Dead Tropics

by Sue Edge

  We sat in silence for several minutes as I cleaned the wound. Dave clearly had something on his mind as he kept clearing his throat and opening his mouth to speak, then shutting it. Finally, I sighed in exasperation and met his blue eyes firmly. “Just spit it out, for goodness sakes.”

  Dave straightened his shoulders decisively. “Lori, that guy died.”

  “Yes, and you revived him. What about it?”

  He looked a little embarrassed. “The thing is we didn’t succeed in bringing him back. We’d given up. The next minute he was attacking us.”

  “Okay.” I frowned. “Odd, but spontaneous revival has happened before.”

  Dave met my eyes. “I saw the heart monitor. Even when we were struggling to strap him down, the monitor remained flat lined.”

  I blinked. “Well, it had to be broken.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Until I talked to the other guys over the CB and found that the same thing had happened to them. What are the odds that all the monitors in all the ambulances were broken?”

  ****

  When I left Dave, I was feeling a little worried. He had started to run a mild temperature. Bites are notoriously full of bacteria. After giving him a dose of antibiotics, I made him promise to go home and rest.

  As I made my way down the hall, I ran into Emma. She was bouncy with wide-eyed excitement. “Those miners are completely insane, I’m afraid! It took six of us to get them into in the isolation beds. A couple of the nurses even got bitten, nothing serious, mind you. Now we’ve all got to wear protective gear around the patients.” She chattered on eagerly as an avid audience of nurses grew around her. “We can’t even sedate them; nothing seems to work. Poor things seem to be mad with the pain.”

  “So what’s the treatment plan?” A nearby nurse asked.

  Emma shrugged. “Standard procedures for treating encephalitis but it will take a while to see if it is working. In the meantime all we can do is try to make them comfortable. Anyway, I have to get back.”

  She looked over at me. “Meet you at lunch, Lori?”

  “You bet. You know how I love cafeteria food. Highlight of my day.”

  Laughing, Emma wagged her finger at me. “Still living on the edge, I see.”

  I returned to the office and took a quick look at the board. Several people had presented with symptoms of possible encephalitis but that always happened when an alert went out. People started seeing serious symptoms in the common cold.

  The sound of a rough cough startled me. I was surprised to see Dave leaning against the doorway and alarmed to see how unwell he looked. The wound on his neck had been freshly bandaged. I hurried over and pressed my hand to his forehead. It was burning hot. His eyes seemed bleary as he tried to focus on me.

  “Hey Lori, I think maybe that bugger gave me some nasty infection…”

  “Let me look at it.” I took his arm firmly and led him back inside. He lay down gratefully on the bed. “How long have you been running this fever?”

  “About half an hour, I suppose. And I’ve got a hell of a headache.” He groaned. “I’ve been trying to find someone to give me some damned pills so I can go home to bed.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, mister, at least not until you’ve been seen by another doctor.” I said even as my thoughts raced through the possibilities. Could this be encephalitis? Could it develop this quickly?

  Dave moaned in protest. “What did I do to deserve that?!”

  I poked him lightly in the arm. “If you can still make jokes, there’s hope for you yet.”

  I left him dozing while I hunted down a doctor. Dr Bennett stood at the nurse’s counter filling in a form, and with a little persuasion, agreed to examine Dave.

  As I went to follow her, she shooed me away. “The triage nurse could do with some help. The waiting room is filling up with neurotic parents and hypochondriacs who are convinced that they’ve got this encephalitis bug.”

  I gritted my teeth and left her to it. Truth be, there was a backlog of sniffling, groaning patients in the waiting room now, and I knew that Dave was in good, if irritating, hands. I’d always found Dr Bennett with her Margaret Thatcher hair and condescending attitude a pain but I couldn’t fault her expertise.

  After sending home two patients with the cold and referring another patient who actually could have the virus, I noticed a sudden flurry of activity as nurses and doctors rushed past my door.

  “Excuse me.” I murmured to the young patient I was with and hurried out. In the hallway, there seemed to be struggle going on. I heard a groan that sent a chill down my back.

  A lump in the pit of my stomach formed as I heard that drawn out moan again. It couldn’t be. As I neared, I saw that the staff had someone pinned on the floor outside the room I had left Dave in. Dr Bennett stood near by, her perfect hair mussed, face flushed and deep scratches on her cheeks. She glanced up at me and acknowledged silently what I had dreaded: it was Dave struggling on the floor under two men and two women.

  “What happened?” I rushed forward to help them.

  Dr Bennett grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “He fainted. While we were attending him, he tried to attack me and a nurse.”

  There was a scream of pain from one of orderlies. “The son of a bitch bit me!”

  He leapt up clutching his neck and I saw Dave looking up at me. But it wasn’t Dave. Gone was the laid back, cheeky man I had worked with for years and in his place was …blankness. With the pasty skin and the dead eyes, I knew without doubt that the same virus that had ravaged the miners had infected him.

  Dave’s empty eyes shifted to the woman holding his left arm.

  “Don’t let him bite you!” I called out urgently.

  The woman instinctively released her hold, and scrambled back. The remaining two men struggled to hold Dave down as he grunted and writhed and snapped viciously at them.

  “Hey, I can’t hang on much longer!” One of the men pinning him down cried out. “Jab him with something, will you?!”

  Dr Bennett grabbed an injection off a nearby trolley and pumped the full syringe into his thigh. “He should be out in a couple of minutes.” She said with satisfaction.

  I knelt beside her, pinning down Dave’s convulsing legs. “Dr Bennett, if this is the same virus as the encephalitis patients, sedation probably won’t work.”

  “Where the hell is security?!” Dr Bennett yelled out before turning to me in irritation. “Well, we can’t very well sit on him indefinitely, can we? Go find security. He needs to be properly restrained before he hurts someone else or himself.”

  Ignoring a flare of anger at her tone, I edged around Dave cautiously. As I passed the injured orderly, I paused to tell him to disinfect the wound and get checked out immediately by a doctor. If this was the virus, it had taken less than two hours from the time of the bite for the infection to reach Dave’s brain. That was impossibly fast. Maybe Joe was right about the threat of an epidemic, after all. How I wished I could talk to him.

  For some reason, there was not a single security guard on the floor. I decided to head upstairs to the isolation ward. Maybe the guards had been called in to deal with more outbreaks of aggression. However, there was no one at the nurses’ station outside the ward, which was odd in itself. Nibbling on my lip tentatively, I pushed the doors open. The silence that greeted me was unnerving at first, but the sound I finally heard chilled me to the bone. I didn’t recognise it at first but as it got closer, I suddenly realised what I was hearing.

  Screaming.

  Panicked, desperate screaming getting closer and closer.

  4

  Automatically, I hit the security alarm before racing into the ward. The hallway was completely deserted. My mind absorbed the scene in snapshots. A mop in a pool of water. A chair overturned. Records spilled on the floor. Coffee cup smashed. Bedding spilling off a trolley. What had happened here?

  My ears were assaulted by the sounds of people’s panicked cries ahead of me. My heart began to
thump. The thought of going forward terrified me. Looking around for something to defend myself with, I saw the mop. Quickly I unscrewed the head, leaving me with a solid piece of wood to wield. I had the sinking feeling I would need to.

  I sent up a quick prayer that security would respond soon and forced myself to move down the hall. The screams had stopped to be replaced by even more disturbing sounds. Thumps, bangs, whimpers and growls merged with cries of pain and terror. Swallowing convulsively, I clutched my pole tightly and peered around the corner.

  A sight beyond my imagining lay before me. It was a few seconds before my brain could even make sense of the images it was seeing. But when it did register, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Bodies lay scattered along the length of the hallway. Eight, ten bodies?

  Hunched over the closest ones were three blood-covered men. For a moment, I thought they were trying to help the fallen individuals and then the truth dawned on me with horrifying clarity. They were eating them.

  I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes but still they continued to tear chunks out of the fallen bodies and chew the meat with such relish, that bile rose in my throat. The blood of my colleagues, people I had worked with every day, was in their hair, their clothes, their nails.

  A groan drew my eyes to the victim closest to me. It was a man lying on his back. Wrinkled face, grey hair…it was Dr Wilson. Oh my God, he is still alive!

  His eyes fluttered as he moaned again. The man kneeling over him leaned over and buried his head in his victim’s chest, ripping pieces of flesh off with his teeth. As he flung his head up, I recognised the dark hair and blank eyes as the first miner I had seen coming in. He’s mad, I realised with despair, they are all insane.

  Slowly I pulled back. For a long moment, I stood pressed against the wall paralysed. I was terrified of moving, for fear the madmen would hear me. Then a new sound. A door slammed and footsteps ran up the hallway towards us. A feminine cry of despair as whoever it was realised what she had run into. I took a deep breath and forced myself to peer around the corner again.

  Emma, dear bubbly Emma, stood a few feet from the scene of the carnage. Beside her stood a young man with glasses who looked vaguely familiar (Ken?). Slowly he reached over and grasped her hand and started to edge backwards and the madmen stopped their dining to stare at them.

  Behind them, a young woman came through the doors, and then another. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I saw the now familiar pale slack skin and deadened eyes.

  Emma glanced behind her and cried out again. They were trapped and they knew it. Without allowing myself time to think, I flung myself around the corner.

  “Hey! Come and get me!” I waved my pole and jeered in a foolhardy attempt to distract the madmen long enough to allow Emma and Ken to escape. “What are you waiting for, you ugly bastards?”

  As the men rose clumsily to their feet, I felt a thrill of satisfaction that my plan had actually worked and they were coming after me. Then - sheer terror. They were coming after me. Shit, shit, shit.

  “Catch!” I hollered and flung my pole like a javelin towards Ken. Without waiting to see if he caught it, I turned and ran for my life. The doors loomed ahead, fifty meters, forty…If I could get through, I could bolt it and get help.

  A raspy groan echoed through the hall just behind me. Oh God. Thirty meters. Please God. A door suddenly opened to my side and a bloody figure stepped through.

  I cried out and veered sharply away as I caught a glimpse of ashen skin and a mauled face. I banged against the far wall and fell over an overturned chair. The woman lurched at me, hands clenched into claws. From the corner of my eyes, I saw other maniacs moving towards me. I grabbed the chair and heaved it at the woman in desperation. It didn’t even slow her down; she reached forward and grabbed my ankle. Screaming, I kicked violently at her face with my other foot until she fell back, releasing me. Scrambling to my feet, I pelted desperately towards the doorway.

  Twenty meters. Suddenly the doors flung open and the wonderful sight of uniformed security men greeted me. Without slowing, I pushed past as the six men spread out across the hallway. “There are people down there that need your help!” I gasped. “Please hurry!”

  “Don’t worry, miss” An older man with grey streaked hair smiled at me. “We’ll have this under control soon.”

  I clutched his arm. “Please be careful. They’re completely insane! They’re eating people!” He blinked as he absorbed that. Patting my hand reassuringly, he moved away.

  Drawing back, I tried to control my trembling limbs as I took in the scene. The woman with a ravaged face was reaching for a young security guard. He pointed his weapon and shouted at her to stop while the remaining men hurried towards the approaching madmen. I prayed that they were in time to save Ken and Emma.

  Suddenly a shot rang out. My head snapped around to see the young security guard had fired a warning shot above the woman’s head.

  “What the hell, Jack!” The security officer standing next to me, yelled out. “These are sick people! Use your taser!”

  I watched on as the guards fired their tasers - with absolutely no effect. And in those precious wasted seconds, the madmen reached out and grabbed the officers. The woman sunk her teeth eagerly into the young guard, Jack’s, arm and tore a chunk out. He screamed in disbelief and struggled to fend her off. Further down the hall, the guards were also engaged in a hand to hand struggle with the infected men.

  Cries rang out as the struggles became increasingly desperate.

  “Do something!” I shouted despairingly at the officer beside me. A quick check of his badge identified him as the officer in charge. “Biggs!”

  Biggs, a lean man with leathery skin and short salt and pepper hair, shook himself and pulled his gun out. “Shoot, shoot! Defend yourself if you have to!”

  He strode forward and tried to find a clear shot. The woman, a jagged hole where her lips once were, pulled Jack close and sunk her teeth into his cheek. He screamed again but seemed helpless to fight her off. Biggs pulled her away roughly and aimed his gun at her. “Don’t make me do this, lady.”

  She bared bloody teeth at him and lunged forward. He shot her in the chest. She stumbled back a few steps then moved towards him again. With incredulity, he shot her again. Again she staggered and then reached for him. Desperate, he pushed his gun into her forehead and pulled the trigger. The woman collapsed instantly like a marionette, a bloody mess where her head had been.

  The senior officer stared at her fallen body in disbelief. Around him, panic took hold as shots rang out without effect. “They aren’t stopping!”

  Horrified, I watched the older officer who had comforted me, drop his gun and stagger towards us. His yells became garbled and blood poured from a ragged wound in his throat.

  Do something! Stepping forward, I yelled at the top of my voice. “Aim for the head!”

  Another guard took up the cry. “Go for the head!” A cacophony of gunshots followed as the security men desperately targeted the maniacs’ heads.

  As the noise died away, the officers stood surrounded by the corpses of the infected patients. They gazed at each other, stunned into somber silence.

  Suddenly, the sound of a woman’s scream brought my head up sharply. Emma! She ran towards me from the far end of the corridor, waving her arms frantically. “Run! Run!”

  Behind her, I heard shots being fired and then Ken and the security guards came bolting around the corner. They were looking over their shoulders and yelling, “Move! Move!”

  In the moment of frozen inaction that gripped me and the others, I saw them - a throng of blood-splattered creatures staggering around the corner. It is an image that will forever be burned in my memory. A doctor with arms that ended in bloody stumps; a security guard with intestines dragging on the floor; a young dark-haired woman with a gaping hole where her abdomen once was. Doctor Wilson stumbled behind her, oblivious to the gaping hole in his chest.

  One of the guards turned and fired wildly at them.
A bullet slammed into the chest of a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform. She fell back into the crowd.

  And then she stood up.

  “Help the wounded!” Biggs yelled, snapping everyone out of their paralysis. “Get going!”

  He grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him up. We followed the other guards carrying the older injured man through. I rushed back to hold a door open. I waved at Emma and the others as they raced towards us. “Come on!”

  She was so close, I could see the flush on her cheeks and the terror in her wide eyes. Not far behind her were Ken and the officers and oh, so close, too close, were the monsters. Their missing limbs slowed them down, thank God, but they kept coming…

  “Hurry, Emma.” I murmured and held my hand out to her. Her eyes met mine and she reached for me. I closed my fingers around hers and swept her into a tight one-armed hug as I continued to hold the door open.

  “Am I safe?” She whispered pleadingly.

  “For now.” I answered truthfully, watching the men drawing closer. And then they were through, and the guards were bolting the doors shut.

  5

  Emma flew into Ken’s arms, surprising me a bit. I wasn’t aware that she knew him that well. A gurgled cry drew my attention. The older guard was lying against the wall, blood pooling around him.

  The nurse in me kicked in. I grabbed a kit from the nearby counter and hurried over to examine them.

  “Call for help” I snapped at Biggs as I ran by. Kneeling by the older man, I struggled to stem the flow of blood from his neck but I saw the light of life already fading from his eyes. Within a minute, he was gone. I stood up slowly. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

  I quickly moved over to the young man, Jack. His wounds were serious but not immediately life threatening. He could be going into shock, though. Behind me, Biggs ordered one of his men to get help.

  As I knelt beside the lad, Emma moved to join me, her red hair falling over her face. “You saved my life, Lori. I can’t believe that you risked your life like that!”