Two Alive, стр. 34
The hallway was quiet, aside from the dying snaps Ms. Dottie was making with her jaw. When Johnathan made his way over to examine the elderly woman, she was lying flat on the floor with what looked like a broken neck. Her chin had hit the linoleum so hard she had snapped her neck and Johnathan could see the indentation where her cervical vertebra had popped out of place. It didn’t look good. She had also bit off her own tongue and a huge chunk of it was on the floor in front of her. Blood was starting to pour from her mouth with each open and closing of her jaw.
Even in her current state—unable to get up, unable to move or do anything but open and close her mouth—Ms. Dottie didn’t seem fazed by her injuries or bothered with the fact she might actually be dying on the floor right now. Johnathan tried to reach down to help her, and she snapped her jaw at him, growling through a mouth filled with blood. Johnathan watched her eyes slowly close and saw the rise and fall from her breathing gradually coming to a stop. Then it did. The old man wiped his eye again, feeling his chest tighten. He heard Miles whimpering nearby.
“Ms. Dottie?” Miles asked with eyes filling with tears.
Johnathan could hear Sam trying to get back up and saw Arthur finally moving to help him. Michelle was still at the end of the hall and she raised her radio to her lips to ask for emergency coverage. Johnathan shook his head and went to put a hand on Miles’ shoulder. “C’mon. We have to get the hell out of here.” He turned to leave and helped Sam back up and put the wounded man’s arm around Arthur’s shoulders.
"Is she ok? What… what was wrong with her?" Arthur asked, at a loss for words for once.
"Are you all ok?" Michelle asked but didn't wait for a response. "We have to take you all to a hospital. Is Ms. Dottie ok?”
“No, she’s not.” Johnathan sighed and lowered his head. “She was infected with that UGEN shit. We have to get Sam to a hospital and call the police. But in the meantime, we have to evacuate the school.”
A thud at the door startled everyone in the hallway and Miles went running to stand behind Johnathan. A second, harder thud was accompanied by incoherent shouting that seemed to be coming from multiple voices. Those men from the park had joined the man in the parking lot and all of them were banging on the locked door.
“What the hell is that?” Michelle looked paralyzed.
“Is that the man? Is that the man from outside?” Miles was still holding the flat cardboard box against his chest.
“What man? Who is that?” Michelle asked.
“We have to go.” Johnathan watched the door intensely. Hearing the bolts rattle with each new assault from outside. “We have to evacuate the school.”
“What’s going on, Johnathan?” Michelle was looking at the men and her eyes kept going back to Ms. Dottie’s body on the floor.
“Michelle, there are violent people in the parking lot, and we have to get everyone out of the school.”
Michelle looked even more confused. “Wha--what?”
“Ms. Dottie attacked Sam.” Arthur was shaking his head and wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked at Sam and saw the color was draining from his face. “What would make her do that? Why--why would she just do that?”
“That UGEN shit did that too her.” Johnathan said, unable to bring himself to look at the body of the older woman. “She told me how she had been using it for her Parkinson’s. They’ve been talkin’ about the side effects of that medicine making people crazy on the news. This is that LRS-10 bullshit or UGEN or whatever the fuck… and I think those men outside may be on that shit too.”
“Wait, what?” Michelle was looking at him strangely.
“Michelle, we don’t have time for this!”
Another loud bang at the door called everyone’s attention. Johnathan wasn’t going to stick around to see how long that door would last. He headed towards the front office with Michelle following close behind him, Antonio and Miles chasing her, and Arthur dragging the sickly looking Sam in the rear.
“You--you think they took the drug and that’s what’s making them… crazy?” Arthur stammered, hoping for an answer to what was going on.
“Look, I ain’t a fuckin’ scientist or a doctor so I couldn’t tell you what exactly is going on with those people. All I know is, they’re out there and they’re dangerous!”
Michelle looked behind her as she swung the corner and continued following Johnathan. Her head was spinning. She wasn’t prepared for something like this when she was just starting to get over spilling her coffee. Now Ms. Dottie was bleeding to death on the floor, outside the staff bathroom. And something that sounded like a gorilla was trying to break open the door to the parking lot.
“We… we have to call the police.” Michelle shook her head and blinked a few times. “We can’t just leave. What about Ms. Dottie?”
“I--I agree.”