Six Feet From Hell: Books 1 - 3

by Coley, Joseph

  “Dammit! Well just get us over there to Buck General; we can just dump ‘em off there. Not like we have any damn choice.”

  Josh made the right hand turn across the bridge and into the parking lot of the small hospital in Grundy. Several other ambulances from neighboring towns and counties were already taking up most of the limited space that the ER had available. He parked the unit, got out to help his partner, and gave a hand to the miner that was still riding shotgun. The scene at the hospital was of pure panic, nothing else. Dozens of people, family members, injured miners, and frenzied hospital staff poured in and out of the hospital. Josh was shuffling in with his injured passenger in tow, along with dragging the stretcher behind him. Steve was at the head of the stretcher, pushing and attempting to plow their way through and into the ER. Josh shoved his way past a few more people as he entered the entrance code to the ER and came in.

  The scene inside the ER was not unlike what was going on outside of it. Two dozen or more patients were in the ER that was only meant to hold six or seven at most. The ER physician that was crossing the hall from the nurse’s station to an adjacent room shot the crew a disapproving glance.

  “Look, you guys are our lowest priority right now. Whatever that stuff was that came up is nothing like I've ever seen before. Drop off your guys in triage. Put whatever guys you have on notice, we are gonna start shipping em out to Richlands, Pikeville, Tazewell and whoever else we can get to take em. We don’t have the resources, now if you’ll excuse me I've got to intubate this fellow in three.”

  Josh turned to Steve and shrugged. They took and transferred their backboarded patient to the lone available hospital bed in triage and sat the other two miners in triage in the floor, as it was the only available space. They tossed the dirty linen off the stretcher and again had to plow through people to get back outside. They loaded up the stretcher in the ambulance and got back in, already getting tired from their early morning debacle. They had no sooner than got in than Josh’s phone rang. He grabbed the cell out of his pocket and answered. It was Joe, a friend of his and former partner at Star Ambulance’s office in Grundy.

  “Hey what the hell is going on down there? Larry just called me and everybody else in, some kind of mining accident down there,” Joe said anxiously.

  “Yeah some kind of underground explosion or something happened a while ago. It felt like a damn earthquake to be honest. I don’t know what they have planned for ya’ll in Tazewell, but be expecting a shitload of work comin’ your way,” Josh said as he put the truck back in gear and backed out of his spot at the hospital.

  “How many injured are there?”

  Josh slammed the truck into gear and began easing forward, being careful not to hit any of the pedestrians that were still pouring into the hospital. “I'm not sure but I would guess they got about a hundred here at least and they are overwhelmed. You know how Buck General is; there ain’t much to go around so they are gonna ship ‘em up your way.”

  “Damn, well how are you guys holding up so far?”

  “Not too good at the moment, from what we can tell comin’ across the radio the same thing happened in McDowell and Pike County too. Some serious shit is hittin’ the fan here, dude.”

  “What the hell is happening with the patients? What are we gonna need?”

  Josh wheeled out of the parking lot and back onto the main road. “Valium, Benadryl, and Epi - I'm not real sure to be honest. It looks like seizures and anaphylaxis combined, some bad shit goin on with ‘em. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Well I'm on my way in; you guys…careful…need any…us…”

  “Joe, you’re breaking up. If you can hear me call me after this shit dies down, gimme a call.”

  Josh looked at his phone, the call disconnected. He slid the phone back into his pocket and focused back on driving. The sun had just come up, but in Grundy, it would be several hours before it would make any kind of appearance and it looked as if rain was on the way. The dark, gray sky was looking over top of the mountains, the clouds dancing on the edges of the tops. Josh glanced up at the ominous-looking coverage and then brought his eyes back to the road when he first noticed what appeared to be a drunken man walking in the middle of the road.

  “SHIT!” He exclaimed as he slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to an abrupt halt.

  “What the hell is this asshole’s problem?” Steve threw up his hands in contempt. Josh quickly threw the truck into park and flung the driver’s side door open.

  “Hey buddy, what the hell? Get your drunk ass out of the way!”

  The man turned to Josh, as soon as he did Josh wished he had not said anything. The man was missing the left side of his face was the first sign of something amiss. The unstable gait that he walked with was another. The man turned and faced him fully, arms drooping at his sides. Josh took an uneasy step back and the drunk man began shuffling towards hi, raising his arms in front of him. Blood poured from the large gaping hole in the side of his head. The man got within ten feet of Josh when the stillness of the early morning was broken by a single gunshot. The man’s chest exploded and he fell to the ground. Josh ducked with lightning quickness. He quickly turned back to see his partner holding a 1911 .45, smoke still slowly rolling out of the barrel. He had opened the door, stood on the running board, and shot across the windshield.

  “What the fuck! What the hell are you doing with that thing on the truck?” Steve fired off another shot at the drunk man as he got up and staggered back towards the front of the ambulance. The second shot landed in the man’s head, splitting it like an old melon.

  “Do you really want to ask that kind of question right now? Can’t you see what the hell that was?”

  Josh raised his voice to near screaming. “AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” Steve fired off another round at another approaching straggler, this one missing both of his hands, bloody stumps stopping at the end of his arms.

  Steve jumped out of the truck and stomped defiantly, moving the .45 around and scanning for more people. “They are goddamned zombies, Josh! Why the fuck do you think that first one got right back up after I shot him dead in the chest? These fuckers are zombies, there jackass.”

  Josh was unknowingly holding his breath as Steve explained himself. He left out a huge sigh when he realized that Steve might be right. Steve swiftly came over to the front of the truck and explained himself to Josh.

  “Look, that guy that we backboarded that was seizing like a son of a bitch, but when I put the monitor on him, he was asystole. I thought it was just a short in the leads, but I couldn’t get a blood pressure on him either.”

  Josh’s eyes widened in horror. “So we just dropped off a goddamned zombie at the ER! Why the hell didn’t you say anything when we were there? We gotta go back and take care of that shit!”

  “And tell them what exactly? ‘I’m sorry, doc. The patient we just dropped off is a zombie, do you mind if we go ahead and shoot him in the head?’ Think about what you're saying, dude.”

  The unmistakable sound of moaning and choked gurgling was slowly getting louder and louder. The approaching undead were wailing in the wind and mixing in with the sounds of sirens and the vehicles coming down the road. Both men looked around to see if any other zombies were approaching.

  “Let’s get outta here, dude. We gotta get to my house and get more guns and ammo. If all those guys are gonna turn into zombies then we are in some seriously deep shit. The guy in the back was blabbin’ on about some kind toxic gas that was comin’ up through the ground. If that shit is in the air, then we are gonna have a lot of zombies to deal with and soon,” Steve said as he ushered Josh back to the truck. Steve motioned Josh to get into the passenger’s side of the truck; Steve would be driving to his own house to arm up. As Steve closed the door on the truck and threw it into gear, more zombies began to appear in front of and behind them.

  “Shit! See, I told you! They are damned zombies, Josh!”

  Josh could not wrap his mind around the c
oncept of zombies. Sure, he had played plenty of video games that had zombies in them, most notably the Call of Duty games with Nazi zombies, but this was different. These were real life (or real death) zombies that were wandering the streets. Steve wheeled the truck and got it turned around near the law school in town and started back towards his own residence. Daylight was finally breaking (such as it was) and the light of the day was not going to get very bright for the day. Steve’s eyes darted back and forth on either side of the road for more of the undead, spying a few more as he went back by the hospital. As he neared the hospital the traffic began backing up as more and more family members and injured miners were making their way in. Steve quickly flipped the lights and siren on, attempting to clear out some of the vehicles in his path, to no avail. The cars that were there were either not able to move due to the deadlock or simply remained oblivious to the wailing siren. People abandoned their vehicles on the side of the road - as frustrated as Steve was - trying to make it into the parking lot of the hospital.

  “Go through the pharmacy parking lot, man. I think we can fit,” Josh said, grabbing the ‘oh shit’ handle on the truck. Steve was thinking the same thing and jumped the curb over into the parking lot of the pharmacy, and shot across it. Steve managed to squeeze out of the parking lot and sped down the road to his own home. As they sped away, Steve could have sworn that he heard a gunshot, but it could have been a backfire from one of the numerous cars that were now parking on both sides of the road. Steve kept the lights and siren going long enough to get away from the hospital.

  Numerous other police cars and ambulances were coming and going in quick succession as they got further away, coming in from other mines that had experienced the same seismic anomaly earlier and transporting some of the overflow of patients to other hospitals. The steady noises of helicopters were also in the air as they too transported patients to trauma centers further down the road. The choppers were going towards Roanoke, Jonson City, Kingsport, Bristol, and Pikeville. The injured were being spread across four states, as they just simply did not have the room for them in the small hospital in Buchanan County.

  Josh glanced over to the clock on the Dodge. It had taken them nearly an hour since they initial rumbling to get their patients, get them dropped off, and be on their way. It had been nearly an hour into the accident and no one had noticed anything amiss. The phrase ‘fog of war’ also applied to EMS; it would be a while before the smoke settled and the actual word got out as to what was going on as opposed to what was being told was happening. Of course, by the time word got out as to what it really was, either it would be too late or no one would believe it until their dead relatives started showing up at their front door trying to take a bite out of them. More helicopters swirled overhead. Josh looked up to the sky and saw one that he did not recognize, however. It swooped low over near where the new Wal-Mart had been built. There had been a Red Cross Bloodmobile parked there at the store for its grand opening providing assistance where it could, but it was quickly overwhelmed.

  Steve was still clutching the 1911 .45 in his right hand as he drove home. He felt a pang of guilt as he realized that, aside from Josh talking to Joe that no one knew about what was transpiring in Buchanan County. IF he could just make it home to his guns and ammo, then he might be able to take care of a few others, but for the moment, he needed to arm up before he or Josh would be of any use to anyone. Josh anxiously tapped his foot on the floor as they neared Steve’s house. He was still wrapping his mind around the word zombies. He did not want to admit it, not even to himself, but he was actually excited. The possibility of getting to kill some of the undead was not something that excited the average person; however, Josh and Steve both were not average people. They were by no means bad people, just typical southerners. They liked shooting and hunting just as much as the next man, and now were going to be given a ‘license to kill’ for zombies.

  And what could be better than killing some real zombies?

  Steve was also slowly coming around to the idea of getting to shoot zombies. He had remembered from a few of the zombie movies that he had seen that you had to shoot them in the head, and all of his rifles were sighted in and dead accurate. They wheeled into Steve’s driveway with gravel-throwing quickness and both men jumped out, leaving the doors open and the engine running.

  Steve looked around with his .45, not seeing any activity, undead or otherwise, and darted into the house. Josh followed suit and bolted inside. Steve went to his gun safe and grabbed his 7mm hunting rifle and a shotgun, along with a pair of handguns and holsters. Both handguns were 1911 .45’s that Steve was fond of and had collected over the past few years. Both guns were also loaded, with several boxes of spare ammo and clips. Steve quickly and silently handed one of the .45’s and a hunting shotgun, a Remington 870 in RealTree camouflage. Josh racked the shotgun and grabbed a box of 12 gauge 2 ¾ buckshot and stuffed it into the cargo pocket of his EMT pants. Steve shed his Star Ambulance shirt and grabbed a RealTree jacket that he used for hunting, with a built-in holster for his 45. He stuffed the handgun into the holster and grabbed the hunting rifle.

  He was not a tactical expert, nor a military or police veteran, but he knew his way around hunting more than anyone that he knew. He checked the chamber on the rifle as Josh grabbed another one of his jackets and took off his uniform shirt. He stuffed the .45 into the waistband of his pants and grabbed the shotgun. Both men paused at the same time as they realized that they both had heard the same sound emanating from the front of the house. They made eye contact and exchanged a devilish grin. They both calmly grabbed their respective guns and walked slowly to the front door.

  The zombies that were outside looked as if they had recently died, they were still moving about faster than the zombies that Steve and Josh had seen in video games and movies. They had not been the slow-moving George Romero zombies that they were accustomed to. It did not matter, however, they were locked and loaded and ready to go. Steve and Josh exchanged another look of anxious excitement. Steve raised the end of his rifle towards Josh to indicate a toast. Josh in turn laughed and raised the shotgun, clinking the barrels together gently.

  Steve grinned and opened the front door; at least a dozen zombies were now within earshot. He checked the bolt one more time and took off the safety on the rifle. Josh did the same with the shotgun, clicking the safety to make the gun hot. Steve raised the rifle from the front porch and aimed it to the head of the closest zombie.

  “Let’s go have some fun, shall we.”

  As the faint glow of impending sunrise came across the small town of Grundy, Virginia, gunfire could be heard coming from the small back road near the edge of town. Josh and Steve could tell they were outnumbered, but they did not care. They had friends out there amongst the undead, and they had plenty of ammo to go around.

  And they had work to do.

  THE END…?