CODE Z: An Undead Hospital Anthology

by Brown, Eric S. ; Besser, Rebecca; Wraight, Anastasia; Rosamilia, Armand; Ibarra, Bowie V. ; Christie, Peggy; Mahan, Jeremy L. ; Sinclair, Pembroke; Snow, Rebecca

  “Oh, decided to join us then? I called you girls ages ago.”

  “What time is your shift starting tonight?” said Diane, changing the subject. She didn’t want a scene at the table and it was hard enough to get the girls to sit down and eat with them anyway. Any excuse to leave the table and go back upstairs and they would. This time her diversion worked.

  “10pm -7am Di, I told you what my shifts were this week yesterday; don’t you ever listen?”

  Keith was a night security guard at the local hospital, a job he had held for the last two years. Easy enough work, but boring and permanent night shift. He and Jerry, his latest co –worker and hack of seven months had the routine pretty much down to a tee. In two years Keith had never experienced a single incident of any kind at the hospital; the only excitement he had ever known had been asking visitors at the hospital to remove their cars from unauthorized zones of the car parks early in the mornings, who occasionally would get pissed off, but that was all. Sometimes the hours seemed endless due to the boredom but over the months both he and Jerry had been able to make it work with little games of cards to ease the monotony, sometimes even a little porn on some old tapes which Jerry would smuggle in every now and again to watch on the old VHS video player they had stacked in the corner and rigged up to one of the spare hospital TV’s. Keith had worked at the local council highways department until he had been made redundant. The security job had come his way a couple of weeks after so he had taken it immediately, a panic reaction to being out of work and Diane’s constant nagging about the mortgage and the bills. Sometimes, when the clock seemed to stop in the middle of the night and Jerry would not stop talking, Keith often wished he was claiming dole instead. But, here he was, working to support Diane and the girls, god knows, Diane’s wages were not enough to pay the bills. Keith often wondered what other opportunities were out there for an overweight forty nine year old ex council worker who had done nothing else from the age of eighteen other than shuffle papers behind a desk. With the way the economy was going, the days when a job with the civil service was for life were well and truly over and his redundancy money would probably be gone in another year or so, Diane would see to that.

  As Keith drove to work that night through town in the rain, he turned on the radio and quickly moved from the crappy channel Diane had it pre-fixed to, cursing as he caught a momentary end blast of a love song. He moved through a channel which was reporting on the virus again, the news report saying an un-named male was still in hospital undergoing tests, but so far the death toll was at sixteen cases. Town traffic seemed pretty quiet; it usually was on Monday evenings and he soon found himself pulling into the staff car park at the back of the hospital grounds. He brought the car to a stop and switched off the ignition, the car becoming silent and dark. There was a small combi-van parked next to him and it caught his attention. Most of the staff had designated spots and he couldn’t remember ever seeing this van before. It looked brand new and shone bright white in the dim light of the car park. Keith got out of his car, locked it and moved around to the front of the van. Sure enough, there was a legitimate looking staff permit badge in the front window. Keith went through the staff entrance, entering his code quickly into the security lock and he shivered in the chilly March night air. He made his way through the first floor main corridor towards the security room and glanced up at the wall clock. 9.46pm, he had plenty of time. He found Jerry, skinny and covered in fading tattoos on his bare arms already at his terminal in the security room, feet up on the desk and tucking into a sandwich his wife had probably prepared for him for later. He nodded to acknowledge him as he entered the room.

  “Evening fella,” said Jerry flatly. Keith grunted in reply and set his bag down on the nearby desk and removed his overcoat.

  “Evening Jez, hard at work already I see!” he said sarcastically.

  Jerry was immune to sarcasm; either that or he was too dumb to pick up on the fact that Keith was being sarcastic. Whenever Keith had made light hearted remarks in the past about Jerry’s bone idleness, which even rivaled his own, he was yet to make a remark back. Keith sat down and sighed.

  “Say, whose is that combi -van out in the car park next to my space? I don’t recall seeing that before, there’s a permit in the window though, looks legitimate.”

  “Oh yeah’, said Jerry, that’s Derek’s van, tidy looking ain’t it?”

  “Who’s Derek when he’s at home?”

  “He’s the new guy who started the other week, mortuary technician, does the graveyard shifts down there now.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Oh, I got talking to him last week on my rounds, he’s okay, bit creepy looking mind, he looks like a mortuary technician, got a face a bit like that geezer off that horror film, what’s it called...Phantasm!”

  Keith laughed. “What does he wear an undertaker’s suit and have a forehead you can cook your dinner on as well then!?”

  Jerry laughed and almost gagging on the sandwich he was chewing on. “He’s ok actually, seemed like a decent bloke, he volunteered to do permanent nights apparently”.

  Keith exhaled sharply, “Jesus, he’s keen, maybe he prefers the company of the stiffs to his missus!”

  Jerry laughed again and took a sip from his coffee cup, “Yeah, maybe his wife is called Diane too!”

  They both chuckled out loud and Keith picked up a piece of paper from the table, crumpled it to a ball and fired it across at Jerry in jest. “You leave my wife alone pal, or we’ll fall out!”

  That night as Keith completed his rounds the hospital seemed quieter than usual. By the time he started his shift, visiting time had all but finished and the wards were settling down for the night. It had taken a few months for Keith to settle in the role of working in a hospital, that smell being difficult to adjust to, but now, he barely noticed it. After two years of watching CCTV and patrolling the corridors and grounds at night the hospital just felt like another office building.

  At around three am, Keith made his way down the stairs from the ground floor to the lower floor, or the stiff hotel as Jerry and the other guys had nicknamed it. This was the least pleasant part of the night, checking on the morgue and freezer room and usually Jerry would do it most nights, knowing Keith found it a bit icky. The overhead lights were usually all out in the morgue late at night, apart from the attendant’s small room, and they reacted automatically to the folding through doors being activated before they fired up. As Keith entered his swipe card for access he always felt that split second of raw fear as he entered the morgue and felt the sudden change in temperature in the air, that strong odor of disinfectant and sterile cleanliness that after a few minutes, would sting at his nostrils. Sometimes, there would be a few seconds delay of the overhead lights activating and Keith would find himself alone in pitch darkness, afraid and surrounded by fridges containing the dead. It was something he had never gotten used to or would ever feel comfortable with, no matter how many times he would enter the morgue. When Keith had first started working at the hospital his imagination would run wild when going down there and he would make his checks as quickly as possible and leave, before his nightmare came true and some of the freezer units opened slowly on their own, allowing the dead bodies inside to suddenly flick open their eyes and come crawling out, their hands outstretched for Keith, their faces grey, cold and lifeless.

  The lights activated to a dull buzz, the florescent beams overhead springing to life as he pushed open the swing doors. The freezer storage room was clean and deserted, only the very light buzzing from the lights above and the soft humming of the freezer units to be heard and Keith made his way around the room to the double doors that exited to the waste and refuge area, a small yard that housed refuge dumper bins. He keyed the lock and went outside, flashing his torch light around. The night air was fresh and cold, causing him to shiver. He checked the outer gates that led to the car park, they were padlocked as normal. Quickly, he went back inside and closed the doo
rs, locking them from inside. Keith made his way back through the freezer room and exited the morgue. As he did so, the lights clicked off into darkness again automatically.

  “Fuck” he thought cursing himself, realizing he had forgot to check the theatre and turned back around. The theatre was the smaller room that latched on the morgue and was where most of the pathology work was done. Another place Keith didn’t like to be. Although the room was always clean and sterile when he went in there, he often wondered exactly how many corpses and had been laid out on those cold flat metal tables over the years whilst doctors opened them up and poked around. He had even seen some of the instruments they used on the workbenches, saws, knives and scalpels, razor sharp for cutting through the flesh and bone of the silent subjects they worked on. He quickly made his way to the theatre double doors and swiped again, pushing the doors open. The theatre lights clicked on immediately and Keith recoiled in shock, exclaiming out loud.

  “Jesus wept!”

  The man in the middle of the room wore a blue v necked standard hospital tunic and pants. His rubber gloves were smeared with deep red blood and on the table in front of him lay a corpse, a man, fat and bald, his body bloated and eyes lifelessly staring upwards at the ceiling. Keith could see the man’s abdomen was wide open revealing his insides, his intestines out like rows of sausages on display at a supermarket delicatessen. Keith felt bile beginning to rise in his throat. The man stared at him, his eyes unmoving and cold. Judging by his appearance, Keith guessed this must be the new guy Jerry had mentioned earlier. The man’s eyes moved slowly from Keith to the mess on the table and he quickly pulled the white sheet at the bottom of the corpse’s feet up, covering the horrific sight. His eyes moved quickly back to Keith.

  “I’m sorry,” apologized Keith. “I didn’t realize you were working in here. Why were the lights off?”

  The man removed his rubber gloves which popped off with a squelch and he tossed them into the nearby bin. He smiled thinly and held out an outstretched hand and Keith hesitated before he took it gingerly. The man’s hand was cold and bony with a vice like grip, the same hand that had only a few minutes earlier been poking around inside a dead body.

  “Hi, I’m Derek,” said the man, his voice low and gravely. Keith could detect an accent there, maybe a West Country tone, light, but there, he definitely wasn’t local. He was tall and pale, perhaps mid fifties and he did indeed bear a loose resemblance to the creepy undertaker from the Phantasm movies Jerry had joked about. On being reminded of his conversation with Jerry earlier, Keith felt his mouth beginning to lift at the sides. He cleared his throat self consciously.

  “Sorry if I startled you,” the man continued, “The buzzing of these damned lights overhead just drives me crazy, so I usually work using the spot lamps around the table, you probably couldn’t see them on from the door windows when you came in.”

  “I just got a bit spooked,” said Keith feeling suddenly embarrassed. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here that’s all.”

  Derek smiled thinly again not offering any reply and the momentary silence seemed to hang in the room forever, making Keith feel even more awkward. He cleared his throat again.

  “Well, I’m sorry for barging in anyway. I’m Keith, I hear you’ve already met Jerry; he said you are new here?”

  Derek looked back at him, his eyes guarded and narrow. His smile remained thin and polite. “Yes, I started a couple of weeks ago, still feeling my way in, so to speak,” he said lightly under his breath. “Was there anything else I can help you with Keith, I really must get back to work?” Keith was keen to get out of there and even though the opened up corpse on the table a few feet away was now covered under a sheet, he still felt nauseous and the smell of disinfectant in the morgue was beginning to burn at his throat.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said curtly and quickly looked around the room. He could see boxes marked with human organ contained signs on the front lined up on one of the counters. They were open and ready for deposit. The man smiled thinly again and did not reply. Keith felt his stomach beginning to churn again at the thought. As he exited the dim theatre and ghoulish scene he could feel the man’s eyes burning into his back, so he quickened his step.

  * * *

  “Bloody hell Jez, what a weirdo, no wonder he works in a fucking morgue!”

  Jerry laughed, putting down a hand of twenty in the blackjack game they were playing.

  “Yeah, he looks a bit shifty but I thought he was okay though, not the chatty type but he seemed like an ok guy.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late to be cutting open bodies down there, I don’t remember any of the other staff doing that kind of shit in the middle of the night? He had some dead bloke wide open on the table, guts out and everything.”

  Jerry chuckled again; clearly amused by the fact that Keith had been so openly spooked by the experience. “Well, nothing to do with me mate, I don’t get paid enough to ask those types of questions and neither do you.”

  When the clock turned slowly towards to 7am, the hospital began to fill up with the day staff and Keith sat watching the influx of movement on the CCTV camera’s in the security room with another cup of pungent hospital coffee in his hand. Apart from the encounter in the morgue, the shift had been quiet and he was already looking forward to a hot shower, some breakfast and then bed. The house should be empty when he got home. He rose from his chair and stretched. Jerry turned his attention away from the internet on his pc screen and exhaled heavily. Another night of monotony had crawled to a close. Jerry seemed to handle the boredom better than Keith, almost like he enjoyed doing nothing night after night.

  “Why don’t you shoot off now? It’s almost seven, I can hang on until the day shift arrives,’ said Jerry

  “Are you sure mate?”

  “Yeah yeah, see you tonight, get yourself off home.”

  As Keith trudged through the corridors of the hospital he was already thinking about breakfast and the morning paper in peace and quiet. The fresh morning air hit his nostrils as he exited the main doors, a welcome change from the stifling smell of the hospital. As Keith got into his car and turned the ignition key he put the car in reverse and started to back out. The staff doors suddenly opened and he saw Derek, the morgue attendant, exiting the building. In both hands he held two organ transportation boxes Keith had recalled seeing earlier in the theatre. The man quickly opened the rear doors to the combi van and placed the boxes carefully inside and shut the doors again, seemingly oblivious to Keith staring right at him from his car. Keith watched as he got into the van driver’s side and started the van. Although he found the guy a bit creepy, something genuinely didn’t add up about this. Why would a morgue attendant have human organ transportation boxes in his van at the end of a shift? He remembered Jerry’s words about Derek volunteering for permanent night shift, so he must be going home. In two years of working at the hospital, Keith had never known the morgue staff to be conducting any kind of autopsy or pathology work in the middle of the night. The guy didn’t even look like a qualified doctor to be opening people up either. As Keith thoughts ticked over, the van reversed quickly alongside him and moved off briskly. He was torn in two minds. Should he go back inside and report his concerns to someone? Maybe there was a genuine reason why he was working during the night and if there were human organs in the boxes he carried, maybe there was a genuine reason for that too. Keith knew he was going to look like a prize fool if he reported the guy and it turned out he was just doing his job. But in his gut, he just felt like there was something wrong. As he rolled the car forward, he made an instant decision to follow the van. Although tired and cold, it would surely only take an hour of his time to put his fears to rest if it turned out the guy was taking organs somewhere for a legitimate reason. If the guy was up to something he shouldn’t be, then maybe he could get some proof before he made a complete arse of himself with the hospital authorities.

  “Ok Dr Death, let’s see where you are going toda
y, shall we?” he said to himself out loud and turned on the radio. The morning news was reporting that the man who had taken ill with the mystery virus from Scotland had slipped into some kind of coma and was now in a critical condition. There were some experts in the radio studio from the World Health Organization arguing about the risks of pandemic.

  Keith followed the white combi- van as it slowly maneuvered through the morning traffic, making sure he kept him in sight but at a distance to remain unseen. Although weary and hungry, Keith felt a little sense of excitement at following the van into the unknown. He didn’t know what the fuck he was going to do if the guy was up to something sinister but nevertheless, he had a feeling of butterflies in his stomach at the prospect of finding out. It would certainly be something to tell Jerry and Di about later.

  They drove towards the south side of town and the opposite direction to which Keith wanted to be. In part that pleased him; he didn’t particularly fancy the idea of this creepy guy living near him Diane and the kids. Fifteen minutes later the van turned off the main road into a residential cul de sac of old style town houses and pulled up by one on the roadside. Behind, Keith was careful to remain out of sight and stopped the car at the side of the road well short of the house. The man was now out of the van and removing the organ boxes from the back. He slowly closed the doors and made his way up the small front garden path to a house. Keith’s vision of the front door was obscured but he was pretty sure he had gone inside. Waiting a few more moments and feeling his heart beginning to beat faster he got out of his car and followed.

  The March morning air was chilly and Keith shivered as he slowly made his way along the street, his breath visible as he exhaled. As he approached the house with the van outside, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. “What the fuck I am going to do?” he thought to himself. It was clear this guy was up to something he shouldn’t be and he knew he should just call the police and hospital authorities now, let them deal with it. But something drew him towards the house, whose windows were dark and soulless, all curtains and blinds closed tight. There was no way he could see inside from the roadway. Maybe if he could just get a glimpse inside somehow, see what the man had in the boxes in some way before he went shooting off his mouth to the police. As Keith made his way up the garden path slowly, his legs began to feel weak under him, reminding him of the games he played as a kid, knocking on stranger’s doors and running away before they came to answer whilst his heart beat painfully in his chest. The large blue wood door had no windows, only a brass letterbox. Keith pressed his ear up against it lightly for a moment, but only silence greeted him. He lowered himself into a squat and with a slow hand gently pushed the letterbox open. He reached forward with his head to see inside. Suddenly, the door opened from the inside and there stood Derek, towering above him, a look both of surprise and anger burning in his eyes. Keith exclaimed out loud in shock and tried to raise his frame back up but his legs were slow to react. Derek’s gaze then suddenly changed, as though his initial anger had passed and his eyes seemed to soften momentarily. Keith noticed his mouth lifting slightly and he was now kind of smiling at him grotesquely. Before Keith knew anything else, Derek raised a claw hammer from behind his back and swung it full force in an arc over his head. Keith didn’t even see it coming before it crashed into the side of his face and he blacked out to nothingness.