag, another as a beautiful young maiden, a third as a matron stout and stern. But to all, she had a fearful mien, one that held no love for those who came before her. Her eyes were a milky white, and they knew that however fearful she looked, she was blind.

  You have come to the Crossroads, she said, and her voice echoed, as if it were a dozen voices all speaking at the same time, some rough, some sweet, some angry, some kind. This place marks the middle of the forest. Now tell me who you are, and why I should allow you to proceed further.

  —

  “IT?” JACKSON SCOWLED at the young doctor as if he was a commanding officer grilling a subordinate. “What is ‘it’?”

  “A—a thing.” Gareth shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. When you’re running like hell from something, you don’t pay attention to detail.”

  “I do.” Jackson’s voice was harsh in the dim quiet. “And—”

  Zolzaya cut him off with an irritated wave of the hand. “Yes, we know, our survival depends on it, blah blah, and so on. Let’s pretend he’s already had the official reprimand.” Gareth looked at her, wide-eyed. “But it would be helpful if you could tell us everything you remember about it,” she went on, in gentler tones.

  Jackson’s eyes went as hard as chips of quartz, and a muscle worked in his jaw. She thought he was going to snarl at her—or perhaps even strike her—but in the end, he said nothing.

  “Okay.” The young doctor seemed to be trying to figure out who to address, to parse which of them was the leader. He finally settled on looking back and forth between Jackson and Zolzaya. “I’m a surgeon in the pediatric oncology department. Usually I work on the third floor. The day everyone vanished, two days ago. Or was it three…?”

  “Three.”

  “Right. Three days. I got a call in the middle of the night that one of my patients had a crisis. She was in chemo for Ewing’s sarcoma, and had been responding well, but suddenly she went into shock. Some kind of reaction to the meds. So I went in, and we got her stabilized. The sun was coming up by the time I was able to go home, but I thought I’d head to the break room on the fourth floor to close my eyes for a minute. I didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel, you know? I live twenty miles up the coast. Or lived.” He swallowed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see the place again.”

  “So, you went on break. Then what?”

  “I got a cup of coffee, and sat down in a chair, and I was asleep in seconds. Lights out. Then something woke me up. I think it was the silence.”

  “Yes.” Olivia had been standing in the shadows behind them, not speaking, and her voice made Gareth start.

  “Hospitals are supposed to be quiet, but they never are, you know? There are always people, the noises of machines, elevator doors opening and closing. Suddenly it was all gone. Well, most of it. You could still hear the humming of the soda machine, the sound of a television in a waiting room, that sort of thing. But there was this great big hole in the middle of everything.”

  “That’s it,” Olivia said. “A hole in the middle of everything. That’s exactly what it is.”

  “So, I opened my eyes, and stood up, and there was no one else in the break room. That was odd, but I didn’t think anything of it. So I went out into the hall, and everyone was gone. There was no one in the Medical Library office, which is right next door. So I went down the hall to Same-Day Surgery. They should have been gearing up. That’s their busy time, early morning, getting that day’s patients checked in and prepped and everything.”

  “It was empty, too,” Olivia said.

  “Yes. And you know by now, everyone was gone. Everyone in the hospital. Patients, staff, visitors, everyone. I went from floor to floor. And all over the place were piles of clothes. I went down to the third floor, you know, to check on my patient—I’d left her, like a half-hour earlier, resting in bed—and her bed was empty. Still warm to the touch, and her gown was lying there.”

  Zolzaya shuddered, remembering Vinnie’s warmth left on the sheets, the only trace of him she would ever find.

  “I made some phone calls, but couldn’t get hold of anyone. I was desperate. I think I called about twenty people. You can’t give up, you know? You keep thinking, ‘It’s a coincidence, someone will answer eventually.’ But no one did, not even the emergency operators at nine-one-one. That told me that what had happened here had happened other places, too. Maybe everywhere. I thought—well, I thought it was everyone, you know, everyone in the world except me.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” Olivia’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “I have never been so terrified.”

  “Can you imagine it? Being the only person left, in the whole world? That’s what I’ve thought, for three days. But when it occurred to me then, and I pictured myself being the only one left, no other humans… I started thinking of The Little Prince, you know?” Now he was crying, tears streaking his round cheeks. “Alone on his asteroid. I pictured that cover illustration, with the little boy standing on the planet, all by himself. I loved that story when I was a kid, but now it’s horrible.” He dragged a sleeve across his eyes. “I kept seeing myself, this lone person on this enormous spinning ball in space. Then I panicked. I took the elevator to the first floor. When the door opened, there was this—this thing.” His voice trembled. He appeared to be on the verge of emotional collapse.

  Jackson had his arms crossed across his chest, looking stern and thoughtful. “Describe it.”

  Gareth nodded, took a deep breath, and centered himself. “It’s tall. Taller than me. It’s covered with—I don’t know. It doesn’t look like hair. The closest thing is dreadlocks. But they’re flat, like long blades of grass. It looks like—I don’t know. Like a man-shaped shaggy grass thing.” He gave a nervous giggle. “I know, that sounds really fucking stupid.”

  “No more stupid than some of the other things we’ve seen.” Zolzaya traded glances with the others. “What did it do?”

  “The first time I saw it, it was about ten feet from the elevator when the doors opened. Slouching along, hunched over. Its back was to me. But it heard the noise, and turned toward me, then came for me, reaching out with these long arms. The arms were covered with that flat grassy hair, too, and it was wet. Like it came from a swamp. It made a moaning noise.”

  “How did you get away?” Olivia asked.

  “Dumb luck. I was paralyzed with terror. I backed into the corner, and it rushed forward. I pushed back on it, fought against it, but it was strong. It pinned me to the back of the elevator. The face—it had these indentations, where you’d expect eyes and a mouth, but those were covered with that shaggy wet stuff, too. Like blind holes, that went nowhere.”

  Zolzaya shuddered. Another one to add to the list. This wasn’t like anything any of them had seen yet.

  “So I pushed at it, and then somehow got my knee into its midsection. It didn’t like that, and roared right into my face. Its breath smelled like pond muck.” His nose wrinkled. “But I kicked at it, and finally braced myself against the rail at the back of the elevator and shoved it with my foot. It stumbled back, and out of the elevator. I hit the Close Doors button before it could get back in. It was almost too fast. The doors would have opened again if it had gotten its hand inside. They have an electric eye, you know? But it barely missed as the doors closed. I pressed the button for the fourth floor because I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. I could hear it pounding on the door as the elevator started to ascend.” He shook his head helplessly. “I’ve been up here ever since. I’ve tried a bunch of times to get out. I won’t take the elevator again, but I’ve tried the stairs. Every time I get to the first floor, it’s there, waiting for me. I’ve lived on soda and corn chips and cookies from the vending machines since then. I broke into them with a chair.”

  To look at him, i
t was probably the first illegal thing he’d done in his life.

  “You had reason.”

  “I’ve been here ever since. I kept looking for evidence that I wasn’t the last person left alive on Earth. I spent hours looking out of the window, down at Highway One, and I never saw a car pass. I was afraid the monster would come up the stairs looking for me, especially when I was asleep, so I barricaded myself inside the Medical Library. I thought it was the safest, because it has heavy doors that open in, and I could push some furniture against them to block it at night. And that’s everything that’s happened until just now, when I heard your voices.”

  “Have you ever seen it anywhere else but the first floor?” Jackson asked.

  Gareth shook his head. “But no matter which staircase I try, it’s always there waiting for me when I get to the ground floor.”

  “There could be more than one of them,” Z said.

  Jackson held back a snort. “Funny we didn’t see any sign of it—or them. We spent a lot of time on the first floor, raiding the pharmacy.”

  “I saw the bags.” Gareth pointed at the pile of medical supplies at their feet. “What do you need all that stuff for?”

  “We’ve got three people who need medical help. We’d come up to the medical library to try to find reference books we could use to treat them. But we did better than that, looks like. We found a doctor.” Z smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging fashion.

  “If we can get out of here.” This from—who else?—Olivia.

  So much for encouragement.

  “I’m armed.” Jackson’s face was grim. “Whatever that thing is, I’ll bet it can’t stand a couple of rounds from a Glock. This time I’m not going to miss.”

  “Thank God you guys showed up.” Gareth said.

  Z patted his shoulder. “We’re just as glad we found you.”

  “Let’s go,” Jackson said. “We need to get back to the house as quickly as we can. There’s no use dawdling, and now that we have a doctor, there’s no need to get books from the medical library. You ready?”

  She nodded. After a moment, Gareth did, too.

  Olivia trembled. “Maybe it will let us go.”

  “Maybe,” Gareth said. “But I doubt it.”

  “Okay.” Jackson’s voice rang with impatience. “Which staircase would bring us down to the first floor closest to an outside exit?”

  The young doctor thought for a moment. “The one on the other side of Same-Day Surgery.” He pointed past a sign that said Medical Library and into the shadowy distance. “Once we’re through the door at the bottom of the stairs, it’ll be a fifty-yard dash across the foyer and out.”

  “Good. Split the bags up so everyone is carrying equal weight. Gareth, do you have any personal belongings you want to bring with you?”

  “Nothing I’ll need.” He frowned, his broad brow wrinkling. “Everyone really is gone, then? Out there?”

  “Not everyone.” Z almost rolled her eyes. This guy really had shut himself in here for the last few days. “But pretty damn close. There are six others back in Furness. Other than us, though, that’s about it.”

  “Us and the monsters,” Olivia said in a solemn voice.

  “You mean you’ve seen other—things? Like what?”

  Z cut the conversation short with a wave of her hand. “There’ll be time to tell you everything once we’re out of here. Right now, we need to go.”

  Jackson led the way, carrying his two bags of medicines in one hand and his drawn Glock with the other, the barrel pointed at the floor. The hallway angled left, past empty and silent patients’ rooms, a nurses’ station, and a waiting room where flattened clothes lay draped across chairs.

  “Where did they all go?” Gareth’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “We have no idea,” Z said. “But when we get back to the house, I’ll introduce you to someone who does. He thinks it was the Rapture.”

  “Religious guy?”

  “Very.”

  “So why was he left behind with the rest of us sinners?”

  She smiled. “He’s still trying to figure that out, I think.”

  The hall ended in a window that overlooked the long slope down to the ocean, and a door surmounted with an exit sign. Jackson opened the door to the staircase, stepped onto the landing, and after a moment signaled the others to follow him with a jerk of his head.

  All talking was stilled. The only sound was the soft tread of feet on the tile stairs. At least this staircase, being against an exterior wall, had narrow windows on each landing, and the dim light filtered upwards and downwards. Handy, now that they knew there was a monster down there waiting for them. At least they’d see it first.

  They met nothing on the stairs. They clustered around the door to the ground floor without opening it, peering through the window into the expansive foyer of the hospital. To the right was the pharmacy they had raided. To the left were the untenanted information desk, a broad marble floor, and shining with the light of the westering sun, the doors to the parking lot.

  Jackson pushed open the door, and stepped through.

  The attack was nearly instantaneous. A dripping, slouching figure, covered from head to toe with what looked like pond weeds, charged him as if it had been waiting patiently for them to arrive. Jackson tried to bring his gun around, but it was too fast. It struck at his arm, knocking the gun skittering across the floor. Jackson ran for it, but the thing’s loping, uneven gait was faster, and it clasped his shoulders, lifted him bodily, and threw him to the floor.

  Olivia shrieked and ran past them, sprinting for the door. Gareth moaned and flattened himself against the wall. Jackson was either stunned or unconscious. The thing had its hands at his throat, but he was limp, his arms slack and flailing as it tossed him from one side to the other. But then the creature’s attention was turned toward Olivia, fleeing toward the brightly-lit exit as if the hounds of hell were at her heels. It stood, giving a low, unearthly wail, and left Jackson, pursuing Olivia, desperate to keep its quarry penned up, not to let any of them escape.

  Zolzaya stared for a moment at the creature gaining on Olivia, and then dashed to where Jackson’s dropped gun lay. With a single motion she lifted it, aimed, and fired off three rounds.

  For not having fired a gun for six years, she did pretty well. The first and third round missed—one pinged off a marble planter near the entrance, the other shattered the remaining intact window in the interior doorway. But the second hit the thing square in the back. It gave a piercing shriek, almost above the range of human hearing, staggered, and pitched to the floor with a wet splat.

  What had she just shot? Her heart was slamming against her ribcage. She’d never killed anything bigger than a fly. And now she’d killed something and she didn’t even know what the fuck it was.

  Olivia apparently didn’t notice her pursuer had fallen, only five feet from where she was. She ran through the interior, then the exterior, door into the sunny parking lot and out of sight.

  A hand touched Zolzaya’s shoulder. She startled and whirled around, only realizing at the last second that she was about to shoot Gareth, who had come up behind her.

  “Jesus Christ, Gareth. Don’t do that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Man.” She dropped the Glock to her side. “That’s why I don’t own a gun. I’m way too easily startled.”

  “I’m glad you had one this time. But we need to get out of here. Remember what you said? There could be more than one of them.”

  She nodded, and they went to Jackson, who was stirring, his face in a grimace. Gareth dropped to his knees next to him, helped him to sit up.

  “I’m okay,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Let’s go.”

  Gareth helped Jackson to his feet, and Zolzaya gave him back his gun. He gave her a curt nod—all the thanks she was likely to get, but it was enough for now. As they passed the fallen creature, Jackson prodded it with his foot.

  It didn’t stir.

  “What
….” He frowned in puzzlement, and knelt down next to it.

  “C’mon.” Gareth made a nervous come-hither motion with one hand. “We need to get out of here before we’re attacked again.”

  “Not until you see this.” Jackson had his hands in the thing’s soggy pelt, his fingers pushing it aside, probing deep into its torso.

  “What?” Zolzaya stepped behind Jackson, peering over his shoulder.

  “It’s not….” For the first time, Jackson was at a loss. “There’s nothing here. It’s—it’s all this leafy stuff. It’s a big pile of wet grass.” He gave a pull with both hands, and the monster’s body tore in two, leaving Jackson with two handfuls of dripping pond weed. “No bones. No muscles. No skin. Nothing.”

  “What the fuck? How could it move?” Simultaneously curious and repelled, she pushed at its outstretched arm with the tip of her sneaker, and it met no resistance. What had once been strong enough to throw a man of Jackson Royce’s size to the floor was now a limp mess of rotting vegetation.

  “Hey, folks?” There was a tremor in Gareth’s voice. “Can we leave the scientific inquiry for another time? I want to get the hell out of here, okay?”

  Jackson nodded, holstered his gun. They walked through the exit and stood, blinking, in the sun.

  “Where’s Olivia?” Zolzaya looked around.

  Gareth pointed.

  Olivia Carr stood, arms clasped about her, facing the building, about fifty yards away, in the middle of an open expanse of lawn that sloped down toward the drive. Her body was immobile. Except for the wind stirring her dark hair, she could have been carved from stone.

  “Start the car, Z,” Jackson said. “I’ll go get her.”

  Back in command. Back to making sure his soldiers did what they were supposed to.

  “No.” She tossed him the keyring. “Let me. You and Gareth get in the car.”