by Mark Clodi
It went down silently and Juan stepped over it and fired another three shots into its head, yelling as he did so. Again he felt a surge of energy wrack through his body. Behind him he heard the doors swinging open and he saw Jack pelting towards him, shotgun at the ready, he backpedaled when he saw Juan and his feet slipped on the smooth, still clean and sanitary floors and went out from under him. He landed on his butt and said, "Wha-what-what the fuck was that! What happened to you Juan!"
Juan stood there for a second, contemplating things, then said, "Nothing, nothing Jack, I am okay amigo. I just found this one here and I think the babies are alive. I am okay. In fact I feel...just fine."
"No, no something is not right, just for a second, it looked like your eyes were glowing, kinda yellowish or something. Must have been a trick of the light.", he said in a tone of voice indicating it was not a trick of the light.
Getting up and dusting himself off he pointed into the baby's room, the window was splattered with black ichor and cracked, but Juan could still see inside the room. Not only were most of the beds filled, but crouching down among the babies were their mothers, nurses, doctors and various other people, all of whom were looking at Juan as if he were some sort of incarnation of God.
"C'mon amigo. Juan?" Jack asked tentatively from behind Juan, getting up to his feet as he did so.
"Look." said Juan, pointing through the splattered and cracked glass into the baby ward.
"Shit, I see, man, I see. Aw fuck. Remind me not to bet against your 'gut feelings'."
Jack pulled out his radio, while Juan looked for a way in. One of the few men not dressed in hospital garb came to the glass and yelled, "Through there, but they got three of the husbands they turned into zombies in there too, they can't get in, we can't get out."
Nodding grimly Juan went to the indicated door and looked back at Jack.
Meanwhile Jack had contacted Terry and filled her quickly in on the situation. He put the walkie talkie back on his belt and moved over to cover Juan. Once he was in position Juan asked him, "You ready?"
Jack answered, "Sì." and Juan pulled the door open. The zombies were in a small room that looked like a nurses station and had a counter dividing it into two halves. All of the zombies were on the same half of the room as Juan and between him and the door to the maternity nursery.
Jack watched as Juan popped the door open, pulled his rifle into position and rapid fired three shots into the narrow half of the room before Jack even had a good idea of what was in there. He said quietly to himself, "Holy fuck!" and Juan looked back at him while his hands automatically popped the magazine out of the rifle and reloaded it of their own accord. Juan's look was one of questioning.
"Did I say that out loud?" Juan nodded 'yes' to him. "Well what the fuck was that? What happened to you? I mean talk about fast, you were a blur there man, you had the door open and those zombies were down before I even counted them up! What the hell is going on?"
The door at the end of the hallway opened up and several men and woman began running towards the two men, hailing them as heroes. Most were crying and upset. Two of the women stopped over a couple of the bodies, sobbing quietly.
Jack held up his hands and said, "Whoa, whoa, people calm down here! We were just checking this place out, we were glad to save you, right Juan? Happy to do so!"
The small crowd forced its way into the hallway, with everyone clapping Juan and Jack on the back before heading to the rest rooms down the hall, a man in scrubs explained it had been awhile since they had been given bathroom breaks. Jack, concerned, ran ahead of the crowd and cleared both bathrooms before letting anyone in, then he stationed himself at one end of the hall while Juan stood at the other. Jack knew he was supposed to be watching for zombies sneaking up on them, but his eyes kept being drawn back to Juan. The man was standing larger than life at the other end of the hall. As the men and women finished in the bathroom they seemed drawn to Juan, before long the entire crowd, Jack included, had gravitated close to him.
The walkie-talkie on Jack's belt crackled to life, "Hey buddy, what is the situation there?" came Terry's voice.
Jack pulled his up and responded, "Hey Terry, we got about ten, no eleven adults and.. Uh doc? How many babies? Oh. Okay we got twelve kids, uh babies really. The doc says they can't move three of them, they were premature and need the equipment."
"Shit. So what do we do? Hold on the cell phone is ringing, Mother Goose is calling for their status report. I will tell them the situation and see what they recommend."
A few minutes later Terry got back on the Motorola and said, "Can we hold out here and wait for a relief column with food and the walking wounded?"
Relief poured into Jack, and he was immediately ashamed because of it, however the mere thought of not having to leave the hospital again made him feel better, he answered, "Sure, the ammo is low, but we can barricade the ER doors, check the other entrances and do a quick sweep of the hospital to see what we can see. Plus some of these guys are pretty able bodied, they could handle bats at least and maybe some of them are shooters. How is the crowd outside?"
"Minimal, we aren't shooting them, just clubbing them if they get too close. Mary is helping and she is bitching about her sore back again, maybe she will be okay, eh?"
"Yeah, sure thing, I mean Charlie dumped a gallon of disinfectant on her right? I am sure she will still be bitching about a sore back tomorrow. I will go over to the other side of this floor and see if the mob is still following us back up the hill, then I will come down, help you secure the doors and bring you up here."
"Ten four and out."
Juan and the other adults looked at him and Jack found himself taking charge, first he determined that none of the men, or women, had any experience with firearms, however almost all of them had been in youth sports and some of them still did adult recreation to this day, and could easily handle a bat or club of some sort. A couple of the women were new mothers and while modern medicine said they should be up and moving quickly, common sense said they should rest and recover, so he put them, the two doctors and three nurses back in the nurses station and the maternity ward. He took the other four people he had classified as adults and got them to work clearing the bodies out of the nurses station and moving the last man Juan had shot down the hall towards the ER. After that he took one of the 'men', a kid named John, who was just an older teenager really, with him to try and get a look outside the north side of the building. His goal was to see if any large groups of zombies were headed their way. They encountered no zombies, but did find several more corpses with terminal head wounds along the way.
"Say John, was there a fight at the hospital?" asked Jack pointing at the latest victim.
"Uh, no, not really, the zombies were kind of organized, um, they had a leader guy and he was uber scary, like a big demon, I friggin' pissed myself when I saw him, he was like telling them what to do and everyone did it. He left, like, this morning, told us he had to go kill a relief column and shut the radio dj up for good. You hear the dj?"
Nodding his head, Jack said, "Yeah, who hasn't, Blake the snake, broadcasting twenty four seven until the zombies get his brain. One brave mother-fucker if you ask me. On what WWEB station right?"
"Yeah, thats the guy! They let us play it, but they laughed at us a lot, you know? Hey, Jack, what happened to Juan?"
"I dunno. You were gonna tell me about these bodies though?"
"I mean his eyes, they like..." seeing Jack's face, John paled and continued, "Yeah, um, right, this leader guy, he was saying that they had to keep us 'meat', that's what he called us, 'meat', alive and not make any more zombies when they fed, there were already too goddamn many. He thought, well he sort of implied, that most of them would be 'used' up in something big coming up. He did this then, when they ate, they drained the blood, ate bits of the body and then bashed the heads in or shot them so they would not turn into more zombies."
"This leader guy, he say anything else? Like where he
came from or anything?"
"Ah, Disney Land."
"What?!"
"No shit, no I mean really that is what he said, he said, 'My master sent me from Florida, not too far from Disney Land, to take over Denver.' He was totally talking to the doctor, but all of us heard it. Doc McAfee had a good conversation with him. That was back when there were like, eighty of us. The leader guy he kept feeding us, to the other zombies to make them stronger, better, smarter. He never said why this worked, but we could all see it working."
For a few minutes both men were quiet as they made their way down a wing of the hospital to peer out the northern windows. Looking out into the afternoon heat Jack was relieved to see only a smattering of zombies wandering around the hospital grounds.
"Jack, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure John, shoot."
"Have you seen what happened to Juan before?"
"No John, I haven't."
"So you don't know what it means?"
"No John, I don't."
Chapter 14
Back at the maternity ward Juan worked with the men to clean up the hallway, paying particular care to get the window cleaned off, it just looked filthy to him and long after he had wiped it clean he kept staring at it, as if he expected it to be grimy again. One of the Doctors approached him and asked if he was alright.
"Oh si, yes. I am fine. How are the women and babies doing?"
"They are good Juan. Look, the group has a few questions about you, about the guys you are with, who sent you and all and about you, you. I mean, we all knew about the zombie Rafael, you didn't, he, well he killed people right in front of us, usually by beating them to death then biting through their throats, this was before the group got so small, in the west wing of the building before they smoked the chaplain out."
"Chaplain? Tell me about that."
"In a minute okay? You first, then I will go."
Juan proceeded to tell the doctor, Sam McAfee, about what he and Hank had been through since the whole mess had started. He summarized it quickly and was done in about five minutes. He kept thinking he was leaving something out, after all on the rooftop it had taken Hank most of two hours to get through the story when telling Kevin. Hank was more of a story teller anyway, Juan guessed. He ended with Mary getting bitten downstairs and then looked to Sam, saying, "Okay now you, what happened to the chaplain?"
"Well it was weird, we have a chapel here, St Joseph's Chapel, and we have a full time chaplain, and one part timer too, although he was not here three days ago when all this happened. The chaplain on duty was trained Catholic, he moved over to become our private chaplain about two years ago. His name was Brian Donahue, he was a priest too, but working here with us became his calling. I knew him pretty well and he was going to go back to the official clergy in another few years, but right now he felt called to serve here. He made damn good money too, but always kept his wages to what he would have earned had he been the head of a parish somewhere. That took a lot of balls too, I mean this is not exactly low end hospital and his wages had to be five or six times what he would have earned elsewhere. Anyway he was very devout, gave probably half of his earnings back to us in the form of private donations and the rest of it went to his local church. I remember the fuss about that, let me tell you! He had his paycheck set up to take the percentage out and have it deposited directly into his choice of charities and when the local administrators found out how much he was giving away, man you should have heard them, you'd think he was giving away their money!" Sam got a faraway look in his eyes.
"So what happened to him?" prompted Juan, who was Catholic himself and now had more than a passing interest the fellow.
"Well I only have the story second hand, anyone who was there and saw anything is dead now. I think John, that kid who went with Jack, was there, but he didn't see anything, he was in the west wing, I think. Anyway I heard from one of the other guys who made it over here after....well after they killed Donahue, what had happened.
He said that he was standing in the west hallway, looking towards the chapel and saw their leader, never knew his name, but saw him calling out to Donahue through the doors of the chapel. Donahue said he would not come out and if they felt they could overcome God's will they could come in and get him. That is just it though, the zombies, they wouldn't go into the chapel. Even the stupid ones that their leader tried to force through. It was a standoff, only Donahue was not exactly doing anything to the zombies except praying for them and trying to compel them to go to their final rest. He was telling them to resist Satan and a bunch of other things. They guy who told me this said sometimes it worked." Juan felt a faint tingle inside of him, some inner voice that said things might not be that bad after all.
Sam let that hang out there a minute before continuing, "Finally the leader he had had enough, the father was in there with about thirty patients and their families and while he didn't seem able to go into the chapel himself, he didn't seem to have any difficulty firing guns into the chapel, he ordered some of his brighter zombies up front and center, gave Father Donahue one last chance then fired into the chapel, it was a slaughter. From what this guy told me anyway, Father Donahue was kneeling in prayer before the alter, he was the last one shot, and get this, even after they were all dead the zombies still couldn't go into the chapel, couldn't or wouldn't."
"So Juan that answers you about the chaplain, now are you going to tell me how you managed to kill their leader's third biggest bad boy in about ten seconds? And tell me what the hell happened to you when you did. Because, Juan, something happened to you. We all saw it through the glass."
Juan looked at the doctor, cast his face down and turned away without a word, he walked about fifteen feet away and assumed a guard like stance in the hallway. The doctor started to go after him, but stopped when Juan looked him in the eye and shook his head slowly from side to side. Sighing Sam shrugged his shoulders and said, "Maybe later, huh?" and ducked back into the maternity ward, leaving Juan to answer an empty hallway, "No, not even later."
Jack and John got back a few minutes later to find Juan alone in the hallway, they looked at each other and then Jack said, "It is pretty clear, John says the zombie's leader cleared everybody out to hike after the radio dj yesterday. We found a few dead people, but no one alive or zombified."
"Sì. No problems here either, ready to go get the others and get the doors blocked up?"
Jack and Juan left John to guard the doctors and nurses and went down the hallway to load the corpses onto a gurney and take them down the elevator to the ER. As they passed the other zombie that Juan had killed one of the men, paused to kick him several times, explaining he had killed his wife, then they tossed the body on top of the other four and continued out into the ER. Once there they moved all the other bodies out of the way to make a path to the door, where they took their burdens outside to the corner of the building and dumped them. Several more trips and all the bodies in the ER were gone but the place was still a gory mess. A couple of the men got mops and did some clean up while the rest of the group figured out how to turn off the automatic doors. Outside the zombies were still trickling in, but they were all of the slow variety and easily dealt with. The crew from the club salvaged everything they could out of the trucks before they filled the foyer area between the inner and outer doors with furniture from the lobby, it was not fool proof, but nothing was going to get through there without a lot of effort and a lot of noise. Then they called back to the Mike's Club and heard that the other convoy was just getting underway, eight vans, cars and trucks filled with the first thirty people and some of the supplies was heading out and should be there within an hour. Among other things they were bringing about a thousand shells of shotgun ammunition.
The group in the ER went back upstairs to let them know what was going on and then they split into groups one headed down to the hospital cafeteria to clear it for the incoming food, and maybe get something to eat. The others stayed up in the maternity wa
rd, including Charlie and Mary, whom they put into a room nearby, the Doctors were all over her when they heard she had been bitten. The others, including Terry and Jen, just kept watch on the hallways, in case there were some zombies running still around that they had missed in their quick sweep of the building. The group that went into the kitchen had an unpleasant surprise in the form of one of the cooks who had turned into a zombie. This woman jumped out at them from the shadows before they had the chance to turn the lights on. Luckily she was a typical slow zombie and other than the initial scare factor, she was easy to put down. They tossed her body out the back of the kitchen into the loading dock area for the cafeteria then quickly locked the doors against the three or four zombies that were drawn to their movement when they opened the door in the first place. Again the men from the maternity ward got out mops and cleaned the area, spraying disinfectant over all everything to make the decontamination complete.
Juan was curious so he asked one of the men, "Why are you always cleaning up everything? The mops in the maternity ward, yeah I get that, but to do the ER and now the kitchen, man that is a lot of work, we can get it later, right amigo?"
The man just looked at Juan and replied, "No, Juan, they might pass this by blood contact, you get an open wound you get infected, you die, you turn, you make them stronger and us weaker. The doc said to clean up and disinfect to the best of our ability, so that is what we do, and the kitchen, well I get the impression you are going to be moving in here with us and we are going to need this to be working. So cleaning it up is very important."
