Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  “Check him,” the voice said, and Tina came up, stethoscope in hand. James’ head dipped forward and down, his teeth clicking on empty air, as he tried to bite the pretty nurse practitioner.

  Rose shivered as she turned to see who was giving orders.

  It was a cop, riding in a wheelchair, holding a gun. A dozen lines occurred to her, a dozen different sentence starters that she could count on Grace to pick up and run with, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter any of them.

  “Nothing, Officer,” Tina said. “He’s standing here, trying to bite me, but he’s doing it without breathing and without a heartbeat.”

  “Don’t forget fighting us,” Brandon added.

  “That’s not possible,” Caitlin protested. “He’s just sick, right?”

  “What’s his name?” the cop asked.

  “James,” Tina said. “He is…was…I don’t know…he’s another nurse practitioner.”

  “What the hell is he now?” Caitlin asked. “Is he dead? A zombie? Like in those TV shows?”

  “I hate those shows,” Grace opined from a few feet away. She and Angelica were standing on either side of the chubby white woman, not holding her up, but doing their best to keep that chick from taking a piece of their hands.

  “James, this is Officer Tim Cannon from the Gaffney Police Department. Do you understand me?”

  James licked his lips in response. He took a step toward the police officer. Both Brandon and Billy moved with him.

  “He’s a lot stronger than he looks,” Billy said, grunting and trying to set his feet.

  The officer held out a pair of hand cuffs. “Think you can get these on him?”

  “I got them,” Josh said, coming out from behind the wheelchair.

  James leaned forward as Brandon and Billy forced his arms down. They shifted again as he took another step.

  Moving behind them, Josh attached one of the cuffs to James’ right arm. Pulling on that wrist, he managed to bring it behind the NP’s back. Working quickly, he grabbed the left wrist and pulled it into position, snapping the other end of the cuffs in place.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?” Dr. Crews yelled.

  Grace, who could see both the tableau with James and the cop as well as down the hallway where Dr. Crews sat babysitting another woman, answered, “James flipped his shit, attacked China and Rose. Now he’s in handcuffs and our Boy in Blue has him drawn down.”

  “Crap, did anyone get bitten?” Dr. Crews asked.

  “You okay, Rose?” Grace asked.

  “I’m right as rain, but he took a piece out of China.”

  “How about James?”

  “Sir,” the officer shouted, “he’s cuffed but he’s not standing down.”

  “He also doesn’t have a heartbeat,” Tina added. “Neither did Gus, but both were moving.”

  “What about this bitch?” Angelica said.

  Tina ran over to Mrs. Burleson, once again employing her stethoscope. She listened in four or five places, then placed the stethoscope on her own chest, as if confirming that the instrument still worked.

  “She doesn’t have a heartbeat either.”

  It was like a tennis match to Rose, these voices yelling from different sides with her in the middle.

  “It’s all over Facebook,” Jessica said, ducking around Buck and Dr. Crews, “people freaking out over family members going crazy and attacking other people. There’s at least a dozen mentions of doctors pronouncing someone dead right before they tried to eat the doctor’s face.”

  “Look,” Caitlin said, pointing to Jessica’s phone, “someone linked a news video about an explosion in Atlanta.”

  “All right,” Tim said. “We need to get this under control.”

  “We need to get China restrained,” Dr. Crews shouted.

  “We’re all out of hands,” Grace yelled.

  “Everyone except you two, back away from James.” The officer waited while Rose moved over near her friend. Jessica and Karen stayed near Dr. Crews. Josh and Caitlin knelt next to China and took her wrists in their hands. “I want you guys to let go on three and back away. But be ready to jump back in if he goes sideways.”

  “You mean if he goes for one of us?” Brandon asked.

  “Exactly.”

  The cop counted and the boys did what they were supposed to, dropping James’ arms and backing away.

  James didn’t turn his head or his body, he just ran right for the cop, hands cuffed behind his back but looking for all the world like he planned on rolling over the man in the wheelchair.

  The cops gun banged, and even though Rose was expecting the explosion, she still jumped and maybe peed a little in her plus-sized granny panties.

  James toppled forward, his head striking the floor just a few inches from the front wheels of the chair.

  Genny squeaked when the first gunshot went off, then sat with her forehead on her desk.

  Just manning the phone. That’s what I do.

  There was a lot of shouting back and forth, people yelling and talking about heartbeats and what not, but she refused to listen. She couldn’t help hearing, but it didn’t matter if she didn’t listen.

  Then there was a moment of silence, just long enough for Genny to wonder if all the excitement was over. Then someone counted and the fusillade of voices returned, orders and yells and pleas and cries and then there was another boom, only this one was just on the other side of her desk and that was it.

  That was enough.

  With a wordless cry, Genny jumped up from her desk and ran for the double glass doors that gave into a vestibule before two more doors gave out to the ambulance bay. The first doors wouldn’t open…

  Of course not. No power, stupid.

  …but they were meant to be opened even without power. And with as many times in a month that the power went out, Genny knew how to do it. She pushed on one of the doors, popping it out of its hinge and opening it like any other kind of door, and then she was in the vestibule.

  “Genny, wait!” someone shouted behind her, which only made her move faster.

  The next set of doors only ever opened automatically from the inside; from the outside a code or a keycard had to be used. And of course, these didn’t want to purr open electrically, but the same principle applied. Push and shove and there were voices behind her, calling for her to come back, but now she was outside, away from the gunshots and the screams, away from knowing that her friends were doing unspeakable things, attacking each other, being shot…

  The summer night was warm and muggy, one of those South Carolina nights where you felt like you could drown if you took too deep a breath.

  It felt wonderful.

  She had her keys in her hand because she’d grabbed them and had been holding them, toying with them, for the past ten minutes. She pushed the center button on the key fob and experienced a surge of relief that her headlights blinked at her. Some things still worked, praise the Lord and hallelujah.

  Genny quick-stepped past the ambulance and the police car, crossing the short lane the allowed the emergency vehicles to pull right up and stepping into the emergency department’s employee parking lot. Her white Volvo was only a few feet away. She could be home in ten minutes and drunk in twenty, if she really tried. Bob always kept a twelve-pack of beer in the fridge and there was always that half-pint of rum chilling in the freezer since the last Cinco de Mayo. He wouldn’t mind if she finished it, not after the night she’d had.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, buried under the fear that thrummed through her and gave some extra pep to her step, was the knowledge that she was walking out on a job. She wasn’t a nurse so she couldn’t get in trouble for abandoning any patients, but she was certainly abandoning her friends.

  A bottle skipped and rolled across the concrete, that tink-tinkle-grating sound that doesn’t come from the wind making something move. She whipped her head left and right, didn’t see anything, and scooted forward just a little faster, reaching
the white car with its promise of safety and escape.

  Reaching for the door handle, she screamed when a shadowy silhouette suddenly appeared beside her dim reflection in the driver window. Turning, she was just in time to see hands reaching for her shoulders, a face rushing in to bite. There were others beyond the one who’d gotten to her.

  Many others.

  Officer Tim kicked and squirmed, desperately trying to make the wheelchair turn without having to take his hands off his pistol. The motion caused his aching head to throb harder, and he wondered if it was possible for a man’s brains to come pouring out of their ears.

  But there was no nausea. Thank God for that.

  As he turned, he yelled, telling anyone who could move to get those doors closed again, protect the department. And thankfully, people moved. Brandon and Billy rushed into the vestibule, calling out to the crazy woman who’d torn out of there like her hair was on fire and her ass was catching. And did she have any idea how close he’d come to shooting her as she burst out of the nurses’ station like that? No, of course not. People never understood how their actions could dictate a cop’s reaction and always blamed the cop.

  If he’d been standing instead of trapped in the chair, he might have shot her, though he liked to think he was a better judge of a situation than that.

  The night had already provided enough weird shit that maybe such a mistake could be overlooked. Thankfully, it hadn’t happened.

  Halfway through the turn he saw the small Indian doctor, the one who’d been so kind when he was down and hurting. The doctor appeared frozen in place, still standing in the same spot as when the old guy came back to life, crawling like a gray-haired spider ready to chomp on someone.

  Well, he didn’t have time to worry about the doctor just then.

  The men who’d been yelling out for “Genny!” suddenly stopped. Their movements became frantic as one of them darted out to push the outer door almost shut, leaving just enough space to duck back in before he and his fellow closed it all the way.

  A split-second later one, no, two…four, five…ten…a dozen…too many to count…people started banging on the outer doors. The made no noise other than their fists pounding. And even without the benefit of exterior lighting, enough of their features were visible to see they were like the old man and the young guy, blank, devoid of emotion, devoid of anything except maybe for a desire to eat…someone.

  The two men ducked back into the ED proper, closing the inner door as well.

  “Can they open those from the outside?” Tim asked, and he was amazed at how calm he sounded. How in control.

  “No,” the tall one with the shoulders answered. Tim’s gaydar pinged when that one spoke, but he’d long ago forced himself past any prejudices based on sexual orientation. Two of the best cops he knew were gay. “The track only opens out, and when the doors are sealed, you can’t get a hand between them to pull. You can only push.”

  “So, when the power goes out, you can escape through them, but no one can come in and loot,” the other tall man said.

  “Okay, spin me back around please,” Tim said. “Slowly.”

  It was time to take control of the situation.

  Chapter 25

  For a moment, Officer Tim Reynolds fiddled with his radio, changing channels, always expecting the chatter of multiple voices on one of the bands but receiving nothing but static. A couple of times he raised the microphone to his mouth and asked a simple question: “Anyone there?”

  The response was the same. Silence.

  His face hurt and something was wrong with his left eye. Not I can’t see or My vision’s blurry wrong, but more like it wasn’t stable. He was afraid if he sneezed his eye might pop out. He’d pushed on the area under his eye, and there was a nauseating crunchy feeling to the bones. The punk Danny had really done a number on him with those headbutts.

  Speaking of heads, his pounded. It wasn’t the morning-after hangover kind of pound that means you can’t think, fog and pain combining to send you to the bathroom to puke up everything you ever thought about drinking. This was worse because he could think through it. He didn’t wonder what happened to him. He knew. And he was able to project beyond the injury, to speculate upon further damage. He still couldn’t move without the pain in his head increasing and the world trying to spin away from him. He had his neck and shoulders locked to prevent any unnecessary shifting, but he wouldn’t be able to maintain that forever. Already an ache was settling in between his shoulder blades, the kind that could only grow deeper and sharper.

  He needed to take charge and get the situation under control, and then he needed to hand that control over.

  “Josh, there’s a little pouch on my belt buckle, right in the middle of my back. Next to it is a larger pouch holding another set of handcuffs. Please take the keys out of the small pouch and get the extra handcuffs.”

  The other tall man, leaner than the gay guy with the broad shoulders, said “I’m down here holding onto China, just in case.” That made the wide-shouldered guy Brandon. Which meant the shorter man was Billy. Tim liked to put names to faces, especially if he was going to be counting on people to do what they’re told.

  “Billy, then.”

  “Okay,” the shorter man said, moving to the side and reaching down Tim’s back. The officer leaned forward to make the job easier, gritting his teeth against the increased pressure in his head.

  “All right,” he said, trying for a forceful voice without straining too much, “Let’s get the cuffs off James and get them on some of these people so we can figure out what to do.”

  “Please,” a deep voice said from across the department. “I’m having a hard time keeping Tonya pinned.”

  “That you, Buck?” Tim called.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so Buck’s holding one. I can see you two ladies got one. Are there any others?”

  “Dr. Crews has another one over here,” Buck answered.

  Tim knew and respected Dr. Crews. Unlike the Indian doctor, Crews was a man who knew how to handle a situation. The officer remembered hearing the doctor had a service record, which made sense. Plain spoken, no-nonsense, and willing to do what needed to be done rather than wait for someone else to do it—that’s who they needed to free up. He also remembered the doctor standing up to him about the bastard, Danny. After what he’d seen tonight, Tim was glad not to be trying to handle that one back at the station.

  “Has anyone else been bitten?” Crews called.

  “Just China and Grace,” the pretty brunette, Jordyn, answered.

  “Oh, hell no you don’t go claiming I got bitten,” Grace responded.

  “She cut her arm on a piece of glass when the window broke,” Rose said.

  “It’s long, straight, and narrow,” Grace said.

  “Not too deep, but she be glad to show it to you, once you stop playing pro-wrestler with Mrs. Butler.”

  “Show it to you, hell! You try cuffing me and I’ll shove your nose so deep in the cut you’ll be smellin’ the bone.”

  “We get it,” Tim chuckled, “you weren’t bitten.”

  “Damn straight!” Grace responded.

  “But China was. This guy James did it.”

  “Me and Caitlin have her,” Josh said. “Bite looks bad. Might have cost her an eye. But I don’t see any of those funny arteries or veins, if that means anything.”

  “Can you wake her up?” Tim asked.

  “Yeah, if you want me to. We’ve got smelling salts.”

  “Okay, but not yet. Let’s get these others straightened out.”

  “I’ve got Zip Ties in the truck,” Buck offered.

  “We can’t get out that way anymore,” Brandon said. “There’s a crapload of crazy out there, looking at us through the glass like a cat watching an aquarium.”

  “Well,” Tina said, “we’ve got the restraints in Room 10 that Danny got out of…”

  “Good idea,” Dr. Crews said. “Get China in those while she’
s out. Roll the bed out here though, so we can watch her. If she turns out to be okay, she’ll be safe until we can get her free.”

  “What about these others,” Angelica asked.

  “We’ve got three crazies and two pairs of handcuffs, right?”

  “Right,” Tina said.

  “So, let’s get Tonya and Mrs. Butler here cuffed through the rails and across a bed from each other. But first, put the one Angelica and Grace are holding in Room 4. Free them up to help with the others. Cuff her around the bed rail and be careful.”

  While the gun sounded twice, voices shouted, people were attacked, and one woman ran outside to her death, Dr. Patel stood mute and immobile. What had seemed so important just a few minutes before, the idea that something communicable, a virus or bacterium, was jumping from one person to another, causing random acts of violent aggression bordering on the cannibalistic, no longer mattered.

  He had seen the face of Brahman.

  Gus was dead. There was no denying the fact of his death. His injury was grievous, a crushing bite to the anterior throat that ripped through skin and tore into the cartilage making up the Adam’s apple and the trachea behind it. By the time he and Tina arrived, the wound only drooled blood. There was no pumping to indicate an active heart. On auscultation, there was no heartbeat, and no sound of air moving into and out of the lungs.

  The man was clinically dead.

  And then he wasn’t.

  All his life, Anil Patel had fought to straddle the line between the traditional beliefs of his family and the Western sensibilities of modern medicine. Many of his kinsman did the same, some with more success than others. And there were always those who became like the Sunday morning Christians he heard his cohorts talk about, people who professed a faith when it suited them, perhaps appearing for worship once a week, but acted like hedonists every other day. Those were the doctors who embarrassed their traditionalist families by fully embracing all the Western world had to offer, turning their back on the faith that empowered them.