Z Ward

by Jay Mouton

  “Excellent, mon frère,” Robey said, using the term that they’d heard from some long, forgotten movie they’d watched, and liked, together. He felt tug of pride for his best friend. The friend that always gave him that feeling that, even though he had no siblings, he knew what having a brother felt like. And how good it felt to have a brother, too.

  “Thank God! Buddy!” Susann exclaimed, “you’re a hero!” The information about the virus effecting adults was pushed, for the moment, to the back of her growing list of fears. And Buddy’s find became another reason for hope to be placed back at the top of her list.

  “Is it charged up?” Robey asked. He, too, could not mask the excitement at the fact that they might now have a means to communicate with the outside world.

  Buddy powered the expensive looking device up. He peeked at the screen. He gave his second thumbs up sign of the day.

  “I need to call my mom, really quick,” Buddy said. His fingers already having entered his mother’s number.

  “Me, too,” Robey said, trying now to hide the impatience that, as soon as he caught sight of the cell phone in Buddy’s hand, started gnawing at him.

  Even Susann threw her first contact out and, just as excited as the boys, added the name of her father to their impromptu list.

  As horrific as the events that had already transpired had been, over the short time they’d all been thrown together in the whirlwind of apocalypse, waiting for a turn at the cell phone was the most grueling in its own way.

  Buddy, cell phone next to his ear, blurted out “Mom! Call this number back as soon as you get this!” Then, almost comically, under the catastrophic weight of all that was happening around them, he added, “it’s, Buddy!”

  Buddy, realizing that he, probably didn’t have to leave his name, just hunched his shoulders as if to say, “so what!”

  He handed the cell to Robey. Robey repeated Buddy’s actions, and touched in his own mother’s cell number. Simply put, Robey’s mom could not afford a cell for her son. Buddy’s folks wouldn’t allow their boy one; not any more. Buddy had gotten into some hot water only a couple of months before when he’d, stupidly he later realized, called in a false report about one of the hurricanes that had made landfall not too far from Jacksonville Beach. The short story was that Buddy thought that his false sighting report would end their school day just a little earlier. As it was, his school day got a lot longer, for nearly a month.

  Robey held the device up to his ear. He muttered something about his mom picking the damn thing up. But, unfortunately, he, too, fed his message into his mother’s voicemail.

  Forlornly, and with a grimace of ever growing anxiety, he held the cell out for Susann Beckett.

  Both he and the woman reaching for the cell noticed the slight tremble of his hand.

  Susann’s call followed suit. She seemed, again, on the verge of tears when she had to leave a voicemail message for her father. Susann, beauty that she was, still lived at home with her widowed father. The angel of mercy side of nursing came naturally to the woman. This side of her showed up stronger than ever when it came to her father.

  They all stood, again, in silence.

  Buddy, unable to stop mentally fidgeting, blurted out, “lot of good that just did!”

  Robey nodded in agreement, and tried to force a smile to his lips. He failed.

  Susann, dejected as she was about not being able to contact her father, did not allow her apprehensions about his welfare to cloud her thinking.

  “I’ve got another call to make,” she said, already entering the numbers.

  It seemed for the first time since Susann had come running into Robey’s hospital room that morning, with the now deceased Doctor Huddleston chomping at her heels, time crawled as the three of them waited on the results of Susann’s second effort at contacting another human being.

  Seconds lapsed.

  “Yes!” Susann nearly screamed!

  Robey and Buddy were, momentarily, caught off guard by the woman’s throaty yell. But, the excitement level ran the gamut from that of terror to feeling about as close to happiness they’d had hoped for at that point.

  “Tilde!” Susann tried to contain her excitement at hearing her friend’s voice, but wasn’t too successful. “Tell me it’s you, and that you’re okay!”

  “Wait!” Susann said, again nearly yelling into the receiver. She placed the device in speaker mode.

  “Tilde! Are you okay?” Susann asked her friend.

  “Girl! I’m so happy to hear your voice, Susann!” Another voice entered the small room, bringing no small relief to Susann, but to the boys as well.

  “Tilde! Where are you? Are you in the hospital? Are you safe?” Susann fought the urge to continue talking. As if to stop would cause the fragile lifeline of communication to leave them alone once more.

  “Susann! Girl, try to calm down,” Tilde’s voice said, once again a most welcome sound for the three of them.

  Tilde Squire was one of Susann’s close friends at the hospital. She was nearing her retirement, and, in fact was not much younger than Susann’s father.

  The two had met nearly four years earlier. Tilde had been working as a part-time cook and food prep person at the convalescence center that Susann’s father had stayed for a short period of time. He’d gone through a few months of rehabilitation after a bout of illnesses that had, nearly, devastated the man’s health a while back. Susann visited her father every single day during that time. Some of those days became extremely long and, as a matter of course, often required staying past dinner time.

  As it was, Tilde had developed a deep affection for Susann during the long afternoons the young woman spent with her convalescing father. Susann, after putting in her hours at Baptist Health, would make the drive from the beaches area all the way over to the westside of Jacksonville. Every night, rain or shine. If there was heavy traffic, or she’d had a difficult shift. It didn’t matter. Susann Beckett always showed up. Even during the last weeks of her father’s stay there. Every night, Tilde Squire would see Mr. Beckett’s daughter sitting her chair, spending as much time as was allowed, next to her father’s bedside.

  Tilde came to care for the young Miss Beckett, and care deeply. Soon after her affection for Susann took hold, she began bringing an extra meal to Mr. Beckett’s room. She didn’t ask Mr. Beckett’s daughter to pay for the extra meal. And, she would have refused the money if Susann had so much as dared to try pay extra for it. Tilde just brought another tray, and left it at that.

  Neither woman could recall which of them had said the first word to the other. But from the time that word, whatever it had been, was uttered, a friendship blossomed.

  Initially, it would have appeared to most that didn’t know either of them, that they didn’t have anything in common. Other than a need to spend time in Mr. Beckett’s room, that was. Tilde, was older. She was a married, but childless. She made the trip down I95 from Yulee every afternoon to work the center’s swing shift. For all intents and purposes, she and her husband, of nearly thirty years, got along well as roommates. But, to say their marriage was one destined for a plot in a romance novel would have been, as Tilde might have said, “just plain as day, dumb.”

  And Tilde Squire just so happened to be black. Not that it amounted to a hill of beans as far as either woman was concerned. Only that they made an odd-looking duo just about anywhere they went together. Tilde tall, dark, and statuesque. Susann short, pale skinned, and possessing a nearly goth appearance at times with her near porcelain tone.

  Susann seldom ventured far from the beachside community in which she grew up. After her primary education, she spent a couple of intense years in an RN program, at a local community college near her home in Neptune Beach. Tilde’s life consisted of cooking meals, and feeding hungry people. Susann’s life was made up of her work as an RN at Baptist Health. And making sure that her one living parent, her father, was well cared for. The young nurse had lost her mother years earlier, and her fath
er had raised her since early childhood. To say the daughter and father were close was, of course, understatement.

  As it was, the two women began to start running into each other, on a regular basis, during Susann’s long evenings with her father. It turned out that under the exterior uniforms of life they both, respectively, donned they shared much.

  Through late night conversations, while Mr. Beckett snored, softly, in the background, they each found out they’d both been raised by widowed fathers. Both had stayed close to their fathers through life. Tilde’s father had passed nearly a decade before the two women met. Both woman enjoyed helping people. And, of all things, they both found they had a love for the game of chess. Both, it turned out, having been taught the game by their, respective, fathers.

  Many a shared dinner, conversations, and much laughter created a bond between them.

  Eventually, Susan’s father, finally, went home. Susan suggested that the two women try to get together for a weekend afternoon chess game once a month. Tilde was thrilled to be asked. Susann was happy the older woman agreed. For the next couple of years, they took turns on meeting places. One month, they meet up close to Tilde’s area. The next month, it would be somewhere near Susann. And, so it continued.

  Then, out of the blue, Tilde’s position at her work place was, simply put, downsized out of existence. After many years at the same place, she found herself out of a job. As the working gears and cogs of friendship are always turning, spinning, and stay in motion, so it was with the two women. Tilde confided, during one of their chess games, of course, that she was job hunting. The very next day, Susann found out that Baptist Health was looking for a full-time cafeteria worker. She urged the older woman to apply for the position. Susann admitted that she had no idea what kind of pay Tilde might be offered, but the trip down from Yulee to Baptist wasn’t much further than the one she’d been making for years that took her over to the westside of Jacksonville. The very next day, a warm, pleasant Monday morning in April, Tilde parked her car in a visitor’s slot, walked into the HR office at Baptist, and applied for the opening.

  “I know! I am!” Susann, again excited, yet agitated, cried into the cell phone.

  “Susann, girl,” the older woman said, her voice steady and even, with not a hint of fear held in her tone, tried to calm her young friend.

  “Susann, sweet girl. Come on now, take a nice, deep breath— ‘kay,” Tilde said, voice softening even a little more.

  Susann followed the woman’s advice, and took a much-needed deeper breath.

  “Uh-huh,” Tilde said, her gentle voice now taking effect on the boys as well.

  “That’s my girl,” Tilde said.

  “Okay, now,” Tilde said, her voice still steady and gentle, but more like the tone a parent might take when trying to talk sense into their child. Not mean, not condescending, but in a serious and matter-of-fact manner.

  “First, I’m just fine, young lady. Don’t spend any worry on me, girl.” Susann’s friend said, allowing Susann to breath even a little more easily.

  “Second. Just where are y’all calling from, Susann?”

  “We’re over here! We’re on the third floor of Emergency!” Susann’s voice jumped an up a notch in volume, again.

  “Shush, calm down, girl. We’re gonna play us a game of chess, now. And, we’re both gonna win this one, okay,” Tilde said to her young friend.

  Susann’s head was nodding up and down, rapidly. As if, somehow, Tilde could hear her nodding in agreement over the cell phone connection.

  “Susann? Girl?” Tilde’s voice, so soft now, almost a whisper over the small speakers that, they had to prick their ears up to hear.

  Susann, nodding, realized she’d not answered out loud.

  “Yes! Yes, Ma’am! Yes, Tilde,” She answered, still fighting to stay in control of her senses. As if to reinforce the fact that it was imperative that she remain in control, Susann glanced over the two boys next to here. She reminded herself that she was still an on-duty RN at Baptist Health. And she was, still, responsible for the safety the two boys standing in that lonely, distant hospital room.

  The young nurse steadied her breathing.

  “Good, girl,” Tilde Squire soothing voice permeated the room, and had its, intended, calming effect.

  “Susann, I’m in the kitchen,” Tilde said, “there are four of us in here right now.”

  “Okay,” Susann answered, and then offered, “There are three of us over here, Tilde!”

  Robey listened, intently. He could hear Susann’s voice begin to, noticeably, calm. He wondered what she was like in her job as a nurse. He wondered if she’d ever saved a person’s life.

  “Susann, listen, young Miss. This, here, it’s really important, okay,” Tilde said. “Are there, ah, any other adults with you?” Tilde asked. Susann had known the woman for a several years now and she could hear the concern in her friend’s voice.

  “Are there any other adults in the room, other than you?”

  Instantly, Susann understood the point and importance of the woman’s question.

  With her head nodding, yet again, the young nurse gave her short report, “No, Tilde. No other adults in here with me,” Susann said, speaking, quickly, into the receiver. She continued, “just me, and two young—!”

  Susann’s voice broke in midsentence, and her eyes darted wildly over to the pile of blood and bone spilling out along the other side of the room. She could see the gently swaying curtains. She thought, nearly madly, that the image could have done justice to a sick and dark Dali painting.

  She was just about to give Tilde a blow-by-blow account of the run in she and the boys had with Doctor Huddleston and one of Baptist’s patients. But, she realized it was all moot.

  “Just Robey, Buddy, and myself,” Susann said, finding her professional nurse voice at last.

  “No adults,” Tilde said, “that’s good.” Almost ominously, in afterthought, she added “that’s real, good.”

  They spent the next couple of minutes talking over what the best way for Susann and the boys to make their way, safely, over to the little cafeteria. Where she and one of the security guards were holed up. Along with two kids that the young guy had managed to rescue from the maternity ward when the three of them tried to find their own way to some place safer in the killing fields that the hospital’s maze of corridors had become.

  Buddy thought to ask Susann to check and see if the security guy had a gun, “because, then, maybe he could come and get us and take us over to your friend?”

  “Sorry, young fella,” Tilde said, hearing Buddy’s request through the cell on her end.

  Tilde exclaimed to Susann, Robey, and Buddy that the security guard had a gun. But, he’d had to use all his bullets fighting off zombies making their way through the hospital. As it was, Tilde added, “young Mr. Hunley, here, kept these two little ones from harm.” She referred to the two children, a brother and sister, that security guard, James “Jimmy” Hunley had managed to save from the slaughter that had taken place in what was the Maternity Ward of the hospital.

  “Oh,” was all that Buddy could muster.

  “Miss Tilde?”

  It was Robey who chimed in on the live connection between, possibly, the only active cell phones on the hospital grounds.

  “Just Tilde, young man,” the woman’s voice came through the small cell speaker, her voice warm and friendly towards the young boy, “yes?”

  “Miss, I mean, Tilde, what did you mean when you said, ‘zombies’?” Robey asked, his eyes wide open by yet another rise in the level of fear trying to make its way into his heart.

  The speaker was silent for a few moments. There was only the faint sound of a what sounded like a small child, whimpering, from somewhere on the other side of the connection.

  “You don’t know, then?” Tilde Squire, her voice still soft, still gentle, but again made its turn back a darker tone.

  “Ma’am?” Robey questioned, “don’t know what?”
>
  Even through the tiny speaker of Doctor Huddleston’s cell phone, they could hear Tilde Squire swallow hard before she spoke again.

  “Susann. Robey and Buddy, is it? We’ve been getting’ info off the Internet for the last couple of hours since this,” she paused, swallowed hard, again.” Well, since whatever this thing is, that’s going around.”

  All three of them stood, motionless, and listened to the woman’s, by now, old news.

  “Well, the soldiers from the National Guards been on different websites now for some time, now, I suppose. They, well, they’ve been talking about all these folks that have been going crazy. The folks that have been doing all this killing!”

  Another deep swallow was followed by the sound of Tilde Squire taking one of her own deep breaths.

  “They said them folks were,” she paused one more time, “well, they ain’t calling them people no more.” Tilde Squire stopped.

  Then she said it.

  She whispered the ward into her cell phone. The signal bounced off a satellite somewhere in the heavens. Then, Tilde’s voice, cold and disconnected from her face, came through Doctor Huddleston’s cell phone. The volume was low, but the word, still, seemed to echo inside the little hospital room.

  “They been calling ‘hem,” she paused, one more time.

  “Zombies—!”

  *****

  They spent several minutes letting Susann try to explain what she thought was the best way to get to the little cafeteria that served the hospital.

  None of the options seemed very safe. And some sounded like flat out suicide runs.

  Still, they didn’t have a whole lot of choices. And none of them wanted to remain in in the room they were in. In fact, it seemed little more than a makeshift morgue.

  This time, it was Robey’s turn to have an idea that seemed pretty good. If it were possible.

  As soon as Robey threw the idea into the small number they’d already considered, Buddy declared it “genius!” He insisted that it would, surely, work. And, he congratulated his best friend upon having such a “totally, cool epiphany!”