Wolf Running

by Toni Boughton

  She stepped back, confused and afraid. Her hand rested on the door handle but she couldn’t make herself turn it. She needed to get out of this room, find someone who could tell her who she was and why she was here. But something very bad was going on in the hospital. Even with her lack of knowledge about her own self and what might be normal for her, people screaming and running and bleeding in the hallways couldn’t be normal for a hospital.

  Now more noises were coming from outside her room. She pressed her face back up to the small window, straining for a glimpse of what was happening. Whoever had been screaming nearby had stopped, but other voices, further away, were raised in pain and fear and anger. Something that sounded very much like gunshots came to her, faintly. She thought about calling for help, and then decided against that. Drawing attention to herself right now might not be the best idea. For the time being, she was safe.

  A rustling sound drew her back to the window. As she watched, the injured man who had been knocked down rose into view. He was facing away from her, swaying slightly. His arms hung limp at his sides and blood dripped from the injured one. Then the man turned, slowly, until he was facing her door. He looked bewildered and lost, and she could almost see his mind trying to turn over, like a car engine on a cold day. He finally seemed to see her, and their gazes locked.

  And then he was gone, pulled down by someone moving very fast, a blur of pink fabric stained with something dark and wet-looking. They landed with a loud thud against the base of her door and she took a startled step back. The injured man began to wail, a sound of pure agony that was abruptly cut off. She could hear liquid tearing sounds. A thin line of blood slid in under the door.

  She staggered away from the door, a hand clamped over her mouth. The large window next to her bed caught her eye and she worked her way over to it. The floor she was on was well up from the ground, and the height gave her a wide view of the outside.

  Against a rich blue sky multiple columns of smoke climbed upwards from a sprawling cityscape. Directly below her window was a large parking lot full to capacity with cars, all trying to reach the street that ran adjacent to the lot. Where they hoped to go in their frantic rush wasn’t certain, as the street was also backed up with traffic. Horns were honking furiously and sirens clamored for attention. People were running between the stopped vehicles wildly. From this height they resembled marbles, crashing into each other as if they had been casually tossed to the ground. Someone, a woman she thought, stumbled and fell in the mad rush of people. No one stopped to help.

  The sound of crunching metal drew her attention to where a long black car was forcing itself past the other stopped vehicles and up onto the sidewalk. Now free of obstacles the car roared headlong down the concrete walk, and those in the fleeing mob who weren’t able to get out of the way were mowed down. Loose-limbed bodies flew through the air, and where they landed they left bloody smears.

  A burst of movement drew her eye and she saw three people peel off from the panicked mass and rush over to the fallen woman. They dropped to their knees around her, and even though their bodies blocked her from view, the bright red blood that spread out from the group was easily visible.

  Gunshots split the air. Drivers were abandoning their vehicles now and joining the stream of fleeing people. From a spot just a few blocks away there came an enormous explosion and a fireball bloomed, adding its own stream of smoke to the sky. And above it all rose the screams.

  She turned away, consumed by her own fear. What the hell is going on? It wasn’t safe outside the room, and it wasn’t safe outside the hospital. I need to hide. Just for little while. Just until someone in charge comes along. Tucked away in the corner near the empty bed was the entrance to the bathroom. She hurried inside and pulled the door shut behind her. It was made of thin material and did little to block out the noise from the madness raging through the hospital. She wedged herself in the space between the toilet and the wall, squeezing her eyes shut and finding with some surprise that she longed for the oblivion of just an hour ago.

  Chapter Two

  Then

  She jerked awake. Feeling unconnected and strange, it took her a couple of minutes to gather her wandering thoughts. Then the events of the day came flooding back. It was dark in the bathroom, and the chaotic noises of earlier had ceased. Considering all that she had heard before, her surroundings were disturbingly quiet.

  She eased out from her cramped hiding position and stood, her legs aching. Slowly she opened the door. The light panels in the ceiling shone incongruously bright and cheery, and for the first time since she woke to panicked screams she took in her surroundings. The room was empty, and the windows in the opposite wall showed that night had fallen. There was a television mounted on the wall facing the beds, but it was off and she couldn’t see a remote anywhere. Wooden cabinets surrounded a small sink in an alcove near the bathroom, and a couple of soft beige chairs were scattered randomly around the room. Medical equipment, machines that served some function beyond her knowing, was grouped around the head of each bed.

  She stood in the middle of the room and wondered. Whatever it was, whatever the cause of the chaos, was it still going on? What had happened in the hospital? Where was everyone? She crossed to the door and looked out the small inset window. The bloody smear on the wall and the threads of blood that had seeped under the door were still there. If things were back to normal, wouldn’t someone have come by and cleaned the mess up? How dangerous is it outside?

  “I can’t stay here.” The harsh croak of words startled her. Was that her voice? It didn’t sound familiar to her, but then again, would she even know if it did? My name is- she thought, and again found nothing. There was a black hole in her head where everything about herself should be. If she concentrated too much on that gaping nothingness she would fall in. Forcefully she turned her thoughts back to the here and now.

  I can’t stay here. I don’t think it’s safe to stay here. I need to find someone who can tell me what’s going on. And maybe tell me who I am. Her decision made, she reached for the door handle and then realized that she was only wearing a hospital gown.

  She stepped back from the door and looked around the room again. The cabinets in the alcove caught her attention. A search of the top cabinets turned up only medical supplies, but a bottom drawer revealed a pair of blue jeans and a red button-up shirt. The pants were too short and the shirt too big, but at least she was clothed. Another search turned up a pair of worn sneakers that fit reasonably well.

  There was a mirror in the bathroom. She studied the unfamiliar reflection. The woman in the silvered glass had a short crop of heavy, matte-black hair that lay close to the skull and thick brows over wide-spaced amber eyes. A thin, sharp nose over lips that were almost the same color as her skin, a light reddish-brown. A splattering of dark freckles arched across the bridge of the nose. High shelves of bone over sunken cheeks completed the facial features. There were dark smudges under her eyes and flecks of dried blood along her forehead. She puzzled over that for a moment. She hadn’t seen any scrapes or cuts on her body when she’d changed out of the hospital gown. There had been a black smear on the inside of her right arm, something that had wiped away easily, but that was all. She was tall, the top of her head nearly meeting the top of the mirror, and under her gown her body looked slightly starved, with ribs and hips precisely delineated under her skin.

  She turned on the tap and splashed cold water on her face, then took a drink from the spigot. Dressed and more awake now, she also felt more confident. The fear and confusion from just a few minutes ago didn’t seem as important as finding out what was going on.

  She turned away from the mirror and crossed to the exit door. Pressing her ear against the wood, she listened. Still nothing from the outside. She drew in a deep breath and turned the handle. The door opened inward faster than she expected, helped along by the two bodies slumped against it. She crouched down to look closer at them.

  One of the bodies was
that of the older man she had seen earlier. On his back, his head tipped to the side, the ragged hole where his throat should be was glaringly obvious. His blue scrub top had been torn away, exposing a gory slash in his rounded abdomen. Mangled coils of intestines intruded from the wound and drying blood was splashed on his face and chest in vertiginous swirls. A laminated ID on a lanyard gave the dead man’s name as Dr. Carlton Stover. She leaned in for a closer look at his face, and her stomach turned. Oh, god, he’s missing an eye.

  The other body was face-down on the cold floor. Cautiously she turned the body over to see a young woman, probably in her mid-teens. Beneath a fringe of light-brown hair her faded blue eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling. She was wearing a pink tank-top over shorts, and her mouth was smeared with blood and glittery lipstick. Her feet were bare and dirty, although the purple nail polish on her toes was still shiny. In one half-curled hand was cradled an eyeball.

  She gulped back the rising bile in her throat and examined the teen-ager. There was a hot-pink phone protruding from the front pocket of the dead girl’s khaki shorts. She pulled it free and turned it over in her hands. Shimmery sequins on the back of the phone were interspersed with small gold-colored stickers. She pushed buttons at random and managed to get the screen to light up. It showed one new message. She slid the phone back into the shorts pocket.

  She rose from her crouch and stepped back from the dead bodies. All the strangeness she had seen since she had been woken by the screams had been disturbing but distant, kept separate by walls and windows. Now it was here and real, sprawled on the floor in front of her. The coppery tang of blood floated on the air, and when she inhaled it she felt the last vestige of fear disappear. A tingling like a mild electric shock coursed through her body, and, strangely, she felt hungry.

  She shoved this thought aside and concentrated on what was at hand. Were there more people like this out there, victims and victors? Or was this an isolated incident? Something told her that it wasn’t.

  She stepped over the bodies and looked out into the hall. The dichotomy between the bright lights and the disarray around her was startling. To the right she saw chairs and small tables from a waiting area further down the hall strewn about. A metal cart was upended, towels and sheets scattered like dandelion fluff. Drifts of paper led down towards the nurses’ station, a trail of white spotted with red. She couldn’t see any people, either living or dead. She looked left, towards the elevators. It was the same - furniture tossed about, no people to be seen.

  Which way? Nurses’ station? She turned right and headed down the hall. The silence, the stillness lay like a blanket over everything. She checked other hospital rooms as she passed them, peering cautiously around the door frame if the doors were open or looking through the window if the doors were closed. Most of the rooms were empty, although they all looked recently occupied. And abruptly deserted, to judge by the tangled sheets on the floor and the beds knocked askew. One of the rooms had two patients, lying with open mouths and trailing limbs on their beds. A cautious tap on the door elicited no response.

  She approached the nurses’ station carefully. It was a large, well-lit space that faced a waiting area and wrapped around the corner where two halls met. The station hadn’t escaped the chaos. The computer monitors were smashed on the floor. Clipboards, pens, pencils and other office supplies had been thrown about. Blood was everywhere, streaks on the floor and smears on the walls. Gore pooled on the counter-top and trailed off the far edge, leading her around to where a heavy-set nurse in green scrubs sprawled on the floor. A blue-handled pair of scissors had been jammed deep into the woman’s right eye. The other eye was closed, as if to not see any more.

  A soft sound drew her to a door marked ‘Utility’. She approached it carefully when suddenly it swung open and a woman leapt out, brandishing a mop.

  “Stay back! I mean it! I’m not afraid to use this!” the stranger shouted, waving the mop around. She was young, with disheveled blonde hair and wide, shocked blue eyes. “I’ll jam this right in your face! Wait...I know you. You...you’re the Jane Doe. Right?” The halting voice was familiar. It was the same one, the young-sounding one, she had heard talking when she lay semi-conscious in the hospital bed.

  The young woman stepped out of the closet, still clutching the mop. “Yeah, that’s right. You came in with the blood...all...over...” Her voice trailed off as she took in the destruction around her.

  “Who are you?” Her raspy words cut through the strange woman’s daze.

  “My name is Jamie. Jamie Woodley. I’m a nurse here, on the medical floor. My God, what happened here?”

  “Who am I?” she said.

  Jamie looked at her. “I...don’t know. Don’t you know who you are?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  The other woman sighed. Well, you’re in the hospital. Exeter General. How about your name?”

  “I don’t remember anything. Anything at all.”

  “Well, I guess I can call you ‘Jane Doe’.”

  She thought back to the words she had heard while she was drifting in and out of consciousness, and what she had taken for someone’s name. “No,” she said, “call me...Nowen.”

  The nurse cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “Ok, sure.” She looked around the trashed nurses’ station. The mop, which had been slowly dipping towards the floor, rose up again. “Did you do all this?”

  Nowen shook her head. “No. Of that, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, that’s reassuring. ‘Cause you look kind of scary.” Jamie stared at the drying blood on the counter front. “Where is everybody?”

  Nowen motioned back down the hall that she had come from. “There’s some dead people in my room.” She decided against describing the state she had found them in. “Also there’s a dead woman behind the counter.”

  The mop fell with a clunk as Jamie looked over the countertop. She gasped and covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, no! That’s Marcy. Oh, God, who did that to her?” Tears ran down the nurse’s face. “She was so nice, always helping me find where things were around here...” She looked up at Nowen. “I just started here two months ago. This is my first real nursing job. Damn it, where is everyone?!” Her voice rose. To Nowen, it sounded like she was approaching hysteria.

  “Earlier, I saw people outside, running like lunatics, as if they were fleeing something. And I saw someone get killed. I think. You’re a nurse - can you tell me what’s going on?” Nowen spoke sharply, cutting through the other woman’s distraction.

  “I’m not sure.” Jamie’s voice was shaky. She looked at her wristwatch and tapped the dial, as if what she saw was unreliable. “About six hours ago or so, everything went nuts. I think it started in the ER. A lot of people had come in from a riot down at City Hall. Some of them got shifted up here to ease the strain. Suddenly we had Code Blues going off everywhere. People were just dying left and right. We were trying to move bodies out to make room for more incoming patients and we couldn’t keep up with them.”

  Jamie’s hands were twisting around each other, her fingers tangled together. Her voice faltered as she continued with her story. “And then it got...weird. I heard emergency calls coming in from all over the hospital. Calls for help and for security backup. A lot of the calls...came from the morgue. I mean people just started freaking out, running and screaming...patients and staff were fighting....I saw Mr. McGurk doing something to his mother....there was a lot of blood... “ Her voice trailed off for a moment. “I ran for the utility closet while he...finished with her.”

  Nowen saw the far-off look in Jamie’s eyes. She snapped her fingers to get the nurse’s attention. “We can’t be the only people left in this building. The phones. Can we call someone?”

  “Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that!” Jamie gasped as she grabbed one of the white phones and pulled it toward her. “What the hell is wrong with me?” she murmured, punching buttons. She tried one set of numbers, listened, and then dis
connected. She hit more buttons on the phone. “I tried Admitting, and no one’s answering. So now I’m trying 911.” Jamie listened, and then slammed the handset down. “A recording. Why aren’t emergency services answering?” She looked up at Nowen with haunted eyes. “Oh, Jesus, how bad is it out there?”

  “Is there anyone else you call?” Nowen urged.

  “I’ll try other numbers here in the hospital”. The young nurse went through a series of calls, each ending the same way: no answer. With the last number she tried she listened longer, her eyes clenched shut. Finally Jamie set the phone back its cradle. The look she turned on Nowen was full of despair and her blue eyes shimmered under a haze of tears. “My parents. No one’s answering there, either.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

  Nowen walked a few steps away to give the other woman some privacy. Should I say something? Maybe. But why? I don’t even know this woman. When the sniffling behind her stopped she looked back over her shoulder. “So, what now?

  Jamie wiped her face. Her eyes were still bright with unshed tears, but she seemed calmer now. “Uh, let me think. We should look for other survivors. Just because no one answered the phones doesn’t mean no one’s there. They could be hiding, waiting for help, like I was.” She snapped her fingers. “The intercom! I can call for everyone still in the hospital to come up here.” She was reaching for the microphone when Nowen’s hand shot out, blocking her.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Well, why not? It’s the fastest way to contact everyone.”

  Nowen pointed at the dead nurse on the floor. “Whoever killed her could still be around. We might not want to announce our presence.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “We should still search the building for more people. Or go outside and see if we can get help.”

  Jamie checked her watch and shook her head. “It’s already after 9. I think it would be safer to stay inside until we contact someone, or someone contacts us. Or until the sun comes up.” She sighed and ran her hands through her tangled hair. “Let’s go to the staff room. We can try the TV there.” She started back down the hall that Nowen had come up.