Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  And now he paced. He’d put the call out for Dr. Matthis to return, and then worried how long he should wait. What should he bring to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center? Other than television shows like Designated Survivor, and movies like Olympus Has Fallen, he didn’t know much about the not-so-secret bunker under the White House where high-level officials retreated during periods of national emergency.

  In the end, he decided he’d go with his laptop and the clothes on his back. A place like that had to have supplies in case of a prolonged stay. He’d give Matthis thirty minutes and then he’d hit the road.

  He had no idea how much that delay would change his trip.

  Chapter 22

  When the tall man pulled him out of the drawer and removed the sheet, there was an instant connection, an understanding that they were become. The tall man attributed that to equality.

  But Austin was not his equal.

  Austin Wallace was an original, as were all the others who became after passing from the bacterial infection that reduced his guts to muddy-red wastewater. With that becoming came a sense of others, those with whom he’d shared, and those who had been shared with by others.

  One of his was in the room with him. The short woman.

  Another was somewhere close, but not in the same room.

  Thinking about the woman made her turn to him, pale eyes luminescent over her ruined throat.

  Had he made her turn, or had she turned in response to his connection?

  The tall man didn’t turn when looked at. Instead he stood staring at the door that led out of the cold room with its steel drawers.

  There were others out there, unbecome. He could hear their voices.

  Stretching his senses, unsure what they were or how they worked, he found others, those that had been shared with and were on the verge of becoming.

  Something inside resisted the change, a sense of self, a suppression of urges that contradicted an internal sense of right and wrong.

  There was no right and wrong.

  There was become, and unbecome.

  He could make them become.

  He could call them to him, if he wanted to.

  For now, he settled on flipping switches, turning shared-with into become.

  And in the waiting room, parking lot, and treatment rooms, new minds came open to him.

  As those metaphorical doors opened, the physical one did as well.

  Randy and Lisa moved forward to greet their guests.

  Kenja Brown sat in the break room across from Jessica, listening to the nurse bitch about how unfair it was that she was stuck in there, unable to care for patients. She usually enjoyed talking to the young nurse, with her humorous anecdotes from time spent working in the emergency department, and her no-nonsense take on just about every major issue in the news.

  But not today.

  A large part of it was that she’d just seen a friend die, had literally watched Lisa get her throat blown out by a patient she was supposed to be watching. She owned that. It didn’t matter that it was Jessica’s gun, didn’t matter that the patient had dementia and couldn’t be held accountable for his actions. She was responsible for keeping him safe, and that meant keeping others safe from him.

  She had a headache too, and that didn’t help. It came on suddenly, building in her head as the adrenaline faded.

  Poor Lisa.

  Letting her head sink into her hands, Kenja tried to massage away the headache, kneading the temples with her fingertips. Her hair felt crispy where Lisa’s blood had sprayed and dried, so she tried to avoid touching it. She’d been able to clean her face right after it happened, but a sink and faucet in a break room was no place to try to wash your hair, especially not when you have a braided weave.

  “Do you know anything about it, Kenja?” Jessica said.

  Kenja didn’t hear the question. There was something wrong with either her temples or her fingertips. It felts like lines, or ripples, like how it felt to run a finger over the surface of a Ruffles potato chip. Concerned, she pulled her hands down to peer at them, but the tips appeared normal. She touched them together, making a steeple in front of her, but couldn’t feel anything wrong. She moved her hands back to her head, and the ripples were there, standing out from her skin, compressible if she pressed down. And did that make her headache worse, or better?

  “Earth to Kenja. Do you know if they ever passed that law that said a business can’t stop you from carrying inside if you have a permit?”

  It wasn’t fair.

  She let the old guy out of her sight. She watched her friend die for her, watched Lisa sacrifice herself. Now her head was pounding, something squishy was growing out of her skin, and all the curly headed, entitled white girl across from her wanted was for someone to tell her it wasn’t her fault.

  Well it was.

  Time to do something about it.

  The words came with a thunderclap, a silent explosion of pain in her head so forceful she wouldn’t have been surprised to see the world spinning as her eyeballs popped out of their sockets, one last rotating image before sight was lost forever. The last thing she felt was a sensation of panic that bloomed within her. A constriction of the chest made it impossible to breathe. A tingling began in her fingers as the tissues starved for oxygen. The panic was short-lived.

  A second later she was become.

  “Kenja?” Jessica asked uncertainly.

  The nurse screamed as Kenja launched herself across the table.

  “I’m telling you, Tiffany, it’s worse back here than up there,” Genny said, twirling a piece of curly red hair around her fingers. Angelica, the day-time secretary, sat nearby, chatting with Josh and Caitlin. The four of them huddled at the side of the nurses’ station nearest the ambulance doors. Josh and Angelica were just waiting for the police to give them clearance to go home.

  “Tell her Sonny came out and gave us the full Monty,” Angelica offered.

  Genny repeated the words into the phone. “Uh huh.”

  She listened for a minute and said, “Tiff says they’ve got more people showing ass in the waiting room than one skinny white boy.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard that,” Angelica said. “Come on Josh, let’s go take a little muscle up there.”

  Josh, who maybe weighed one-fifty soaking wet, said, “What do you want me for then?”

  Angelica laughed. “You’re gonna stand beside me so they know I’m not to be trifled with.”

  Caitlin rose as well. “Might as well go check on my patient,” she said. “Make sure her restraints aren’t cutting off circulation, you know.”

  Buck and Dr. Crews came out of room 10 just as Jordyn walked by, most of the tubes of blood safely enclosed in a Biohazard bag. She still had the cup of ice as well, with the two gray-topped tubes sticking out of it. “I’m taking these to the lab, Dr. Crews. Can you put orders in for them, please?”

  “Soon as I get to the computer,” he responded. Then, to Gus and Tim, the police officer, “If he calls or yells, don’t go near him. Come get me.”

  Both the cop and the security guard peered through the glass viewing square. “Looks like he’s just lying there,” Gus said.

  “Dr. Crews thinks he might bite,” Buck offered as the doctor walked away.

  “Even trussed up like that?”

  “If you got close enough. Just be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Buck,” Tim said. “If he tries to bite me, he’ll have more than a broken arm to deal with in lockup.”

  Buck grunted and turned away. For a moment, he thought about going to the nurses’ station, but what could he do there? There were already enough bodies taking up space with nothing to do but bullshit and speculate. He’d seen enough of the tragedy without wanting to be cornered and questioned about it, and he certainly didn’t know when the police were going to lift the lockdown and let people go home. But they would think he did. Ambulance workers got that a lot and milked it more than the
y should. People acted like having a radio in the vehicle made you privy to more information than anyone else had.

  In truth, he wasn’t even sure if the lockdown applied to him. Maybe he could leave. Maybe Tim would know.

  But before he left, he wanted to check on the CNA who saw it happen. Something about the panic in her eyes troubled him. What had she seen when Danny rushed in?

  That’s what he really wanted to know.

  Had Danny looked normal before he attacked?

  He wanted her to tell him he did. Not that it changed what Danny had done. It didn’t. Nothing changed that his co-worker was a murderer.

  But Buck wanted to know. Had the situation made him snap? Or was he already going crazy.

  He looked off when we got back with Mr. Butler. That’s what’s got me so worried. Was he already losing it, or had he forgotten to hide it for a minute? Isn’t that what Tim said, that he’d just been good at hiding it?

  Buck headed down the back hallway.

  Tina came bursting out of room 9. “Need a crash cart in 9. Now. Stat!” she yelled, then darted back into the room.

  A flurry of shouting started up at the nurses’ station.

  Something’s wrong, Buck thought, but there were enough people coming that he’d just be in the way.

  There was a scream and a crash from the break room on his right.

  That’s something I can help with.

  Reaching for the knob, he keyed in the code and pushed open the door.

  Danny heard Dr. Crews give the warning to the guards outside his door.

  It didn’t stop his movement. Arm up and arm down. Each time he did it the arm moved a little farther, the swathe slid down a little lower.

  He saw the pale faces of the guards peek in at him, but that didn’t stop him either. To them he would look like what he was, a man strapped down struggling to be free. But they thought him constrained by the pain in his arm.

  Becoming had taken away all pain, but they didn’t know that.

  Yet.

  He heard the call to become, but he already had.

  He just needed to be free.

  Up and down.

  Up and down.

  The swathe dropped away, and his arm was free. In one slow, sinuous, torturous movement, he craned his head and neck to the right and raised his right arm as high as he could, feeling the thin strap of the sling slide over his head.

  Wordlessly, he used his right hand to loosen the restraint on his left arm, then sat up and used both to free his legs.

  It was time.

  A body slammed against the door and Tiffany screamed. Other screams from the registration desk came through the walls. The sound of glass breaking reached them, as the crazed people in the waiting room tried to reach through the flimsy partitions and get at the two women who took their names and made copies of their IDs and insurance cards.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” James asked.

  They could see a little of it through the narrow rectangle of glass in the door that separated the triage room from the waiting room. Such a little thing, a single door. But it was steel reinforced and should be able to keep them safe. It was built for just such an emergency, after all. The hospital needed to be able to be locked down.

  There were more screams from the receptionist’s area.

  What happened if they climbed through the glass and got into that office, James wondered. Those ladies had a door that also let into the emergency department, over on the hallway where bed 14 was located. Funny how no one had thought of that as a potential weak point, but that’s what it was. If you can break the glass, you can get past.

  “We’re going to have to go help them,” he said.

  “What?” Tiffany asked. “Are you crazy? Have you seen what they’re doing out there?”

  James hadn’t. He’d been sitting at his computer, listening to Tiffany’s descriptions of what she could see through the glass, which were undoubtedly more colorful and action-packed than any measure of reality.

  He shook his head and she said, “Come on, come look. See for yourself.”

  James rose and went to look.

  The waiting room was a scene from a disaster movie, but not because some earthquake had opened a fissure through the middle of the room, or because a volcano had rained down fire and destruction from above.

  No, it was a disaster because of the human element.

  He could see ten, maybe a dozen, people running around. And some…

  Dear God, some of them are chasing the others!

  …were down, with others on top of them.

  Are they eating them?

  The body that had slammed against the door was one of the crazy ones. Even as he watched, the man made a grab at another guy, who shouted for help and pushed back. The body hit the door again, vibrating the separating wall.

  There was blood too. A lot of it.

  “Holy crap,” he whispered.

  “Uh huh, and you want to go help?”

  James thought fast. Our doors are secure. They can’t get through the door into triage, and there’s no way in hell they’re going to be able to break through the double doors that lead into the hallway.

  “We need to go around the back way, get those ladies out of registration and see if we can blockade the door somehow.”

  “What’s that?” Josh said, coming into Triage from the hallway with Angelica right behind him.

  “I think they’ve broken into registration,” James said.

  “Who has?” Angelica asked.

  “The patients, or whoever is out there.” James waved his arm in the direction of the waiting room.

  “If they get into registration—” Angelica said.

  “We heard glass breaking,” Tiffany offered.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Josh said, making an abrupt about-face and heading back the way he’d come, Tiffany, James, and Angelica following close behind.

  They reached room five, which is where a right turn would take them across the front of the nurses’ station, right past rooms 15 and 16, when a scream sounded from inside room 15.

  Immediately after, Caitlin came running out, with Kristie’s mother, Mrs. Burleson, running right behind her.

  Only, Mrs. Burleson wasn’t running from an attacker. She’d heard the call and had become.

  James reached out a steadying hand, intent upon asking what was happening. His head was turned into the room, assuming Kristie was the violent one. But though the teenager writhed and thrashed on the bed, her restraints were secure. It was Mrs. Burleson who promptly grabbed his hand and bit down on the back of his right forearm.

  Others were rising from their places behind the nurses’ station: Brandon and Billy, Karen and China. Dr. Crews, who hadn’t yet made it to a seat, was the first one around the counter.

  “Need a crash cart in 9! Now! Stat!’ Tina yelled from farther down the hall, which halted Dr. Crews just enough that he was still standing there when the door to bed 8 burst open and Mrs. Tyana Butler, face covered with writhing blue and red lines that looked like a nest of snakes, rushed out at him.

  Tina heard the scream but couldn’t let it distract her. Dr. Patel needed her help. Tonya needed both of them.

  She turned back to the bed and saw…

  That’s not possible!

  Dr. Patel was just finishing checking for a pulse. He must not have found one because he immediately placed his right hand on top of his left, interlaced the fingers, and placed the heel of his left hand on Tonya’s breastbone.

  She can’t be dead.

  But he was pushing, and counting, and her training took over, pushing aside doubts and worries, pushing aside the fact that this was a friend. She was a patient who needed cardiac resuscitation, and they needed the crash cart now and couldn’t wait for someone to bring it to them.

  Tina turned to run back out of the door, but another motion caught her eye.

  Tonya’s left arm raised off the bed, hand reaching for Dr. P
atel’s shoulder. He hadn’t noticed.

  “Doctor?” Tina said.

  “28, 29, 30.” The small man shifted to his right, ready to give rescue breaths. Tonya’s arm was right there, ready to grab.

  Tina lunged forward, grabbing the doctor’s coat, and yanked him back.

  “What the hell? Tina?” he said, turning his brown eyes on her.

  Tina stared at Tonya, who was now rising to a sitting position on the stretcher.

  Seeing the direction of her gaze, Dr. Patel turned back.

  “Tonya?”

  He tried to step forward, ready to check on her.

  “Dr. Patel, I think we should leave.”

  As he had always done, the gentle doctor turned to look at her. It’s who he was. Look at the person you are speaking with.

  And in that moment Tonya sprang for his back.

  The door to the morgue swung open, and Marcus turned to say something, probably some other quip about how Cliff was skittish around dead people. Well, he was a big boy. He could take it.

  But as the door swung in there was someone standing there, someone big.

  Three someones, and damned if they weren’t the three people him and the nurse had dropped off in the room.

  “Shit, look out!” Cliff yelled, one part of him rushing forward to yank the nurse out of the way and the other part deciding that now was a perfect time to go hide under the covers with a flashlight and a pistol, because he was old enough to have a pistol, by God.

  “Please!” Marcus spluttered, “like I’m gonna fall for—”

  His words were cut off as the gnarled hand of the six-foot tall old man reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and hauled him into the morgue, slinging him back and into the other two…

  …fucking standing there, missing half her goddamn throat! It’s not possible! It’s just not!

  …who grabbed him, halting his backward stagger. Marcus drew in a breath to scream as the tall fucker lunged forward. He had his arms out in front, like a damn zombie from some horror movie, but he moved like a normal guy…

  Like a fucking six-foot-tall normal guy somehow moving, breathing, reaching, even though his neck looks all stitched-fucked up like a modern-day Frankenstein, two hundred pounds of pissed off and a whole lot quicker on his feet than Bela Lugosi ever dreamed of being!