by Jolly, Kirk
Suddenly he was very nervous to leave the morgue. He dreaded what he would find in the rest of the hospital. These thoughts were foolish, he kept telling himself, but he couldn’t convince the knot of fear that had settled in the pit of his stomach. With no work to occupy his thoughts, he was becoming more panicked and found that he had to take more than a few deep breaths to steady his pulse. They were still waiting for him.
“Perhaps we should turn on the news again and see what’s going on. Maybe it will be good news.”
Alice nodded and walked over to the monitor that hung from the corner of the room. She flipped it on and they all jumped at the sound of the emergency broadcast signal. The message, “Stay in your homes. Dispose of your dead. Help is on the way,” crawled across the screen over and over again.
“What do we do?” Alice said flipping through the rest of the channels trying unsuccessfully to find a real broadcast.
“We go check the ER,” he said his eyes frozen to the screen.
Chapter 12: ER
Allen led the way out the doors. Part of him wanted to grab the bat he kept in his locker but felt that would worry the others too much. Besides, more than likely they would go through the locked doors and find the staff working on patients, and he would look quite foolish standing there with a bat like a frightened child.
The hallway was lined with empty gurneys on both sides. They walked down the middle toward the locked doors. After a quick peek out the small windows, he clicked his badge against the lock. He pushed the door open and was both relieved and disappointed that the hallway beyond was empty.
They crept along the short distance to where the hallway turned leading into the ER, then stopped to listen. They could hear commotion beyond, but the ER often sounded that way. He tried to listen for voices calling out instruction or codes, normal hospital sounds, but the only voices he heard were moans of pain.
He slowly turned the corner and edged closer to the swinging doors at the end of the hall. He put his face to the window and looked out. The room was crammed with patients on beds, struggling against the straps that held them down. Many simply lay still. There was no sign of any of the staff. He eased the door open. A few of the patients called to him for help as they noticed him entering the room.
“Where are all the doctors,” he called to the closet patient.
“They ran away. Please help me. At least undo these straps so I can make a run for it.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. There was a commotion in the parking lot. A siren or something…,” the man coughed up blood, choking on it. Alice rushed to his side and started to undo his straps, but the man began to buck.
“Shit, he’s seizing,” Alice blurted backing up. “What do we do?”
Allen froze. His mind reeled as he felt the situation slipping away from him. He scanned the room looking for a crash cart but the sight of so many people dying, pleading for his help, made him panic all the more. The man on the bed in front of him was dying just like his appendectomy patient all those years ago. He felt the weight of all the eyes in the room on him, boring through him. A sour sweat broke out over his entire body. Dimly, he heard Alice and Xavier pleading with him to do something.
The sound of glass shattering broke his trance. The entire ER went silent, the pain and suffering usurped by fear. Fear of what that sound meant. In the eerie calm, the grunting, animal sounds of the risen dead could be heard as they forced their way into the hospital. More breaking glass crashed, then the ER erupted in screaming. Alice and Xavier lunged for the nearest patients to free them, but Allen grabbed them both by the collar and dragged them backwards.
“It’s too late,” he shouted at them as they struggled against him. The first zombie rounded the corner and attacked the nearest patient. The fight went out of his young colleagues and he was able to pull them behind the swinging doors. He risked a glance back through the small porthole and saw that dozens of the dead had now fallen on the helpless people in the ER. The screams haunted them as they fled toward the safety of the morgue.
“Hurry,” Allen said to everybody needlessly as they ran to the locked double doors around the corner. When they’d retrofitted the hospital to handle the outbreaks, they’d had the foresight to put a steel door-barring system in place. Once everybody was through, he pulled the heavy metal bar down across the double doors and made sure it was securely in the brackets. Nothing would be able to get in now, but they also wouldn’t be able to get out.
As they walked past the elevator, a soft ping sounded. They all froze and watched as the down arrow lit up and the lights indicating floor went from 1 to B.
“Somebody’s down there,” Allen breathed.
After a pause, the arrow switched from down to up, and they all held their breath as light changed from B to 1.
Chapter 13: Out of Options
The bat would have felt really good in Allen’s hand right about now and he silently cursed himself for not grabbing it. They back off from the elevator doors as they began to open, readying themselves for whatever was about to come through. With a groan, a person wearing scrubs covered in blood lunged through the opening.
“Shit!” Allen yelled jumping back, but the figure fell limply at his feet.
“Josh?” Alice said quietly. She bent down and struggled to flip his prostrate body over to get a look at him. Xavier helped her.
“He’s breathing,” she announced. “Josh can you hear me?” She patted his face gently at first then with a little more force.
Just when she thought there would be no response, the kid sat up and yelled, “They’re coming!”
Alice hugged him tightly and whispered to him, “Calm down. You’re safe. We’re locked in the morgue.”
His eyes darted around taking in his surroundings. Groaning, he grabbed his leg. His scrubs were torn below the knee and he was bleeding from what looked like a bite mark.
“Let’s get him on one of these gurneys,” Allen said grabbing the nearest one. They hoisted him to the rolling bed and set him down as gently as possible. Allen grabbed another empty gurney and wheeled it over to the elevator. After pressing the down button and waiting for the doors to open, he pushed the gurney in between so the elevator would not be able to close and leave the floor. “Just in case,” he said responding to the questioning looks on Alice and Xavier’s faces.
They pushed Josh back to the morgue. The kid was quiet but alert. Allen wanted to question him but knew they should patch him up first.
Once inside, Alice cut Josh’s pants leg open and assessed the wound. It was a deep bite on the side of his calf, but the tissue was still reasonably intact.
Allen hissed as she scrubbed at it with antiseptic. The Risen’s bite carried no disease besides the ones in any normal human mouth, but infection was still a danger.
“I’m going to have to put in a few stitches,” she announced. “Allen, can you help?” She looked at him with appraising eyes.
He’d hoped that she hadn’t noticed his paralysis in the ER or had discounted it as a moment of weakness. Allen knew that they were counting on him to lead them out of this. He’d have to push down his fear of harming a living person.
“Sure,” he said in an uneasy voice. He walked over and got some supplies and returned. Alice wipe the fresh blood away from the wound and used both hands to close the opening as best she could. “Sorry, Josh. We don’t have any anesthetics down here. No real need for numbing the dead.”
“Just do it,” he rasped.
Allen plunged the curved needle into the skin and forced it out the other side of the wound. Josh grunted but held still. After several more stitches, while ragged, the skin was closed up. It would leave a nice scar, but Josh would survive.
Alice applied some more antiseptic and bandaged and wrapped the wound. She walked away and returned with a fresh pair of scrubs and a glass of water. Josh downed the whole thing in a couple of gulps.
“Thanks,” he exhaled, w
iping his mouth. They helped him stand and change into his clean scrubs.
“Tell me what happened,” Allen asked in a calm voice.
Josh shook his head and his eyes became shiny with tears, but none fell. Allen regretted the question, but they had to know.
“About a half hour ago, we noticed that there weren’t any more ambulances coming in,” he grimaced. “Adams sent me to go check it out. I went to the dispatch room to try the scanner. There was nothing but static at first, but then a voice came through. He said he had tried to come in to the hospital but there was nobody working the gate and he couldn’t get out to open it because there was biters in the parking lot. He said if we came and opened the gate he would get as many people out as possible, so I went to let him in. At that point there were only a few of them in the lot that I could see, but as he drove up, it was like kids chasing the ice cream man. There were dozens. I couldn’t open the gate. I just couldn’t.” He shook his head and tried to collect himself.
“It’s okay,” Alice said patting his shoulder. She’d finished with his leg and was standing next to him.
“When he saw that I wasn’t going to let him in, he started honking and blasting his siren. This made even more biters come. When I turned around, the rest of the hospital staff was standing by the doors, those that hadn’t run off already. A few of the orderlies went to open the gates for him but Adams stopped them. The ambulance driver kept honking and drawing more of the dead in. Adams shouted for him to stop and he finally did. The guy rolled his window down a bit and shouted at us to let him in.”
“Adams told him the hospital was overrun and they needed to get out. I tried to say that we should just wait, but he wanted to get out of there bad. The ambulance driver agreed to sound his sirens and drive slowly away to divert the biters so we could make a run for it.”
“Why didn’t anybody come get us?” Allen asked.
“I told him I was going to run in and get you guys, but he told me it was too late. When I turned to go anyway, I heard a clicking sound. I turned around to see him pointing a gun at me.”
“Jesus,” Xavier breathed.
“I didn’t think he would shoot me so I turned to go anyway and he fired a shot at the ground next to me. He grabbed me and held it to my head. He said that he was more important than me and that I was going to be the one to stay behind to open and close the gate. They only operate from this side for security reasons. Then the ambulance started to drive away. Probably didn’t want to wait around for the psycho with the gun to shoot him. The rest of the crowd was looking at me desperately. I nodded that I would do it.”
“The plan sort of worked but either the ambulance drove away too fast or some of the Risen just were too curious about us to follow the sirens, but either way not all followed him as he drove away. They were far enough from the gate to open it so I did. As soon as it was open enough, Adams pushed his way through first then he ducked to the side to let the rest of the crowd through. The biters who’d stay behind began to come back. Adams pushed a nurse into a couple of them and ran. I was stunned and didn’t realize the gate was still sliding open. I pressed the close button a few times but it opened fully before it started to close again. A few of them got through and I had to fight them off to get back into the hospital front doors of the hospital.”
“That’s how I got this,” he said pointing to the bite.
“Did they make it?”
“Not all of them, but a lot did, including Adams. If I ever see that guy again…,” he trailed off.
We should try to make a run for it too,” Alice said. “My car’s pretty close to gate, we could…,” she cut off seeing Josh shaking his head.
“They followed me down the stairs to the basement. I had to barricade the door to get away. I was trying to get to you guys so we could run through the ER out the back.”
“The ER is overrun too,” Allen replied.
“So what do we do?” Josh asked.
They all looked at Allen. The weight of their stares threatened to crumble him. He wished it were just him here alone. He knew what he’d do if he were the only one left, but being responsible for three young people made it a hard decision. Still, he knew there weren’t many options. They could arm themselves and try to fight their way out of the hospital, into the parking lot and take their chances in a city that was surely overrun by now. They could barricade themselves in the morgue and hope that help came, but that seemed unlikely.
Or they could try something reckless to try to save the city, but it would take sacrifice. He looked them each in the eye in turn.
“I may have a plan,” he answered.
Chapter 14: Plan B
“That’s insane,” Alice said after Allen stopped talking.
“Yeah Allen, that’s suicide,” Josh agreed.
“Not necessarily,” Allen said. “The newer cold storage units are basically big walk-in fridges, and the walls are only a thin sheet of metal and insulated plastic, but the original one in the basement, that old beauty is practically a vault. It’s airtight and the walls are thick steel, surrounded by cement.”
“So we’ll just run out of air,” Josh said.
Allen opened his mouth to reply but Alice spoke up first, picking up on his train of thought.
“They keep oxygen tanks in the storage rooms down here. Lots of them.”
“Yeah, and I’ve stashed some bottled water and some food down there just in case…well just in case this happened.”
“What if nobody ever comes?” Josh asked.
“Then we’re as screwed as we are now,” Allen pointed out. “At least this plan gives the city a chance. Think about how many dead are in the hospital, risen or about to be. If we do this, it might just give everybody else a chance.”
“He’s right,” Xavier finally spoke a look of resolve on his face. “We should do it. We should burn the hospital down. We could save a lot of lives. I’m in.”
They all looked in surprise at him.
“I still think it’s crazy but I’m in too,” Alice added still shaking her head.
“Fuck it,” Josh spat. “I’m in as long as I get to light the match.”
It seemed a simple enough plan. They would clear out the cold storage locker; fill it with as many oxygen tanks, water, and any other supplies that would fit. Then they would disable the overhead sprinklers. Felix in maintenance had shown him how to do it. Then they would set off the fire alarms. This would do two things. It would warn anybody in the floors above them that might still be alive to try to escape, and the noise and the lights of the alarm going off would also draw as many of the Risen into the hospital as possible. After that, two of them would go back up to the main floor and set the place on fire using embalming fluid from the morgue to help it spread as fast as possible. They would then retreat to the storage room and let the building above them burn to the ground, putting down as many of the Risen as possible.
If it all worked, and the city was able to beat the outbreak back with their sacrifice, they would be rescued from the ashes in a couple days. If not, then they would be as dead as they were now.
There was one part of the plan that Allen had left out while telling the others, because he knew they wouldn’t go for it. As they set to work clearing the dozens of bodies out of their impromptu shelter, Allen kept catching Xavier staring at him with a strange look in his eyes. Twice Allen asked if he was all right and twice the young man just shook his head and got back to work.
The room now clear, Allen turned to the group, “You three go start getting the supplies loaded in, and I’ll see about the sprinklers.” They nodded and headed down the hallway.
He turned into the maintenance room that housed the water main. There was no way to disable the sprinklers. As long as the main had water, they would activate, ruining his plan. He had to turn off the water to the entire hospital.
Allen tried the wheel and it wouldn’t budge. After a few moments he decided to get help, when Xavier’s voice
startled him.
“Need some help?”
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” he offered.
“That’s all right. Just clear your throat or something next time. Now give me a hand with this.”
They each strained at the wheel and at first nothing happened, but then with a groan it began to turn. Once moving, it wasn’t too hard to get it shut. Allen grabbed a wrench and opened the relief valve.
At first the water came out in a rush but even as they watched the flow began to lessen. It would still take a few minutes for the system to depressurize and there was no point in standing and watching.
“Let’s go help the others,” Allen said. As he turned to go, Xavier grabbed his arm.
“How do you plan on getting to the security room alone?” he asked leveling Allen with his eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know what you are planning, Allen. I’ve dealt with the Risen before. The fire alarm might draw them in, but as soon as they see the fire, they are going to flee, making your plan useless. You’re going to try to make it to the security room and lock them in, aren’t you?”
“I told everybody this plan would take sacrifice.”
“I know and I agree, but you’ll never make it by yourself. You would have to fight through the ER.”
“I was thinking that with the chaos caused by the fire, I would be able to sneak through.”
“And what if you can’t? Were you going to sacrifice yourself and us for nothing?”
“I’ll make it,” Allen said stubbornly. “I have to do this.”
“Fine, but I’m going to go with you. I’m going to help. If we both go, we double our chances of making it and then we…”
“Absolutely not,” Allen barked, cutting him off. “The only way you will help me is to make sure the fire isn’t started until those gates are down and that everyone is safely inside.”
“Allen, I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” Xavier pleaded.