TAGGED: THE APOCALYPSE

by Chiron, Joseph M

  “I’ve got you, Darlin’,” Candy cooed, holding her tightly, rocking her and stroking her hair. It felt good. “I’ve got you.”

  “Take their badges,” Jackie bent over her dead parents and unclipped Kurt’s badge from his belt. “All the doors open electronically with these badges.” Jackie was all business as he tossed Brit’s badge to Sven, who clipped it to his belt. Eve watched Sven, even as he watched her every move, out of the corner of his eye. A part of her liked the attention, but Sven and his friends had just murdered her parents. She hated them. She couldn’t remember why she had been attracted to him. These were awful people.

  Brit regained consciousness and began moaning loudly, just like the infected. Mack and the two brothers swiveled their guns toward his head. Eve stiffened, terrified that they were now going to shoot Brit. Eve grabbed her head and screamed to drown out the inevitable gunshot. She felt that she was losing her mind. Candy held her tighter.

  “Stop! Don’t kill him,” Jackie barked. “Search them. Take their weapons,” Jackie ordered. Jeb and his sons lined up the remaining survivors against the wall at gunpoint while Jackie and Jeb covered them.

  Candy walked Eve over to some chairs. “Come over here, Darlin’.” Dixon followed closely.

  “He could be infected,” Jeb said, referring to Brit.

  “He’s been shot, not bitten,” Jackie said. “Doc, we need you in the control tower now, over.” Jackie pulled the rechargeable guard radio out of his back pocket and spoke into it.

  “I’ll try to get over there. It’s getting pretty crxxxxx….” The higher-pitched voice of the doctor was drowned out by garbled static.

  Only Dennis and the two guards were left alive. The first guard was carrying a portable arsenal, including an M-16, a Glock 9mm on his hip, a seven-inch folding knife in his back pocket, three stun grenades on his belt, twenty pounds of extra ammo, a backup pistol strapped to his leg and a telescoping metal baton. “Jackpot,” Mack said. The brothers snapped up the loot, fighting over it the moment it hit the ground.

  “We’re on your side,” the other guard complained, perspiring heavily. “You don’t have to do this.” He was immediately relieved of his M-16 and the Glock 9mm on his thigh, all his extra ammo, a Taser and two cans of mace. Mack attached the guard’s electronic badge to his belt. When Mack lifted his shirt, there was a weeping chasm in his side that went all the way down to expose the hip bone. Mack jumped back like he’d been bitten by a snake, furiously wiping his hand on his pants, and then immediately ran over to the antibacterial dispenser by the door to disinfect them. Mack’s brothers, Bubba and Tiny, pointed their weapons at the sick man. The other guard and Dennis dove away. The putrid smell of rot filled the room from his sores. The guard turned toward them with weird red eyes and big teeth, “Please,” he said.

  Jeb fired the head shot that put him down. Bubba and Tiny fired several shots of their own.

  Eve heard someone screaming hysterically and suddenly realized it was herself. Candy held onto her tightly, desperately trying to calm her. Eve couldn’t breathe, and when she stood up her head spun. She felt like she was going to pass out.

  “Get her out of here!” Jackie ordered.

  “Where?” Candy said, holding Eve up. “There isn’t any place else.”

  “If you kill me, you’re all dead! This place goes into melt down and you’re all toast!” Dennis screamed, pressing his four hundred pound frame to the wall in an attempt to disappear.

  “Cease fire!” Jackie calmed the shooters. “He’s right. Take your clothes off.”

  Dennis looked at Jackie like he was speaking Greek. “Now! Take your clothes off; both of you.” Jeb and his sons raised their weapons threateningly. Dennis complied, peeling off his tee shirt to reveal layers of flapping blubber and man boobs much larger than her own, and larger than any woman’s Eve had ever seen. “All of it. Now.” Jackie forced both men to remove all of their clothes, even their socks. “Now turn around slowly.”

  When Jackie and Zeb were satisfied there were no bites or scratches on the men, Jackie said, “Okay, put your clothes back on. Now, him and her.” Jackie pointed to Brit and then Eve. Eve shrank further into Candy’s arms. Now she would be raped, Eve thought. First, her parents were murdered and now she would be raped.

  “No,” Sven stood between them.

  “Hasn’t she been through enough? She just lost her parents, Jackie,” Candy said.

  Jackie’s face softened toward his friends, but his words were firm, “We have to know if she’s been bitten or scratched.”

  “I can check her,” Candy said. Eve looked hopefully at Candy. They seemed to listen to her.

  “They’re rushing the fences. We barely made it over here. Two of my nurses turned back.” The doctor entered in a hurry, and after a moment of confusion from the other three dead bodies littering the floor, he made a bee line straight for the moaning Brit. “He’s lost some blood. We need to get him to medical, stat.”

  “The doctor will check her for bites,” Sven said.

  Dixon barked at the window. Candy said, “Holy shit! Have you seen what’s happening out there?”

  All present immediately looked out the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree windows to see what appeared from there to be ants covering the twelve foot high fence, crowded against the entrance and spread out along each side. Behind that was a mass of black shapes jumping and writhing and moving in the darkness.

  “They’re rushing the fences,” Sven said. “We need to get out there.”

  “Candy, you’re in charge of the two prisoners and the girl. Accompany the doctor to medical and stay there,” Jackie ordered.

  “Where am I gonna go, out there?” The guard said.

  “You need me to run this plant,” Dennis reminded them. Candy unclipped his badge from his belt and hung it around her neck.

  “Lock them in the exam room at medical. Don’t let them out of your sight.”

  “Keep Dixon with you. I don’t want him getting hurt.” Sven reached for Eve, but she recoiled closer into Candy. “And take care of Eve.”

  CHAPTER 9: October 15, 7 p.m.

  “The good news is that the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs and just passed through,” the doctor explained over the unconscious Brit on the exam table. “We stopped the bleeding. As long as he rests for twenty four to forty eight hours, he’ll probably be fine. As long as…well, a lot of things could go wrong, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Please don’t shoot him, Eve prayed silently.

  “So he’s not infected,” Dennis said.

  “No. I’m fairly certain the ravening infection is transmitted primarily through bites. Although, any direct saliva to blood transmission method will suffice.”

  “So you have to be bitten to get infected,” Dennis explained.

  “Or scratched or have an infected spit into an open wound…”

  “Ewww…” Eve said.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news.” The doctor folded his hands and assumed a professionally somber tone. “Several hours ago, your friend Needles succumbed to the infection.”

  “What?” Candy looked at him confused. She, like the others, was still recovering from the sprint from the control tower with the injured Brit. They carried Brit on a stretcher. On one end was the doctor. Initially two nurses took the foot end, but were more unwilling than unable to carry the load, so the guard replaced them, easily carrying his half of the load. The guard seemed to feel better about his imprisonment after helping out.

  There was a pitched battle going on at the fence. The shooting, the shouting of the men was only a hundred yards away. It felt like it could break through at any moment.

  “Brace yourselves.” The doctor grabbed a floor-length heavy curtain with both hands and then yanked it back to reveal the darkened glass-enclosed examination room. Immediately, something threw itself at the glass to get at them; then again and again. Whatever it was clearly did not understand that there was thick glass between th
em and it.

  The examination room was darkened with all the lights out, inside the room with lights on outside the glass where they stood. They could only hear the pounding and see glimpses of the dark shape as it threw itself against the glass to get at them. It’s red eyes glowed eerily in the darkness.

  “Watch this.” The doctor flicked three light switches and the room was flooded with light. The beast shrieked and with lightning speed crumpled itself into a ball under the gurney, covering its eyes and head to escape the light. “They are very sensitive to the light. Apparently, they are only active during dusk and evening. They see better during the night than we see in the day.” The doctor flicked two of the three light switches and then another switch beside. Now the room they stood in was darkened and a few track lights illuminated the opposite wall leaving the rest of the exam room in darkness. With lightning speed the beast rose and launched itself again at the window.

  “The good news is they are not active during the daylight. The bad news is that with all the dust and debris in the atmosphere, the sun only breaks through the haze about six to eight hours on a sunny day.”

  “Oh Needles. I’m sorry,” Candy said.

  “What are those red marks all over its arms?” Eve asked. Saliva ran down the thick glass where the beast had been spitting at them and trying to bite them through it. It had a thick mane of hair like a lion, four pronounced canines and seemed to prefer to move on four legs, but could move just as easily on two. It looked like a skeleton.

  “I’m glad you asked that,” the doctor smiled. “Apparently, it’s starving. It seems to feed only on blood and lacking any other food source it will feed on itself. It will literally drink itself dry, I suspect, hastening its own demise, unless it finds another food source.”

  “You mean us - humans?” Eve said.

  “That’s my friend in there, you son of a bitch.” Candy sounded defeated, her eyes misting.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…the thing is, it’s not your friend, Needles, anymore.”

  “Ben. His real name was Benjamin.”

  “It’s not Benjamin, anymore. You see your friend Benjamin succumbed to his infection about six hours ago. He was clinically dead. No heartbeat; no breathing. We had him connected to an EKG machine at the time. He flat-lined for approximately sixty seconds before re-animating. The interesting thing is that there appeared to be no indication that either the heart or lungs were working following re-animation. It’s dead. The infection itself actually re-animates the corpse. The hair and the nails grow extremely fast and the teeth- clearly this is some bi-product of the infection itself. In fact, even when humans die, the hair and nails continue to grow for several weeks or even months after death. Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is its actually dead. It’s a walking corpse.”

  “Ben. Benjamin!” Candy called through the glass. The beast stopped, clearly hearing her call. It sniffed the air. Candy felt a moment of hope, then it lunged against the glass, baring its teeth and attempting to scratch and bite its way through the glass. The doctor calmly flicked the two light switches flooding the room with light; it scream/growled and like a flash it was under the gurney in a ball.

  “It moves so fast,” Eve said.

  “It’s actually moving quite a bit slower than it was. It’s growing weaker and slower from lack of a food source and drinking its own blood. Here’s the problem. A lot of the medical supplies are in that room. Ideally, it will expire on it’s own in a day or two. Otherwise, well, we may have to go in there and put it down.”

  Candy turned away, covering her face with her hand.

  “And now for the really bad news,” the doctor folded his hands and stood opposite them. “Out in that waiting room are lots of people who have been bitten, scratched, and spit on by these things. We need to separate them from the general population before they die and become one of these things too.”

  “Where’s Thompson?” Candy asked.

  “Who?”

  “The guard that we took as a prisoner from the control tower. I only know his name, because his badge is around my neck.” Candy waved the electronic badge with his picture on it.

  “Hang onto that. That could come in handy later,” Dennis said.

  They left Brit with a nurse in the separate examination room. He would probably be safer there than in the general population.

  CHAPTER 10: October 15, 7:15 p.m.

  The smell hit them all as they entered the medical unit. Eve doubled over and threw up from the stench. Dixon sniffed it and immediately began lapping it off the floor before Candy could yank him away.

  “You can’t bring that dog in here,” the doctor said.

  Candy stiffened, “His name is Dixon and he goes wherever I go.”

  The doctor peered at her momentarily over his wire-rimmed glasses, then nodded assent and continued walking. “I need your help triaging the patients.” He walked over to the woman with the toddler Eve had seen earlier. The child was sitting at her feet looking dazed, with very bloodshot eyes. The mother looked even worse up close. Her entire left side was covered with blood. “Miss, I’m a doctor. I’m going to take a look at your arm.” She gave no indication she had heard anything. The doctor gently lifted up her blood-soaked sleeve to reveal the arm ripped off below the elbow. The bone was visible, and the arm itself looked like it had been chewed off. He lifted her chin to look in her eyes and then checked both hands. He shook his head sadly, bending down to look into the young child’s eyes. Immediately he said, “Group A top priority. Have a nurse re-apply a tourniquet. She’s been seriously injured, and both appear to be in the advanced stages of infection. We need to remove them both from the general population, stat. Take them to that room there.” “Come with me Darlin,” Candy said to the woman who stared blankly ahead. She then got behind her and began gently moving her and the child toward the other room. Dixon let out a low growl and remained a discrete distance from the woman and her child. Eve stuck to Candy like a lost puppy.

  Eve waved her hand in front of her nose, clapping a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from chucking again. “The smell. It’s them,” she whispered to Candy. It was a combination of body odor, vomit and something much worse she couldn’t quite put her finger on but that if pressed would describe only as the smell of death itself. They put the woman and child into the room, just as three of the nurses showed up to help.

  The visibly ill were not hard to find. It seemed that around twenty five percent had a scratch or a bite, boils or fever. And the sicker they were, the worse they smelled. Dixon growled and his hackles went up whenever they got close to an obviously infected person. He also seemed to growl at a lot of people that didn’t appear to be sick. Maybe this giant dog was a little freaked out too, Eve thought.

  “What if the doctor’s right that all the sick ones turn into those things?” Eve whispered in Candy’s ear.

  Candy led them to the doctor who was examining a patient in the midst of the chaos. “We put all the sick ones we could find in the other room.”

  “Very good.”

  A muffled scream sounded to their left.

  “What’s happening in there?” Dennis pointed through the glass into the Group A top priority sick room, where they were separating the bitten, scratched, and visibly sick patients from the general population.

  Two nurses had been tending to the woman with the arm ripped off and the sick child. From the other side of the glass, they could see that a small animal had latched onto the neck of one of the two female nurses with its teeth. A closer look revealed that it was the young child of the injured mother. The other nurse and several by standers were frantically trying to get it off. The mother seemed to be unaware of anything around her. A well-intentioned male bystander yanked on the feet of the toddler, dislodging it from the nurse’s throat, suddenly releasing a torrent of blood from the neck of the nurse. The nurse collapsed in a puddle of her own blood. There were screams, and people inside began rushing to get out
of the room back into the general population, but the door was locked.

  “This is bad,” Dennis said.

  “We have to help them. Get them out,” Candy said, raising her pistol and looking to Dennis and Eve for support. “We have to unlock that door or they’ll all die.” Candy pushed toward the door, gun in one hand, with the other hand pulling Eve, who held Dixon on the leash. As Candy reached for the handle to unlock it, blood spattered the door and glass in a wave. People were screaming inside.

  Dennis grabbed her wrist. “Don’t. It’s too late. You let them in here and we’re all dead.”

  Candy pulled her wrist from his grip, then stood there looking defeated in through the glass. Apparently, at least four had turned. The toddler was biting and scratching ankles and calves like a Tasmanian devil. Its mother, with the missing arm, suddenly became vicious, ferociously bringing down two more and scratching five more in the few seconds since they began. The others, who had changed, were equally vicious, biting and savaging any within their reach. Everyone had blood on them. A young woman with a gigantic, red welt on her neck pressed herself against the glass, begging them to open the door. Candy’s hand began to rise to open the door. Dennis gripped it strongly. “Look at her neck. It’s too late.”

  “Do you think we’re safe in here?” Eve asked.

  Two men and a woman in the general population room where they stood, who had not previously appeared to be ill, suddenly dropped to the floor unconscious and began vomiting. “Oh shit,” Dennis said under his breath.

  Candy grabbed Eve and pulled her and Dixon toward the door. Dennis stuck to them like a shadow. “Come on, we’re going back to the control tower.” But just as they reached the entrance to the medical unit, the men who had been fighting at the fence came running from everywhere. Many were cramming themselves through the door like Black Friday at WalMart.

  On the other side of the room, by the priority sick room, a large scuffle erupted, and they could hear screaming and then two gun shots rang out. “Follow me.” Dennis grabbed Candy by her hand and they formed a train cutting through the crowd. Candy held onto Dixon’s leash and Eve held onto Candy’s pants with her hand.