by Katz, ML
She repeated her warning that the wounded man should be restrained, but Captain Crawford just nodded absently. Blood covered the wounded driver’s shirt and seeped through a thin blanket. He hardly looked like a threat.
Finally, two more soldiers pulled one of the creatures along. They used a pole, with a chain around his neck, in order to control his movements. His hands had been cuffed behind his back. The creature snarled and jerked, but mostly moved along behind the strong arms of his captors.
“Do you seriously think we want to get in a helicopter with that thing?” Paul asked. He gestured wildly back in the direction of Future Faith with the arm that held the wrench. “You should see what’s going in back there.”
“That individual is under control,” Captain Crawford said. “I have my orders.”
“I don’t have any orders,” Paul persisted. “I am not getting into a helicopter with that poor mad creature.” Before this the young medical student had been fairly passive. Pam had almost thought he seemed boyish. Now he became agitated. He still had the big wrench, stained with gore from Mr. Barnes at the end, and now he was waving it around a bit as he gestured. His eyes looked wild and Pam found herself taking a step backwards.
The officer regarded him with some concern for a moment, and then he barked out, “You calm down, young man. Just do what I tell you to do. The first thing you need to do is drop that wrench.”
“Paul,” Pam said. “We don’t have any choice right now. Let’s be cool. This is the US Army, and they’re here to protect us.” Pam’s own father had served in the military before he took over his own father’s farm, and now one of her brothers was in college ROTC, hoping to become an officer when he graduated. Pam trusted the military instinctively. These are the good guys.
Paul glanced at her, and then he glared back at the officer. “No, I am not going to be cool. I am leaving right now.” With that, he turned on his heel and started up the walkway toward the parking garage. Pamela stood frozen in place. She was not eager to get on the helicopter, but she was not about to start walking around alone here. They had already seen some of the infected outside, and who could say if there were more lurking in the garage.
Another thought intruded into her mind at the same time. A bite was obviously infectious, but who knew if the virus could also be transmitted more slowly in the air they had all shared. They could all be contaminated, and for now, it seemed wisest to stick with the authorities who might offer medical treatment.
“Paul, come back,” Pam called as forcefully as she could. The young man did not turn around. “You can’t do this! I don’t think you should go off alone right now. Dozens of those things could be lurking in the parking garage for all you know.”
Captain Crawford glanced at her, and then he turned his head to watch Paul’s retreating back. As he watched Paul his jaw worked. Pam was not sure if the tough looking military officer was furious or indecisive.
Then the officer turned back to Pam. “I gave you a chance. Now we’ll do it my way.” He shouted out a command. Two burly soldiers trotted after Paul, and put their hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off and seemed prepared to run. They glanced back at Captain Crawford. He signaled them. The soldiers nodded, and then one of them used a Taser from a few steps away. The young man dropped to the hard sidewalk.
He was quickly cuffed, and then dragged, half stumbling, back to the helicopter. Pam watched the scene with mounting distress, but her natural common sense prevailed. Despite her anxiety, she really had no choice but to board the helicopter. Paul should not have walked off like that, and he certainly should have dropped the weapon when the officer commanded it. She could understand his reluctance to stalk off without a weapon. But this is the army. These guys have plenty of guns. She still clung to the silly bent umbrella though the military men did not seem to regard it a threat. Except for herding her around, they mostly seem to ignore Pam all together.
Though plagued with the uneasy sense of being treated more like livestock than a credible witness, Pam believed she might be helpful. She might even need help later. Pam placidly followed Captain Crawford.
By the time she followed the soldiers on board, Dr. Klein was slumped in a seat. She had been strapped in, but appeared unconscious. The soldiers dumped Paul into the seat next to Dr. Klein’s and strapped him down, leaving him cuffed. He was conscious, but his head sagged and he groaned. Pam felt bad for him but had no idea how she could help.
A soldier directed Pamela into a seat behind them. She was relieved that she did not have to sit right by Dr. Klein but she would have rather been placed near Paul. The uniformed soldier watched her carefully as she figured out how to belt herself securely into the seat. From the growls behind her, she guessed that the infected man had been secured in some sort of storage area. The wounded driver was laid out prone in the aisle. After all of the passengers had been secured in one way or another, two more soldiers piled in.
“They are making progress securing the building, Sir,” a soldier told Captain Crawford. “There have been a few minor injuries, and they will need more medical transport right away. But the situation seems under control.”
“Radio for that second transport,” Captain Crawford said briskly. Then he signaled for the pilot to take off. Pam thought he should have given more instructions to secure any wounded. She considered trying to speak to him now, but figured she had done her best. Besides, now that the immediate emergency had passed, her adrenaline seemed to have bottomed out. She felt tired, shaky, and unable to confront the officer and his cadre of armed soldiers. As soon as I get out of this machine, I’ll talk to somebody. Dr. Klein could become totally incoherent at any time, and I’ve no idea if any senior Future Faith scientists are even alive.
She looked down at her hands and almost smiled as she remembered that she still clung to the heavy umbrella. Captain Crawford must have figured it was just a personal item without realizing she had been using it as a weapon. She imagined him shouting, “Drop that umbrella!” She pictured herself turning into Mary Poppins and leaping from the machine, using the umbrella as a magical parachute.
She thought about discarding the worn, floppy, and practically useless thing on the floor, but her white knuckled fingers would not release their grip. Faced with this alien threat, something primal seemed to take over her limbs no matter how hard her conscious mind fought for control. She sympathized with Paul though she certainly wished he had controlled himself better back on the ground. Captain Crawford may have disregarded the big wrench then, and she wished she had it instead of the bent umbrella.
Right now, even the illusion of security and control seemed better than nothing at all.
The Hospital of the Damned
The flight took less than twenty minutes, including the rapid take-off and landing. To Pam it seemed almost as if the machine had bounced up and bounced down again. After they landed, passengers that could walk were herded out of the helicopter and into a large green transport truck. This included Paul who still had his hands fastened with plastic cuffs.
He had calmed down and just looked pale and listless. His eyes flitted over to Pam’s face, but she just shook her head and frowned. She wanted to tell him to stay cool, but her advice had been useless a half hour before, and she doubted he would listen to her now. If he was going to cooperate it would have to be his own decision.
Dr. Klein had to be carried between two of the burly soldiers. She appeared unconscious, but still murmured some vague phrases, like somebody talking in her sleep.
The truck lurched, jarring the occupants who were mostly uncomfortably perched on benches in the back. Then it seemed to speed through a gated area, and finally towards a long low building. They pulled up into a circular drive in front of a squat and solid two story building. The sign simply said Medical. A large white sign informed visitors that this was a secure area intended only for authorized visitors. Anybody else should check in to another building for an escort or find the main infirma
ry a few yards away. She doubted that this building was a simple hospital or clinic, but rather it must be some sort of secured medical facility. Pam wondered what types of patients this place normally housed. She was pretty sure that today’s situation was unique.
An officer with a white doctor’s coat over his fatigues emerged from the building as Pamela’s group was herded out of the transport and into the sunshine of a warm summer afternoon. He stared as two soldiers struggled with the turned creature, and then he bent over the stretcher that contained the incoherent Dr. Klein.
“Look,” Pam said as she stepped forward, “you have to listen to me.” She introduced herself as Pamela Stone, offering her credentials as concisely as she could. Then she also mentioned that Paul was a witness and a medical student. She noticed that Paul was trying to stand as passively as possible in the hope that somebody would notice and remove his handcuffs. She hoped to gain some credibility quickly. In a rush she tried to explain everything she had seen and heard this morning.
Captain Crawford nodded as the doctor glanced at him. “These two may have some good information. We’d be remiss to ignore credible witnesses. They are only company interns, but highly educated ones. You should know that the young man has been a bit uncooperative though.”
The military doctor was tall, lanky, and had a thin and pleasantly homely face that reminded Pam of Abraham Lincoln. His grim, almost hangdog expression completed the look. Pam tried to keep the trembling out of her voice as she spoke. “The thing is, Dr. Klein needs to be restrained in case she turns. Paul got a little excited back at the site. But he is not a danger, and she is. You can see what that other mad thing has become. If they bite us, or maybe even scratch us, we will be infected and likely doomed.”
“Dr. Klein’s injury doesn’t appear serious,” Dr. Lincoln said.
“One of the guys back at the lab got bitten. His name was George. George’s injury was a bit worse, but didn’t look that bad either,” Pam said, trying to control her voice. “He expired very quickly. She’s hanging on longer. I don’t know if that is encouraging or not.” She rubbed her face in frustration. “Honestly, I don’t know much more than you do. I have more questions than answers. I just need to realize that you do too. You don’t know what this thing is.”
While Dr. Lincoln digested Pam’s words, Captain Crawford asked Paul if he could behave now and the younger man nodded and mumbled, “Yeah, I’m really sorry.” At a nod from the captain a soldier removed the cuffs. Pamela noticed Paul glance back down the narrow road like he wanted to bolt, but he managed to allow himself to be guided into the building. They were all led inside, and then down a flight of stairs. They were taken to a large room that looked like a sick ward. Cots lined the walls. There was a small attached office off to one side of the entrance. A group of people, dressed in an assortment of scrubs and uniforms crowded into the small office, huddled over a monitor.
As the two soldiers slid Dr. Klein off the stretcher and then guided her into one of the cots, Pamela said, “You’ve got to restrain her.” The thin doctor and Captain Crawford exchanged a glance. Pam whirled towards Crawford and said, “You saw what those things were like.”
“She’s not like that,” Crawford said. He indicated what he meant by that with his eyes as he glanced at the mad creature.
“She isn’t like that yet,” Pamela said. “She will appear to be unconscious, and maybe she will even seem dead, and then she will come back like that poor thing.” She gestured at the infected man who still struggled and growled despite the control the two large soldiers had over him. Some sort of fluid seemed to be leaking down out of his mouth like an extra disgusting sort of drool. As the creature tried to wrench himself away from the soldiers, he appeared to have injured his body even more. Fluids had already stained one of the soldier’s shirts and Pam suggested that the men should have protective clothing as they did not know how the infection might spread. “I’m sure it will pass through a bite, but I don’t know if is absorbed by the skin.”
“You say he wants to bite?” the doctor asked Pam as she took a seat on one of the cots that was positioned as far from Dr. Klein as possible.
“Yes, they seem to want to feed on us,” Pam said. “But even if they just bite, it spreads the infection. That may be a motivation too. If they get a snack that’s just dessert I guess. That’s what Dr. Klein thought. They want to feed on us, but the virus just wants to spread.” She shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what passes through their minds, or if they even really have minds.” Then she rubbed her eyes, trying to focus on making her case without seeming like she had lost her mind too. “Calling them insane would be insulting the mad. If Dr. Klein could speak right now, she’d agree with that much.”
While they watched an orderly ducked in to try and take a blood sample from the enraged thing. That proved difficult, even though the creature’s arms were restrained, and a hood had been fixed on its head. Dark fluid entered the syringe as the nervous orderly took his sample. It did not look like bright red blood so much as refuse. An odor of rot started to permeate the clean air of the infirmary room.
“The creature, then, is not really alive is it?” Paul asked. “It’s like some sort of zombie.”
“Yeah,” Pamela said. “Dr. Klein woke the Zed. She even said it before we left Future Faith.” At that, as if roused by the mention of her name, the older woman gasped and cried out, and then lay still. The doctor rushed over to her cot, pushing aside a couple of male nurses. He put a finger to her neck, frowned, and said, “She’s gone. That can’t be right.”
Now the doctor and one male nurse worked to try to revive her. Her chest inflated and deflated as the nurse pumped in oxygen. Her body bounced as Dr. Lincoln applied charged pads. After a few moments they relented. Dr. Lincoln stood up. “She’s dead.”
“She may not be gone for long,” Pamela insisted. She glared at Captain Crawford. He studied her back for a moment, and then he nodded. A solider bent over to fasten the doctor’s slim wrist to the bed frame with a light plastic cuff.
“Well, her dead body is cuffed to the cot,” the doctor said. “How far can she go?”
Pamela shrugged. “If it was up to me, I would shoot her in the head. Either that, or hit her with a hammer.” The doctor looked at her in horror, and she shrugged. “It’s just a suggestion.”
“I second it,” Paul said. “She will wake up.” He gestured to the light wound on her neck. “That gash looks minor, and it shouldn’t have been enough to kill her this quickly. It shouldn’t have killed her at all. She was infected. I know it’s difficult for you to believe us, but you have to listen to us.”
“I don’t have enough information to confirm anything,” the doctor said. He shook his head and regarded both Pam and Paul with a strained expression. By this time, Pamela had noticed a nametag which told her he was Dr. Lincoln. Pam blinked, thinking he had resembled the famous president. Her mind wandered off for a moment, recalling that the original Lincoln was not believed to have any living descendants, but she wondered if he was some sort of relative. The sixteenth president had always been a sort of personal hero to Pam. In fact her father always claimed descent from Lincoln’s grandfather. Somehow that made her trust the military doctor.
As the doctor caught her staring at his badge, he nodded and said, “Yeah, I hear that Lincoln thing all the time,” as if he read her mind. “We can discuss my family tree later, but we need to get back on track. This wound could have been infected by something quite explicable, or she could have passed from other natural causes. She is not a young woman. She covered up the wound, and apparently nobody even thought to give her an antibiotic before.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Paul said sourly. He sat down hard on a narrow cot. “We keep calling it an infection, but it’s not bacterial. Dr. Klein called it a virus. You know that she helped invent the virus blocking protein. I’d imagine she knew a lot about the subject. Antibiotics won’t help.”
“Would the vir
us blocker help?” Dr. Lincoln asked.
“That’s a good question,” Pam said. “She never suggested it though. It would be very helpful to go back to Future Faith and examine her papers.” Pam took a deep breath. Despite the rising tide of panic, some part of her educated and conscious mind kept throwing sparks. “In fact it’s even possible it took her longer to succumb because she’d been exposed to the virus blocker. Also, I really have no idea of how much time elapsed between the time of the initial outbreak and the time I found her in the reception area. There are a lot of possibilities.”
“Were either of you scratched by the things?” Doctor Lincoln asked.
“No, I managed to avoid them,” Pamela said. “It was a near thing, and at the time I didn’t even realize the true nature of the danger. I just wanted to stay away from those things. But I believe I’m clean. I did try to clean George’s wound before he died, so it is possible some fluid got on my skin but I tried to avoid it. I know I already mentioned that I’m working on my doctorate in pathology, and I’ve had a lot of lab experience. I’m not unaware of proper procedures.”
“What about you?” he asked Paul. The young man regarded him for a long moment, frowned, and then shook his head. From what Pam could see right now Paul did not appear injured either.
“Well, let me get a blood sample anyway,” the doctor said. “And I’ll have you examined to be sure nothing abnormal shows up. Neither of you appears ill or feverish. That seems like a good sign.”
Paul settled back on the cot without bothering to remove his shoes or get under the light blanket. They had been through a trying day, but her body felt electrified with adrenaline again. Beyond that, the presence Dr. Klein’s prone corpse and the restrained creature on the other side of the room, removed any thoughts of trying to rest. She did not know if the zombies got tired, but this one seemed to grow more indolent as time passed with the heavy bag over its head.
