roared to life. She threw it in drive and hurtled through the parking lot. The congregation threw stones, shattering the windshield. Mary Katherine turned onto the road. She saw the congregation in the rearview mirror. Car doors opened. Headlights came to life like sick, glowing eyes.
“Please, Jesus,” she said. “Help us.”
Chapter 113
Ambrose and the sheriff ran down the hall. Christopher limp in the sheriff’s arms. Ambrose could hear the people locked in the morgue behind them. Banging on the doors. Breaking glass with their bare hands. The sheriff held on to Christopher a little tighter as they ran faster than Ambrose had ever run in his life. It was more than fear. More than adrenaline. He had run for his life before. But this speed didn’t come from him.
It came from Christopher.
An hour ago, the sheriff had been in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound in his chest. Ambrose had been crippled and blind on a slab in the morgue. Now, Ambrose was moving like a man half his age, and the sheriff was sprinting like a man who had never felt better. The only thing they had come into contact with was Christopher’s hand. One touch, and they looked like they could take on an army by themselves.
But Christopher looked like he was dying.
“We need a car! Follow me!” Ambrose yelled.
Ambrose ran ahead, opening the door for Christopher and the sheriff. He still couldn’t believe what was happening. The last thing he remembered was a plastic mask thrown over his mouth. The next thing he knew, he felt a child’s hand on his own, generating heat that moved up his arm to his neck, finally settling
On his eyes.
There had been no surgery. But he still saw halos around lights as bright as an eclipse. He felt like a soldier again, dissecting the hospital like a battlefield in war. He never thought he would be grateful for all those trips to the eye surgeon, but he may as well have been a spy for how well he knew this place. The back doors. The shortcuts. The basement corridors that led to the laundry. His men were outnumbered, but he could force the enemy into a bottleneck.
He had done it before.
Ambrose led them to the back staircase. They sprinted up the stairs toward the garage floor.
Click went the door above them.
Mr. Collins stood there, holding a nail gun from his construction site. At least two dozen people behind him.
Click went the door below.
The people from the morgue looked up the stairs. Their hands torn apart from breaking through the glass.
Ambrose led the sheriff up. They had to get to the garage floor first. A terrifying screech echoed off the staircase as Mr. Collins began running full speed down the stairs with the people from the morgue running up.
Ambrose reached the garage floor and ripped open the emergency door. The alarm shrieked through the hospital. They ran down the empty hallway, the two mobs narrowing into a single line behind them. Two fronts now one. The perfect bottleneck. Ambrose led them to a fork in the hall. He was about to turn right when suddenly, Christopher whispered,
“Go left.”
The sheriff made a hard left, and Ambrose followed. He looked back, seeing the ambush crash into the hallway behind them. Somehow, the boy had known. Ambrose turned to Christopher. Blood dripping from his nose and eyes like tears. They came to another fork.
“Go right,” he said weakly.
Ambrose turned right. Christopher led them down a labyrinth of back hallways and side doors. Putting some distance between them and the mob. They finally reached the back entrance to the parking garage. They closed the door behind them.
The parking garage was empty.
The silence was eerie. Their footsteps echoed off the cement walls. The sheriff instinctively began to run down the ramp toward the exit.
“They’re waiting for us down there,” Christopher said.
“Then go to the roof,” Ambrose said.
“They’re up there, too,” Christopher said.
“We need a diversion,” Ambrose said. “Follow me.”
He began to sprint. Legs and lungs straining. Ambrose ran through the garage, kicking cars, setting off alarms. How many times had he set off munitions to serve as a diversion? He never thought he would do it again. Especially with a Ford. He led them into the maternity ward entrance, leaving behind a half dozen blaring alarms. The three ran down the hallway. Past the nursery. All of the babies were crying. They reached the first fork.