The two living beings were so focused on their discussion that they failed to realize that the woman on the table had almost worn through her restraints. The woman had not stopped moving and had nearly broken through. Each of the three belts that held her had been frayed to the thinnest of threads. The belts snapped in succession, making tiny noises.
The woman on the table slowly sat up. There were indentations where the belts had been, showing just how much she had struggled to get free. The open autopsy incision exposed what was left of her insides to the world. Each remaining organ shifted with every movement.
“Oh, shit,” Brett exclaimed. Perkins looked over at the table and had the same reaction. Things had just gotten worse.
“What now, doc?”
Without hesitation, Perkins screamed, “Shoot that thing in the head,” and then cowered down on the floor. Brett drew his gun, took careful aim, and fired dead center into the woman’s forehead. She fell back onto the table.
“You can get up now,” Brett said sarcastically.
Perkins picked himself up off the floor. He had panicked and abandoned his medical training for horror film 101. The results were surprisingly efficient for being done on the fly. For the first time since this whole ordeal started, Perkins thought they had a chance at survival.
Matt came stumbling through the door, his usual pristine uniform was unkempt and his left wrist was bandaged. These kinds of entrances were not unusual for him, but the battered uniform and bandage were new wrinkles.
Brett looked Matt over and asked, “What the hell happened to you?”
“I was rounding up zombie patients and locking the place down, like you asked. I’d love to know what the hell kind of drug they’re on. One of them junkies bit me!”
Perkins asked what both he and Brett were thinking. “How bad?”
“He just broke the skin. A little bit of bleeding. No big deal for Matt Sullivan, security extraordinaire. Diane patched me right up.”
“Lucky for you, biting is one of the worst ways to spread and contract diseases,” said Perkins. “Human bites are the tamest. If a wolf did that to you, you’d be praying right now.”
“Yeah, lucky for me, huh?” Matt’s attention was drawn to the banging. It was the first opportunity he had to look around the room, since he barged in. The unsettling presence finally sunk in. “What’s going on here? What’s that noise?”
“That’s the reason I had you lock the hospital down.”
“Who’s in there?” Matt sensed something awry, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it exactly was.
Brett stared Matt in the eye and said, “The living dead.”
Matt started to laugh. “Yeah, that’s a good one. C’mon, who’s in there?”
Suddenly Matt’s expression drew blank and his face went pale. Behind Brett and Perkins, he could see the woman on the table rise up, once again. He saw the bullet hole in her forehead that Brett had expertly made. He saw the autopsy incision that revealed her half harvested organs.
Brett and Perkins both turned towards the table. “Oh, shit,” said Brett. He calmly drew his weapon and fired another bullet into her brain. The woman fell back onto the table once more. “Shooting ‘em in the head is the only way to kill the undead,” he said mockingly. “What a load of horseshit!”
Matt sat on the floor, momentarily catatonic. Brett looked over at Perkins, waiting for a comment.
“Well, we now know that the heart and the brain are not controlling these things,” Perkins chimed in.
“And that everything we’ve learned from the movies is complete and utter horseshit.”
“There’s that too, Brett. Let’s get her into an empty drawer, before she rises again.”
Perkins and Brett grabbed the woman off the table and moved her into a drawer. Matt started to mumble to himself while he rocked back and forth. He was useless to them now, but at least he had locked the hospital down. He managed to get that much right, before he realized what was going on.
“Stay here with Matt, doc. I’ve gotta contain these things.”
Brett ventured out of the room for the first time in nearly an hour. He headed to the nurses’ station. If anyone could help get the skeleton crew mobilized quickly, it would be Diane.
As he approached the station, the bustling activity usually found there was gone. It looked like a ghost town. Not a soul, living or dead, was in sight. The paperwork was strewn about the desk in a haphazard way.
Diane?”
From behind the desk, a head suddenly popped up. “Oh my god, Brett! It’s you!”
Diane had been crouched under the desk, hiding from the zombies that had overrun the hospital. She started to cry, when she saw Brett.
“It was horrible, Brett,” screamed Diane.
“What happened?”
“Matt came by and we put the place on lockdown. Not even five minutes after he left, these patients came over in droves. It was a mob scene! They overtook over Kelly and trampled her. Then she got up and joined them! They’re all loose somewhere in this hospital. What’s going on, Brett?”
“It’s going to sound crazy, but the dead have come to life.”
“Fuck crazy! I believe it! After what I just saw I believe it!”
“What happened to the others, Diane?”
“Everybody else saw that and ran out of here. I saw some run outside and some run down the halls.”
Brett realized the situation they were in. “We’re on lockdown and people opened the doors? Fuck me running!” Time was running out and Brett had to think fast. “How can we contain them now?”
“I don’t think we can, Brett. There’s too many of them,” Diane exclaimed.
An alarm went off somewhere down the hall. Someone else just went outside. Diane was right. There was nothing that they could do now. Brett did the only thing that he could think to do. He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Gary? It’s Brett at Memorial Grove. We have a situation.”
Brett did all he could do. It was in the hands of the sheriff’s patrol now. He had failed to contain the threat. For the first time in his twenty years at Memorial Grove, Brett felt like a failure. He and Diane held each other tight as they waited for salvation to come.
Dead Inside
By Jim Bronyaur
Jim Niles stood over the small, rusted drain and poured a fresh bucket of dirty water, cursing as chunks of dirt, dust, and hair started to clog it up.
“You think they’d put a better drain down here, right?”
He looked at the new guy – what the fuck was his name? – and smiled.
“You don’t have a sink?” new guy asked.
“Drain ain’t no better there. Plus, this shit gets stuck in the bends and you have to keep taking it apart. Plus, you think I’m lifting this bucket? All it takes is one time to spill it on yourself and you’ll never do it again.”
There was a slight pause.
“Shit, I’m sorry kid, what’s your name again?”
“Ronny.”
“Ronny, damn, I was close.”
“Well like I said, call me Niles. Jim was my Daddy’s name and he left before I started grade school. Don’t like to be compared to him.”
Ronny nodded.
“I usually just grab a paper towel and wipe the rest of this up. Don’t like touching with my bare hands. Not anymore at least. You never know what kind of diseases are in here now. It’s sad really. I tell you, I feel bad for you. You, your friends, your kids – Christ, if it were me, I wouldn’t have kids. Not now. World’s a sick place…”
Ronny watched as Niles stood with his warped mop handle in his hand staring off to a concrete wall, thinking. All Ronny wanted was a summer job to save some money for his first year of college. He thought working in a hospital would beat flipping burgers, but so far, all he saw was the bowels of a hospital – dirt, garbage, waste, things with blood.
Should’a taken the burger job, Ronny thought.
“Now you gotta
keep up with the cleaning here man, this ain’t no joke. People are depending on us, you know?”
Ronny nodded.
“Now, head into that storage closet and get me two sprayer bottles. We’re gonna do a little window cleaning.”
Ronny shuffled away as Niles kicked the pile of mess left on top of the drain. He stared at the brown door and its faded sign – EMPLOYEES ONLY – and grabbed the handle. He pulled but it wouldn’t open.
“Hey, uh, Niles? This locked?”
“What? Oh, no. Damn things gets stuck. Give her a tug. Don’t be afraid now.”
Ronny pulled. The door wouldn’t budge.
“Dammit son, pull the door.”
“I am,” Ronny said.
“Try harder.”
Ronny pulled the door again and again, it didn’t move. “Fucking job…” He closed his eyes and grunted and the door shot open.
“Good job!” Niles yelled. “But, be careful of-”
The motions were already in place. Ronny let go of the door handle and fell back a few steps. His hands waved into the air as he fought for balance. He took his right foot and planted it behind him and then reached for the door. His right foot stepped into the drain and twisted in the slippery mess. His foot shot back and left foot turned, his balance gone. As Ronny fell forward his eyes caught one thing and one thing only, the door handle on the inside of the door. It wasn’t a handle other than in the sense of its positioning on the door. A large piece of this so called handle was missing, leaving what looked like a shank, jagged, rusted, sharp, sticking out ready to introduce itself to Ronny’s face.
A few inches from an injury no woman would want to get over and sleep with him (that was, if he survived), he felt his throat begin to choke. All at once he saw the storage room, the top of the door, the ceiling of pipes and mounds of dust, and then finally, Niles.
“Jesus Christ son, you okay?” the man barked at him, his breath rancid, something like milk and baby shit.
“Wha…”
“I grabbed your goddamn shirt. You could’a got hurt.”
“What kind of door handle is that?”
“Broken.”
“Take it off then.”
“Can’t do that,” Niles said, “it connects to the front one. I’d have no handle on my door. Then people could come and go and take my supplies.”
Niles clicked his tongue and then pointed to the sink.
“Wash up and let’s clean some windows.”
Ronny, still shaking, walked to the sink.
“No worries Robbie, you got your first day jitters out now. Can’t get any worse, right?”
* * *
They cleaned three windows before a call came to Niles handset.
“Niles?”
“10-4,” Niles said.
Ronny turned his head and smiled. He couldn’t believe how serious this guy took this job.
“Assistance needed on the sixth floor.”
“On my way,” Niles said and jumped off his small step stool. He jacked his shoulders back and puffed out his chest. He looked at Ronny. “We got a call, kid. Time to work.”
“Aye-aye,” Ronny said and saluted Niles.
Niles frowned before he turned and walked away.
Another call came in.
“Go on,” Niles said into the hand set.
“They’re requesting tape and some kind of tarps. Stuff that could be cut up.”
“Come again now?”
“You heard. Tape, tarps. Stat!”
Niles stopped and looked at Ronny. “What the hell do they want that for?”
* * *
Annie Breverich ran down the hall, chasing after two other nurses, and a tall doctor in front of them. The doctor was Dr. Harvey Leinstin, one of the surgeons in the hospital. The idea of him being here and running… why that wasn’t a good sign. Not at all. Annie looked at her watch and cursed herself. She was only twenty minutes away from her shift ending.
They all turned the corner to find a new patient being loaded onto a bed.
“What’s happening?” Dr. Leinstin shouted.
“Accident. She was the passenger. Ran a stop sign, hit by a dump truck. Driver’s dead. She’s struggling here. I think there’s-”
“Get to the sixth floor, now. I’ll do the thinking and acting.”
Annie watched as Dr. Leinstin moved with speed.
“Ninth one today,” one of the nurse’s, Mary, whispered to Annie as she walked by. “People forgetting how to drive today I guess.”
A paramedic ran into the room. “Lance, we’re out again. Another call.”
“Another one?”
“Another accident. Someone drove off the goddamn Jones bridge.”
“Shit.”
Annie watched as the room moved around her. She wasn’t sure what to do. Dr. Leinstin grabbed the bed and began to roll it. Annie saw the woman’s face and cringed. She was cut, bruised, and bleeding. Worse than that her skin color had been changing. It had a yellowish tint to it. And her eyes… they looked empty. Just white balls attached to her head.
“She’s turning,” Dr. Leinstin said to a nurse. “We don’t have time.”
“Turning?” Annie asked.
“Dying, dear,” Mary said. “Come on, let’s go.”
* * *
Lester Jackson bit into a ham and salami sandwich and felt a glob of mayonnaise shoot into his mouth. He nodded, chewed, and swallowed. He looked down at the purplish body next to him and said, “Enough of these and I’ll be right there with you partner.”
Then he laughed and a piece of ham fell and hit the corpse right in the forehead. Lester grabbed the ham and looked around – as if someone could be watching him – and then popped the ham back into his mouth.
“Five second rule,” he said and then continued eating.
He couldn’t remember such a busy day before. He hadn’t had to eat on the job in a very long time. And it figures, the damn radio kicked out this morning.
Working in the hospital morgue was quiet, cool, and sometimes bright. It served Lester well, as he watched friends come and go, only exchanging one sided conversations with them as he cut them open determined to find out why they died. Others were brought in body bags, stayed there until retrieved to go elsewhere.
He enjoyed the work.
Not because he possibly held the chance to find out why someone died, but rather because it was quiet, cool… and sometimes bright.
But mostly because of the quietness.
And that’s why when he heard a hollowed bang echo through the room, he dropped his ham and salami (and mayo) sandwich and jumped up, heart racing. A smear of grease from the salami and mayo glistened on his face against the light as he yelled, “Who’s that? Somebody here?”
Another bang hit.
“Damn rats,” he whispered and walked trying to follow the noise.
About fifteen years ago, the hospital became infested with rats, some the size of small dogs. They would climb into the pipes and the sound of their claws scratching and their little grunts and squeals would echo everywhere. A few of them were so big they got stuck in the pipes themselves and died, then rotted, enough so that the hospital actually closed for a week after people started getting sick.
But there hadn’t been any problems since.
For Lester, time wasn’t relevant. Fifteen years ago could have been fifteen minutes for all his mind knew, and it was well known that if Lester had a chance to walk back to his sandwich in peace, he’d view it as a fresh, never before seen nor eaten sandwich, excited and hungry.
The bang came again and Lester threw his head and body to the right. He pointed, smiled, and walked slow.
“Here raty-rat…,” he called out. “I won’t hurt ya…”
When the thump hit again, Lester found himself staring at something that didn’t seem right.
A drawer.
A drawer in the morgue.
The kind that stores bodies.
“Son of a bitch,” Le
ster said and he grabbed the handle. His mind could only imagine one thing, one very bad thing… rats eating bodies. Now that would stir some shit, especially these days with money hungry lawyers and all.
Lester opened the door and pulled the body out. At first he saw something thrashing on the inside of the body bag. Logic didn’t set in until it was too late. Lester’s poor mind still thought of rats. Only his mind missed one thing – how could a rat get into a zipped body bag? And furthermore, how in the hell was the body bag moving?
When he opened the bag, a body sat straight up and growled at him.
“Jesus on the cross!” Lester screamed and stepped back, falling on his behind. He blessed himself, kissed his thumb and pointed it into the air.
The body kept moving, kicking its legs that were still in the zipped bag. It reached forward with greenish, bony hands. Its face was caved in on one side, from Lester’s angle making an almost perfect looking letter C.
Lester braced himself and stood up. He wiped his forehead.
“Are you alive?”
The body leaned forward, so far, bones cracked. Skin tore, so much so that the shoulder bone became exposed.
“Oh my…” Lester pushed the body back and slammed the door. The thumping continued as the body punched.
Lester blessed himself again and ran back towards the front of the room.
His eyes caught sight of his sandwich and he grabbed it. He went to take a bite and stopped.
“Car accident,” he whispered. “That was a car accident this morning.”
Could someone die and come back? No, that wasn’t possible. Nerves killing themselves off? Maybe. Like when you tear a leg off a bug and it twitches for a while. Maybe the trauma of the skull caving in.
Lester looked down at the body on the table. He realized something else.
“Jesus, you were the driver.”
The massive hole in the man’s chest almost fit the shape of the steering wheel, which had impacted his body.
Lester tapped the dead man’s shoulder. “Looks like your friend ain’t resting so well back there…”
He put his sandwich to his mouth as the man grabbed Lester’s hand and twisted it. Lester dropped his sandwich and for a second, watched as the bread opened and the ham went one way, the salami another. Then his wrist snapped and pain shot through his arm. He looked down and saw the man, the man with the open hole in chest, sit up and look at Lester.
CODE Z: An Undead Hospital Anthology Page 19
