The ambulance entrance doors slid open automatically as they approached them; the place still had power. Inside was a little antechamber-like room, which held extra gurneys.
Finding blood on both the automated doors and the inner swing doors, prompted Jessica to admit, “I don’t like this.” The fact that they hadn’t seen anyone yet was also troublesome.
“Claire’s here somewhere.” Abby pressed forward. She went up to the swing doors and pushed one open with her field hockey stick.
While Abby stuck her head through the opening, Jessica walked up to the other door and looked through the blood smears on the glass. She didn’t see anyone on the other side. The lighting was dim. Some of the lights must have been broken, or maybe they were running on emergency power. Some of the lights flickered.
“More darkness,” Jessica sighed. It was like being in a horror movie, or a terrible nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.
Abby stepped through the doors, so Jessica followed her. They walked down the short hall to some sort of nurse’s desk at the end. Here, blood was smeared on everything, even the ceiling.
“It doesn’t look like anyone is here,” Jessica stated the obvious.
“Claire will be here somewhere,” Abby sounded so sure.
Jessica snapped, “Where? Over in that bloody corner perhaps? Or maybe behind one of those torn curtains? Or could she possibly be in that room over there that has no lights on in it?”
“I get your point,” Abby sighed, shrinking back from Jessica.
“Do you?” Jessica scoffed. “You convinced me it would be safe here. That there would be cops. I don’t see any cops!”
Abby looked like she was about to snap back when a groan issued from behind a curtain. Both girls went pale, wide eyed, and totally silent, not even breathing. The curtain rustled momentarily but wasn’t pulled back. Maybe it was just their imagination. Similar hallucinations were all; that whole mass hysteria thing. Another groan sounded, but this time closer. How could it be closer? Nothing had come around the curtain.
Jessica had a thought and took another step toward the desk, looking down behind it. On the floor between the desk and the curtain, a man was dragging himself along with one arm. His other arm and both his legs were gone, his torso a ragged mess with the guts hanging out. Jessica gasped, which was an understatement.
“We should go,” Abby swallowed hard.
“Go where?” Jessica’s anger came back in a flash. “Go where, Abby? Back to your place? No thanks. One trip through the subway was good enough for me.” She walked around the desk and over to the man. The man reached up at her groaning, his eyes bloodshot. “What is wrong with you?” she screamed at him. At it. “What do you want?”
The man just continued to groan and reach.
Jessica’s anger, frustration, and fear all came out at once in a tidal wave. With a blind fury, she raised the shovel high above her head and brought it down with a heavy thwack. Then she raised it again and swung. And swung. And swung. With every lift and fall of the shovel, she mentally screamed, Why? Why? Why? It wasn’t until Abby grabbed her arms and made her stop that she realized what she had done. The man’s head at her feet was a disgusting, pulpy mess that matched the rest of him. She had gone beyond killing him. He reminded her of the rat she had killed in the subway.
Jessica suddenly dropped the shovel and turned away. She ran three steps before having to double over and puke her guts out. This was all some terrible nightmare from hell. How could this be happening? Abby’s sneakers appeared in her line of vision, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. Jessica looked up and met Abby’s eyes. They weren’t judging or disgusted like she imagined they’d be. They were frightened, and not of her. Abby was probably feeling all the same things Jessica was; only she had channelled them into finding Claire.
“Let’s search the building. Maybe she’s upstairs somewhere,” Jessica offered Abby a weak smile. Maybe she could channel them as well.
“Okay,” Abby nodded. “Do you still want your shovel?” Jessica had dropped it when she had turned away, and Abby had picked it up.
The moment was broken by a loud banging coming from behind one of the doors. The door had the shade drawn, but it looked like something was trying to push through.
“Yes,” Jessica quickly nodded and Abby handed her the shovel. The blade was covered in blood and bits of hair but Jessica didn’t really notice. They didn’t know exactly where they were going, except that it was away from that door.
* * *
They passed by several odd and terrifying sights. A window to one room had two people standing up against it, one a doctor, the other a patient. Both of them were soaked in blood. The patient had a bunch of IVs, electrodes, and bandages hanging off of him while the doctor had a scalpel sticking out of her neck. A bed they went by had a pregnant woman strapped to it. She thrashed and raged against the restraints, a large slash across her pelvis indicating her baby was elsewhere. Another bed had a body in it, but this one was unmoving. It had been pulverised and torn to pieces. It was barely identifiable, just mush and bits of bone. A third bed had a very peaceful unmoving body. It would have looked like a normal person that had just gone to sleep if it weren’t for the handle of a knife sticking out of the eye socket. They passed by the triage area, which was its own horror show. Thankfully, the glass was heavy and practically unbreakable, and the doors into the rest of the hospital were sealed unless someone from this side opened them, or someone inside had a code. The area was full of horrifically damaged and frightening people. Almost all of them rushed the glass when Abby and Jessica came into view. Men, women, and children, it didn’t matter. Something had happened to all of them. Those that didn’t rush the glass lay prone on the floor or sat up in chairs, very dead. Jessica was glad they had decided to go through the ambulance bay doors instead of walking around to the doors that led into that area. That would have been worse than stepping into piranha-infested waters.
Abby approached the glass cautiously, looking at each person’s face.
“What are you doing?” Jessica kept her distance, appalled by every one of them.
“Checking if Claire is in there,” Abby’s voice came out as a cracked and hoarse whisper. She went right up to the glass, trying to see past the swarm. All of them gathered right up against the glass around her, reaching over each other to get at her. Those closest to Abby were smushed right up against the flat surface, their faces distorting as they tried to bite at her.
“Do you see her?” Jessica asked from her position of distance.
“No,” Abby shook her head. “You?”
Jessica didn’t really want to look at the faces. She didn’t know how Abby could stand it. “No.” She didn’t exactly lie, she just wasn’t looking.
Abby continued to stand there, almost studying them. She had acted like this in the subway station too; it was kind of creepy. Jessica was terrified just being as close as she was now.
“Come on, let’s search the other floors,” Jessica tried to draw her away. Abby didn’t seem to hear. “Abby!”
Abby startled and took a step back. “Yeah, let’s keep looking.”
They came across a set of elevators but decided to take the stairs instead. Being stuck in a small box when there may not be a complete power system seemed like an awful idea. They headed up to the second floor where signs directed them to a cafeteria. The cafeteria doors were barricaded with big file cabinets and something was pressing to get out.
“Please don’t tell me you want to search in there.” Jessica looked at Abby. Abby shook her head no.
They hurried away from the cafeteria. Next, they came across a doctor’s lounge and went inside. Other than a small pile of bandages sitting in a corner, the place looked undisturbed. Jessica spotted a fridge and her stomach growled with hunger. She hadn’t even realized she was hungry, but the sight of the fridge made her starved. She walked over and opened it up. The fridge was occupied by some plastic containers with the doct
ors’ lunches in them. She took them out and looked at what was inside. Jessica was a vegetarian, so she settled for a couple of salads that looked like they had no meat in them. Even if she weren’t a vegetarian, she wouldn’t be able to eat meat today. She also took out a milk carton and an apple juice.
As soon as she turned away from the fridge with her food, Abby took her place, rummaging. Jessica put her pilfered feast down on a table and went looking for a fork. She found a drawer of them and handed one to Abby, who placed a container of something in the microwave. The microwave still worked despite the power system glitches. It seemed only some of the power grids were haywire.
Jessica sat at the table and dug into the garden salad first. Food had never tasted so good. Even the first few mouthfuls tasted amazing despite the lingering aftertaste of her own vomit. She plowed her way through it and was done by the time Abby sat down across from her. She had penne noodles covered in meat sauce with fried chicken bits and mushrooms. She devoured her food nearly as fast as Jessica did. Jessica downed the apple juice and then ate her second salad, a Caesar, but slower than the first. When Abby finished, she found some glasses and poured milk out of the carton into two of them. The girls split the milk until the carton was empty.
* * *
Jessica leaned back in her chair with a sigh. Being full never felt so good. “What floor do you want to check next?”
Abby shrugged, “Do you know what floor they would do CT scans on? Claire might have ended up there.”
“I have no idea.” Jessica leaned forward again and shoved the containers out of her way. One clattered to the floor accidentally. On instinct, she wanted to pick it up, but then realized there was no point. She rested her head on the table. Sleeping seemed like a fantastic idea.
“We need a directory or something.” Abby got up and started looking at stuff around the room. She appeared tireless.
Jessica enjoyed sitting where she was. Not being on her feet felt wonderful. She felt herself drifting off, the world going out of focus, when a loud clatter came from out in the hall. Jessica snapped upright in a flash, completely alert. The clatter was right outside the only door in, or out, of the doctor’s lounge. Abby stood rigid over by some lockers, like a rabbit who had spotted a fox.
The doorknob began turning slowly. Jessica rose from her seat in an instant and hurried over to Abby. Abby opened an unused locker and began squeezing herself inside.
“There’s another one over there,” she hurriedly whispered to Jessica, pointing down the row of lockers.
Jessica moved fast, tugging at each locker until she found the one that was open. She could fit into it, but not in any way that would be considered comfortable. Bending her knees as much as the space would allow, she still had to crane her neck sideways to fit. Her shoulders were bunched up and a coat hanger was digging into one of them. She grabbed the back of the locking mechanism and pulled the door closed just as the doctors’ lounge door crashed open.
There were slats at the top of the locker, but because of the shelf, Jessica couldn’t see out of them. There were also slats down near her feet where she could just barely see some light coming through. In the small, metal container, her breath sounded like a wind turbine to her own ears. She tried to breathe as little as possible, taking slow and shallow breaths through her nose.
Something smashed into a locker down the row. Jessica hoped Abby was okay but didn’t dare to move. Another crash, closer this time. A shadow appeared in front of the lower slats. Heavy breathing sounded from the other side of the thin metal. Something slammed the front of Jessica’s locker. She bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from screaming. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears began running down the side of her face. A strange, barely human squealing rose in volume on the other side of the door. Then, just like that, it ran away. The squealing made its movements easy to track as it fled out of the doctors’ lounge.
Jessica continued to stay quiet, fearing it would come back. She shook slightly, causing a slight vibration in the metal surrounding her. A small squeak of hinges sounded from down the row. It was probably Abby leaving her own locker.
“Jessica?” Abby hissed.
Jessica sighed with relief and pushed on her locker’s door. It didn’t budge. She pushed again, but still it wouldn’t open. The door must have gotten jammed when the thing hit it. She was stuck. Trapped in a tiny metal box, smaller than a coffin.
She freaked out and began thrashing against her tiny enclosure, banging against the sides, the back, and mostly the door.
“Jessica! Calm down!” Abby hissed urgently from outside the door. “You’ll make too much noise and bring it back!”
Jessica immediately stopped moving, but her hammering heart was far from calm as she looked at Abby’s shadow through the slots. “I’m stuck,” she whimpered.
“I’ll get you out. Just hold on.” Abby’s shadow disappeared.
Jessica had no idea what she was doing out there. Abby could leave her for all she knew. Left to die in this somewhat smelly metal container. She wondered how long it would take. Probably days, since she had just eaten. Even if Abby came back, what if she couldn’t get her out? Would Abby stay around anyway, finding her scraps of food to slide through the slots until someone with better tools came?
Abby’s shadow appeared again. “Which side are you on?” she asked.
That was a silly question. Jessica filled the whole damn space.
“The side with the hinges or the side with the lock?” Abby clarified her question, although it was still silly.
“The side with the hinges.” Jessica decided to base her answer on what side her back was pressed against.
“Good. Try to keep yourself away from the door as best you can.” Like there was room for that.
Jessica tucked her arms away from the door and crumpled as best she could against the rear of the locker. Abby grunted and with a clang, something was shoved between the door and the side of the locker. Jessica looked and saw it was her shovel. Her gore-covered shovel she had left near the fridge. Her freshly eaten food tried to rise back up at the sight of the shovel’s blade, but she managed to fight it back down.
Abby began prying with the shovel, using it as a lever. She wiggled it up and down trying to loosen the whole door, coming millimetres away from slicing into Jessica a few times. Eventually, it popped open. Jessica gasped as if she had been underwater for a long time. She spilled out of the locker and rubbed the shoulder that the coat hanger had been jabbed into.
“You okay?” Abby asked her.
Jessica nodded. “You?”
“I just about pissed myself when it crashed into the locker next to mine.” Abby handed Jessica the shovel and went to grab her field hockey stick.
“How do you think I felt when it did crash into mine?” Jessica followed her.
“Let’s get out of here.” Abby went to the door.
Jessica grabbed her arm before she could open it. “What if it’s still out there?”
Abby stood with her hand on the door, unsure of what to do. Eventually, she decided that going out was better then staying in and left the doctors’ lounge. Jessica followed with her shovel held high.
* * *
The hallway outside the lounge was empty.
“So which way do you think the CT scanner is?” Abby whispered to Jessica.
Jessica shrugged, “Further up?”
Abby led them over to the stairs and they climbed to the third floor. This one seemed to be the surgical floor.
“If she needed surgery, she’d be here.” Jessica remembered when Cillian had his tonsils taken out. Mostly she remembered the waiting room. She had waited there during the surgery, and a while after. She got to walk with him to the recovery ward but she wasn’t allowed to stay there with him. He had apparently tried to eat as much free ice cream as he could before they discharged him.
“It’s unlikely she would have needed any, but we should look around here anyway. Just in case.” Abby s
tepped out of the stairwell and into the hallway.
The first thing Jessica noticed when she followed her was the smell. It was an awful combination of sterilisation chemicals and rot. Although the place didn’t look as bad as the ER did, it was looking pretty bad. She guessed that some patients from the ER had been moved up here for surgery and that’s when things went wrong.
The women wandered around the surgery floor, not really knowing where they were going. Although Jessica had been here before, she had been pretty much confined to one area. They ended up next to a door labelled as the surgical observation deck.
“Maybe we should take a look?” Jessica suggested. “It’ll allow us to see into at least one room without having to go into it.”
Abby shrugged and opened the door. They climbed a short flight of narrow stairs, which led into a long, wide hall. Both sides were lined with heavily meshed glass, which had benches in front of them. A few chairs were also stacked in corners.
Jessica walked up to the first window on the right and looked through. The surgery room was bright white, with an ominous black leather, cross-shaped operating table in the centre. IV stands and monitoring systems had been knocked all over the place, and some blue cloth pieces lay scattered all over the floor. There were a few drops of blood on the pristine white floor, but not a lot. Jessica turned to Abby, who was looking through the window behind her.
“Anything over there?” Jessica asked.
“One of those crazy people is restrained on a table,” Abby told her. “It looks like he’s trying to chew his hand off.”
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