Our first move was to slowly circle the house, looking for any more bodies or zombies outside. Then we shined our flashlights through the basement windows to make sure we didn’t get any more surprises like at the pizza place. When that looked all clear, we split up to enter the house simultaneously from the front and back doors, which were both standing wide open.
I held my breath as we entered, and I wished I had a hand free to also hold my nose, as the odor of decomp was overpowering. There were two more bodies and two more zombies were thoroughly enjoying the corpses that were covered with tasty, high protein maggots—an unusual condiment, but a common one on bodies now that the weather had warmed up. The men dispatched the zombies with two quick shots. Again, neither of the human remains were small enough or large enough to be PayRay or his little sister. We slowly searched every room on the first floor, and then Cam cautiously led us up to the second floor of the expansive old Victorian home.
This was where the real house of horrors was at its most nauseating, in terms of both the smells and sights. The ten or so zombies of all shapes and sizes paid no attention to us whatsoever as we approached them down the hallway and entered the bedrooms. A few were startled by the gunshots, but not even loud noises would chase them away from their delicious meal of weeks-old corpses. When all of them had been efficiently eliminated, I had the unenviable task of examining fourteen sets of partially consumed human remains. I recognized a few of the people who had fallen face down and had only so far been eaten along the back sides of their torsos and limbs. They were PayRay’s people. There were also several corpses still wearing the telltale bandannas of the rival gang.
I was so angry at the stupidity and futility of a turf war in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but was considerably relieved to not find any bodies of children. However, in Yvonne’s room there were definite signs of a struggle, and one of the pair of pink scrunchies she always wore was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Then we gathered all the guns, ammunition, food, and supplies—of which there were considerable amounts—and exited the house.
“What kind of car did PayRay drive?” Cam asked as we finished loading everything into the vehicles.
I never thought to look to see if PayRay’s Cadillac Escalade was in the garage or on the street. It wasn't. That gave me hope that PayRay and his sister weren't home at the time of the raid, or they had somehow managed to escape the carnage. Before we left, I stuck a note on the front door saying that if they needed help to call me, come to my house this week, or get to Bannerman’s Island the following week.
Our convoy moved on to the hospital. And wouldn’t you know it, even though 99% of the population was dead or gone, we still couldn’t find a parking space! We took the time to move all of the ambulances, police cars, and army vehicles away from the emergency room entrance so we could park closer for easy loading, and a fast getaway if necessary.
For all the long hours I had spent in the hospital, I barely recognized it. The emergency room looked like a tornado had swept through it, and there were bodies covering the floor. The remains were mostly skeletal, but from the clothing I could tell they had been doctors, nurses, police, and patients. I couldn’t help looking at a few nametags of the medical staff and was heartbroken to see that I knew every one of them. Some had even been good friends.
But now was not the time to mourn the dead. Now was the time to grab what we needed and go as quickly as possible. It was clear that we were not the first to scavenge for supplies, but I was hoping that whoever had been here before didn’t know where all the good stuff was kept. And sure enough, after shooting the locks on a few doors and cabinets, we were rewarded with the mother lode of all the drugs a doctor’s heart desired.
And that was just the beginning. I loaded everything from cases of syringes and bedpans, to ultrasound machines and blood analyzers, onto gurneys and wheelchairs so the guys could roll it all out to the truck. Then we even loaded a few gurneys and wheelchairs onto the truck.
As each floor had different departments with their corresponding specialized instruments and equipment, we carefully made the rounds collecting whatever we could carry. My eyes lit up when we came upon the massive MRI and CT scanning machines, but Cam just shook his head and told me to be realistic.
Everything was going well until we reached the top floor and heard an ungodly sound. It appeared to be emanating from behind a set of double swinging doors, which each had a handwritten sign which read, “Warning, Isolation Ward, Authorized Personnel Only.” The guys wanted no part of whatever could be making the awful sounds in the abandoned isolation ward. However, after I made some remark about the questionable existence of their testicles, they manned up.
The windows in the swinging doors were blacked out, so we had no idea what lay beyond them. To avoid any in-your-face surprises, I placed a gurney at the center of the doors while the men formed a semicircle and readied their automatic weapons. I pushed very slowly until there was a wide enough space to determine that no one was ready to pounce. Then I pushed the gurney all the way through and swung my M-16 over my shoulder and raised it to my cheek.
The terrible gurgling, moaning, groaning sound was coming from the end of the hall, but first we made a cautious room-to-room search to make sure we weren’t going to have anything sneak up behind us. The first room contained four beds, with emaciated corpses strapped to each one. Each successive room presented the same grisly scene, although some of the corpses looked to be more recently deceased, which at first, made no sense. Finally, we came to the last room at the end of the hall, and I gagged when I saw what had been making that god-awful sound. Two of the men vomited.
It was a female zombie, and from the looks of her, she must have been well over 300 pounds at one time. Now she was essentially skin and bones—emphasis on the skin. Strapped to the bed, she had been unable to feed, so the zombie parasites had been consuming her flesh to sustain themselves.
What was left, were piles of thin, rubbery skin that lay in heaps on her body like a deflated Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon! This deflated lady, or “Deflady,” as one of the men called her (after he wiped the vomit from his lips) was quite possibly the most disgusting zombie I had ever seen, or smelled. And despite the fact that she was extremely weak and near death, Deflady still growled and snapped her grimy teeth at us, hoping to get a bite to eat.
There was a clipboard on a table by her bed, and I checked to see when Deflady had been admitted. I was astonished to find that she had arrived in September, right before quarantine began. As the hospital had been abandoned soon after quarantine ended, that meant she had been without any food for almost six months! The chart also provided the answer as to how she had survived all this time—she had originally weighed in at 378 pounds!
I went back into all the other rooms to check the patient charts and quickly found that the “freshness” of the corpse was directly related to the weight of each patient at the time they were admitted. In other words, it took the obese zombies much longer to starve to death. This was interesting information, but most importantly, it proved that if they didn’t have any food, zombies would eventually die. We suspected that back at ParGenTech, but we only had weeks-worth of data, not six months of starved corpses to examine.
“Can I please shut her up now?” Cam asked when I returned to the room.
“Please do,” I replied, and then added, “And we need a way to crack open her skull so I can examine her brain.”
“Is she serious?” one of the men asked.
“Afraid so,” Cam replied a moment before he put a bullet between Deflady’s eyes.
The guys broke off a couple of the metal legs of a table, and then bashed in her skull enough for me to take a look. The usual thick, glistening white sheath of parasites was thin and greenish. I simply had to have a sample for analysis, so I ran down the hall to get a jar to hold a couple of lumps of brain. I know everyone thought I was nuts, but you never knew what you coul
d learn about the ZIPs that might someday be used to help make weapons to fight them.
Our last stop was the laundry, where I bundled up a few dozen sets of scrubs. I used to live in scrubs night and day, so it had actually been strange wearing regular clothing the last few months. In addition to my comfort, I also secretly hoped that when I reopened the clinic, people might actually think I looked like a doctor for a change!
Grand Re-Opening: The temporary structures that had been built on Bannerman’s Island last November had, for the most part, held up fairly well. One had blown over, and another had partially collapsed because it was too close to one of the old walls and some stones had fallen on it. Enough of the buildings were intact, though, to get up and running again, and Cam promised that he would get some of the men to build more permanent structures and install solar panels and generators.
We had formed another little convoy, this time with boats, on our first day back to the island. I didn’t bring any special equipment as I didn’t want to leave anything like that unguarded. This was just a trip to assess the condition of the structures, store some of the basics like linens and bandages, and essentially do some spring cleaning. However, we were not there an hour when a boatload of survivors arrived.
There were seven of them—what was left of three different families who had lived on the same street—and fortunately they had only minor injuries and illnesses that I could treat with my portable medkits. But no sooner had I taken care of them, when several more boats approached. Fortunately, back at the house I had already boxed and labeled everything for the clinic, so I gave Cam a list and sent him on a supply run, as it looked like the Grand Re-Opening of the Truesdale Clinic had already begun. Even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse news traveled fast!
It took several days to get organized and set up, and on the fourth day I was thrilled to have The General return to run everything. From the moment she arrived, all aspects of patient management ran smoothly. And many of the doctors and nurses returned, too, along with some new ones, so that within a week we had quite the little hospital.
Unfortunately, for the patients trying to travel by land, the increased presence of zombies on the streets had made it extremely dangerous, and even fatal for one group. There were five young men and women who had been driving through Cornwall on their way down to the docks when their car broke down and became swamped by zombies. They sat in the locked car for three days with bloodthirsty zombies pounding on the doors and windows, when suddenly the driver’s nerves snapped and he opened the door to try to escape.
He didn’t make it more than one step, and zombies quickly spilled into the car like a deadly tsunami. One woman actually managed to shoot her way out of the pack and drag herself to the dock. However, she had been savagely bitten dozens of times, and when the boat arrived for its noon pickup, she only had enough strength left to tell her story before she died.
Newburgh had also become inundated with packs of ravenous zombies. That is, until Smokin went back on the job. This time, however, he was not alone as two men from the compound joined him. They were there to burn of the piles of bodies that Smokin quickly generated, and to also learn the fine art of being a sniper. It was one thing to walk down the street blasting away like a gunslinger; it was entirely different—and infinitely safer—to be perched atop a building picking off your prey with expert skill and precision. Within a week, Newburgh had become one of the safest towns on the Hudson River.
One of the policies that The General strictly enforced at the clinic was that all personnel take at least one day off a week. I was just beginning my fourteenth straight day of work when she officially relieved me of duty and threatened to throw me in the brig if I did not comply. As we now had a holding cell on the island for the occasional patient who tried to steal supplies, I decided that getting some fresh air was preferable to being incarcerated.
It was one of those warm, glorious, spring days that almost made you forget that the world was full of dead people trying to eat you. The solar panels were all soaking up the sun’s rays, and I decided to relax and recharge my own batteries, as well. I was sunning myself on the stone terrace while sipping a cool beverage when my satellite phone started playing Cam’s ringtone.
He and some of the men had gone north a few days earlier and were living in the Hudson-Athens lighthouse while they scouted for supplies around the area. He had been reluctant to leave me, but The General had assembled a good security team, so there was no need for him to remain. However, I was certain he was just fretting over my safety again, so instead of saying hello, I answered with, “Yes, Cam dear, my perimeter is secure.”
“Rebecca?” an unfamiliar voice asked, as a jolt of fear shot through me. Cam wouldn’t let anyone use his satellite phone unless there was a problem.
“Who is this? Is Cam all right?” I asked jumping to my feet.
“This is Albert, Albert Buckley,” the man replied. “Cam’s been hurt.”
“Oh, god. How bad?”
“Pretty bad. He’s been shot. Some crazy motherfucker shot at us when we were on the street in Athens. One of the guys, Jersey, got hit in the leg and went down. Cam risked his neck and ran over to Jersey to carry him back to the dock. Cam didn’t even know until he got back to the boat that he was shot, too. Then he just collapsed. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
I knew Buckley had some basic medical training in the army, so I had him describe Cam’s wound, which was in his abdomen on the lower, left side. I told him what to do for Cam until I arrived, and how to prepare the room. I also told him to make a list of potential blood donors at the lighthouse, and made sure they had enough field transfusion kits. (One of the things I had insisted upon at the compound was typing everyone’s blood, and you never saw a bigger bunch of babies when it came to these big, rugged men getting their fingers stuck!)
“We will have everything ready, but you had better come by the river. With the warm weather, the zombies are thick on the roads.”
“I’m on my way,” I replied. “All I ask is that you do one more thing for me.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t let Cam die.”
As fate would have it, one of our surgeons was off-island attending to a case that couldn’t be transported. The other surgeon was in the middle of a lengthy and delicate operation. It looked like I would be on my own.
Even going full throttle in perfect weather, it would take at least an hour and a half to get to the lighthouse. Then about forty minutes in, the skies darkened, thunderstorms rolled in, and visibility was greatly diminished. I shouldn’t have even been out on the water in those conditions, but I didn’t dare risk delaying even for a few minutes, as it was precious time that Cam may not have.
Sheets of rain pelted my face, and I tried to convince myself it was the rain, and not tears, that was stinging my eyes. It wasn’t long before I started shaking uncontrollably, as the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees and I was still in the shorts and tank top I was wearing on my warm, sunny terrace. But again, I didn’t dare stop to change clothes, I just grabbed a tarp and wrapped it around me like an Indian blanket and kept going as fast as I could.
I called Buckley when I was about twenty minutes away, and was relieved to hear that Cam was still hanging in there, and the bleeding had subsided. Of course, there was no telling what was happening internally, but I would hold onto any shred of hope.
Buckley also said that visibility was so poor there, that they couldn’t even see the abandoned train cars on the Hudson side. But the green lighthouse beacon was on, and they would start ringing the big bell as soon as I told them when I passed under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. As it happened, I almost ran into the bridge, but managed to avoid a collision by just inches. I then called to tell them to pound that damn bell as loud as they could.
Minutes passed excruciatingly slowly, and I was beginning to think I would never be able to hear the bell in all that thunder and wind. I was also afraid I would run aground o
n Middle Ground Flats if I overshot the lighthouse. Then there was a faint sound, could it be the bell? I moved toward the direction where I thought the sound had come, eased back on the throttle a bit, and held my breath. There it was again, a little louder. It was the bell!
I grabbed the air horn and gave a couple of short blasts, and whoever had been striking the bell at regular intervals now wailed away on it. Finally, the green beacon shone through the murky air and within minutes I was at the lighthouse dock. Some of the guys grabbed my bags of gear, while I climbed the steep metal stairs two at a time to get to the old lighthouse keeper’s house.
Cam was on a long table in the kitchen and the first thing that hit me was the unpleasant odors of bleach and blood. They had disinfected everything as I had directed, but there was no way to mask that distinct smell of blood, Cam’s blood. I was shocked to see how pale he looked and gently wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. He was semi-conscious, and I couldn’t tell if he was smiling because he recognized me, or was grimacing in pain. Even if he couldn’t hear me, or couldn’t understand what I was saying, I whispered into his ear that I bet him dinner that he couldn’t pull through, and then kissed him on the cheek.
After that, I was all business and set about organizing my “surgical staff.”
“An uglier bunch of sons of a bitches nurses I’ve never seen!” I said to the group of big, strong men who all looked petrified at the thought of assisting in a surgery on their best friend. My comment helped break the mood just enough to get them to try to focus, and as I got the three donors filling units of blood, the rest were prepping for the bullet extraction. As it turned out, Jersey had just sustained a flesh would, and he was even prepared to help by boiling pots full of water.
I got an IV going in Cam’s arm and injected antibiotics and a low dose of a general anesthesia. I wanted to use the anesthesia sparingly, as without having him on proper monitors (Buckley checking blood pressure and heart rate was not my idea of proper monitoring) I didn’t want to give him too much. I took a deep breath and started running through in my mind everything the surgeon back on Bannerman’s Island had told me before I left, as well as everything else I had ever learned about surgery, but I couldn’t just stand around thinking.
HVZA (Book 1): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse Page 30