The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series

by Charley Hogwood

  Jack rose from his chair as if he was thrilled to see Damien. “Wonderful, my friend. Perhaps a little better than certain sectors of society today in light of the current health crisis. How can I be of service?” Jack attempted a feeble handshake and Damien responded with a grimace, keeping his hands in his pocket.

  “Jack,” Damien’s tone took a concerned inflection as he sat down in a chair across from Jack, and noticeably moved it further back a few inches before continuing. “Pharmastat has a very significant investment in this hospital. The board has concerns about the security situation over here. For god’s sake, man. The boardroom is right there,” Damien said as he pointed out the window across the parking lot.

  Whesilton did not need to look, he knew quite well that the hospital was in sight of almost every office at Pharmastat.

  Nonetheless, he set out to defuse the situation. “I understand that, but we are running into a labor shortage. People are calling in sick, afraid to come here. The local PD has sent a few police but they are also stretched thin…”

  “Not to worry, Jack,” Damien interrupted. “We are going to take over your security. Pharmastat has a large team returning from South America and they will be establishing physical control. Our media arm and Public Information Officers will win the news cycles.”

  There was a slight disturbance in the outer office and Mark let himself in, with Jack’s secretary close behind in objection. The two men in the room looked up at the ruckus, and Mr. Weaselton, as Mark liked to call him behind his back, let out an audible sigh and his head drooped in anticipation of what was about to happen. He had no idea what was about to happen but every time Mark barged in, it was a problem.

  At the same moment, Mark noticed the visitor. He also took on an air of irritation. Mark and Damien were not exactly good buddies.

  “Oh hello, Mr. Greed–I mean Greene.”

  “Dr. Welby,” Damien replied. Before Damien finished his sentence Mark addressed the director.

  “Jack, where are the refrigerated trucks I requested days ago?”

  “Do you wish to sit, Mark?” Jack offered.

  “No. Do you know what is happening downstairs?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued.

  “The morgue is so full that the door is jammed shut with bodies, the laundry is down, housekeeping has no one in charge, nurses are walking off the floors, and we have a body melted into the incinerator on a loading dock that was almost overrun by an angry mob that wants to get into the hospital.

  Damien’s eyebrows raised as he cocked his head and turned to the director.

  “Jack, is this true? What is your plan to get this sorted out before word leaks to the news?”

  “Listen,” Jack started, not having any idea what he was going to say next. “Things are a little busy right now. The County said they are requesting a State of Emergency and we qualify for surge status.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? That’s not even a thing,” Mark quipped.

  “It means we will receive additional support through an emergency appropriation of funds and personnel. That’s what the County told me.”

  “Oh please…” Mark snapped, “we don’t have time for appropriations and promises. Your staff needs to see you and know that you are in charge. Hiding in your office is doing nothing but fueling the rumor mill. There is even a rumor you died and no one is in charge.”

  Damien realized things were worse than he thought. “Jack, perhaps we need to appoint someone to relieve you until things settle down.”

  Jack knew what that meant. It was code for being edged out and kicked to the curb. Jack looked at the two men in his office. Trying to think quickly on his feet, a light bulb went off in his mind.

  “How about we put Dr. Welby in charge of the crisis response so I can focus on the logistical support and politics?”

  Damien seemed to mull it over at the same time Mark was back peddling. Damien knew it was a good idea. Dr. Welby was very experienced in crisis medical operations.

  “Great idea, Jack. Dr. Welby, you will have the full support and funding of Pharmastat.”

  This was not going the way Mark had intended and it took him a moment process the scheme. Since he did not answer quickly, Damien and Jack took that as acceptance.

  “Wonderful!” Damien said, as he stood from his seat.

  “Wait,” Mark said. He knew it was probably the best solution but to be under the thumb of Pharmastat caused him some acid reflux at the moment. Jumping to seize the moment, Mark spit out a list of needs.

  “I’ll need security, personnel in all critical departments, and the refrigerated trucks, since apparently the County morgue is not coming anytime soon. The bodies are turning and we will have more than a flu to deal with if typhus and cholera get a foothold in the hallways.”

  “There are no refrigerated trucks, my friend. Apparently you have not been watching the news. But no worries, Pharmastat has already secured a 40,000 square foot refrigerated warehouse at the Port of Palm Beach.”

  Mark was beginning to have a flashback to Liberia.

  “So how are we moving the bodies?” he asked, with hesitation.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Damien said on the way out the door.

  19

  Chapter 19

  Tuesday, January 9th (late evening)

  Wellington, Florida

  Duane and his film crew had no trouble getting into the hospital that night. Their inside contact had gotten them uniforms and all they had to do was say they were there to fill in for workers who did not show up. Walking up to the front door of the hospital, the crew of three people, Duane, the sound guy, and the cameraman approached the security guards. They brought a maintenance cart of cleaning supplies and a forged printout that looked like it came from a commercial cleaning service. Since they looked like they belonged there, the guards let them pass with little interest.

  “You’re here to help clean up?” a chubby security guard asked.

  Duane took the lead. “Yeah, man. We got called in. Frankly, we would prefer you turn us away so we can tell our boss to eff himself,” Duane said, as he glanced at his crew of misfits. The other two looked just as uninterested in mopping puke all night.

  The security guard glanced at the paper again as if he had any idea what it meant but it looked professional enough.

  “Sorry boys, tonight is your unlucky night. Come on in. The Environmental Services department is all the way at the end of this hall, turn left then second right. Follow the smell, you’ll find it,” he said with a smirk.

  The crew shuffled in and headed down the hall.

  “Wait!” the guard snapped. The crew stopped nervously. Were they busted?

  “Grab some Tyvek suits and masks over there on the table before you go.”

  Relieved, the crew grabbed some protective gear and continued down the hall with a half-hearted wave. The security guards all laughed a little, knowing what was waiting for those guys.

  The crew walked down the main hallway, which housed the administrative offices. It was almost 11 pm and the offices were deserted. The crew was beginning to wonder if there was going to be anything to film.

  “Oh man, this might be a bust,” the cameraman said.

  Duane replied, “Oh no, this is it. I can feel it. Corporate deception has a foul stench and I smell it.”

  They turned the second corner as directed by the security guard and Duane was right. The smell hit them at the corner.

  “Whoa!” the sound man coughed. “That smell could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.”

  The other two covered their mouths with their arms and looked at him, trying not to open their mouths to laugh. They found themselves approaching a maintenance crew trying to remove a door, but it seemed to be jammed from the other side. The hinges were on the inside and not accessible from the hallway. One of the maintenance men turned to the other.

  “This ain’t working. We need someone on the inside to clear the bodies out of
the way.”

  The film crew was still holding the image of a housekeeping team when they heard the maintenance man allude to stacked bodies. Seeing an opportunity, Duane engaged the men.

  “Y’all need some help?”

  The man in the work coveralls and Tyvek suit that was ripped over his large midsection looked at the cleaners as if help had arrived. After all, the maintenance men who were haphazardly dressed like white pumpkins and resembling Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were not about to get this figured out anytime soon.

  “Well, we need to get this here door open but it swings inside and a pile of bodies fell over and jammed it shut.”

  “Pile of bodies?” Duane replied, trying to elicit more information. “Aren’t they supposed to be in refrigerators or something?”

  “Them was filled up yesterday. The county was supposed to come but never showed up.”

  Not one to press his luck, Duane volunteered the skinny cameraman to squeeze in.

  “Won’t work,” the chubby man said. “We was thinkin’ about going over the wall and down through the ceiling on the other side but obviously we ain’t gonna fit.”

  This was perfect, Duane thought. He could send the cameraman over to film and no one would see the camera. Of course, the cameraman was quickly losing interest in the scheme, but the maintenance guy set a ladder too quick.

  “Getty on up there, skinny. Just climb over and open the door.”

  Dave, the young cameraman, figured he could use the cell phone camera so as to not draw attention. He reluctantly climbed the eight-foot ladder, lifted a ceiling tile next to the wall out of the way, and worked to shimmy up and over the space above the hallway wall. Luckily, it was not a fire barrier and he was able to prop himself on the top plate of the wall as he reached to move a ceiling tile on the other side. Unfortunately, the wall framing was all metal studs and sharp screws. After a few small cuts and pokes, he caught the edge of the flimsy tile on the other side. In an effort to clear it so he could crawl through, he lost his balance and fell through the other side. From the hallway, the others saw Dave’s feet shake wildly, then disappear, with a sickening splat sound as their only confirmation that he had made it over.

  “Dude!” Duane yelled out. “Are you ok, man?”

  Nothing from the other side. Duane climbed the ladder to look over the wall. What he saw made him retch. The others in the hallway retched too when green bloody fluid oozed out under the door.

  “Dave!” Duane yelled.

  In a moment there was a moan and then a blood-curdling scream. Dave was unconscious for a few seconds because he had fallen head first and cracked heads with a skinny old man on a pile of other dead people. The old man still had tubes hanging out of his mouth and roughly cut off about six inches beyond his lips. His eyes were half open and there was fluid dripping from the tubes.

  Dave scrambled and found some bare floor a few feet away. Now dripping in goo almost all over, Dave ran to the autopsy sink and used the shower attachment to hose himself off with no particular pattern other than to spray water everywhere in the room.

  “Dave, are you ok?”

  “No dude! I’m not ok. I’ll never be ok again.” Dave angrily flipped both middle fingers to the large pile of bodies as if that would help. For good measure he let out a primal yell of curse words with a big “GAAHHHH!” at the end.

  Duane was still on mission, “Dude do your work and then open the door.”

  The maintenance men looked at Duane quizzically.

  “What work does he need to do? Just open the door.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant. He needs to move the bodies,” replied Duane.

  Dave had been wearing a Tyvek suit and other protective equipment, but it had gotten ripped in the fall. The adrenaline kept him from realizing he was a dead man.

  Now that he was in, he figured the fall should at least pay off, so took his cell phone out and began filming the horror scene in a documentary way.

  He whispered what he was seeing and became so engrossed in the body pile that he forgot to video his surroundings. There was no context as to where he actually was.

  Done filming, Dave retched as he pulled the bodies blocking the door. Eventually, he got the door open and rushed into the hall with the others, who all stepped back at the gory sight. The film crew made an excuse to get Dave cleaned up and left the maintenance team standing there retching as they rushed to pack their tools.

  “Dude!” Duane loudly whispered, barely able to contain his excitement until they were out of earshot of the maintenance crew.

  “You are going to be famous, maybe even get a Pulitzer for this!”

  Duane reached to pat him on the back but awkwardly pulled away when he saw the slime on Dave’s Tyvek suit. Duane’s team found the Environmental Services door down the hall and ducked in. The area was part of a larger warehouse bay with smaller wire cages that held various equipment. Through the cages, Duane saw the open incinerator room and the loading bays where the overhead doors fell and broke the young man’s back earlier.

  Duane thought he saw something unusual through all the wire cages but could not make it out. He reached into the housekeeping cart they had used to smuggle in their equipment and grabbed the video camera. Leaving Dave behind to get cleaned up, he took Jeff the sound man to investigate.

  They moved around the wire cages and approached the incinerator, trying to figure out what they were seeing. Duane instinctively switched on the camera, which prompted Jeff to switch on the sound gear.

  “We are in the maintenance area of St. Agatha’s Hospital in Wellington Florida,”

  he absentmindedly narrated as he moved toward the incinerator for a better look.

  “This hospital is conveniently located next door to the Pharmastat regional research laboratory.” He liked that word, laboratory, and he said it in the old Frankenstein pronunciation for effect.

  “Pharmastat is the leader in gene editing, which the Military Industrial Complex is developing as a weapon against humanit… Holy shit,” he said in a loud whisper. “I cannot believe what I am seeing right now.” He rushed to get back into character.

  “It is now approximately 12:30 AM, we are in the maintenance area at the base level of the hospital. No one is here but our crew,” Duane reported, waiting to get close enough to the incinerator door. The camera was struggling to focus on the subject as he approached. The image in the viewfinder went from blurry to crisp.

  “I reported to you how bad the sham flu was going to get but tonight we have seen bodies stacked like cord wood, with no one coming to pick them up. Now we see the desperation of the corporate overlords. This is a body half hanging out of an incinerator. The smell is unbearable.” Duane turned the camera on himself as he pulled a mask over his nose. “This poor soul did not deserve this fate and we are next if we don’t stand up!” A metal door slammed somewhere in the large bay area. Duane motioned for the crew to hide.

  A group of men in blue head-to-toe biohazard suits walked in from an exterior door and began to lift the large overhead doors.

  Duane turned the camera on them and stopped narrating out of fear of being found.

  A semi-truck and long flat trailer appeared in view of the loading bay door. On the trailer was a front-end loader. Men, not in suits, began to unshackle the big Caterpillar loader. Another man hopped in and the machine chugged to life with a cloud of smoke. The semi-truck drove away and several dump trucks arrived in a line, as if they were preparing to pave a stretch of road. The line of blue-suited men walked through the housekeeping cages and took every laundry cart they could find. Several other men, dressed in charcoal-colored suits from head to toe with breathing respirators, filed into the large bay area. This group of about a dozen took up positions around some sort of perimeter. They had what appeared to be submachine guns with silencers. At least this was how Duane was going to report it, because he did not know one end of a gun from another. He was actually very close in the description of the weap
ons but that was more of an accident.

  The weapons were small and well-hidden under the arms of the suited men. One man in a grey rubbery suit seemed to be giving orders but the muffled voices were hard to understand in the distance.

  The film crew stayed still as church mice, more out of fear than anything else. After about ten minutes, the first laundry carts reappeared from the hallway. They had white sheets draped over them but red stains were blotting through in some places.

  The men pushed the carts to the elevated part of the loading bay that was normally used to unload delivery trucks. The large loader was there with its bucket positioned up like a cattle trough. Duane’s eyes got wide when he realized what was about to happen. All these years of ranting on about such things and he never once caught it in action. He was as dumbfounded as everyone else would be when this video went online.

  The first cart was rolled to the edge of the dock and tipped to dump the contents in the loader bucket. Bodies, some shrouded and some not, were unceremoniously dumped into the bucket like trash into a garbage truck. With a shake to dislodge the last body, the cart men left to get another load.

  The loader was full after three laundry carts and the driver fired it up in another cloud of smoke. Backing away from the dock, the loader turned in a tight radius and lifted the bucket over the first dump truck. The soft thuds of about a dozen corpses rang out. The loader moved back to the dock for another load, just like a normal production cycle of moving soil from one place to another.

  The process went on for about 30 minutes, until all the bodies were loaded.

  “Hey,” the leader muffled to a couple of workers, “go get that one hanging out of the incinerator.”

  As the others used backpack sprayers to sanitize everything in sight, two men grumbled their way toward the incinerator to dislodge the half-charred body that was stuck to the refractory brick opening. One of the men violently vomited in his full face respirator when the body’s flesh slipped away from the waist up and the skinless remains thudded on the ground.