Howell reached up and wiped the woman’s spittle off of his face and cursed as he got back on his feet. He searched frantically for his duffle–
He spotted it as it got kicked from one side of the lobby to the other by the panicked crowd. Finally, it slid to a stop against the trampled corpse of a security guard.
Howell pushed his way through the crowd and snatched the duffle up, hugging it against his chest.
‘DING’
A set of elevator doors slid open and sent the crowd into frenzy. They jostled and shoved against each other as they crammed into the open elevator. People were pressed against the sides of the elevator while others were crushed against the floor. The car was crammed to the point of suffocation. The maximum weight limit buzzer sounded repeatedly, but that didn’t stop people from clawing through each other as they attempted to get inside the crammed lift.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, the screaming crowd swarmed past Howell, pelting him with elbows, fingernails, and fists as they rushed towards the open lift. Howell collapsed into a fettle position and cradled the duffle against his chest, protecting it from the trampling horde.
‘DING’
A second set of elevator doors slid open, and a bloodied man covered in human bite-marks ran out into the lobby, screaming in horror.
Behind him, two infected men emerged from the elevator. Both men were covered with blood and their shirts were caked with vomit. They gave feral snarls, projectile vomited on the people closest to the open elevator doors, and enveloped themselves into the frightened crowd, gnashing madly.
The lobby filled with a crescendo of blood-curdling screams as the crowd tried to ineffectively push against itself to get away from the infected men. A number of brawls broke out as people started to pummel each other, literally trying to kill whoever stood in their way of escape. Meanwhile, the infection spread like wildfire throughout the chaotic lobby.
Howell looked up and spotted a group of people slipping into a doorway in the far corner of the lobby.
It was a stairwell.
Howell snatched up his duffle and limped towards the open stairwell, elbowing frightened people out of his way. The stream of people headed towards the stairwell was increasing, so he sped up, lungs burning–
A woman stepped in front of him, holding her what remained of her left ear, bleeding profusely. She cried hysterics, pleading for help.
Howell shoved her to the ground and pushed his way through the doorway, entering the stairwell.
The stairwell was as chaotic as the lobby. People were sprinting up the stairs, skipping two or three steps each stride. Some of them lost their footing and went tumbling backwards down the stairs, taking others down with them like a human avalanche.
Howell kept his duffle held tightly and–
Two security guards and a construction worker slammed the stairwell door shut behind Howell. They held the door shut while one of the guards fished through his key ring.
Howell started sprinting up the stairs, gasping for breath, keeping the duffle squeezed tightly against his chest.
People bashed and scratched against the door from the other side, pleading. Behind their pleas, the feral cries of the infected grew louder.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” one of the guards repeated to the pleading voices as he searched for the stairwell door key. He found it, slid it into the lock, locked the door shut, and snapped the key off inside the tumbler.
The guards and the construction worker stepped away from the door and briefly listened in horror to the carnage coming from the other side. They turned and ran up the stairs as blood started to flow underneath the door.
Howell up the stairs and passed the third floor landing.
A man lost his footing and tumbled backwards down the stairs, screaming–
Howell stepped aside and allowed the man to go cartwheeling down past him. After the man passed, Howell ran up to the fourth floor landing and paused briefly to catch his breath.
The sixth floor stairwell door swung open and three infected men and one infected woman rushed into the stairwell.
Two people nearby were caught unaware and were immediately pounced.
The infected woman bounded down the stairs, headed towards the group climbing up.
The people climbing up the stairwell stopped mid-stride and abruptly started running back down the stairs, screaming, tumbling over each other in their blind panic.
Howell turned and tried to open the fourth floor stairwell door–
Someone was holding it shut.
“Go away! Find somewhere else!” a frightened voice said from the other side of the door.
Below, Howell heard another stairwell door open and could make out the distinctive snarls from the infected.
Terrified screams echoed throughout the stairwell.
Howell pounded against the door.
“Let go of this fucking door! I’m not sick, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!” Howell shouted, rattling the doorknob.
“I said go away! Go to another floor before– oh, shit! Shit!”
The person let go of the door and it swung open into the stairwell.
The terrified businessman who had been holding the door shut shoved Howell out of the way and ran out into the stairwell, looking over his shoulder fearfully.
Howell passed through the doorway and pulled the door shut behind him. He ran down a narrow hall that was lined with doors. It opened up into a large office area full of cubicles. He froze–
In the middle of the office area, three infected men and two infected women pinned down a young pregnant woman and were gnashing into her. They sunk their teeth into her neck, arms, and bloated stomach as she writhed in agonizing pain, gushing blood from nearly every orifice.
A group of terrified onlookers watched, frozen, mouths agape.
The infected let go of the dead pregnant woman and leapt into the group of onlookers.
The group let out a terrified scream as the infected spread amongst them.
A man wearing a bile-splattered paramedic uniform broke away from the besieged group, toppled a cubical wall, and ran towards one of the skyscraper windows.
He picked up an office chair and hurled it at the hurricane-rated glass–
The chair bounced off of the impact-resistant glass.
Undeterred, he picked the chair up and hurled it at the thick glass again, as hard as he could, grunting, stumbling forward–
The chair bounced off of the unscathed glass once again.
The man picked up the chair a third time and–
A single hole formed in the middle of the glass and the back of the man’s head erupted in a geyser of blood.
The man dropped the chair and crumpled to the ground as a pool of blood formed around him.
Howell looked around the corner and saw a helicopter hovering outside, between the skyscrapers. The side doors of helicopter were open and revealed a row of snipers peering up and down the building through their scopes.
The pregnant woman slowly stood and stared down the hallway at Howell. Her stomach was eviscerated and a puddle of dark blood had formed at her feet. In the middle of the puddle lay what remained of a fetus. She fastened her lips into a feral snarl and sprinted towards Howell, dragging the fetus with her across the carpet.
“Fucking bitch!” Howell snarled as he ran to the nearest door. He turned the knob, swung the door open, and ran inside.
It was a nicely appointed office, one that looked like it belonged to a manager. It had a mahogany desk in the middle and a plush black leather chair. Two bookcases filled with legal books dominated the side of the office and the back of the office consisted of a large floor-to-ceiling window offering a panoramic view of the plastic-draped skyscraper directly across the street.
Howell slammed the door shut behind him and locked it. He hesitantly backed away, clutching his duffle tightly against his chest, coughing.
Within the seconds, the pregnant woman was bashing against the
outside of the door, trying to claw her way in. Howell knew that the door wouldn’t be able to take much more of–
“Sherry? Sherry!?” a man’s voice asked. “What the fuck… Jesus!”
The pounding against the door stopped as the woman sprinted towards fresh prey.
The man’s screams turned into gurgles as he choked on his own blood.
Howell picked up the office phone off of the desk and cradled the receiver against his ear–
The line was dead.
Howell dropped the phone and sat his duffle on the desk, coughing. He walked towards the window, closed his fists, and pounded against the glass as he cursed to himself. As he drew a fist back, he looked down and saw a red dot centered on his chest–
Howell ducked away from the window and sat underneath the desk.
Outside, plastic draped down over the window, shrouding out the sunlight.
Howell rung his fingers through his oily hair and started to rock back-and-forth, trying to drown out the screams coming from the other side of the door. He couldn’t care less about the bomb on the desk anymore. He knew that he would never make it to New York.
He knew that he would never make it out of the building.
He was terrified.
He dropped his head down between his knees and wept underneath the desk in the dark office, alone, terrified.
The bomb’s timer, however, counted down dutifully.
11
When Terry regained consciousness, searing pain was his first sensation. Vertigo overtook him. Briefly, he opened his eyes and saw his tie lolling side-to-side in front of his face. Another explosion of pain rippled through him.
Terry screamed.
His consciousness faded.
Below Terry, a white-suit waded through corpses and luggage. He heard the scream and he quickly turned his attention up towards Terry’s dangling corpse.
“Hey, Green, there’s a live one here!” the white-suit, Small, called out. “Test ‘em!”
Green, donning his own white-suit, crawled into the upside-down train car and stumbled over a sprawled out corpse wearing a tattered Saks suit in the process.
An interesting mixture of excitement and terror washed over both soldiers as they stared up at Terry since they didn’t find a single survivor from the train accident all morning.
Green pointed the infrared thermometer at Terry.
“37.2 °C,” Green said, reading off the red LED display on the device. “Slightly above normal but not quiet falling in the ‘PT-12’ exposure range. Of course, the increase could probably be attributed to the accident trauma. I would say that it’s a passable reading.”
Small shook his head.
“I don’t know… It’s higher than normal, right?” Small asked while aiming his M16 up at Terry’s lolling head. “I’d say it’d be a waste of time to drag him down.”
Green put a hand on Small’s rifle and pushed the barrel down.
“Jesus, Small, what are you doing? You know what the orders are. You must really want to piss off the Colonel, don’t you?” Green said
“What, Green?!” Small cried out, jerking the rifle free from Green’s hand. “Do you really want to waste time hauling him down, taking him to one of those CDC idiots in the hospital just so they verify that ‘oh what do you know, he is infected just like everyone else we looked at’, waste some more time out of our day by hauling him out from the hospital, and then haul him across downtown to a skyscraper just to seal him inside with the other infected civilians?!”
“Those are the orders,” Green said matter-of-factly. “If we find anybody without symptoms three hours after initial viral exposure, take them to the CDC triage center for close observation and lab work! They don’t want us arbitrarily shooting people in the street! That’s not what we’re here for!”
Small raised his rifle up towards Terry again.
“Fuck that. I’m saving us both a lot of headache and I’m saving him from rotting inside some shitty downtown skyscraper tomb,” Small said, finger tightening on the–
“Do it and I’ll report you,” Green quickly said. “Please, be reasonable and be somewhat humane.”
Small froze and slowly turned towards Green.
“Who are you going to tattle to? The Sergeant already left. I guess he figured that he had more important shit to do then watch two assholes do busy work,” Small said.
“I’ll call Colonel Mathis himself, then,” Green said defensively.
Small laughed.
“No, you won’t,” Small said. “You know, you talk pretty noble for someone who was picking the pockets of corpses and–”
“Yeah, well, if he isn’t infected, this is murder. And I won’t take part in cold-blooded murder,” Green snapped back.
Small and Green stared at each other a moment and finally Small lowered his weapon.
“Fine, if it makes you feel better. But when we have to haul him out from the hospital because he’s infected and take him to another fucking building, don’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Small said, grumbling. “Nobody is immune to this shit, you know! CDC is wasting their time! Atlanta says they want someone with natural immunity but I’d bet money that they already have a fucking vaccine for this shit in storage!”
Green, ignoring his partner, climbed on top of a stack of luggage to reach Terry when the corpse dangling next to Terry suddenly twitched.
“Christ, the one beside him just moved, too,” Green said.
“Aw, fuck, here you go again. It’s just rigor mortis or something,” Small grumbled.
Green reached a hand up and pressed two gloved fingers against the side of Richard’s throat.
“No, he’s alive, too! Christ!” Green shouted.
Small threw his hands up in the air in exasperation and shook his head.
Green pointed the infrared thermometer at Richard and frowned as he read the results. “38.4 °C. He’s within the infection suspect range.” He paused and turned towards Small. “There’s a chance that the observation center won’t accept him. If you’re worried about making two trips, we can leave him and just drop off the first one. I’m not saying kill him, I won’t agree to that, but we can leave him for another team to find. It’s up to you.”
Small stared up at Richard, thinking. Finally, he shook his head.
“We’re already taking the first one so, fuck, we may as well drag the second one along for the ride,” Small said, shaking his head.
“Who knew you had such a big heart,” Green said, chuckling.
“Me? Hell, you’re the bleeding heart snitch. I’d say shoot both of them.”
“Well that isn’t happening,” Green said. He cut Terry out of the seatbelt and carried him down over his shoulder. “Believe it or not, I still have somewhat of a conscience.”
“I don’t see how, considering the shit we’ve done here today,” Small said. He climbed up the luggage pile and cut Richard’s seatbelt.
Richard collapsed on top of the luggage pile and his medication bottle fell out of his pocket.
The two white-suits hauled Richard and Terry’s unconscious bodies out of the derailed train car and loaded them into the back of a white van.
Green stared at the crash site in the rearview mirror a moment and then turned the engine.
“If we stuff anymore in the back of the van we run the risk of cross-contamination. We’ll have to come back,” Green said.
Neither of the men really wanted to return to the accident and, since they supervisor was AWOL, neither of them would.
The van swerved around abandoned cars as it sped down the deserted downtown streets towards the CDC’s medical observation center established at Central Hospital. Downtown Raleigh had become a ghost town within a matter of hours. Skyscrapers draped in clear plastic towered high along every street while soldiers wearing white hazmat suits hurriedly covered the bottom floor windows of the plastic-draped buildings with plywood. The looting was taking its toll on the shops and cafes, but all of th
e looters, confused on-lookers, and responding police officers were all herded into and hidden away the plastic-draped tombs by the besieging military.
Central Hospital’s parking lot was filled with FEMA busses and hundreds of civilian vehicles. Near the building’s entrance, National Guard soldiers wearing gasmasks were unloading plywood and rolls of plastic off of flatbeds.
Green and Small rolled Richard and Terry along the sidewalk towards the hospital’s emergency room entrance using two wheelchairs they found in the back of an empty ambulance. One of the masked National Guard soldiers stopped unloading plywood and looked at them.
“New admission?” the soldier asked, his voice muffled by the gasmask.
“Yeah, CDC is still inside, right?” Green asked, staring at the stacks of plywood and plastic sheeting; he knew that it could only mean one thing.
The soldier nodded.
“They’re still in there,” he said, picking up a pneumatic drill off of the ground. “They’re not having much luck though, I hear. Everyone who was brought in healthy is getting sick. Some people may have been resistant or slow to show symptoms… but they’re all dancing to the same tune in the end. The damn place is festering! All of their blood work is coming back hot, too. I don’t think anybody has turned yet, but it won’t be too much longer until CDC has to evacuate and let us seal it. Hell, it’s just a matter of time now.”
“I told you so,” Small muttered to Green.
“Pull out? Seal it? We just drove across downtown to drop these two off,” Green said, ignoring Small. “What a complete mess! Are they even taking new ones or are we supposed to take them straight to one of the quarantine towers?”
The solider holding the drill shrugged.
“I think they’re still taking them,” he said. “All I am advising is that you hurry in and hurry out, you know? Otherwise… you won’t need to take them to a quarantine tower,” he held up the drill and continued, laughing, “You’ll already be inside of one!”
Green and Small quickly rolled the wheelchairs through the emergency room doors.
The emergency room was a madhouse and the waiting room was the main hub of activity. CDC workers in white hazmat suits shuffled amongst hundreds of terrified civilians who were camped out on the hospital floor. The white-suits took temperature readings and drew blood samples. Civilian nurses and Red Cross volunteers, most of who were coughing behind their thin paper germicidal masks, were helping to collect blood samples and pacify the sickly crowd.
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