The sound came from the wrong direction.
Not the stairwell.
Not the barricaded door that had been breathing at them all night.
It came from the hallway.
A wet, dragging shuffle—too close, too intimate to be imagined.
Sharon froze mid-step.
For a fraction of a second, her brain tried to correct it. Tried to file it under stress hallucination, generator echo, exhaustion making monsters out of shadows.
Then someone screamed.
It was short. Sharp. Close.
And the sound that followed—the heavy thud of a body hitting tile—ended all doubt.
"ROOMS!" Angela shouted. "NOW!"
The hallway erupted.
People scattered in blind panic, abandoning whispered plans and careful rotations. Doors flew open and slammed shut again. Beds squealed as they were dragged backward. IV poles toppled, clattering loudly enough that Sherry's heart jumped into her throat.
Sharon didn't move.
Not yet.
She stood in the center of the corridor, eyes locked on the far end where the emergency light flickered—and where a figure had just stepped into view.
"Oh God," someone sobbed behind her.
The man moved slowly. Unevenly. One shoe missing. Hospital bracelet still clinging to his wrist, smeared dark with blood.
He had been with them.
Sharon knew that immediately, with sickening clarity.
He'd come up the stairs hours earlier. One of the walking wounded. Bleeding, shaken, helped by two nurses and a stranger who'd kept a steadying hand on his elbow.
She remembered because he'd thanked her.
"Didn't want to die alone," he'd said, voice hoarse. "Thought this place would be safe."
Sharon's stomach dropped.
"When did he get bit?" Patrice whispered, voice breaking.
No one answered.
No one had seen it.
No screaming. No collapse. No warning.
Just time.
The man's head twitched at the sound of breathing. His eyes—clouded, unfocused—tracked movement instead of faces. He let out a low, bubbling moan that vibrated in his chest like something drowning.
Blood dripped steadily from his mouth.
"Inside," Sharon ordered quietly. "Everyone get inside a room. Lock it. Now."
Most obeyed.
Some didn't.
Officer Daniels stepped forward, hand already pulling his sidearm free.
Sharon snapped, "No."
He hesitated. "Ma'am—"
"You fire that gun," she said sharply, "you'll bring every one of them on this floor down on us. And if you miss—if you hit equipment, oxygen, a tank—"
"I can take the shot," he insisted.
"You don't take it," she said, stepping into his line of sight. "Not here."
The zombie took another step.
Closer.
Its foot slipped slightly in a smear of blood, but it didn't fall. Didn't even react. It just corrected and kept moving, drawn by sound and motion and the terrible, living heat of the hallway.
Angela grabbed a metal IV pole and yanked it free from a stand. Patrice armed herself with a fire extinguisher, white-knuckled and shaking. Another nurse tore a sharps container from the wall, clutching it like a blunt weapon.
Sharon felt the weight of the moment settle fully on her chest.
This was no longer about holding a door.
This was triage in motion.
The zombie turned its head.
And that was when Troy ran.
"NOPE," he barked, panic ripping through his voice. "Not doing this."
He bolted for the nearest open room, shoving past a nurse so hard she stumbled into the wall. The door slammed behind him and locked.
Sharon's head snapped toward the sound.
"Troy!" she shouted.
Too late.
She followed his line of flight—and felt her blood turn to ice.
His wife.
Still in the hallway.
Still on the bed they'd rolled out earlier so she wouldn't have to walk.
Eight months pregnant. Pale. Sweating. One hand braced against her belly.
She hadn't moved.
Hadn't even screamed.
She was staring at the thing approaching her with wide, disbelieving eyes—as if her brain hadn't caught up yet, as if she were still waiting for someone to tell her this wasn't real.
The zombie was less than ten feet away.
"Oh my God," Angela whispered.
Sharon moved.
"Patrice—bed!" she barked. "Daniels—block him!"
Daniels lunged sideways, trying to intercept, but the zombie pivoted abruptly at the noise, mouth opening wide enough that Sharon could see teeth slick with blood and something darker tangled between them.
The woman whimpered.
Not loud enough to draw it.
Just enough to break Sharon's heart.
"Troy!" Sharon shouted again, slamming her fist against the locked door. "OPEN IT!"
Nothing.
No response.
The zombie took another step.
Then another.
Its foot caught on the bedframe and scraped metal loudly against tile.
The sound echoed down the hallway like a bell.
And the zombie surged forward.
"MOVE THE BED—NOW!"
Sharon's voice didn't crack. It cut.
Patrice was already shoving, her shoulder slammed into the metal frame as the wheels shrieked across tile. The pregnant woman cried out as the bed jerked sideways, IV pole rattling wildly, fluids sloshing.
The sound was enough.
The thing lunged.
Not fast. Not clean. Just dead weight thrown forward by instinct and noise. Its shoulder smashed into the bed rail with a wet, cracking impact. Its mouth snapped inches from the woman's arm, teeth clacking together, strings of saliva and blood stretching between them.
She screamed.
The kind of scream that emptied the lungs. The kind that didn't stop.
Daniels hit the zombie from the side, tackling it hard. They went down in a tangle of limbs, the stench exploding up close—rot, blood, something sweet and wrong. The body beneath him thrashed violently, jaws snapping, teeth scraping skin.
Daniels screamed as its mouth grazed his neck.
"HEAD—GET ITS HEAD BACK!" Sharon shouted.
She was already moving.
She grabbed the IV pole Patrice had dropped and brought it down hard.
The metal rang against skull.
The sound was wrong. Hollow.
The zombie shrieked—not in pain, but in rage. It flailed wildly, fingers clawing at nothing, legs kicking against the floor.
Angela ran in with the fire extinguisher, both hands shaking.
She brought it down.
Once.
Bone gave way with a sickening crack. Blood sprayed warm and thick across the floor, across scrubs, across Sharon's hands.
Still—it moved.
Its body jerked, convulsed, refused to stop.
Renee screamed and swung a broken tray table again and again, sobbing with every strike.
"STAY DOWN—PLEASE—"
Daniels scrambled free, gasping, blood pouring down his neck.
"You have to—head—" he choked.
Sharon lifted the IV pole again.
Her arms burned. Her vision tunneled. Her lungs screamed for air.
She brought it down with everything she had left.
The skull split open.
Gray matter spilled across tile.
The body collapsed.
And stayed down.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the pregnant woman vomited violently over the side of the bed.
"She's alive," Patrice said breathlessly. "She's alive."
Sharon dropped to her knees beside her immediately, hands already assessing—neck, arms, shoulders.
"No bites," she said quickly. "No breaks. Angela—oxygen. Now."
Angela fumbled with the mask, hands shaking so badly she had to try twice.
"My baby—" the woman sobbed. "Please—my baby—"
"Your baby is still with us," Sharon said firmly, gripping her hand. "Stay with me."
A door slammed open behind them.
Troy.
He took in the scene in one glance—the blood, the body, his wife shaking and splattered—and something inside him snapped.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" he screamed.
He slipped in blood, went down on one knee, then scrambled toward the corpse.
"You SAID it was SAFE—" His voice broke into a howl. "YOU SAID—"
Daniels tried to intercept him. Troy shoved him hard.
"You killed him! You KILLED HIM!"
"He was already gone!" Angela shouted.
Troy grabbed at the ruined skull, screaming, fists slick with blood.
Then he turned on Sharon.
"This is YOUR FAULT!" he roared. "You locked us in—you played GOD—"
He swung.
Daniels took the hit, crashing into the wall.
Troy lunged for his wife.
"We're leaving. NOW."
Sharon stepped between them.
"No."
Her voice was low. Absolute.
Troy shoved her.
She hit the floor.
Daniels tackled him from behind, the two of them crashing into the wall. Troy fought wildly—screaming, sobbing, striking himself.
"I LEFT HER—I LEFT HER—"
Renee grabbed a syringe from a fallen tray. "Sedative. Now."
Patrice drew it up with shaking hands.
Troy bucked violently, throwing Daniels off, fists slamming into his own skull.
"I CAN'T—"
The needle went in.
Then another.
The sedative finally took hold.
Troy went slack in their arms, the rage draining out of him all at once, leaving only dead weight and shallow breathing. They lowered him carefully to the floor, turning him onto his side the way they'd been trained to do a hundred times before—only this time, it felt wrong. Like too much damage had already been done.
The hallway looked like a crime scene.
Blood streaked the tile in wide arcs where the body had fallen and thrashed. Gray matter clung to the base of the wall. Someone's shoe slid when they tried to step back. The smell was thick now—iron-heavy, nauseating, impossible to ignore.
The body lay twisted where it had finally stopped moving.
Unrecognizable.
Except for the clothes.
A woman near the wall made a broken sound in her throat. She stared at the corpse without blinking, one hand slowly rising to cover her mouth.
"Oh my God," she whispered.
Sharon turned toward her. "Do you recognize him?"
The woman didn't answer at first. Her knees buckled, and she had to grab the rail to stay upright.
"He was… he was with us," she said finally. "He came up the stairs with us."
That single sentence changed everything.
The hallway went still.
Angela felt it like a physical blow. "What do you mean, with us?"
"He helped push the wheelchair," the woman said, her voice shaking. "He said his wife was downstairs. That he just needed a minute."
Renee's face drained of color. "He wasn't restrained."
"No," the woman whispered. "He walked."
Sharon's chest tightened.
She looked at the body again—not as an attacker, not as a threat—but as a timeline.
"How long was he on this floor?" Patrice asked quietly.
No one knew.
"Which room did he come from?" Daniels asked.
Silence.
The question hung there, heavy and suffocating.
Angela turned slowly, her gaze sweeping the hallway—closed doors, darkened rooms, people pressed against walls holding their breath.
"If he came up with us," she said, barely above a whisper, "then he was already bitten."
A murmur rippled through the group.
"And no one noticed," Renee added.
The pregnant woman whimpered softly on the gurney, fingers clutching the sheet. Someone reached for her, then hesitated, unsure.
Sharon felt the weight of it settle fully now.
This wasn't just about what had happened.
It was about what they'd missed.
She looked at the people gathered there—patients, families, nurses, doctors—every one of them suddenly very aware of their own bodies, their own skin.
Her voice was steady when she spoke, but it took effort.
"Whose family member was this?"
No one answered.
"Where did he come from?" she asked again.
Still nothing.
The silence stretched.
Then someone whispered the question no one wanted to be the first to say out loud.
"…How many others could be bitten?"
No one moved.
No one spoke.
The unit seemed to hold its breath with them.
And in that moment, surrounded by blood and fear and unanswered questions, everyone understood the same terrible truth:
The danger hadn't broken in from outside.
It had walked in with them.
And it could already be standing beside them again.