by John O'Brien
“Okay. It’s 09:10. If I’m not back by 10:00, head back to Grandma’s. Don’t come in after me. If someone does come by or you see someone, try to hide as best as you can but do not, under any circumstances, draw any weapons. If they see you, do what they say and tell them the truth. Don’t go making anything up. If you tell them I’m inside, they’ll wait here until I come out so we won’t be separated. Questions?”
“What about if we just cover the doors like we did at Freddie’s?” Robert asks.
“No, I have this one. You just stay here and don’t go exploring.”
I pass the rear of the ambulance to the emergency entrance room doors. The back end of the ambulance is empty with the stretcher missing and there are a couple small pools of dried blood on the floor. I’ll grab the med supplies out of here as well, I think to myself turning once again to the doors.
The main doors are double glass doors that slide open automatically with a glass, push-open door flanking each side. Approaching from the right side, I see that quite a bit of ambient light reaches inside illuminating a black and white checkered linoleum floor. I kneel by the red brick wall and peek through the right hand door. It appears the room opens up to both the left and the right with a hallway leading off into the darkness directly across the room from me. A large nurses’ station counter abuts the back wall to the left of the hallway entrance and is dimly lit by the light. The left and right walls are shrouded in darkness.
I reach over to the pull bar on the right door and give a pull. The door gives a fraction of an inch before stopping with a metallic thud. Okay, I try pushing. Same thing — locked. I sidle over to the pneumatic doors keeping my eyeballs on the interior. I don’t expect them to automatically open, and they don’t, but I try pulling them apart. They don’t budge. I try the left door but it only gives the same response as the one on the right. Righty-O then. Another tape job coming up.
I am a little worried as I have snuck onto a military base, taken a couple of their vehicles and weapons, and am about to break into a building. If I do run into anyone on base, they are going to be slightly displeased. And, with what I am sure is a martial law status going on, that displeasure could sting. Wait until I take one of their airplanes. They are going to positively love that!
Leaning my gun against the brick wall, I peel off strips of duct tape and tape the lower pane of the glass door on the right. Taking out my knife, I bash the handle end against the glass. My knife rebounds without any resounding crack or shattering of glass. Another bash gives the same response. Damn, this has always worked before, I think giving one more smack. “Okay you son of a bitch! Be that way!” I mutter as I turn and walk back to the ambulance.
Climbing into the back, I lift the bench seat lining the right compartment wall. Inside are folded blankets and small pillows. I grab three of the blankets and a pillow, close the lids, and walk back to the titanium door that has cleverly disguised itself as glass.
I fold two of the thin blankets slipping a pillow between them. I put the pillow sandwich against the glass and hold it there with my shoulder. I take my Beretta out and drape the other folded blanket over it and my hand. Putting the draped pistol against the blankets on the door, I remove my shoulder and fire. The shot sounds loud but is muffled substantially by the blankets. There is no rebounding echo off the buildings around so I know the shot couldn’t have been heard from very far away. I chip away the rest of the glass starting at the bullet hole until the entire pane comes clear.
Grabbing my M-4, I turn on the flashlight and pan it around the room. The light comes to rest on several bodies lying on the floor. From this low angle, I can’t really see much of the room, but of what I can see, nothing moves. I crawl into the room and stand up at the entrance. The smell immediately hits. It smells exactly like the inside of the truck I opened yesterday; blood, vomit, and feces. It’s like a solid cloud permeating the room, gagging me. Taking short, shallow breaths, I shine the light around the room. Molded plastic chairs line every wall except where the nurses’ station is. Double wooden, swinging doors are set into the far right wall. The hallway across the room and in front of me stretches away past the limit of my light tapering off into unrelieved blackness.
The bodies scattered across the waiting area and are in the same state as the corpse in the guard post. They have been stripped of most of the skin and tissue with only small strips of tendon and muscle still clinging to the bone. Most still have their hair attached to the top of their heads. Pieces of entrails stretch away from some of the bodies and the floor is covered with dried blood. I have seen many, many things in my life; badly burned bodies, disembowelments, bodies of villagers killed, mutilated and stacked like cordwood, bodies thrown from speeding vehicles; but never anything like this. The darkened room, with only my light illuminating the ruin as it pans its way around the room, coupled with the overwhelming stench, is enough for me. I scramble my way out of the door and lean against the brick wall outside, letting the nausea subside.
It won’t be long before the flies and disease crop up from so many bodies. Most of the diseases, plague, cholera, and typhoid in particular, will become rampant in the most populated areas. I am not so keen on going back in there. I just won’t shine my light on the bodies and head over to the nurses’ station, I think reaching down and taking the pillow case off the pillow. Folding the pillow case into a triangle, I tie it around my face covering my nose and mouth; not so much as a precaution for disease, but more so for the smell.
Crawling back in, I keep the light and M-4 pointed at the ground straight ahead. Approaching the counter, I notice bloody footprints leading down the hall. Not just one or a couple, but lots of them. Too many to count and they form a trail. I suppose they could have been from hospital workers here before or during this tragedy, but with my experience from the gas station and the footprints there, I am going to assume there are a few of those things in here. My thumb subconsciously slides the selector to ‘burst.’
Stepping behind the counter, my light catches a multitude of charts and papers lining the desk. Some charts lie open and others are just stacked on top of each other with individual papers scattered in every way. I shine my light on the charts hoping for a folder that would give me information on what I am looking for but they only have individual names on them. Keeping my ears open, I check out the various papers on the desk. One is a memo detailing the immediate cessation of the Cape Town flu vaccinations, another outlining a quarantine area and ordering those with flu symptoms to report there or medical staff observing these symptoms in others, to call security. I search through files and desk drawers but come up empty on anything related to CDC or military findings. So, that leaves the medical services commander or hospital administrator.
Near the phone in middle of the desk is a hospital telephone directory. On the top page is the commander’s name, Col. Sarah Jensen, ext. 2856, room 350. Of course it would be on the third floor, I think setting it down and looking at hospital diagrams taped to the top of the counter. Using my folding blade, I liberate the diagrams from the counter, each diagram depicting a floor of the hospital. I notice the commander’s office two floors above me on the complete opposite side of the hospital. Wow! Two for two. A third strike and I’m outta here, I think stepping from behind the counter and into the hallway.
Heading quietly down the hall, I come to an elevator and a steel stairway door to my right. The bloody footprints continue down the hallway fading and disappearing altogether a short distance away. I shine my light at a doorway across the hall from the elevator and see a black engraved sign on the wall that reads ‘Dispensary.’ The door is a half door in which the upper half can be opened separate from the bottom half with a small counter separating the two halves. And, the top half is open. Aha, my luck seems to be changing, my thought bubble hanging out there in hope.
I edge across, alternating my light between the dispensary opening and the hallway. Reaching the door, I pan my light around the small interi
or of the room. Bottle-filled shelves line the walls with three smaller bottle-filled shelves in the middle of the room creating small aisles between them. A small, open doorway opens in the middle of the left wall.
Entering the room, I quickly clear the small aisles inside and swing back to the open doorway. It is a small storage room and is empty with the exception of several open cardboard boxes filling the wall space to the left. Bringing the empty boxes into the dispensary room, I fill them with various bottles. Now, I am no Pharmacist by any stretch so I start with the ones I do know. Various antibiotics and pain killers start the transfer from shelf to box followed by most everything else I can pack into them. Time to sort later, I think filling box after box. There is a Pharmaceutical book on the counter so that goes with. Can’t Google stuff anymore so we’ll need this. After the boxes are filled, I bring them to the front doors making several trips, making sure to keep an ear and eye alert for any sound or movement.
I head back into the hallway and the metal fire door leading to the stairwell. Yes, I plan to go further inside than what I told the kids. I pull slightly on the handle and the door swings open. Opening the door, I shine the light inside while holding the door open with my foot. A flight of concrete stairs leads upward to a landing with another flight of stairs leading off in the opposite direction to the next floor. I step into the stairwell noticing only a folded wheelchair next to the wall in the alcove next to the stairs as the door slowly closes behind me. Focusing my light on the stairs and landing above me, I step onto the first stair. The stairwell is completely dark except where my flashlight radiates a small circumference of light. Away from the light, an oppressive darkness prevails and presses in on me. No emergency exit lights. No light of any kind.
I proceed up the stairs counting them as I go and focusing my light and carbine as far up the next flight as my vision permits. My stomach is clenched tight with a tingling sensation as my system continues to pump adrenaline through my bloodstream. No matter how many times I have done this in the past, it is always the same feeling. Hyper-alert. Time slowing. My heart beats strong in my ears, to the point where it seems that it can be heard externally. With a team around, this feeling was minimized to a certain extent, but when solo, the feeling intensifies. You can get used to the feeling but not the circumstances. Keep focused and keep moving.
Approaching the second floor, two metal fire doors exit from the landing to either side. With my back to the wall, I continue up to the third floor landing. Two additional fire doors exit here. Crouching by the left door, I ease it open with my shoulder, and enter into an inky black hallway. To my left, towards the emergency room parking lot, the hallway goes a short distance before turning left to another hallway. A single door sits closed in the wall at the juncture with a small amount of light leaking from under it; a natural light most likely from windows facing the parking lot.
To my right, the hallway extends into darkness and with several closed doors set into the walls. The stairway door closes behind me with a soft thud. I check to see if it opens, find that it does, and so I am not stranded having to find another way down. The hospital diagram shows the administrator’s office lies down the hallway to my right at the other end of the building. I edge down the darkened hallway panning my light from left to right. The third door on the right is open.
As I approach the opened doorway, I see it is actually a set of double doors and begin to hear a faint panting sound. Much like a room full of dogs on a hot day or after a day of chasing sticks but heard from a long distance. This sound fills my ears at the same time as my light zooms into the room. There, I see the end of a folding table on its side jutting slightly out into the doorway with several orange plastic chairs lying upended and scattered throughout the room. And, against the far wall, huddled together on the floor, lie fifteen to twenty bodies, their skin pale and blotchy. It is from this huddled mass that the panting sounds emit.
The one closest to the door, and hence me, opens its eyes, staring at me through the light. Rising with lightning speed to its knees, its mouth opens and lets out an ear-blasting shriek of alarm. I pull the trigger and the gunshots join in this sudden escalation of noise, the flash of my rounds giving a quick strobe-like quality to the room and hallway, affecting my vision only slightly. The burst of rounds stitch across its body from the chest upwards, hurling it back into the huddled mass; its scream changes in mid-shriek; from alarm to pain to nothing.
The smell of gunpowder wafts in the hallway as time stands still for a moment. The only sound that of the empty cartridges bouncing metallically on the floor. The stillness ends with an explosion of activity and noise as the things all seem to rise instantly and as one, the shrieks from them deafening as they charge for the door. Two more bursts lift the two in front off their feet and into those behind as the others streak for the door. I am going to have to reload before I can take them all down therefore allowing them to pour into the darkened hallway. With this in mind, I start backing down the hallway toward the stairway focusing on the room’s entrance and thumbing the fire selector to ‘semi.’
The first one appears at the door. My round enters its head just beside the left eye, rocking its head backwards. The back and side of its head explodes outward, coating the doorjamb with blood and bits of bone and gray matter. It falls forward to the ground onto its chest and face, its momentum carrying it forward further into the hallway. A second one appears, leaping with a shriek over the body falling in front. Another strobe of light and popping sound of a round leaving the chamber fills the hall. The body is thrown sideways in mid-leap from the round slamming into the side of its chest, cutting the shriek off mid-way. Hitting the floor, it skids across the linoleum, coming to rest against the hallway wall.
Three more enter into the hallway at an almost full run, turning toward me as they exit. Three more rounds fly from my barrel, sending them all to the ground; the one on the right flies backward with its feet over its head, slamming head first into the floor with a meaty smack. By the time the last one has fallen to the ground, five more have poured into the hall and launch themselves toward me. I continue backing toward the stair door with the smell of cordite strong in the air. I fire once at the one closest, bringing its forward momentum to a sudden halt. It just stands there as if its body doesn’t believe it has just been shot in the sternum. Unable to continue forward, it slumps toward its final resting place. A movement brings the next one in line with my barrel as a loud, metallic crash erupts close behind me.
I’m so outta here, I think turning to bolt towards the fire door that stands between me and the stairs. Racing to the door, my light catches the aftermath of the metallic crash. An upended aluminum cart lies on its side at the hallway juncture. Shards of glass on the floor glitters faintly in the light. A beaker rolls in slow circles amidst small metallic shapes scattered about. Three more of the things have rounded the corner running in my direction, the one on the right shrieking loudly. I hear footsteps pounding behind me mixing with those that have now entered the hallway in front of me with more sounding from the hallway around the corner.
I reach the steel fire door at a run, throwing it open and race through it on the fly with those things right on my heels. I can almost feel the warmth from their bodies on my back and hear their breathing seemingly inches away. Launching down the stairs, I keep my light focused on the stairs themselves. This would be the absolute wrong time to trip or stumble. Rounding the corner of the landing and using my hand on the railing to help my turn, one of them enters into my cone of light just ahead on the stairs, having apparently jumped over the railing from the flight of stairs behind me. Too close to bring my M-4 to bear for a shot from the hip, I duck my shoulder and head and slam into its chest knocking it backwards. It flies off the stairs and lands almost to the bottom, close to the second floor landing, hitting the stair with the small of its back, sling-shotting its head backwards to smack into the concrete landing with a sharp, meaty crack. Blood spurts outward from
where its head was introduced to the concrete and it slides backward into the concrete brick wall with another, slightly smaller, wet, crack, coming to rest face up. Blood immediately begins pooling outward around its head.
The impact slows my momentum. I feel the brush of a hand against my left shoulder as my feet continue their flight down the stairs, the thing reaching over the stair railing directly beside me. Leaping off the second stair from the landing and over the prone body, I turn quickly in mid-leap facing both the next flight down and the flight I just traversed, thumbing the selector to ‘burst.’ My light flashes to the stairs coming down, my direction reversed. The stairs are completely filled with an ashen gray horde barreling toward me, a few scant feet away.
Just before my feet come into contact with the landing, three rounds exit my M-4 at the nearest one sending it backward into its companions as the steel-core rounds pound into its chest and neck, spraying blood outward. I feel a few warm splashes hit my cheek and forehead. Flashes bounce off the concrete brick walls as my feet contact the landing and gunshots echo loudly in the stairwell, overwhelming the growling emitting from the horde. My second burst slams into the next ghoulish thing setting foot on the bottom stair, spinning it to the right and into the arms of the one behind, gaining me another foot of separation. I launch forward, tearing off down the stairs toward the first floor.
I hit the magazine release button before reaching the third stair down. The magazine clatters down the stairs, its sound of metal bouncing on the concrete mixing with the growling right on my heels. Clearing the bottom of the upward flight of stairs, I grab the hand rail and vault over to the final flight, concentrating on landing square on a stair. Hitting a stair edge could cause a trip, stumble, or twisted ankle and that is something I can’t afford right now. Several shrieks fill the enclosed space as I land with bent knees and race to the fire door. Reaching into my vest pocket, I withdraw a fresh mag and slam it into the receiver. I hit the door at a dead run, slamming into it with my shoulder and spin through the opening. Planting my foot, I shift my momentum toward the emergency room lobby and exit. The first of the many things streaks out of the still opening door before I have taken my second step.