How was that possible?
That was the question her mind had been wrestling with ever since she came here—and, being locked up in less than sixty square feet, she had not much else to do.
To Dorte’s own surprise, she hadn’t really cried yet. Sure, the thought of Peter and Rikke brought a deep, stinging pain to her chest. But she obviously wasn’t mourning yet, and she didn’t believe herself to be in shock, either. She was still functioning very well. Apparently, she was surprisingly good at working under a crisis.
But the real reason the grief process hadn’t begun was simply that she didn’t feel like her role had been played out yet; she still had a job to do, as a doctor with firsthand experience of whatever this thing was.
And she still couldn’t accept the fact that Rikke and Peter were out of reach of modern medicine. There had to be some way to cure them. She just had to figure out what was wrong with them.
It couldn’t be a mental thing, it just couldn’t. A handful of sick people could maybe be explained like that, some strange case of factitious disorder, where the patients would basically will themselves sick, creating the symptoms from pure conscious effort.
But several thousand?
All happening within a span of a few days?
No way.
And that left her with no real explanation. She simply couldn’t give even a peripheric guess, had her life depended on it—which very well could turn out to be the case.
She shoves aside the thoughts and bangs the door again, then shouts out through the tiny, square hole placed in nose-height.
“Hello? Anybody? Please help me!”
Earlier, when she came to the jail, there had been a constant humming of voices from elsewhere in the building, and every once in a while, a guard had passed by out in the corridor.
But now everything was quiet like the grave. And she hadn’t seen anyone since dinner.
It was probably just because the nightshift had begun. There were only a couple of guards here now, and they would soon make their rounds to check on the detainees.
Or maybe they had all been called out on active duty.
Or maybe something even worse had happened.
A scream from behind her.
Dorte spins around and stares at the window. She hurries over there in three long paces. Looking out, she can only see thanks to the yellow light posts around the closed courtyard. A female officer is running across the pavement—or rather, limping. One of her legs is obviously broken, the foot twisted in a wrong direction. She darts a look back and up, and Dorte notices the open window three stories up.
Did she … did she just jump?
The officer cries from pain and tries desperately to get away from the building, as though she’s afraid someone is following her. And someone is. Dorte sees a big, broad man in guard uniform lean out the open window, reaching his arms out clumsily—one of his sleeves is torn off, and the hand is mostly gone, chewed off, apparently—and then he loses his balance and falls out of the window.
Dorte gasps but can’t look away.
The guard flies through the air for what feels like several seconds, flailing his arms and legs helplessly, before connecting with the concrete, giving off a loud, sickening and very meaty thud. He lands halfway on his shoulder, just barely missing his head, which would surely have been cracked open like a coconut, had it taken the impact.
And to Dorte’s utter horror and amazement, the guard immediately begins getting to his feet. He doesn’t even cry out. He simply gets up and walks after the woman, who’s still limp-running away from him. His collarbone is obviously shattered, his right shoulder sitting way lower than the other, hindering him in raising his arm all the way. This doesn’t seem to bother him either, though.
The woman looks back and accidentally puts weight on her busted foot. She falls over with a scream. The guard ups his speed and moves in eagerly.
“Get up, get up,” Dorte finds herself chanting. “Run, goddamnit. Run!”
But the female guard can’t get up. So she crawls instead, crying as she does it. She reaches a door in the other building, reaching for the handle and pulling herself to her feet.
“Good, now open it,” Dorte whispers, feeling her heart pounding in her throat as the man closes the distance to the woman.
The door is locked.
The woman fumbles for a key in her belt.
She almost gets it in.
And then he reaches her.
Dorte can’t look away. She wants to, but she can’t. She’s forced to watch the scene play out. It takes less than thirty seconds. The woman stops screaming halfway through. The man is almost double her size, and he works with vicious efficiency. Not elegant and precise, like a cat killing a mouse, but more like a crocodile tearing a gazelle to shreds.
It’s only because of the dim lighting Dorte can’t see the gruesome details, and she’s thankful for that. But she can see the dark pool forming around the woman as she sinks to the ground. And she can hear the wet smacking sounds as the man begins feasting on her flesh.
This is not anything like rabies, a faraway thought tells her in that fact-of-the-matter voice she has developed over the years. His motivation wasn’t to spread whatever he has to her—he just wanted to eat her.
Dorte is finally able to turn away, and she staggers towards the sink in the corner. She stands there, leaning against the wall for a minute or so, taking deep breaths, fighting back the nausea, trying to shut out the noises from outside.
Her dinner decides to stay down, and Dorte realizes the sounds have stopped. She doesn’t want to go back to the window, but once again, she can’t help it.
The male guard has gotten to his feet and is walking away. At first, Dorte assumes he’s full and doesn’t want to eat anymore.
Then, the woman sits up. She looks around, like someone just waking up from a nap, before getting to her feet. She takes a few wobbly steps after the guy, seemingly finding her bearings, reminding Dorte of a toddler walking for the first time. Her broken ankle is no longer of any concern to her, and she simply walks on the crooked foot.
The male guard heads for the bars enclosing the courtyard. Behind them is another set of bars, and behind them again is the street. But instead of unlocking the gate, the guard simply walks into it and tries pushing himself through.
The woman soon joins him and does the exact same. They just stand there, side-by-side, trying to move through the bars to get to the street.
They have very little brain-function left, that detached doctor’s voice observes. No memory. No problem-solving skills. They’re probably not even capable of hypothesis-driven thinking any longer. Only things that seems to be left are limited motor skills and a motivation for finding and eating human flesh. That’s why he lost interest in her. She wasn’t alive anymore. The second she came back, she joined him in searching for new prey.
“Hello?”
The voice is so unexpected, it makes her jump. She spins around and scans the room, expecting someone to have snuck up on her. But she’s alone.
“Over here.”
She sees the face looking in at her through the window in the door. It’s a young man with dark hair and dark, worried eyes.
“Oh, thank God,” Dorte breathes. “I was beginning to wonder if anybody would come.” She walks to the door. “Listen, there are two infected people out in the courtyard. Both of them were officers. It’s important no one goes out there to try and—”
“Who are you talking about?” the guy cuts her off. “Who would go out there? There is no one left.”
Dorte just stares at him as he finds his keys and unlocks the door.
“What do you mean?” she asks as he opens it.
“The entire building has been evacuated. You’re lucky I decided to take one last look. Almost cost me dearly, too.” He holds out his hand to reveal a tear in his sleeve. A couple of red scratch marks snake down his wrist.
Dorte knows instantly the poor guy i
s done for. The cuts in his skin are just barely deep enough to draw blood, but that’s plenty for the infection—or whatever it is—to take hold. Rikke’s wounds had been even smaller, and she died within five hours. This guy has probably only two or three left to live.
Dorte looks him in the eye and feels her throat close up. He’s young, around her own age, and he has that young George Clooney melancholy look over him. Dark tan, soft-spoken, clean hands. Probably a very nice guy.
“What?” he asks. “Why are you looking like that? Is anything wrong?”
“I just … you got those … scratch marks because you came back to see if anyone was still in the building?”
“Yeah. I figured they might lock down the city like they did in Viborg, so it might be several days before anyone made their way in here. Would be a bummer to spend a week locked-up in here with nothing to eat, huh? I couldn’t live with that thought. Now, there’s three of them downstairs. One of them tried to grab me, but I tore loose. I think they might have followed me, so we need to go the other way and use the fire escape so we don’t—”
A noise from down the corridor. It sounds like something tipping over.
“Hurry,” the guy says, pushing Dorte along. “We’d better get out of here.”
They run down the corridor, and the guy opens the door with his key. They enter a staircase and run up a floor. There, he opens a door marked with a fire sign. An alarm sounds somewhere in the building. They step out onto a metal platform suspended several meters above ground-level. Below is the parking lot to the detention facility.
Dorte pauses for a moment, looking out over Aarhus. And she finally realizes just how serious the situation is—and how quickly it has escalated.
The night sky is lightened by the glow of the city. But unlike any normal night, the lights aren’t just from cars and lamp posts and windows. In fact, there seems to be less electrical light sources. Instead, there are several fires blazing.
Not many cars are out, either. Most of them are parked haphazardly in the streets or on the sidewalks. A few of them are crashed. She sees windows smashed, things strewn about and only a few people—most of them seem to be infected.
“Good God,” she breathes. “It’s just like Viborg. Except it’s going a lot faster.”
“You been in Viborg recently?” the guy asks, closing the fire door behind them.
“I was there just yesterday,” Dorte says. “How could it run out of control so fast? It’s been only one day …”
“I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that it started in Skejby. I think it reached the city so quickly because several people carrying the infection drove here for medical help. As to why it spread a lot faster here than Viborg, well, I figure it’s because there are a lot more people here, and they live a lot closer to each other.”
“Good God,” Dorte says again, and thinks to herself: This is my fault. I brought it here. Because of me, the country’s second biggest city will be in ruins by tomorrow evening.
A movement from below catches her eye. A group of infected people are coming down the street, headed for the parking lot.
“Come on,” the guy says, beginning to descend the stairs. “We’d better hurry, or we’ll get trapped up here.”
They rush down the stairs and reach the ground well before the infected can reach them. They run across the parking lot and out into the street.
The guy looks from side to side. “My car is parked in an underground parking two blocks from here. I’m going to try and get out of town, then reach Silkeborg—that’s where my wife is waiting. You can join me if you want.”
Dorte looks at the guy briefly, and can’t help but feel a deep love towards him. He looks so innocent, and even in a very dangerous situation, he took the time to go back into a detention facility to look for anyone locked up. Now, he’s going home to his wife, a short, yellow-haired woman no doubt who’s probably worried sick by now. Except he won’t make it to Silkeborg; he’ll be dead before that.
Should I tell him?
“You’re giving me that look again,” he says.
“I’m not going with you,” she says.
“You sure? I really don’t think you want to be out in the streets right now.”
“It’s okay, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want. See you, then.”
He’s just about to run off.
“Thank you,” Dorte says, the words coming out as hardly more than a whisper. “Thank you for getting me out. You saved my life.”
The guy smiles briefly. “Don’t mention it. To be honest, I didn’t expect to see someone like you up here. You don’t look like a typical bad guy.”
“I am,” she says. “Believe me.”
“Well, I believe in second chances,” he says, smiles once more, and then he’s gone.
TWENTY-SIX
She soon regrets not going with the guard. Walking alone through the city center isn’t exactly a pleasant experience.
The streets are mostly empty, but there’s an eerie atmosphere looming over everything. Here and there are crashed cars, smashed storefronts and items dropped or thrown.
She hears police sirens passing by now and then, and she considers waving one of them down, but for one thing, she doesn’t want to burden the people trying to tidy up the mess she made, and secondly, she’s technically a fugitive.
She also considers calling anyone she can think of who lives in or around the city—which proves to be only three persons. Two old med school friends and her aunt whom she never sees. But she can’t bring herself to call any of them and ask them to come pick her up. And calling a cab is also kind of opportune, as she doubts any company would send a car into what is basically a war zone.
So, Dorte resolves herself to walking.
Weirdly, a part of her feels it’s the right call, despite the danger. This is her mess. It seems an apt punishment for her to walk her own way out of it.
She heads west, hoping to reach the highway going around the city; out there, she might have more luck in hitching a ride.
She feels exhausted but is running on adrenaline and cortisol, which heightens her senses and makes her super-aware of any movements and sounds nearby. As she turns a corner, a teenage boy comes running at her full speed, only wearing shorts.
Dorte jumps aside, holding out her hands in a protective way, but the boy runs right past her. He only slows down enough to yell at her: “Get away! Two of them are coming!”
Dorte has time to notice the bloody lines across the boy’s shoulder blade; they look an awful lot like something from fingernails. Then, the boy is gone.
She turns and looks the way he came, immediately spotting the two silhouettes coming this way in that characteristic, wobbly stride. Even from this far away, she can hear their hungry groans.
Dorte runs across the street and slips down a smaller alley, reaching the next block, just as someone screams up ahead.
Dorte sees the woman lying on the ground, sprawling to get away from the infected person who has thrown itself on top of her. A young guy—possibly the woman’s boyfriend—is kicking the infected from behind, while yelling at it to stop, but to no avail. The infected bites down on the woman’s throat, muffling her scream. The guy bends over and grabs the infected, pulling it away. But the infected has grabbed the woman’s hair, so she is dragged along, while the blood starts spurting from her open throat. The infected snaps its head around and bites down on the guy’s arm, causing him to scream out in pain.
Dorte turns, feeling nauseous and dizzy, then staggers down a new side street to get away from the awful scene.
The sound of gushing water reaches her. On the next block she sees a group of armed men shooting a water cannon at a large group of infected people, forcing them back, all the while others are closing in from other directions.
“Stay back!” one of the soldiers roars. “Stay back, or we’ll open fire!”
The infected don’t heed the warning, and
two of the men begin firing their weapons at them. The sound is deafening, causing Dorte’s ears to ring. Although it’s clear the bullets connect, sending arms flailing and torsos twisting back and forth, they don’t stop the oncoming.
“The head!” one of the men roars. “Aim for their fucking heads!”
That won’t work, Dorte thinks to herself. There’s no brain activity …
The men take aim and fire a new round of shots. This time, to Dorte’s surprise, there’s much more effect. Two of the infected go down immediately, apparently dying for real, as they simply collapse and don’t move anymore. Soon the rest of them follow suit, as the men hit their targets.
Dorte frowns, for a moment snapping back into rational thinking. How’s that possible? How does destroying the brain make any difference, when the entire central nerves system is already switched off?
“What the hell are you doing?” one of the men by the water cannon bellows and runs to the men who just put down half a dozen infected. “Are you using live rounds? Are you insane?”
“We had no choice!” one of the soldiers defends himself. “It was us or them!”
“We can’t go around killing these poor pricks! How do you think WHO will react once they find out we’re executing sick people? They’ll hang us out like goddamn Nazis!”
“When are you going to listen, Troels?” the other soldier shouts back, punctuating every word by jabbing a finger in the chest of his colleague. “They … are … fucking … zombies!”
“Will you stop spouting that movie nonsense?” the guy retorts, shoving away the other’s hand. “I’m in charge here, and I say we follow orders. And the orders are to treat these people like sick individuals. We keep our distance, we pacify them and bring them in, and we don’t use lethal force! Got that?”
The two men are so wrapped up, they don’t see the three infected coming from the alley and heading right for them.
“Look out!” Dorte screams, but she’s too far away, and the sound of the water cannon drowns out her warning.
Luckily, the third soldier notices the threat just in time, and the two others jump out of the way. They begin dealing with the infected by throwing nets over them and using long poles which reminds Dorte of the ones dog catchers use.
Dead Meat (Book 4): Dead Meat [Day 4] Page 16