Designated (Book 2): Designated Quarantined

by Cooper, Ricky

  ****

  Janet's head swivelled as she heard the hushed rattle of automatic gunfire roll through the silent corridors of the hospital. She shivered as she heard the guttural bellowing of dozens of Infected as they streamed past the door.

  The children clung to her sides, their heads buried into her slim form as they tried to blot out the unearthly howls beyond their hidden bastion. Kevin shot an agonised look at the door as several Infected bounced off the panel of reinforced glass; he physically winced as stars of glistening red blood shot over the rippled surface of the meshed glass.

  His gaze travelled to Janet's as she cradled the two children against her. Maria, swaddled in her woollen blankets, lay blissfully unaware in the impromptu cot. A soft burble of incomprehensible words drifted out her as she clutched at the edge of her blanket, small, toothless gums smacking gently together as she shifted in her slumber.

  Janet stared at her child as she moved, a silent prayer drifting over the slumbering babe, begging her to stay quiet as the march of the damned continued outside their door.

  Broadhead Barracks

  Officers' Housing

  Baker paced, his fists clenching and unclenching as he growled out his fear—fear at his inability to help his wife and child, fear that he was finally starting to lose his edge, fear at the world outside his door and the turmoil writhing through it; and above it all, fear at losing not just his life, but all he ever held dear.

  He stopped in the centre of the room, his mind a whirling maelstrom of loathing and anger. His hands balled again as he resumed pacing. Turning, he stormed across the room, his fists smacking at the sides of his head as he bellowed in rage. He snatched his rig from the cot in his office, crashed through the door, and sprinted down the corridor, his eyes wild with fury.

  Susan stepped into the corridor, her arms a mass of neatly typed and stacked papers. She grumbled to herself as she turned, staring into the onrushing path of a man possessed; in a whirl of fluttering paper and indignant squeals, she crashed into the wall as Baker charged through her, the clacking of quick-release buckles echoing in his wake.

  Dazed and confused, Susan began her arduous task of collating and collecting her fallen paperwork, the pages rasping through her fingers as she plucked them one by one from the floor. Colinson watched with consternation mingled with acceptance and anger as Baker sprinted past his office door. Stepping forwards, Colinson walked briskly to his door and knelt, scooping up scattered sheets of paper. Susan looked round; Colinson's charcoal grey-clad form filled her vision as she reached out, her eyes avoiding his as she lifted the papers from his grip.

  David smiled as he watched the worry etch itself through the corners of her eyes. A soft shimmer of hopefulness wormed its way through her as David began to speak. 'He will be fine, Susan; don't worry about a thing.'

  The air was crisp and bitter as Derek jumped through the open door of his Jeep; his chest rig thumped and bounced against him as he viciously twisted the key and shoved the vehicle into gear. In a hot squeal of burnt rubber and a burst of smoke, he flew from the motor pool and out the gate. He drove as if Satan himself had come to collect, weaving through the backcountry roads as he made his way towards central London.

  Central Middlesex Hospital

  Exterior: Main Entrance

  Bodies lay strewn in the carpark as Derek slid to a halt, the wheels of his Jeep squealing as he tried to meld the brake with the vehicle's floor. A heavy clunk rolled up from below him as it rolled over the shredded head of a dead nurse. Her skull collapsed, sending shattered pieces of skull and shredded flesh splashing ahead of him in a glistening halo of shimmering blood and cranial matter.

  He stepped out of the Jeep, his feet sliding in the mashed paste of the deceased nurse's head as he lifted his rifle from the rear of the vehicle; he grit his teeth, his hand closing over the pistol grip as he lifted the unloaded weapon from the back seat of his vehicle. A dull semi-metallic clunk echoed through the empty carpark as he opened a box of 5.56 mm ammunition. He glared at the G36C in the passenger seat and ground his teeth together as he laboriously loaded the magazines in his ballistics vest. Finally, Derek slid the magazines into the pouches on his vest. After ten agonizing minutes of tedium, he rolled his shoulder and settled the weight of the general-issue Benelli M4 Super 90 between his shoulder blades. Then with the echoing clack of the assault rifle's charging handle rolling across the body-laced carpark, he sprinted for the front doors of the hospital.

  Baker smashed through them like a runaway locomotive, his eyes shining with an uncontrollable, almost fanatical need to wrest his wife and child from the grip of whatever calamity had befallen them. Raising his booted foot, he kicked in the door to the triage room. It swung back on noiseless hinges, slamming into the wall with a thunk that echoed through the waiting area; it rolled over the walls and chairs, swelling over all in its path like waves over sand. His gaze travelled over the shattered skull, halo of pulped brain matter, and the minuscule corpse it accompanied as he stepped into the room.

  Derek's eyes lingered on the torn and ravaged face of the nurse, her eyes locked in a screaming excitation of pain and horror as the shattered corpse of the child lay dead in the nurse's eviscerated chest cavity.

  His weapon dangled from the one point sling as he stepped over to the hospital staff rota plastered onto the dry-wipe board. He scanned the board for anything showing any sign of his wife. His heart clenched in on itself as he thought of her and his daughter. His hand dropped to his thigh, brushing over the chequered pattern of his pistol's grip. His fingers brushed the tactile sides of the weapon as he stared at the dead child and her unwitting carrion bed. Shaking himself from the stress-induced stupor, he turned and felt the weight of his shotgun tugging at his back as he stepped into the waiting room. The scent and tang of fresh blood and excrement settled on his tongue as he stopped, finally taking note of the abounding destruction.

  Chairs lay askew, cast aside as people fled in terror from the crazed and enraged forms of their Infected friends, family, co-workers, and patients. He stepped forwards, looking at the splintered and smashed remnants of the concrete and bolt housings that had been torn from the floor in a crush of fleeing bodies. Kneeling, his gaze travelled towards the doors he had entered through; the pulverised remnants of a human hand lay caught in the gas-powered pneumatic hinges of the door. The soft hissing of the closing door belied a far more sinister note as the brushed aluminium ground against the shattered wrist bones of the severed appendage.

  The grating of metal on bone flowed to his ears as he watched the door pull the hinge shut. Turning his head to the left, he studied the rest of the room, taking in the splayed arms and pool of congealing blood slowly seeping out from beneath a toppled vending machine to the butchered remains of a staff porter. The man's tear-drenched face dangled from the remains of his torso where it hung swinging against the twisting column of his own spine.

  Baker shook his head in wonderment, struggling to fathom what had possessed the seasoned hospital worker to try to clamber through the smashed window of the double doors; but as he knew all too well, in the grips of man's primal fight or flight instincts, common sense had little to say when it came to a person's method of escape.

  Hospital: Floor Two

  Rook crashed through the door, his back slamming painfully into the floor, his battle vest lost somewhere in the twisting corridors, torn from his body by the writhing Infected now astride him. He smashed his knees into the small of its back, sending the screaming rage-filled face past his head and into the floor. He rolled backwards, his curled legs slamming into its neck as he sank his weight into the fragile cartilage beneath him. The crunch of smashed bone reverberated through his body as he brought his gun to bear on the door in front of him.

  Token stumbled through the door a second later, his flailing form besieged by the screaming, bleeding, rage-drenched contents of the upper children's ward. He swatted and punched at anything he could reach as they tore at
his clothing, their prepubescent hands torn to shreds as they desperately tried to tear their meal from his flesh. He ensnared the waving locks of one child and, with a vicious wrench of his muscular arm, tore the child from him, its tortured screams filling his ears as he cast it aside. The sound of tearing silk filled the room as its scalp tore free.

  Token spun, sending himself back-first into the square steel frame of the nearest bed. The crack of snapping bone met his ears; the slim arms encircling his throat went slack as all life left them. Spinning on his feet, he swung the clump of hazel hair up into his hands; the dripping lump of flesh on the end was warm against his gloved hand.

  Turning to face the charging, scalped form of the Infected child, he sidestepped and wrapped the child's own hair around its throat. The pumping blood oozed down the back of its head as its eyes bulged in their sockets. Rolling his hand, he pulled ever tighter, watching as the skin of the girl's cheeks turned a deep purple. Then with the squeaking of its bare feet ringing in his ears, it went limp. Chest heaving, blood slowly worming its way out of his broken nose, he sank to the floor. The dull crump of dead flesh hit the tiled floor as he let the hair fall from his grip.

  A look of detached surprise wavered over the men's faces as Token pushed himself into a sitting position against one wall, his breathing heavy and ragged as he listened to the gunfire rattle through the hall. Walters, Patterson, King, and Lucas stormed through the door, bullets smacking into flesh as they tried to push back the tide of Infected bearing down upon them. Slamming the door shut, Walters took aim as the Infected smashed themselves upon its flat, glossed surface.

  'Well, we're stuck.'

  Patterson turned and looked at Rook, a look of quiet puzzlement passing over his face.

  'Rook, where's your rig?'

  The former division operative smiled, a sharp wince running over his face as the broken remains of his third and fourth ribs ground against each other. A sharp hiss of pain-flushed air left him as he pushed himself into a higher sitting position.

  'To be honest, Andre, I have no idea. If I were to guess, the rig, my rifle, and all of my spare ammunition and radio are somewhere back in the main corridor.'

  Andre sighed as he walked over to his section leader. He knelt and poked his extended index finger into Rook's ribs. He watched Rook's face contort, a fresh wave of nauseating pain rolling through him as Andre kept on with his 'inspection'. Lifting his free hand to Rook's shoulder, he pulled the torn flaps of his suit aside and looked at the hole in Rook's skin.

  Reaching into a pouch on the front of his rig, he pulled out a trauma pad. The length of high-tensile gauze clutched in his hand, he pushed the Celox-infused pad against Rook's shoulder as he wrapped the bandage over the wound. Pulling tight, he threaded it through the pressure bar and pulled. A muffled whimper of pain left Rook as the pressure built, sending shocking waves of pain through his torn muscle. Snorting out through his nose, he nodded at Patterson and closed his eyes as he pulled again, wrapping the bandage back on itself and sending the pressure ever higher.

  A soft plastic click emanated up from Rook's shoulder as Patterson clipped the end of the bandage into place.

  'That should see you until we can get exfil; just don't do anything stupid, okay? And pray to god, or whoever the fuck collects your ticket, that it,' he pointed to the freshly covered wound, 'isn't Infected, and I don't mean MRSA.'

  Rook smiled as he fished in his thigh pocket for a cigar. 'Andre, if it comes down to it, I'll clock myself out rather than turn into one of those fucking things.' He motioned towards the door with his unlit cigar. 'By the way, chuck me your coms; I got to relay into Hawk, let him know what the hell's going on.'

  7

  Hawk's radio buzzed, his ear itching from the burst of white static; lifting his hand, he rubbed at the inside of his ear, trying to scrape away the maddening tickle that was pushing at the roots of his ear.

  As he strained to listen, a familiar voice filtered through the wall of hissing electrical buzzing. Flicking away the flakes of congealed soap clinging to the tip of his gloved finger, Hawk pressed against his throat microphone, opening up the channel. His eyes widened as Rook relayed the situation of his team.

  'Fuck it all to hell. Okay, brother, sit tight; if you can push to the evac, Kingfisher should be there.

  'Hold position there, we are closing in on the source here. Collared a live ward manager. I will radio through if I come up with anything concrete. Keep it on a swivel, okay? See you on the other side.'

  Stepping through the heavy double doors in front of him, Hawk swept the torch beam across the rows of beds; blood stained the loose-woven blankets and heavy cotton sheets. He stepped forwards, a soft wet tapping emanating up from his foot. Glancing down at his boot-covered feet, he watched as the ever-expanding ripples rolled through the slowly congealing pool of blood. A frown crossed his features as he lifted his foot and stepped over it, dropping to one knee besides the nurse's station. The flickering glow of the computer monitor reflected off the one-way glass set into the wall. The light bounced across Hawk's crouched form, casting a dancing hunched shadow across the floor.

  'Sooker, on me. Hampson, Carruthers split left. Carlstook, dig in and cover the doors; we haven't got long here and need to find the heart of this bitch and rip it the fuck out.'

  They split off, heading deeper into the ward. A soft mewling drew Sooker's attention as he slowly advanced into the second section of the ward. Beds lay strewn across the floor, their mattresses and blankets tossed aside like fallen trees in a forest; stepping over the claret-stained bedding, his footsteps as silent as falling snow, Sooker peered into the gloom. Motioning with one hand, he beckoned Hawk forwards. As silently as a stalking shadow, he appeared at Sooker's side. Tapping his ear gently with his index and middle finger, Sooker shifted and motioned towards the far corner of the ward. Hawk nodded, lifting his rifle to a tighter position as he stepped to the side and watched Sooker continue forwards.

  Slowly and with infinitesimal care so he didn't disturb the steel sliders of the privacy curtain, Sooker pulled. As the curtains parted, both men felt their gorge rise. Hunched in the decimated remains sat a woman, her withered form sleeved in the bile and blood of those she had been feasting upon. Her soft, toothless gums sucked at the flayed strands of skin and flesh as she tried to prise it from the bone. Empty bowls, canisters, and packets lay strewn over the floor, their contents long since consumed in the burning need for sustenance. A dark viscous brown sludge flowed from the woman's hunched form, staining the back of her hospital robes.

  The stench was overwhelming, filling their olfactory sense to the point of bursting. Pulling his battered and weatherworn Shemag scarf from around his neck, Hawk wrapped the patterned band of cloth around his face in a strident attempt to block out the vile odour.

  Her sallow skin slipped and flapped against her age-withered frame as she pulled at the pallid dead flesh of the patient in her grip; the man's vacant, dead form lolled limp and lifeless as it jolted and bounced against the floor with each tug the woman made. She pulled as her lips and gums closed on the string of cabled muscle and skin; a soft, slick pop issued up from her wanton face as the lump of dead meat finally pulled free. Flicking her head back, the tousled curls of her blue-rinsed hair bounced against her age-lined face as she swallowed. The bulbous pustules covering her lips and face made her flesh shiver and move as she pushed the lump of meat around her saliva-drenched mouth.

  Strings of the glistening, clear fluid ran from the corners of her mouth, coalescing in thick ribbons as it dropped from her chin to land with a wet plop on the front of her hospital gown.

  ****

  Janet's head snapped up as the blood flashed over the window; the glistening spray cast a red-hazed shimmer over the walls. The children burrowed against Kevin and Janet, their shifting forms warm against them as they hid from the muted gloss of incandescent red smears sliding down the walls. A face crashed into the window, blood bubbling from its lips as it
was crushed further and further against the glass. A small childlike groan rose from it as it began to slide, a weak and pitiful sound that made Janet want to weep. A sudden and almost violent squeal of flesh on glass made them all flinch; a soft whimper of fear boiled up from the girl in Janet's lap. Glancing to her left, Janet watched the softly moving figure of Maria as she shifted in her sleep, her infantile lips clapping together softly as she dreamt. Reaching out, Janet smoothed Maria's downy hair over her scalp as she gently shushed both children, praying they both stayed quiet.

  Kevin edged the boy from his lap, setting him gently on the floor. The boy whimpered as he met the cold concrete of the floor, his hands clutching at Kevin's stained and torn lab coat; the fear and need for physical comfort was oozing from the child like water from a slowly dripping tap. Pushing the boy's clutching hands gently away from him, he stood and crept to the door, his hunched form looking like an amorphous crab as he slowly slunk towards the door.

  Janet's sharply hissed and panic-edged call gave him pause as he reached out towards the door. His hand hung in the air mere centimetres away from the brushed steel handle of the storage room's door. His fingers brushed against the cold, lifeless steel bar. The cold crept through his fingertips and seeped deep into his knuckles, sending a wave of pain through his fingers as he curled his extended digits around the handle. He slowly pushed down on the handle; the bolt slid back millimetre by millimetre as he edged the handle down ever further. Clutching the steel bar in a death grip, he pulled the door towards him, his eyes pushed shut so tightly they began to ache from the self-imposed pressure. Kevin stepped to the side and peered through the ever-widening gap in the doorway.