by G. Benson
And they died anyway.
You were sad, and affected, but you buried it and went back to work because you had five other patients or your pager was beeping or your shift had only just started. That night you went home, or you went out, and you blocked it out. Sometimes maybe had a cathartic cry. Then blocked it.
So Natalie did that now.
Except this was harder to block out.
Even covered in blood and with her shoulder on fire, Natalie had stood up and kicked one of those people—zombies, they were calling them now? Seriously?—off Raj. It had fallen into a wall, slipping and cracking its head on the edge of a cupboard filled with medications.
After which it had stood straight back up.
Fucking zombies.
She wanted to go back to Ireland. No zombies there.
God, she hoped there were no zombies there.
Trust there to be zombies in bloody Australia, though. All the jokes her family made that everything here could kill you.
Well, ha-ha, Da. There were zombies now.
Dear sweet baby Jesus, what if the spiders became zombies?
No. She was spiralling. Stop that.
Withholding a sigh, Natalie focused back on what they were doing.
Off to fight zombies.
Right.
Huddled together like penguins, they made their way to the double doors that opened up to the split off to Ortho and Vascular.
Here they were, choosing to flounce through the Vascular Ward and play in the blood and gore. Lovely.
Natalie was sure her arm was about to fall off.
If some zombie—she would never be able to think that without rolling her eyes, she was sure—didn’t chew it off first.
Taren paused in front of her at the doors, the others hanging back. Small movements of her head indicated she was looking back and forth through the tiny window that had always reminded Natalie of a ship portal.
Not sure how Taren had become the leader of this small expedition, Natalie wasn’t going to fight it. Especially after watching her drop those two earlier in quite a horrifying way.
It wasn’t like Natalie could talk. She’d grabbed Raj’s baton out of his hand and swung it at the one that had got back up in Ortho. Then again. And again.
Then pulled him up, given it back to him, and they’d fled the sounds and sights of more of those things.
Turning to face everyone, Taren’s face was unusually grim. Natalie didn’t know Taren personally, only vaguely of her and what she knew from the gossip mill. But whenever she had seen her, excluding after the moody break up or whatever it had been with Ayton, Taren was laughing and loud and had a grin that made everyone beside her grin too.
“It looks clear.”
“Great.” Looked like Natalie was using that sarcasm.
Behind them, Xin piped up. “Uh—question?”
The girl reminded Natalie of her doe-eyed sister—who Natalie could not even think about usually, let alone this minute, without getting an aching twist of homesickness in her gut. But this one was not as innocent as she seemed. She had fight. When those zombie things had rounded the corner, Natalie had frozen, despite kicking a few of their asses when her blood had been hot. Xin had rounded on them, ready with that fire extinguisher.
Natalie turned around and they stood in a small circle.
Eyes wide, Xin surveyed Natalie and Raj, who Natalie hadn’t even realised had barely moved a foot away from her until now.
“How many were in the Vascular Ward, guys?”
Everyone turned to the two of them.
Audibly, Raj swallowed. He was such a soft guy. Which was not meant as criticism. “Uh—maybe two?”
Arms crossed, Xin kept an eye on them. “Okay. And those ones in the corridor, was that woman one that you’d seen in there? The one with the glasses? We didn’t really talk about what we could expect in that ward.”
Silence sat on them, heavy. They really weren’t well rehearsed at this kind of plan making.
“I recognised the woman,” Ayton said. “She’s from the Vascular Ward. I was going to amputate her foot tomorrow. She had glasses, yes.”
Ayton’s voice was low, and Natalie watched as she carefully avoided Taren’s eye as she said it. Maybe she’d been close to that patient. Taren had definitely hit them pretty hard. Though Natalie held nothing against her for that—they just kept coming back if you didn’t, and right now it was the zombies or them.
Zombies. Bloody zombies.
Give her Aussie sharks. Spiders. Snakes.
Not zombies.
“Yeah.” Raj swallowed heavily. “She was there. Another one definitely was. One who had stripy socks.”
“Well.” Taren looked like she was gnawing the inside of her cheek whenever she wasn’t speaking. Maybe their fearless leader wasn’t so fearless. “Then it looks like maybe we’re dealing with at least one in there. When we run through, if we see it, we’ll try to take it out so you two don’t have to deal with it.”
Xin blew hair out of her eyes. “Excellent. And if others are now one of them? And there’re a lot?”
“We bail,” Raj said, brown skin greying a little at the thought.
Face set, Taren watched Ayton. “Ayton, are you going to be able to square up if we need you to? With your martial art stuff?”
Confused, Natalie looked between Ayton and Taren. Why wouldn’t she? The woman was a black belt. Right now, Natalie felt like they’d won the lottery getting her on their little team. Who better to be stuck in this kind of mess with? Was Taren asking because Ayton was hypoglycaemic or because of something else? Sure, Ayton was kind of clammy and pale, but she wasn’t shaking or anything.
“I guess,” Ayton finally said.
She guessed?
“What do you mean, you guess?” Sometimes Natalie should think before she spoke. Wait, she had done. Oh well.
Xin chimed in, “She’ll do it, I’m sure.”
Before Natalie could press, Taren spoke. “Okay, let’s go. Ayton needs food and meds and, to be honest, I need to eat something too. You two get the meds and get back to the stairs—sorry Natalie, but your arm is really not going to be helpful. I thought maybe you could get the meds and meet us at the canteen and we could all come back together, but in case our plan changes, I think it’s best you guys go straight back to the stairs.”
Ignoring the sting that she was basically useless, Natalie nodded. “Fine. You don’t want to get the insulin first, then get food? In case?”
Ayton considered for a second, before she shook her head. “I need food more than anything. The short-acting can wait until after, since I had the basal shot last night. Normally I’d say yeah, insulin first, but I’m getting dizzy.”
Taren looked to Raj. “Okay?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “We could meet you at the canteen. Get the meds straight to you, stronger in numbers?”
“And if we have to run elsewhere? Or all die? Or change our plan? Then we’re all separated even more.” Taren rubbed the back of her neck. “If we just all go back to the stairs as our meeting point, we’ll know what to expect.”
Raj jerked his shoulders up, resigned. “Okay.”
Natalie felt a spark of irritation. She didn’t think any plan was a particularly good plan at this point, but if he disagreed, he could show some backbone and say so.
With that, Taren turned and pushed open the doors.
One by one, they trooped in after her. Clearly deciding not to hesitate, Taren turned right and headed for the double doors, Vascular Ward written clearly over them. Once again, she stopped and checked through the glass. She didn’t glance behind her, not once.
Natalie did. The foam from the fire extinguishers had become an even soppier mess, tinged pink. The bodies of the two Taren had taken out lay there, unmoving.
Unable to help it, she stared for a good few seconds. Definitely unmoving. Breathing a sigh of relief, she followed T
aren up to the door, Xin tagging along with her. Ayton was also adamantly not looking back. She’d actually dropped into one of the seats outside the Vascular doors, face peaky.
“Same as before,” Taren said, head moving as she checked through the small window.
Grand. That meant lots of dead bodies.
The back of her neck prickled, as if simply the knowledge of what lay behind them was creeping her out. She glanced behind her again—the bodies were still dead. Or dead again. Positions unchanged.
She turned back to face the doors. There were dead people ahead, too.
People Natalie had been working with the last year and a bit that she’d been in Australia. People she liked, and didn’t like, and was neutral on. People she’d gone with for after-work drinks, who had included her in the Secret Santa even when she’d arrived only a week before the ward Christmas Party. People she’d squabbled with, swapped shifts with, saved lives with. Lost lives with.
All dead.
Why were none of them rising up? Why were so many staying dead? Weren’t the bites infectious?
Did it only affect some people?
Natalie switched off that thought and followed Taren in. As she walked through the doors, she took a step to the left so the others could go past her and ahead. Not wanting to admit it, Natalie did it silently with her jaw gritted. She was less able to help with one arm working and no weapon. Raj stepped next to her, and the others walked ahead.
There was an endless beeping coming from down the hall. So loud it was almost piercing.
“Intravenous pump,” Natalie murmured as quietly as she could.
Normally that sound would be drowned out by chatter and movement, by everything else going on in the ward. It would reach the nurse who needed to attend it distantly, and the nurse would rush off with a new IV bag or new medication to put up, or muttering about the alarm going off because the patient had barely bent their hand and the sensitive machine thought there was an occlusion.
Now the sound droned on, and on, and on.
Wide-eyed, Natalie catalogued what she saw. Steve was still sprawled over the nursing station bench, blood no longer dripping. They’d liked to go clubbing together. His fiancée was one of the nicest women Natalie had ever met. She’d made a move on Natalie, searching for a night of fun, before she’d got together with Steve, right when Natalie had first arrived, and Natalie had had to do her polite decline she was always having to do.
She and Steve had seemed really happy. Natalie had never told him his fiancée had tried it on with her, hadn’t been sure their friendship was at that kind of point in which they could rib each other.
Now she’d never be able to, anyway.
She tore her eyes away, drawn to the flowers on the floor a patient’s family had dropped off for the nurses the night before. The water they lay in was pink.
Ayton, Xin, and Taren went on ahead, and Raj and Natalie followed behind. They took measured steps, all of them walking like cartoon characters trying to be sneaky. A hysterical laugh bubbled up in her chest, but Natalie managed to swallow it down.
On the wall to the right, before they started walking past patient rooms, hung the bulletin board covered in posters and pamphlets and—taking up most of the space—brightly coloured thank you cards. The one written expressly to Natalie, thanking her for the laughs in a hard time, had a spray of blood over it, red blotting out the ‘Thank’ so only the ‘You’ stood out, like an ominous warning. The spray of red spread up and up the wall.
That beeping kept going.
There was a red palm print on the wall, blood smearing off down the corridor.
At the door to the medical supply and treatment room, Raj and Natalie stopped and watched the others walk ahead. Gingerly, Taren stepped over the security guard on the ground without looking at him, Raj’s grip tightening on the baton in his hand next to her.
Natalie narrowed her eyes and watched as Joy scooted around him, eyes glued to the blood and open neck wound, face even whiter than before. Once at the end of the hall, all three paused and turned. Natalie and Raj gave them a silent wave, then they moved off quickly further down the hall.
The corner swallowed them and they were gone, leaving just Raj and Natalie and the sound of beeping that droned on and on, a machine that would be doing that for a very long time.
Her heart hammered in her chest. The last time she had been in here had not been a nice experience.
“His name was Adrian,” Raj murmured next to her, eyes glued to the security guard on the floor.
Natalie clenched her hands, unsure what to do with that information.
She and Raj stood in silence for a few minutes, listening intently. No footsteps over the sound of the IV machine. No shuffling.
“Let’s go.”
Raj’s whisper, carefully muted, made her twitch in surprise. The glare she threw him made him grimace an apology, but she still whacked him gently with her good hand. Satisfying, despite the jolt to her shoulder.
Rubbing his chest as if she could actually wound him left-handed, he jerked his head towards the inside of the room. Together, they stepped in. It was a typical treatment room, shelves lining the walls filled with everything from bandages to needles. A locked cupboard stood at the end with medications. Counters lined the walls with cupboards stacked high with even more supplies. A stainless-steel island table ran in the middle for preparing IV antibiotics and whatever else staff needed.
Natalie had spent a long time working in here.
Usually, there was not a long, bloody streak running along the silver table.
Usually, it was spotless.
Who had left that streak? Where had they gone? There were some smudges of blood on the floor near the door, but nothing else.
They’d never know.
Lost, Raj looked around the room and then back to Natalie. He gave a helpless shrug.
Natalie rolled her eyes. Typical surgeon. He didn’t know where anything was. She grabbed his swipe keys, still dangling from his pocket, and yanked on the drawstring before letting it go to flick back against his hip.
“Swipe card can access medications. You get the insulin, and whatever else.” Natalie had never spoken so quietly in her entire life. Nervously, she peered over her shoulder, but there was still no movement, no sound beyond beeps. A thought occurred to her as she looked back to him, already on his way to the med cupboard.
“Raj!”
He turned around at her harsh whisper. “Jesus! What?”
“Pain meds.”
Sounding that pathetic had not been a part of her plan but her shoulder hurt, damn it.
Dark eyes softening, he gave a nod and swiped his card over the access port, setting his baton on the ground next to him. Glad she knew her way around, Natalie went first to a drawer on her left and filled her pockets with scalpels. Any form of weapon was better than none and she couldn’t think of anything in this room that could work better. They didn’t keep many on the ward, but she added what she could.
On second thought, she turned and considered the IV poles that were jammed in the corner. Long. Silver. Strong. Spokes at the top for hanging IV bags. Grinning, she walked over and went to undo the lever in the middle. Having only one hand was annoying, and Raj was busy rummaging through the medications. The second she touched it, its wheeled base meant it started rolling away.
She rested her foot on the base, undoing the lever with her left hand. When the top pole started to slide down into the supporting pole’s base, she quickly grabbed it and pulled it out. An unbidden grin took over her lips. Who needed two hands? Not Natalie.
She was left with a metal pole a touch over a metre long with four hooks at the top. Perfect weapon.
Eyes swept to the door again and focused on the hall, or what she could see of it. Nothing.
She quickly undid three more poles, laying them one by one on the floor next to a cupboard to take with them.
S
ure-footed, knowing her way around this room like it was her own bedroom, Natalie crossed it and opened a cupboard. She snatched out two of the large green bags with a pull-string top they gave patients to take their belongings home in. Silently, she handed them to Raj, who nodded his thanks and started emptying his pockets into it, packets of meds raining in. He was grabbing everything he could. Why not?
Natalie grabbed another bag for herself. Using her free hand, she half-opened it on the island table and left it there, walking around the room to collect alcohol swabs, insulin pens, needles, and insulin syringes. The bag was barely full, so, figuring it couldn’t hurt, she filled it up completely with anything a diabetic would need, throwing in two blood glucose monitors. She topped it off with more of everything—bandages, antibiotic cream, dressing kits. Because, again, why not? Government funded and all, and according to Xin, the government was out there shooting at them. They paid taxes. Technically, she’d paid for this stuff then.
Which meant it wasn’t even stealing.
She grabbed a second bag and looked around the room, then down at the blood-stained shirt that her arm was wrapped in, and rolled her eyes at herself. She needed a sling. The cupboard with those was low and she squatted, opening it to pull one out. It, too, was shoved in the bag as she decided they could wait until they were safe in the stairwell to put it on. Again, she looked out the door.
Again, there was nothing.
Beep beep. Beep beep.
That sound had haunted her dreams her first year of nursing back in Ireland. She’d wake up sure she needed to change an IV bag or fix a blocked line, lying in the dark for a few seconds thinking she was on the ward. Those dreams had stopped, eventually.
Probably they’d start again, with that sound mingled with people who wanted to eat her. Fabulous.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt, Natalie grabbed plasters, suture kits, saline, normal syringes, and more needles. The bag was overflowing and by the time she paid attention to Raj again, he was standing with his back to the open medication cupboard, eyebrows raised at the full bags she had.