by West, J. D.
Dr. Black could see doubt creeping in and moral breaking down. He got up and spoke words to us that put everything in perspective.
“I am a workaholic who works sixty to eighty hours a week. I work hard to provide for my family. We live in a spacious house in Scottsdale. My kids attended private schools all their life. I spent my money buying them anything they wanted. I’m a good provider but I just was not around for birthdays, ball games, or anniversaries. My wife always wanted us to take a dance class together but I was always busy. One time I showed up an hour late to my daughter’s recital. I even missed my oldest son’s graduation party! I just always thought I would have time later to spend with my family but now I may never see them again. Every day we spend with our loved ones is a gift.” he explained. “We should not spend all our time worrying about material things and money. Without anyone to spend our lives with material things are worthless! Right now the only thing I want is to kiss my wife and hug my kids!”
“I’m sorry sir that may never happen!” said Dr. Okonkwo. “Not as long as those things are out there!”
“They appear to be human but no human would do the things that I saw them do!” he responded. “We have to lock down this ER!”
Dr. Black quickly took charge. He ordered Dr. Sanchez and Dr. Okonkwo to tell the remaining staff to look for anyone with a bite wound. We needed to quarantine all the bite victims and separate them from the other survivors. We decided to put all of them in the secure holding section of the ER used for psychiatric patients. It already had beds in the room and there was only one way in or out. No one wanted to be locked up but they were not stupid enough to do something to get shot. I locked the steel door from the outside with two dead bolts. Before I left I looked through the twelve inch by twelve inch Plexiglas window at all the people inside. All of them were scared and had sad looks on their faces. They had been someone’s family member. I felt bad just leaving them there to turn into monsters. I wish there was a cure for this thing but I would have felt better just shooting all of them. Under normal circumstances doctors don’t kill patients just because they are sick and contagious. Until Dr. Black had another treatment plan they would have to stay locked up for now. This was a temporary fix to a serious problem. This epidemic was a mass casualty event but we had no way to save people or warn the outside world. The survivors were desperate and disorientated. Normally the ER attending physician would contact the local police and fire department but we couldn't get through. Randy the maintenance man let us know that if we needed it there was a backup generator. The hospital normally stored five days of fuel but the fuel for the generators was not cheap. He said that the board told him not to purchase fuel this month. They wanted to see if the price went down. He did not know how much fuel we had in the tank. The charge nurse told us that there were only three days of painkillers and medications left in the ER. Dr. Black said that from the info he got from the charts of the men from #6 and #10 that we had about two hours before the other victims died and tried to eat us. He knew that after a bite exposure the patient would develop an upset stomach. The victim would become queasy and have a brain boiling body temperature of 106 degrees or more. The temperature caused respiratory failure and death. Each victim would become a monster capable of murder. Every hour their numbers were growing. Dr. Okonkwo organized a group of nurses and techs to move the dead bodies from the hall into a large supply closet. That included the large man and Mark Cordova.
The bodies were stacked up inside. I locked it when they were finished. The next step was to find a way to keep those things out of the ER. The one hundred pound capacity magnets connected to the ambulance doors could keep them locked. That was good but most of the door was made out of glass. We needed to set up a barricade in order to reinforce the glass and block the doors off. He got a couple of men together and we moved the refrigerators from the staff office and paramedic break room out into the hall. We pressed all four of them against the steel door frame. Then we stacked the empty beds from the hall behind them. It would keep those things out for now and might buy us some time. I went around to all the other doors with Randy the maintenance man. We secured all of them by using the patient restraints like chains on the handles. We also created barricades made out of unused medical equipment. Dr. Black asked Maria and Dr. Okonkwo to go room to room with him to talk to the patients and staff. Many of them had just lost friends and family members. There was no way to forget the image of a live human being eaten alive and consumed. We were in a real life nightmare. You could close your eyes or try to wake up but you could not get away from it. The lives lost tonight were irreplaceable. They had to tell a teenage boy that his sister and grandparents were dead. They never made it out of the waiting room. He started cursing and fell to his knees overwhelmed with grief. Some of the other patients asked Pastor Harrell to pray with them. Other patients withdrew all together and refused to talk. I looked into all their faces and did not see any hope. Who could blame them? That’s when I saw the flash of red, blue and yellow lights. Through a small opening in the barricade we could see an ambulance coming up the road. The sirens were blaring and the emergency lights illuminated the darkness.
The display of lights got everyone’s attention. Those things saw them too and moved closer. As the ambulance slowed down the driver did not notice the growing crowd. He saw the figures walking around in the darkness but people were always at the hospital. Just like all the rest of the first responders his crew was overwhelmed with calls to pick up the sick and injured. He parked in the ambulance bay next to the other ambulances. The crew had transported patients to this hospital a thousand times. This time the paramedics were here to drop off an injured female patient. The driver grabbed the woman’s paper work and headed for the double glass doors. She had been in a car crash. The woman was fleeing the scene of some sort of domestic disturbance. Her SUV struck a divider in the middle of the road and flipped on its side. She was cut and bruised when the airbag inflated. They found her slumped over the wheel choking on her own blood.
The male passenger next to her impacted the windshield and was thrown from the truck. He flew through the air and skidded across the asphalt coming to a hard stop against the curb. Layers of skin were peeled off causing road rash. His head was sliced open because his body was traveling so fast. He left a six foot long by foot wide smear. The tough unforgiving asphalt had ground him to a bloody stump. A few teeth were left sticking out his deformed and mangled jaw. The driver's partner and a trainee took the patient out the back of the rig. They hung her IV on a pole and strapped her to the gurney. While walking to the door the driver saw a man standing with his back to him. The man was pounding on the sliding glass doors. The driver walked towards him and the sound of his footsteps caused the man to turn around. Any change in sound or smell told them that food was nearby. The creatures could also differentiate between the aroma of the dead and the living. They ended up only a few feet apart. For the first time the driver could see the blood on his shirt and the wounds on his neck. The man looked at him with a crazy look on his face. His skin was bruised and discolored.
“GROOOWWWL!”
The driver backed up because he was startled. His partner and the trainee had their backs to him. They did not see what happened. He backed right into a woman that walked up behind him. He turned to face her and their eyes met. Her eyes looked glazed over with a white film and her nose was missing. Blood soaked her yellow belly shirt and white tights. He yelled “What the hell!” “CHOMP!”
Suddenly he felt excruciating pain in his face as he yelled in pain.
“Yowl!”
The woman was wildly swinging her arms scratching and biting him. His friends turned around when he screamed just in time to see the silhouettes of the woman and the man attacking him. They ripped the drivers face open. He pushed the
woman away from him as blood gushed from the puncture wound under his right eye. The man outside the doors grabbed him by the neck and bit his ear off.
Together they both pulled the driver to the ground. His partner and the trainee rushed to help him. The driver lost all his fingers and ended up with a bloody gnawed up stump. His screams signaled the dinner bell for the rest of the undead forsaken roaming the parking lot. They slowly walked out of the darkness and moved in closer. His partner heard their moaning and the trainee saw their teeth.
“GROOOWWWL! GROOOWWWL! GROOOWWWL!”
“Look there are more of them!” screamed the partner.
Eight hungry forsaken creatures surrounded them in seconds.
“Go ahead and run!” yelled the partner. “I’ll be right behind you!”
The partner shoved two of them to the ground but another one bit him on the arm. The scared trainee turned to run but he tripped and knocked himself and the driver down. The trainee was able to get off the ground but a mob of hands pulled the driver apart. Their bony dead fingers and decaying hands raked across his skin and punctured his flesh. They bit both of his legs and his back. Hands with knife like fingers ripped the partners buttocks open. They pulled his colon out his body. Thankfully the pain was only temporary. He had his spine separated seconds and lost all feeling and sensation. The beasts ate him alive while He laid there with his eyes open bleeding to death. The trainee jumped up on the hood of the ambulance and climbed up on top of the rig. He tried to lie down and be quiet.
The horde of forsaken followed him to the ambulance. The female patient was still strapped to the gurney as they shambled toward her. She was defenseless. “Nooooo!” she screamed as they moved closer. “Save me dear God!” The gurney was a buffet table and she was the main course. Her cries for help rang out in the darkness unanswered.
“MUNCH! MUNCH! MUNCH!”
The carnivorous forsaken devoured all her flesh, fat, and muscle. Sucking and wheezing noises were the last sounds she made as she struggled to speak. Soon she was unconscious on the gurney bleeding profusely. Three piles of blood soaked bones littered the ground after a few more minutes. The trainee was hurt but thanked God that he was alive. He used his t-shirt to stop the blood flowing from the bite wound on his arm. His uniform was drenched in blood.
“We can’t just leave him out there to die!” a nurse cried.
“He got bit by one of those things so he is dead already!” I said. From the top of the rig the trainee could hear them moaning below.
“GRRRRRR!”
The scent of his blood was carried by the night breeze. He was a helpless animal surrounded by predators. We wanted to help him but anyone bitten was going to die anyway. He was an innocent victim but now he was going to wake up a killer.
“What if there is a cure?” asked a patient.
“The only cure for what he has is a bullet in his head!” I barked.
CHAPTER 8:
Neighborhood Watch
People trying to go home to their families were caught up in all the mayhem on the streets. Crowd suppression efforts by the police were rapidly becoming ineffective. The attacks grew more intense as the creatures entered the densely populated parts of the city. Explosions rang out and fires blazed. Large plumes of black smoke rose into the air. Phone communications and cell towers were knocked out. In this neighborhood people were running in every direction. Crying children trailed close behind their nervous parents. They were the most precious members of our community. Several people had to leave their other family members behind. All of them hastily packed up their vehicles and pulled off. Soon our parking lot came alive with action. The chaos hand an impact on the entire community.
Thousands of people crowded into churches, synagogues and mosques. From all over south Phoenix people flocked to our hospital. They arrived in pickup trucks, car, and several SUV’s! The parking lot was packed. They unloaded the injured bloody bodies of their friends, family members and total strangers. The backseats and truck beds served as a gurney. It looked like a street scene after an attack from my times in Afghanistan and Iraq. They only made it a couple of feet before they saw the killer mob lurch out of the building. Even though they appeared to be alive their soul and everything that made them human was now gone.
“GROOOWWWL! GROOOWWWL! GROOOWWWL!”
Some of them tried to get back to their cars, while others banned together and fought back. They pulled innocent civilians out of their vehicles and ate them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The forsaken ripped their throats and some people had their faces devoured. The large group of neighborhood youths fought back armed with bats, hammers, sticks, and pipes. Some of them also had small caliber handguns.
“Kill those bastards!” shouted a fighter.
One man tried to fight them off using and old ceremonial marine saber but he was quickly overpowered after it broke.
“I'm going to send all you bastards back to hell!” snarled his friend.
They had defended their hood in the past from other gangs but tonight they fought for the right to live. Gang members that once terrorized the neighborhood became its only protection! They bashed in rotting heads and blew out undead brains. At first it looked like they would have an easy victory. That changed after the forsaken continued to lumber out of the shadows reaching hungrily for the living. Their wide open glossy eyes never blinked. The helpless people tried to scatter but were circled.
“GRRRRRR!”
“Look out! There are more of them coming out the building.” A woman yelled. She looked back to see more decrepit and bloody creatures lurch towards her. It didn’t take long for them to finish her off. The bites from their teeth caused pain to flow through her body like electricity.
“Crap man. There are more than I thought!” a man screamed.
“Get off the street people and Lock your doors!” yelled another homeboy.
A war raged twenty feet from the hospital entrance. The bangers threw rocks and bottles at the forsaken. The local gang leader in charge knew his hommies were outnumbered and they could not repel such a large force of forsaken. He opened his trunk and pulled out a looted case of Absolut vodka.
“What are we going to do with those?” asked a young gangster.
“Light them up with these!” he screamed. “Make all those motherfucker's burn!”
“I got something for your punk ass!” he yelled.
The young gang member lit the rag and threw the Molotov cocktail to buy some time for his people to escape. He blew up a Honda civic and set a group of ghouls on fire! Flames shot out from under it as the gas tank exploded. It flew into the air and landed on its side. The rest of his homeboys tossed cocktails too and joined in on the fun. The wall of flames temporarily held their attackers back. Unfortunately the noise drew the rest of the forsaken out of the surrounding houses. Those kids fought hard but they were unorganized. They fired wildly into the crowd but the shots went wide or just hit the beasts in the upper torso. In minutes their cars were overwhelmed. The flesh hungry killers pounded on the doors before breaking out the windshields and side windows. Some of kids scrambled for cover as the others fired off several more shots in rapid succession. The attackers showed no hesitation or fear. The bullets cut through the dead flesh and punctured their rotten bones. One of the bangers dropped his gun during a struggle with an overweight forsaken woman. He got free from her grasp but was attacked by a forsaken male before he could recover his pistol.
“GROOOWWWL!”
“Shoot those motherfuckers!” he screamed. “Aim for their heads!”
The rest of his buddies fired at the forsaken from behind their temporary cover. A look of desperation came over their faces as they started to run out of bullets. Soon the intense battle left them with a lot of
seriously injured people. The waves of slow moving forsaken kept coming. The massive horde plowed its way through the gang. The gang leader pulled a nineteen eleven from the small of his back and began to fire until the clip was empty. He was unfazed by all the death and destruction going on around him. This was his hood and he was either going to save it or die trying. The leader popped out his second magazine and reached for a third. Then he fired his gun in the air.
“Come get some you ugly puto's!” he screamed.
A large group of forsaken lumbered after him. He lured them away from the hospital to give his men a chance to escape. The leader stopped occasionally as he ran to fire his gun.
“POP! POP! POP!”
The leader made it to the liquor store on the next block before his luck ran out. He was surrounded by seven corpses. All of them had been shot multiple times. The leader was able to fend them off for a short time before being ripped in half. His remains were found in front of the store. The only thing left untouched was his head. An empty pistol was found next to him.
Just down the block a large group of people was hiding inside a dry cleaner. They spent their time holding onto each other and praying.
“Let’s get out of here!” cried a short man.
He had seen too many of his friends being murdered and wanted to keep the rest of them alive. The other panicked citizens knocked the injured ones down and climbed over them to get away. Some of them tried to crawl but did not get far before the savages found them. The rest of the group rushed toward the ER but was cut off by the dead. Several of them managed to get back to their vehicles. One man tried to save his family by hiding in his car. A couple of the forsaken were following close behind them. Once they caught up they started beating on the car door and windows. The man tried to hold the door closed by the handle but he was not strong enough. His family was screaming in terror as the door was pried away. The rest of the undead mob broke out the windows and started grabbing the family.