Well, the ladder was what had done him in really, but it was while he was cleaning out his gutters that it had happened. He’d climbed to the top, a leaf blower on his back, determined to make quick work of the leaves clogging the drains. After he’d finished, he’d tried climbing down – and the leaf blower had thrown him off balance, so down he went. Right onto his neck.
It had been instantaneous. He’d barely had time to scream before he’d landed. It was a tragic event, but now that he was gone his tissues could be harvested for a good cause, if Gina was quick. The body had been held up somewhere along the line by the local police, so instead of going to the far better-equipped, but farther away hospital in Haysberry, Edgar Nash had been brought to Grady Memorial.
It had bothered her once, long ago. When she’d first started medical school she’d been squeamish around the bodies. Now, though, it was just like any other day: work. And her work could save lives. She took pride in that, despite her working conditions.
She took a deep breath, the smell of stale air barely filtered out by her mask. She’d hardly noticed it before, but now with all of her senses at their peak efficiency before the autopsy, everything came to her. The smell of old machinery, leaking vital fluids one sludgy drip at a time. The sound of the machinery churning through the walls, a constant, dull rumble. The occasional echoing drop of water. The sound of far-off fireworks.
The feel of the warm metal underneath her gloved fingertips. The vibrations of each distant machine shaking the table ever so slightly. The chafing of her apron and doctor’s uniform, a size too small and well-worn, but all she had. She’d put in a requisition for new uniforms months ago, but she’d heard nothing back. She knew they were closing Grady Memorial down, though they would never admit it until she was out of a job.
Over the past year, staff had been transferred slowly out of the aging hospital. The most desirable were transferred to Martin Memorial in Haysberry, the rest were let go. She’d had a sinking feeling that when the hospital finally closed down, she’d be out a job. Still, she held out hope. She lived in Haysberry, and transferring to the hospital only five minutes away from her house was one of her dreams.
She couldn’t blame whoever was in charge, though. Grady Memorial was an ancient building, a relic of the past; a bygone remnant of a time long gone. Grady had been built back during the early years of the Cold War, when tensions were still high. At its inception, it had been a shining example of American pride.
Now, it was just a dilapidated hospital that had no patients and was little more than a prescription dispensary. Still, it was serviceable as a morgue.
She took another breath, this time through her mouth to try to avoid the stale taste, but it was pointless: she could taste the faint hint of oils, rotten machinery, and the body in front of her. She almost coughed, but kept the urge at bay.
Her eyes travelled over the man: every single hair on his head, a day’s worth of stubble, the bruising where his neck was broken. What a way to go, she thought. Dead on the 4th and brought to Grady. She had an inkling the man would have wanted to go anywhere else, but it didn’t matter now.
Thump thump thump. She couldn’t see the fireworks from down below where she was, but she could hear them, very faintly. The morgue was an old fallout shelter, designed to keep everyone safe when the nukes started to fall. When they hadn’t, the room was converted to what it was today. Luckily, the aesthetics of the fallout shelter perfectly matched what a morgue should look like, so it was an easy transition.
Her breath frosted as she pushed the scalpel down, cutting through Edgar Nash’s flesh with ease. She used to be squeamish, back in med school, but that was long past her now. She examined the body as she cut it open.
Gina was more than just a doctor, and it always amazed her how she’d wound up at Grady Memorial. She’d graduated med school as a forensic pathologist, one of the most promising in her class. She’d had a bright future in front of her, so many job opportunities that she couldn’t even count them all – and look where it had gotten her.
She pushed the thought away; it wasn’t something she liked to dwell on.
She focused instead on doing her job, however pointless it might be. Determining the official cause of death in this instance was definitely pointless, considering that it had already been determined. An autopsy had already been done. But regulations were regulations, and Gina was the final stop for Edgar Nash, at least until he went to the funeral home.
Thump thump thump.
She figured she would go upstairs after this was over and sit at the front of the hospital with Bobby. He was supposed to be answering the phone, but she knew exactly what he’d be doing: watching sports with his legs up on the desk, beer in hand. When she’d shown up earlier and given him a look, he’d just shrugged, as if to say, It’s the 4th. What else do you want me to do?
Maybe she would go up there and steal a beer from him. Sit down and watch the fireworks. Find Charlaine, the nurse, and chit-chat with her. If she had any friends in the hospital, Charlaine would be the closest. Still, they kept things work related and never hung out except when in the break room.
The autopsy went quick. The cause of death had already been determined, and Gina saw no reason to argue with their findings. Gina let her mind wander as she finished up: what was everyone else doing today? Were they having as much fun as she was? How was Petey dealing with the fireworks?
Boom! Boom! BOOM!
The whole room shook. What the hell?
She couldn’t be sure what kind of firework that had been, but it was big enough to swing the hanging fluorescent lights over her head. When the light swung away from her, it cast the other side of the room in a sickly half-glow and threw her temporarily into darkness. Edgar Nash looked like a zombie, lit up like that. But zombies weren’t her problem; she was done here. She bent down, unlocking the wheel blocks, and pushed the body into another room for storage. She locked him in, completing her final task with the body.
Boom! BOOM! BOOM!
She scribbled her final notes onto the clipboard. That was it - she was done with her work for the day. Still, something was definitely not right. As she left the morgue, she made sure to flip off the still-swaying lights and close the door behind her. Without that light, she realized, she was bathed in complete darkness. The lights in the hallway were off.
“What is going on?” she whispered. She opened the door back up and turned the light back on. The light didn’t even reach a quarter of the way into the hallway, but it was something. She headed forward, slowly, unsure. She’d walked down this hallway over a thousand times and could do it in her sleep, but something here just felt… wrong. She couldn’t explain it any other way.
It took only a few steps to completely leave the cold safety of the morgue light again, and she had to feel blindly to stop from stumbling. The building around her was almost silent – she couldn’t hear any of the usual sounds she had come to expect from Grady - but for one thing. Some other sound, coming from one of the rooms off of the side of the hallway. She’d never been in it before, but she stopped in front of it, wondering what it could be.
She reached out, willing herself to keep walking instead, but her curiosity was too great. She grabbed the handle, expecting it to be locked, but it turned underneath her grip. She opened the door. The sound was louder now that the door was opened. She ran her palm across the wall, feeling for a light switch.
She felt it underneath her fingers and flicked it on – nothing. With a sigh she pulled out her cell phone, and turned on the screen for a dim light. The room wasn’t large, and most of its available floor space had been taken up by stacks upon stacks of crates. She couldn’t even imagine what was wasting away inside them, but she didn’t care. She was here to find out what that sound was.
It was coming from behind a stack of crates in the far corner. A sort of buzzing, shuffling noise. She approached carefully, walking around stacks, and then came to stand at the base of the tower.
Was it coming from inside a crate? She didn’t think so. She set her phone to the side on a chest high stack, screen pointing up. It cast just enough light for her to see what she was doing.
She started by removing the top crate. It was surprisingly light. She set it carefully to the side and grabbed the next one. Oof! It was much heavier than the first one, and she stumbled with it, barely setting it down onto another. But the sound was just a little bit louder, and now Gina could see where the sound was coming from.
There was some kind of metal box on the wall. She grabbed her phone, shining it at the box. It wasn’t large, six inches by six inches, but it seemed to be vibrating quickly. That was the noise she had heard: the box moving against the wall extremely fast. From her position below, she couldn’t see much of the box, so she grabbed one of the cardboard crates and pulled it close.
Carefully, she climbed on top of it, putting the metal rectangle directly in front of her face. She looked at it closely: it had originally been red, but the paint was long faded and chipped. On either side was a round, dark hole. She couldn’t fathom what those were for. She wanted to reach up and slide her hand through, but there was no telling what it could be.
The top, she saw, was smooth, except for where two small wires protruded straight up. Using her phone, she followed them. They extended half a foot above the rectangle. One entered the wall, disappearing from her view. The other had been disconnected. In the dim light, she couldn’t see much, but she could tell that the wire had adapters on either side – to put it back together, all she would have to do was push them together.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Gina steadied herself as the crates rocked to either side. A large stack on the other side of the room collapsed, and they sounded heavy. She could really get hurt in this room – she needed to leave. She started to get down from her stool, but hesitated. It wouldn’t hurt to plug in the wire and see what happened, right?
She climbed back on and without hesitating she reached out with her free hand, grasped the wires, and angled them together with deft fingers. The light from her phone was unsteady, but it was enough. Just as the wires connected, she thought: It’s an alarm. Those two holes are speakers.
And the adapters slid into place.
Immediately, there was a loud rush of air, then the siren went off: a loud klaxon noise filled the air, so loud that the shock blew her backwards off of her box. She screamed, but she couldn’t hear it. She had enough time to think, Oh great. Now I’m deaf, as she tumbled backwards through the air. Her phone flew out of her hand, and she landed on the concrete floor, feeling her head crack against it with a flash of pain, then darkness.
*
The siren was deafening, but she knew that meant she still had her hearing intact. Gina rolled to her side, head pounding, and touched it gingerly. She could feel a wet slick of blood, but she knew it wasn’t anything serious. She’d been out for a few seconds, at the most, but that was enough: the room was utterly pitch black. Her phone had turned off. She may not be deaf, but she was effectively blind.
She fumbled around in the darkness, running blind into crates, praying they wouldn’t tip. There was another BOOM and she heard a tower collapse somewhere else in the room, metal clanking loudly inside of them. She got to her hands and knees, feeling for her phone, and finally found it.
She pressed the unlock button, and nothing happened. Slowly, she ran a hand over the screen. It was shattered. Her phone was broken.
She felt around until she reached the door and left the room. To her right, at the far end where the morgue light should have been, was instead darkness. To her left was the staircase leading out, but she couldn’t see that, either. Had the power gone off? Where was the generator? Why hadn’t that siren have turned off too? And what was it for?
She looked towards the staircase that would lead to the hospital proper. She started walking slowly, her hands outstretched in front of her. She didn’t want to run face first into the door. After what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than seconds, she reached the door, heart pounding. She opened it, then closed it behind her, thankful that the siren noise was dampened, if only slightly.
She looked upward: there was a window at the top of the stairs and it gave just enough light to see where she was going. She took the steps slowly, going up all five flights, and reached the top minutes later. She was exhausted – not physically, but the situation was stressful. She had no idea what was going on.
At the top of the stairs, the siren was barely audible. The rest of the hospital was silent. She had expected to hear Bobby’s TV blaring some game, but there was nothing. Even the fireworks – and whatever else had been exploding – were silent.
“Hello?” she called. No answer. She made her way to the front of the hospital, checking the reception room. The TV was on the floor, shattered, as were a couple of beer bottles. Miraculously, one bottle had stayed upright through whatever had happened. It was half drunk. Bobby, from all of his bragging, was the kind of guy to never leave a beer behind. But he was nowhere to be found.
From behind her, she heard footsteps. She turned, seeing Charlaine, a look of panic on her face. She hardly seemed to notice Gina, who moved in front of her, asking, “Charlaine! What’s wrong?”
It took the nurse a few seconds to register her. She never stopped moving, though, and skirted around Gina, saying, “Get home and get out of here, Gina!”
Then she was out the front doors. Dread was starting to form in the pit of Gina’s stomach. Something was seriously going wrong here. She didn’t know what it was, but she was uneasy.
BOOM! The entire hospital shook. The ceiling tiles started to come down, shattering close to her. She jumped sideways to avoid one as Bobby’s last bottle toppled to the floor and shattered in an explosion of glass and beer.
Gina decided that it was time for her to leave.
*
Outside, she couldn’t see much. This time of the year the trees were in full bloom, and they covered the mountains. There were a few small houses to her left, down the road: the entirety of the town of Grady. To her right was a small supermarket. The road was deserted, though. Even the houses were empty. The cars that usually sat unmoved out front were gone.
Whatever had happened, the residents had fled. She heard the roar of a car, and Charlaine raced past her. Gina watched her car until the road wound around a huge patch of trees, and then it was gone. She was alone. She was probably the only person left in the entire town.
She ran to her car as fast as she could, getting in and slamming the door behind her. She started it up and wheeled out of the parking lot faster than she had ever before. Whatever was going on, she intended to get home, grab her dog, and hit the road – anywhere was better than here, with whatever was going on. Petey would probably be scared stiff right now.
She took a right, following the route Charlaine had taken, winding and turning down mountain roads. She’d always loved the Appalachians, especially driving through them. Most days, it was like driving through a dream. She had always felt special, felt hidden, between these ancient trees. Right now, she hated it. She couldn’t see anything but the twisting and turning road in front of her.
She tried to peer through the trees, down the mountains, hoping to see signs of what was happening in Haysberry. But the trees were oppressive and dark. The sun would be slipping behind the horizon soon, and then she wouldn’t be able to see anything, at all.
So she kept driving, muttering under her breath, “Shit, shit, shit,” over and over. The road was absolutely deserted. She had expected to see someone, anyone, but she was alone. She shivered.
Gina rolled the windows down, letting the warm breeze roll into her car and keep her focused. What was going on? There were some explosions, and that siren in the basement had gone off – she wasn’t sure what it meant, though. Explosions? Had they been attacked? Were those explosions from bombs, or from something else?
The radio told her nothing. The
re was nothing but static on every channel she tried. She wasn’t surprised. Gina shivered again. What was going on?
The drive down to Haysberry wasn’t long, but it was tense. As she drove down the mountain, Gina started to hear the familiar sound of sirens. Then she started to smell smoke. She still couldn’t see what was going on down below, but she had a feeling it wasn’t good.
MUNDO (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 2) Page 56