The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  Celianne approached the door. The three people in the wide hallway stared at her. She did her best to quell the frustration and manufactured a gentle smile. “My name is Lieutenant Sarah Celianne, HPD SWAT. You are safe. Can we come in?”

  The two dressed in the bio-hazard suits exchanged a glance. The woman moved forward and did something to the door. Sarah heard a click and the woman stepped back. The smile on Sarah’s face became a little more genuine. Just a little. She needed to figure out what the hell was going on. No patients. No CDC in the ER. All the missing plastic. Nothing about this made sense. It was time to find out why.

  Chapter 17

  Sarah stepped through the door with Perkins in tow. The two suited CDC personnel shuffled back to make room, as did the dazed ER doctor.

  The three looked at her expectantly, all of them eyeing the rifle slung on her shoulder. “You’re safe,” she said. “We’ve cleared the area. No one is here.”

  The woman with “Harrel” taped across her chest frowned. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her words were muffled through the helmet, but Sarah had no problem picking up the snark in her tone.

  “Dr. Harrel, is it?”

  The woman nodded.

  “My team has cleared the ER. There’s no one in the quarantine room and there’s no one in the Trauma Center except you folks.” The two CDC doctors exchanged a glance. “You don’t look convinced.”

  Dr. Mathis, by his name tag, rolled his eyes. “Lieutenant, is it?” Sarah nodded. “Exactly what have you been told? Why are you here?”

  “We were called in to assess a hostage situation and provide protection,” Sarah said.

  “From what?” Dr. Harrel asked.

  “I assumed from armed persons trying to break the quarantine.” She glanced into the operating suite to her left. Two doctors and several nurses sat on the floor inside. “Speaking of,” she said and returned her gaze to the CDC doctors, “what happened to the quarantine?”

  Mathis loosed a short, grim laugh. “There is no quarantine, Lieutenant. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean? What happened here?” Harrel and Mathis exchanged another glance. “Ma’am? Sir? I need to know what happened so I can help keep you and everyone else safe. Please tell me what’s going on.”

  Harrel closed her eyes for a moment. “You won’t believe us. You’ll never believe us.”

  “Try me,” Sarah said. That sinking feeling she’d felt earlier crept back into her belly.

  “What have you seen?” Mathis asked.

  The other doctor, the Indian-looking one, was still sitting on the floor, his eyes unfocused and staring off into space. “The tunnel is cut from the ER. We found no bodies, but the isolation room is a complete mess. Looked like all the plastic was gone. Just a bunch of metal and glass left.”

  Mathis nodded. “What else?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “The floors are cleaned? The doors and walls looked burned by something?”

  “Yeah,” Harrel said. “What else?”

  “Nobody here. Been here before on a Friday night. Usually buzzing with casualties and a shitload of people on staff.”

  Harrel sighed. “We sent them into the main hospital area.” She pointed to the man dressed in blue scrubs on the floor. “Dr. Sharma stayed with us in the quarantine area to help out with organization and the trauma surgeries.”

  “Trauma surgeries?” Sarah echoed. The doctors in the suite. “You have patients in surgery?”

  “Not anymore,” Mathis mumbled.

  “They’re dead,” Sharma said.

  The sinking feeling in her gut turned into acid. Sarah took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. These people weren’t making sense. At all. “Where are the two officers that are supposed to be guarding the front of the building?”

  “Dead,” Harrel said. “They’re all dead.”

  Perkins growled, but Sarah didn’t look at him. “Okay, I’ve had enough of this. What happened?”

  “We had a patient,” Harrel said.

  “Had?” Sarah asked.

  “Had. The patient became ill after cutting herself on a barrel of oil sent from an exploration rig. One cut and she ended up having symptoms of both hemorrhagic and dengue fever.” Harrel’s eyes teared up. “Whatever made her sick wasn’t just a virus. It was a parasite of some kind. And it—” She stopped speaking and wiped her eyes. Sarah could tell the woman was on the verge of breaking down.

  Mathis put an arm around her, his suit crinkling with the movement. “More than a parasite,” he said. “A creature of some kind.”

  A feeling of unreality washed over her. This had to be a goddamned joke. Either that or these people had all suffered some biological attack.

  Perkins growled again. “Bullshit,” he said in a hoarse baritone.

  “I’m done with the joke,” Sarah said. “Two cops are missing.”

  “They’re not missing,” Mathis said. The anger in his eyes just managed to mask the fear in his face. “They’re fucking dead, Lieutenant. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Boss?” Epp’s voice said over the radio. “Charlie team.”

  Sarah glared at Mathis and then touched her headset. “Go.”

  “We have something moving out in front of the hospital.”

  “Something moving? Be specific, Epp.”

  “Sorry, boss. Can’t tell you much more than that. Looks like a number of vehicles are entering the parking lot. Military by the look.”

  “Stand by.” Epp didn’t respond. The man knew better. She switched frequencies on her radio. “Dispatch? This is SWAT Commander. Come in.”

  Static answered and then the fragment of an unintelligible sentence stumbled through it. “Dispatch? Please repeat.”

  Another wave of static hit the speaker. She waited a moment, but no more words came through. She cursed and flipped back to the team frequency. “Epp. Go outside and get a better view of what’s going on. Then report back.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  She dropped her eyes back to the tired, exhausted doctors. “If something killed the rest of your team and the two officers, how come you’re still alive?”

  “Luck,” Mathis said. “We were taking a break when it happened.”

  Bullshit, Sarah thought. “So how the hell do you know what happened? How do you know what went on in the ER if you weren’t in there?”

  The two CDC doctors looked at Sharma. The Indian man rocked slightly, his arms wrapped around his knees. “He saw it,” Harrel said. “And after what came down the hallway, I believe him.”

  “What came down the hallway, ma’am?” Perkins asked.

  “Something. It was black. Blacker than space.”

  Thing. Harrel’s voice had stumbled on the word, almost as if she was afraid to say it out loud. “What kind of thing?”

  Sharma shuddered. His voice quivered through his rapid breathing. “Eyes. Its eyes. They grew out of nothing.”

  Sarah frowned. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “It came around the corner,” Mathis said. “Legs. Tentacles. And teeth. It tried to get in, but couldn’t get through the glass.”

  “Is that why you’re locked in here?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Lieutenant. Otherwise, we’d be out the goddamned door.”

  “Boss?” Epp’s voice crackled in her ear.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We have a major problem. You better get out here.”

  “Acknowledged.” She turned to Perkins. “You stand guard. Try and find out what the hell is really going on here.” She cast a glare at the CDC doctors. “Because none of this shit makes any sense.”

  Sarah turned to the glass door, opened it, and entered the hallway. Givens and O’Malley were still down at the far end, their rifles at the ready. O’Malley turned to look when he heard her open the door, eyebrows raised. Sarah held up a hand. The rookie nodded and resumed standing at his post.

  She walked around the corner and conti
nued onward to the ER lobby. The bad feeling she’d had since they entered the hospital had only grown worse. The things the doctors were saying? Impossible. Simply impossible.

  But the floor glistened. There were no bodies. Missing police officers, missing CDC members, and where the hell were the patients? None of it made any damned sense. Hell, where were the security guards in this place?

  When she finally made it to the lobby, she was struck by the look on Schneck’s face. He was still standing by the hallway, but no longer turned to it. Instead, he stared out the double doors.

  “What’s up?”

  He didn’t turn to her. “Bad, boss. It’s bad. Better talk to Epp.”

  Sarah didn’t reply but kept walking until she could see the double doors leading to the parking lot. Something banged outside. It was difficult to place the sound with the howling wind and rain beyond. But then it hit her—hammers. Then she heard the whir of drills. And bit by bit, the double doors were disappearing.

  “Epp!” she yelled.

  He stood in the space between the inner and outer doors, rifle pointed to the floor. A piece of metal slammed over the lower half of the outer doors. Then another. The grind of heavy-duty drills followed close behind.

  “They’re locking us in, boss.” Epp’s face was flushed with anger, but there was also a hint of fear in his eyes.

  She walked past him and then looked out into the parking lot through the remaining gaps in the outer doors. Several men in military uniforms stood in a line, assault rifles pointed in the general direction of the ER.

  “Is that a goddamned tank?” she asked.

  Epp nodded. “I went outside to find out what the hell was going on.” He swallowed hard and she looked at him. “I was told to get back inside the hospital and not to attempt to leave.”

  She already knew the answer, but she had to ask. “Or else what?”

  He sneered. “Or else they open fire.” He saw the look on her face and nodded. “We’re under quarantine. The whole goddamned hospital is.”

  The fear, that cold gripping hand that had caressed her back, her spine, and made something inside her shiver, touched her heart. This is really happening, she thought.

  “Epp. I want you to keep trying to get dispatch on the radio. You let me know when you get them.”

  “Yes, Boss.”

  The whirring continued behind the entry doors. Sarah turned and walked back into the lobby. The glass partition separating the ER from the rest of the hospital caught her eye. She walked to it and banged on the glass. The partition shivered, but held just fine.

  “We’re quarantined,” she whispered. Through the glass, she saw a security guard at the other end of the hall. He was watching her, but made no move to come forward. She waved at him and beckoned. The man didn’t move. “Fucker,” she said under her breath and turned back to the ER room.

  The blackened and melted plastic drew her. She stepped to it and studied the edges. The plastic hadn’t curled or melted like it did from flame. Something had sliced through it and burned it, but the rest of the plastic hadn’t reacted at all.

  With those thoughts in her mind, she walked back into the main ER room. A Glock .40, just like the one she carried in her holster, still sat next to the doorframe. Sarah lowered herself to one knee and examined it. The normally dark metal gleamed like polished silver. Whatever had wrecked the room, polished the steel, and consumed everything else, had also stripped the matte black finish from the pistol.

  She picked it up with her gloved fingers. It was a breach of protocol, but now that she knew this was more than a crime scene, protocol was out the window. The weapon smelled like it had been cooked in a crockpot with rancid meat. She popped the magazine. It was empty.

  Sarah pulled back the slide. There were no rounds left in the pistol. She sniffed the barrel. The smell of cordite was strong enough to overcome the fetid stench. She slammed the magazine back into the weapon and then placed it in a vest pocket.

  The room was completely silent save for the sound of the circulating air. She peered up at the vents and suddenly wished she had a set of blueprints to this place.

  So the, whatever it is, started in this room. Tore through the quarantine tunnel, and then headed to the trauma center? Then it would…

  Something clicked in her head. She quickly walked from the room and past Kilfoil into the hall leading to the trauma area.

  Sarah followed the shining path on the floor. Now that she knew what to look for, she saw the trail. The sides of the floor were unevenly polished as if whatever had done it hadn’t filled up the entire hallway. A swath in the center of the floor shined more brightly than the rest.

  As with the glass doors leading to the trauma center, the area was completely clean. Including the edges. But the tile floor had a sheen to it, as though something had turned in a circle. She felt someone’s eyes on her and looked up. Perkins stared at her through the glass doors, eyebrows raised.

  She shook her head at him and continued to follow the trail. The shining tile ended in front of the first room on the left.

  “Boss?”

  “Hang on, O’Malley.” She walked into the room. Perkins hadn’t been kidding about the wall. Exposed wires dangled from the massive hole. She walked to the broken sheetrock. That smell of something rotten frying hit her nostrils immediately, although it wasn’t very strong. She poked her head into the hole and looked sideways.

  Whatever had pushed through the wall hadn’t bothered to mess with the wiring and pipes in the dead space between the sheetrock panels. The PVC pipes holding the wiring were intact on either side of the ragged hole.

  A whiff of ozone told her at least one of the electrical wires had shorted out. But that was minor damage compared to what she saw on the other side.

  Rather than leaving the room through the door and walking back out into the hallway, Sarah crawled through the misshapen hole. Her kneepads crushed drywall eliciting a spray of crumbling material. The elbow pads in her uniform smacked into the ragged sides, causing even more damage. She didn’t care.

  Halfway through, she realized the wires touching her back could be live and filled with electricity. But if that were the case, she’d already be dead. Good idea, she told herself, something’s in the hospital, you’re quarantined, and you try and kill yourself with electricity. Perfect. She made a mental note not to try this again.

  Sarah poked her head into the other room. The door was open and she could see Givens’ tall, lean silhouette in the hallway. Sarah awkwardly climbed through and stood. She pounded her gloved hands together and a cloud of white dust filled the air. She sneezed, wiped her nose, and surveyed the damage.

  A large metal rectangular box was attached to the far wall. The side facing her was mostly shining as if polished. The rest of its surface was dull and even rusted in places. Sarah walked to it and sat on her haunches. A metal plate bore the word “DANGER.” Another showed a lightning bolt of electricity. Other than the gleaming metal surface, she didn’t see any damage to the electrical box. But it wasn’t humming. It wasn’t giving off any heat. She frowned.

  Sarah climbed atop the box and peered down over the back. A severed PVC pipe led to the wall. The wires inside were completely stripped of insulation. “Goddammit,” she mumbled. Givens had turned on the lights in the room and they functioned fine. So what the hell was this box supposed to power?

  Sarah turned and looked around. Affixed to the adjacent wall sat a rack of flat, rectangular boxes. Each had a strip of dead LEDs with labels. Finally, it clicked. This was a VOIP exchange. If the hospital’s phones ran on this system, they were completely dead. Unless, of course, there was another trunk somewhere in the hospital. She hoped only the ER/Trauma Annex was out. Otherwise, they were really screwed.

  Sarah looked down at the ragged hole in the middle of the floor. Perkins hadn’t been kidding. The tiled floor had chips in it near the hole as if a pickaxe had come down again and again on its surface.

  “Givens
?” she yelled toward the hall.

  The tall man leaned in the doorway. “Boss?”

  She gestured to the door. “Is that metal?”

  He blinked and then gently tapped his rifle barrel against it. The metal door clanged softly. “Yeah, Boss. Steel. Heavily reinforced.”

  She nodded and looked back at the floor. Below was complete darkness. And that fetid smell rose to her nostrils. She pulled a long halogen flashlight from her belt, flipped it on, and shined it into the hole.

  The narrow beam of light illuminated broken ducts, broken PVC pipes, and even a broken water pipe dripping water into the area below. The bottom of the hole was at least ten meters down. Two stories worth of a gap. The light stabbed through the clutter of wreckage and hit the concrete floor at the bottom. The beam reflected from impossibly clean and polished stone.

  “Shit.”

  “Boss?”

  She turned and faced the door. Givens’ normally impassive face held a line of concern. The man was stoic to the point of near inhumanity. Seeing him with that look on his face was more than enough to make her worried.

  “Yeah, Givens?”

  “What’s going on?” He delivered the words in a dead croak.

  She’d heard that voice before in Basra. Right before they walked into the worst firefight of her short military career. Without him and Perkins fighting like maniacs, the entire squad would have been lost. She’d done her best to get them all out alive and received a commendation for doing so, but Givens and Perkins, two unrelated men that had bonded like brothers, were the two that saved them all. She owed them her life. And they, for reasons she didn’t understand, thought they owed her theirs.

  Those thoughts drifted through her mind before she figured out why he looked concerned. He trusted her instincts. And if she was worried, he would be too.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She fought the urge to force a grin. That might help calm a rookie like O’Malley, but Perkins and Givens would see right through it. “But we need to figure it out.”

  “Boss?” Epp’s voice said through the radio.