Wolf Running Read Online Free Page B

9. I think it would be safer to stay inside until we contact someone, or someone contacts us. Or until the sun comes up.” She sighed and ran her hands through her tangled hair. “Let’s go to the staff room. We can try the TV there.” She started back down the hall that Nowen had come up.
    Nowen turned to follow, glancing back down at Marcy. Something seemed different but she couldn’t tell what. The dead woman’s one good eye was staring up at the ceiling. Hadn’t that eye been closed? Nowen shook her head, dismissing the thought. Her memory had betrayed her; who knew if she could trust her other senses. As if in agreement, her stomach growled. The scent of blood seemed to be everywhere. She swallowed a mouthful of saliva and hurried to catch up with Jamie.
    As they passed the room where Nowen had seen the dead people Jamie went in and checked them, just to make sure. On the way out she paused a moment in the doorway, gazing back at the bodies. She shrugged her shoulders at Nowen’s questioning look. “No obvious wounds that I can see. Neither of the patients is even that old, so a cardiac event, while not impossible, seems unlikely. And they haven’t been dead that long.” She tapped her knuckles against her lips thoughtfully. “They’re not familiar to me, so they must be recent arrivals. Probably more-”
    A sound from behind them caught the two women’s attention. They turned as one to look.
    Someone was crawling from Nowen’s room.

 
    Chapter Three
    Then
    The girl in the pink tank-top was laboriously dragging herself from the room, her bloody hands clawing for purchase on the white-tile floor. Jamie gasped.
    “Why didn’t you tell me there was someone injured in your room?!” The young woman’s voice was outraged. She shot Nowen an angry look and started down the hall. Nowen reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, realizing for the first time that she towered over the other woman by at least a foot.
    “Wait!” Nowen said, urgently. “Don’t do that. Something’s not right.”
    “What are you talking about?” Jamie pulled free and whirled to face Nowen. “That girl is hurt, and I need to help her!” Again she started toward the girl, and again Nowen stopped her.
    “Something’s not right - listen to me! That girl killed someone. That blood isn’t hers!”
    “Yeah, something’s not right here and it’s you.” Jamie retorted. “I’m going to go help her, and you can just-”
    A low growling interrupted the nurse. In the short time they had been arguing the girl had gotten to her feet, and now she faced them. Her skin was a sickly shade of blue-green-grey. Her lank brown hair hung in her face and her eyes were yellow as autumn leaves. They almost glowed with the intensity of her gaze. Pale lips slicked back from her teeth as she bit at the air. Her jaws met with a snapping sound that echoed down the hall.
    Jamie shuddered and stepped back. “Um...you might be right.”
    The girl’s bloody hands were twitching like dying spiders. She swayed slightly, and then, without warning, she opened her mouth and shrieked, a sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. In the next moment she was running toward them, bare feet slapping on the floor. She was fast but uncoordinated, and had taken no more than a couple of steps before she fell. The teen-ager didn’t try to break her fall and her face smashed hard on the tiles. Dark blood spilled from her nose. Almost instantly she was scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor, trying to pull herself upright.
    Nowen didn’t wait to see what would happen. “Move!” she shouted, and she and Jamie turned and ran toward the nurses’ station.
    Where Marcy now stood.
    The heavy-set nurse looked much like the girl in the tank-top, but she was moving much slower. Gracelessly the nurse lurched forward, one yellowed eye focusing like a laser on the two of them.
    Nowen never slowed. Running at full speed she dropped to the floor and slid on her back between