Hour 23

by Robert Barnard

  “After you and all your pussy friends jumped ship, I stayed at the station and did the work of ten men.” Ingram spit into Jim’s face. “While I stayed behind doing your job, they crawled into my house and ate her alive, Jim. My Janice is dead. Because of you.” Ingram slammed Jim downward once more. Again, Jim’s head smacked into the pavement beneath him. He coughed and groaned and flailed his arms uselessly. He tried to ignore the warm sensation creeping from the back of his head and down his neck, but it was futile—he knew that at any moment he would pass out, and once passed out, he would be unable to defend himself. He would be dead.

  Jim gurgled out a glob of spit and blood and thought of Chloe. Not so high, Chloe. You’ll fall off.

  “And this one, you traitorous motherfucker, is for me.” Ingram rolled up his shirt sleeve, revealing a wound that looked similar to a bite taken out of a fresh, crisp apple. “I got this beauty on the drive over to my old pal Jim’s house.” Black tar oozed from the hole in Ingram’s arm.

  “Ain’t it a beaut, Jim?” Ingram said. He taunted Jim once or twice before winding back his meaty fist and plowing it into the left side of Jim’s skull. Instantly, Jim’s world turned dark. His body went limp on the chilly, dewy grass.

  “Deserter,” Ingram ridiculed. He reached behind his back and pulled out a .40 caliber hand gun. “You…fucking…deserter…”

  Ingram began to wheeze and pant as he pressed the muzzle of the hand gun against Jim’s lifeless face. As badly as he wanted to, he could not pull the trigger. His fingers turned to rubbery goo and what felt like a small army of fire ants marched from the center of his chest and outwards, towards the end of each of his extremities. The virus had taken its hold. There was no fighting it.

  The summer of Chloe’s seventh birthday, Jim drove his family out to a waterpark in Riverside to cool off. It was unseasonably warm that summer. For a brief moment, Jim lost sight of Chloe while waiting in line for a long, twisting waterslide. There was no greater happiness than the joy and relief he felt when he found her beside an ice cream kiosk. As if he could breathe again—

  Breathe. I can’t breathe. Jim’s eyes fluttered open and shut. Ingram’s massive body pinned Jim between the earth beneath him and the sky above him. Every inch of the sergeant’s four-hundred pound frame weighed down on Jim’s thin build. He’s dead—Oh God, he’s dead, it’s happening to him! Jim panted and struggled to reach the gun fastened to his hip, but Ingram’s gargantuan belly made accessing it difficult.

  Ingram started to moan lowly. His eyes had rolled back in his head. His teeth snapped open and shut. The layers of fat on the sergeant’s neck were the only protective cushioning keeping Jim from being bit.

  I’ve almost got it, Jim thought, his fingers cramping from stretching them as far as they would reach. The tip of his index finger grazed his holster. He flicked at it desperately and unlatched it. The gun was free.

  Glorp. Arkch. Blurp. Ingram started to make retching noises and his head whipped forward and backward.

  Almost. Almost. Jim slid a finger into the trigger guard of the gun, looped a knuckle around it, and fished it forward. He had the gun firmly in his grasp, but it was hard to concentrate. His skull throbbed so painfully that it was almost impossible to focus. The world in front of him would turn fuzzy and dark, then refill with vibrant light and color, only to turn dark again.

  Jim pulled his firearm upward, freeing his hand from the pressure of Ingram’s weight. He swung the gun forward and had it nearly pressed against Ingram’s flabby jaw when—

  Click. Clack. Ingram sunk his teeth deep into Jim’s shoulder, then jerked his head backward. Jim looked forward in disbelief as his former sergeant knelt above him, chewing on a tattered piece of Jim’s shirt. Jim raised his gun, the tip of the barrel aimed precisely between Ingram’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. A misty, warm spray rained down upon Jim’s face, and Ingram slumped sideward, freeing Jim.

  The front door of the Whiteman residence erupted. Chloe came running out, shocked by the sound of the fired gun.

  “Daddy!” Chloe cried. Jim knelt in the center of his front lawn, his face and chest covered in blood. He was gasping for air.

  “Chloe, stay—” Jim coughed up a glob of scarlet and collapsed forward onto the ground.

  Jim’s black Suburban careened down Pigeon Hill Road.

  “Faster,” Chloe cried.

  Dana leaned up from the rear seat where she sat with Jim. “No, Nolan, not any faster,” she plead, her face white. Jim sat slumped in his seat, in the same position he was when Noland and Chloe lifted him into the truck and buckled him in. He was out cold.

  “He’s dying,” Chloe screamed, turning back from the front passenger seat to glare at Dana.

  “We’ll die too if Nolan pushes this Goddamn truck any faster. Nolan, slow down!” Dana gasped as the truck blew through a dip in the road. The maneuver left a sensation in the bottom of her stomach, like she was riding a roller coaster.

  “What happened to him?” Chloe sobbed, turning back towards the road ahead of them.

  “That asshole beat him half to death,” Nolan grumbled, squeezing the steering wheel tightly, “before your dad blew his fucking head off.”

  “Why would someone want to beat up my father like that?” Chloe said, her voice cracking. So much of the mysterious assailant’s face was missing that she couldn’t recognize him as Sergeant Ingram.

  “I can’t think about that right now,” Nolan said. Up ahead, the wreckage of a downed helicopter blocked Pigeon Hill Road just before the road widened into Maple Avenue.

  “What are you waiting for?” Chloe begged.

  “What do you mean ‘what am I waiting for?’”

  “Drive through!”

  Nolan laughed. “Jesus, Chloe. I can’t just drive through!”

  Chloe pointed forward, tapping her finger on the windshield. “Drive over the side of the road there, there’s a path!”

  Dana sat in her seat, a golf ball sized lump in her throat. Jim’s breathing was shallow. Sporadic. Labored. She turned to the left just long enough to see the Xtra Mart—or what was left of it, at least—smoldering across the street.

  “Stop arguing, please,” Dana said. “I know a way into town.”

  Nolan pulled the steering wheel left as Dana had instructed him to. The Suburban crawled between a dumpster and a ditch beside the convenient store. When it made its way into the clearing behind the store, a bloodied figure leapt up out of the tall blades of grass.

  “Oh my God!” Chloe gasped. The thin male beat a palm against her window, leaving a bloodied handprint on it. His teeth clicked open and shut; his eyeballs swam around in his skull in opposite directions.

  “Is that Nicky Moore?” Chloe asked, still startled.

  Elliott barked from the rear of the vehicle as Nicky passed by the window. “It was Nicky Moore,” Dana clarified.

  The Suburban zoomed through the tall grass behind the Xtra Mart, cutting a path as it sped along. When it reached the steep embankment between the clearing and the railroad tracks, Nolan cautiously slowed down.

  “I don’t think we’ll make it up,” Nolan choked.

  “Trust me, we will,” Dana said. “I made it in a Prius.”

  Nolan cackled as the Suburban lurched forward, tires digging into the hillside. “You did this in a Prius?”

  Once atop the embankment, Nolan again hit the gas.

  “How does he look?” Chloe asked, turning back towards Dana.

  Dana swallowed hard and lied. “He’s going to be okay, Chloe.”

  The truck reached a section of track where the rails narrowed and passed over a bridge. Before Dana could speak, Nolan stomped the accelerator. The right rearview mirror clipped off with a spark as the Suburban drove over the planks of wood. Thump-thump-thump-thump.

  “Turn here,” Dana said, pointing at the back lot of a used car dealership. Nolan pulled the steering wheel to the right and the car swerved through one last clearing before making its way onto Wash
ington Street.

  The streets were mostly empty. Nolan made sharp turn after sharp turn until he was facing East Violet Memorial.

  “Shit,” Dana said, scooting up in her seat to get a better look at the building before them. The street was clogged with cars and frightened residents. They crowded the parking lot in front of the building. A helicopter hummed overhead. Countless tanks and Humvees lined the street. Rows of busses filled both lanes of traffic in front of the hospital.

  “They’re starting the evacuation,” Nolan said flatly.

  Chloe leapt from the passenger’s seat and out into the street.

  “What are you doing?” Nolan asked, before she slammed the door shut.

  Chloe climbed onto the hood of the Suburban and waved her arms desperately in the air. “Help! Help!” She cried as she howled the words. “Someone, please help us!

  TWENTY

  “We’ve got four coming up,” a male nurse announced from far off in the dimly lit hallway. “Two adults: one male, one female; two adolescents: one male, one female.”

  As the nurse made the announcement, he breezed quickly by Sherri’s desk. A stack of paperwork she was filling out fluttered as he passed.

  “Alive?” Sherri asked.

  The nurse scoffed and continued to hustle towards an elevator at the end of the hall.

  “Hey, Rolland. Are they dead or alive?”

  The male nurse turned towards Sherri as the elevator dinged open behind him. “The word ‘alive’ has become fairly subjective today, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sherri winced, not amused by Rolland’s morbid sense of humor. Sensing her annoyance, the young male nurse clapped his hands together and clarified. “Alive, Sherri. In the broadest definition of the word. Suit up, they’re waiting in the lobby.”

  Several nurses assembled near the elevator alongside Sherri. “We shouldn’t be taking new patients, we should be getting ready for evac,” one said.

  Sherri stood in the corner of the elevator, uncomfortably shoved up against Rolland. As far as Sherri was concerned, Rolland was young, arrogant, and a show off. She had been thankful for how little their paths had crossed over the past forty-eight hours.

  “Try not to look so serious, Sherri,” Rolland said with a wide grin. “It’s only a deranged, flesh eating virus that turns its victims into walking corpses. Lighten up a bit.”

  Sherri kept her cool, deciding it would be better to keep her lips sealed with a polite smile than point out Rolland’s lack of tactfulness. She had worked in her profession long enough to understand why some men found gallows humor so appealing—it was better to laugh and shrug at that which truly terrified them than to risk losing even an iota of machismo in the eyes of their peers.

  The elevator arrived at the twelfth floor and the nurses inside flooded out into the creep ward. When Sherri first put on a hazmat suit at the start of the outbreak, it felt strange and foreign. Now, it was almost like second nature. In a matter of moments she was outfitted in the protective suit, breathing apparatus and all. When the last piece of duct tape had sealed her in tightly, she returned to the elevator.

  Sherri hoped to be the first, and only, nurse to get back on the elevator. The others were still only half dressed. Except for Rolland.

  Rolland jammed his hand between the closing doors of the elevator, causing them to fully reopen. Sherri reluctantly stepped aside, giving him the room needed to board the elevator.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t fart,” Rolland said with a chuckle. “Besides, even if I do,” he continued, pointing at the breathing apparatus deep inside his helmet, “I’ll be the only one who can smell it, right?”

  Sherri grumbled, and the elevator began to descend.

  “Come on, Sherri. That was funny.”

  “Are you sure you’ve had enough rest today?” Sherri said.

  Rolland seemed aggravated by his inability to make Sherri laugh. He took a deep breath. “But seriously,” Rolland said, after a long silence. “Don’t these things make you feel like Darth Vader?”

  The elevator reached the lobby. When the doors opened, a nurse was already waiting outside with a gurney.

  Nolan, Chloe, and Dana all looked shocked by the aliens that had stepped foot off of the elevator to take care of Jim. They were even more shocked when the short, slim one appeared to recognize their father.

  “Jim, oh my God. What happened?” Sherri asked, her panicked breathing fogging the visor in front of her face.

  “You know how it is,” Jim said, helping himself onto the stretcher. “The world ends, planes start falling from the sky…you decide it’s a good time to brush up on your boxing.”

  Sherri giggled. Rolland sneered at their exchange.

  “Jim,” she said, helping the battered man swing his legs over the stretcher. “You look like hell.”

  “I got my ass kicked, Sherri,” Jim said with a grunt.

  Rolland and Sherri wheeled Jim towards the elevator. Chloe, Nolan, and Dana followed closely behind.

  “Your wife and kids?” Sherri asked.

  “No,” Jim quickly replied. “Well, the girl is, Chloe.”

  “Your dad’s in good hands, Chloe,” Sherri said.

  Chloe was hysterical.

  Jim said, “I know what’s waiting upstairs and I don’t want them anywhere near it.”

  “No way,” Sherri said, smiling at the trio following close behind. “There’s a room upstairs—beneath creep ward—that they’re more than welcome to.”

  The elevator doors closed. The boxy enclosure ascended slowly with creaks and screeches.

  “Nolan, you look white,” Jim said, glancing at where the boy stood in the corner of the elevator.

  “I hate hospitals, and I hate blood,” Nolan mumbled.

  The elevator came to a halt and the doors slid open. “You three take a right down this hall. At the very end you’ll see a door, it says Dr. Merrill,” Sherri said. The three followed her every word. “Whatever you do, don’t go in that door. Go one over to the right of it, room 1145. There’s a couch and some vending machines. The TV comes in and out.”

  Dana, Chloe, and Nolan nodded. Dana put one arm over Chloe and the other over Nolan, then walked them in the direction that Sherri told them to go.

  “So, you two know each other?” Rolland asked after the elevator doors shut. He slid a key into the numbered panel so that the car would lift to the infamous twelfth floor.

  “Not exactly,” Sherri said, grinning. “Just a couple of ships passing in the night, huh Jim?”

  “Something like that, I suppose,” Jim said. “God, I never would have believed I’d be back here right now.”

  Sherri’s smile slowly faded.

  “Sherri,” Jim said, looking at Rolland and then back to her. “When we get—you know, up there—can I talk to you for a minute? Just the two of us?” Jim looked worried.

  Rolland rolled his eyes. Sherri seemed surprised by Jim’s request.

  “Of course, Jim,” Sherri said.

  When the doors opened to creep ward, Rolland stepped out first, pulling the stretcher behind him.

  At first, Jim tried to close his eyes, not wanting to revisit the horrors from his last visit. Unable to resist a morbid curiosity, he watched the creep ward nursery as he wheeled by.

  “Where did they all go?” Jim stammered.

  Sherri nodded. “They’re dying, Jim. In less than a day they die. Truly die. After twenty-three hours, to be exact.”

  Jim gulped and looked at his watch.

  After a short trip, Jim was back in the same room he was in just the morning before. Jim looked at Rolland, then Sherri, and back to Rolland again.

  “I nearly forgot,” Rolland said, stepping back out of the room. “Excuse me.”

  Sherri dragged a rolling office chair close to Jim’s bedside, then sat beside him.

  “What happened out there, Jim?”

  Jim sighed. “Where’s Dr. Merrill?”

  “Preparing for the evacuation. I can get him
for you, if you want.”

  Jim looked nervously at the ceiling. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Jim,” Sherri repeated gently. “What happened?”

  After a moment of wondering what to say, Jim peeled back the collar of his shirt. Sherri turned slightly in her chair to see Jim’s wound. Purple flesh, swollen and bruised, in the middle of what was unmistakably a bite mark.

  “Oh, Jim. God.” Sherri crossed her arms and could feel her eyes begin to sting. “When, Jim?”

  “A little over half an hour ago.”

  Sherri cocked her head in confusion. “Half of an hour ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sherri spun in her chair, perplexed, and pulled herself close so she could get a better look. Whoever had bit Jim, their teeth had broken through the skin—there was no denying it.

  “That’s impossible.” Sherri spoke so lowly that Jim could barely make out what she was saying.

  “What do I do now?” Jim asked, his words wrought with desperation.

  Sherri stood up suddenly and pulled Jim’s shirt down, covering

  the wound. “Who knows about this?”

  “No one else. Everything happened so fast. I woke up in the backseat of my truck while they drove me to the hospital. They loaded me in without ever realizing it happened.”

  “Hold on,” Sherri said, and she looked around the room. “We’re going to run the blood panel on you—no, I’m going to run the blood panel on you.”

  Sherri grabbed a small plastic vessel and held it in front of Jim’s face. “Spit in this,” she said.

  Jim sighed. “What?”

  “Just do it. Spit in it.”

  Jim spit into the plastic bottle then wiped his face. Sherri sealed the container, then grabbed a vial and syringe from a drawer.

  “Let me warn you, I’m not a phlebotomist. I might miss a few times. Especially with these gloves.” Sherri made a pumping motion with her fist. “Do this.”

  Jim mimicked Sherri’s motions, then extended his arm. Sherri pressed the needle against Jim’s arm, miraculously hitting a vein on her first try. She filled the vial, removed the syringe, then quickly bandaged Jim’s inner elbow.