“We’d better learn how to use these,” Miguel said, ignoring Cheri’s protest. “Care to show us, Eric?”
Eric beamed with importance. He grabbed the pistol and pulled the magazine from the handle, checking to see if it contained any rounds. He saw that it was full, showing Miguel and Cheri the entire process.
“This is the clip,” he started. “It contains . . . a lot of bullets. In the field, we call them rounds.”
He pointed out specific parts of the pistol, naming them. “This is the safety.”
His tutorial was cut short by several rapid shots which made them duck for cover.
~*~
Lenny lay utterly still in the bed, though Keith watched for the slightest sign of movement. The sound of footsteps coming down the hallway drew his attention, and he stepped to the door, glad to see that it was Jack.
“We’ve got another bite victim,” Keith said, keeping his voice down so that the patients in the next room wouldn’t hear. After Jack stepped into the room, Keith closed the door behind them and told Jack what he’d found.
“He hasn’t become like the others yet, so maybe he won’t, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I moved his roommate out. Didn’t want to give the guy a heart attack if I have to, well, you know.” He nodded toward the gun. “It’s got me thinking that maybe we should talk to the doctors and nurses on the other floors. We need to find out who is still in the hospital and what the doctors’ specialties are. We also might need to redistribute some of the work load. It’s going to be critical to keep an eye on all of the patients. All it’ll take is one infected person to start this all over again.”
“How about if I get on the intercom and let everyone know the plan?” Jack asked. “We’ll get a head count for lunch, and Snake’s guys can feed the patients and do security detail while we have our meeting. Maybe in the cafeteria? That way, we could get some lunch too. I’ll just have to tell the staff and patients that we have some volunteers. What do you think, half hour?”
“That sounds good,” Keith said, but it brought up another issue. “I’ll bet our dietitians are all gone, and we’ve got several patients that are on restricted diets. There should be a list somewhere in the kitchen, I’d think. Let me know if they can’t find it and I’ll see what I can do, but a meeting in the cafeteria sounds good, unless I’m still here.”
“I’ll go get one of Snake’s men to take over here so you can come to the meeting,” Jack suggested as he left the room.
“Thanks,” Keith said, subdued. The infected people he’d killed earlier had been mostly strangers and they’d all been an immediate threat. He had not had a lot of time to contemplate his actions before taking them, but he had simply reacted to defend himself and the others that were with him. This was different. Lenny had been in Keith’s care for a week and they’d talked a lot. Lenny’s wife had brought cookies the previous day to thank Keith for taking such excellent care of her husband. Now Keith was probably going to have to kill him.
~*~
Peeking from their crouched positions, Miguel and Eric found Cheri examining the bale of hay she had just riddled with holes.
“Smith and Wesson 9mm,” she commented. “Nice!”
“H-how did you learn to do that?” Miguel stuttered. “Wait, I don’t want to know.”
“My dad was a sharpshooter,” she informed him. “You were so against guns that I never told you. I’m a pretty fair shot myself.”
“That may come in handy,” Miguel admitted. He turned to Eric. “I guess the lesson’s over.”
Eric looked like a kid on his last day of summer vacation. When he and Cheri had been together, she had always balked at his suggestion that he teach her how to shoot. Now he knew why.
As Miguel turned to leave, Eric slipped the pistol into his waistband.
Miguel said to Cheri. “I think we should put the beds in the basement. There are no windows, and the door is solid wood. I think everyone would sleep a lot better.”
Cheri agreed. The basement was 800 square foot, the size of a small apartment. They had finished it years earlier, making a recreation room for the kids, a guest room, and a utility room for the battery bank and power inverter. There was also a small room for their canned foods. If their defenses were breached, the family could survive almost indefinitely in the basement.
Halfway through the move, Miguel became tired and had to rest. Eric and Cheri continued transporting the beds, a small refrigerator, a microwave and, of course, the kids’ video games into the basement. As Miguel rested upstairs on the couch, Eric approached Cheri.
“I’m not sure how to tell you this,” he said carefully, “but I think Miguel may have been bitten.”
Cheri looked at him skeptically.
“What are you trying to pull now?” she asked him. “Miguel’s not like you, Eric. He wouldn’t risk exposing us. He would have told me. Why do you even think that?”
“Look at his lower back,” he replied. “It’s all infected. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I think you should check it out.”
Cheri shook her head.
“It’s probably just a cut or something. I’ll look at it, but this better not be some lame attempt to drive us apart.”
Her hand gestures gave Eric a clear message.
~*~
Lenny gasped suddenly, eyes pleading as his fingers tightened on his sheet. Before Keith could cross the room, death had stolen the light from Lenny’s eyes and had released his death grip on the bedding. Keith let out a breath as he reached down to check for a pulse. He found nothing. He closed the dead man’s eyes and stepped back, hoping that Lenny wouldn’t reanimate as the others had. Maybe he was truly dead. Keith wondered how long he might have to wait to find out, and he deliberated over whether or not to shoot him anyway, to be safe. Before he could make a decision, Lenny’s eyes sprang open.
~*~
Cheri walked upstairs and approached Miguel, who was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. As she came closer, she could see his ashen face. His eyes were devoid of expression and his breathing was shallow. For a moment, she just watched him. His hand, which was dangling off the couch, began to twitch. The spasm then spread to his arm. He shot up to a sitting position and grabbed his arm, trying to stop the tremors. Turning, his eyes met hers.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” he whispered.
“What? What’s going to be harder?” she demanded, not wanting to know the answer.
“I-I wanted to make sure you and the kids were okay. I was just going to drop off the guns and make sure you were safe.”
“Miguel,” she asked, “have you been infected?”
His eyes turned away and stared vacantly at the wall. He stood up, his arm still shaking.
“It’s time to say goodbye.”
~*^*~
~16~
“Ah, shit,” Keith said. His heart began to pound as he raised the gun.
Lenny began to push himself into a sitting position, his milky eyes shifting around the room until they finally focused on Keith.
Keith stepped closer and took aim, angling the pistol so that it was pointed toward the outside wall, rather than the next room. As Lenny reached for him, lips curled back in a snarl, Keith began to apply pressure to the trigger, yet he still didn’t take the shot. What if there was a cure? What if Keith pulled the trigger only to find out the next day that the violent symptoms could have been reversed? These thoughts gave him pause.
“Lenny, can you understand me?” Keith asked as his patient swung his feet over the side of the bed. There was no sign of recognition, and the only expression visible on Lenny’s face was hunger.
Lenny lunged at Keith.
“I’m sorry,” Keith said, pulling the trigger. He watched his patient fall back onto the bed, his face a ruined mess.
Jack heard the gunshot and hurried back to the room. “Well, I guess we don’t need a guard after all.”
“I guess not,” Keith said quietly.
>
“He may be better off than we are. It’s over for him. For us, it’s just begun.”
As Jack walked back to the nurses’ desk and started to speak on the intercom, Keith stepped over to the window to look outside. He watched as the infected roamed the streets and the parking lot and he wondered if the rest of the world was also falling apart. After a few minutes, he left the room and closed the door, refraining from looking at Lenny’s body on the way out.
~*~
When it was time for the meeting, he asked Marla to keep an eye on the floor. When she looked down at the tiles, he said, “I didn’t mean that literally. Just watch the patients and send a message over the intercom if anything happens.”
Keith had decided that it was best not to have her at the meeting. She’d distract the bikers at the very least.
When he reached the cafeteria, it was full of activity. The staff had been so busy dealing with the crisis that they hadn’t had much time to contemplate the enormity of their situation. Now everyone was speculating. At Keith’s suggestion, Jack had the attendees sign in before being seated. Everybody on the first and second floors, besides Autumn and Lindsey, was either dead or missing. Those on the upper floors had fared much better as Keith and Jack had halted the invasion before it could spread. All totaled, 16 staff members were present, including two general practitioners, one pediatric intern, one cardiologist, six nurses if Marla was to be included, three certified nursing assistants, a physical therapist, a janitor and one security officer. Besides the patients, there were also several visitors, some of whom had decided to attend the meeting, and the few bikers who weren’t busy distributing meals to the patients.
Jack told the crowd everything that he had learned and then he introduced Snake, who, along with his men, would be helping with security.
A balding middle aged doctor took exception to the announcement.
Jack groaned silently when he recognized him. Dr. Winston was notorious for being difficult and most of the medical staff hated to work with him.
“I’m not going take orders from a bunch of bikers. We hired you to do the job,” Winston said, pointing a finger at Jack. “You have no authority to put gangsters in charge of our safety.”
“Well, Doctor, since I am only one man and this is an emergency, I do have the authority to hire anyone I want to assist me with security. Perhaps you would rather be looking behind your back every time you go to check a patient’s blood pressure. Or maybe I should use the remaining CNAs and nursing staff for security so you can spend your time giving sponge baths and changing bed pans.”
The doctor threw up his hands and sat back down, muttering to those around him.
“It appears we’ll be here for quite some time, so we’ll be working long hours,” Jack continued. “I doubt that swing shift will be coming in, so we’ll have to make some sort of schedule. We desperately need everyone here, but if anyone has to go home and check on family members, I don’t think anybody will blame them.”
A CNA in the back stood up. “What would our chances of survival be if we leave?”
Snake stepped forward. “Like Jack said, it’s chaos out there. Chances are, if your families are alive, it’s because they’re somewhere like this. Unless you live away from population centers, you probably won’t find them at your homes, at least not like you remember them, if you even make it there. There’s a snowball’s chance that they are holed up at home, but if they are, you could be leading half the undead population of Lansing to them.”
“Undead? Are you insane?” Dr. Winston said, jumping to his feet. “Do you think this is some kind of horror movie? This is real life, buddy. The dead don’t get up and walk. These people are obviously on some sort of drugs.”
Keith stood up. “All I know is that there was a man on my floor who had his heart torn out and eaten, yet we found him crawling across the room.”
“Oh, please,” Winston said, rolling his eyes. “You’re just trying to start a panic.”
“Keith is right,” Jack replied. “I saw it, too. The man was dead. No doubt in my mind.”
The CNA who had helped them nodded in agreement. “There was no way he could have still been moving, but he was. The guy had been completely gutted.”
“You probably saw a lump of flesh that you believed to be a heart,” Winston said.
“I know a heart when I see one,” Keith said.
“So they teach you that in nursing school, do they?” Winston smirked, looking around to see if others found his comment amusing.
Keith took a deep breath but Snake stepped in before he could reply.
“Doc, I’m not sure how much you’ve seen here in the hospital, but I can tell you that this is not just a bunch of people on drugs. My boys and I were out there. For one thing, drugs aren’t contagious and this is. A person gets bit and they change, after they die.”
“Again, I’m sure it appeared that way to you,” Winston stated.
Snake shook his head. “We saw people walking around with their intestines hanging out; guys with throats completely torn out. Just go upstairs and look out the window and tell me what you see.”
“Whatever. If it makes you happy, we’ll pretend they’re zombies,” Winston said, rolling his eyes as he sat down.
The cafeteria door opened and a man with disheveled light brown hair walked in carrying a cup of coffee. He was late but that didn’t surprise anybody since he always worked on his own schedule. After one of the bikers stopped him and asked him to sign in, he sat his coffee down and looked over the list then added “Nicholas Doune, brain surgeon.”
Rather than sitting, he stood at the back, sipping his coffee as the meeting continued.
“Has anybody been able to get any calls through?” an elderly visitor asked. “If we could somehow contact our families that would help, so we know that they’re all right.”
“The hospital phones were all busy for the first few hours and now they seem to be dead,” someone replied. “My cell phone works but nobody answered.”
“I got through on my cell,” a nurse named Marian said. “I called my sister and told her to get her kids and get up into the attic with as much food and water as possible. They’re all right for now, but I don’t know how long they’ll be able to stay there.”
There was a short debate over how long the epidemic might last and whether or not help would come. When the discussion began to go off on a tangent, Keith spoke up.
“Let’s finish getting the security matters handled and get this schedule together then we can open the floor to discuss whatever anybody wants to talk about. I’m going to need to get back to my patients soon. Marla’s up there now,” he said, sitting again.
Marian, a devout Catholic, quickly crossed herself.
“Who put you and the rent-a-cop in charge anyway?” Winston asked, standing again. “You’re just a nurse. It seems like a doctor should be making the decisions around here.”
Winston rarely missed out on an opportunity to belittle others, and he often made comments to Keith that could easily be taken as racist remarks. The doctor was usually just careful enough not to cross the line. Keith took a deep breath, knowing that the doctor was just trying to push his buttons. It wasn’t going to happen. He stood to make sure he could be heard.
Across the room, the doctor flinched when Keith stood.
“You stay right there!” Winston said, looking around frantically. “Where is security?”
Keith shook his head as laughter could be heard around the room. Most of those in the room knew that while Keith could appear intimidating, just from his size alone, he was very easy-going.
“Nobody said we were in charge, Dr. Winston, but Jack and I were the ones that secured the top four floors of the hospital with help from Lindsey and Autumn,” he added, motioning toward them. “I sure didn’t see you lift a finger to help. And Snake and his friends cleared out the bottom floor, which was totally overrun. We secured this building at considerable risk to our own
lives. I think that shows that we can handle ourselves in a tough situation, and I think we’ve earned the right to have some say.”
The doctor started to sputter a reply as Keith returned to his seat, but Dr. Sharma, the young pediatric intern from India, stood up and spoke. “Keith is right. We’d probably all be dead right now if not for those who cleared the building and that includes the men with the motorcycles. We owe thanks to all of you that helped. I honestly did not think that any of us would survive the day.”
Someone began to clap and soon the applause quickly drowned out Dr. Winston, who was still complaining. He finally sat down, fuming as he glared around the room.
Jack had known concerns would be raised with the chain of authority, so he began to address the issue.
“We don’t plan to impose martial law here. There just have to be some rules if we’re all going to get through this with all of our body parts intact,” Jack said, trying to reassure his skeptics. “I admit, I haven’t paid much attention to the hospital bylaws but I brought someone who has. Ernie, will you read everyone what you showed me?”
Everyone’s attention was directed into the corner. As the room fell silent, snoring could be heard. Ernie’s mouth hung wide open and his head leaned against the corner of the wall. The crowd chuckled as Jack rolled his eyes.
“Well, to paraphrase,” Jack continued, “in a state of emergency, which we are undeniably in, all issues of security are the responsibility of the head of security, who will answer only to the hospital administrator or board members. Since I don’t see any of these people on this list,” he said, holding the sign-in sheet high for all to see, “that gives me authority when it comes to matters of security only. All other matters are up to the medical staff. So, if no one has any security questions, I will yield the floor to the medical staff.”
~*~
Cheri stared in shock at Miguel as her world dissolved around her. A river of thoughts and words flowed into her head, but she could only scream, “No!”
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