I didn’t see that coming. It knocked the wind out of my sails – and knocked me on my ass. I blinked the tears from my eyes and saw the surprised look on her face, like she didn’t know where the punch had come from.
For a second, it looked like she was about to say something, maybe even apologise, but her face set to stern lines once more, and she walked away without another word.
*
I made my way back to the A&E holding a cold compress to my face. These things were a penny a pack for the VHC and after an altercation with a violent patient, it was widely accepted practice to slap one on to reduce the swelling. There wouldn’t be any awkward questions. Hopefully.
The supply room I’d taken it from had been halfway emptied, no doubt the work of Sydow Sec, preparing to evacuate. I wouldn’t be joining them. If the hospital and her patients were to be abandoned, then I was free of my obligations, and at least some fucker would be making use of the supplies here.
The whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth, though that may actually have been blood. Either way, I was getting on my bike and leaving. The only difficult decision would be where to go. My house, or Kelly’s apartment?
I hadn’t had much time to think about him since I got here. Usually we get a few texts in, but from arriving here, working with Dr Lines, everything that happened in the basement, there hadn’t been a second to spare. Except for that half hour I just spend cooling my heels in custody.
Damn it. Now I felt guilty as well as sore.
I hung back in a quieter corridor for a moment, waiting for a pair of scrubs and a gurney to roll by, before trying to call him. Outside of the basement, the signal around here was usually pretty good since we’re near all the university buildings. But I still couldn’t get a bar.
Another nurse backed their way out of a patient’s room, locking it behind him. The blinds were closed, and a biohazard triangle was stuck to the door.
‘Impromptu isolation room?’ I asked him. I didn’t recognise the guy, but it’s a big hospital.
The nurse turned around and nodded – he was wearing a surgical mask and thick latex gloves. ‘Getting to be quite a few of them now. Obvious bites have been passed onto the CDC, but there are more than a dozen patients presenting symptoms with no obvious cause. No wounds.’
‘Could it just be a fever going around? Some kind of flu?’
‘Maybe. None of them have turned yet, but it’d be a hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?’
I nodded agreement. ‘Heard any news?’
‘About what?’ he snorted. ‘Rumour is we’ll be shipping out tomorrow night. They’re pulling everyone they can down to Sydow. You believe that?’
My face knew all too well the truth of it.
‘It sucks.’
‘Sucks?’ he looked surprised. ‘Clear evacuation out of the city, off to somewhere safe? I’ll take that over staying.’
‘They tell you about the patients?’ I pressed him, giving a shrug. ‘Everyone’s getting discharged, just put on the streets. “See ya later, make your own way home folks”. It’s a shitshow.’
‘That…no, really?’ the nurse faltered.
‘It’s not like we can drop them off home, or like Sydow are interested in bringing them all with us. And can you get a signal? I think the cell towers are down. So nobody’s going to be calling for any rides either.’
He took out his phone and tried. ‘No…nothing.’
I showed him my phone. ‘Me neither.’
‘They can’t do that. I’m going to talk to my supervisor, try and find out if there’s anything we can do. Thanks for letting me know.’ He added, taking off down a corridor.
‘Thought I asked him for news?’ I muttered to myself, carrying on towards the A&E.
Things had finally quietened down. There was still no sign of Jerry, but an orderly was manning his station, handing a clipboard to a couple of doctors. They left the desk as I arrived.
‘Anything for me to do?’ I asked.
‘Nurse Cox, right?’ he checked.
I nodded, already bracing myself.
‘Dr Lines has been calling. Wants to see you as soon as possible, over in the quarantine ward.’
‘Of course he does.’
Eleven
For an A&E nurse, I hadn’t been dealing with many accidents today. Plenty of emergencies though, if you count the situation in the basement. Still, I wasn’t happy about being summoned back to Dr Lines’ lab. Sometimes it’s nice to get a rotation away from your department, but the last time we’d spoke he mentioned autopsies.
Don’t get me wrong, I can stomach it – blood and guts don’t bother me overmuch. But Sydow had pissed me off and the CDC were complicit in it. So as I pulled on my quarantine attire, I thought about what I was going to say to him.
The quarantine ward was abuzz with activity. Figures in white overalls were using empty gurneys to ferry equipment and supplies to the doors, ready for the big pull-out. I signed my name at the desk again and made my way up in a crowded elevator. I swear one of the soldiers was smirking at me, but since he had a facemask on, all I could see were his smug-as-shit eyes.
When the doors opened, I looked for anyone holding a clipboard, or carrying medical equipment instead of a gun.
‘Where can I find Doctor Lines?’ I asked the first pair of CDC overalls I saw.
‘Teaching theatre, down that way…’ they said. Their hands were full so they just sort of shrugged in the direction, but I knew where it was.
I had to swipe my ID to get into the scrub room that separates the theatre from the corridor, and was all set to lay into a rant the moment I set eyes on him. But once inside I could see it was empty – the scrub room is all glass, apart from the sinks and lockers.
‘Up here.’ A slightly tinny voice came from a speaker on the wall. I looked up to see Dr Lines, waving from the observation level.
I went back out the door, into the next one, up a short flight of stairs and opened the door for the observation room.
You know why it’s called an operating theatre? Because back in the early days of modern medicine, surgery was a spectator event. Not quite a “fun for the whole family” thing, but anyone with an interest in anatomy could pay their way into the hospital and be fascinated by modern medicine.
Of course, it wasn’t just wealthy weirdos who came along. Student doctors took every opportunity to cram in some extra learning, and colleagues would come to observe each other’s technique to improve their own practice. They even had tiered seating around a central operating table, to give everyone the best view – like an amphitheatre. That’s why we still call it a theatre today.
Nowadays though, things are a little more sophisticated. Johnny Public can’t come and watch, but there’s a big window over the operating room, three rows of tiered seats and a huge TV on the wall, just for the betterment of medical learning. Now I had the view of the theatre, I could tell the standard operating table had been replaced by an autopsy table, the kind from rose cottage.
Dr Lines stood by the window, waiting for me. His laptop was open on one of the chairs – the kind with the fold-out tray in the arm for taking notes on.
‘I called the A&E several times, but they said you weren’t there.’ He started, before I could. ‘Just as I was about to go down there myself I heard that you’d been detained by Sydow Security for killing a man. Is that true?’
I let out the breath I’d been holding to start my shouting match with. Dr Lines’ brow was furrowed and he was faced towards me, I had his full attention, but I didn’t get the impression the man was here for a confrontation. He looked worried. That gave me pause.
‘Not a man. It was infected, and attacked Dr Grey, the Chief Medical Examiner. I helped restrain it until Officer Asturias could kill it.’
‘Tell me everything.’ Dr Lines nodded, indicating the chair next to his laptop. He took a seat and waited for me to take mine.
‘I want to talk to you about the SySec evacuatio
n.’ I told him, standing beside the chair.
‘Please, Katy, after,’ he said, fingers poised over the keyboard, ‘tell me everything you remember. Start at the beginning.’
I sighed, and gave him one last look before I launched into it. I started with getting back to the A&E from lunch. The gurney, the missing body, Emile, Grey and I down there in the dark, how we got the lights back on, and how it came for us.
When it came to the part about us being escorted to a secure room by Sydow Sec, I skipped Grey’s potential injury and moved on to how Sergeant Bailey had told me the hospital was being abandoned and slugged me in the face.
‘She what?!’ he asked, eyes wide.
I’d doffed the compress on the way here and Grey was probably too male to notice subtle changes in a woman’s appearance. New hair, earrings, or in my case, the red mark beside my eye. In a few hours it’d be a flourishing bruise and I might even get a shiner.
‘Outrageous, unprofessional!’ he blustered, standing up and fuming on the spot.
‘I’m not forgiving her, but I’m grown up enough to admit I was in her personal space.’
‘You were expressing a valid concern – one I’m sure that is shared by many in this hospital, certainly many in your profession.’ He nodded, clearly considering something. ‘I’ll have a word with Captain Hale about this. No names, I won’t mention you. I’ll just say I’m aware of an incident and I won’t stand for it. If he wants the CDC to come with him to Sydow then he’d better keep his men in check.’
‘I…no, Doctor, please don’t say anything. I’ll be going home when they start the evacuation. I don’t want to rock the boat.’
‘Please, call me Yanis. The information you’ve given me today on the ghoul might be invaluable. But I wish you’d reconsider, you co-’
‘Wait, ghoul?’ I asked.
Yanis waved his hand. ‘A nickname for the aberration you described. Capable of imitating the living, of controlling its hunger, and allegedly possessed of crude intelligence. Think of how it walked the corridor towards Doctor Grey before attacking, or of how it played dead when you discovered it in the open – then vanished before you could return. It even freed the infected on the gurney.’
‘No, surely, no, they can’t be smart as well.’ I stood up, and began pacing. ‘How is that possible? Brain function of the infected is next to nothing, it’s barely even animal.’
‘A quirk of DNA perhaps, that of the carrier or the new host. They have not been observed in any great numbers, like the running infected, or the slow staggering ones. Until now I believed them to be rumour, hysteria. We’ve yet to document any credible sighting or capture one, but Voison has only been fighting the virus in earnest for a week.’
‘There was a theory that the longer a host was infected, the more chance there was of aberrant behaviour presenting, right?’ I checked with him. ‘Well, the infected down there, he was part of that security team in the basement. He was cut across the throat and turned in hours – maybe even minutes. How the fuck does that happen?’ I asked, running a hand through my hair.
‘I don’t know. But the body is on the way now, with any luck. Captain Hale agreed to an autopsy, that’s why I was waiting for you up here. Somewhere to talk in private while Sydow bring it in.’
‘You’re hoping to find some physical abnormality that’d explain the aberrant behaviour?’ I asked.
‘Precisely.’ He nodded, turning back to his laptop. He typed away a little more, tidying his notes up while I processed the last few hours. After a minute or two, he cleared his throat.
‘I do wish you’d come with us though.’
I turned to face him, and he was looking at me, almost apologetic.
‘I know that soldier struck you, and that cannot garner any trust. But they mean well. They’re thinking about the numbers alone, best survival odds and most lives saved. You’re on the front line of medical care – right in the trenches. I’m not denigrating the job you do when I say this, but it does not lend well to seeing the bigger picture.’
‘I have people in Greenfield who don’t know about this plague in the least.’ I said, turning back to the window. ‘They haven’t got a clue about aberrations. Ghouls. Even the common infected. They don’t know the city is falling and I need to get them to somewhere safe myself. I doubt Sydow is willing to help me do that.’
‘I understand. I would have liked to have worked with you more. You’ve a keen mind Nurse Cox, and when this is all over, if we’re still alive, you will have my letter of recommendation, and a place at the CDC if you want it.’
That should have landed with me, given me cause to smile. That shit was my career in the bag, I could make my five year plan in a week, or open up a whole new set of options with the CDC. But at that moment, the scrub room doors opened and two Sydow Sec mercenaries in white overalls wheeled in their deceased brother in arms.
‘Excellent. Shall we proceed?’ Yanis asked, gesturing to the door.
*
The dictionary definition of an autopsy is that of a post-mortem examination to discover the cause of death or the extent of disease. It actually derives from an ancient phrase meaning “to see for oneself”, which I think is kinda cool. But we were mainly looking to see what had happened to this guy’s body after he expired. A sort of post-post-mortem.
When I say “we”, I actually mean Dr Lines. The nurses of Voison may be a little more versed in doctoring than our international colleagues, but an autopsy is a pretty specialised field. Specialised fields are what doctors are for. It was an interesting thing to watch, but in terms of actual involvement, I was the movie extra who hands the surgeon a scalpel and mops their brow.
Gods, I didn’t even do that. I went in mainly to watch and learn – this wasn’t a time sensitive operation so there was no sweat to mop and he could grab his own rib-spreaders, so my hands were idle. My brain however, was switched on.
Cause of death was established first, because its procedure. Single incised sharp force trauma to the neck, across the jugular vein. It was good that Dr Lines started with the basics, otherwise we’d have missed the first medical mystery.
‘Evidence of partial tissue remodelling…what?’ he said, mostly to himself.
‘His throat was slit but he had time to heal?’ I asked.
‘Impossible, and yet there it is. I’d love to examine this at a molecular level. Keep this sample safe…’
‘Of course, doc, erm, Yanis,’ I nodded, accepting a slide with a sliver of reddish pink flesh on it. I didn’t want to risk my letter of recommendation by being too informal, but then I wasn’t sure if I’d offend him if I didn’t use his first name when asked to.
‘Either’s fine in the operating theatre,’ he said, voice low as he examined the body, ‘nobody’s around, just us two, and my dictaphone.’
‘I have a joke about those, but I bet you’ve already heard it.’ I said with a chuckle. It felt good to laugh again after the tension of the afternoon. ‘Do you have a theory on the tissue regeneration?’ I asked, putting the slide in a glass fronted refrigerator.
‘Not as yet. It must have been post-mortem though. The wound would have been fatal, yet after expiry, the body began to recover, to heal. This is most unlike any other infected we’ve seen. In the average undead, there is no tissue regeneration, they do not heal, but their cells are more resistant to wear and tear. I wonder if our subject here also had that cell resistance factor?’ he added, voice trailing off.
He looked up from the body for a moment, processing.
‘I haven’t heard the dictaphone joke, but I can imagine how it goes.’
He needed a hand with the abdominal and thoracic extraction. There’s a lot of internal organs there – most of them in fact – and they’re easier to examine when they’re out of the body.
It was not a task for the squeamish, but with a few strategic cuts, a sternal saw here, and an extra pair of hands there, they come out in a fleshy, oozing lump. It’s the anatomical equ
ivalent of lifting the engine block out of a car.
Once it was on the dissection table, the fluids began to run for the channels and drain away. I’ll admit, for all my talk about not minding blood and guts, I had to look away to catch my breath. The smell was sour, ripe, and I expected flies to start buzzing out of the fleshy mass any second.
‘First autopsy?’ Yanis asked.
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘You’re doing fine.’ He said, smiling with his eyes. ‘The thoracic extraction is the worst part, but from here, we’ll be able to see everything.’
‘Have you performed autopsies on the infected before?’
‘No, I haven’t had the chance yet, most of my research has been on live subjects. This would be my first on an expired infected. My calls to A&E were to get you back for the termination and autopsy of our two subjects from earlier.
‘They have been joined by many more subjects, I’m afraid to say. Testing has yielded similar results. But when I heard there was an aberration already deceased and ready for autopsy, I made a change of plans.’
Yanis continued his examination of the body for close to an hour, working his way through the liver and kidneys to check for any obvious toxicity, though we were taking samples all the way for a proper chemical analysis. This part of the autopsy is just getting eyes on the obvious.
Eventually, we came to the stomach. We double sutured to keep it from spilling open at either end, then Yanis made the central incision to open it up, bit by bit.
‘Oh, would you look at that…’ he said, involuntarily withdrawing, as the stomach contents were revealed.
I leaned over for a closer look.
‘That looks like blood.’
‘I believe it is...’ He said, opening the stomach a little more. ‘Rather a lot of it, in fact. I would estimate a pint.’
‘House red. Not the kind of pint I’d usually go for.’ I smirked, hoping he was familiar with the term. It seemed apt here.
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 10