Or down, as I see when we enter the stairwell.  "Hm.  Which way do we go?" I ask.  "Let's go down.  That way we won't have any surprises if the zombies start to go to higher floors.  If they do that when we go up, we'll be sandwiched," Pat says.  "Good idea," is my response.  We go to the left stairs, and start to go down, when we hear a groan.

I raise my gun to my shoulder, and see Pat do the same.  He waves me forward to the landing, and I go to it, turn to the next flight of stairs.  Empty.  I motion that it's all clear, and Pat and Jamie come down the next flight of stairs right behind me.  I step in something wet.  "What the..." I look down and turn on my rifle mounted taclight.  Blood.  Blood everywhere, covering the floor.  I look at Pat, whose jaw is totally dropped, but he isn't looking at the floor.  His expression is one of pure horror.  I look where he is looking, and see the last thing I expected to see, or wanted to see.

We are all looking at a pack of four infected dogs eating dead doctors and patients on the floor.  I know exactly what they can do from hearing about the incident in the mountains.  Suddenly, one jerks its head up, and its skinless body tenses as it growls at us and starts barking.  The rest of them start to advance.  "****!" I yell as we all start emptying rounds at them.

One suddenly jumps onto Jamie, and tackles her, but right before it bites her, I blow its head off using four rounds fired fully automatically.  I turn and as one tries to jump at me, I shoot it once in midair, and it gets blown back.  I then start going forward, and I empty five more rounds into the dog's head until I'm satisfied it's dead.

I hear no more movement or growling.  I look over to see Pat kicking a dead dog on the ground, and Jamie nursing her bruised head.  I look around some more, and see the fourth dog lying motionless on the ground with only a part of a jaw left of its head.