Eves of the Outbreak

by Lilith Assisi

  A sense of relief filled me when I heard the voices of others while I approached the ICU break room. The rhythmic beeping of various monitors chimed on and off as well, though not as many as usual. Movement could be heard, likely the shuffling of papers and feet as nurses recorded their patient’s progress and continued giving them the nursing care they deserved. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All the noises were apropos, just lesser in volume and quantity than normal.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the door to the break room. Would there be anyone there? Would there be zombies? Would it be empty?

  Just rip off the bandaid Diana…

  I swung the door open and looked back at several shocked but familiar faces sitting at the table. They had been watching the small break room TV, but my dramatic entrance had caught their attention.

  Nathan the technician assistant, Marge the daytime lead technician, and my colleague the criticalist Dr. Scott Ferrell were non-chalantly munching on a bag of Doritos, Scott with his mouth currently open mid-chew as an eyebrow cocked upright.

  “Hey Di, what are you doing here? You ok? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Scott inquired.

  “RIVER!” exclaimed Marge as she held out her arms and open lap. River didn’t hesitate to comply, and ran over to leap on to her legs for an ear rub.

  “Aren’t you off today? We haven’t had any surgeries with the school closing either, so Ray went home with his pager,” Scott told me.

  Ray was one of my fellow surgeons. He was on duty today and we normally spent the day in the hospital on clinics during on duty weekdays. I peeked around Scott’s shoulder in to the ICU and saw that the patient load was sparse: only about five cages appeared to be filled. I could see Katy, another ICU nurse, sitting in the cage with one of them fiddling with its IV.

  “The school’s closed?” I asked.

  “Yeah, didn’t you check your email? There’s been several weird muggings in town and the police closed the school as well as several local businesses while they search the streets for culprits. They think it’s some sort of gang violence. But it’s been happening in lots of cities, just like in California yesterday. They officially closed campus this past hour and everyone’s been clearing out,” Scott told me, turning back to the TV.

  “It’s not gang violence,” I said as I sat down in one of the nearest empty chairs. The three of them turned back towards me quizzically, but those intrigued looks quickly turned to concern and fear.

  “Are you ok? You look pale,” Marge said.

  “Do you want some water?” Nathan asked as he started to get up and head towards the water tower by the mini fridge.

  I nodded and gratefully started sipping on the water after it was handed to me. I wasn’t much of a water drinker, but I was coming down from a major adrenalin rush and needed hydration.

  “What happened to you?” Scott asked as I set the glass down on the table.

  “I was attacked,” I said to astonished gasps. “But not by muggers. Not even by people.”

  “By what, dogs? Are you ok?” Marge asked frantically.

  “Was it the police?” Nathan asked weirdly. He was African American, and I couldn’t blame him for those fears.

  I tried to breathe slowly and then started my story. I told them everything, starting with the thuds on the door and the trio in the yard. I even told them about the jogging woman. I left out one thing: Peter. I was too embarrassed to tell them that detail: that my own boyfriend had abandoned me. I just pretended that I had been alone for all the events, and told the story like that.

  At the end of the story Marge looked more concerned than before I had started, but I didn’t know if that was because of genuine concern for what had happened to me, or for my sanity, which was currently in question.

  Nathan’s face was blank. Scott’s face was smirking, when suddenly he broke out in to a grin and guffawed loudly.

  “What drugs are you on girl? Seriously, are you kidding me? Zombies?!?! That’s even crazier than a politician telling the truth!” he exclaimed. He continued laughing his usual baritone, bellowing laugh that made him look like Santa Claus without the beard. His rotund stature and white hair made the resemblance easy to imagine.

  I didn’t know how to react. I was already questioning my sanity on the way in to the hospital, but for some reason the stories of gang violence and other absurd behavior of people nationwide made me more confident. It was sinking in that what had happened to me was real, even when my colleagues were judging me as a lunatic right now. There was a coming storm across this country, maybe the world, and soon we would all be seeing how we could survive.

  A loud buzz in the room shook him out of his epic laughing fit and all of us turned towards the door.

  “Woohoo, first case of the day!” Nathan shouted with excitement.

  Even with the school closed, the hospital would remain open to see emergency cases. I realized they must have locked the hospital’s front doors like on overnights since the school was closed and minimally staffed. That meant clients had to buzz the front doorbell to alert someone to go let them in. I was about to go out and check the monitor with the front door security camera visual displayed on it in the hall when Marge grabbed my arm. She lifted River back up in to my lap while she talked.

  “With all the scares around town the students are all home, and hardly any clients have come in. We had a mass exodus of discharges from the hospital this morning, but once that was over they sent all the front staff home too and it’s just us ICU-ers running the hospital, just like on nights and weekends.” As she was telling me this Scott was getting up from his chair.

  The doorbell rang again. And again. It was frantically being pressed over and over.

  “Jesus, this better be a good emergency! I’ll go triage it,” he said as he hopped up and rushed out of the room.

  Then he turned and said to me with a wink, “Maybe our first zombie dog!”

  From my ER days I knew he was going up front to let the client in and to assess the patient and make sure it didn’t need immediate life saving care.

  River was only in my lap for a minute before she jumped down and started pacing as if she was agitated, standing at the door after Scott had left the room.

  “You should probably let her out before she has an accident. You know we don’t care if she’s off leash around here, but you don’t want to give us extra clean up either,” Nathan joked with me.

  I opened the door and headed towards the end of the hall where another back exit would open to a small kennel space outside. It was where the monitors I had been wanting to peek at earlier were located, and I looked up in the corner to check out who was at the front door just as Scott was opening it. But what I saw made me turn on my heels and start running back towards the front of the hospital.

  A loud yelling made me realize I was probably too late as I skidded in front of the door to the lobby.

  Nathan and Marge rushed in to the hall from the break room at the same time. I glanced in to the lobby through the glass door window to see exactly what I feared. Two figures were huddled on top of Scott’s portly, struggling body on the floor as they tore at his flesh, blood and tissue flying about as muffled whimpers emerged from Scott’s body. Two more figures were on top of another struggling figure, probably the person who had rang the doorbell to be let in. Nathan and Marge just stood there next to me, scared stiff.

  Well we could either run, or fight I thought.

  I had left my baseball bat back in my office and wanted to kick myself in the ass for doing that. But as I glanced up and down the hall I saw a fire extinguisher on the wall.

  It’s weird, having these adrenalin rushes that overpower you. And luckily rather than paralyzing me as they might others, it definitely fueled me. There was this temporary over-ride part of my brain that would push my fears in to a part of my brain that I couldn’t access while I flew in to action.

  That must have been what happened, cause before I knew
it I was grabbing that fire extinguisher and bolting through the doors to the lobby. I felt some hands on my arm and back, probably Nathan and Marge trying to stop me. But my movements had been too fast and unexpected for them to have stopped me.

  Scott’s attackers barely lifted their heads as I came running at them. They were too focused on their meal. Without hesitation I held the extinguisher like a ramrod and thrust in to the head of the closest zombie, feeling the crunch of bone as I did this. The creature collapsed to the floor next to Scott.

  At this point the other monster had lifted its head to meet my gaze. It had been a woman, and her cloudy blue eyes didn’t even register my makeshift weapon as a threat when I collided it with her face. There was blood and flabby tissue hanging from her mouth and her head was making an odd jerking motion. I closed my eyes as the red fire extinguisher connected with her visage, giving an even more satisfying crunch of nose and sinus bones as she was flung backward off of Scott.

  She was still twitching and trying to right herself when I continued past Scott’s body and smashed in her head for the last time.

  I looked up quickly to see where the other two zombies were just as they came stumbling towards me, when SMASH! The body of the first fell to its feet. I watched as Nathan turn and swung the chair he had just used to take down this zombie in front of me into the head of the other. The body was still moving and trying to right itself, as the chair was just enough to knock it down.

  I moved over and stomped out the movement by connecting the extinguisher with its head, and repeated the same action to the last zombie.

  Standing there panting for a minute, looking at the collapsed bodies in front of me, I felt dazed from the rush of what happened and couldn’t really process any details.

  A voice behind me startled me back to the present.

  “Oh my god Diana,” I heard. I turned to see that Marge had ventured to open the lobby doors and was looking at the scene in front of us with abject horror.

  A muffled gargle brought us all back to the scene on the floor as we looked down at Scott’s body.

  Marge and Nathan rushed to his side while I did a quick check of the other victim. Finding her dead I went back to Scott and the others.

  His lips were sheet white, matching his pale face. He had several large gashes in his throat where blood was actively pouring, blood bubbling up in to the opening as it spurted with some air, likely from a tear in the trachea. There was blood coming from his mouth as well. He also had several more superficial bites and scratches on his body, but another more substantial wound running diagonally along the inside of his right wrist.

  His eyes were luckily out of focus as he made his last few sputtering breathes, which transformed to gasps as his body stopped moving and twitching completely.

  Nathan reached up to his face and closed those eyes.

  “I’m sorry Scott. I’m so, so sorry,” I said. I knew it didn’t matter, but it felt like the right thing to say.

  A scream came from behind us and we all jolted upright to see Katy had joined us. Or at least she had made it to lobby doors and was now standing there with her hand over her mouth, hyperventilating as she took in our predicament through the lobby doors.

  Without a word Nathan jumped up and headed over to comfort her.

  “Now what?”

  My eyes refocused on Marge who had just asked the question.

  “I think we should barricade the front here, and block off these bodies,” I said, thinking about our next move.

  “Should we call the cops?” she asked.

  “Yes. Yes, it’s the right thing to do. The question is whether or not they can help us. We may be more on our own than we thought,” I stated. And it’s how I felt. This was the moment I had been worried about, and it was time to face it like I had faced all the other challenges in my life: head on.

  Chapter 21

  One week. It’s been one week since I uttered the word zombie in reference to something other than a TV show, book, or movie. One week. And they have become part of my day-to-day existence now.

  One week. If I was asked how long it took for the country to fall, I’d answer one week. I couldn’t answer that about the rest of the world, but I knew that West Lafayette, Indiana was non-recognizable to those who knew it before the outbreak.

  Flashback to one week ago, after Scott was murdered we called the cops. 911 was busy. Yup, it happens.

  Without any prospect of law enforcement aid in sight, Nathan and I went about surveying the front doors and trying to lock them back up. We also started figuring out how to isolate our half of the building, blocking off the other entrances scattered around for students and staff.

  Katy left us shortly after everything started to unfold. She had a family to get home to, and I hoped there was something left of them for her when she got there. Actually, I hope she got there in the first place. We haven’t seen or heard from her since.

  The campus was far from overrun at that time, but it seemed there was the occasional zombie roaming around those first twenty-four hours. It was enough to keep us on our toes. Unfortunately the veterinary school was at the south side of campus, closest to the city, which meant the majority of zombies stumbled through our neck of the woods first.

  The zombies mostly tried to come at the groups of students who were trying to get off campus to wherever their homes were. Many of the undergraduates weren’t allowed cars on campus and spent their time in dorm rooms together trying to reach their families to help them escape.

  I learned this on one of my missions on the second day after the outbreak hit us: I went out looking to see where people were, if anyone needed help or shelter, and to gather some supplies as well.

  Most of the students already had staff attending to them, trying to help. They were doing a pretty decent job of grouping up during this time of crisis. And we gained a lot more than the lost Katy to our group as well.

  We had acquired over forty students as well as four professors and a half dozen staff from around campus.

  We had set up a sort of shelter in the ICU. I refused to kill or neglect the couple existing animal patients we had without reason, but those that were doing poorly we had made the decision for them without having their owners to contact and get permission. It had started out as seven patients total: four dogs and three cats. Of those, four had survived. Two cats were still alive. Sadly one of them was a very shy tabby named Missy whom I had let loose in one of the unused back rooms for her comfort. The other cat was a gorgeous and friendly tuxedo male named Max that was providing therapy to our surviving humans by purring and head butting galore.

  Two dogs also remained, in addition to River that is. There was a sweet old man black Labrador with lots of grey in his face named Percy (I liked to call him Percival). Despite being eleven years old, he acted like a puppy. River and he had taken to each other quite well and spent a lot of time lounging around together. And there was also a comical young female French bulldog named Nibbler that spent most of her time cuddling up with students under their blankets.

  We had accumulated a lot of food and water as supplies. We hadn’t even started rationing it, but I think we would have to start doing that soon. All in all it sounds like we had a pretty good gig, right?

  All in all we did. It could have been a lot worse, but I haven’t told you the worst of it up till now.

  And it’s only been one week. One week.

  There was the deal with the infected. Like I said, there weren’t a lot of zombies on campus. But there were a lot of people who had been infected. So far it seemed like whatever was the culprit of the outbreak was being spread like most classic zombie scenarios: through bites.

  Unlike many medical and surgical patients I had dealt with in my career, at least these patients read the textbooks, right?

  And in reply to your next question, the answer is yes. Yes, the dead did rise. We figured that out the first day with Scott. The poor man died right there in front of us. But
he wasn’t gone for long.

  I had the smarts to move his body in to an area that we could secure: our isolation ward. It was just in case. And it turned out to be the right case.

  About three hours after moving him there we heard thudding and rattling coming from the ward. River’s hair stood up on end and she started barking her head off to get our attention.

  Nathan and I did the dirty work that day. We both traveled down to the ward at the end of the hall where Scott’s previously lifeless body was floundering on the floor, letting out the occasional moan. He seemed unable to right himself. And unlike the previous zombies that had taken his life, he was unable to focus his eyes on noise or sights. I wasn’t sure if this was how they all looked early after turning.

  He probably couldn’t have done much damage in the state he was in, but it wasn’t fair to let him suffer either. Nathan was avuncular enough to put him out of his misery for me, since I had served that role enough that day.

  Subsequently we’ve taken in a couple bitten, and while some of them hadn’t turned right away, enough of them have that we require them to stay in quarantine, locked up in the horse stalls until they get healthy or pass.

  From what I have observed the bite wounds appear to fester despite my administration of healthy doses of antibiotics to the patients. About thirty-six to forty-eight hours after having being bitten they develop seizures that are minimally responsive to anti-epileptic drugs, and within twelve hours after that they slip in to a coma. Then within another twelve hours their vital signs start to plummet to a level so low they barely register, and then they rise.

  Whether or not these patients are actually dead I can’t say, but most of them have a heart rate and respiratory rate so low it’s like they are in a hypothermic coma. But the ones that die from their trauma before being able to pass through these stages rise even more quickly, in a matter of a couple hours. The only variation in this pattern I have seen is that those that are bitten close to or on the head move the stages more quickly, and those that are bitten further from the head, on the foot for example, can take over seventy-two hours before they pass in to the second stage of seizures.