by Ben Stevens
Any moment now he’d feel the first bite on his ankle or the back of his knee; he’d turn round, screaming, draw his gun and fire it till the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Boxes of bullets carried in the rucksack always strapped tight to his back – but no chance of getting to these, as the things began tearing chunks out of his body with those foul, broken, brown and yellow teeth of theirs...
Opposite the top of the staircase and to the left, near one corner of the spacious first floor landing, was a narrow door. It looked solid, a metal ventilation grill set near the bottom of it.
A small office, perhaps. Or just a storeroom.
Either way, Parker had to get to it. His one hope.
If it was locked...
Well, that would be about the time he’d pull out his gun and use it to blow out his brains. Before the things got him alive, as it were. He briefly imaged himself lying there, eyes wide open and very dead, as the things fell upon his spread-eagled body, the gun still held in his right hand...
He emitted another sob. Realized: I don’t want to die. Even like this, life was so very precious. He moved as fast as he could towards that door. Still the things were gaining on him, snarling and moaning as they pulled themselves up the stairs behind him.
Parker collapsed against the door, blinking rapidly, his vision severely distorted by sweat. Every part of him seemed soaked with blood, sweat and vomit. A stinking, bleeding mess that was still, somehow, alive...
It was this last word that made Parker turn the door handle and push it open. Unlocked. Parker almost cried out in gratitude before realizing something. If this door didn’t have some way of locking it from the inside, then he’d still be producing that gun from out of his pocket and putting a bullet through his brain sometime real soon...
The dying light in the small, horizontal-shaped room came from the window that was at its end. The blinds open. It was an examination room of some kind, a trolley-bed against the wall on Parker’s left. In front of the window – where the room became wider – was a sturdy-looking wooden desk, a chair on either side.
Parker took all this in, in the split-second it took him to enter the room and slam the door shut behind him. There was a lock actually set into the handle; a metal button you pushed.
Although, it didn’t look as though it would prove particularly resistant to the twenty or thirty things that would be hammering and clawing upon the door any second now.
The desk?
Impossible: Parker was far too sick to attempt to move that over.
But – it was try or die time. He went behind, kicked one of the chairs away, and attempted to push it.
Impossible.
Fucking impossible.
With a hoarse yell, Parker tried again, this time summoning up some mysterious, primeval display of strength – of the type exhibited by a mother lifting a burning car to get to her trapped child.
The desk moved. Slightly. Its feet rubbing on the thin carpet. Push – Parker got one end of it and gave another yell as he turned it around ninety degrees, so that one end was facing towards the door.
Then he put everything he had and more into pushing it towards the entrance into the room.
He could hear the things coming, moaning and groaning, the nurse thing with her tit hanging out now saying ‘Chaaange dresshing twishe daaaily...’
The desk thudded against the door, the surface just below the handle. Parker pulled the trolley bed back, out of the way. He realized it would fit – lengthways – almost exactly behind the rear of the desk and a slight return in the wall, which was opposite another door Parker really only took notice of now.
He opened it up and there was a small bathroom. Toilet, sink, shower. Then he put the trolley bed so that one end was braced against one side of the doorway, and the other against the return in the wall.
The frame of the trolley bed was metal; didn’t look like it would buckle or break with the strain of the things pushing outside – even if they did manage to get the locked door partially open, which didn’t seem as though it was going to happen although Parker could hear them now banging their hands against the door.
Beside himself with exhaustion, Parker still remembered the very reason why he’d come to this hospital in the first place. It hadn’t been just to imprison himself in a room with no means of escape.
Which was exactly what he’d just gone and done.
Klutz.
There were three drawers set in one side of the desk. There was still slight room to open them, before they hit the wall. In the middle drawer, Parker got lucky. Among packets of tissues, pens, boxes of drawing pins and other junk, he found a small plastic bottle with a child-proof lid.
He peered at the name printed on the label. Hard to see through his sweat-stinging, exhausted eyes. Name was long, but it had tetracycline at the end of it. Reminded Parker of that time he’d had an infected cyst on his back, and had been given some medicine by his local doctor...
Yep, these were undoubtedly antibiotics. Parker opened the lid with difficulty, severely lacking any strength in his shaking hands, and spilled a number of pills into his left palm and onto the floor. Two pills somehow found their way into Parker’s mouth.
Then he was staggering into the bathroom, putting his head over the toilet bowl and vomiting the pills and whatever remained in his stomach back out.
It was hopeless. He slumped against the tiled wall by one side of the toilet. Could hear the things pawing against the outside of the door. He pulled out his gun slowly, painfully from his jacket pocket. Put it on the ground. He’d blow out his brains, if these things somehow managed to break through that door and its barricades.
His upper left arm stained with blood from where he’d been bitten in that clothing store – how much earlier? He’d thought it hadn’t been a deep bite but – shit! – it sure had bled. Maybe his current sickly state was partially due to loss of blood...
His eyelids were closing. Lapsing into unconsciousness now. All this effort merely to trap himself in a small room, and vomit back out the medicine he’d thought he needed.
‘Ah, shit,’ he sighed, almost reflectively. No use trying to remain conscious. No use at all.
Maybe this was just dying...
...He’d returned from the school at lunch-break. Had put out the tables and benches the sixty or so pupils sat upon to eat, and then went to the small house he shared with Carrie that was on the far side of the outside recreation ground. He’d have something to eat and then return to put the tables and benches away when lunch-break was over. Then another break in his working day, before the pupils went home and he and a couple of cleaners set about straightening up the place for the following day.
Parker liked his job as janitor. A small, private school for children with mental and/or physical disabilities. That morning he’d fixed young Earl’s walking frame, which was on wheels. It had developed an irritating squeak and Parker had merely applied some lubricant and tightened a couple of nuts. Simple stuff, but the result had caused Earl to give Parker a bright smile. An inspiration, that boy, thought Parker.
All the kids were. Often they sought out Parker just to talk to him, or ask if they could assist him in his work in some way. Parker always found some way to oblige.
...Now, Parker found a chicken-salad sandwich waiting for him in the kitchen. Already made by Carrie, who was in the living room across the narrow hallway watching television. Parker entered the room, munching. A report showing what looked to be a village somewhere in Africa was on the news’ channel.
‘S’up?’ said Parker, mouth full.
Carrie didn’t look away from the television screen as she replied –
‘They’ve found some strange disease in this village in... I forget what country now. Quite a few people have died; others are sick. They’re sending a relief team there now.’
‘What sort of disease?’
Carrie shook her head.
‘No one knows. They though
t Ebola but it’s somehow... different...’
As he sat on the chair beside the sofa occupied by Carrie, Parker realized that she looked genuinely concerned by the report.
‘You okay?’ he asked quietly, surprised as always by the depths of her compassion for other peoples’ suffering. Not that Parker didn’t care himself – but this was taking place in a place thousands of miles away... Not that this made any difference, of course, but you had to keep a sense of perspective...
‘Those poor people,’ returned Carrie, again shaking her head. ‘Why do these sorts of things always happen to the most impoverished? Wars, famine, outbreaks of deadly diseases...’
‘They’ll be given help, Carrie,’ said Parker. ‘You said a relief team is being sent there...’
‘And what will they be able to do, I wonder?’ sighed Carrie. ‘Imagine if this sort of thing – an outbreak of some strange, deadly disease, were to happen here, in – ’
‘It never will,’ interjected Parker, as though trying to reassure her.
‘Well, maybe it should,’ said Carrie almost forcefully. ‘Maybe we should know what it’s like, for a change.’
Parker looked curiously at her, as he finished off his sandwich.
‘Careful what you wish for, Carrie,’ he said then, brushing crumbs off his lap as he stood up and prepared to walk back over to the school. ‘Might just happen...’
...He awoke in semi-darkness with an aching head and a raging thirst. Like a severe hangover. Back and neck aching from his slumped position against the tiled wall.
But the sickness had past. He’d survived the bite; he really was resistant to the virus, however it was transmitted.
He sat still for a few moments, scarcely daring to move. Scared that at any moment the moaning and banging of the things against the door outside the bathroom would disturb this perfect silence. But this moaning and banging did not come. Either the things were being very quiet out there – or else they’d just given up and shambled off somewhere else within the hospital.
And that was the thing about things, considered Parker almost abstractly. They didn’t have much patience. If they somehow realized you weren’t about to be their next meal any time soon, they lost interest in you pretty quickly.
He slowly got to his feet. Thirst was killing him. He took off the rucksack that was always strapped to his back and pulled out a flask of water. Unscrewed the lid and drank deeply. Then he looked at the shower. As often as not, Parker got lucky. Broke in somewhere and found there was still water in the tank. Didn’t do to drink it, of course – been sitting around too long for that – but still he could wash...
He tried the shower now and out the water came. A little brown at first, but Parker wasn’t in the least concerned about that. He turned the shower back off, and removed his stinking, sweat-soaked clothes. His underwear he just threw beside the toilet. After yesterday’s outbreak of diarrhoea, he wouldn’t be wearing those boxers again.
The shower turned on again, he stood beneath the cold water. There was a bottle of shampoo on a shelf – caked around the lid, but still liquid-like inside the container – and he quickly cleaned his hair and body (wincing as he washed the bite on his left bicep), not knowing when the water would run out. But still it kept flowing – running clear now – until Parker considered himself clean again and so turned the water off.
There was a small hand-towel, which Parker used to dry himself as best as he could. He put his smelly, blood-stained clothes back on with a grimace. Soon as he got back outside, he’d find his way back to the store where the two things had attacked him yesterday, and get a whole new outfit.
He left the bathroom and walked over to the window with the open blinds. A red dawn. A beautiful sight to see the early flaming sun rising over whatever city this was. Parker didn’t think of names anymore – of cities, states or even his country. All of that had ceased to exist in his mind within the first few months after the virus had struck.
His gun returned to his jacket pocket and the rucksack again on his back, Parker wondered how he could best move the desk away from the door without making a load of noise and so attracting the things. The trolley bed he just quietly picked up and put out of the way by the window.
Parker decided just to inch the desk back until he’d created sufficient space to be able to climb over it and open the door sufficiently to be able to get out. He pulled at the desk. Christ, it was heavy! How in the hell had he been able to push it all the way across to the door the previous evening?
His muscles straining, he inched the desk back. Climbed over it and cautiously opened the door. Prepared at any second to leap back into the room and draw his gun. Relatively speaking, he was well again – physically and mentally – and had several boxes of ammunition in his rucksack. He could hole up in this room for quite some time if the things were still outside...
But he really didn’t want to remain in this room, and outside of it the massive first floor landing was eerily still. A sign above a pair of double-doors nearby had an arrow and the words Operating Theatre.
Parker stepped out. The landing becoming increasingly lighter as the sun continued its ascent outside. Brightness coming in through the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the staircase.
Which Parker now walked down, towards the reception area crowded with the mummified corpses. Things must have surprised these visitors to the hospital; those presumed killed by the virus suddenly returning to life, rising up and leaving the hospital mortuary, wards, operating theatres and such. Some people had stayed dead, others had become things. No one had known why. And a few people – like Parker – had found themselves totally immune to the virus.
This small number had also included Carrie, until...
Parker forced the thought away, yet again feeling the tears pricking at his eyes, and that whispered word in his mind –
Coward.
I had to go he thought. There was no way I could stay and –
Coward – the word sounded again.
Once the memory of his treachery towards Carrie would have caused Parker to find some alcohol, get wretchedly drunk and cry bitter tears. But that time had passed. Now there was just that dull sense of resignation to what he perceived to have been his act of cowardice.
You fucked up, Parker. And so now you have to go back. You have to know...
Another thought forced away – for the time being – as Parker left the staircase and walked past the shrivelled corpses caked in dried blood. Back through the open sliding doors and into the car park.
A thing appeared to Parker’s right. A policeman, still wearing his hat and with a gun on his belt. The hazy, early morning sunlight seemed to make the edges of his frayed blue uniform almost shimmer.
‘Hey – how you doing?’ said Parker convivially, knowing that this stumbling, solitary thing posed no threat towards him. As such, Parker wasn’t going to kill it. He never fired that gun unless he had to. Didn’t even like the feel of it in his hand. Had never owned any sort of weapon until he’d been obliged to come into possession of that pistol. But he’d since become something of a marksman. It paid to be a good shot, sometimes...
‘Nishhe... morning,’ returned the policeman, who was leaking some sort of fluid from the cavity where his nose had once been. He was heading in Parker’s direction, but not it seemed with any great enthusiasm.
‘Yeah – it is at that,’ nodded Parker, who then set off with quick footsteps. Soon he’d left the policeman behind and then left the car-park with the multitude of abandoned vehicles...
...cars screeching to a halt, people running into the hospital carrying sick family members, children... The reception area already massively overcrowded, people coughing, crying... Doctors and nurses running around with deep lines of exhaustion etched into their faces, a few beginning to cough and feel unwell themselves...
And then the things suddenly among this mass of people. Snarling, biting. Yelling and screaming. The police and army arriving.
Becoming gradually overwhelmed as they always, ultimately, had...
Parker blinked and what he’d been visualizing came to an end.
He retraced his footsteps of the previous evening. Back when he’d barely been able to crawl in the direction of the hospital. He felt okay now. Just a little light-headed. He’d find something to eat shortly.
Soon he was back by the smashed glass windows of the clothing store. Inside it was dim, the bodies of the two things he’d shot still lying there. Didn’t look as though any animals had started to eat them, yet. Maybe because they were indoors, and so concealed. But just as soon as they started to stink a bit...
Parker didn’t want to think about this any further. Nor did he want to stay in this shop longer than he had to. He checked sizes and quickly grabbed a shirt, trousers, underwear, sneakers and light sports jacket. A whole new outfit. He changed and then left the store, now looking out for a supermarket or grocers.
But there didn’t appear to be one in the immediate vicinity, and Parker soon found himself entering a residential area. At one time, the trees on the wide sidewalks either side of this road had undoubtedly been neatly kept. The houses were large, and set back a little from the road. Parker decided he’d break into one of these and find some food. It was rare that he didn’t find anything. People had stockpiled – ‘prepping’ or whatever it was called – but in many cases they’d not even touched their supplies before succumbing to the virus, or an attack by some things or one of those so-called ‘hog’ gangs...
So in one room, in a cupboard, down in a cellar or basement, Parker usually found something like a mass of canned goods, bottled water and the like. The water he didn’t touch – he’d once heard somewhere that bottled water only kept for around six months, which meant he was basically reliant on the rain to keep his several water bottles filled – but the canned stuff gave him a reasonably varied diet.
He approached a large house now. A massively overgrown hedge outside the front door. A child’s bike abandoned on the ground, the wheels and frame gone rusty. Parker took renewed notice of the front door. A large red ‘X’ had been sprayed upon it. This might have meant that the occupants were sick with the virus; but people still healthy had also taken to using the symbol as an attempt to deter the looters, robbers, murderers and rapists who’d begun breaking in everywhere as society with all its norms had quickly begun to erode...
