Infected

by Anthony Izzo

  He fired again, blowing a hole in the thing's guts. It fell to its knees and scurried forward. Five feet from Emma and she kicked it in the face, her foot sinking in with a squish. It fell on its face and she finished it with a trio of blows from the shotgun's stock.

  She looked down at her boots, which were spattered with blood. Hopefully none of it bled through and came in contact with her skin, for there was no telling how the germ was spread. “How you holding up?”

  “Feeling a little woozy.”

  “You think it's from getting scratched?” Emma asked.

  “Either that or it's because I just cut down seven humanoid freaks with a shotgun.”

  “That's enough to make anyone sick.”

  The bodies of the things lay in the hallway, blood pooling on the floors. The hallway had taken on a smell that reminded her of unwashed feet and old meat combined. Aside from the zombies – or whatever they were – her next concern was ammunition. She had ten shells left for the shotgun and thirty rounds for her Glock. “How you fixed for ammo?”

  “Six rounds left for the twelve gauge. Thirty rounds for the sidearm.”

  There could be a hundred or more of these things running around and some of them took multiple shots to bring down. But there were patients on the upper floors, one of them her mother. She could only hope they were locked up safe. “All right. These things aren't going to kill themselves. Let's move.”

  Weiss, Max, and Lori got off the elevator in the lobby. The security desk was straight ahead, and Weiss saw that blood had been splattered across the desktop. Not splattered. It looked like someone had taken a paintbrush and gone to town. “Where's the other guard?”

  “Walking a nurse to the lot,” Max said. “That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Hopefully he got out. I need to check on my ER. Take Lori to her car. Get her out of here,” Weiss said.

  “I'm staying with you,” Lori said.

  “Lori.”

  “I don't want to hear it. What's next?”

  Weiss said, “I need to find out if anyone's still alive in my ER.”

  “I'm getting out of here. You two should do the same,” Max said.

  “You're security. And we could use your gun,” Lori said.

  “My life ain't worth eight bucks an hour. And I might need the gun,” Max said, and walked away.

  “Coward,” Lori said, but Max either didn't hear her or was chosing to ignore the statement.

  Weiss went down the hallway and pushed through the emergency room doors. The walls in the main room were smeared with blood. There were four bodies sprawled on the floor, all of them missing chunks from torsos, arms, and legs. If that weren't bad enough, a re-animated corpse dragged itself across the floor, its intestines trailing behind like blood-soaked rope. Weiss took the hammer and bashed its head until it moved no more.

  “Where is everyone?” Lori asked.

  “Dead or run off,” Weiss said.

  He checked the main desk. The pit, as the nurses liked to call it. It was empty, as were the patient bays. His emergency room had effectively become a ghost town.

  “What now?” Lori asked.

  “There's two cops sweeping the building. I don't know how far they've gotten,” Weiss said.

  “Mike, what the hell is it?”

  “It's moving fast whatever it is. I'm guessing some crap the army cooked up. Some freak bug. We need to call for help,” Weiss said, and took out his cell.

  “Not here. We'll get out. Call from outside.”

  Weiss looked around, thinking Lori was right. There was no telling how many of those things were running around the hospital. They left the emergency room and reached the security desk. The main entrance was just ahead. They were almost there when two of the creatures smashed through the glass doors.

  Weiss froze, gripped Lori's arm. A half dozen more of the pale-skinned things filled the doorway. Tugging on Lori's arm, he directed her back to the elevators. If they kept going, they'd reach the side entrance at the end of the hallway.

  That door proved to be a dead end, as three of the zombies broke through the glass door. The things had broken out of the hospital. If they got into town – or beyond – it would be disastrous. The infection would spread and they'd be looking at a serious health crisis.

  “Back upstairs. No choice,” Lori said.

  They went back to the elevators and pressed the button. The zombies from down the hallway spotted them and came for them. The doors opened and Weiss urged Lori onto the elevator. He stepped in and jammed the first button he saw. He mashed it again, as if it would make them close any faster.

  As they began to shut, one of the creatures stuck its head in the elevator. The doors pinched the zombie, and it tried lunging at them. Weiss swung the hammer, cracking its cheekbone. He swung again, smashing the thing's temple. It caved in like rotten fruit. Lori joined him, shoving the zombie backwards and out of the elevator. With it gone, the doors closed.

  They stopped at the second floor and the doors opened. Weiss caught the stench of blood in the air and figured the bastards had been on this floor. “We'll backtrack to the stairs. Hopefully get around them.”

  “They're blocking the exits.”

  “Maybe they moved in the hospital. The entrance might be clear.”

  Weiss heard a commotion at the end of the hallway. He saw a woman in bloody pink scrubs leading a pack of the newly risen towards them. A section of her scalp had been peeled away and hung on her forehead. Weiss glanced at the elevators and figured they wouldn't have enough time to wait. They ran around the corner, turned right. There was an office at the end of the hallway and Weiss tried the door. It opened. They went inside, the sounds of the dead echoing in the halls.

  They shoved a desk in front of the door and backed away. Weiss turned around and looked out the window. He had a view of the parking lot, where a few dozen cars remained. He hoped to see extra police cars out in the lot, but there were none.

  From the other side of the door came scratching as they tried to get in. He looked out the window again and saw a cluster of bushes beneath the window.

  “How do you feel about jumping?” Weiss said.

  “It doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy, if that's what you mean.”

  “It's about twenty feet. If we were to hang and drop, it would cut down on the fall. There's some bushes down there that might break our fall,” Weiss said.

  “Considering the alternative.”

  He yanked a drawer from the desk and smashed it into the glass. It cracked but stayed in the frame. Using the drawer, he completely busted out the glass. Lori climbed up first, straddling the sill then hanging out before dropping. He heard a thud and looked out to see Lori rolling out of the bushes. “You okay?”

  “Just a little battered.”

  Weiss did the same, letting himself drop. When he hit the ground his ankle turned and he got up, hopping and swearing. From above, he heard the door crash inward and the woman with the peeled scalp stuck her head out the window and growled at them.

  “Don't suppose you have your keys?”

  “In my purse. Which is in my desk.”

  “We'll go to the ambulance bays. Maybe there's a rig parked.”

  “Your ankle.”

  “Just twisted it a little.”

  They made their way to the rear of the hospital, where an ambulance was parked outside the emergency room doors. The crew was nowhere in sight. As they got closer, Weiss saw someone on the ground. They were on the opposite side of the ambulance, and he went around to find one of the paramedics. His blue uniform was darkened with blood. His right ear had been torn off. Weiss recognized him as one of the men that had brought Marty in. “Shit. Think his name was John.”

  Lori opened the driver's side door. “Keys are in it,” she said, and climbed in.

  “His partner must've taken off.”

  Weiss was about to get into the passenger seat when he was grabbed. He spun around, slamming his arm into
the person that had grabbed him. It was the other paramedic, and he stared at Weiss with those bleached-out eyes. He smiled a mirthless smile, exposing teeth with bits of bloody flesh stuck in them. Weiss recoiled in disgust.

  He lunged at Weiss, who managed to grapple the freak to his knees. His head was half in the ambulance and Weiss slammed the door on the creature's skull. It took five times before the paramedic stopped moving. After dragging the body out of the way, he got back in the ambulance.

  Lori started it up, and they pulled out of the ambulance bay.

  Emma and George swept the fourth and fifth floor and found no one alive. There had been several bodies, all with chunks and bites taken out of them. She'd worked a murder case about five years ago. Teen who'd gotten lost up in the woods, fallen from a cliff, and broken his neck. The animals had got at him, nibbling away pieces. That's what the corpses reminded her of.

  She was beginning to lose hope of finding anyone alive.

  Until they reached the sixth floor and heard someone calling for help. It came from down the hallway, the sound of someone moaning, long and low.

  They tracked the noise to a large conference room. Inside was a highly-polished cherrywood table with enough room for two dozen chairs. There were several framed motivational posters hanging on the wall with words like Excellence and Dedication on them.

  They found the moaner in the corner. It was a man in a lab coat and scrubs. He was dark skinned and dark haired, and his identification badge indicated he was Doctor Ajay Gupta. The good doctor's scrub shirt had been ripped open, exposing a circular ring of teeth marks on his side.

  “Doctor Gupta, can you hear me?” Emma asked.

  Gupta opened his eyes and looked at Emma. “I'm sick. Burning up.”

  “What happened?”

  “A pack of them – those things – came through here. Bit me, but I managed to elude them. They might still be around.”

  Emma looked at the wound and saw the teeth had gone deep. The doctor might be infected but she had no idea how fast or when he might change into one of the freaks. “Can you get up, doctor?”

  The doctor nodded and sat up, wincing at the pain in his side. Emma saw the sweat beading on his forehead and the ashen color of his skin.

  “How soon after you were bit did you get sick?”

  “Not long. Fifteen minutes.”

  George said, “Where did they go?”

  “I heard them down the hall. I heard more screaming,” Gupta said. “Are they all over the hospital?”

  “Hospital's crawling. It started in the emergency room,” Emma said.

  “We've got to get you out of here,” Emma said.

  “I can do it. I'll get to the elevator,” Gupta said.

  They dragged Gupta to his feet and urged him out of the room and down the hallway. He said, “Where are you headed?”

  “Upstairs. There might be more patients.”

  Gupta shook his head. “I came from seven. It was a slaughter. I'm the only one that got out.”

  Mom was on eight. She had to get up there. “There's one more floor after that. We can't chance leaving anyone up there.”

  “People are changing. They get bit and come back to life,” Gupta said. He looked down at the bite on his side. “I'm a danger to you. I'll turn like the others.”

  She glanced at George, who was beginning to sweat. “George, how you feeling?”

  “Like I have a bad flu. Nauseous. Chills.”

  “Take the doctor downstairs. I'm going up to the eighth floor.”

  George said, “I'm not leaving you here.”

  “That's an order. “

  She watched the big man begin to sway. Slowly at first, then rocking back and forth, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Faint,” he said, and crashed to the ground, his head cracking against the tile. Blood pooled on the floor underneath him.

  Gupta knelt down, took a penlight from his pocket, and pried open one of George's eyelids. It was Emma had feared. George's normally blue eyes had been replaced by a milky white membrane. He was starting to turn into one of them.

  She felt like a shit for doing it, but she took the Glock from his sidearm and ejected the clip. Then she took the spare from his belt. After that, she ejected the shells from the shotgun and took the spares from his pocket. Needed all the ammo she could get. She was fighting back tears at the thought of George turning into one of the creatures.

  George's body started to twitch. He began to rise and Emma backed up, Gupta doing the same. Her former deputy rose to his feet like a boxer rising from a knockdown. When he was upright, he turned his head and hissed at them. The color seemed to have drained from his skin, leaving it somewhere between white and gray.

  George reached out and grabbed Gupta. The doctor flailed but to Emma's horror, George pulled him close and sank his teeth into the doctor's neck. One of the main gaskets in Gupta's neck blew, blood pumping and spraying on the wall. George's lifeless eyes fixed on Emma as he ripped his way through the doctor's neck.

  Emma turned and ran for the stairs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Maria had gathered the patients in the room at the very end of the hallway. Pediatrics had sent down a kid named Christopher, who was battling leukemia. Now, Christopher sat on a bed across from the Ross woman, who was recovering from knee surgery. He was supposed to go home next week, after this round of chemo was over.

  Other than the patients, there was Megan, the nurse from this floor, and another nurse named Rebecca, who'd brought Christopher down. The rest of the staff on the peds floor had fled after the slaughter had started. Rebecca had stayed behind with Christopher.

  The three nurses stood outside the hospital room.

  “You're lucky just one patient,” Maria said. “I'd hate to try and clear out a whole floor.”

  “Amazing how many people just bolted. Doctors and nurses,” Rebecca said. She was tall and had the build of a lamppost. A blond ponytail hung down past the middle of her back, and Maria could see the tip of a star tattoo poking from under her sleeve at the wrist.

  “We'll get them both in wheelchairs. We'll take the patient elevators,” Maria said.

  “Mrs. Ross is gonna have a fit,” Megan said. “But then again, she gets upset if her meatloaf touches her mashed potatoes.”

  “Let's tell them the plan,” Maria said.

  The boy, Christopher, was propped up in bed reading a Harry Potter novel. The Ross woman was sleeping, her head to one side. Maria gently nudged her, waking her up.

  “What do you want?”

  She hesitated to tell them exactly what had attacked her in ICU. “We're evacuating the hospital. There's some sort of security problem, people loose in the hospital. We need to get you out of here.”

  Christopher set his novel down. “What kind of people?”

  “Dangerous people,” Maria said. “Rebecca's going to get you in a wheelchair. Mrs. Ross, Megan and I will help you into a wheelchair.”

  “I'm not leaving,” she said. “My knee hurts.”

  “If you stay here, you're going to die,” Maria said. “I got attacked in the ICU. There's more of the people that attacked me roaming the hospital. “You can stay if you want, but I don't recommend it.”

  “Fine. Be careful moving me. I'd hate to have to sue the hospital.”

  This woman acted worse than her twelve-year-old son in the middle of a tantrum. She glanced at Rebecca, who rolled her eyes. “We'll try not to drop you on your head or anything.”

  They got the patients into wheelchairs and proceeded to the patient elevators.

  As they descended, Christopher said, “What are they going to do with us?”

  “We'll cross that bridge when we get to the lobby.”

  “I called the cops,” Rebecca said. “The dispatcher said they're already on scene.”

  Maria figured this whole mess might be beyond the local Sheriff, but she didn't say anything.

  They reached the ground floor and the doors opened,
revealing a pair of Coke machines straight ahead. “Let me check and see if it's clear,” Maria said.

  Maria stepped out of the elevator and went to the main corridor. Looking right, she gasped. A security guard in a tattered blue uniform and a woman dressed in scrubs squatted over a corpse. The guard held a severed arm to his mouth. He was gnawing on it. The woman was tearing at the corpse's midsection.

  The woman turned her head and saw Maria. She stood up and gave chase. Maria ran for the elevator.