Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  Of the fifteen, only seven would make it out alive.

  Chapter 26

  The idea that a hospital could ever be not busy was something of an anomaly to Carolyn. There was always something going on around the big city facilities in places like Atlanta, where she was born, and in Alpharetta, where she moved after marrying Austin. Ambulances and police cars were always coming and going, most often with lights flashing as they raced off to save another life or returned with one hanging in the balance. The emergency department visitor’s parking lot might not be full twenty-four-seven, but it was never empty, and she hadn’t ever pulled open the door of a Waiting Room and seen no one.

  It might be just that it was a small hospital. The waiting room consisted of ten metal folding chairs, a water fountain, and a unisex bathroom. There wasn’t a separate room for triage, just two desks situated side by side. The receptionist should be behind one of them, ready to type in the patient’s demographic and insurance information, while a nurse manned the other, checking vital signs and doing her initial charting activities.

  Both desks were empty, and the lights were off.

  That didn’t make any sense. Emergency departments didn’t close, did they? And if they did, would they have left the front doors unlocked?

  The only other door, set behind and to the left of the desks, led back into the emergency department. Even with her limited knowledge of medical facilities, Carolyn knew this door should be shut, guarded by the ladies at the desks and opened only for those invited within.

  The door stood ajar. Not like it had just been used and would close soon, but open halfway and stuck there, like it lost power in the middle of closing.

  Still stuck on the fringes of reality, walking the line between depression and desperation, Carolyn fought to recall how the department looked when she’d walked out. Bitsy’s room had been lighted up until they pronounced her, then they dimmed the lights and turned off the machines. But the hallway outside was lit, machines in other rooms giving off their tell-tale beeps and boops, automatic blood pressure cuffs cycling on and off with that grinding air compressor sound. There were people everywhere, nurse and technicians coming in and out of rooms, some stopping to offer their condolences as she floated by, riding the current of loss.

  She hadn’t moved with a plan then, just followed the floor and the lights until she saw the large glass doors offering her red-eyed and bandaged-nosed reflection superimposed over a vague picture of night. The doors swept open as she approached. Her reflection disappeared, wiped aside like everything else, not a trace remaining, and there was the open air of the outdoors. And she’d started walking, following the sidewalk to the right. She didn’t remember the lights going out around the building, but she’d been so caught up in her own thoughts, making plans that centered on finding her husband because it was easier than thinking about the loss of her daughter, there could have been a transformer explosion and she might not have noticed it.

  And now she faced a door that shouldn’t be open leading into a dark hallway, made darker by the meager moonlight filtering in through the windows of the waiting room. There were sounds as well, though they were faint. Bangs and scrapes, what might be a moan or might be wind through a narrow opening.

  Something, some primal acknowledgment of a need for increased attention when faced with the unknowable dark, sent a chill up her spine. Her muscles tensed as adrenaline surged through her body, tearing through the clouds in her mind. Her thoughts cleared. And though the need to find her purse remained, it came with an understanding that the benefit might not be worth the risk. She could turn around. It would make it harder to do what she wanted to do, which was to go find her husband, but it was an option.

  What the hell is wrong with you, woman? It’s just a dark hallway.

  The thought didn’t make all her apprehension go away, but it did shame her into stepping forward, crossing into the hallway, where she noticed it wasn’t as dark as it appeared from the waiting room. There was light, of a sort, just not coming from the fluorescent banks overhead. There was a hum though, which was odd. You occasionally heard that same high-pitched hum coming from active lights, but it so quickly faded into the background that you ceased to pay attention to it. When it was the hum without light, the idea of power without seeing the result of it, the hum became ominous.

  The hallway was short and then the emergency department opened in front of her, with doors to patient rooms on the left and a small nurses’ station that doubled as the doctor’s area on the right. There were only two or three doors before the hall doglegged to the right, with five or six more rooms in that direction. The first two rooms on the left were deep, holding two patient beds each, and had grandiose names like Trauma Bay, and Cardiac Bay. Carolyn didn’t begrudge them their titles. Between those rooms were the sliding glass doors she’d walked out of an eternity before. The same moonlight that illuminated the waiting area shone through here as well, giving enough light to see that the floor was clear, though not enough to tell the color of the tiles. Where the hall made its turn there was a door she remembered, leading into a small observation room. The room was empty except for a bed. Meant for holding potentially suicidal or otherwise psychotic patients, it contained no electronic equipment, no medical supplies, nothing with a cord a patient could use to hang themselves, or needles which could be used as weapons. That was where the crazy lady stabbed herself in the eyes.

  There was another source of light besides the moon. It was meager, a glow more than anything else, and it came from the right, from a door set behind the nurses’ station. The door featured a single, large pane of glass, and through it, Carolyn could see one of those fancy medication dispensers and rows of plastic bins filled with syringes and tubes. A portable light like a battery-operated Coleman lantern sat on the counter in the medication room. Otherwise, the department was dead.

  Like Bitsy is. Like Austin probably is.

  Concentrate.

  She came for her purse, which would be in Bitsy’s room, around the corner to the right.

  Stepping forward, passing the Trauma Bay and approaching the Cardiac Bay, Carolyn flinched at a sudden noise from the left, a whooshing sound that accompanied a blast of warm air. Spinning, she saw the ambulance bay doors sliding open, apparently triggered by her proximity. The wind gusted in and floated through the nurse’s station, riffling papers into the air. For some reason, the sound of those papers moving drove home the sense of emptiness and abandonment in the department. This wasn’t a place where everyone just left and would soon return.

  This was a place of the dead and for the dead, and she was the intruder in their domain.

  Stop it! Get a hold of yourself! You’re alive and they’re alive. They’re just off handling some other emergency. And you’re just…

  Just what? Having a breakdown? Taking a mental vacation? On the first leg of a one-way trip to Crazy Town?

  Forcing herself to calm down, just take a breath and get through this, Carolyn took a step forward, then another. The automatic doors of the ambulance bay whisked shut behind her, cutting off the breeze. The loose papers in the nurses’ station stopped rustling and settled to the floor.

  The crash of one of the stretchers slamming into a wall sounded from in front of her.

  She froze again.

  That wasn’t a sound caused by an errant gust of wind.

  There was a rattle. Then, instead of a repeated crash, a softer thud, like a body slamming into a wall or a doorframe.

  “Hello?” Carolyn said tentatively. “Is anyone there? I left my purse and—”

  A shape moved through the dimness ahead of her, coming out of the observation room.

  Thinking it was one of the nurses, perhaps performing some last-minute duty on the deceased crazy lady—do they still attach toe tags?—Carolyn took another step forward. “Excuse me,” she said.

  The shape resolved into the well-remembered silhouette of the woman with the burned-out eyes, tight skirt s
howcasing a narrow ass and skinny legs.

  No.

  It had to be a mistake.

  Someone dressed like her, though Carolyn didn’t remember seeing anyone else with that combination of height and weight and disregard for decent clothing that covered more than it advertised.

  The other woman didn’t respond, other than to turn toward her voice.

  The light wasn’t bright enough to see her face, though Carolyn knew what she’d see…

  …eyes sunken and deflated inside a burnt corona of red and black skin; blood, dried to a tacky crust, staining that hundred-dollar blouse…

  …couldn’t possibly be the face of the crazy woman. It just wasn’t possible. That woman was dead. She’d watched the woman stab her own eyes and slam a lethal dose of some medication into the artery in her neck. She’d witnessed the blood spraying like a fireman’s hose out of the artery when the first nurse removed the syringe.

  She had literally watched the woman die and heard the pronouncement of death.

  The silent person turned a little too far and stumbled out into the hall. Her hands reached out in front of her, not like she wanted to grab anything, but rather like a blind person trying to walk without bumping into anything.

  “Ma’am? Are you all right?” Carolyn asked, forcing down her fear to try to be helpful.

  The woman pivoted again, this time focusing on Carolyn’s voice. She took a hesitant step forward, hands and arms still outstretched.

  Carolyn wavered, caught between an irrational fear…

  It can’t be her! It just can’t be!

  …and a human desire to offer help to someone who needed it.

  The figure took another step forward and something, a resurgence of that instinctual fear from before, caused Carolyn to back up a step.

  As if sensing her unease, the figure came forward again. More boldly now.

  One step after another.

  Carolyn backed up again and heard/felt the rush and swish of the ambulance doors responding to her presence, unsure why they still worked in the darkened department, but thankful for the easy escape they offered if she needed it.

  Why should I need it?

  And the strangest thing happened.

  The female figure turned toward the sound of the doors, arms out in front of her, and began walking toward them.

  Carolyn froze, waiting.

  The figure passed through the moonlight beaming into the department, and…

  It was her! Never mind that it shouldn’t be possible, there she was, standing, no, walking right in front of her, all fucked up face and fucked up eyes still in her fuck me clothes, and she’s walking like she’s blind because of course she would be. After all, the dumb bitch blinded herself with a needle. I saw her do it!

  …Carolyn held her breath, afraid to make the slightest sound, because that was how the woman operated now. She focused on noise because sight was gone. Why she hadn’t responded was a question best left unanswered because Carolyn thought nothing good could come of trying to get the answer.

  One step at a time, the blind woman staggered out through the ambulance doors.

  Still holding her breath, Carolyn stepped forward once, moving herself out of the electronic eyebeam of the doors, which began to slide shut. As soon as they moved the woman stopped, turning in place to find the source of the new noise. She stepped forward, her hands reaching the glass just as the doors closed completely. From here, outside facing in, the woman had returned to a silhouette in shadow, backlit by the moon, and Carolyn let out the breath she’d been holding. The doors only opened automatically from the inside, which made sense. You wouldn’t want an easy access from the outside of an emergency department. Carolyn kept her eyes on the doors and the woman standing outside of them until she had moved forward and reached the right-hand turn in the hallway. With the doors and the resurrected crazy woman out of sight, she remained alert for the sound of them re-opening, or the gusting of the pre-dawn breeze.

  The encounter had left her shaken and wondering, thoughts and fears intertwined with hopes that could not be allowed to take root and grow.

  If her, why not Bitsy?

  It might be possible, she thought, for the people in the hospital to make a mistake with one woman, calling her dead when maybe the drugs just threw her body into a weird state where she only looked dead. Such things happened; she’d read about them. People frozen in their own bodies, believed to be dead or unconscious, only to wake up on the operating table, or at the beginning of the autopsy. After watching a movie on the subject she’d been tormented for weeks with a similar fear, trapped in the perfect prison, aware of things happening around her but unable to interact with anyone. She wondered if that’s how ghosts felt.

  There were no rooms one through five, she’d discovered. The two beds in each of the “bays” plus the observation bed counted as the first five chart locations in this tiny hospital, so the numbered rooms started at six and went up to nine before this back hallway ended in a double door that gave out onto the rest of the single floor building. Radiology was just on the other side of those doors, where she’d gone to have her nose X-rayed.

  Bitsy was in room 8, just a few more feet up the hall.

  There’s no way two miracles happened. Stop hoping for it. Stop thinking about it. She’ll be in there, still under the sheet. Or maybe someone will have moved her, and it’ll be an empty room and then you’ll have to come back up here and look under the nurse’s desks for your stupid purse.

  Despite her cautious thoughts she couldn’t help a tingling anticipation, a quickening of the heartbeat, the sudden slickness of nervous sweat on her palms. Her throat felt dry and cottony despite a twisting nausea rising from her center. She needed to get this done before her nerve completely deserted her and she either puked or passed out or both.

  There was light, of a sort, coming from the overhead fluorescent panels. Maybe it had always been there but so faint that it hadn’t registered as such. Dimmer even than the moonlight, the panels glowed faintly. She remembered the hum that said power still flowed to the lights, but it must not be enough to fully activate them.

  Room 6, on the right, was empty, sheets strewn on the floor reaching from the bed almost to the door, like the patient had gotten up and walked away.

  Likewise, room 7, on the left, though that room was devoid even of the stretcher. Perhaps the patient was in Radiology.

  How are they going to X-Ray or CT anyone without power?

  Room 8 was the next door on the right. As Carolyn got closer, her footsteps quickened. She breathed faster, her body working to meet the demands of her racing heart.

  It’s going to be empty. It’s going to be empty.

  But she turned into the room and it wasn’t empty.

  The bed was there.

  Bitsy was there, on the bed.

  And she was sitting up.

  The last hour was a blur to Jesse.

  They’d landed at Will Rogers World Airport after Air Traffic Control diverted his small plane away from the large, commercial facility. Only his claim of a medical emergency got him permission to land at all. His filed flight plan hadn’t indicated he’d be traveling this far north, so unless he had a good reason for being so far off course and no fuel to correct it, he’d be denied clearance to land. Just the world we live in, thank you Jihadists.

  Ragan still hadn’t moved by the time he completed the final turn and extended his flaps. As the wheels touched down and his plane began to slow, he saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles waiting for him at the end of one of the taxiways. He reached down with his left hand and shoved the flashlight deep into the Oh Shit pouch. A quick glance showed blood spattered over the flight controls, which would help with his planned story. As the small plane came to a complete stop, he killed the engine and climbed out to greet the paramedics.

  Seizure, he said, and they bought it.

  No, she didn’t have a history of seizures. Yes, this was the first time. />
  His bloody fingers helped sell the story. She bit him while he tried to keep the plane level with one hand and prevent her from banging her head even worse with the other. Complete accident, don’t worry about him, just help the girl.

  He rode in the ambulance to Community Hospital, where he checked her in with her first name and his last.

  No, he didn’t have her insurance card on him, but he had his driver’s license and his pilot’s license.

  Yes, they could mail the bill to his home address.

  His fingers were torn and bloody, but there was no tendon damage, and a pretty Physician’s Assistant was happy to sew him up while the nurses and technicians drew Ragan’s blood, placed bandages over the cut his flashlight made in her scalp—they planned to staple it shut later—and prepared her for a CT scan.

  By the way, what’s wrong with her arm? It looks infected.

  They didn’t seem to believe him when he said her arm looked fine when they left Mississippi.

  Just wait here, Mr. Franks. Your little girl will be back from her CT Scan in just a minute.

  That’s what they said when they rolled her stretcher out of the emergency department.

  That was five minutes ago.

  Now there was a phone ringing at the nurses’ station just outside of his room.

  “It’s Radiology,” a nurse said to the air before answering it.

  “Deidra here.” A pause. “Yes, Dr. Worthington is here.” Another pause. “Okay, I’ll put you on hold for just a second.”

  Jesse couldn’t see the doctor, but he could hear the man’s voice as he picked up the call.

  “Worthington. Yes, Ragan Franks is my patient.”

  Jesse rose from the visitor’s chair in Ragan’s room and edged toward the door.

  “What do you mean, abnormal? Hold on, let me pull up the images.”

  Jesse walked out to the nurses’ station, where he saw the broad back of the doctor caring for Ragan bent over a computer keyboard. The man’s shoulders and head obscured a large computer monitor which cycled through hundreds of images of a skull like one of those old-timey cartoons, where an artist drew image after image, each just a little different. When stacked together like a deck of cards and flipped through at high speed, it created a rudimentary animation. It could only be a CT image, the way each image seemed to look deeper into the skull, bypassing the layer of bone and then showing a picture of a brain, with its many whirls and whorls, like a high-altitude image of a maze of rivers and tributaries in some African rainforest.