Fracked

by Campbell, Mark

  Rebecca sighed and shook her head.

  She looked up at him expectantly once more.

  “When you were out there, did you come across any other survivors…?” she asked.

  John shook his head.

  “So all of them are…?” she asked.

  John nodded somberly.

  Rebecca looked down again with a blank expression.

  John placed his hands on her shoulders and peered down her.

  “I… know that this is a lot to take in, but I need you to stay with me,” he implored.

  Rebecca looked up at him as tears ran down her cheeks.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know that we need to get out of here,” John said. “They’ve already cut us off from the outside world, so I can only imagine what’s next. We need to stay focused if we’re going to get out of here and survive.”

  Rebecca nodded and wiped away her tears with her palms.

  “Walking through the hallway is out of the question… Those things are everywhere. Do you know any other way?” John asked.

  “I do,” Rebecca said. She pointed towards a nondescript door in the corner of the room. “That’s the service corridor. It’ll take us through the back way of radiology. If we go through the department, we should come out at the end of the hallway where the elevators are.”

  “Sounds good, let’s go,” John said, holding the weapon close to his chest.

  The two snuck through the door and entered the dank service corridor.

  The corridor was long, dark, and made of concrete. Exposed conduit lines and water pipes ran along the ceiling while plastic-draped crates of supplies and cleaning materials lined the wall.

  A man wearing a hospital gown stood at the far end of the hall with his back facing John and Rebecca. His head was lowered and he was twitching.

  Overturned jugs of industrial window cleaning liquid were lying on the floor. The methyl alcohol solution was pooling around the man’s feet.

  The front of the man’s gown was torn open and a long, black tentacle-like appendage dangled from his belly button. The tip was sloshing through the alcohol solution, greedily sucking it up.

  As the man drank, pustules grew all over his body…

  The couple looked at him with horrified disgust.

  John turned towards Rebecca and put his index finger against his lips, shaking his head.

  Rebecca nodded.

  John and Rebecca quietly made their way down the corridor away from the twitching man and stopped at a door marked ‘RADIOLOGY WING ACCESS’.

  Rebecca gently lowered the door’s lever and pushed the door open.

  John kept a watchful eye over his shoulder, but the man at the far end of the corridor didn’t seem to notice.

  As soon as the door was open, the couple rushed inside.

  John slowly closed the door and let out a long sigh of relief. He looked over at Rebecca and froze when he saw her expression.

  She was staring wide-eyed into the room with her mouth slightly agape, trembling.

  Bullet-riddled corpses of hospital security guards and nursing staff members were strewn along the side of the blood-slathered wall. Stacks of old imaging equipment sat in the corner of the room and sparking wires hung from the ceiling. Spent brass shell casings littered the entire floor. A male nurse and a man wearing a tattered CDC white-suit stood in the middle of the room with their eyes focused on the ground, convulsing as the black substance foamed out of their mouths.

  The two twitching corpses were standing in front of the room’s only exit.

  A depleted MP5 lay on the floor next to the white-suit’s feet.

  John put his finger against his lips and looked over at his wife. He pointed towards the door leading out into the main radiology department.

  Rebecca nodded, hands shaking.

  John took a single step towards the door.

  His boot sent a brass shell casing skittering across the floor.

  Both of the infected looked up and glared at him with their onyx eyes. They started sprinting towards John, screaming.

  John fired at the white-suit first.

  The automatic gunfire tore up the center of the white-suit’s chest and along the front of his face. His head shattered and he tumbled onto the ground.

  Gun still smoking, John fired wildly at the male nurse who was only a few feet away.

  The blast of gunfire shattered the man’s left thigh and eviscerated his abdomen. He collapsed to his hands and knees as his innards fell out in clumps onto the floor.

  John stepped back and squeezed the trigger again.

  ‘CLICK’

  ‘CLICK’

  ‘CLICK’

  Aggravated, he threw the depleted weapon aside and put an arm in front of Rebecca as they stepped back against the service corridor door.

  The man tried to crawl across the floor, but stopped after a few inches. He lowered his head and expunged the tarry substance from his body.

  After the last ounce was gone, the man’s shriveled corpse fell motionless.

  The substance spread out across the floor and started to crawl onto the corpses of the security guards and hospital staff. The corpses started to convulse as the substance forced its way into their orifices.

  John and Rebecca jumped as the man from the service corridor started banging against the other side of the door.

  “We have to go now!” John said as the security guards and the slain staff members started to reanimate.

  The couple ran through the door on the opposite side of the room into the radiology imaging room just as the reanimated corpses started to get on their feet.

  The imaging room consisted of rows of broken x-ray machines, dressing tables, toppled room dividers, and desks stacked with computer equipment. Mangled corpses lay strewn amongst the rubble.

  At the far end of the room there stood a door that led out into the waiting area.

  As John and Rebecca sprinted around the wreckage towards the door, the door behind them swung open and the infected horde entered the room.

  The infected sprinted after them. Black tentacle-like appendages erupted from their belly buttons and flailed wildly through the air, spritzing the mangled corpses with the toxic, infectious substance.

  The mangled corpses on the floor immediately started convulsing and reanimating.

  One of the patients, an elderly woman, broke ahead of the pack and darted towards John.

  Rebecca grabbed one of the imaging carts and pushed in front of the old woman.

  The old woman tripped and tumbled over the cart, snarling and screaming as the rest of the horde carelessly trampled over her and kicked the cart aside.

  John slammed against the doors, but they wouldn’t open. Panicked, he started slamming his shoulder against the double-doors.

  Rebecca ran beside him and placed the ID card attached to the lanyard around her neck against the door’s proximity reader.

  The doors swung open.

  Safely on the other side, the couple slammed the doors shut and stepped back.

  The doors locked back in place.

  Infected began striking the double-doors from the other side.

  The doors started to bend and the drywall around the started to crack as the group relentlessly pounded…

  John looked at the door and shook his head.

  “That won’t hold them off forever,” John said as he looked around the room. “We have to get out of here.”

  The radiology waiting area was a small room with rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor along the center. A flickering electric sign above the double-doors read ‘X-RAYS in Use’. Numerous Triburton posters were hung on the walls and old gossip magazines were scattered across the floor. An abandoned receptionist’s desk sat against the wall.

  A single door led out into the hallway.

  “That way,” Rebecca said as she pointed towards the door, struggling to catch her breath.

  They quietly walked out of the roo
m and entered the hall.

  Every patient room door had been kicked open and the concrete walls were chipped away by gunfire. Patients and hospital staff were strewn across the floor, shot until they were unrecognizable.

  The nurse’s station next to the elevator had its window shattered. Inside the station, a heavyset nurse was slouched back in her office chair with a single gunshot through her forehead. Her lifeless eyes were staring up at the ceiling while blood ran from the corners of her mouth. Her phone was hanging off of the hook and her computer monitor had an error message on it that read ‘CANNOT ACQUIRE NETWORK – CHECK INTERNET CONNECTION’.

  Rebecca covered her mouth as they walked past.

  “Dear God…” she muttered. “Those sick patients didn’t do this… This is their way of helping? I’m glad you couldn’t call anybody…”

  John spotted something.

  Curious, he picked up a cellphone that was lying next to one of the corpses in the hall.

  Just as he expected, the phone didn’t have a signal.

  He sighed and dropped the phone into the corpse’s lap.

  “I imagine that they either took out the few towers we have around here or they have some sort of jammer in place,” John said as they neared the elevator. “We won’t be able to call anybody until we get closer to an active tower. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Just as he was about to push the elevator’s call button, the electricity switched off. The hallway was immediately bathed in darkness and the air stopped flowing from the vents overhead.

  Rebecca blindly stepped towards John, terrified.

  “No, goddammit!” John muttered in frustration as he repeatedly mashed the powerless call button.

  After a few seconds, the emergency lights switched on and bathed the hallway in dim yellow light.

  “There!” Rebecca said as she pointed at the stairwell door a little ways down the hall.

  They hurried towards the door and stepped inside.

  The stairwell was dark and the air was stale.

  As soon as they started to descend down the steps, the first floor door opened up and bathed the stairwell in light.

  John and Rebecca froze as six masked soldiers wearing black uniforms and night vision goggles entered the stairwell toting M-16s. The soldier’s uniforms had no names or numbers, just an American flag emblem on the left shoulder.

  Rebecca stared at the flag and looked relieved to see somebody other than the white-suits… Perhaps real help had finally arrived.

  “Please help us!” she called out to the soldiers. “We’re not sick!”

  The soldiers immediately looked up towards the sound of her voice and fired.

  Rebecca screamed as John pulled her back.

  The barrage of bullets struck the iron staircase and ricocheted off of the walls.

  “Run!” John shouted above the ringing in his ears. He took Rebecca by the hand and led her back into the hallway.

  The soldiers quickly ascended the steps and chased after them.

  John and Rebecca ran back inside the pitch-black radiology waiting area and took cover behind the receptionist’s desk.

  Two soldiers kicked open the door and entered the waiting room with their rifles ready.

  They slowly started to walk towards the receptionist’s desk.

  The double-doors on the other side of the room rattled…

  Both soldiers stopped and looked towards the noise. One of the masked men pointed towards the double-doors; the other nodded.

  They quietly advanced towards the double-doors with their weapons ready.

  One of the men tried opening the door, but lowered his hand.

  “It’s locked,” the masked soldier said. “They’re inside.”

  They pointed their rifles at the door’s hydraulic lock and fired a three-round burst.

  The hydraulic lock ruptured and the doors flung open.

  The soldier closest to the door was immediately swarmed. He screamed out in agony and let out a wild burst of gunfire as he was brought to the floor.

  “Shit!” the other solider said as he fired into the massive horde while backing towards the hallway door.

  A few people wearing hospital robes and nursing scrubs collapsed, but other ghouls quickly took their place as more and more swarmed into the waiting room.

  The soldier stopped firing, turned, and sprinted out into the hallway. He pushed in the locking device on the door’s handle and slammed the door shut.

  The room was bathed in darkness once again.

  Infected blindly pounded against the door but their efforts slowly subsided as they stood like statues in the dark.

  John and Rebecca stayed hidden behind the receptionist’s desk, practically holding their breath.

  “What happened?” a muffled voice asked from the hall.

  “T-The room is festering, sir,” a voice breathlessly replied. “Williams is down.”

  “What about the two civilians?”

  “Dead,” the voice replied. “They have to be. The room is full of those things.”

  There was a moment of hesitation.

  “Is that door locked?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. We’ll come back and clear the radiology department after we finish clearing the rest of this floor. Let’s move.”

  John and Rebecca listened as the soldiers retreated down the hall.

  The only sound in the room were the quiet snarls and garbled breaths of the infected standing throughout the room, twitching, waiting, and listening.

  Several minutes passed.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, John peaked out from behind the desk. He could make out a faint line of light coming from underneath the hallway door, but he also saw multitudes of feet...

  Rebecca was hugging her knees against her chest, looking down.

  John leaned close, nudged her, and pointed towards the hallway door. He slowly, quietly, got up on his haunches and got ready.

  Rebecca nervously nodded and followed his lead…

  He reached up and grabbed a stapler off of the top of the desk and hurled it towards the far corner of the room.

  The crowd inside the room let out a piercing scream as they blindly darted towards the noise, crashing against each other in the mass confusion.

  John and Rebecca ran towards the door, pushing a few of the clamoring infected out of the way before they had a chance to react.

  John pushed down on the door’s lever, unlocking the mechanism.

  The corpses in the room spun towards him, snarling.

  He swung the door open and ran out into the hallway, holding Rebecca’s arm as she struggled to keep up with him.

  The couple ran down the hall towards the stairwell once again, sprinting as fast as they could manage. They ran inside the stairwell and slammed the wooden door shut.

  The swarm of ghouls rushed out of the room and gave chase, quickly gaining momentum and closing the distance.

  A burst of gunfire came from the distance and echoed along the hallway.

  The ghouls stopped mid-stride, turned towards the noise, and dashed towards the noise.

  A pale man wearing a bloodied hospital gown started to follow the others towards the gunfire, but stopped… He slowly turned his attention back towards the stairwell door and continued his pursuit after John and Rebecca.

  He started bashing against the flimsy wooden door with his open palms, splintering the door bit-by-bit…

  At the bottom of the staircase, John and Rebecca snuck through the open doorway into the hospital’s lobby and hid behind a stack of ammunition crates.

  Rebecca looked around the room with surprise; it certainly had changed since she saw it last.

  The entire lobby was illuminated by bright halogen flood lamps. Crates of military equipment and ammunition were stacked aside large drums of disinfectant. Corpses of slain patients and hospital staff were stacked in front of the admission’s desk like cordwood, covered by a flimsy plastic sheet.
A plastic tunnel with a zippered flap had been erected around the hospital’s main entrance and temporary chemical decontamination showers were lined next to it. A large plaque hung on the wall above the admission’s desk, above the stack of bodies, and read: ‘Triburton Medical Center, Serving the Community, Serving You!’

  In the middle of the room, the plastic waiting room chairs were pushed aside and a table had been sat up with the hospital’s blue prints and a short-range radio sitting on top of it.

  Outside there were police sirens and the rumble of diesel engines.

  A group of masked soldiers and white-suits stood huddled around the table, staring down at the blue-prints and marking off areas with a red permanent marker.

  Suddenly the pale man from upstairs emerged from the stairwell. Screaming, he sprinted towards the men at the table, knocking over and shattering two halogen floodlights in the process.

  “Contact! Contact!” one of the startled soldiers shouted.

  The soldiers knocked aside the table and fired on the pale man while the white-suits ducked down and retreated.

  The pale man’s body jerked with each shot and his tattered hospital gown fell off of his body. He stumbled forward a few more paces before falling flat on the floor, naked and still.

  Cautiously, the soldiers kept their weapons pointed at the stairwell door, waiting.

  On the floor, the black substance started to leak from the pale man’s corpse and formed tiny, oily beads. The beads rolled their way across the tiles towards the stack of corpses in front of the admission’s desk, went underneath the plastic tarp, and started entering the corpses…

  The corpses started violently convulsing.

  Realizing what was happening; the soldiers started firing wildly into the massive stack of bodies, but it did little to impede the corpse’s rapid evolution.

  Meanwhile the weaponless white-suits cowered by the sealed exit tunnel.

  The reanimated corpses tore their way out of the plastic tarp, sprinted across the lobby, and took down the screaming soldiers one-by-one.

  Panicking, the white-suits unzipped the plastic flaps and ran outside through the tunnel. One of the white-suits stopped and quickly zipped the flap back up before taking off after the others.