Joe looked at Denise and Frank. He saw Frank had a gun in his hand and a holster under his coat. Denise was probably a few years younger than him, obviously a nurse. She would know where Sarah was.
Denise moved her lips slowly enough for the men to read. She still didn’t dare make a sound.
What are they?
Joe shrugged, but he knew they couldn’t be human, at least not anymore. He knew humans could be absolutely terrible creatures. But cannibalism, feeling no pain, that was something else entirely.
He leaned toward Denise and spoke in a whisper. “Sarah Thompson, I need to find her.”
“And Brandy Kinkade.”
Denise closed her eyes and held her hands up. She tried to think rationally, but the fear knocked those rational thoughts aside.
“Listen,” she said. “The news says these things are walking dead bodies. And we’re in a hospital, the worst place to be. Now, I want to help people, but I also don’t want to die. We should leave right now. Sarah and Brandy, they’re probably already dead.”
Frank barely heard a word she said. He carefully reached up and grabbed the keyboard from her desk. “Look her up. What room is she in?”
Denise sighed and ran a quick search on Frank’s sister. She skimmed through the doctor’s notes as fast as she could.
Her voice fell. “She’s in ICU.”
“ICU?”
“She was bitten, wasn’t she?”
He nodded. “Yes. Out jogging this morning in the park.”
“Her condition got worse, so they transferred her to ICU. Listen, Frank, she’s probably-”
“Where is the ICU?”
“Second floor.”
Frank checked the magazine in his gun as quietly as he could.
“I, uh, suppose you don’t have another one of those?” Joe asked, pointing to the nine millimeter weapon.
“Afraid not.”
“Didn’t think so.” He looked at Denise. “Sarah Thompson.”
Denise ran the search. “Nothing.”
“What? I know she’s here.”
“She’s not in the system. I’m really sorry, but as you can see, this place is falling apart.”
“Come on. Beautiful blond pregnant woman, a pretty brunette would have been with her, her best friend.”
Denise’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Yes, Dr. Blair took her back. But she’s not in the system yet. And that…that can’t be good. I don’t know what room she’s in.”
“Where the hell do they deliver babies here?”
“Third floor.”
Joe looked at Frank. He wished they were going together, since Frank had the gun. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. They both had different people they needed to get to.
“Good luck, man,” Joe said.
“You too. Listen, whatever it is people are becoming, you have to nail the brain to take them down. I shot that guy out there in the leg. He didn’t even flinch.”
“Thanks.”
He looked around the office for a weapon. There was nothing at all that caught his eye that he could wield. His eyes fell on a spare computer keyboard in the corner. With nothing else to use, he grabbed it and took a few practice swings.
Despite everything around them, Frank smirked and shook his head.
“Okay, hold on,” Denise said. “Just hold on a second.”
She grabbed the computer monitor and stretched the cables enough so she could put it on the floor. She logged into the network-based security camera system. She shouldn’t have known the passwords, but Gary, the IT tech who always tried to impress her, showed her once how to log on.
They didn’t like what they saw.
Denise slowly cycled through the camera feeds. Joe and Frank crouched and watched over her shoulder. Her eyes burned as she wiped away tears. The cameras showed them what she had already guessed.
The hospital was a lost cause.
All it took was bite wound victims being moved all over the hospital. The creatures were everywhere. She cringed as she watched people running for their lives down the halls, doctors that once cared for patients eating those same patients’ intestines.
“I’m sorry, guys, but I can’t go with you.”
Frank nodded. “I understand. Get your loved ones and get someplace safe.”
A sad thought crossed Denise’s mind. Her mother was drunk somewhere in a bar in California. She hadn’t spoken to her father since the day he’d walked out on her and Mom, almost ten years ago. Six years of having her nose in medical books didn’t leave her with a lot of time to make friends.
She had no one.
Frank opened the door and sprinted across the empty waiting room. Joe was a step behind. They knew it was empty now, but it could be full of those creatures at any second. They had to be quick and quiet.
They went up the stairs without incident. When they got to the door leading to the second floor Frank peeked through the glass window. He pulled his head back when he saw a head pass by.
Frank saw two men and a woman kneeling next to a man on the floor. One of the creatures used to be a patient. His robe was open in the back, revealing a slice that went from his tailbone all the way to the bottom of his neck. Frank could see the muscle tissue exposed.
He put a hand on Joe’s shoulder, not wanting him to look. Joe felt ridiculous. He still carried the spare keyboard, while Frank had a gun.
“This is my stop,” Frank said.
Doubt started to creep into Joe’s mind. This is crazy, he thought. I’m not gonna make it.
He had to try. His wife and child, and Margie, needed him.
Joe just gave Frank a nod. Frank pulled open the door and took his first steps onto the second floor. As Joe ran up the stairs he heard Frank shooting.
His hopes fell. How far did he really expect to get with a keyboard as a weapon?
He looked through the window leading to the third floor. Down the hall he could see someone walking, his back facing Joe. For a moment, he thought it was a normal person. Then he noticed the slow, unsteady gait. In a closet just behind the creature, a mother burst the door open and fell to the ground. Her young daughter, whom the parent had spent the last hour hiding in the closet with and treating her wounds, tore a chunk of flesh out of her mother’s back. The other creature turned and joined in the attack.
“My God, this can’t be happening.”
A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind.
Joe spun around and cocked the keyboard back, ready to strike. Denise held up her hands and shielded her face.
“Hey, hey! It’s me!”
He let out a breath and lowered his weapon. “Shit, lady! What are you doing here?”
“I, uh, don’t really have anywhere else to go. And you need help. You gotta find your family. Hell, that’s my job here. I’m supposed to help people.”
Joe was surprised. He didn’t expect help from anyone. He gave her a smile and looked at the fire extinguisher she carried. It was no doubt a little sturdier than the keyboard he had.
He stuttered. He didn’t know what to say. “I…well…thank you. I owe you one.”
“I’m Denise.”
“Joe.”
Denise pushed her face to the glass. She looked away when she saw the disgusting feast still happening at the end of the hall.
“Okay, the maternity ward isn’t too far away. It’s just two halls over to the right. But…I don’t know what we’re gonna find there.”
He took a breath. “You ready?”
She nodded.
Joe opened the door. The two creatures at the end of the hall looked up. They climbed to their feet and started walking quickly.
“Come on,” Denise urged.
They took the hall slowly but steadily. It took everything Joe had not to break into a run. He heard the two creatures trying to catch up behind him, but he told himself they were slow. If they ran, they would make noise, and who knew what they would run into?
As they approached one hall intersection J
oe saw a hand grab the corner of the wall, then pulled around the corner. Denise recognized the man as Dr. Jay, a nice man who always told her how pretty she looked.
He looked at her now and wailed. His eye hung halfway out of the socket. When he opened his jaw to moan, the eye fell out completely, held only by the optic nerve.
Denise was now convinced that they were walking corpses.
Joe, who hadn’t kept track of the news, was stunned. He knew they didn’t feel pain, but this was too much.
He raced toward what used to be Dr. Jay and swung the keyboard as hard as he could across his face, breaking the cheap plastic. Dr. Jay stumbled backwards and fell awkwardly on his leg. Joe heard it break.
That still didn’t stop the doctor. He slowly crawled toward them, drooling blood on the floor.
“The ward’s one more hall over,” Denise said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s go.”
As they passed an exam room, Denise saw a nurse she used to eat lunch with ripping the tongue out of someone’s mouth. The nurse, with the scent of warm flesh in her nose, left her cooling meal and stood up.
“We have to hurry before we attract too much attention,” Joe said.
“We’re here. Just this next left.”
When they reached the intersection they stopped. Joe looked down a long hall with rooms on both sides. A creature had a woman pinned to the wall, teeth in her throat, about halfway up the hall.
“Dr. Blair would have brought her here.”
Joe looked behind him. Three creatures were still slowly approaching, their arms outstretched. He took the fire extinguisher from Denise.
“I guess we have to look in every room, right?”
She nodded.
They started searching rooms. The first room they saw that wasn’t empty had a creature eating someone’s foot. Joe ran forward and smashed him in the head with the extinguisher.
The noise attracted the attention of the single creature ahead of them. The three others still tailed them as well.
“They’re gonna pin us in,” Denise said.
Joe wasn’t worried too much about the creature ahead. He could simply knock him over and run. But Denise was right, they needed to hurry.
They approached a large room to their left with a huge viewing glass, and a mini lobby across from it. The single creature was twenty yards away. Joe took a quick look.
It had been the hospital nursery.
It wasn’t a nursery any longer.
Rows and rows of tiny beds were knocked over. He couldn’t see what the creatures were doing, but they were on their hands and knees, reaching into the beds. Not a single baby made a sound.
Joe lost it. He leaned over and vomited. The creature approaching them was getting dangerously close. It actually seemed to get faster as it drew near.
“Joe, we gotta move. Come on.”
He snapped. As he wiped his mouth, he could only think one thing. Is my baby in there?
He ran forward and swung the extinguisher as hard as he could. The creature fell to the ground, a huge dent where its forehead used to be. But Joe didn’t stop. He hit the thing eight more times, until its brain leaked out of its crushed skull.
Denise was crying. Joe was hunched over, vomiting again. Thick, almost coagulated blood was smeared on his chest from destroying the thing. She ran up to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“You have to get it together!” she almost screamed at him. “We have to keep-”
She cut herself off when she saw movement to her right. She looked into the room next to them, and recognized Dr. Blair.
Joe’s murder of the creature attracted the attention of five more of them, all coming out of different rooms. They were moving much faster than the others. Joe and Denise were trapped now.
“Come on!”
She dragged Joe into the nearby room and locked the door behind them.
Dr. Blair was standing near the window, just swaying back and forth, with his back toward them. Blood covered the bed and walls. There was movement on the floor. The angle they had from the hallway didn’t let Denise see it, but someone else was in the room.
Joe thought maybe he had died and gone to Hell. He thought back to his chaotic day. The warehouse, then the hospital. He didn’t remember dying along the way, but that was the only way to explain what he was seeing.
His beloved wife Sarah crawled out from next to the bed. The gown she had on was twisted and covered in blood, and showed most of her front. Her stomach was split open. Intestines dragged along the floor as she let out a moan that threatened to send Joe over the edge.
He couldn’t move or think. All he could do was look into the hollow face of his once beautiful wife. He didn’t hear the crowd of walking dead gather outside the locked maternity ward room. He didn’t hear Denise next to him urging him to do something. He wanted to crawl to the corner and die, but his legs refused to carry him anywhere.
He thought of the last time he saw her. It was at the front door, where they hugged and kissed goodbye before he left for work that morning. He had no idea then that it was the last hug and kiss they would ever share.
Denise plunged the scalpel she found on the table next to them deep into the skull of Sarah Thompson before she could crawl any closer. She fell lifeless to the floor, the womb where their baby once grew exposed.
Dr. Blair shuffled forward. He had more bite wounds than when Denise saw him earlier. His neck was ripped open, exposing tissue and muscle. Joe didn’t even realize Denise had taken the extinguisher from him. She beat Blair in the head till he fell, then beat him some more.
Denise looked at Joe. She knew he was out of it, just leaning against the locked door. He seemed oblivious to the pounding coming from the other side. She gently grabbed him by the shoulders and leaned him against the closed bathroom door.
She knew they weren’t getting out the way they came in, not with all the creatures on the other side. She stepped over Blair’s corpse and looked out the window. The emergency waiting room was its own little addition, and the roof to it was just outside. The window didn’t open large enough to walk through. It only cracked a little, to get air. She swung the extinguisher through the glass, being careful not to cut herself. She ran back to get Joe. The pounding on the door was getting louder.
“Let’s go,” she said. “We can climb out on the roof here and jump down. It’s not a short fall, but we’ll figure something out.”
Joe blinked twice. Tears stained his face. “I-I think I’ll stay here.”
“What?”
“Sarah…she’s gone.”
Denise grabbed his face gently. She had just stabbed a woman in the head and beat a man to death. She was amazed she was keeping it together as well as she was.
“Joe, she would not want you to die here.”
Before he could respond, there was a voice in the bathroom behind him. “H-Hello? Is someone out there?”
Joe thought he recognized the voice. He turned the handle to find the bathroom locked.
“Unlock the door.”
The door opened to reveal Margie. She was a mess. Her shirt was torn, blood smeared down her face. Her pretty blue eyes were bloodshot from crying.
In her arms, she held a tiny baby boy. He slept peacefully, wrapped in a blue blanket.
“What in the hell is happening?” Margie asked.
Denise shook her head. “People are dying, and getting back up. We have to get out of here.”
Margie looked at the locked door in front of them. It actually shook from the pounding.
“Not that way.”
“No. We can get out through the window.”
As Margie moved out of the bathroom Joe pointed at the newborn baby. “Can I hold him?”
She gently placed the hour old baby into his arms. “Of course. He’s yours.”
Joe was lost in his own world for a moment as he looked at his son. The baby yawned for just a moment, then went back to sleep.
The sounds of fists at the
door brought him back to the real world.
“Joe!” Denise called from the window. She had already put a sheet over the sill to cover the shattered glass. “Come on!”
Margie was out on the roof. She helped Denise climb through. Joe moved with new-found purpose. He very carefully handed over his son through the window to Denise, then climbed through himself. He heard the door splintering behind him. He almost expected something to grab his foot as he stepped onto the roof, but that didn’t happen.
They had a better view of the surrounding area. Buildings were on fire. The hospital parking lot was empty of people, except for a few bodies littered about. Some car alarms went off, and they could see the ambulance that had crashed into the hospital earlier was completely engulfed in flames. There was the occasional scream and some small explosions off in the distance, plus the wails of the creatures.
Margie ran to the edge of the roof. It was a good twelve foot drop to the ground. She had no idea how they’d pull it off with a baby.
She turned and screamed when she saw the creatures at the window. Joe spun around.
They weren’t coordinated or organized enough to get through. They tried to climb out at the same time, bumping into each other and falling down. But one did manage to make it. Joe acted fast. He ran forward and grabbed the creature before it could stand. He dragged it along the roof and slid it right off the side.
“They’ll figure out how to get out eventually,” he said. “What are we doing?”
An engine fired up in the parking lot. Denise looked down to see Frank Kinkade sitting behind the wheel of a minivan. He backed out of his parking spot, running over a dead body as he did so.
“Frank!” she called. “Hey, Frank!”
He stopped the van and looked around. It took him a moment to find the voice. He looked up at Denise.
“Can you give us a hand up here?”
Cop or not, Frank was tempted to drive away. He wanted to live through whatever was happening. The more he stopped to help people, the less of a chance that would happen. But he saw Denise and the man whose name he didn’t know in the waiting room. They had another woman and a baby with them. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t help.
Dead Living Page 3