Survivors in a Dead World

by Gary M. Chesla

  She hadn’t had that feeling for a long time. It felt nice.

  Carrie went out in the hall and closed her door.

  Except for the groaning coming from down the hall, all else seemed quiet.

  Carrie smiled, “Today I will be the first one to the helicopter.”

  Carrie tried to think of some “cute” remarks she could toss out at Bob and Tom when they finally showed up.

  Her cheerful attitude dropped when she reached the top of the stairs to the roof and saw Bob, Tom and Ken waiting for her in the helicopter.

  Bob greeted her when she climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  “Glad to see you were able to join us today,” Bob smiled, “I thought I was going to have to fly this thing myself this morning.”

  “How the hell did you three get out here before me this morning,” Carrie asked.

  “It was easy,” Bob grinned. “I just figured after we changed the oil, swept out the helicopter, redid the brace on the skid, threw a few rocks at the dead down on Fifth Avenue and ate breakfast that we might as well just get in the chopper and wait for you to get up.”

  “We figured you would probably show up sometime today,” Tom added.

  “You assholes,” Carrie said as she started the engine.

  As the rotors began to spin and get up to speed, Bob yelled, “Did you say something Red? I couldn’t hear you for all the noise.”

  Carrie looked over at Bob. When she saw the big grin on his face, she turned back to the controls and sighed.

  “Here we go again,” she laughed. She didn’t know whether to be flattered or pissed.

  Carrie increased the speed of the rotors and the helicopter began to rise above the helipad.

  At fifty feet above the pad, she stared to guide the helicopter towards the center of the city.

  The sight of the streets below made Carrie cringe in her seat. As usual, the streets were packed with the dead. If the group had to get out of the hospital and make a run for it without the helicopter, it would be suicide.

  She hoped today would go well at Allegheny General. After all, she was the one that had opened her big mouth and suggested that they try to lure the dead off of the roof at Allegheny General. At the time it had seemed to be the right thing to say. However it would be a lot different than when she worked at WTAE and suggested that she go out and report on the traffic. If the traffic didn’t end up being as bad as she expected, it was no big deal. If this didn’t work out today, her standing with the guys, whatever that might be right now, could really go down. She had fought long and hard to be more than just another pretty face. Being considered just a pretty face before was annoying, but if her value in today’s world was considered to be nothing more than just being a pretty face, she could end up finding herself in the same position she had been in the early days of this disaster.

  Being just a pretty face before actually had a few perks that she had enjoyed. In today’s world she couldn’t think of any possible perks. Being just a pretty face now would only make her a target.

  The helicopter crossed over the Ohio River. Heinz Field was on the other side of the river. Allegheny General was now only a few minutes away.

  The doctor crawled out of bed.

  He had been in a light sleep. His mind had been working on what kind of experiments he should try today.

  The experiments on the dead creature’s eyes hadn’t produced any useful results yesterday.

  Maybe today he would find the dead wouldn’t detect him when he entered the room. Maybe he had misinterpreted the dead’s actions yesterday after he had painted or removed their eyes. Maybe it had just looked like they were following his movements after he painted or removed the eyes because they already knew he was there.

  Maybe today if he was quiet when he went into the room, he would see a different reaction.

  After all it had to be impossible for the dead to follow his movements without eyes.

  But even if they didn’t detect him when he went in the room today, what good would that knowledge be?’

  If the group had to leave the hospital, they couldn’t go out and paint over the eyes on all of the dead and then wait a day before leaving the hospital.

  He had to find something simple that would actually be possible to do. It had to be something they could do with what little they could find available at the hospital.

  If it was as simple as spray painting the dead, even that would not be possible. If they searched the entire hospital they would be lucky to find maybe three cans of black spray paint.

  Finding a simple solution was not going to be easy.

  The sound of the helicopter lifting off finally had the doctor fully awake.

  “I hope Bob is successful today,” Doc thought. “It would make things a lot easier if we had a fully functional helicopter that could stay airborne longer than thirty minutes. But wherever we go, we are still going to have to deal with the dead. Regardless of how Bob does, we could still use an advantage when dealing with the dead.”

  The doctor got up and got dressed.

  John’s accident came to mind.

  The doctor had checked in with John last night before going to sleep.

  John had a high fever when he examined him.

  A high fever was not a good sign. A high fever was normal after someone had been bitten by the dead, soon followed by the loss of consciousness, death then reanimation as one of the living dead.

  On the other hand, it would also be normal to run a fever after having your finger cut off.

  A fever was one of the signs that the body was fighting back and trying to heal itself.

  Under the unsanitary conditions in which the doctor was forced to remove John’s finger, an infection of some kind would be expected.

  It was the type of infection that worried the doctor.

  In an attempt to save the life of a person who had been bitten by the dead, the doctor had amputated several body parts of victims in the past. He had only ever seen the procedure be successful one time before.

  But even if he had removed John’s finger in time, it by no means meant that John would survive.

  Just to be safe, the Doc had secured John to the hospital bed before coming back to his room last night.

  He had run a strap across the bed over John’s waist and another strap over his knees.

  In the event John passed away and turned in the middle of the night, he at least wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.

  The doctor walked out of his room and down the hall. He stopped outside of John’s room and listened.

  He could hear groaning, but that sound was coming from further down the hall.

  John’s room was quiet.

  The doctor opened the door and cautiously looked inside.

  John was lying in his bed. There didn’t seem to be anything to indicate John had been struggling to get out of bed.

  The doctor walked over to the window and raised the shade to let in some light so he could get a better look at John.

  As Doc turned back towards John, he quickly grabbed another strap from the bedside table and ran it over John’s shoulders and chest and secured it to the bed.

  John’s skin was gray and large black veins ran from his hand up to his elbow.

  John’s hair was matted to his head from perspiration caused by his high fever.

  The doctor’s next move would have been to amputate the arm at the shoulder in an attempt to save him, but even if he would have had the facilities and equipment to do it, from the look of John, it was already too late.

  Doc was about to reach down and feel John’s head when John’s eyes snapped open.

  The milky eyes almost made the doctor jump.

  The doctor was surprised when John spoke.

  “Hi Doc,” John said in a low gruff voice. He looked down at the straps holding him in place as he tried to move his arms. “I guess these straps means I’m not going to make it.”

  “I don’t know yet,” the docto
r replied. “You are displaying a number of signs that are not good, but on the plus side, you are still with us. It could be worse.”

  “If you say so,” John said softly.

  The doctor picked up a syringe and filled it with another dose of antibiotics. He moved back to John and stuck the needle into his upper arm.

  “Most people I’ve seen get infected and die do so usually within the first hour,” the doctor added. “It has been twelve hours in your case. I’m hopeful you will pull through, John. Tell me, what did you feel when I gave you the shot.”

  “What shot?” John struggled to answer.

  “Just rest John,” the doctor said. “You’re doing fine. I’ll check back again in another hour. It will be a struggle, but you can do it.”

  John just closed his eyes and was silent.

  The doctor touched John’s legs and arms, looking for some response, but there was no reaction.

  John’s arms and legs were cold even though his head was warm. It was the progression he had seen in the past. The body would grow cold until only minimal life activity remained. The head and brain would be the last to go until only whatever part of the brain that controlled these things remained functional.

  The doctor should just put John out of his misery and save him from what was sure to happen next, but the fact that he had survived this long, the doctor wanted to give John every opportunity to pull through.

  As a doctor in his past life, the idea of a mercy killing had been unthinkable, that all changed a year ago. After what he had seen, a mercy killing was now the first option he considered when dealing with the victim of a dead attack.

  Watching someone suffer, die and turn into one of those creatures in his mind violated his oath to do no harm.

  Whoever wrote that oath had never dealt with the living dead.

  The Doc left John’s room and walked down to the room he was using for his experiments on the dead.

  As he thought about John, he hoped he wouldn’t be doing any experiments in John’s room anytime soon.

  It had been months since the doctor had to watch anyone that he had been able to call a friend die at the hands of the dead.

  He had seen a lot of horrifying deaths, but the last number of months at the hospital had spared their group from having to deal with death up close on a daily basis.

  Seeing John now reminded the Doc of what he had been trying to forget. It also reminded him of what the group may be dealing with again very soon when they left the hospital.

  This all brought the doctor’s thoughts back to his experiments. He had to find something that would give his group an edge or a weapon against the dead if they were to survive. There had to be something, he just needed to find it.

  The doctor stopped outside the room where his two dead subjects were restrained.

  He thought about what he had done yesterday then he thought about what he had been thinking when he woke up this morning.

  “Could I have misinterpreted what I saw yesterday?” the Doc wondered. It could easily happen when you didn’t know what you were dealing with and didn’t have all the facts. In the absence of facts, humans tended to substitute what they knew or were familiar with to fill in the gaps so an observation would make sense.

  “Were the dead seemingly moving their heads as I moved because they could still see me, or could there be another explanation?” the Doc thought. “If it wasn’t because they could see me, then how would they know what I was doing?”

  His experiment only tested the function of the eyes. What other sense could have produced the same results he saw yesterday?

  He could often remember knowing his nurse was in his office without actually looking at her.

  He had heard her moving around.

  “Was hearing a possibility?” he wondered.

  When he moved his hand in front of the dead creature’s face, the creature couldn’t have heard his hand move.

  The doctor thought about the other senses.

  Assuming those things possessed only the normal senses and not some supernatural senses, which he couldn’t completely rule out, which sense would it be?

  He remembered when he was a kid. He would often come in the house and knew what his mother was making for dinner without seeing or hearing what was in the oven because he could smell it.

  “Smell,” he thought. “That had to be it or at least what I should look at next.”

  The doctor opened the door and stepped inside the room.

  The creatures started moving their heads around at the sound of him coming into the room.

  He quietly moved across the room.

  The creatures moved their heads around but didn’t immediately look in his direction.

  It wasn’t until he stopped in the middle of the room for a few minutes that the dead directed their attention to the spot where he stood and started their eerie groaning.

  The doctor smiled, “I might be on to something.”

  He walked over and looked down at the creatures.

  Neither one of them still had an actual nose. What they had was more of a hole lined with torn flesh, smashed cartilage and splintered bone.

  There didn’t appear to be anything there that could function as a nose.

  But again there was little left in the eyes that should have been able to see.

  The doctor fought his thoughts to try and keep emotion and preconceived ideas of how things worked out of the way of the facts.

  Doc walked over to his table and the collection of items he had gathered to use in his experiments.

  “What high tech piece of equipment do I have here for my next experiment,” the doctor laughed to himself.

  His eyes settled on the can of putty.

  He picked up the scalpel and used the handle to pry up the lid from the can of putty.

  Next he picked up a spoon and looked over at the creatures on the table.

  “The putty should do for the nose what the paint did for the eyes,” Doc thought as he walked between the two beds holding the creatures.

  The doctor stuck the spoon into the can of putty and pulled out a large glob of putty.

  Being careful to avoid the creature’s teeth, he pushed the glob of putty in and over the hole where the nose had been on both creatures.

  The doctor stepped back and looked at the creatures, especially the creature with its eyes painted black and now a large glob of white putty on its face.

  “What kind of sick person would paint and putty a zombie?” The doctor laughed to himself. “It looks like something two cruel kids would do to torment a helpless animal.”

  The doctor turned and left the room.

  He would come back in an hour or so and evaluate the creature’s reactions again.

  The doctor closed and again locked the door.

  Today the doctor was hopeful that he had found something useful.

  It wasn’t anything earth shattering, the dead used their senses to find the living. Anyone could determine that.

  But considering how little he knew about or understood about these creatures, this simple realization was at least a starting point. It was something.

  However it again brought the doctor back to his earlier thoughts.

  So even if the dead detected us by sight and smell, he couldn’t go out and paint and putty every zombie in Pittsburgh.

  However he felt the key to finding some small advantage was right in front of him now, if he could only see it.

  Carrie held the helicopter in position fifty feet above the helipad at Allegheny General.

  She looked back at Ken, “OK Ken, now it’s up to you.”

  “I can’t believe I actually volunteered for this job,” Ken said looking wide eyed and like he was having second thoughts.

  “Here slip this on,” Bob said holding up a vest sized web of rope. “Put your arms through the ropes here and wrap the rest of it around you. I’ll tie the rope we are going to use to hang you below the chopper through these loops. In
case you happen to faint the webbing will hold you so you don’t fall.”

  “In case he faints!” Tom laughed.

  “Hey chicken shit,” Ken shot back, “at least I agreed to do this. Unlike someone else, I didn’t say I was afraid of heights.”

  “Yea Tom,” Carrie shouted over the sound of the chopper’s engine, “It’s not too late for you to change your mind. I think we have a sheet in the back of the cabin.”

  The smile on Tom’s face quickly disappeared, “No thanks.”

  Bob looked at Carrie and laughed as he finished securing the rope to Ken’s web vest.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll let you down easy,” Bob said.

  Ken looked at Carrie, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t swing me around too much. I’m not afraid of heights but I do get sea sick pretty easy. I’d hate to puke on all of those bastards down there.”

  A smile spread over Ken’s face, “I wouldn’t want to piss them off.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Carrie laughed.

  “Are you ready Red,” Bob asked.

  Carrie looked at the altimeter, “Ready.”

  “OK Ken, were going to lower you about twenty feet then fly around the building about thirty feet out. All you have to do is look tasty,” Bob instructed.

  Ken nodded nervously.

  Ken moved to the open door and looked down.

  Bob tied off one end of the rope to the brace on his seat and tightened his grip on the rope near Ken’s vest.

  “Tom, give me a hand,” Bob said.

  Tom moved over and grabbed the rope and smiled at Ken, “Do you want us to push you out or can you do this on your own?

  Ken shot Tom a look and then leaned out of the helicopter.

  As they started to lower Ken, the last thing Bob and Tom heard was Ken shouting, “Oh Shit!”

  Carrie guided the helicopter out from the roof and lowered Ken even with the top of the roof.