Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

by Manel Loureiro

  A half a dozen wobbly figures stepped out of the shadows, headed for our SUV. I couldn’t stay there any longer. I turned on to the main road and approached the hospital slowly, dodging fallen branches and the occasional passersby who tried unsuccessfully to claw the car.

  Then, something caught my attention—a couple of undead wandering on the road, dressed in tattered hospital gowns. I shuddered with terror. If Meixoeiro Hospital was infested, we were really screwed.

  I rounded the last bend in the road to the top of a small hill; from there I could see the hospital. I hit the brakes and stopped for a moment. I held my breath. Fuck.

  Meixoeiro Hospital is a huge conglomeration of modern steel, glass, and cement, a gigantic maze built in several stages, with miles of corridors and rooms. It had been one of Galicia’s premier hospitals. It was cutting edge, equipped with the best, most modern human and technical resources. Thousands of people used that facility daily. A real temple of science, pride, and human health. Something to behold.

  Now it looked like something out of a nightmare. Every window facing north was shattered. Torn, faded curtains stuck out of the dark recesses of those broken windows, flapping wildly in the wind. A sewer pipe on the fourth floor must have burst—dried, smelly black slime covered part of the wall.

  What was really frightening was the total absence of light, sound, and movement. The huge building loomed up like a dark monolith, devoid of life. The tunnel to the emergency room was shrouded in shadows, like the entrance to a deep mine.

  Around the building I could see evidence of hectic activity. Dozens of civilian cars, police cars, Civil Guard tanks, and ambulances sat abandoned every which way, many with their doors flung open. Some were covered with a rust-colored crust that could only be dried blood. Stretchers and medical equipment were scattered here and there, as if they’d set up a field hospital on the front lawn to take care of the overflow.

  A city bus, its windows streaked with dried blood, was parked on the lawn, as if a drunk driver had left it there. On the rear doors of the bus you could see bloody palm prints. God only knows the story that bus could tell.

  A double row of sandbags and concrete barriers surrounded the perimeter. Some places were reinforced, so I assumed they’d been checkpoints. As I’d seen on the road and so many places for miles around, shell casings and rotting corpses were everywhere. There were far fewer around the hospital than I expected, though.

  I quickly corrected that thought. When the horde of undead arrived, the defenders must’ve been decimated, exhausted, almost out of ammunition. Those monsters easily overpowered them. Then came the carnage.

  The bitter taste of bile filled my mouth. I pictured a hospital full of the wounded, refugees, medical personnel, women, children...then hundreds of these things broke in. Oh, blessed Christ.

  The place was filled with pain, death, and despair. That dark, silent building was a huge grave...or worse. But we had to go in. Prit needed medical supplies.

  I rolled the SUV up to the tunnel to the ER, virtually silently. Drenched in sweat, I looked in every direction, hesitating. On one hand, if I went in alone, I could move faster. If I ran into trouble, I could defend myself better. On the other hand, I didn’t dare leave Prit, semiconscious and alone, in the parking lot, at the mercy of those things, as I walked through the bowels of that building.

  And besides, there was Lucullus. Fuck.

  The ka-boooooom of a giant clap of thunder startled me out of my wits. Time was slipping away. A big raindrop splattered against the windshield with the force of a bullet. Then another and another, in quick succession. Scattered raindrops turned into a downpour. The storm had reached us. The thunder was drowned out by the roar of millions of drops hitting the ground.

  I calculated we were no more than twenty yards from the tunnel. I couldn’t go any farther in the SUV. Reinforced concrete blocks and lots of sandbags lying across the road made it impassable. In better days, a guard would’ve waved me on from a entry box a few yards to my left, but now it was abandoned. That empty landscape, lit up by lightning, gave me the creeps.

  I put the backpack on and cinched the straps tight. Between Prit and Lucullus, I wasn’t going to be very mobile, so I distributed the weight as evenly as I could. I didn’t want all that weight to drag me to the ground right under an undead’s nose.

  I took Lucullus out of his carrier and cradled him in my arms for a moment before setting off. My little furry friend purred happily, comfortable, dry, and warm on my lap, watching the rain fall. I scratched behind his ears, gazing at him fondly. Since he was a tiny ball of fur, he’d liked to curl up on the radiator and watch the rain fall in the garden.

  The memory of my house, my life, my whole world, pierced my heart like a dagger. I missed my home. I missed my job, my friends, my life—but most of all I missed my family. I hadn’t heard from them in months, not to mention the ton of friends I have (had) all across Galicia. I’ve tried to keep my mind occupied with my own survival and not think too much. Every time I thought about my past, I tried to tell myself they were comfortably holed up in a Safe Haven, somewhere those monsters hadn’t reached.

  Now I know that’s all a lie. Those monsters from beyond the grave are everywhere. There’s no safe place, and no one’s safe. All the survivors are drowning in a sea of suffering that goes on forever.

  I could feel tears flooding my eyes. I took a deep breath, rubbed my face, and shook my head, trying to blank it all out. If I started crying, I wouldn’t be able to stop. If I collapsed, I was screwed. The survival instinct kicked in again. Something deep in my hypothalamus secreted enough endorphins to get me going. Still, the pain was buried deep inside me, oozing emotional pus. Someday, I’d have to face it and wrench it out of my heart. But not now. Not yet.

  I pushed the door open cautiously, making as little noise as possible. As I stepped out of the car, a violent gust of wind blew a curtain of water in my face. The thunder and lightning overlapped each another. It was almost completely dark. I closed the door behind me and crouched down for a moment, my back to the SUV.

  I didn’t see anything that looked threatening, but instinct was telling me just the opposite. To be honest, instinct screamed at me to get the fuck out of there.

  About six yards in front of me, I could make out the half-decayed body of a civil guardsman in riot gear. His distinctive blue uniform had faded in the sun. In places it was a blackish oxidized color from bloodstains and body fluids. From the waist up, the body was a pile of torn, stinking flesh. No trace of the head.

  I shrank back. I didn’t know if scavengers or the undead had disfigured that body, but it looked like the work of a demented butcher. I gagged but didn’t vomit. Amazing...I was getting more macho or deranged, depending on how you look at it. None of this shit affected me anymore.

  I approached the body. Holding my breath, I pulled a shiny black pistol from the holster on his right hip. It was larger and heavier than the Glock, but I didn’t have time to study it any more than that. I unlaced the guy’s combat boots. His feet were black and rotten from fluids that had pooled there. It smelled really foul, so I hurried as fast as I could. When I’d pulled out the shoelaces, I had a cord about six feet long.

  With the gun and shoelaces, I went back to the SUV, soaked to the skin. I grabbed the surprised Lucullus by the belly and tied one end of the cord to his collar and one end to my wrist. Then I hung the AK-47 and the speargun across my chest and dragged Prit’s unconscious body out of the car.

  The downpour brought the Ukrainian around. His groans signaled he was still alive but hurting like hell. Draping his arm over my shoulder, I started walking toward the access tunnel, holding the gun with my free hand and dragging Lucullus, who was indignant at being treated like a dog on a leash and at being soaking wet.

  Our progress was painfully slow. Prit could hardly walk, and I was loaded down like a mule. Those few yards seemed like miles. The cat viciously yanked at the cord, trying to take cover from the rai
n. Every time he leaped forward, the bootlace dug into my wrist, sending waves of pain up my arm.

  What a surreal picture we made! It occurred to me if an undead popped up, I’d have a hard time defending us, with both arms immobilized. That thought made me pick up the pace.

  We reached the access tunnel in a matter of seconds. The glass roof over our heads amplified the heavy downpour. I twisted around, pulled the flashlight out of my pocket, and shone it toward the end of the corridor.

  I leaned my shoulder against the emergency room door, and it opened with a soft hiss. I poked my head inside. The huge admitting room was in the shadows. A soft light filtered through large rectangular windows that ran all the way up to the ceiling. There were two bullet holes right in the middle of one of them.

  The lobby looked like an abandoned slaughterhouse. Rust-colored blood was splattered across floor and walls. In some places it looked like someone had dumped large buckets of blood. The sweet, nauseating smell of dried blood mingled with the smell of decaying food...and stale sweat. It was subtle and faint but unmistakable. Human sweat. Someone had been sweating in that space, but I couldn’t determine whether it had been hours or months ago.

  Everywhere, lying every which way, were cast-off clothes, used bandages, stretchers stained with dried fluids, and even a couple of defibrillators with their paddles dangling. It was not a welcoming sight, to say the least.

  The most upsetting part was the dozens of bloody handprints and footprints crisscrossing every inch of that corridor. Many feet (and I mean a whole lot) had traipsed through pools of blood, leaving an erratic trail. There were large and small footprints, including children’s little steps, long strides, dragging feet...a complete collection. But no one was there. I couldn’t say for sure that the tracks were made by the living.

  I settled a nearly unconscious Prit in a wheelchair and untied Lucullus from my wrist and tied him to a radiator. Tying him up like that hurt his feelings. He was dying to explore that new place, but I couldn’t turn him loose, not knowing what we’d find.

  There were bodies on the floor, of course, but fewer than outside. By some miracle, I avoided stepping on a woman inflated by the gases of decomposition. Most of those unfortunate people weren’t undead, just innocent victims the monsters had maimed so savagely they were beyond resurrection. The lack of corpses there was surely because most of the patients were now part of the giant brotherhood of the undead.

  A sudden, loud metallic sound paralyzed me. Someone had run into a filing cabinet or a cart, then let out a drawn-out groan. The sound seemed to come from a couple of floors up, close enough to give me chills.

  We weren’t alone.

  I wasn’t about to walk around a dark, deserted hospital full of corpses just to identify the source of a noise. Whoever or whatever it was could have the whole place to himself. I was scared shitless just standing at the entrance. I couldn’t imagine heading into the bowels of the building.

  I walked by the nursing desk. A dust-covered stethoscope lay abandoned on a pile of medical records. I couldn’t resist hanging it around my neck. When I was little, I used to “borrow” my mother’s stethoscope. I loved those things.

  Suddenly I could picture myself in an episode of ER. What the hell would those characters think if they saw a guy holding an AK-47, wearing a wetsuit and a stethoscope around his neck, prowling around the ER?

  I giggled hysterically. My God, all that shit was starting to go to my head. Next stop: schizophrenia.

  Beside the check-in desk, next to some cubicles with the curtains drawn, was the emergency medicine cabinet. The door was caved in. I entered cautiously, treading on the broken glass that covered the floor.

  It looked like a bomb had exploded in there. The steel cabinet where they kept morphine and opiates was shredded into what looked like flower petals. Someone had opened it the hard way, with an explosive, maybe a grenade off a dead soldier. The explosion had reduced the jars, vials, and medical devices to smithereens. A botched job. The work of someone looking for morphine or, more likely, a junkie who knew where to find opiates. I’m not surprised. It must be hard to score some horse these days.

  I rummaged through pieces of broken glass for a vial in good condition, mentally repeating the list: antiseptics, antibiotics, gauze, painkillers (no opiates, since Prit had already maxed out on morphine), sutures, bandages, sterile needles.

  I felt a jabbing pain in my hand and yanked it back. I’d sliced my finger with a sliver of glass as thin as a knife. I swore under my breath and put my finger in my mouth. The salty blood ran down my throat. I wrapped my finger absentmindedly in a butterfly suture and went back to searching, in a worse mood, piling my booty on a shiny aluminum tray.

  That tray saved my life. When I turned around to set down a roll of tape, I saw movement behind me reflected in the metal mirror. I turned around like a snake and clumsily raised the AK-47. The bitter taste of fear rose from my stomach.

  A decrepit old man, completely naked, with some of his intestines hanging out, was rocking back and forth, less than two yards from me, the right sleeve of his hospital gown rolled up. He opened his mouth in a mute roar as he stumbled toward me, stepping on the glass barefooted, feeling no pain. I was paralyzed with horror. The old man had no eyes. Although his eye sockets were empty, and two bloody streams slid down his face, he knew exactly where I was.

  Everything happened in slow motion. I raised the AK-47 to his face. Curiously relaxed, I pointed the gun at his neck to compensate for the kick, something I’d learned from the Pakistanis. I let him get barely a yard away and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet left a gaping red hole in the old man’s forehead. Splinters of bone, brain, and blood splattered the wall behind him.

  The old man collapsed like a sack with a wet, gurgling sound, dragging along a pile of folders as he fell. The smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils, and a piercing whistle rang in my ears from firing in such a tiny space. I’d have a headache in the hours to come.

  Once again, I’d had a close call. But that shot would’ve been heard for more than a mile. Every being, living or not, in the hospital would know we were there. Jesus, what a day...

  As I calmed my heartbeat, I cursed myself. How could I have been so stupid? The speargun hung over my left arm. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry and as scared as a hysterical old woman, I could have taken out the old man with a silent spear instead of the noisy AK-47.

  I’d had to act fast. I hadn’t had the presence of mind to think about the speargun. The assault rifle was the first thing I got my hands on, and I acted instinctively.

  Now I had other things to worry about. The shot triggered a wave of sound throughout the hospital. Doors banged, things crashed on top of each other, something fell noisily to the floor (a stretcher?), and there were dull, muffled thuds against the walls. It was one lethal symphony. And most of all, the fucking groaning. How could I forget that? It was an indistinct, deep echo, as if someone was trying to talk but had forgotten how to move his tongue. It was impossible to explain the sound if you’d never seen those monsters. It’s a chilling roar, human and inhuman at the same time.

  I scooped up all the drugs on the metal tray and ran back to where I’d left Prit. He was awake, sitting bolt upright in the wheelchair, his right hand cradling his left hand, which was covered in bandages. He was dazed by the morphine and white as a sheet, but otherwise fully conscious and alert. And scared. As fucking scared as I was.

  He asked me what had happened and where the hell we were. Quickly, I brought him up to speed from the time he had the “accident” until I’d left him sitting in that chair in the middle of a deserted, dark room. Then I realized the tremendous shock he must’ve felt when he regained consciousness, all alone, wounded, in the dark, in a strange place filled with terrifying noise. If it’d been me, I’d have had a heart attack.

  I hesitated about whether to tell him about his injuries. Hell, he’s got eyes, he’s not an idiot. I told him he’d lost t
wo fingers on his left hand, and the ring finger didn’t look good. The Ukrainian didn’t blink. He coldly asked if he still had his thumb. I nodded. He seemed to relax a little. He matter-of-factly said that wasn’t so bad, as long as he still had his thumb and two fingers to oppose it. “I’ve seen worse,” he added. “You should’ve seen my friend Misha in ninety-five after his helicopter was hit with a thirty-seven-millimeter grenade. Now, he had a problem. So I’m okay. I’ll make it. Now, pass me the AK-47 and stop making all that bloody racket, by God. Our ass is on the line here.”

  My relief was so overwhelming I nearly cried. I knew Prit’s apparent calm was only a front, but just hearing his voice made me feel less alone. I handed him the heavy AK-47. The Ukrainian deftly crossed it over his wounded arm and felt for the magazine with his good hand. He seemed perfectly capable of defending himself with one hand.

  I was already calmer. Knowing I didn’t have to keep one eye glued to an unconscious Pritchenko was a big relief. And knowing that he had my back again was an even bigger relief. But as much as he played the tough guy, I could read fear and anxiety in his eyes. Plus, I couldn’t forget that the guy needed urgent medical attention. More than I could give him. And he needed it now.

  It was time to get the hell out of there before things got uglier. I left Lucullus in Prit’s care (my cat looked distressed to lose sight of me) and walked back down the hallway to the ER. I had to find out if the path was clear.

  The hallway was even darker than when we got there, lit up by only the lightning. The worst of the thunderstorm had passed, and there were fewer lightning bolts. But the rain was far from stopping. Sheets of rushing water fell from a dark violet sky. The wind was gradually reaching hurricane speeds. Broken branches, bark, and dozens of unidentified objects whirled around the parking lot. Swirls of rain reduced visibility to a few yards. That was the least of our problems, by a long shot.