“JEEEZUSSS!” Drew cried.
UPS guy crumpled over and keeled to one side.
No signature required.
Three others, a woman and two men, lay dying along the roadside. The woman, thrashing and pulling at her tangle of dark, dirt-matted hair, stopped, reached over the white line that divided the shoulder from the lane, and tried grabbing the truck as it passed her.
The piercing screech of fingernails across the side of the truck made Eva’s skin prickle and her teeth hurt.
They drove on...
Ahead to his left, Drew could make out a hazy structure. It was one of the last establishments in Warwick before suburb gave way to the sticks.
No sight of zombies there and only a handful of corpses appeared as unidentifiable lumps in the tall grass flanking the road.
A calm settled over the cab of the truck. No immediate threat around, but the building to the left was coming into view, as they got closer.
“We can start there,” Drew said, pointing to the structure.
Concern shown on her face. “I don’t know,” she said.
“You said we need antibiotics. What better place than that?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s safe yet.”
“If it isn’t now, it will be very soon. Like, in a matter of hours, if not sooner.”
She looked around expecting to see an army of zombies emerging from the distant treelines. But there were none.
“I don’t see anyone from here,” he said. “We’ll pull up to the main entrance and wait for a while. If nothing happens, then we’ll go in. Sound like a plan?”
“How long should we wait?” she asked.
“Not sure. We’ll just have to feel it out.”
“I’m not comfortable with this idea,” she said, her grip tightening around the rifle.
Pointing at the rifle, he said, “Just have that ready.”
“You bet your ass I’ll have it ready.”
“And make sure you don’t mistake me for one of them,” he added only half-joking.
13
They pulled up to the front entrance. Overhead a sign read WARWICK GENERAL HOSPITAL, a familiar sight and one that gave some comfort to Eva. It was ironic since she loathed hospitals and an all too telling sign of how irrevocably bad things have become.
Drew craned to get a look through the sliding doors without having to get out of the truck. Eva looked as well, unconsciously raising the rifle.
Few corpses could be seen in the lobby. Views of the corridors were blocked by furniture arranged along the glass walls. Dead ahead past the sliding doors the security desk appeared as a solitary brown block illuminated by three pendant lights.
No indication of movement anywhere inside.
“Don’t see anyone inside,” Drew said.
“You mean anyone alive.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant.”
Eying the raised gun, he added nervously, “Is your finger on the trigger?”
“No. Not yet”
“Good.”
She took a breath, lowered the rifle.
“What do you think? Should we go in?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said, continuing to scan the lobby. “Wisest thing to do is what I suggested earlier, wait a little longer. I think I’ll feel more comfortable.”
“Me too,” she agreed.
“Do you want to put that away until we get out?”
“No,” she said caressing the barrel with her right hand. “I think it’s good right where it is.”
“Just asking,” he said unstrapping the seat belt.
Drew stepped out for a quick bathroom break, standing just outside the driver-side door.
When he finished, it was Eva’s turn. She took the rifle with her.
Then they waited.
Morning passed into afternoon.
They waited.
Sleep took over Eva completely. She awoke surprised to find four hours had gone by when it felt only like seconds. The rifle was missing from her lap. Drew told her he had laid it in the back seat so that she wouldn’t accidentally pull the trigger in her sleep.
She scoffed at this, said something sarcastic, but felt no real anger toward him. She reached back and retrieved the rifle.
Throughout all that time she slept, Drew remained alert, but now he was getting the nods. He opened the door, let in fresh, revitalizing air.
“We should do it,” he said. “I don’t feel like spending the night here.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
Inside, the lobby began to show brighter as outside grew darker.
14
They stepped past the threshold. Above them, large globe lights providing more decor than useful illumination flickered. Two rows of fluorescent lights running the center length of the lobby, however, remained solidly aglow. Pumps, compressors and motors from hidden environmental units thrummed softly, going about their purposeful routine as though nothing happened, much less the world ending.
Among thick leather chairs and coffee tables overturned and scattered across the huge carpeted floor were the mortal remains of dozens of various hospital staff, doctors, nurses; of patients and visitors and uniformed security officers, their sidearm still holstered.
Stepping over bodies as they crossed the main aisle, a foul stench crept into their nostrils. Not even the large ventilation systems pumping air in and out of the hospital could purge the lobby of such a powerful and complex odor: blood, urine, feces, sweat, etcetera, etcetera. In a few days rot would be joining the potpourri.
They had to cover their faces, Drew using the bottom of his shirt, and Eva with a hoodie sleeve pulled over her hand.
Regarding one of the security officers, Eva said, “You should take his gun.”
Drew refused reasoning that he would likely shoot his own foot off. “Anyway, we probably won’t need one anymore.”
“If you say so,” she said doubtfully. “But I’m not giving mine up just yet.”
A look behind the security desk forced Eva to recoil in horror.
Bodies crumpled on top of each other gave evidence that people had not only attacked themselves but one another before succumbing to effects of radiation and shock. Some had died with hands still buried in the flesh of another’s body.
Turning away from the front security desk, Drew and Eva walked slowly toward the entryway of the south wing, an all-glass breezeway.
The trek was no more than twenty feet. To Eva it felt like a thousand. Drew was forcing her to remain astride at a more cautious pace. Gun or no gun, she would never leave his side. Out of almost seven billion people worldwide, they were the only two left as far as she knew. The circumstances that saved them from the gamma ray burst were freakishly rare for her to believe that something like that happened anywhere else. Even if her belief was not true, she was sure they were among an extremely few left alive, and the only two within the vicinity.
The technician that helped them escape the MRI room might still be alive, since he had been exposed to the same cloud of charged particles, if he escaped attack from those who had been turned.
That was a big IF.
There might have been others near the room at the time of the MRI accident. Eva could not remember. Warwick General Hospital had been turned into a burial ground. She would be hard pressed to believe anyone was still alive.
A moan. Soft. Gravelly. Weak.
The woman was leaning against the glass wall of the breezeway. One of her feet wrapped in gauze up to the ankle was soaked with plasma. The bag, deflated and lying in a puddle of its solution lay next to her bandaged foot.
Her wheelchair lay overturned a few feet away.
Her white hair was disheveled, hanging limply over her forehead in wiry locks.
She stared up at Eva through milky eyes. Deep gashes formed a crisscross map of red lines across her chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was torn muscle tissue and significant blood loss, but the damage was not as sev
ere as what Eva had already seen. The patient was dying. That didn’t stop her from trying to take a bite out of Eva. She reached for Eva’s leg with a shaky hand, moaning, as if begging for food, which Eva wasn’t willing to give. She leveled the barrel of the rifle squarely on the woman’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
The report echoed throughout the hospital corridors. The powerful kickback knocked a surprised Eva backwards, nearly causing her to trip over her own feet.
Not bad, Drew thought, for a first-timer.
Little was left of the woman’s head. The 12-gauge round had reconfigured it to form a crescent shape. Only the lower half of the head was actually still attached to her body, exposing the piping and meat of the inner throat.
No tears shed, and no remorse.
The woman was now at peace.
It was time for Eva and Drew to move on with other things to consider.
Moving deeper through the corridor, the hum of environmental units didn’t sound so much like machines as an eerie chorus of wind across cold walls of a mausoleum. Resonating throughout the adjoining hallways gave their sounds a moaning quality.
Half the fluorescent fixtures were out on the far end of the corridor and many surviving lights began to flicker.
The hospital was losing power.
It felt colder too.
“Do you remember where the Pharmacy is?” he asked.
“I think it’s on the other side of the hall. I remember taking the elevators down two flights.”
“That was for the MRI.”
“I know that,” she said a little testily. “I’m just trying to remember how we got there.”
“Okay,” Drew said. “Then let’s do that.”
“Do what? Take the elevator down to the MRI?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m sure the Pharmacy’s up here somewhere. I just need to find a sign.”
“I don’t think the power’s gonna last,” he warned. “If it means that going downstairs will jar your memory, we’ll still find the Pharmacy faster than wandering around up here in this maze.”
“You sure?”
He recalled Eva being trapped in the MRI during its runaway meltdown and how it almost microwaved her to death. He said, “Unless you feel more comfortable staying up here.”
She didn’t. Having so many dead on the main level depressed her, made her feel hopeless.
Lower levels had less foot traffic and therefore fewer corpses. Still not a good reason to break out the party hats and confetti but at least she’ll have temporary reprieve from so much death.
“Okay,” she said, and headed for the elevator lobby. “Let’s go.”
Then she halted abruptly.
Something caught her eye.
It was very subtle, possibly a trick of the light, like the afterimage that stays a second longer on the screen after the television is turned off.
She turned around.
A glow emanated through the windows of double metal doors at the end of the corridor. She had almost missed it. But now that she saw it, she couldn’t turn away. She was drawn to its soft, unearthly bluish hue.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Without answering him, Eva pulled the bolt back loading the chamber with another round, locked it in place. She moved toward the double metal doors, ready to shoot anything that moved.
Drew followed closely behind.
Carpeting turned into linoleum as they moved closer to the metal doors, passing overturned medcarts, gurneys, a few bodies, and stepping around congealing puddles of blood.
Above the doors she saw the sign, remembering it from the last time they were there.
Had that really only been a day ago?
To her it felt more like ten years.
The sign read NEONATAL ICU.
The metal doors parted.
Although power was still pumping through the lines throughout most of the ICU space, the fluorescent strip of lights across the ceiling belonged to a separate circuit that had gone dark, leaving only the lights in the incubator room on.
Eva started to enter. Drew stopped her.
“Everyone’s dead,” she said impatiently.
“I know, but…” he scanned the room. Shadows took interesting shapes in the dim blue cast. Was there movement among them? He couldn’t tell.
“But what?” she said.
“Just be careful.”
Raising the rifle, Eva said, “I am careful.”
She began to turn away.
He stopped her again. “One other thing.”
She stared at him.
“I just want to warn you,” he said, cocking his head toward the incubator room. “They might not be alive.”
“I’ll be okay, Drew,” she said calmly.
“Or worse.”
She held her gaze, impatience turning to concern.
“They could still be alive,” he said haltingly. “Could be like...the others.”
“I understand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she replied, exchanging solemn looks.
Had they not personally witnessed the horrible consequences of being turned, deciding to end the lives of turned newborns would have been impossible, but now they understood that death was better than committing the newborns to unnecessary suffering.
How it would be done had yet to be determined. The rifle was not an option for two reasons. The first was they had too little ammo to spare. The second was that firing a large caliber round into the tiny heads of newborns was unimaginable.
Despite how much the Fairwoods had grown numb to death and violence, deciding the best way to euthanize a baby was impossible, so they left it for the last moment when they would be standing over the first incubator.
15
Stepping further into the neonatal ICU, they discovered why the shadows had interesting shapes.
The room was in shambles.
Gurneys and carts had been toppled, legs bent in different directions, glass vials, monitoring equipment all smashed and scattered across the floor. Intravenous lines twisted into choking knots around the legs of gurneys and infusion pumps.
Also among the debris were more bodies.
The highest concentration of the dead were lying against the door to the incubator room, in a tangled stack as high as the door handle; their outstretched hands frozen into claws perpetually fighting to get inside.
Through the blood-smeared window above the stack of corpses, Eva caught sight of movement. Turning to one of the incubators on the far wall, she saw it again. Lines and wires that ran from a digital monitoring system down into the bed shook. Drew sidled up to her, following her gaze.
More lines shook and not just from one incubator station but two.
Three.
Dread fell over the room as knowing what needed to be done was fast approaching. Eva had hoped they wouldn’t be alive. Now that at least some newborns were, a vice seemed to squeeze around her chest.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, crestfallen.
Drew said nothing. His face was a block of ice. It was something he learned to do growing up under the iron fist of a domineering father.
He began dragging the bodies away from the door.
Eva did her part by keeping watch for surprise guests, the rifle held firmly in her grip. A powerful instinctive urge to protect came over her, an odd sense she had more to protect than just her husband.
She was struck again by an earlier question that hung in the back of her mind. Why? Why had the zombies been so desperate to get inside the incubator room? Except for she, her husband and the technician named Tray, whom in a freakish twist of fate had all been spared the horrors of being turned, Eva could not think of anybody else who could have survived unaffected by the gamma ray burst.
And speaking of Tray, where was he, she wondered. She looked further around the pile of bodies and could not find him. Maybe he survived, she thought hopefully.
“Looks like they were trying
to get inside the room but didn’t make it,” Drew said interrupting her thoughts.
Suddenly, the surrounding blood, gore and death took a back seat to wanting to get inside the incubator room as soon as possible. While Drew dragged the last body away from the door, Eva raised the butt of the rifle. She aimed it at the door’s window.
With a single, powerful thrust the window shattered.
Thousands of bits of flying glass rained down in glistening shards and pattered across the linoleum floor.
A few more quick jabs with the butt of the rifle cleared the bottom of the window frame of sharp jagged edges. She reached through and pushed down on the handle on the other side, pulled and the door swung back.
Eva entered the incubator room.
The smell of blood was strong. For the second time since entering the hospital Eva covered her face.
She looked down. Near her feet were the bodies of two hospital staffers, both women, wearing blue scrubs, one lying on top of the other. The woman on top still held the syringe she had plunged into the left eye of the woman on the bottom.
The woman on top looked familiar. She had dark brown hair, same as the nurse they met yesterday when they stumbled upon the neonatal room by accident. Her nametag read MARY.
Mary’s efforts appeared to succeed, though it cost her life. Blood soaked the left side of her scrub shirt. Above that, a gaping bite wound reshaped the side of her neck. It was a horrific tableau telling the story of what happened. Mary must have been inside the incubator room when the MRI on the floor below exploded, thus protected from the effects of the gamma ray burst.
She had also been inside the incubator room following the burst. Somehow the female zombie had managed to get in. Following the blood trail to one of the incubators suggested the zombie decided a newborn would make an easy meal. Before she could get her hands on a baby, Nurse Mary managed to subdue her with a syringe she happened to be carrying with her (probably picked up from a medcart while being chased).
During their struggle, the zombie bit her. Considering the copious amounts of blood that had poured out, Nurse Mary would not have stayed conscious for very long. Mary was slight in build, a few inches over five feet, while her adversary, Caucasian and blonde, seemed Amazonian by comparison. That Mary had been able to put her down at all was incredible and something to be admired.
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