by R. J. Spears
I was about to go for my thousandth cup of coffee when Kara spoke. “Doc, you may want to come over here.”
I jumped to my feet, and Doc started to stand but was having some trouble, so I offered him my hand, and he took it. I had him on his feet in a second, but his knees still popped on the way to Jason’s bed.
“Is he going?” Doc asked, his face looking grim.
“No, not really,” she said as she wiped away some more sweat. “I think he’s improving.”
“Why do you say that?” Travis said, moving up beside the bed.
She reached down and pulled back the collar of Hub’s shirt. “See here,” she said, pointing to his neck. “The blackness in his veins is subsiding. Plus his temperature is down to 103. That’s not great, I know, but it’s better than 105.”
“It sure is,” Doc said with a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“So, he’s going to be okay?” Travis asked, trying to read as much into the Doc’s expression as he could.
As quickly as hope had come, Doc clamped it down. “I’m not saying that. Not at all, but this is promising.”
“Do you think it’s working?” I asked.
“I can’t say,“ Doc said. “His body could be rallying, but I doubt it. No one else I’ve seen has been able to beat this thing. So, I’d have to say the transfusion has done something.”
“But you said you didn’t think it could work,” Kara said. “What do you think is going on?”
“My only guess is that -- and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time anyway,” Doc said, running his hands through his shoulder-length gray hair, “the virus crashes the immune system, and that’s what makes it so deadly. With Hub here, his immune system should have attacked any positive agents in Jason’s blood and destroyed them. That’s why I thought this wouldn’t work at all, but with his immune suppressed by the virus, it’s a possibility that something in Jason’s blood may have worked.”
“So, you’re saying that this is going to work,” Travis said, his expression a combination of joy and relief.
Doc Wilson turned toward Travis quickly and said, “I’m warning you and everyone else, don’t get your hopes up.” That was as stern as I had even seen the Doc. “This is most likely temporary. I’ve not been able to study what’s inside this virus but have only seen what it has done to my patients. This thing could and probably will come back.”
“This is only temporary?” Travis asked, any sense of hope deflated. “What about more of Jason’s blood?”
“He only has so much to give,” Doc said.
Jason tapped the rail of his bed to get our attention and then held up his dry erase board. He had written, “I can give more. I can.”
“Yes, you can,” Doc said. “But’s not enough. To give this any chance of working, we’d need more than you can give.”
“What can we do to make it permanent?” Kara said.
“I have no idea and no skill really to do much of anything,” Doc said, not able to meet any of our eyes. “All of you have to know that I’m just a general practitioner who used to work in an E.R. I’m not a research scientist or have anywhere near that kind of expertise.”
“But if you had to make a guess, what would you do?” Kara asked.
“First, I’d need a lot more sophisticated equipment than I have now.”
“So, what do you need, and where do we get it?” Travis said.
Doc hesitated before proceeding, which was an obviously bad sign. “The only place would be the hospital in town.”
And that’s where the bottom dropped out of any chance to go any farther with this potential course. Of all the places in the city not to go to, the hospital would be the first place to avoid. When the Outbreak hit, everyone and his brother brought sick loved ones to the hospital, hoping that the doctors could do something. Obviously, they couldn’t, and the virus spread like a wildfire through the place within a day or two. Any time we had been near the hospital, it was swarming with the undead, making it about as inviting as visiting a snake pit full of cobras and just about as deadly.
“What do you need?” Travis asked putting on his game face.
“I can’t and won’t ask you to do this,” Doc said. “In fact, I would warn against it completely and entirely. That place is a death trap, and it’s not worth the risk.”
It was Travis’ turn to get serious. “Doc, what do you need?”
“No, I can’t let you do this,” Doc replied.
Travis reached out and grabbed the lapels on Doc’s coat and gently and firmly pulled him close. “I’ll go and bring back everything I can in a semi-truck if I have to, but I’m going. If you give me a list, it would make the trip all the easier.”
Kara stepped forward and placed her hands over Travis’ hand and said, “Travis, you need to take it down a notch or two.”
Travis released Doc and said, “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just that I need to do something to save my dad.” His eyes were red, and he was close to tears.
I’m not sure what came over me, but I knew I personally owed Hub a great deal and maybe even my life and certainly Naveen’s. “Doc, if you give us a list of what you need, we might be able to get in and out quickly.”
Kara looked at me dumbfounded. “You’re thinking of going?”
“If we don’t, Hub’s not going to make it,” I said. “You know it, and everyone knows it.”
A cloud of doubt passed over Doc’s face, but then it passed. “Okay, give me something to write on, and I’ll do my best to describe what I need. Kara, you’re going to need to go with them.”
Chapter 37
A Trip to the Hospital
I’d never really like hospitals. Who does really, with the exception of doctors and hospital administrators? The only reason a person ended up there was because something was seriously wrong with them.
The city hospital was in such bad shape now that there should have been a hospital for hospitals to check into because it was terminally ill. Zombies swarmed in and out of the building like a busy subway station. Some were trapped inside with no way to escape, spending their days and nights wandering the halls.
When we had been in town, we avoided the hospital like the plague because, well, it was full of the plague. Lots of it, too. Whenever we needed medical supplies, we hit any of the local medical supply stores or pharmacies instead.
Our team consisted of Kara, Travis, Greg, and me. Greg insisted on going on this mission even though we had agreed that the General should not go behind enemy lines, but we were stretched thin with Brandon’s still not being one hundred percent.
On the drive into town, we saw small packs of zombies in the fields and around the houses beside the road, but we ignored them. We also hoped and prayed that the hospital would be somewhat less populated with the walking dead, but it was not to be.
We came in from the north and used the retirement home on the hill above the hospital to screen us from the mob of zombies surrounding the hospital. Greg drove because Travis was too jumpy. He cautiously maneuvered us onto the hospital helipad, which gave us a nice panoramic view of the front of the hospital while we had the benefit of a line of cars to block us from any zombies at the hospital.
“What do you see?” Travis asked Greg who stood in front of the SUV, scanning the hospital.
“Lots of zombies,” Greg said without much inflection.
“I can see that, too, but is there a way in?”
Greg had Kara and me hold back with the SUV, ready to jump in and rabbit out if the zombies caught wind of us. Lots of zombies seemed like an understatement to me. At least hundred zombies were milling around on the outside of the main entrance. We had no idea how many of them were on the inside, but I could see figures moving past some of the windows on the second and third floors. God only knew why they were there. Maybe some memory lost deep inside their shriveled brains recognized that they were sick and this is where they could get well? Maybe they started their zomb
ie afterlives there, and it had become their home base? Or maybe they were waiting for universal health care? Their current numbers just reinforced why we stayed away from the place in the past.
“We’re not getting in the front way, that’s for sure,” Greg said.
We hopped back in the SUV, and Greg maneuvered around the back of the retirement home, driving in a wide and safe arc around the hospital grounds. Just a few years ago, the directors of the hospital extended a back road to make a second entranceway to the hospital for those coming from the north. That’s where we ended up.
“This might work,” Greg said.
“As long we stay away from the emergency room entrance,” I said. I scanned the E.R. entrance with the binoculars. Zombies streamed in and out of the doors, but if we stayed on the northwest corner of the facility, we’d be away from direct view of the zombies at the E.R.
“This is more promising than the front,” Greg said.
That’s if hand-to-hand combat with two dozen zombies equated promising, but it was better in relative terms. The zombies shambled aimlessly around the back parking lot. It would be a few minutes before they left aimless behind and started moving with purpose: we would be that reason when we came on the scene.
We stepped out of the SUV, brandishing our quiet weapons because guns were out of the question. Any shot fired would bring the horde around front down on us, and if they came around back, we would be done. The zombies would be eating us like human sushi, but no fancy preparation and definitely no need for cooking.
We each had on a set of police riot gear, which could come in handy in the close quarters once we got inside. Kara’s was a little big on her, but we tightened it up with some duct tape. I had my trusty baseball bat, Travis had his crowbar, and Greg had a long handled hand axe. Kara brandished a thin piece of metal pipe with one end wrapped heavily in duct tape, making it easy to grasp. I tried to talk her into taking a baseball bat, but she said she liked the metal pipe. She told me once that she had used one back in her farm days when she was young. That knowledge made me take a step back and ponder the fact that I was in a relationship with a farm girl. The zombie apocalypse made for strange bedfellows.
Greg and Travis had the lead as we moved as quietly as we could among the sparsely parked cars in the parking lot. The zombies were spaced out with most roaming closest to the building. None had taken notice of us until we lost the cover of the cars and had only open ground between the building and us. The gap between the cars and the door seemed like ocean.
One geriatric zombie dressed only in a hospital gown spotted us and started in our direction. Travis stepped forward and caved in its skull with a swift and deadly blow. While he was careful to avoid any overt noise, a few other zombies took notice and moved our way.
I moved up beside Greg, which put us in a diamond formation with Greg, Travis, and me on the front offensive side and Kara on the backside. I’m not sure she liked it, but there was no way I was letting her take a lead spot. I think it pissed her off a little, but we needed her to identify the medical equipment once we got inside, and, besides, I was expendable. At least that’s the rationalization I used.
Without any explicit commands, we knew what we had to do and readied ourselves for it. My job was to protect our left side as we advanced, and that put me on a collision course for what looked like to be a hospital security guy -- now zombified. He would have been described as burly while he was alive, and that still fit in death, but now gray and very, very stinky would have to be added to the description.
“Here we go,” I said under my breath and brought my bat back and swung for the fences. When I connected, I would have liked to say I hit a homer, but it was more like a double as I caught the guard’s shoulder, blunting the force of the impact to the side of its head. The guard staggered to the right and nearly went down but caught itself and started to stand again. My swing had been somewhat overzealous, and I was not prepared for another swing, which left me exposed. The guard shot out a meaty paw and clutched at my arm, but before I knew it, a blur of motion passed by me. Kara brought her metal pipe down on the guard’s head, and that’s all she wrote. He went down as if he had been hit with a lead pipe, which essentially is what happened.
Greg used his axe to take down a squat young guy who was missing an arm. That was three down and about twenty or so to go.
It was a real slog as we bashed, jabbed, and slammed zombie after zombie. It started to get hairy at the end when the remaining eight zombies surged towards us in a mass making me think of a defensive line of a football team -- only dead and hungry. This was when they were at their most dangerous. Depending on what shape they were in, the terrain, and other factors, individual zombies could be handled quite easily, if a person had the right weapon. When the group up and came at a person, that’s when the real fun began.
Unconsciously, we closed ranks as they moved in on us. This maneuver reduced the chance that one of them would break through, but it cut down on our freedom of action. Greg was doing well with his axe, and Travis was getting by with his crowbar, but Kara and I weren’t doing that well.
Instead of swinging freely, I had to use my bat in a jabbing motion. Kara followed suit and was doing slightly better than I. She even took one out when her pipe impaled one of the zombies, ramming into the thing’s eye socket. The sucking sound when she pulled the pipe back was disgusting.
My jabbing was effective at keeping them back, but it was not putting any of them down and out of action. Every impulse in me wanted to go for my pistol and start shooting, but then we would have a couple hundred zombies coming to us at a run. Or, at least at a shamble. So, I reached deep to maintain my serenity and kept jabbing away.
I smacked a female zombie in the face, knocking her back, but she growled and came back for me. “Don’t you do that,” I said, “or else I’ll have to hit you with my ugly stick.”
“You didn’t just say that,” Kara said.
“Let’s stay focused, people,” Greg said as he buried his axe in the skull of a teenage-boy zombie.
I decided to improvise, pulled back from our group, then did a set of quick jog steps to the left, and ran forward, quickly flanking the zombies. This little maneuver freed me from the tight quarters we were in and allowed me to open up from behind the remaining zombies. By being able swing freely, I took out three of the remaining zombies in short order while the others took down the rest.
We stopped to catch our breath, and Greg said, “Nice move, Joel. That won’t work inside, but it was slick.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I’m nothing, if not creative.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Kara said.
“There’s an open door over there,” Travis said while pointing to an open emergency exit.
“Let’s move, folks, before we’re spotted by any more zombies,” Greg said, and we jogged across the parking lot to the door. Greg held us up just outside the door.
“We have no idea what we’re walking into,” Greg said. “Let’s stay tight at first until we get the lay of the land. We’ll try to do this without gunfire but don’t take any risks. If you have to shoot to stay alive, then do it. If we get separated for any reason and this goes totally south, get out and get back to the truck; wait no more than twenty minutes. We good with this?” He stopped and took us in. Each one of us nodded in assent. “Okay, let’s go.”
With that, he turned, opened the door, and we went inside.
Chapter 38
Test Drive
Things are coming together nicely, Anthony thought. The new recruits clearly understood what they had to do, even Felix, whom Rex still relentlessly rode each day. His new design on the control panels allowed for finer control of the zombie soldiers. Now, it was time for a test drive, so they say.
Two days prior, a small group of nomads had come to town. They were camping out in an abandoned store downtown, using it as a base camp as they foraged around the area for anything they could use. They had
no idea that they had encroached upon his town, but they were going to learn a lesson. A valuable and, unfortunately, final lesson.
With the expanded army, Anthony had to add a semi-trailer to the two school buses just to move the entire operation efficiently and effectively. He was grateful that Rex had driven an 18-wheeler prior to the Outbreak. He could stack his soldiers deep in the trailer, and they never complained about the cramped quarters or stuffiness. The conditioning had worked like magic on them. Press a button, and they jumped, but they never asked how high. He knew he couldn’t have everything, but this still caused him to sigh.
Wendy had been sent ahead to monitor the nomads’ movements. Her last report on the nomads said they were still bedded down and she didn’t expect they would resume their foraging activities.
Nothing like a dawn surprise attack to wake them up, Anthony thought.
He drove a bus full of soldiers and one of the new recruits with him. She was a pretty little thing named Layla. They had found her wandering in the park, half-starved and in shock. For some unknown reason, instead of using her for training exercises, he decided to take her into the fold.
Over the time she had been with them he had taken a liking to her. She was a petite and fiery brunette with vibrant blue eyes that he found himself looking at more and more lately. He thought maybe it was time to make a move, but he wasn’t sure how that would go. He knew he could always force the issue if she weren’t willing, use a little of his persuasive electricity to convince her that she should return his attention, but something deep inside would have preferred a willing reciprocation. If not, he would do what he had to do.
The walkie-talkie attached to his belt squawked, and Rex started talking, “Teams 2 and 3 are unloaded and in position.”
Anthony pressed the talk button and said, “Good. Wait for my go signal. Team 4, report in.”