Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel

by Smith, Aaron

  “Thanks, Sean,” Klein said as he began to walk away.

  “Yeah,” the ME answered as he lit another cigarette. “Thank you, Steve. Thanks for the nightmares I’ll get from this one.”

  His need for nicotine satisfied, Sean went back downstairs. As he rode the elevator, he steeled himself for the next part of his visit with the three corpses. In thirteen years as a medical examiner, he had seen his share of horrific injuries. Most of those, he could handle. He would never want to shoot someone, for example, but he could imagine doing it if the situation warranted. Standing ten or twenty feet from another person and impersonally pulling a trigger was easy enough to think about. However, he could not even begin to imagine what it would feel like to grab hold of another human being and sink his teeth deep enough into their neck to open the jugular, nor could he imagine the sensation of thrusting his hand deep into a person’s body and squeezing, pulling, exposing the guts that kept them alive. He shook his head as if the gruesome thoughts were flies that could easily be shooed, and he opened the door to the morgue, telling himself he was ready to get back to work.

  The first thing to enter Sean’s mind as he walked into the morgue was a question.

  Who?

  His mind answered the question without words, but with a burst of panicked realization. There were two figures standing in the cold, dim room, and they should not have been up. Sean stared for what seemed like ages though it was only seconds. The dead had risen. The two male corpses were on their feet, one with an open throat and the other with its middle organs proudly waving from its torn belly like grisly flags of gore. The shock of the sight froze Sean in his tracks and he couldn’t even think of running. The dead advanced and Sean fell to their frenzy. He didn’t have time to cry out before they were upon him.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hayes, but I really don’t know what to tell you. I’m not holding information back because I don’t think the Saunders can understand it. There simply is nothing to tell,” Dr. Lake admitted.

  “Well obviously, something is very wrong with the boy,” Danielle argued.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Lake insisted, frustration creasing his brow and his brown eyes squinting as he forced himself to think harder, “but I can’t seem to figure out what that is. Heart rate, respiration, even brain activity all seem normal or at least within acceptable parameters. Yet he can’t seem to speak or communicate. He seems aware of people around him but, as layman-like as this description sounds, it’s as his mother keeps saying: he looks empty, like his personality has been submerged under the clouds of the trauma he’s suffered.”

  “Okay,” Danielle agreed, “I could understand if he was completely unresponsive, but that doesn’t explain the violence last night. He attacked the nurse, so obviously he’s capable of doing something. I’m sorry, Doctor, I know you’re frustrated, too. I just wish we had something, anything, to reassure his parents.”

  Lake rubbed his eyes. The strain of trying to understand his patient’s condition was clearly having an effect on him. He glanced down the hall at the door to the room that held Joseph Saunders.

  “Miss Hayes,” he said, “the boy’s parents are with him and I’ve told the nurse to try feeding him again in a few minutes. I think I need to step away and get my head screwed on straight. Would you like some coffee?”

  “All right,” Danielle agreed, following the doctor down the corridor.

  The nurse had brought in a small container of orange Jell-O and a plastic spoon. She walked in and nodded to Katherine and Harold.

  “That’s all?” Harold asked, “Only that orange glop? Can’t you find something more nutritious?”

  “It’s only a start,” the nurse told him. “If we can get him to eat this, we can add more. Let’s start small.”

  “Let me do it,” Katherine suggested. “I’m his mother.” She took the Jell-O and spoon from the nurse and scooped up a small amount of the translucent orange gelatin. Joseph was sitting up in bed, eyes still staring straight ahead, hands still secured to the bed, a necessary precaution after his outburst of the night before. Katherine brought the spoonful of Jell-O to Joseph’s lips.

  “Come on, Joseph, you have to eat something. Look! Jell-O! And you can have as much as you want this time!”

  Joseph’s head came forward and he decapitated the plastic utensil in one vicious bite. Katherine pulled back, shocked at the sudden violence of her son’s movement, staring at the broken white plastic she held. The nurse leaned forward, Harold stood up. Joseph’s throat moved as he swallowed Jell-O and spoon head, all in one gulp.

  “Oh my God,” Katherine shrieked. “He’ll choke on it!”

  The nurse undid the straps that held Joseph to the bed. She lifted him and looked at Harold for help. They held him over the bed, upside down, each holding onto one leg, trying to keep the plastic from going down.

  Hanging there, Joseph began to make a sound, animalistic and subhuman, growling and growing more high-pitched as it went on. The nurse dropped him on the bed and backed up, terrified. Harold bent forward, grabbing hold of his son, trying to calm him. Katherine stared, frozen and unable to think. The awful noise that had emanated from her little boy had sent her spiraling into panicked immobility. Joseph’s small hands reached up and his nails dug deep into Harold’s cheeks. The nurse began to scream.

  The cafeteria was quite full, but Dr. Lake and Danielle had managed to find an empty booth and sat down with their coffees. Danielle’s, cooled by cream, was already half-empty. The doctor, taking his black, sipped slowly, carefully. Neither of them had spoken after sitting down, neither sure if they wanted to go on discussing the Saunders case just yet. Danielle finally started to form a sentence, but it never came out.

  “Dr. Lake … Children’s Ward immediately,” the intercom blared in an alarmed female voice. “Dr. Lake … report to the Children’s Ward!”

  They stood up, coffee forgotten, and ran to the elevator.

  An hour earlier, the three living victims of the attack on the streets had been admitted. All three had been bitten or scratched by the madwoman who had gone down in a storm of police bullets. All three had suffered wounds, but none had been considered life threatening. The bleeding had been stopped with little difficulty and bandages and stitches had been applied as needed. The three sat waiting for further attention. All had been quiet in the aftermath of their arrival.

  Then things changed. The trio stood up, all at the same time, all without a word or any apparent intention. All three then proceeded to attack. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, guards, other patients were all caught off guard. Screams filled the air, blood spilled, and flesh pulled mercilessly and was torn away and shoved like morsels of a meal into the mouths of the transformed and famished attackers. Fingers clawed and teeth tore and too much was happening for anyone to make sense of the pandemonium. The floor grew slick with blood and the screams rang out like the shrill cawing of a thousand ravens.

  “Security!” cried out one man, forgetting, in his panic, that he was security, before he was silenced as the hand of a ravenous attacker tore away his larynx.

  A woman who had just arrived and was about to give birth held her trembling hands over her swelled belly, desperately wanting to protect her unborn child as the hands closed in and reached for her face.

  Adrenaline coursed through the body of a man who had come in suspecting a heart attack. His chest pains stopped, forgotten as the gruesome scene unfolded before his eyes. He got up, tried to escape, ran for the door, but his feet slid out from under him as he lost traction on the blood-coated floor. He fell, his head striking the tiles, and lost consciousness. The concussion was a thing of mercy, for he never felt the tearing that took place when they got to him and feasted.

  By the time the resurrected dead in the hospital basement had gorged themselves full, what was left of Sean the medical examiner would have been barely recognizable to anyone who knew him. The two risen dead men who had torn him to shreds stepped over the remains like bloodthi
rsty automatons, knowing not what they were, instinctively moving forward to seek out their next prey. The first one to reach the door opened it not by the handle but by moving forward against it and pushing with its whole body. The second one came through next and the two shambled down the subterranean corridor, unthinking, unspeaking, just needing to consume.

  Somewhere in the building, the fire alarms were set off. The loud clanging sound echoed through the halls on all floors and panicked nurses and staff members began evacuation procedures, a complicated task when many of the evacuees were bedridden and required machine assistance to stay alive.

  Amid the growing chaos, Danielle and Dr. Lake reached the fifth floor. They could have turned and left, obeying the alarms, but they had already almost reached the Children’s Ward and saw no reason to turn away from their call. As they came within sight of Joseph Saunders’ room, the door flew open and Katherine Saunders rushed out with a nurse, who slammed the door behind her. Screaming and crashing noises came from within the closed room, loud enough to be heard even with the fire alarms ringing, loud enough to stun the ears.

  Katherine slumped against the closed door, tears streaming down her face, blouse wet with blood. The nurse, still standing, peered into the room through the small, square window in the door.

  Danielle and Lake reached them. The doctor pushed the nurse aside and looked through the window. Danielle knelt down beside Katherine.

  “What happened? What’s going on in there?” the young medical student asked.

  Katherine breathlessly cried, “Joseph went crazy! It’s not him! I told you before; it’s not him anymore! He’s in there with Harold! He … he scratched him and he’s bleeding! I … I have to go back in there, for God’s sake!”

  She still had her purse hanging on her arm by its strap. She pulled out her phone, handing it to Danielle with pleading eyes.

  “Take this! Please, you have to help me! Our other son … Brandon … he’s with my sister Phyllis. Her number’s in the phone. Please make sure he’s okay. I … I don’t think I’ll see him again. Tell him I love him … please!”

  Danielle took the phone without thinking. Katherine stood and shoved Dr. Lake out of the way. She reentered the room and slammed the door. Danielle stood and tried to look in the small window but a burst of red hit the glass, obscuring the view.

  As Danielle, the doctor, and the nurse stood there stunned, a crowd of running people rushed by, a mix of nurses, orderlies, and patients.

  “Come on,” one of them shouted as they passed. “We have to get out!”

  The nurse fell in with the runners and fled. Lake and Danielle looked at each other as the crowd reached the staircase door and vanished at the end of the hallway. The sirens still blared overhead.

  “What the fuck is happening?” Danielle blurted out.

  “I don’t know,” Lake said, “but I suggest we get out like everyone else.”

  Danielle felt like a coward, but saw reason. If nothing else, she realized that the best course of action would be to find out the cause of the mayhem. She followed Lake as he walked toward the stairs.

  When they reached the ground floor, neither of them could understand what they were seeing. The hallways, the emergency room and every direction were a mess of blood, body parts, the dead or dying. Screams and groans of pain and confusion hung in the air. They both almost slipped on the crimson floors as they made their way through what looked like the aftermath of a suicide bombing. They stopped dead in their tracks as they finally came to a place where they could see the cause of the chaos.

  Shredded, torn, mutilated beings, still alive in some sick sense of the word, crawled about among the heaps of wounded and dead, tearing away chunks of flesh with their hands or teeth, stuffing their cheeks with human fragments. Too busy with the food that was already on the floor to turn their attention to the two new witnesses, they kept munching on those who had already fallen. The sound was as bad as the sight, the rending of skin and cracking of bone.

  Dr. Lake threw up where he stood, a gush of vomit hitting his shoes. Danielle stared at the carnage until her self-preservation told her to move, to get out.

  She squeezed Dr. Lake’s shoulder, trying to snap him out of his terrified trance.

  “Let’s go, Doctor! We need to get outside!”

  Lieutenant Klein, Chicago PD, having noted what the patrol officers who had responded to the wild woman attacking the pedestrians had reported, ordered his men to aim for the heads when confronting the things that had been reported wreaking havoc in the hospital. According to his men, the bullets to the chest and abdomen had failed to stop her. Klein didn’t understand how or why this was so, but he felt obligated to act on the information.

  Klein led his men into the hospital. They wore body armor and carried automatic weapons, full riot gear. They passed through the mob of bloody, confused people outside and were shocked by the gore on every conceivable surface within the building. They went straight for the emergency room, where they had been told the majority of the chaos had been taking place. Two people passed them on the way out at a running pace. Klein quickly sized up the middle-aged man and young woman. They appeared to be moving normally and he could see no noticeable open wounds on their bodies. They seemed to be all right. He raised a hand to signal that his men should not fire on them and then used the same hand to wave them by. When it was clear, he gestured for his squad to keep moving.

  Danielle took in a deep breath, her heart floating on a wave of relief as she saw the blue sky and sunlight. The smell of freshly spilled blood was gone, a scent that had been almost overwhelming in its coppery intensity. Dr. Lake, standing beside her, still vaguely smelled of his own vomit. Outside the building was chaos, insanity, panic; people ran about, some looking as dazed as if an explosion had just occurred. The air was full of moaning, whimpering and screaming. A police loudspeaker was blaring between bursts of static.

  “If you do not require medical attention, please clear the area! This is an emergency! Stand clear of all emergency personnel and police vehicles! If you do not require medical attention, please clear the area! If you are injured or are a hospital patient, please remain where you are and try to stay calm!”

  “This way,” Dr. Lake said, tugging on Danielle’s sleeve. “My car’s in the staff lot!”

  Danielle saw no reason to stay there among the chaos and followed Lake. They turned the corner toward the lot on the side of the large medical complex. As they ran, they saw several of the ravenous attackers that had made their way out of the building and now prowled the parking lot. One of them chewed a severed hand as it shuffled about between the cars.

  “We have to go past them if we’re getting out of here,” Lake shouted. “It’s the white Lexus! Run!”

  The remote control locks and ignition saved precious seconds, and they reached the car without interference. They got inside, slammed the doors, and Lake navigated out of his parking spot. As they sped out of the lot, the car struck a glancing blow against one of the shambling risen corpses that got in the way. The white hood of the Lexus was stained with gore but they did not stop. They dodged several panicked, fleeing citizens, and shot down a side street, managing to avoid the police and ambulance traffic that had made a chaotic tangle of the area.

  As they moved along with the other vehicles, Danielle turned the radio on.

  The news broadcasts seemed to be a mixture of confusion and assumption. “It was like a (bleep!) Zombie movie! Holy (bleep!) they just got up and started biting people and killing and I got up and ran out. I wish I took some (bleep!) video with my phone!”

  Danielle turned to Dr. Lake, who seemed to have calmed down.

  “What just happened back there?”

  “ An outbreak of some sort, spreading very quickly … But I wonder if it might have begun with the little boy, Joseph Saunders. He attacked the nurse overnight and that seems to have been the first indication of violence. How it got to the ground floor, I don’t know. What did Mr
s. Saunders say to you before she ran back into her son’s room?”

  “She gave me her phone,” Danielle told him. “She asked me to check on her other son. She sounded like she knew she wasn’t coming out of that room alive. Where are we going?”

  “I’m going home,” Dr. Lake told her. “I have a wife and three kids. I think I need to be there while this mess is sorted out. I don’t want to be away from them. I can drop you off—where do you live?”

  Danielle recited her address and Lake nodded. It was right on his way home.

  Danielle entered the building and made her way up to her floor. As she walked down the hallway to her apartment, there was no one else in sight, but she could hear the televisions behind the doors and recognized the droning of newscasters’ voices trying to describe what was happening in Chicago that afternoon.

  The TV was on and Claire was sitting on the couch watching the news, eyes wide with disbelief. Claire turned to look at Danielle.

  “You’re home! I was getting worried. Were you there when it happened?”

  “Yeah,” Danielle confirmed. “And don’t ask me to explain it, because I don’t get it either, but it was horrible and I don’t want to talk about what I saw. Listen, I have to borrow your car.”

  “But you have to stay here,” Claire protested. “They’re telling everybody to stay inside until they figure out what’s happening. Where could you possibly have to go?”

  “I made a promise. You know how I feel about keeping my word. There’s somebody out there who might need my help. Where are the keys?”

  “Shit!” Claire blurted out. She knew Danielle well enough to keep herself from arguing. Once her roommate’s mind was made up, she was nearly impossible to dissuade. “They’re on the table. Be careful!”

  Danielle scooped up the keys and put them in her pocket. She went into her bedroom, changed clothes as quickly as she could, exchanging her school and work attire for jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers in case she had to run—as fast as she could with her prosthetic—not knowing exactly how dangerous the situation outside would become. On her way out, she grabbed the crutch that rested against the couch, and flew back out the door.