I turn towards Lauren and say, "I would rather of you stayed home where it was safe Lauren."
"I can't just stay at the house, my nerves would be driving me crazy about what is going on and if you were safe," says Lauren.
I reply, "I understand but I don't want you getting hurt or anything, stay close to us and listen to what we say. I'm sure inside the hospital is going to be chaotic."
We arrive at the main entrance to Tampa Hospital. The parking lot is packed with cars, police cars, and several ambulances. As we drive towards the main hospital entrance, it is obvious that something big happened here between police, people, and zombies. There are bodies, cars, and debris scattered all around the hospital parking lot and hospital entrance. Ambulances and police cars are partially blocking the emergency entrance to the hospital, but we can still make our way into the hospital. I pull into the hospital parking lot and see bodies of police officers, hospital workers, and people scattered throughout the hospital parking lot and property. Clearly the police came to provide help at this hospital but they might have become overrun by zombies and people.
I park the police SUV in my parking spot at the hospital, which is close to the entrance to the hospital. I have worked for Tampa Hospital for 10 years now. I did my last year of clinical rotation here and was offered a job when I graduated from medical school. I am a doctor of orthopedics with a focus in sports medicine. Tampa Hospital was a great place to work. We had a great staff, friendly patients, and all the equipment and tools to be successful every day. Over the years, I have seen plenty of crazy situations and patients. Nothing like the current state of the world however. Hopefully I will find out some answers about what is going on and what to make of all these zombies.
I take the keys out of the ignition, turn to Lauren and Phil and say, "Keep your eyes peeled for anything and everything. We need to get up to the 5th floor. Be careful when you are walking past bodies on the ground as they could be zombies."
Lauren and Phil both answer, “Yes sir. 5th floor is where we go. Check the bodies on the ground and around the hospital.”
We all exit the SUV and make our way to the hospital entrance. Phil wearing the police body armor is walking carefully with his shotgun drawn to shoulder height, Lauren is walking cautiously with a handgun in her right hand, and I have a handgun in my left hand and my samurai sword in its holder on my back.
We enter the first floor of the hospital; the hospital has power but occasional power surges are making the lights flicker on and off as the backup generators keep the power to the hospital going. The first floor of the hospital is a mess. We can see gunshots in the walls. Waiting room chairs are scattered all around. Bodies are all around the first floor, in waiting room chairs, and against the walls. Some of the bodies are moving and groaning as we walk past them. None of the bodies look or sound to be alive. As we walk past a couple bodies, I see an elderly couple lying on the ground holding hands. They must have died on the floor and held hands in their last dying moments.
We get to the elevator and hit the up button, but the elevators aren't working. I try the elevator button again but see that it’s not working. I wouldn’t trust using the elevator anyway as we might end up getting stuck inside if the power fails.
I hit the elevator button one last time and say, "Let's take the stairs, I don't have faith in the elevator working properly anyway."
We walk past various dead bodies on the floor and bodies sitting up on the floor in the hallway. The hospital has a variety of smells. It’s a mixture of dead bodies, cleaning chemicals, blood, and burnt hair.
We turn right at the end of a hallway and go down another hallway to find the side stairwell. As we walk down the hallway, we hear moans and groans. We aren’t sure if the noises are from zombies or patients, but the plan is to get some supplies and check the 5th floor. We don't enter any rooms as we are focused on the stairs to the 5th floor.
We get to the stairwell door. Run through the doorway and up the first flight of stairs. As the stairwell door closes behind me, I hear several zombies come out of first floor rooms.
The stairs are clear of people and zombies. We make it up to the 5th floor. As we enter the 5th floor through the stairwell, we find it empty and mostly quietly. We walk down the hallway and find several of the hospital room doors are closed. I see some of the hospital staff employees have died and their bodies are lying face down on the floor. Several of them have gunshots or stab wounds to the head. I turn the corner and hear someone making noise. I hear someone at the nurse’s station.
"Where is it? C'mon, where is the damn key?" shouts a man as he moving papers and objects around at the nurse’s station.
We take cover in an empty hospital room. I see the man, but can't make out who it is. I see that he is wearing a white coat and is looking for something at the nurse’s station. I want to see what he is trying to get, before I interrupt him.
"Jackpot, thank you Shirley for leaving your keys here," says the man.
I see the man gets keys from the desk. He walks away from the nurse’s station. I want to follow him.
I turn to Phil and Lauren and say, “Stay here. I’m going to follow the guy in the white coat.”
I exit the room and walk slowly down the hall after the man in the white coat. The man turns down a hallway to another nurse’s station. He tries to open the medicine cabinet but drops the keys. As he bends down to pick up the keys, I notice who he is.
It’s Dave Wilson, he’s a medical doctor that I have worked with for the past two years. He’s a smart guy but tends to be full of himself and does not like to listen to anyone. I wonder why he is here all alone.
I ask, "Dave? Is that you?"
"Who wants to know?" shouts Dave.
I reply, "It's me Ryan Briggs, Dr. Briggs. I work here."
"What do you want?" asks Dave.
I ask, "Do you know what's going on here? What happened?"
"It's the end of the freaking world Ryan. Every man for themselves. I have seen some crazy things man. People eating people, the dead come back to life, and people being animals," says Dave.
I respond, "We have seen some crazy stuff also. I can't believe what people are doing to each other now. It's like some crazy science fiction stuff."
I approach Dave by the medicine cabinet. Dave turns around slowly. As he turns around I see that he has been bitten on the right thigh. His hand is all bloody from applying pressure to his wound. His right thigh wound looks to be very deep.
I say, "Let me see that wound man. It looks bad. How did this happen?"
Dave replies, "This patient bit me yesterday. He came in with bad stomach pains, a fever, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, sweating, and complaining of being sick. Nothing out of the ordinary from what we see at good ole Tampa Hospital. We had a rash of people complaining of various things, the flu, stomach pains, fever, and chest pain. We checked them all out and they all had the same thing. This weird flu strain or something in their system. I don't know if it was the flu, but it was some sort of virus. We never saw anything like this before and heard reports from other local hospitals, as well as hospitals in Orlando and Miami. The virus wasn't just local to Tampa. We heard reports of this virus being all over the east coast of the United States. We don't know how far it has spread, but we do know that it's not just a local virus to Tampa Bay."
Dave falls to the ground, struggling to breath now. I help him sit up and regain a normal breathing pattern.
"I was trying to get some gauze and antibiotics to help treat my wound, but I’m not sure if it will help," says Dave.
I ask, "Where is everyone else at? Where are the other hospital employees?"
"They all left when the patients started attacking the staff and turning into the undead. The cops came and it turned into a war zone. After I was bit, I killed the patient that bit me. I must have passed out on the floor. I just woke up about an hour ago, only to find the hospital empty. You have to make sure that you kill the bra
in. It's the only thing that works against these things," says Dave.
I reply, "Thank you for the information Dave. Did you gather any other information about these undead zombie things, or current end of the world situation?"
Dave struggles to respond, he drops the medication cabinet key, but says, “It looks to be a result of some manmade virus. The virus might have something to do with food or vaccines, but we are not sure exactly."
Dave gasps for his final breaths of air and then stops breathing. I check his pulse but don’t get a reading. I put my head next to his mouth, but don’t hear or feel him breathing.
Phil and Lauren come over to the nurse’s station.
Lauren asks, “Is he dead?”
I stand up and reply, "Yeah, he just died. He told me some valuable information though. Let's get this medication and get out of here.”
Phil says, “I’m going to take a quick look around and sweep the floor for any other supplies or useful items.”
I pick up the medication cabinet key that Dave dropped. I unlock the cabinet and see a half-stocked medicine cabinet. It has a variety of drugs, such as Penicillin, Amoxicillin, Cephalexin, Cipro, Tetracycline, and Tobrex. Lauren starts loading up the medication into a bag. As Lauren is loading up the medication bag, I take a quick look around the hospital rooms for anything useful or any zombies. Dave starts to move and groan. Dave has now turned into a zombie and he lunges towards Lauren. He grabs her leg.
Lauren screams, “Help!”
Dave is about to bite on Lauren’s right leg. I grab a throwing knife from my belt and throw it at Dave. The knife lands in Dave's head and kills him instantly.
"You have to kill the brain," I say to Lauren as I pull my throwing knife out of the Dave’s head.
Lauren's scream attracted a bunch of zombies in various rooms on the 5th floor now. Zombies from all over the 5th floor come to our location. The nurses station is now surrounded by zombies. Lauren and I block off both entrances of the C-shaped nurse’s station with chairs and office supplies. As we block the station, I take out a few zombies.
Phil turns the corner, after scavenging for supplies to find Lauren and I trapped. Phil fires several shotgun bullets, which takes out several zombies. One side of the nurse’s station is clear now. Lauren and I hop over the empty side and run towards Phil. Lauren shoots a couple zombies, but runs out of bullets quickly. I shoot a couple zombies, but soon find myself out of bullets now.
A zombie lunges towards my left leg. I move out of the way and at the same time, I take out my samurai sword from behind my back. I kill several zombies with my katana. I am slashing, gashing, and stabbing zombies as they make their way towards us. Phil takes out the last remaining zombies that were attacking him and gives Lauren a bullet magazine for her gun. I am taking out zombies left and right, but one comes out of the room behind me. The zombie is about to bite my right shoulder.
Boom!
Phil fires a shot with his handgun and blows a hole in the zombie’s head. Brains and blood come flying out of the zombie’s head and go all over the hospital floor. I look at Phil with a look of relief and give him a thankful nod.
I see a couple of zombies that are still alive on the hospital floor. I kill the last zombies that fell to the floor with my katana. Lauren runs over to me, she starts to cry as she hugs me.
I ask, "Are you ok Lauren?"
"Yeah, it was just scary is all. I'm ok though," says Lauren.
We check a couple of remaining rooms for any supplies but don’t find anything useful. Lauren takes the bag with all the medications, and we move down to a couple more medication cabinets. We find some more medical supplies and several bottles of various medications. As we clean out the last medication cabinet, we make our way back to the stairwell.
We get to the stairs and hear zombies moaning and groaning in the stairwell now. It’s dimly light as only the emergency lights are working in the stairwell. They must have followed us in the stairwell on the first floor.
Lauren asks, “Do you hear that? It sounds like a lot of them!”
I reply, “It sounds like they are only on the first and possibly second floor stairs though. They keeping falling down the stairs. The stairs are giving them trouble. Let's go down the stairs as far as we can. Hopefully we can make it down to the first or second floor."
We head down the stairs and make it down to the 3rd floor before we run into a couple zombies. Phil takes out a zombie with his handgun and Lauren kicks a zombie down the stairs. The zombie that Lauren kicked falls down the stairs and takes a couple zombies along with him as he is falling. Phil shoots another zombie, and we attempt to enter the 2nd floor entrance. Phil holds the door open, while Lauren and I pass through the doorway onto the 2nd floor. As Phil holds the door open, a zombie tries to bite Phil on the shoulder. The zombie can't get through the body armor though.
Phil laughs and says, “What a stupid zombie.”
Phil turns towards the zombie and kicks the zombie down the stairs. He watches the zombie as he falls down the stairs. Phil then goes through the 2nd floor doorway and meets Lauren and me.
"What are we going to do now?" asks Lauren.
I reply "Let's try the other stairwell."
We run to the other stairwell at the other end of the floor. The second floor is the pediatric floor. It is full of bright colors on the walls, and fun things for children to play with. As we run to the other side of the floor to get to the other stairwell, I notice that all the rooms have their doors closed. We pass several deceased hospital workers and an elderly male on the floor. I notice that they all have knife wounds to various points of their heads. Someone took them out when they were zombies or before they became zombies. We make it to the other stairwell and find it blocked with chairs, desks, and other objects.
"That's just great. What are we going to do?" asks Lauren.
I reply, “I don’t know yet, but we will figure something out.”
Lauren, Phil and I meet in the center nurses station and try to figure out an idea of what to do. I take notice of the patient rooms that are around the nurse’s station. I see that all the rooms have their doors closed except for one. I find that odd that most of the rooms have the doors closed.
I turn to Phil and Lauren and say, “All of the rooms have their doors closed. That usually is never the case. I wonder if the hospital staff closed them for a reason?”
Phil replies, “Whoever was working here, probably wanted to keep the occupants in their rooms.”
I reply, “Let’s stay by each other and check out the floor for supplies, medications, and anything useful that will help us get out of here alive.”
We first check out the nurse’s station and find a couple of magazines, a comic book, and some crayons. Lauren walks over to the medication cabinet and finds it locked. I try my key that I got on the 5th floor but it won’t work on this floors medication cabinets. The medication cabinets have clear glass doors on them. I take out my knife and try to break the glass with the end of my knife. I jam the knife into the glass and it cracks, but doesn’t fully break. The glass is designed to crack but not fully break. We need to find a medication cabinet key for this floor.
I say to Lauren and Phil, “I can’t open the medication cabinets without a key. We need to find one. Let’s check if we can find one around here.”
Phil, Lauren, and I check one last time around the nurse’s station but don’t find any keys. I exit the nurse’s station and walk towards the bodies of the hospital staff that are lying on the floor. I walk over to the body. I find it face down on the floor. I turn the body over but don’t find any keys in the woman’s scrubs. I move over to the other hospital staff member. I kneel to examine her scrubs as she is sitting with her back against the wall. She is an older woman who is wearing kitten scrubs. Her name tag reads, “Janet Quinn.” I knew this woman. She was very nice but a bit of a loner. She was always talking about her cats when I went past her in the hospital cafeteria. I check her scrubs but do
n’t find any keys. I stand up and am annoyed that I didn’t find anything.
I see the one door that is open on the hospital floor. I walk down the hallway and stand outside the door. The door is partially open. I can’t see directly into the room.
Phil and Lauren walk next to me as I stand in the doorway.
I say to Lauren, “Phil and I are going to check the room out. You stay out here and keep a lookout for us.”
Lauren says, “Ok. I will keep it all clear for you guys.”
I take out my handgun and Phil raises his shotgun to shoulder level. I gently push the door open. The door makes a loud creaking sound as it opens. I hear something move slowly as I walk into the room. I take one step into the room and hear that something is trapped in the bathroom.
Phil and I walk all the way into the room and look at the closed bathroom door. It sounds like two zombies are trapped inside. Nothing else is in the room besides the hospital bed, an empty chair, and a bedside table. I motion for Phil to open the door as I provide cover. Phil walks over to the bathroom door handle and moves to the side of the door. I move to my left so my line of sight is on the doorway and nowhere near Phil. Phil looks back at me and checks that I am ready for him to open the door. We hear hands slapping the door and zombie screams coming from inside the bathroom. I nod my head that I am ready, and Phil pushes the door open. The two zombies fall to the ground. It is a nurse and a young teenage girl. The nurse gets up and starts to come towards me. She steps out of the bathroom.
Boom!
Phil shoots the zombie nurse in her left temple.
The young teenage girl zombie is stuck in the bathroom. Her left leg looks to be broken from when the bathroom door hit her. She is aggressively reaching towards me and I walk into the bathroom. I feel bad for her. The girl looks to be about 13 or 14 years old. She looks to have been having chemotherapy and radiation for some type of cancer. She is completely bald and very skinny.
I feel bad that she is a zombie that I’m about to kill, but also that she suffered with cancer. Cancer sucks, no matter what type it is. Cancer is such a draining and scary thing. I would always see kids coming in and out of the hospital. I always wanted them to get better. I want everyone to get better but especially sick kids.
Fight 4 Us (Book 1): The Beginning Page 6