As dazed and frightened as Sam was, he moved toward the station nonetheless. He needed to check the phone, see if he could call Lacey. She must be worried sick about him. He was definitely worried sick about her. He stumbled the last few steps to the desk, pain coursing through him. He reached for the phone, picking up the receiver and placing it to his ear. No dial tone. He pressed 9 on the keypad, hoping to get an outside line. Still nothing.
Since it didn’t seem Sam would be able to call Lacey, he knew he needed to somehow get home to her. He just didn’t know how he was going to get there. He was in constant pain, he was shivering worse now, and sweat was literally pouring off of him in buckets. He decided to get back to his room and look for his clothes. As he began to turn, he noticed a bottle of water setting on the edge of the nurse’s station. His mouth was dry, his throat was parched and with all the sweating he was doing, he knew he needed a drink. He made his way to the edge of the desk, grabbed the water and drank it down greedily.
As the coolness of the water hit his throat, Sam felt a little bit better. He was refreshed, but he still needed to eat. He poked around in the desk drawer nearest him, hitting pay dirt on the first try. Somebody had left an unopened package of peanut butter crackers. He tore into them, chewing as fast as he could. After devouring half of the crackers, Sam drank down the rest of the water. He put one more of the crackers in his mouth and turned towards his room.
Making his way slowly back to his room, Sam wished he could see Lacey. He knew that it would take hours, possibly even days, to reach her in his condition. But he had to know she was okay, had to know she was safe. She was the center of his world, and he would go the ends of it to protect her.
Just as Sam made his shuffling way back to the wall next to his door, he saw a lifeline. About twenty feet down the hall was an empty wheelchair.
He made up his mind to get the wheelchair first, and then get to his room for his clothes. Twenty more feet on his bad leg, and then he would be rolling instead of struggling to walk. He began to move toward the wheelchair, taking one small, staggering step at a time. After what seemed like hours, but was really only ten minutes, Sam stood next to the chair. He locked the wheels, turned it so he could sit, and gently lowered himself into it. He let out a huge sigh of relief.
In no time, he was back in his room. The corpse was sprawled out in the middle of the floor, but Sam thought he could negotiate around it with relative ease. He made his way towards the cabinet, opening the door and revealing his clothes. He yanked them from the hanger, placed them in his lap and wheeled towards the bed. He set the brake on the wheelchair and crawled onto the bed. He stripped out of the hospital gown he was wearing and began to pull on his boxers and tank top. As he slid the boxers over the cast on his leg, Sam realized he wouldn’t really be able to wear pants just now. He slid his t-shirt on and wrapped the hospital gown around his waist. ‘Better than nothing,’ Sam thought.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, gathering his thoughts and his strength. The next few hours would be hard on him, and he needed to be as rested as possible. When he felt he had mustered the strength, Sam climbed into the wheelchair, unlocked the wheels and rolled himself out the door and back into the hallway. He saw an exit sign hanging from the ceiling, pointing him in the direction where the wheelchair had sat. He continued down the hallway, his thoughts drifting to Lacey, only to be interrupted by the pain running rampant through his body.
He came to an intersection where two hallways met and saw a sign on the wall pointing out various locations along each corridor. He noticed the sign for the pharmacy. Even if he couldn’t get behind the counter to find prescription painkillers or antibiotics, he should be able to find some kind of over the counter pain reliever. He might also find more food and water. He was still sweating and his stomach kept gurgling, letting him know he needed to eat more, and soon. He decided to head to the pharmacy, gather what he could and then make for his house.
He rolled silently through the hall, reaching the pharmacy quickly. Its storefront was open, so he rolled inside. He headed for the prescription counter and noticed that it had the old style flip-up counter that would allow access to the back. He tried to lift the counter top, only to find it locked in place. He searched underneath with his hand and found a sliding lock. Freeing the lock pin, he was able to open the counter. There was just enough room to wheel the chair through.
Now that he was behind the counter, Sam could see that each shelf holding any prescription drugs had a gate pulled down over it, and was locked with a padlock. He swore and spun himself around to get back to the other side of the counter. As he aligned the chair with the space in the counter, Sam heard the sound again. The guttural growl followed by a sharp barking sound. He froze in place. The sound came from down the hall, but it was coming closer. He realized he hadn’t brought the IV pole, or anything else that could be used as a weapon. He searched around desperately, finally spying a rack near the entrance holding crutches, canes and walkers. He rolled silently across the room and grabbed a wooden cane.
As he turned back to the entrance, Sam heard the sound again, this time very close. He completed his turn and saw it standing in the entrance. Sam was trapped.
The creature standing in the entrance held something in its hands. With dawning horror, Sam realized it was a human leg, torn savagely from its owner’s body. The thing was chewing on it, holding it like a piece of chicken, ripping a huge chunk from it. It chewed the meat, swallowed and took another bite.
Sam didn’t want to accept it, but he forced his mind to form the thought. This was a zombie, this creature eating a human leg. It was a man brought back from the dead, with an obscene appetite for human flesh. He felt his bladder let go, felt the hot urine pool in the wheelchair seat. The zombie moved toward Sam.
Sam wheeled himself backwards, hoping to dodge down another aisle of the pharmacy and out the entrance. He was almost to the end of the aisle and had almost finished turning when the zombie reached him. Sam screamed in panicked fright, feeling the thing grab him by the back of the neck. Sam jerked the wheelchair forward, breaking the zombie’s grip on him. With a burst of adrenaline, Sam sped the wheelchair down the aisle and towards the door, bouncing off the shelves several times as his broken arm tried to keep pace with his good arm. The creature was still behind him, giving chase now, growling. Sam reached the door and shot through it into the hallway.
And just like that, Sam was mobbed by a group of the creatures that had been gathering outside of the pharmacy.
Sam grabbed the grips on the wheels and tried to spin himself around. He didn’t make it very far before the closest zombie was on him, grabbing his head. It started pulling on Sam, and he flopped out of the wheelchair, landing hard on his broken leg. But that was just the beginning of the pain. Sam lay stunned on the floor, flat on his back. His vision faded for a moment, but it cleared almost instantly as he felt the first set of teeth sink into his good leg. He screamed, this time so loud and long that it tore is throat. Then there were more teeth chewing on him, biting and tearing his skin. He felt the blood draining from his body and with it, the pain began to recede. As the life slowly faded from Sam, his last thought was of Lacey. He hoped she was okay, hoped she was safe.
Deliver Us from Evil
By Peggy Christie
The automatic doors of the Intensive Care Unit swished open. Carolyn took a small step forward and poked her head through them, unsure and terrified. She hated hospitals. She always found some reason to get out of visiting friends or relatives when they wound up here, usually after being on the business end of a bottle rocket. By the time she had offered up a third excuse for her absence, they’d already checked out.
This time there was no excuse. Her mother was in the ICU of St. Joseph Hospital and the outlook was bleak. She’d had a severe stroke two nights before and was now hooked up to a ventilator. The doctors said it was just a matter of time before her half-dead brain shut down completely and stopped
supporting all life functions. The bucket was poised and ready. All her mother had to do was aim low.
“C’mon, Carrie. You can do this. You have to do this.”
Carolyn psyched her self up as she walked down the pristine white hallway. The glare from the overhead fluorescent lights reflected off the white tile and walls, forcing her to squint. Her mother’s room was the last one on the right and Carolyn had to walk past four other patients’ rooms to get to it.
Through the window of the first room, Carolyn saw a privacy curtain around the bed, hiding the patient inside. The name “Walker” stood out in dark letters on the white dry erase plaque hanging on the wall. The high turnover rate in the ICU made the erasable board more cost effective than a printed nametag.
In the next room a weathered old man lay on the bed. A life support machine wheezed as an older woman and three adults, probably the grown children of the old couple, stood next to the bed and wept. Several doctors stood off to the side as one pushed a large red button on the ventilator. The air pump slowed to a stop. One of the doctors slipped a twenty dollar bill into the button pusher’s hand, a look of irritation darkening his brow. The name on the plaque had already been erased.
From the bed in the third room, a young man looked up at two doctors with a puzzled expression on his face. A pretty blonde woman clasped her hands together and he looked at her, his countenance unchanged. Carolyn overheard one of the doctors say “amnesia.” The young woman slapped the young man while screaming personal information in his face. Maybe she thought that would cure him. Carolyn hoped that Mr. “Strawfeld” would be okay.
A flurry of activity surrounded the fourth room. Several doctors and nurses ran in and out, yelling for drugs and equipment Carolyn never knew existed. As Carolyn passed the room, she saw the patient’s foot peeking out from underneath the crisp white hospital sheet. It bounced as a nurse performed CPR. She couldn’t tell if the patient, “Johnston”, was male or female but she heard the incessant flat-line scree of the heart monitor drift out into the hall as the staff lost the fight to keep the patient alive.
Carolyn entered her mother’s room. The whoosh from the ventilator, the sound bouncing from one wall to the other, assailed Carolyn’s nerves. A single saline bag hung next to the bed like a vulture over carrion. Its attached intravenous hose connected to a needle at the back of her mother’s hand. A small circular bruise marred the delicate skin where the needle penetrated. Morphine kept her sedated, or “comfortable” as the staff liked to say. The monitor above the bed displayed her vital signs, all on the low side of normal.
She smoothed a hand over her mother’s hair then kissed her forehead. A tear rolled down her cheek and onto her mother’s face. Embarrassed, she dug a tissue from her purse and dabbed it away. As she wiped her nose before snot dribbled into her mother’s mouth, Carolyn caught movement from the corner of her eye.
The doorway framed the silhouette of a tall thin man. Though she couldn’t make out specific details, it was clear he was naked except for the cotton gauze wrapped around his legs. One loose end hung from his left thigh as if the staff had forgotten to secure it in place. Several IV lines dangled from the crook of each elbow, dripping both clear and ruddy fluid onto the floor. His bare feet slapped and dragged over the linoleum, creating an arrhythmic ssssshhh-SLAP cadence.
The man moaned and raised his arms. Carolyn reached for the call button as she spoke to him.
“Are you all right, sir? Do you need help?”
Her voice faded to a horrified whisper. As the man stepped from the doorway and into the room, the overhead lights shone on his face and body. What shuffled toward her should not have been humanly possible. The man’s flesh was a rough charred patchwork of red and black tissue. The shrunken remnants of skin looked in danger of splitting open at any moment. His fingertips had burned away and the blackened bones left behind jutted out into wicked claws. They twitched as he reached for her.
Carolyn stood motionless as this monstrosity moved closer. Only when the rough finger bones brushed her cheek did she scream. She darted around the bed to create a buffer zone between herself and this freak. He stumbled as he changed direction and bumped into the bed, his face a map of wrinkled confusion as to why he couldn’t reach her. He jerked his head down then stared at Carolyn’s unconscious mother.
His eyes widened, a savage shine lighting up his milky irises. He grabbed one of the woman’s arms but seemed to lack the strength to lift it. After several failed attempts to bring the arm to his mouth, he bent over instead and sunk his teeth into her neck. Blood gushed onto the pillow and sheets. Carolyn watched in stunned silence as the man chewed and slurped on her mother’s flesh.
He suddenly pulled back, grunting in dissatisfaction. He poked a bony finger into the torn flesh and flicked the hard plastic breathing tube. Pawing at it, the man tried to pull it out but couldn’t get his fingers around it. His eyes looked at the connector on her mouth then followed it to the hose suspended over the floor. He pushed on it and watched the breathing tube shift up in her throat. A lopsided grin split the torched skin on his face. Dark viscous fluid oozed down his cheek and jaw. He raised his arm and slammed it down on the air hose. The tube popped out of her mouth and fell to the floor.
Carolyn inched her way toward the door. It seemed the man had forgotten about his meal as he bent down and grasped the tube in both clawed hands. Pointing it at his face, he jerked in surprise when a puff of air pushed out. He looked down the hollow opening and snarled when the air rushed out again. He jammed the tube in his mouth and the next flow of air spewed blood from the tear in his face and onto her mother’s pale pink hospital blanket.
With a half smile, the man threw the cold plastic to the floor. He stared around the room, pointing at various objects, as if he’d forgotten where he was. When he looked down at Carolyn’s mother, the ferocious hunger lit up his eyes again. He lunged forward and nestled into the gaping hole in her throat, continuing his feast.
Carolyn managed to tear her eyes from the gory spectacle and looked at the monitor above her mother’s bed. Several bright green lights shone in long flat lines. Whether she died before or after the breathing tube incident was anybody’s guess. She was just happy that her mother would not be witness to this horror.
Her eyes welled with tears but Carolyn had no intention of becoming the second course at the buffet table of hell. As she stepped into the hall she overheard the head nurse arguing with two men in blue scrubs. The only intelligible words she caught were “burn victim” and “Room One” before she saw the goopy footprints leading from the end of the hall to her mother’s room. She turned to watch the people arguing at the nurse’s station.
“I told you, Rob, the body is in Room One,” the head nurse said to one of the men.
“And I told you it isn’t. We just went in there. The bed is empty.”
“You obviously checked the wrong room. Follow me.”
She walked down the corridor as Rob and the other man, Carl according to his nametag, made faces at her back. Carolyn tried to get their attention.
“Excuse me?”
She waved her hand but they didn’t see or hear her. The nurse entered the first room. After several minutes, she backed out, her face pinched in puzzlement. Rob moved to stand next to her.
“See? I told you. Maybe you’ve got the wrong room.”
“But this is impossible! We declared him dead five minutes ago. What did he do, just get up and walk out? I don’t under-”
The nurse paused when she saw the bloody footprints. She followed the trail halfway down the corridor and looked up. Carolyn clutched her overcoat to her throat and pointed at her mother’s room.
After bolting down the hall, the nurse ran into the room. Her orthopedic shoes squeaked to a halt. Carolyn crept up behind her as she stood at the foot of the bed, shaking her head back and forth. She peeked over the nurse’s shoulder and saw that the man was now buried up to his ears in her mother’s lower abdomen. Th
e way the sheet bunched up around his head, it appeared he was eating something other than her entrails. Hysteria tickled her brain as she thought of her mother getting oral sex from a charred corpse in the ICU of St. Joe’s hospital.
Carolyn backed away and headed down the hallway to the exit. The nurse screamed from the room behind her. A loud whump floated out into the hall followed by wet slurps. She felt that hysteria again when it tugged her lips into a smile as she mumbled, “Bachelorette Number Two.”
She focused on the red EXIT sign at the end of the hall. As she passed the room adjacent to her mother’s, a flutter of movement caught her eye. Carolyn looked at a pale young woman as she ambled out into the corridor. Dark circles bruised the delicate skin under her eyes. A large deep gash hung open on her neck and a this crusty coating of blood covered her chest and shoulders.
As much as Carolyn’s senses screamed at the illogical turn of events, there was no denying the truth before her. This young woman, and the man eating her mother, were dead. They had died and come back to life. How or why didn’t seem that important right now. She just had to figure out what to do about it. Maybe she could reason with them. She looked at the dead woman.
“Ms. Johnston?”
No flicker of acknowledgement sparked the corpse’s eyes. Screams echoed out into the hall again and the young woman jerked toward the sound. Carolyn looked to see several nurses back out of her mother’s room. The charred man, the now-dead nurse, and her mother advanced on the hospital staff.
The nurse only had one arm. Strings of skin and muscle dangled from her left shoulder. Her neck lay open and her blue uniform was stained purple. The burn victim carried the nurse’s arm, licking the blood that had dribbled to the fingers. A KFC commercial tagline ran through Carolyn’s head. She’d never be able to eat fried chicken again.
CODE Z: An Undead Hospital Anthology Page 9