Dead, but Not for Long by Matthew Kinney, Lesa Anders

“I think if we get out of this, I’ll appreciate being alive a little bit more.”
    Keith was impressed with the girl and he had to agree with Jack. There wouldn’t be much
he’d be taking for granted if they got out of the crisis alive.
    The sound of moans soon filled the adjoining room.
    “All right, Lindsey,” he said, “we’ll need you and Autumn to draw as many of those things toward that window as possible.”
    He pointed to the half window between the two rooms. It started about waist high and went to
the ceiling of the room. “The more of them that we can get into the exercise
room, the better. I don’t think they can open a door, but I’d feel better if
you lock it behind us when we leave. Jack and I will circle back around and
lock them in. Hopefully most of them will be trapped inside. After that, I’m
sure we’ll still have some cleaning up to do on the floor.”
    There were still several of the infected in the hall, clawing at the window, but most were turning
to follow the others into the exercise room.
    “Can I ask a stupid question?” Autumn interrupted. “You’re rounding up these zombies so you
can get medicine to the people on the other floors?” She continued before
anyone could speak. “I know you can’t get it all and doesn’t some of that stuff
have to be refrigerated? I doubt you have a fridge big enough upstairs.”
    Jack took a breath to reply, but she cut him off. “What’s going to happen when you need
more meds and they finally break that window? Are you going to do another zombie roundup? Why not just get rid of them now?”
    “Just how do you propose to do that?” Jack tried not to sound too sarcastic.
    “We’re extremely short on ammunition,” Keith explained.
    “You led them into here, why can’t you lead them out there?” She pointed to the wall.
    “Outside?” Keith asked.
    “The fire exit,” she explained, rolling her eyes. “It’s right outside that door you’re going to be going through.
    Keith didn’t spend much time on the second floor except to go to his locker, but the layout
was the same for the whole building. There were five floors with two wings. The
stairs and elevators were located at the intersection of the wings, along with
a nurses’ station or information desk on each floor. There was a fire escape at
both ends of the hospital. Since the physical therapy room was at the end of
the hall, it was only a few feet from the door that led to the fire escape.
    This time Jack took her seriously. “Okay, what’s your plan?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “you’re the security guy, why do I have to think of everything?”
    Jack made a choking gesture as she turned away. He turned to Keith. “Well, do we stay with plan A or go with girl wonder here?”
    “Since we don’t know how long the doors and windows will hold, I’m all for getting the ones
that have been infected out of the building completely. The second floor would
be the lowest level of the fire escape, with just a ladder that can be pulled down to the ground, right?”
    “Right,” Jack said. “It’s kept pulled up when it’s not being used.”
    “I’ll bet if we could take off the railing at the end of the fire escape, they’d walk right off
the edge. I’m not sure it’s enough of a fall to kill them but at least they’d be out of here.”
    “I agree,” Lindsey said. “Chances are this glass won’t hold until the next round. We can’t
all go out there. Jack and Keith, since you have the weapons, why don’t you get
Autumn out of here while I act as bait? I’m in pretty decent shape. I could get
them to follow me out onto the fire escape. If we do like Keith suggested and
disable the drop, I could climb to the next floor before they reach the door.
They sure don’t look smart enough to climb and they sure as hell aren’t fast
enough to catch me. They should all fall off like lemmings, I hope.”
    Jack thought about it. “Worse