Z Poc: The Lodge

by catt dahman

  Lisa’s gauze-wrapped hands held outwards were a mass of dripping yellow and red.

  Dana let loose with a most unprofessional but satisfying scream.

  “Get out of there,” Hank reached for her hand, yanked her almost off her feet and out the door, which he slammed shut. In seconds, Dana heard someone slamming fists against the door.

  “Lisa…Nina….”

  Hank grasped Dana’s chin and looked into her eyes, “We don’t have a lot of time. Dana, there’s no way to get them out, and if we could, they would soon attack us. You know that, now, don’t you?”

  Dana started to protest and argue but then simply nodded, letting Hank hug her close, “I know,” she whispered. She felt sick thinking about that woman inside attacking Lisa.

  “Good girl,” Hank said. If she had argued, he might have cold-cocked her, slung her over his back and carried her out, but she was a big girl, and he didn’t know if he could do it; that made him grin a little.

  “Why are you smiling?” Norman demanded.

  “Thinking of having to carry Dana.”

  “Yeah. I know. Keep staying positive.”

  Hank and Dana joined the rest and were about to run down the hallway to the front of the lodge, but Bristol and Jack slammed a door shut and ran their direction, yelling to go the other way.

  The other nurse, Susan, fell from the triage room that the hotel management had set up for her, half in and half out of the room. Her arms and head were bleeding in streams and spurts thickly covering the floor and walls.

  People in the room screamed.

  Dana had just a second to notice that Susan’s fingers were missing on one of her hands, with bloody, broken stumps left instead. From the room, Ricky looked out and fell along Susan’s body where he began clawing and ducking his head down to bite her back.

  “He’s turned. He’s turned,” Jack yelled, “go.”

  The other hallway was filled with people shoving and yelling, yet it wasn’t clear if they were healthy and terrified or infected monsters or a mixture of the two. In any case, it was a madhouse, and no one was making any headway although some were being crushed underfoot.

  “The bar,” Hank yelled. He pushed Dana that way and followed.

  They ran into the bar and tried to close the door behind them. A few more people ran in as well, and by that time, it was almost too late to close the door. Finally, they slammed the door and bolted it and began piling things in front of it. Several people beat against the door, but no one opened it to let them inside. To do that was comparable to suicide.

  “What the hell?”

  “I have it,” Nick Hoyt said. He helped barricade the door and then flopped into a seat, “Something strong, please. We need a strong drink before we go on. The door is locked and barricaded, so maybe if we are quiet, the things will move on.”

  “Z’s?” Peri asked, but no one answered.

  “Get us drinks?” Nick asked the bartender.

  The barkeep frowned but did as asked, pouring shots of rum, whiskey, and producing bottles of beer as his eyes shifted side to side and landed on the door that was being pounded.

  “What’re you here for? My women and kids ‘re out there,” Rudy said, raising his camo-covered body off a table.

  “They didn’t make it.”

  “No shit. They couldn’t make it in when ya shut the damned door,” Rudy sputtered.

  “I mean the illness got them. The infection,” Dana lied a little, “and I’m so sorry. Trish tried so hard, but the infection was too strong.”

  “Infection? Huh?”

  “They’re gone. They passed,” Dana said.

  “Dead? Ya mean they died? What the hell you going on about? Nina had a little ole bite on her arm. You medical types always get hysterical.”

  Hank stared into the man’s face, “Nina got sicker while you sat here and drank. She passed on. Your wife and your boy were outside with your nieces, and they were attacked by some very sick, violent people and were wounded. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive the attack.”

  “Dead? My girl, boy, and woman? All of them?”

  “If it is any consolation, those who attacked them are contained.”

  “I’m gonna kill the bastards that done this.”

  “It’s a little too late. Besides, we can’t go out there right now. Those infected are still attacking people,” Hank said, “and they’re biting people. That’s how this started.”

  Rudy glared, “My brother and his wife are in their room.”

  “And if they are fortunate, they will stay there and remain safe. I see you are thinking about going out there anyway, thinking you can handle it, and wanting revenge and answers, but if you try to get out that door, we’ll tackle you and tie you for your own good,” Hank said.

  Rudy sat back in a chair in a corner and glared silently.

  “What the hell just happened out there? And for the record, Nick, I’m about tired of the lies,” Hank said.

  “Dave and I barely made it out of the triage. Your friend, Ricky, well, you know he had several bites all over his arms and was missing fingers. He had a particularly bad bite on his neck.”

  “But he hadn’t gotten those blisters and the infection yet,” Dana said.

  “As I understand and know, I am not a doctor, some get bitten or exposed, and the infection sets in and takes over. You saw your friend and that woman, Sheila, and the kid, Nina. It must depend on how deep the injury is or where it is or maybe the health of a person. I don’t know. It can take a while,” Nick explained. “That’s logical.”

  “But Ricky?”

  “Maybe because it was by the throat or something. Whatever caused it also caused him to turn faster.”

  Hank leaned towards Nick, “What is this turning business? Ricky was my friend. We live in the same town.”

  “I’m sorry. You saw it,” Norman said, “Turning means you get sick and violent and attack people by biting. Look, we saw people actually start eating other people like cannibals.”

  The barkeep chuckled but broke off as everyone gave him dirty looks. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Hank said.

  “We found a girl, but she was dead. You can argue all you want, but she was about as dead as anyone could be with her insides ripped out and torn into bits and pieces, but she stood up and came after me and would have eaten me if I hadn’t beat her skull in.”

  “You killed a kid?”

  Norman gave the barkeep another evil glance, “Are you stupid? I just said she was already dead. You can’t really kill what’s already dead.”

  “Dead people don’t walk around.”

  “No shit. You think?” Norman asked.

  “You just said you killed a dead kid. But in your version, dead people are dead, but they run around anyway,” the barkeep said sarcastically.

  “I wouldn’t say they run. They shamble fast.”

  “They do what?”

  “Shamble. Fast shuffling. Not real fast but fast enough, and they don’t stop. They don’t feel pain,” Normal said.

  “Like zombies?”

  “In a way. Maybe.”

  “Weird.”

  Norman wondered at the barkeep’s ignorance but turned back to Nick, “So Ricky didn’t get sick?”

  “He died in triage. Deadish. Maybe for some the infection goes to the brain fast, and they die. Kind of dead. Near as I can tell, that’s it,” Nick said, “and then they come back. Not like dead up running around, but Dr. Lindsay explained some, and she said the stuff about prions controlling basic actions and impulses.”

  Dana nodded, “That’s how I understood it. I think the core personality dies. In other words, what we see isn’t the person anymore. It’s a shell being used by whatever this infection is.”

  “Dead is deadish, and alive may be kind of dead?” asked the bartender, still struggling.

  “Exactly,” Nick sat back and sipped his drink.

  “Do they…the deadish know they are deadish?�
� the bartender continued.

  Everyone stared at him.

  Dana shook her head, “No. They don’t know anything, but they want to eat.”

  “It isn’t that simple. There were a lot of people in triage,” Peri exploded. Her voice rose with anger. “What about all of them?”

  Dave Dallas sighed, “You saw your friend, Ricky. I am terribly sorry, but until something else is done, he will be up walking around, violent, and trying to bite to spread the infection and to feed on humans. Some of us, maybe not all, but we saw him attack the nurse, Susan. He either will eat her and she will come back, or maybe she’s just bitten a little, but she will be back, too.”

  “And the rest in there? Trish, Eddie, his brother, Joey, and another two or three we admitted will…what? Be eaten alive?”

  Dallas looked at Dana, “If they are heavily infected, the rest don’t eat them always. Sometimes they do. They prefer warm, unspoiled…ummm…meat. If they have been bitten, which those in triage have been, then one hundred percent will…die…so to speak…and come back and be zombies. For a lack of a better term, I like that.”

  Dana pretended to beat her head on the table for a second, letting everyone watch her. She tried to find the right words, “So everyone who is bitten is infected, and all infected turn into monsters. Zombies. Wow. Lovin’ that word. Everyone out there is turning or will turn? They’re hunting us?”

  “Shan,” Peri said softly.

  Dana nodded sadly.

  “Not the ones uninfected and hiding,” David said.

  Hank and Norman grabbed Jack before he could strangle David Dallas. “Stop being difficult,” Jack shouted.

  “Shhh. We need to be quiet and let them move on,” Hank said. More fists hammered on the door.

  “Where is Dr. Lindsay?” Peri asked.

  Nick pointed, “Out there. She knew better than to lean that close to the kid; he bit her ear off.”

  With several adding to the story, they once again went over the information they had about outbreaks reported from all over the world. “The doctors and scientists have zero hope to control this. In some cases, it has gone airborne. All those who catch the hemorrhagic version will come down with the host prions as well and become violent,” David said. He explained that the media was trying to keep it quiet while they struggled with finding a cure or an inoculation.

  “You mean the whole world is facing this?” Bristol asked softly.

  Dallas told them there was one doctor who was pulling out all the stops in an attempt to save at least part of the human race. Most, listening, shook their heads, refusing to believe this could be true.

  “Why not quarantine cities and stop travel? Why are we in a damned lodge playing week-long vacation if this is the situation?” Hank asked. “Am I the only one who finds this a little futile?”

  Nick wiped his face, maybe brushing away tears, “When that vial went missing from the lab’s vault at the Texas CDC, it was all over for humans. We didn’t know it was all over for sure and hoped we had time or maybe that it wouldn’t be released.”

  Hank motioned him to keep talking.

  “Since Dr. Parce found out, he’s been playing catch-up, willing to do anything to save any part of our species.” After several protocols and experiments failed miserably, Dr. Parce tried an inoculation, lowering the potency in trials, trying to find the perfect balance. Those injected could not be infected, so they could be bitten or share bodily fluids and not turn and die and become a zombie.

  “You call them zombies?” Peri asked. That bothered her terribly.

  “Yep. Like I said, no better term came up, really, for anyone but the doctor,” Nick said. Unfortunately, the inoculation had side effects. First, the host also was contagious to anyone not also inoculated. Second, the prions made victims crave raw meat for reasons Dr. Parce didn’t understand except that the prions liked iron and protein.

  Persons with the shots had to eat raw beef or pork often to prevent excruciating stomach pains, acute hunger, and a loss of impulse control.

  “And does that help? Eating that?” Dana asked, curious, despite her revulsion.

  “Somewhat. It does for the main part, and theoretically, it would be fully viable, but some issues came up. We can’t account for the fact that some people have very poor impulse controls period. Also, children seem impossible to handle safely, and some people are just evil assholes who like the changes.”

  Those were huge variables. Nick explained, “Also, we couldn’t account for the problem with sexual urges. This action in the lodge made that clear.”

  “You said we, so we can assume you are a big part of this and not some poor innocent caught up in this,” Norman leaned close to Nick. “Now you want us to believe it took several hundred of us locked in a lodge with this infection in some insane experiment to know that people have poor impulse control, children are difficult, and people like sex?” He yanked NIck over the table and on the ground before anyone could interfere.

  Nick tried to block the fist punches but then spread his arms and let Norman finish hitting him. When his fury was spent, Norman sat back and leaned against the bar, watching Nick Hoyt lie on the ground.

  “They didn’t ask me. I’m security and hired help. They are the brains.”

  “What does this all mean?” Peri asked. “We’re trapped here and are just being observed? And don’t say you don’t know. You know plenty.”

  Nick nodded, “I guess so. If it helps, Dr. Parce may offer some of you all the same inoculation to prevent being turned. I had it. I don’t bite people. He says we’re Angels, and we’ll survive. Like a new species.”

  “I liked the old species,” Norman grumbled. He was a hair’s breadth from beating on Nick Hoyt again for suggesting what he had but held himself back only because it wasn’t worth his energy.

  David Dallas checked the doors again, “So did we. But you’re seeing this on a small scale. Imagine this is the world in less than a month.”

  Chapter 7

  On the Beach, There’s Sand…in The Lake, There’s Cold Water…in The Boathouse, There Are The Infected…

  At the back of the lodge, guests who were still downstairs saw the pretty nurse, Susan, fall halfway into the hall; before she could get to her feet, a big man, African American, handsome, and snarling, lunged across her back, sinking hands and teeth into her back and neck. She screamed but couldn’t dislodge the weight or stand the pain.

  He didn’t stop the feeding, but a teenager rolled over the zombie and his victim, clumsily staggering to his feet. Once in the hall, the zombie, formerly called Eddie, dumbly looked around and reacted to the hive noise of moaning.

  In the triage room, a pair of shamblers pinned Trish and her son in the corner and, and using their weight, they held the uninfected down so they could chew and feed with leisure. Blood began to pool on the floor.

  Mira thought she saw Dana and Peri with some of the others dart into the bar and close the door, but she wasn’t positive because at almost the same time, a crowd came around the L-shaped hallway, pushing and shoving. Some screamed, some snarled, some moaned, and several bled heavily as they knocked one another to the floor.

  “Dana?” Mira yelled, knowing it was too late and of no use.

  A pair of women she had seen around the lodge holding hands stared back at the oncoming crowd and then out the glass of the back doors. The light blonde- haired one called to others who were standing still, in shock, “We can’t make it upstairs, so we’ll go outside.”

  Mira ran with them, joining more people outside.

  A short man with a beard yelled at a pair of shamblers who reached out with claws and moaned continuously. He had a fireplace poker that he had grabbed earlier and used it to poke at one of the creatures. Even when he made a spot of blood appear on the front of the shirt close to the belly button, the drooling man didn’t react to the pain but pressed forward, stabbing himself on the poker.

  Todd the man who was fighting the zombies jerked bac
kwards and then came at the zombie again swinging the poker hard.

  “Do it again,” Wicket, his friend, called, “and break the other arm.”

  Todd kind of liked seeing the man’s arm break and hang sideways. “A little help?” He sidestepped the man, hit the woman who was advancing on him, and popped the man on his head.

  Wicket gleefully slid into the woman, tackled her, and began smashing her head against the stone path. He liked the hollow thud noises.

  After Todd knocked the zombie down and not using pain to incapacitate him but sheer force, he slammed the fire poker into its head. He didn’t mind doing the wet work, but he heard more moans and thought more of the creatures were coming his way; it was time to bug out. Standing, he shoved the poker into the man’s eye socket, gave it a quick jiggle, and stepped back.

  Wicket was finished with his job, too.

  “We need out of here.”

  “The hotel where we came from is a mass of people running and those things. Unless we can get to the front or to the other doors….”

  Wicket waved Mira’s suggestion away, “No time. We’re blocked unless we wanna fight?”

  “Okay, then we run,” Mira turned, and everyone followed her. She had no idea where she was going except away from monsters, which wanted to bite them, but she ran full out. As they ran past the bon fire area, a few grabbed sturdy sticks.

  The sandy beach of the lake was next in their path.

  “Dead end,” Todd groaned, “you dumb ass.”

  “We’re on a bluff area, so every direction is a dead end. But look at the sail- boat. Can they swim?” Mira asked.

  “Beats me.”

  Mira helped a woman with her small child get aboard. She was Abi, and the three-year-old was Kara; Abi’s husband was Jimmy a study, handsome Korean. Sue and Shannon climbed aboard, still holding hands; then, there was a woman named Jill, and a couple named Sarah and Dan. Wicket, Todd, and a teen named Cody cast them off and jumped aboard the sailboat.