by L. D. King
Landon and Layla got ready to leave for the hospital. The city of New Orleans was turning into a death zone for anyone who didn’t have a place to escape to. When the hotels in the French Quarter closed, it forced the tourists onto the streets to fend for themselves.
When the airlines quit flying, tourists who had no vehicles had no way out and were on their own to wander the streets. The zombies gathered in the Quarter, hunting the tourists. The grocers that were still open were nearly out of food. People broke into the stores that had already closed, looting anything they could find.
Those who could leave had left the city days ago. The people who had a sense of commitment to the city stayed to help until they could no longer do so.
New Orleans had a fragile infrastructure. It had been bad since the last big storm back in August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina blew through Louisiana and destroyed the city. The city never quite recovered from that, and it only took losing one utility for all the others to start to crumble, taking everything else with it.
For New Orleans, it was the sewer system. The sewage pumps had become plugged. This caused a surge in the power grid, taking it down. Following that, the police department closed as well as the fire department.
Landon drove his wife’s car, parking in the hospital employees’ parking lot. In front of the hospital, they could see a large tent set up which the hospital was using to triage patients before anyone was allowed inside the hospital for treatment. The two of them walked to the back door of the emergency room to get in. She used her keycard to open the locked door.
As she pulled it open, they could see that it was chaos already. The overflow of patients in the emergency room had filled each exam room, leaving patients on gurneys or sitting in chairs in the hallway.
On the floors above the emergency room, there were two or three times the number of patients in each room as was normal. The hospital was overcrowded, with more patients coming every minute. Savannah Locaviche, the charge nurse for the emergency room, saw Layla and called her to her desk.
Savannah said, “Layla, I see you brought your husband. Is he here to help us, or just to keep you company? If he wants to work, we could really use the help.”
“I was getting ready to come in when Landon came home early from the firehouse. All the firehouses in the city are now closed. I asked him to come help us here. You know all of the firemen are trained EMTs. He’ll do anything you ask of him. Will that be okay?”
Savannah nodded. “Landon, you’re a sight for my tired eyes. Yes, you can stay. The only thing that I’ve heard is that everyone is leaving the city if they can. If this is true, then where are all these people coming from? We’re swamped. For now, the two of you have rooms 47 through 50, including the six patients in the hall outside those rooms. We need them worked up so we can either admit them or get them discharged the hell out of my ER. I think most of them just want a safe place to stay. We only have one doctor on the floor to help us. It’s Dr. Gavin LaTour. Call him only if you need him. The last time we talked he told me that, in his opinion, most of the patients are terrified.”
“Savannah, who am I relieving? I need to get a report on the patients.”
“You’re not relieving anyone. We’re so short-staffed, everyone is running all over the ER to help out wherever they can. Once a patient makes it back here to see us, they sit for another three or four hours or more before we can get to them. Some of them sit in the waiting room for ten or twelve hours before we can work them in to be seen. We’re doing what we can with what we have. I was told that the hospital might be going on lockdown sometime today. When that happens, they won’t let anyone in without absolute, treatable medical emergencies. If they lock this hospital down, then you’ll have a choice to stay or to leave. If you go, you won’t be allowed to come back.”
Layla looked at her husband. He gave her a thumbs up. She said, “Savannah, if they lock this place down, we’ll both be here.”
As they were talking, the radio at the charge nurse’s station started going off, startling all three of them. They thought everything in the city had shut down. Savannah turned to the radio. She picked up the mic and depressed the key.
“University Medical Center Emergency Room here. Over.”
“This is Officer Gage Barra, New Orleans PD. I’m headed to your location with a seriously injured officer. He’s got some serious facial lacerations. His cheek has been ripped open and his eye is hanging out. I’ll be at your location in three minutes. Over.”
“Copy that, Officer. We’ll be ready. Drive safe. Over.” Savannah turned back around, looking at Layla.
“Well, it looks like you have another patient on his way in. Get a gurney ready and grab an aide. I think Brice Maillieux is closest. Grab him to help you when they get here. They won’t be long.”
“Thanks, Savannah. I’m sure this won’t be my last patient tonight. How many surgeons do we have upstairs?”
“We only have one left, Dr. Franchebois. Both he and his nurse, Trinity Skinner, have been here for the last three days. They’re having a rough go of it. It’s one surgery after another. If it’s not absolutely necessary, we don’t send anyone upstairs to them.”
“Okay, Savannah. We’re off to work. If one of us falls over, just give us a good kick to wake us up.”
Layla started towards the ambulance door to wait on the patient that was on his way. Landon was right behind her. Once the officer arrived, they took him to their assigned rooms to treat him. All they could do was make the officer as comfortable as they could while they waited for Dr. LaTour to treat him. His wounds were deep; he was going to lose his eye.
While they were waiting for Dr. LaTour, they started to analyze their other patients one by one. They had six patients in the four rooms. Adding them to the six patients in the hall, they had a total of twelve patients to cover.
They entered the first patient’s room, where the smell of decaying flesh was pungent. They looked at the patient. It was clear to them the patient was dead. He had several deep, slicing gouges in his leg. As Layla looked at the wounds she did not think they were so bad that they would kill a person.
She told her husband, “Landon, could you go ask Savannah to call the doctor? He needs to pronounce the time of death. After that, the body will need to be moved to the temporary morgue in the basement.”
“Okay. I’ll go find her.”
Landon found Savannah at the charge station. He told her, “Layla wants you to call the doctor over to pronounce the time of death for our patient. When he’s done, we will move him downstairs.”
“Landon, we’re too busy right now to ask the doctor to pronounce anyone. Just put a note in his file. Take the patient and the file to the morgue. It’s down the hall and to the right. Take the elevator to the basement. It’s to the right again after you get off the elevator. The room’s locked, but the key is on a hook next to the door. Put the body on top of any stack of bodies that you can. Then lock the door behind you and come back with the gurney. Do you need anything else?”
“No, I guess I’m okay with that. I’ll do as you ask. Is this the procedure from now on with all the dead?”
“Yes,” Savannah said. “We’ve had so many patients die, we’re just putting the bodies in the morgue with their charts. We don’t even have any more body bags. You’ll have to use a single sheet to wrap them. All we’re doing is moving patients through the system as fast as we can. We’re up to our asses with patients. We can’t do much more than patch up the living or take the bodies to the morgue. As soon as we can get an open gurney, we put another ass in it as fast as we can. We aren’t even checking for insurance anymore. We’re just about out of a lot of meds that we need to treat patients. We’re doing the best we can in the time that we have to treat them.”
When Landon got back to Layla, she was walking out of the policeman’s room with tears in her eyes. Landon held her. “What happened honey?” he asked. “Why are you crying?”
“T
he cop died. I was holding his hand. He told me to find his wife and tell her that he loved her, but before he could tell me where he lived, he cramped up and died. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I understand what you’re going through. The first person that I couldn’t save on a fire call, I broke down and cried right there in the street. If you want to go home, I’ll understand.”
“I don’t want to go home. I’m a nurse. I’m needed here. It’s just hard to watch people die without being able to do anything for them. I’ll need you to give me a shoulder to cry on every once in a while. Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll do anything I can for you, any time you need me. Let’s go back to work. Having something to do will take your mind off what’s happening.”
“Okay, honey. I love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
This pace went on for Layla and Landon for fifteen more hours. They saw ten to fifteen patients an hour. In fifteen hours they saw 195 patients. 119 of them were discharged. Twelve were sent upstairs for surgery. They had sixty-four die after they were taken into the emergency room. Their deaths were, for the most part, quick. With few exceptions, all the patients died from a zombie attack. They were able to get away from the zombie that attacked them, only to die shortly thereafter from their wounds.
The morgue in the basement had bodies stacked from floor to ceiling. When a body was added to the morgue, it took two men to heft the body to the top of a stack.
They worked at this pace for another ten hours straight. After twenty-five hours on their feet, they decided to go home for some sleep, but found that the hospital had gone on lockdown after they had been at work for ten hours. The guard at the door told them that if they left, they would not be allowed to return. They had to make a decision whether to stay or go. They decided to stay.
Looking for a place to get some rest, they found a small room upstairs where they could be alone. As they closed the door, Layla said, “Landon, I don’t know what to do. We can stay for as long as we want, and we’ll be safe here. If we leave, then we will be on our own. Outside, there’s no place as safe as where we are right now. If we stay, all we have is work or sleep. What do you want to do?”
“We should stay until we can’t help anymore,” said Landon. “I mean, we don’t have anything else to do. And you’re right; we don’t have anywhere else to go. The hospital is safer than being outside right now. If you want to stay, I’ll stay with you. If you want to leave, then I’ll be right beside you.”
“I want to stay. I really believe that this is where we belong.”
“All right, then, it’s settled. We’re a team,” said Landon. “We’ll stay, but right now I need some sleep. Do you want to try to get some sleep here, in this room? There’s no bed, but we can sit on the floor and hold each other as we sleep. Then we can go back downstairs and start all over again.”
“That’s a great idea. I’m about to pass out on my feet.”
“Let me lock the door so no one surprises us. I’ve been thinking about the patients we’ve seen. Anybody who has been injured by a zombie dies. There seems to have been no exceptions to that. If we can tell the people in the triage tent not to allow people in who’ve been attacked by a zombie, we’ll have more time to treat the rest of our patients. We should have someone send a message out to triage about that. But now I’m going to fall down if I don’t get some sleep. If you wake up before I do, wake me up.”
They leaned back against the wall and drifted off into a much-needed sleep.
They had been working for the last seven straight days since Australia Day Zero. They would sleep right through most of day eight.
All they had to look forward to was another day of patients when they woke. It would be rough, but they would be safely inside, away from the zombies.
Chapter 9
Manhattan Island
New York City
ADZ +60d
Jerry was the first to make it up to sidewalk level, followed by Mary. Jennifer was next, followed by Mike. Once they were all on the sidewalk, they stopped. They all turned and looked back down the stairs to see if the creatures were following.
The creatures were starting to come up the steps after them, but much to their surprise, the things only came up the steps as far as the shadows extended; they seemed to wish to avoid the direct sunlight. They stopped, staring at the four survivors from the shadows.
Looking at the creatures, Jerry said, “Do you guys see this? They’ve stopped coming up the stairs. They won’t move out of the shadows. They don’t like the sunlight. Maybe it hurts? The tunnel has electric lighting… They don’t seem to mind that. They caught us in the dark of the tunnel. Maybe we can use that against them at some point.”
“Goddamn, those are some right fucking ugly creatures,” said Mike. “Look at their clothes, if you can call ‘em that… they’re all ripped to shit. Look at that one. It’s missing an arm. That one over there is stumbling around, missing a foot. And they smell like hell! They’re all torn to crap. They’ve all got deep gouges or other kinds of wounds… Can you see their eyes? They’re all glazed over. Makes me wonder if they can even see at all. I wish we had some gasoline or something to pour on them so we could burn ‘em to the goddamn ground. This is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. I want to go home. it should be safer out on the island.”
“I don’t know, Mike. All I know is this place is not safe for anyone,” said Jerry. “I agree that we need to get out of this shithole. If going back home is the answer, then let’s get going. Are you girls okay with this?”
“You know wherever you go, I’ll be with right there with you,” said Jennifer. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. Can we go now?”
“Not just yet, Jen. It’ll be dark soon. I don’t think it’ll be safe to be outside when it’s dark. Remember what happened in the tunnel. I’m not ready to lose anyone else.”
“Should we call the cops, or something?” said Mary. “You know, report this to someone?”
“Yeah, if your phone has enough charge, call 911, or you can use mine. Tell them that two of our friends were killed by some kind of creatures, and their bodies are still in the subway tunnel — the 125th Street near Malcolm X Boulevard subway station, and that the station’s abandoned.”
They walked around the subway entrance to the highest point above the steps and leaned against the railing, watching the creatures below them. The things were standing there, looking at them, as the four of them looked back.
Mary dialed 911, only to get a busy signal. She tried again, and a total of six more times. After the last time, she stopped. Her face looked frustrated and afraid, all at the same time. She began to cry.
Jerry looked at her. He reached out and drew her close to him, and asked what was wrong.
“No answer, Mary?”
“No… 911 is busy. I tried it six or seven times, but it was always busy. I’m getting scared, Jerry! 911 is supposed to be answered every time you call it. Have you ever heard of 911 being busy? What’s wrong with 911? Is it overloaded? Are the cops so busy that they can’t take our call? This is really starting to scare me. We thought we were gonna be safe on the street, but I don’t feel so safe anymore. I want a policeman to come and help us… and I don’t want to leave our dead friends down there.”
Mike was starting to worry. As Mary was calling 911, he was watching the creatures in the stairwell. As the sun gradually sank lower in the sky, the shadows below them got longer. The creatures came up another step, though they were still in the shadows.
Looking over the railing at the creatures, Mike said, “Hey, guys, do you see this? I’ve been watching the things down there. The lower the sun sets, the longer the shadows get. Then they move up a step. I’ve been watching them. Why do you think they are wearing clothes? I mean, they’re are all torn up, but it’s still clothing. Isn’t that weird? I don’t figure anybody dressed them, right? So do you think they were human
before they became these creatures? You can tell some are males and some are females… Some of the males have beards, and others just have like a three-day growth. The females all look like they’re dressed like they were going to work. Something’s really messed up about this.”
Jerry thought for a while. After a few minutes, he said, “Mike, I see what you mean about the clothes. Wow. And you’re right — they seem to be following the shadow up the stairs. It’ll be dark soon, then they’ll be right up here with us. We need to get the hell off of this street and back in our room, behind a locked door. On the way to our room, let’s grab whatever we can get to eat. The hot dog cart is still over there, but the man who runs it is gone. Let’s raid the damn thing and take as much as we can carry back to our rooms.”
“That’s stealing!” said Jennifer. “I’m not going to jail for stealing a handful of hot dogs.”
“Jen, if this was a normal situation, I’d agree with you, but we just watched two of our friends get killed by something that we’ve never seen before. Right now I’m stealing whatever is left on that hot dog cart. If a cop wants to arrest me, let ‘em. Until then, I’m going to eat. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m walking over there and taking as many hot dogs and bottles of water as I can carry, and anything else I can find, too. Come on, Mike — are you with me?”
“Yeah, I’m in. I’m hungry. If I have to steal to eat, then I’m gonna steal. Girls? Are you with us?”
“All right, you guys,” said Mary. Jen and I will help you steal so you can fill your tummies. I just don’t wanna get caught.”
“C’mon, let’s get dinner. If we get enough, we’ll have breakfast, too. We need to be up in our rooms before those things make it to the top step. Once we’re behind closed doors, we’ll have a better chance to stay alive until morning.”
