Apokalypsis Book One

by Kate Morris

  “Are we going in a circle?” she asked in the dimly lit stairwell.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “This is the way the nurses and doctors and staff go to avoid some of the street traffic that comes through the hospital so that they can get down to the E.R. more quickly.”

  “This is kind of creepy,” she said and brushed her small hand against his. It was a suggestion, and Roman took her hand in his without pause. “I’ve never been to a hospital this late at night. Don’t think I’ll ever do it again.”

  “I had my tonsils out when I was eleven,” he said. “I remember getting up and walking around in the middle of the night. I thought it was cool. The nurses were nice, too. They knew I was bored.”

  “Bored? You were a weird child.”

  “You have no idea.”

  They came to the door that would take them right into the thick of it. He peered through the small, nine-inch by twelve-inch sliver of window in the metal door. Doctors and nurses flew by in a rush.

  “Let’s move,” he said and opened it.

  The second he stepped through, Roman spotted blood on the floor about ten feet from them.

  “Watch where you step,” he warned and got a nod from her. “And keep your mask pulled up.”

  She didn’t release his hand, and he was glad she didn’t because the second he turned left, he could see why the doctors and nurses were running. They were attempting to subdue a man on the ground. Orderlies and another soldier were holding him down as the doctor tried to insert a needle into his arm.

  “This way,” he urged and practically dragged her after him in his haste to get away from that scene.

  They sped along the corridor, noting the number of patients per room. It was staggering. There were mothers sitting on the dirty floors of the patient rooms holding their sick children. Every bed was not only full but filled with two people sitting on each one. There were even people sitting on the floors in the hallways. The screaming of a woman echoed through the halls.

  He indicated his head to their right, and she followed close behind. Two men in military garb ran past them carrying big rifles. He pressed against the wall and put an arm out to protect Jane from being run down. They both stood there a few seconds watching the soldiers running. The men turned down another hall to the right and disappeared from sight. More screaming and moaning came from the other end of the hall where they were heading. Roman nodded to her that they should continue, and they did.

  At the end of the hall along the white tile wall were smeared, bloody handprints streaking about ten feet. This was indeed not the way it looked when he used to sneak around as a bored kid. Housekeeping would’ve been immediately called to deal with something so disgusting and unsanitary. He pressed on toward the sounds of people in agony. They came to the end of the hall and turned right again. More bright orange and white wooden barricades, this time resembling saw horses, were in the way, so he walked around them. He suspected that the guards who should’ve been posted here to keep people out were the ones who just ran by them. He stopped at a patient room which was closed, but a banging sound came from the other side of the door. As he drew near, he noticed a padlock on the door. It was in no way an unusual lock, pretty standard. Except it was on the outside of the door. It was keeping whoever was on the other side locked in.

  “Careful,” he whispered and stepped closer to the door. He jumped when a thud on the other side of the door sounded like a body hitting it with force. “Jesus.”

  Jane peered around him and sucked in a sharp breath, as well. There was a woman inside the room staring out the small window pane the same size as the one he’d peeked through into the Emergency Room. Jane took a step back, but Roman held fast to her hand. He didn’t want her sprinting away because she could get separated from him or lost.

  “Jane, look,” he said as the woman rushed away and ran into the other wall. There was already a laceration on her forehead. That wasn’t what he was trying to show Jane, though. “Over there. Look in.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and peered through the window. “Oh, my…what…?”

  “Doctor!” someone behind them screeched. “We need help over here!”

  “Let’s go,” he said and walked quickly down the hall toward the exit door. Roman tried to steal quick glances in all of the other rooms that were also locked from the outside. He rushed them through the exit door and ended up in another hallway, this one meant for service personnel moving from the pharmacy and kitchen to the Emergency Room and back. A corridor of sorts to expedite internal movement. “What the hell? Did you see all those people?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered as they tried to walk as quickly as they could without running. A few times, he thought she was going to. Her hand clenched his in a deadly vice.

  “There were so many of them in those rooms. Handcuffed and zip tied. What the hell? How can they do that to people?”

  “They’re infected with the same thing Randall and Mr. Hawkins had. I saw their eyes. That woman’s. They were all…”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think we should’ve come here,” she worried.

  “We had to know. There’s still more to know.”

  He hooked a left and went down another hall he knew would take him to more service elevators. They rode it to the basement.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The morgue,” he said and felt her immediately jerk back.

  “No way!” she protested. “No freaking way! Roman!”

  “I’ll go. You can hide. I know a place…”

  “No!” she shrieked.

  It was the loudest he’d ever heard her speak. It surprised him.

  “There’s a place right around the corner,” he explained. “You’ll be fine. It’s where the families wait when they’re brought in for a final viewing or to identify a body.”

  “No, I’m not waiting anywhere by myself,” she stressed. “What if one of those infected people gets loose and attacks me? I don’t exactly have a weapon.”

  He frowned but nodded with understanding. Then he led them down the long hall that would take them to the morgue. It wasn’t dark and foreboding like in a stupid scary movie. However, Roman still felt a hint of anxiety at what they might find. It didn’t take long. Before they even got to the door to the morgue, there were gurneys with dead bodies covered in white sheets lining the next hallway.

  “Are those…?” she whispered.

  “Uh, yeah, yeah, I think so,” he said and stepped closer. He reached out for the edge of the sheet, and Jane jerked his hand.

  “Roman, don’t!” she hissed and looked around.

  “Turn around,” he asserted. “Don’t look.”

  She did as he said and tapped her toe anxiously against the floor. Roman took the very corner of the sheet between two fingers, not wanting to touch it or the dead patient beneath. He lifted slowly and pulled it back. It was a man, probably in his late forties, average height and weight. There were multiple bruises on his face. His jaw bone hung slack, leading Roman to believe it might’ve been broken. He tenderly pulled back the man’s eyelids and stared into bloodshot, dull and lifeless ones. He flipped the sheet back over him. Then he checked under the next sheet. It was a woman, more like a teenager if he were to guess her age. She had a bullet wound in her forehead. He pried open her left eyelid and found the same extreme bloodshot syndrome. He wasn’t sure if the virus was still alive on her body, so he covered her again.

  “They’re infected,” he told her.

  They walked further down the hall, and Roman checked a few other bodies, as well.

  “They’re all infected,” he said quietly just as a noise at the other end of the hall alerted him that they were no longer alone. “Let’s get outta’ here.”

  They jogged to the stairwell and went inside.

  “I want to go up high,” he said and went to the first floor where they caught the elevator.

  “Why are we going up to the thirteenth floor?”
she asked.

  “I want to see those tents. We can get a better view from the roof.”

  She didn’t question him further as they got out of the elevator and went to another stairwell. Nurses were too busy taking care of in-patients to notice them. He took her up to the roof and opened the door.

  “Some of the nurses would come up here to smoke,” he explained as he led her to the edge. He dropped to a knee and took off his backpack. Then he pulled out binoculars. “I would come up to look at the city lights.”

  “What the heck else do you have in there?”

  “Not much,” he said, snorting.

  Roman spied on the long white tents. Military men in uniform were going in and out at a constant pace, some carrying heavy boxes of supplies they were unloading from the backs of big trucks, military trucks.

  “What the hell is the military doing here?”

  “They were downstairs, too,” she said.

  He handed her the binoculars so that she could look.

  “Whoa, that guy’s wearing a hazmat suit like an astronaut or something,” she said and pointed when she handed back the binoculars.

  Roman spotted him, too. “Biohazardous suit, I would guess. They either don’t want to contaminate themselves, or they don’t want to infect more people outside the tents.”

  “Do you think they’re government scientists? Like CDC people or something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure the CDC is going to send a team to work here in Ohio in a mid-size city like ours. If it’s this bad here, it has to be way worse in the big cities.”

  “True,” she said.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  “What? What do you see?”

  “They’re hauling dead bodies out and…there’s…I’m not…sure …there’s no way.”

  “What?” she asked and yanked the binoculars out of his hand.

  “I think that’s a crematorium.”

  “Seriously? Gross,” she said. “Oh, disgusting. I think you’re right.”

  “What the hell? They brought in a crematorium?”

  “Don’t you think the hospital already had one?”

  He shook his head as she handed the binoculars back, “No, I don’t think so. They removed all of them years ago. One of my friends here at the hospital told me when I used to hang out here because I was a dumb kid who liked to ask a lot of questions. He told me that a long time ago a hospital almost cremated a baby they thought was stillborn but wasn’t. Some federal regulations ordered that hospitals could no longer perform cremations.”

  “I think they’ve just reversed that law,” she said.

  Roman spied on the tent people again and watched as other scientists came and went. Military personnel were scurrying around at a frantic pace, as well. They were all armed with rifles.

  “Let’s go. This is dangerous,” he admitted and felt guilty that he even brought her with him.

  “Let’s just get out of here before someone catches us.”

  “What are they gonna do? Arrest us for being curious?” he asked with sarcasm. “I’m more concerned about catching this flu.”

  She hit him gently in the shoulder. “Put your mask back up, Johnny Cash. I don’t want to explain it to your parents if you get the zombie flu.”

  “Russian flu,” he corrected.

  “That, too,” she answered.

  They moved more quickly to the first floor this time and began the long trek to the laundry room. Hacking the database was no longer necessary. He had all the answers he’d wanted.

  “Hey!” a man in a military uniform yelled. “What are you kids doing back here?”

  They both turned to look. The man was huge, formidable, and carrying a rifle in front of him with two hands.

  Roman turned to look down at her and said, “Run!”

  They took off, and he kept ahold of her hand the whole way so as not to lose her. The soldier whistled to a friend, and they were pursued by not one but two gun-wielding soldiers.

  “Hurry,” he said as they rushed through the door to the laundry. Then they passed a group of housekeeping workers who looked surprised to see them.

  “Are you lost?” one of the men asked as they sprinted past.

  Roman heard the door behind them slam against the wall as the soldiers kept coming. Maybe this was an arrestable offense, after all. Roman charged, “Down this way.”

  They brushed past a cart full of bedding, and Roman knocked it over once they were by it. Then they burst out the back door and ran for the gap between the wall and the fence again.

  “Keep running,” he urged and looked over his shoulder. He didn’t see the soldiers, but he wasn’t going to slow down, either.

  She kept up pace for pace, and they made it to the car without getting tackled to the ground.

  “We should throw down our gloves and masks here in case they’re contaminated,” she said.

  “You’re right,” he said and tossed it all onto the street. She did the same.

  They got in, and Roman fired up the Range Rover, slamming it into gear.

  “Seatbelt!” he shouted, sounding too loud for the quiet interior of the vehicle.

  He heard her seatbelt click into place as they sped away. Once they got a few miles from the hospital, he felt safe to slow down. Nobody was following them, but he jumped on the freeway to take a different route home just in case.

  “Hand sanitizer in my bag,” he instructed, to which she rummaged and found it. “Use a lot, Jane.”

  She squirted it into his hand, too, which he rubbed together with the other.

  “I can’t believe we just saw all that. And why the heck doesn’t anyone else know? Where were the local cops? Where were the family members of the people they’re burning? Do you think they had to sign a waiver to allow the hospital to do that, or were they just doing it anyway? And why isn’t the media showing footage like that?” she asked in rapid succession.

  Roman let her go for a minute with more questions before finally saying, “This has already gotten as bad as that doctor was predicting. That’s why they hauled him away. That’s why the media wasn’t there. They don’t want anyone to know because it’s already beyond their control. The government is purposely keeping the media in the dark. Or else they’re in on it, too. The CDC wasn’t there because they’ve already trained others in healthcare to handle this. They knew it was coming. The military’s here to contain the people, not the dead. We’re one step away from martial law.”

  “That’s a scary thought.”

  “Jane, we have to do something to prepare ourselves.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They arrived back in their neck of the woods at almost two a.m., and Jane didn’t want to go home to her grandmother’s house because Peaches would wonder why she left Destiny’s, where she was supposed to be, in the middle of the night.

  “I guess we didn’t plan this out very well,” he said.

  “It’s ok. I’ll just sleep in my truck and sneak in when…”

  “What? No way. I’m not letting you sleep in your truck,” he argued. “Jesus, there’s crazy, insane people roaming the streets along with the normal crazies, and you think I’m going to let you just sleep in your truck? In the cold.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to startle her by going in there right now. And the same for Dez. I don’t want her to have to wake up and come down and let me in.”

  “It’s cool. Just stay at my house,” he said and turned into his community.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “Your parents wouldn’t like that, either.”

  “Really? They’d have to notice first, and I still doubt if they’d care. Besides, my mom left, and my dad sleeps in a soundproof bedroom with a noise machine going. Plus, he has to pop sleeping pills just to sleep at night.”

  “Why? Is he an insomniac?”

  “Yeah, stress insomnia. He never sleeps. He’s always working and stuff. Most of the time he only sleeps two or th
ree hours, and then he’s back up in his office attached to their bedroom. So, in order to get to sleep a full night through when he’s actually home, he pops Ambien like they’re Smarties. And my mom had their master suite remodeled and the walls rebuilt to be soundproof. Then he takes a sleeping pill or a few, cranks up his sound machine, and he’s out for about ten hours. Unfortunately, that’s all he sleeps for a few days. Then he’ll crash again like that. Usually when he’s home, though, not on the road.”

  “Your parents’ lives seem really stressful. No offense,” she said.

  “None taken. Their lives are stressful. They’re always out chasing that dollar.”

  “Do they fight a lot?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a gloomy frown. “I think so. Soundproof room, though.”

  Jane noted the expensive homes in his neighborhood and realized that most of those families within them were probably living lives just as stressful. She felt sorry for them. Her grandmother’s home was small but comfortable, and they’d made good memories together in it. They never fought about anything. Her grandmother was kind and generous but stern and orderly. She gave Jane a home for the first time in her life.

  “I still don’t know if I should do this,” she commented. “I don’t exactly lie and break the rules. I’m not that kind of person.”

  “I know,” he acknowledged and pulled around to the side entrance of his massive home but left the car outside. “It’s one of the reasons I like you so well.”

  She chuffed uncomfortably as Roman got out. She did the same as he came around.

  “Hey, let me open your door for you. Quit beating me to it.”

  “Sorry,” she said, unsure of why he’d want to do that. She never knew anyone else to do so, and it struck her as odd.

  He went through the man door into the garage that faced the back yard and used his key. Just inside, he deactivated and then reactivated the alarm system.

  “Do you want anything? Something to drink or…?”

  “No, thank you,” she whispered, even though he wasn’t exactly speaking softly.

  “Come on,” he said, going ahead of her. “You can go to my room. I just want to check on Connor.”