by Kate Morris
“Here,” a nurse shoved a bundle of towels into his arms, “take these to 212.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he stated as she jogged the other way. He had no idea where 212 was, but he just got permission to go there.
Tristan quickly oriented himself and found room numbers. Some doors were solid glass and swooshed open with a swipe card, while others were solid wood with glass insets. He went down a hall, trying to peek into patient rooms as he went. Some were filled with three and four patients, which was odd in America. The patients were in various states of illness. Some were delirious, fevered, and sweaty. Others vomiting. Some moaning in pain.
“Hey! Doc, hey!” a young man, a teenager with a letterman jacket said to him, “Man, you gotta get this dead woman outta’ here. It’s freakin’ out my mom. Bro’, seriously. What the hell? She shouldn’t have to be in here with a dead person. That woman died like two fuckin’ hours ago, bro’.”
“Yes, we’re working on it. The hospital’s just a little busy, son. Stay with your mom. Keep your mask on.”
Tristan told the kid that because he’d pulled it down to talk him. He peered around him into the room to find a sheet pulled over an obvious woman’s body. There were two other patients in the same room, including a person who was clearly his mother. She didn’t look well. The other occupant looked like a homeless man. He was rambling strangely like the freaks sometimes did.
“Watch out for him,” Tristan warned the kid, pointing at the weird one.
“They already checked him,” he said in return. “He’s just crazy, not infected. Well, he is but not with the second kind.”
“What have they told you about it?”
The poor kid shrugged helplessly and looked like he wanted to crumble to the floor and cry in a fetal position. Where was his father or someone else who was an adult to take care of his mother’s situation? It made him think for the thousandth time since leaving her house earlier about Avery. She was also carrying the burden of her family right now.
“Just that my mom’s got the first kind. I don’t even know what they mean. The doc said my mom’s kind is bad, but the other is worse.”
Lies.
“She said that they’d get my mother admitted as soon as they could, but they don’t have an open bed. We’re waiting for one to open up upstairs.”
Or for someone upstairs to die.
“One of the dudes who took my mom’s blood said to watch out down here for the other ones. You know, the ones with the second kind. He said they get really violent or something. Do you know what he meant? At school the other day, my teacher, Mr. Hawkins, he freaked out and was beating up one of the students in my government class. My girlfriend goes to school near Cleveland. She said a student threw another student out the window. Shattered his leg, man. Can you believe that? Tried to hurt some other kids, too. At my school, Jackson High School, our cop and a few other teachers came and were able to get Mr. Hawkins subdued till the cops came and took him away. They told us Mr. Hawkins was sick. Is that what’s wrong? Is it this flu?”
Tristan nodded. He knew all too well. That ‘kind’ kept trying to kill Avery Andersson. “Yeah, be careful, kid. They’re fucked up all right. You come across one, you’d better find a weapon and quick, or you better be able to outrun them.”
The kid looked at him with surprise as if he couldn’t figure out why a dude that looked like a doctor or nurse with his lab coat on was talking like a trucker. Or in his case, a soldier.
“You understand, kid?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll run. I play football. I ain’t no slouch.”
Tristan nodded and hoped the kid was right. Then he left and kept going toward room 212, which he eventually found at the end of the next hallway. The door was closed. He pushed it open and was shocked at what he found. Two of those things, the sick ones with the second strain were handcuffed and had their legs zip tied. They were also gagged. This was definitely not humane patient treatment, and whatever governing board that was in charge of how hospitals treated their patients wasn’t going to be too happy about this. He stepped gingerly closer and was spotted by the first one, a woman in her early twenties. She looked like a hooker, maybe was. Her short white jeans skirt barely covered her butt. Her neon green fishnet pantyhose were ripped. Her red pumps were probably five inches high, and she was missing one. The top she wore was a halfsie-style that showed her toned midriff. He could see multiple tattoos and a belly button piercing. Her breasts were an obvious augmentation job. Maybe she was just a stripper. The name of a bar was on the front of her t-shirt. It sounded like a strip joint, Angels on Demand Club, and had the typical stripper shadow silhouette on it with a girl twirling a pole. She must’ve been one of said angels. It appeared she’d also soiled herself and was lying in her own urine, which was not at all sexy or going to get her g-string tips. None of that was what bothered him. It was the crazy and violent stare she was leveling on him. Worse even were the growling sounds coming from her. Eyes that were once brown and probably pretty were bloodshot and sunken. Hair that was once bottle blonde and long was now a matted mess and had a lot of dirt, leaves, and twigs in it like she’d been wrestled to the ground by the police. Fingernails that were long and acrylic were chipped, broken, and some bleeding. She was clearly missing a tooth, freshly knocked out because her mouth was bleeding and contained an empty socket beside her front two teeth.
The other person woke from its stupor and attempted to crawl toward him. It was a man. It struggled hard, kicked at the wall, attempted to scream and after a few seconds got its feet free from the zip ties. Tristan backed out of the room just in time to shut the door in its face. That didn’t stop it. Just like Avery had described, the thing pounded its head against the glass portion of the door so hard it split its skin open and cracked the heavy-duty glass. A piece embedded in its forehead, but it kept going. It turned toward the woman with the same level of hatred.
“Hey, get away from there,” someone said as they approached Tristan.
“I was told to bring these for 212,” he said and shoved the towels into the man’s hands. He looked like he was around his age, and his badge told that he was in housekeeping.
“Oh, thanks,” the young black man said. “I’m supposed to go in there and clean up the woman.”
The man thing rammed its shoulder against the door in an attempt to break out. Then it turned and stomach kicked the stripper. Normally, Tristan would jump in to help. Normally. This was anything but.
“I don’t think I would,” he advised. “That one just got its feet untied. Just tell them you did.”
The man chuckled nervously. “Yeah, I think I will. My buddy upstairs got some pretty nasty bruises and a cracked rib a few days ago from one.”
“That happen from one of them?” he asked of the white bandaging taped on the man’s cheek. He nodded. “What happened?”
“Damn crazy dude,” he said. “Clawed at my face.”
Tristan hooked his thumb toward the door, “That one?”
“Nah, man,” he said. “Up on six. That’s where they’re keeping the fucked-up ones. Moved them the other day. Didn’t you hear?”
“I don’t work here, man,” Tristan said, pulling his dog tags out of his jacket to show him.
“Army?” he asked, to which Tristan nodded. “Yeah, I served one term in the Navy. Should’ve stayed in. Woulda’ been better than this shit. Look, you didn’t hear it here, man, but word is your boys are comin’ soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“This gets worse? They’re callin’ in the National Guard and shit.”
“Really,” Tristan stated more than questioned. “Why?”
The guy looked around to make sure nobody would hear. “They can’t handle this much. It’s getting outta’ control fast. I mean, just last night one of ‘em attacked and killed a nurse. Kinda’ hard to treat the patients if the staff’s all dead, ya’ know?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
&nb
sp; Two female nurses came toward them and yelled out orders to someone behind them. It was time to keep moving.
“Keep your head down, brother,” Tristan said and held out his fist to the guy, who punched it and slapped his open palm against Tristan’s next.
“Later, brother. Stay safe,” the young man said and walked away with the towels.
Tristan went to the sixth floor and found a nightmare like he’d never seen before. Orderlies, police officers, and security teams dressed in the hospital’s uniforms were dealing with hundreds of the infected people. They had them four and five in a room, handcuffed to beds or sedated as best as they could manage.
“Son of a bitch in 657 bit me,” a doctor was swearing and showing a nurse his bloody arm. “Goddamn maniacs. I’m getting sick of this shit.”
Tristan stood silently in the shadows near a vending machine meant for families who were visiting patients and loved ones to hit up. He figured nobody was coming back into this alcove. No families or loved ones were on this floor. Just the crazy freaks, the night crawlers, which could be hookers or soccer moms.
“Oh, Dr. Schmucker. Let me take a look. Oh, geeze. You’re up to date on your tetanus, right?” the young nurse asked in a gentle voice.
The doctor looked to be around sixty and like he was probably a normal, level-headed, calm man when not in this odd situation. Right now, he seemed as overwhelmed and frustrated as one person could get. “Yes, Martha. I’m vacc’d. Let’s just cover this. I don’t think it needs stitches. We’ll do a sanitize and cover. I need to get back at it. The CDC wants all the blood vials sent over by midnight. That’s three damn hours to get over a hundred patients drawn. Without the help of our phlebotomists? Sure, we’ll get right on that.”
“No kidding,” another nurse complained. She had brilliant red hair done up in a 1960s style beehive like Tristan had seen in a movie from that time period. “How come they get so active at night?”
“They think it’s the adrenals not firing correctly,” the bleeding doctor educated the nurses and, unbeknownst to him, at the same time gave Tristan free information. “Their hormones and their sense of night and day are running backwards. The melatonin runs high during the day, but their cortisol kicks in at night.”
“Wow,” the redhead commented. “That is ass backwards. Like vampires.”
“Like night crawlers,” the first nurse said. She was a lot younger, really pretty, probably the kind of brunette Tristan would’ve hit on if he met her out in the real world. He always had a thing for brunettes. Used to.
“Martha, don’t use that term here, please,” the doctor corrected. “They are simply to be referred to as patients, or if the media or their families inquire about them, the terms ‘sick’ or ‘infected’ can be used. If we assign simple terms like ‘crawler’ or ‘night crawler’ as slang, jargon being used by laypersons to make it sound like something from a silly horror movie, then we could create hysteria. It’s bound to get out to the public if we as professionals use such a phrase, too. A name like that is also going to raise alarms and cause fear. This isn’t a horror movie. This is science, and like all science, the sickness will eventually be defeated through research and study. We don’t want to cause people to panic by dolling it up and assigning it a name that scares the public even worse.”
“Maybe it should,” said the redhead.
“That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing right now, remember? Ladies, you’ve all seen the memos. I know you were both present at the mandatory staff meetings. This is the federal government we’re talking about. It’s no laughing matter.”
“Yes, doctor,” she said, looking put in her place.
“Keep the public calm. Don’t draw any more attention to this than is already out there. Misunderstanding and misinformation can do just as much damage. When the time is right, the government will do what needs done.”
Tristan wanted to laugh. He saw every single day of his service in the military just how inefficiently the government ran things. The only time he and his men got anything done was when they were out on an actual mission away from their base of operation and far from all the red tape and chiefs.
Having seen enough bloodshot eyes and listening to their muffled growls and incensed and violent intent for one night, Tristan sneaked back off the floor and down to the ground level again. It was the main floor of the hospital with a long, wide glass ceiling meant to draw in natural light and provide sunlight to the many potted plants placed strategically to make it seem like a nicer place to be. There was also a gift shop. All of this seemed typical, like just about any other mid-size hospital in America. But this was a little different. The entire wing of the hospital was shut down by barricades and yellow tape and the lights were off. More oddities. Nobody was sitting at the reception desk, either, but there was a ten-foot long streak of blood down the middle of the tan marble floor and another on the wall in one of the sectioned off family sitting areas, which did not bode well for this hospital’s sanitary record. It was even creepy if he was being honest. The televisions in the various, segregated waiting areas were turned off, the spaces vacant of family members. He walked out unimpeded through the main door of the hospital, shedding the jacket, gloves, and mask on the ground as he went. Then he took his cap out of his back pocket and pulled it down low on his forehead. The hood went back up, too.
He jogged to his truck and got in. Tristan had seen a lot of shit, seen stuff in other countries that would make the average civie sick to their stomachs. This was something different. What was happening on his home turf was like nothing he’d ever seen before, and he felt a little like he was in some sort of episode of the old t.v. series, The Twilight Zone. This couldn’t really be happening, not here, not in America.
People deserved to know the truth. Nobody was prepared. They were sitting ducks if this got worse, and from what he understood from that doctor, that was likely to happen before it got any better. No wonder there was talk of bringing in the National Guard to keep the peace. He understood just how long research and study would take of such a disease. Tristan had to tell people, tell someone what was happening. He sat there in his truck with it idling, and the only person he could come up with to tell was her.
“Dammit,” he swore to the empty cab and pounded his palm once on the steering wheel in frustration and anger.
No way was he calling her. She threw him out earlier. Maybe he didn’t like her, was even pissed at her, but he could probably text her friend Renee. No, he didn’t have that chick’s number. He could text Spencer and tell him to tell Renee so that she could tell Avery. Hell, that sounded stupid just thinking it. Instead, he grabbed some food at the Chick-fil-A drive-thru window and kept going. Screw her.
She was a pain in the ass. All he did was save her time and again. He didn’t need that shit in his life. She was all sorts of complicated and time-consuming. He liked his life free from complications, free to do and say whatever he wanted, free to get more ink, free to not listen to her shitty classical music or stare at her gorgeous face. So, he stuffed his own with a chicken sandwich, thanked the creator of such a heavenly thing, and downed a large sweet tea. Then he cruised for a while to let everything that he saw and heard at the hospital sink in. More than the chicken needed to digest, so Tristan cranked up rock music and drove around. Before he realized it, he had driven for over an hour and was parked outside her gate. Then he was getting out. And the next thing Tristan knew, he’d scaled the black security gate and was walking down her lane just as unimpeded as his exit from the hospital. It put him in an extra pissy mood knowing she still wasn’t taking security seriously. She should’ve been greeting him with a shotgun pointed in his face right about now. But no.
He knocked on the door to her parents’ house and waited. He gave her a few minutes since the house was so big. After two minutes, he knocked again and still didn’t get an answer. The soft humming noise of a motor was coming from the backyard, so he went to inspect if something was wrong. He
fully expected to see her and siblings lying on the ground slaughtered. He would kill her if that were the case.
What he wasn’t expecting was to see Avery Andersson walking up the stairs exiting a hot tub in a white bikini with steam coming off of her sexy body like some sort of Playboy centerfold. She looked up, spotted him, probably shrouded in shadows. Then she screamed loud enough to wake the dead.
Chapter Twenty-one
Avery choked off the scream that had erupted from her as the figure in the shadows stepped into the light and held up his hands. Tristan Driscoll.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed angrily and grabbed her towel to wrap around her shoulders. She shouldn’t have drunk that wine. All told, it was probably three glasses worth. She felt a little dizzy and tipsy. Geesh, what a lightweight.
“I, uh, was driving and…” he drifted off.
His gaze more than once skimmed over her body as he drew closer, which made her blush all the way to her toes. She was thankful for the cover of night.
Marching over to the control panel on the wall of the shed, Avery turned off the hot tub jets, then the lights. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Her head jerked in the direction. She slowly looked back at Tristan.
“We should go inside,” he encouraged without looking at her. His eyes were still scanning. Not her body this time but the black horizon. He was back to being in control of himself again.
She wasn’t even going to argue. The steam coming off the pool and hot tub in the dark of the night was spooky enough without dogs barking.
“I have to close the pool cover first,” she said and hit the other button. She also touched the screen and punched in the code for the automatic pool cleaner to start. The heavy black screen on the motorized poles built into the edge of the pool’s cement and ceramic tile walls slowly moved across the pool, enshrouding it in darkness and completely covering it. Now it just looked like a trampoline. The automatic cover was something her father insisted on. He hadn’t wanted any of the children to fall in and get trapped under one of those lighter weight tarp style plastic covers.