Nightfall Protocol:A Zombie Romance

Chapter Three

Dr. Voss stared at me like I'd lost my mind, and honestly, I couldn't blame her. Maybe I had. But there are some decisions you don't make with your head — you make them with whatever's left of your gut once the fear burns away, and mine was telling me one thing, loud and clear: find Mia.

"There's a side entrance," Voss said finally, her voice tight but steadier now, like she'd decided helping me was better than standing frozen in a doorway waiting to die. "Past the loading dock. It's not as heavily... occupied. At least it wasn't twenty minutes ago."

"Show me."

She hesitated, glancing back toward the mouth of the alley, toward the wider street beyond where, presumably, safety and normal police response and ambulances that weren't full of monsters still existed. Then she looked at the blood on her scrubs, at the exhaustion etched into every line of her face, and something in her posture shifted.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. This way."

We moved together through the alley, my leg protesting every step but holding. Voss kept close behind me, flinching at every shadow, every gust of wind that rattled a loose gutter or shifted trash across the pavement. I didn't blame her for that either.

"How long have you worked at Medifi?" I asked, partly to keep her calm, partly because silence in a place like this had a way of making the imagination run wild.

"Six years." She kept her eyes forward, scanning. "I did my residency here. I know this building better than my own apartment." A pause. "Knew it, I guess. It doesn't feel like the same place anymore."

"What about the patient — the one who started this? Any idea what infected him?"

She shook her head. "No records, no history in our system. He came in through the ER, said he'd been out near the old industrial docks when something bit him. We assumed animal attack. Cleaned the wound, ran routine bloodwork." Her jaw tightened. "By the time the labs came back, he was already gone. And then he wasn't."

I filed that away. Industrial docks. If this had started somewhere specific, that meant it hadn't come from nowhere — it meant there might be a source, maybe even a reason, buried under whatever chaos had exploded across this hospital in the last hour. NPS didn't send agents out for random incidents. Someone, somewhere, already suspected this was more than an isolated outbreak.

We reached the end of the alley, where it opened onto a service road running along the side of the hospital. A loading dock sat ahead, its metal shutter half-raised, dark and silent beyond. No sound came from inside — which, given everything else tonight, felt more like a warning than a relief.

"That's the entrance," Voss whispered, pointing. "Through there, straight down the corridor, you'll hit the east wing stairwell. If your friend made it anywhere, it would've been up — patients and staff were being moved to the higher floors when everything went to hell."

"You're not coming?"

Her eyes flicked toward the street beyond, toward whatever fragile hope of escape still existed out there. "I have a daughter," she said quietly. "She's eight. I have to try to get to her."

I nodded. I understood that kind of pull better than she probably realized. "Get somewhere safe, Dr. Voss. Don't stop until you're sure it's clear."

She gave me one last look — something between gratitude and pity, like she didn't expect to see me again — and then she was gone, disappearing back into the alley the way we'd come.

I turned toward the loading dock alone.

The shutter groaned as I ducked beneath it, the sound echoing louder than I would have liked into the darkness ahead. I raised my weapon, flicked on the small flashlight mounted beneath the barrel, and let the beam cut through the black.

The corridor beyond was chaos frozen in place. Gurneys overturned. A wheelchair on its side, one wheel still spinning slightly, like someone had abandoned it only moments before I arrived. Dark smears streaked across the tile in long, dragging trails that I didn't let myself think too hard about.

"Mia?" I called out, low, testing the air. No response but the hollow echo of my own voice bouncing off the walls.

I pressed forward, boots crunching over broken glass and scattered debris — shattered vials, medical charts fluttering weakly in some unfelt draft, an overturned crash cart spilling its contents across the floor. Every few steps I paused, listening, weapon raised, waiting for that same wet growling sound to announce another one of those things lurking in the dark.

Nothing came. Not yet.

The stairwell Voss mentioned appeared at the end of the corridor, a heavy door propped half-open, red emergency lighting bathing the stairs beyond in a dim, b****y glow. I hesitated at the threshold, some instinct prickling at the back of my neck — the same instinct that had kept me alive through three tours with NPS, telling me that whatever was waiting up those stairs, it wasn't going to be simple.

But Mia might be up there.

I took a breath, steadied my grip on my weapon, and started to climb.