Static Omnibus

by Hunt, James

  “Yeah, I was getting that feeling too.” The nurse paced back and forth, cradling his chin in his hand, rubbing his skin raw.

  Wren looked at the woman lying in the hospital bed, her head shaved, needles and wires stuck in her arm and tubes shoved down her nose and mouth. From the looks of her, she couldn’t have been much older than Wren, but with her skin so pallid and her body thin from whatever disease inflicted her, it was hard to be certain. The woman looked so still and quiet, almost as if she were already dead.

  “The moment I open those doors, Doctor Reyes will trigger a quarantine lockdown, and once that happens, no one is going anywhere. But there might be a work-around.”

  “Then hurry,” Wren replied. “I’m not sure how much time we have left.”

  The nurse headed for the door, but before he was out of earshot, she called to him. “Do you know what happened to her?” She stared at the patient, unsure of what would kill her first: the disease or the madmen in control of the hospital.

  “No.”

  “Can she even hear anything? Does she know we’re here?”

  “I’m not sure. I never worked in the ICU before. I only graduated nursing school a few months ago. This is my first week at this hospital.”

  Wren wondered if she had family, a husband, or friends that came to see her. If she did, she imagined the only reason they weren’t here was because of the power failure. With emergency vehicles barely able to navigate through traffic, she doubted any non-emergency personnel would be able to move through that mess. Her mind suddenly drifted to Doug and the divorce papers. She knew he was out in the chaos, on a call, trying to save someone’s life—perhaps a woman just like herself, trapped somewhere. But all of those calls, all of those long nights, had taken a toll on both of them.

  Wren finally left, leaving the woman in peace and to whatever fate awaited her. She remained quiet on the walk back to the front of the ICU. She turned the corner to the main hallway, where the entrance doors were located, and saw Addison near the windows. Her first instinct was to scream, but she bit her tongue, afraid the noise would draw attention. She broke out into a hobbled, pain-filled sprint.

  Addison was fiddling with her camera when Wren yanked her away from the doors in a panicked hurry, keeping the two of them low as her daughter dangled from her one good arm. “Mom! What are you doing?” Addison squirmed and fidgeted, clutching the camera in her hands.

  “Addison, listen to me. You don’t ever go near that door.” Wren shook her daughter’s shoulders. “You scared me half to death.”

  Addison lowered her head. “I’m sorry.” She opened the camera and extended it to Wren. “I heard people outside the hallway, so I went to see them. I thought if I could get them on camera doing something bad like they do on TV, then it would help.”

  Wren’s expression softened. She couldn’t fault her daughter for trying. “That was very brave of you, but you have to be careful. These people will hurt you if they see you, so you have to stay hidden.” She took the camera and rewound the playback.

  The picture was shaky, Addison fumbling the device in her hands. Most of the footage was of the door, but when Addison lifted the camera high above her head, Wren saw two terrorists, one of them carrying a bag. The two were speaking quickly, their motions hurried.

  Wren squinted at the tiny screen, trying to figure out what they were pulling from the pack, but the screen kept wavering back and forth. She paused the film then rewound it again and zoomed in for a closer look.

  The devices were small, brick-like, and she had to watch it a few times before she realized what she was looking at. Once it struck her, she slammed the camera shut and dragged Addison back to Nurse Malla, who was still watching Chloe.

  “There you are, Addison,” Malla said. “We wondered where you ran off to.”

  “Keep the girls here,” Wren said, ignoring the nurse’s apologies, then turned to both of her daughters. “You two do not move. You hear me?” Wren kept her tone strict, and both of them nodded.

  Wren clutched the camera tightly, searching the hallways for Doctor Reyes and the nurse she spoke with earlier. She found the doctor in one of the patient rooms, a cluster of nurses around him, all of them casting disapproving glares at her presence. “We have to get everyone out of here now.”

  Reyes didn’t look up from his clipboard, scribbling down notes. “I told you before, Mrs. Burton, we have procedures in place for things like this. Everything will be resolved soon.”

  “I know. In fact, the people that shot up the hospital are taking care of that right now. And we need to get out of here before they decide to detonate the bombs they’re placing in the hallways.”

  Chapter 5

  Wren tore apart the desks on the nurses’ stations, looking for as many pieces of paper as she could tuck under her good arm along with a few pens then rushed to the conference room where Reyes had gathered the ICU staff.

  While she spread the papers out over the table , her mind was already sketching the outline of the building from what she remembered of her entrance. “I need to know every staircase that you know of on this floor, where it leads to, and any other security doors that will be locked.”

  Wren stabilized the elbow of her wounded arm then drew perfectly straight lines without the aided effort of a ruler. The basic building structure took shape, and she noticed the quiet. Wren brought the pen in her hand to rest and looked to the strained faces, half of them pale and frozen, the others confused in disbelief, and none more so than Reyes. The shock from the video had stripped them all of the invisible shields of protocols and procedures. “Doctor.”

  Beads of sweat rolled down Reyes’s temple as he stepped forward and knuckled his fists into the table. The same tremor in his arms also shook his voice. “The first available right turn out of the ICU doors is a hallway that leads to a corridor where the hospital’s cardiac center is located. There won’t be any security restrictions there.”

  “How many rooms?” Wren asked, offering a rough sketch of the unit and marking notes in the corner of the paper.

  “Twenty-one,” the doctor answered.

  “Twenty-five.” One of the nurses stepped forward, her voice no louder than a mouse’s squeak. “I used to work that rotation before I was moved to the ICU. Twelve rooms on the left, and thirteen on the right. The stairway at the end of the hall will be locked, though.”

  “Keyless entry?” Wren asked.

  The nurse shook her head, and Wren tightened her grip on the pen. Any door with a function beyond the doctor’s ID card was useless. Wren finished the sketch, scribbling dead end over the unit. “That’s good. What about the rest of the corridor?”

  The doctor rubbed his forehead till his skin turned raw and pink, an exhausted sigh escaping his lips. “Everything leads back to the front of the hospital near the ER. It takes up nearly all of the first level. There’s a staircase on the corner, but it’s blocked off because of construction. The only way out is the way you came in.”

  Wren slammed her pen onto the table. Anger and adrenaline rocketed her thoughts into overdrive, and she ran through every possible design that an architect would have used for the hospital. And while she wrestled with the logistics of how to escape, the rumble of panic spread through the others like wildfire.

  “They’re just going to blow us up?”

  “Somebody has to be doing something, right?”

  “We need to get out of here. I can’t die here. I won’t die here!”

  Every shrill outcry only compounded the next person’s despair. Wren shut her eyes, turning every stone in her mind over for anything that could aid in their escape. The groans of despair rumbled louder, reaching a crescendo.

  “Enough!” Wren’s cheeks flushed red, and her roar rolled over the room, casting everyone in silence. “This is what they want.” She pointed beyond the halls of the locked ICU doors. “We let fear take control of us, and we lose whatever reason we have left. They want…” The bombs. Wren pushed pas
t the nurses and cleared a path back to her sketches. “We need to go down.”

  “Down?” Reyes asked. “We’re on the first floor.”

  “I know.” Wren extended her sketch below the ER, creating another level and stretching the staircases underneath the building. “We’re going below it.”

  Everyone gathered closer, all of them clinging to the floating raft that was Wren’s mind, watching her deft hands bring the paper underneath her palm to life. She sketched notes in different corners, labeling utilities and their functions, creating a path that would lead them to safety. She dropped the pen and smoothed the paper over the table. “Whenever a building is set for demolition, the goal is to have the building implode on itself, and a part of that strategy involves the foundation.”

  “So, what? These guys are looking to detonate the building safely?” Reyes asked.

  “No, not with the placement of devices I saw in the hallway,” Wren answered. “It’s sporadic, flashy. If they do bring the building down, it won’t be pretty. But”—she pointed to the subterranean level on her sketch—“this hospital has utility functions below the main floor. A friend of mine worked on this place, and he designed it to give the hospital more of a streamlined appearance in functionality. And every floor is required to have an emergency exit, even below ground. We get to the utilities room, and we have our way out.”

  “I’ve been in the staircases,” one of the staff members said. “I haven’t seen one that goes below the ER.”

  “Well, one of them does.” Wren leaned back over the table, examining her sketch. “And we have to figure out which one.”

  With at least a chance of escape, the group exhaled a cloud of anxiety-ridden relief. Wren finished her sketches after a few quick interviews with the staff to add to her drawings then duplicated the maps by the number of staircases that they needed to investigate.

  The cluster of radios at the nurses’ station were checked for a charge then distributed among the six groups of five. “Make sure you’re on channel six. The moment you get to the lower level, you let the rest of us know. Keep it short, and make it quick. If the terrorists are listening in, they’ll know what we know.” She looked back to her girls, still huddled by the desk, Addison stroking her sister’s hair. “Surgical instruments.” Wren looked back to the group. “We need something to protect ourselves.”

  A nurse separated himself from the group. “I’ll take a look in the supply closet.” The weapons were distributed to every group member, and as Wren went over everyone’s route and role one last time, she noticed the tremor in every hand white-knuckled over the silver of surgical instruments.

  “Wren.” Reyes snuck up behind her, flanked by three nurses. For a moment, Wren thought he would try to stop her, and she wedged the knife between herself and the doctor. “We’ve chosen to stay behind.”

  The knife dipped in Wren’s hand. “What? Doctor, I told you that whatever procedures you think—”

  “It’s not about procedures,” the doctor interrupted. “I took an oath. There are still sick people in this unit, and I won’t abandon them. Not when there’s still a possibility of rescue.”

  “Doctor, these people, they—”

  “I know.” Reyes adjusted his glasses, straightening the bloodstained white coat, which he wore more like a suit of armor. The finality in the doctor’s words marked his own grave, but Wren didn’t push the subject any further. Whatever duty Reyes still felt he owed was his to fulfill, just as her duty propelled her to keep her children safe.

  The groups quickly gathered by the door, and Wren cupped her one good hand around Addison’s and Chloe’s, keeping the knife gripped painfully in her left. “We’re going to get out of here, okay girls? But when we leave, we have to be very quiet. We can’t talk at all, and you always need to hold on to one another and stay with me. I know this is scary, but we have to be brave.” She offered their hands a reassuring squeeze, their soft skin warm against the palm of her hand. “Let’s go.”

  Wren’s knuckles whitened over the blade’s handle, and she struggled to keep a lighter grip on the girl’s wrists. She peered through the small sliver of window the ICU doors offered and checked the hallway, the heat from her breath reflecting off the door and back onto her lips.

  Blood and bodies lined the floor of the hallway, but the living were nowhere in sight. Wren shouldered the door open and kept low, pushing both Addison and Chloe’s faces into her pants legs, trying to spare her daughters any more trauma. “Keep your eyes shut, girls.”

  Wren guided the three of them around the puddles of blood and outstretched arms and legs sprawled in every direction. The odor from the bodies on the floor mingled with the sterile stench of hospital disinfectant, and Wren tucked her nose into the crook of her shoulder.

  Once they arrived at the corridor, the groups split, each heading in their own direction, huddling close to one another, silent through the halls save for the light shuffle of feet.

  The body count only grew the closer Wren moved to the ER. Some lay face down, but the ones that faced up still had their eyes open, gazing into the false white light flickering above. Wren shuddered at the sight of them, and she felt the same warm spray of blood from the man who was shot in front of her. She involuntarily wiped her cheek on the sleeve in the crook of her elbow as though bugs had crawled on her face, their small legs tickling her skin.

  A faint echo of voices froze Wren in her tracks, and she shoved the girls behind her and against the wall. Shifting the blade to her good arm, she aimed toward the sound’s origins. Her breathing grew labored, and she looked behind her, debating whether to turn back. The hallway was door-free, leaving her completely exposed, with nothing but the gritty texture of the walls to claw.

  Then, slowly, the voices faded, and the hammering in her chest subsided. Wren dropped her arm, and both Addison and Chloe sobbed quietly into her stomach, flinging their arms around her waist. “Shh. It’s okay, girls.” She kept her voice a whisper. “We need to keep moving.” The girls offered little protest as Wren pulled them to the end of the hallway, where they passed more bodies and bombs.

  Wren crouched low before she poked her head around the corner, quickly looking in both directions of the hallway’s intersection. The trail of bodies grew thicker toward the ER entrance, where the door to the staircase just so happened to be positioned on the left. She turned back to the girls, both of them still huddled close to her leg, their little bodies trembling. She gently peeled their faces off her shirt, now sticking with sweat and tears. “Addison, do you remember that scary movie you saw over the summer that you watched at your friend Katie’s house?”

  Addison nodded, sniffling. “You said you didn’t want me to watch it, but her parents said that I could.”

  Wren wiped a tear from her daughter’s cheek. “And you remember how everything you saw was just pretend? It wasn’t real?” Again she nodded. “I need you to do that again. Whatever you see, just know that’s it pretend, okay? You don’t need to be scared.” Wren turned to Chloe. “And that goes for you too. Everything is pretend. Now, stay close, and remember to keep quiet.”

  Wren wrapped her fingers around their thin wrists, coaxing them around the corner, her glance shifting between the staircase door and the girls. They both kept their eyes glued on her as Wren maneuvered them around the outstretched legs and arms of the dead. Chloe tripped over a hand, but Wren caught her, and when her daughter glanced down at the arm attached to it, soundless tears burst from her eyes.

  The staircase door was only a few feet away but was blocked by a body with a smeared bloody handprint that stretched from the handle to the floor. Wren huddled the girls together next to the wall, and they clutched onto one another tightly, hiding their faces in each other’s shoulders.

  With her right arm, Wren grabbed the fallen nurse by the wrist, dragging him from the doorway. She strained against the heavy body, a trail of fresh blood smearing the floor with each pull. With the doorway finally clear, she reach
ed for the handle just as harsh, foreign voices echoed from behind the ER doors.

  In her panic, Wren let loose the door, and it clanged shut with a bang. She grabbed both girls by the hand, yanking them down the hall, jiggling the door handles along the way, each one of them locked. She tripped over a leg in her haste, twisting her ankle, and nearly fell but caught her balance with an outstretched arm. Her fingers grazed a door handle that gave way to her pull, and she ducked inside, shutting the door just before the masked men burst into the hallway.

  The room was dark, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, Wren found they were alone. She hurried Addison and Chloe under the empty patient bed, covering them with whatever she could find as harsh, hasty-tongued words flooded the hallway.

  “Stay quiet. And don’t move. No matter what.” Wren crawled to the door, locking it, still clutching the knife in her hand. She huddled herself in the corner, her fingers flexing against the handle. She pushed herself from the floor, the back of her shirt sliding against the wall. Keep walking. Just pass by.

  The mumbled jargon stopped right outside the door, and Wren’s eyes locked on the handle. She reached for it instinctively, locking her arm in place, raising the tip of the blade high above her head, every fiber of her muscles strung tight as a steel cable. A jerk rattled the steel handle, and her skin burst with sweat, the handle now warm and slick under her palm.

  Wren tensed her shoulder and arm, shouldering the door to offer more resistance. The handle shook violently as more jargon spewed through the door cracks along the frame, until finally Wren felt the handle loosen, the grip on the other side given up. The muffled voices moved farther down the hall, and Wren slowly uncurled her shaking fingers from the levered piece of steel.

  The two bumps that were Addison and Chloe underneath the blankets of the hospital bed poked out their heads then scooted hurriedly to their mother’s aid. She grabbed both of them, squeezing them tight, and felt the hot burst of water seep from the corners of her closed eyes. She took slow breaths, forcing herself to regain control. It wasn’t over until they were out of the building.