Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  Don’t think about it.

  It was hard not to. Neither Dr. Crews nor Tina would give her an answer when she’d asked, only cautioning her that the wound needed to start healing before any guesses could be made. But she’d seen the looks. Even with one eye, she’d seen the way some of the others looked at her, a degrading combination of sympathy and pity.

  A lot of that was for the wound itself, she was sure, not just the eye. There were mirrors in the bathrooms and above the sinks in the trauma rooms, but China hadn’t wanted to see what she looked like. Not yet. She’d always been proud of her looks, her skin, her eyes. She promised herself every morning not to let others know she felt that way, but it was hard, sometimes, when an old lady would comment on how pretty she was. Some called her a porcelain doll or made suggestions about how they had a son or a grandson they’d love to introduce her to. When the day ended, and she went home to her single-bedroom apartment--all she could afford on her salary--that’s what consoled her.

  She was pretty, and someday, she’d be a pretty doctor’s wife.

  Maybe even a surgeon’s wife, if she was lucky.

  Another nurse once made a snide comment that some girls become R.N.s on their way to earning an M.R.S. China agreed with the sentiment, though she wasn’t even an RN. That was her plan and she was proud of it.

  The thought that those dreams might be dead was almost too much to bear.

  So she refused to look and she gritted her teeth through the pain, because to acknowledge either meant accepting that one-bedroom apartment and sore feet and possible marriage to some guy who—hopefully—treated her well but who probably only wanted to marry her because he couldn’t get anyone prettier.

  The sharp crack of a pistol sounded from the right, no way to tell how far away it was.

  “The hell?” Brandon asked.

  Their steps accelerated, moving toward the crossing corridor.

  As they passed the entrance to the second conference room China had one moment to be thankful it was her right eye that was injured and not her left, because she saw movement flashing through the doorway and was able to turn, identify the threat, and move to her right, shouting and shoving past Brandon. A second later, as the big, broad-shouldered CNA moved to meet the attacker, something came in from the crossing corridor, hitting her high and hard on her blind side. Stunned, she stumbled across the corridor and into the wall, sending a wave of pain through her left shoulder. The same someone, or maybe a different person, charged in again, hitting her a second time before she could get her feet set or turn to see what was happening. The second hit slammed her head into the wall, and she slid down, voices and light and shouting all disappearing into a comforting darkness.

  He was coming.

  Austin didn’t know if the police officer could become what he needed to be by means of just any infection. Something urged him to take care of this one personally.

  Why should that be?

  Did it matter?

  As was the case with many of the changes in his mind, Austin found that it didn’t.

  What needed to be would be, without question.

  The police officer was armed and willing to use his weapon.

  That posed a problem.

  While Austin no longer had a fear for his own life, he was driven to accomplish certain things. Those goals could not be met if he was erased. The others, those who had not kept the ability to reason, were infinite. They were legion, or would become so, and were, therefore, expendable.

  He, and those like him, were limited, a single-digit fraction of the population.

  He was aware of every one of his waiting in places around the hospital. He knew where all those who had not yet become were, and how they progressed.

  He needed to make sure the police officer came to him unspoiled.

  But he needed to be rendered impotent along the way.

  Concentrating, Austin worked to make it so.

  Brandon tripped over his own big feet when China shoved past him, the minute stumble enough to get his head under the reaching/swiping arms of the big and ugly woman charging at them out of the conference room. Startled, he pushed out with his arms, easily knocking the attacker back into the room.

  “Watch out!” one of the women yelled. Not knowing if it was directed at him, he went forward, toward the attacker and her vein-striped face.

  Drawing back an arm, he swung the baton with everything he had, hearing it swish through the air. It landed solidly in the center of the woman’s face. One of the protruding vessels popped like a pustule and black ichor as thick as molasses began rolling out. Another swish and thunk sounded behind him, accompanied by a grunt of effort.

  The large woman went down, and Brandon turned to see the world going to hell around him.

  Karen had her ax buried in the head of another woman wearing a hospital gown, small red spots on her arm testifying to the recent presence of an IV. The woman was down, and the nurse worked the handle back and forth, trying to free the blade. Two men, both as old as the woman and not what he’d consider spry enough for any kind of physical activity, had hold of Angelica, one on each arm. Jordyn rode on one’s back, arms wrapped around his neck trying to dislodge him. Caitlin had moved up beside the secretary and…

  Where the hell did she get a gun?

  …laid the barrel of a small, pink handgun against the head of one of the old men.

  China was down, though he couldn’t see any obvious injury beyond the eye patch and bandage.

  “Get them off me!” Angelica yelled, twisting and struggling.

  “Stop moving!” Karen yelled right back. “I can’t swing with you dancing around!”

  “I’ve almost got this one,” Jordyn said, straining and pulling backward.

  The pink gun fired—Brandon saw Caitlin’s face go tight as she pulled the trigger—and the one Jordyn had hold of came free and she let go, falling back.

  “I got it!” Brandon shouted, thinking he had a better chance of just hitting the target and not accidentally killing someone else, like Karen might with the ax.

  But Karen was already swinging too.

  Brandon didn’t know how close he came to feeling the ax bite into his collar as Karen twisted, desperate to prevent a catastrophe. The baton cracked against the second old guy’s skull, but he didn’t seem to feel it, tugging harder on the secretary.

  “Get the fuck off me!” Angelica said, finally able to bring her right arm, the one holding her 9mm pistol, to bear on the attacker. The gunshot filled the corridor, causing Brandon to flinch away from the noise, much louder than the almost-demure pop that came from Caitlin’s weapon. Jordyn cowered back as well. It also covered a very different sound, solid yet somehow wet.

  As the crazed man fell away, never to rise again, Karen dropped to the floor. The ax handle fell from hands gone numb with shock. The ax head remained where it struck, buried in China’s chest and supported by the decimated remains of her sternum. Her uncovered eye was closed, her face relaxed, like she was already asleep when the end came.

  “Oh my God, no!” Karen screamed. “No no no no no.”

  Another hospital-johnny-garbed patient tore around the corner, followed closely by Jenny, a pretty, blond, Med-Surg nurse, both with hands out and mouths open, ready to attack.

  From farther down the corridor more forms emerged.

  “What the hell, man?” Billy said, loosening his grip on the dead doctor’s arm as Josh did the same on the other side. The tall doctor sank gracelessly to the floor. “He was just scared.”

  “Not at the end, he wasn’t,” Josh said. Officer Tim nodded. “He…I don’t know…changed, I think.”

  “He was about to attack,” Tim said.

  “You can’t know that!” Billy insisted.

  Josh reached out a hand to his friend. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked softly.

  Billy took a deep breath, looked like he was about to say something else, then let the air out with an explosive sigh. He l
ooked down at the body and said, “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  Voices reached them, shouts and yells diminished by distance, but still loud enough for Josh to identify Brandon’s voice.

  “It’s coming from the left,” Billy added.

  “Push me up to the next hallway,” Tim said.

  Josh complied, resuming his place behind the wheelchair. They passed two more doors on the way to the crossing hall, but no one mentioned stopping to check the rooms.

  A gunshot echoed from the left as they reached the intersection, followed closely by a louder report, temporarily silencing the voices from that direction.

  Sensing stimuli from a half-dozen sources, processing it, compartmentalizing it, and formulating a plan based on the inferred data wasn’t something Austin had to think about. It just happened. If he’d still been capable of drawing analogies as a method of comparing, he might have said it was like being a general watching a battle from high above, seeing his enemies’ movements and countering them with no lag time.

  The police officer was moving up the hallway, and both flanking groups were engaged.

  Now was the time to pull everyone to attack the center, even if it meant allowing those on the flanks to run.

  He had to have the police officer.

  The radiology waiting room took up almost all the space between the corridor leading to the back of the emergency department and the next, which cut clear across all three hallways. The area bowed out in a semi-circle, with enough glass to let in plenty of moonlight, as well as causing Buck to feel extremely exposed. If they could see out, then someone coming up to the windows could see in. He hadn’t noticed anyone looking. Not yet. But he couldn’t help breathing easier as the windows gave way to regular wall, which curved back toward them at the point where the crossing hall T-boned into their path. His thoughts were still on the radiology technician, Bobby.

  Buck was supposed to be the guy helping other people, dammit, not killing them to put them out of their misery. They may allow that kind of thing in Oregon, but thankfully South Carolina still had legislators who hadn’t fully integrated their heads into their asses and could act like they had some common sense from time to time.

  It happened while he was distracted, his thoughts turned inward.

  The shit hit the fan.

  One second, he was hanging at the back of the pack, ostensibly on the lookout for anyone trying to sneak up behind them but really wallowing in guilt, and in the next instant he was being grabbed by a young man in green scrubs. It took him a second to pull his thoughts back to the moment, a flash of time that might have made the difference in a life, when six or seven people came rushing down the hallway toward them, and three more came out of the side corridor.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that they were dead-eyed and acted like zombies out of a horror movie, minus the monotonous calls for Brains! he might have thought it a coordinated effort, a classic pincer-move.

  But zombies couldn’t strategize, could they?

  I can’t believe I’m thinking of them as zombies! When did that happen?

  It happened when a big dude named Bobby tried to kill him despite having a broken leg that should have made it impossible to rise, much less attempt to walk. It happened when a lab technician wearing green grabbed him, clawed hands trying to scratch, mouth opening and closing in an attempt to find an ounce of flesh to bite, all while sporting a missing hunk of skin in the side of his neck, with a glistening tendril of something…

  …is that part of his carotid artery…

  …dangling into the missing space.

  One of the women screamed.

  Buck slammed his right hand into the face of his attacker, hearing/feeling the man’s skull crack, leaving a sizable dent in the guy’s forehead.

  There was no blood. That kept him centered while all the world went crazy. No matter where he hit them, they didn’t bleed.

  Dr. Crews fired his pistol once, then a second time.

  The guy in green held on to Buck, forcing the paramedic to hit him again. He let go with the second blow, and Buck turned to see who else needed his help.

  The sense of a frantic melee, one of those scenes from a period-piece set in feudal Japan, or perhaps one of the tournaments from Game of Thrones, greeted him.

  Another scream rose, this time from Jessica, who held a woman at bay, arms locked at full extension, one hand pressed into the woman’s throat and the second holding onto a wrist. Without thinking, without allowing himself to think, Buck stepped in and launched a full-strength hook at the strange woman’s head, scoring a solid hit that made her fall to the side.

  “Thanks,” Jessica whispered.

  The woman caught herself before she could hit the ground and pivoted, leveling a stare at Buck that was devoid of emotion, not even a hint of anger at being sucker-punched by the big man. There was a dent in the right side of her head where he’d connected, a physical deformity in the skull that changed the angles of her face. He’d literally caved in her head, and she was about to come back for more.

  Dr. Crews fired again, and the woman fell forward.

  “Oh, you fucker!” Rose yelled.

  “Like that shit, do ya?” Grace said, one voice rolling into the other with barely a pause.

  The two stout women wrestled with yet another hospital patient, a middle-aged man with a protruding paunch of a belly. Rose sported a long gash on the left side of her face that bled freely, a product of the man’s swinging fists. Grace stood to the side, launching punch after ineffectual punch at the man’s face. The man ignored her, trying to drive Rose to the ground.

  There were two others circling the group.

  That was weird, Buck thought. Why aren’t they just charging in?

  Dr. Crews kept them covered with his pistol, but they managed to keep Buck and Jessica between themselves and the doctor, so he couldn’t risk shooting without taking a chance of hitting one of the living.

  “Grab him,” Buck said, reaching out to take one of the arms of the guy attacking Rose. Jessica grabbed the other. Between the two of them they managed to separate the man from the receptionist. He fought and pulled steadily, not frantically, but they were able to hold the guy long enough for Dr. Crews to put him down.

  Buck turned, looking for the other two, but they were gone, moving in and out of the shadows of the connecting corridor, heading for the center lane.

  Angelica pivoted from the man she’d shot, saw another patient in a hospital gown coming at her, and fired again. The shot missed as the man dove forward, lunging for Karen, who hadn’t moved from her place near China, still in shock. She screamed as he landed, forcing her to the side, pinning her against the wall. His face came in at hers and bit, making her scream again.

  Angelica swore, body pivoting as she tried to track the flying body with the pistol. The blond Med-Surg nurse, Jenny, reached forward and grabbed the secretary’s arm. Her mouth came down a split-second later, chewing through skin and gristle, sharp incisors scraping the bone. The 9mm pistol fell as Angelica’s fingers spasmed wide. The secretary screamed.

  “Grab it!” Brandon yelled, his eyes locked on the four other figures flying down the hallway at them.

  One of them was Mr. Sprugg.

  Smiling grimly, the big CNA tightened his grip on the baton, ready to swing at any of them, but hoping for a chance to hit the old man.

  He started this, Brandon thought. He started it when he killed Lisa.

  It wasn’t true, and the CNA knew it.

  But it made him feel better to have a target to focus on.

  The little pink thing in Caitlin’s hands fired once, then again. One of the men rushing at them went down, falling onto his face like his feet got stuck to the floor.

  Karen screamed again, followed immediately by Angelica’s harsher voice, letting out a stream of curse-words fit to make a sailor blush.

  Brandon glanced back over his shoulder.

  Nothing had changed.

  Karen
was still down, still buried under a guy who was no longer biting her face but had instead moved down to her neck. His hands were under her shoulders, lifting them, almost romantic in how he held her close. Her eyes were closed, and her head lolled back. In that quick look, Brandon couldn’t tell if she was dead or just passed out.

  Angelica was on her feet, dancing, pivoting, trying to free her arm from Jenny’s grip but unable to pull too hard. The Med-Surg nurse had both hands on Angelica’s arm, holding it to her mouth. Her cheeks bulged and compressed, teeth chewing.

  “Ohmotherfuckerletgomyarm!”

  Caitlin stood tall, feet planted and little gun held securely in both hands, lining up a shot on the remaining three men charging at them.

  And Jordyn just stood there, a statue at the back of the class, eyes wide and staring. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid-fire jerks. She was hyperventilating, about to pass out.

  She wasn’t going to be able to help.

  Cursing, Brandon turned and dove for the gun.

  Chapter 29

  “They’re running straight at Billy and Josh!” Grace said, watching the two guys disappear down the crossing hallway.

  “Officer Tim can take care of himself,” Dr. Crews said, coming over to stand in front of Rose. “Let me look at your face.”

  “It ain’t nothing,” she replied. “I’ve had worse scratches from my man.”

  Buck and Grace laughed.

  Dr. Crews pulled his smartphone out of a back pocket, activated the flashlight feature, and shone the bright light over Rose’s face.

  The cut was long, narrow, and jagged, not so much a slice as a gouge, running from just below the line of the ear, over the cheekbone, and almost to the chin. It wasn’t particularly deep, Buck thought. Certainly not full thickness.

  “How’s it look?” Rose asked.

  The blood flow from the cut was already stopping, which didn’t make sense. A wound like that should be bleeding freely for much longer than just a few seconds.