by Frank Martin
She was making her way along the sidewalk towards the center of town, but the doctor felt like she was lost out in some remote part of the mountains. Snow covered absolutely everything in sight, effectively turning this small canyon of civilization back over to the surrounding wilderness it once belonged to.
Sure, the landscape was beautiful. Where else could one find such a desolate ghost town engulfed by whiteness? But the horror and tragedy that it took to create such a scene was too high a cost.
Not that she witnessed any of it firsthand. She only knew about what happened from the radio. And judging by some of the calls that came in, the streets seemed like some kind of warzone. A warzone which Anna saw very little evidence of.
Some storefront windows were cracked and cars had been abandoned out in the middle of the road. But Dr. Morris saw none of the crazed looters that were reportedly tearing through the streets, destroying everything in sight.
The air was quiet. Stagnant. And the snow had been untouched by any wandering footprints.
Then again, Anna would be lying to herself if she didn’t notice every so often tiny bits of limbs sticking out through the snow-covered streets. That was one of the reasons why she decided to stay on the sidewalks. To avoid the occasional frozen foot or hand that was a grim reminder of her failure to save every life she could from the gruesome destruction.
But at the same time, the doctor had to peek over and force herself to acknowledge the bodies. That this struggle was real. People died here. Cold and in pain. And she had to use that horrible truth as a reminder as to why she couldn’t let it happen again.
In reality, though, it wasn’t really that hard of a thing to demand of herself. Her trip was slow and boring enough that her wandering eyes eventually made their way over to the street anyway. Anna’s gaze would occasionally veer off and notice another body without even realizing she was doing it.
This time it happened to be the back of a woman’s coat just barely visible through the snow. Dr. Morris gave her usual sigh of pity and remorse before planning to turn her line of sight back around. However, her head wouldn’t move, almost as if it noticed something before she did. It took Anna a few more seconds of staring in the same direction, but she eventually realized what had caught her eye: the woman’s back was moving.
In an instinctual panic, Dr. Morris frantically began wading through the snow in an attempt to reach her. Any caution and hesitance she had about hiking through the snow were gone, replaced by her convictional need to help someone in trouble. The woman’s movements were faint, but they were enough to give Anna hope that something could be done.
Upon reaching her new patient, Dr. Morris removed her bare hands from the comfort of their pockets and began digging around the woman’s body. Anna noticed that a small cave-in of snow around the stranger’s head had allowed a tiny pathway for air to reach her face. An unlikely yet miraculous accident that prevented the young woman from suffocating.
Once enough snow had been cleared, Anna checked for a faint pulse before quickly examining the rest of her faced-down body. Except for a minor bruise on the back of her head, the woman appeared in decent enough shape. Cold and unconscious but physically fine. Probably left for dead among the other corpses littering the streets beneath the snow.
After making sure there weren’t any broken bones, Anna flipped the woman over and began carefully slapping her pale, white cheeks. The repetitive taps grew increasingly harder and faster until the doctor became concerned that she was going to leave a bruise. She contemplated stopping when she suddenly got the first eye flutter from her otherwise hypothermic patient.
Anna stopped for a moment to give the woman’s brain time to catch up with the trauma. Then, all at once, the woman gasped out in panic as her eyes shot open with fear. With her last panicky memories coming back to her, the woman’s eyes began darting all around.
And it took several whole seconds of Anna holding her shoulders for the woman to calm down. “Relax! Easy now. You’re OK. You’re safe.”
Finally settling in, the woman laid back down into the snow, anxiously catching her breath. Her eyes continued to glance in every direction but much slower than before.
And once she was able to fully process the situation, the woman looked over to the savior sitting next to her. “What happened?”
With the pain from her injury setting in, the woman began rubbing the back of her head as Anna went on to explain her diagnosis. “I’m guessing that blow to the head knocked you out. You seem fine but lucky. If I didn’t find you then you probably wouldn’t have lasted the night.”
“And you are?”
“Dr. Anna Morris. I’m on my way to pick up some drugs from the pharmacy. I assume you’ll want to tag along?”
Finally realizing just how lucky she was, the woman looked up to the doctor with the friendliest of smiles. “Sure. I could use some drugs.”
Anna then returned the joke with a laugh of her own. “I would have to write you a prescription first.”
“Of course. Just make it out to Elizabeth McCabe.”
***
The gondola ride up was silent. Probably because Peter, Stephanie and Chris knew it was the one place they could let their guard down without fear of being attacked. No maniac was going to bust through the door of the small gondola cab while it was suspended forty feet in the air. So the three unlikely companions took the opportunity to truly relax without a conversation to distract them.
For five minutes the cab transformed into a nap area, each one of its passengers giving way to their fatigue. Despite all efforts to resist, their eyes grew heavy with every passing second. And the trip up from Mountain Village was spent with the three passengers dozing in and out of consciousness.
That all ended when the gondola hit a series of quick, consecutive bumps, signaling that the cab transferred onto the track inside the mid-mountain station. The car’s shaking motion jolted all three of its riders back to alertness, each one propping themselves up off their seats as if they needed to be immediately aware of their surroundings. But once the gondola doors opened, the cab began its long, slow and rather uneventful trip through the station.
Much larger than the stations located in either Mountain Village or Telluride proper, the mid-mountain station acted as more than just a halfway point between the two. It served as a full-scale base and recreation center for the resort’s guests.
Because of that fact, Chris was not too happy spending more time there than he had to. “I don’t like this. We’re just sitting here in a confined space with the doors open.”
While looking around at the empty yet, expansive gondola station, it seemed as if Peter shared Chris’s concern but was pragmatic with the group’s decision making. “Well, what would you have us do? Get out, run to the other side, and jump in another cab closer to the exit?”
The otherwise sarcastic comment lit a spark of inspiration on Chris’s face, one which both Stephanie and Peter took notice of. A moment later Chris darted his body out of its seat and in the direction of the gondola’s open door.
He was barely outside the cab when he heard Stephanie ready herself to get up as well. “I guess that was a yes.”
Without waiting for his companions to follow, Chris began his swift jog towards the other end of the station. He wanted to keep his eyes ahead. To remain focused on the task. But as he approached the halfway mark, something at the side of the station grabbed his attention.
At first, it was a noise. Perhaps the light tapping of footsteps. Loud enough that he could hear them but too soft for the others to notice from their position back at the cab. Chris stopped as soon as he heard it but fought the urge to look. He knew no good could come from his curiosity, but it eventually became too much to resist.
Chris turned his head just in time to see a male figure disappear down into the stairwell. But before the man entered the darkness, Chris caught enough glimpse of his face to see the old, wrinkled features of his ski patrol partner.
Chris couldn’t tell exactly what his first reaction was upon spotting him. Relief. Worry. Shock. Fear. Truthfully he hadn’t thought about Phil since he took off down the mountain with their patient in the sled behind him. When they parted ways, Chris told himself he was going to check in and make sure his partner got down safely, but he never got the chance to, for obvious reasons.
In the instant it took Phil to disappear down the stairs, Chris had to once again fight his prodding curiosity. He knew he shouldn’t chase after him. The chances of his partner being himself were slim. Why else would he simply stroll downstairs like the mountain wasn’t in a crisis? Or why would he take shelter in the station at all? But when it came time for him to make a decision, years of brotherhood and loyalty overcame every logical bone in Chris’s body. His partner was down there. Probably infected as one of those things. But “probably” wasn’t good enough. He needed to know.
Just as Stephanie and Peter reached his side, Chris started walking in the direction of the stairwell. For a moment, they both just stood there watching in disbelief, almost confused that the hardened ski patroller started wandering deeper into the station. There was an awkward silence between them as if they were both hoping Chris would just turn back on his own accord, but when he didn’t, Stephanie was the one to verbalize her bewilderment. “Does he realize that is the exact opposite of what we were planning to do?”
Her pointless question was immediately followed by Peter yelling out to Chris as the patroller continued to approach the stairwell. “What are you doing?”
He responded midstride, without ever looking back over his shoulder. “I thought I saw something. Just gimme a minute.”
As Chris continued his walk towards the stairwell he didn’t hear any more discussion from the two behind him, but he didn’t hear any more footsteps either. They must’ve been staring at each other, silently deciding whether to ditch him, join him, or simply wait for him to return (if he returned at all). After several seconds, though, just as Chris reached the top of the stairs, he heard the combined clatter of snow and ski boots hitting the floor as Steph and Peter jogged in his direction.
They eventually caught up to him halfway through the stairwell, and together the group emerged into the hallway of the station’s lower level. Moving across the speckled carpet floor, Stephanie was the only one to browse through the old framed photographs hanging on the walls. She wanted to stop and read the captions under each one, but Chris and Peter, both of whom had traversed the station more times than they could count, had no interest in slowing down their pace for her. So she was forced to quickly scan the aged black and white photos that depicted the mountain’s history.
The first few pictures were of nineteenth-century miners and their families stoically posing in front of their settlement. But gradually, the photos shifted into color and showed old time skiers in one-piece snowsuits, happily christening the resort during its early years. It was a visual story of rebirth that Stephanie unexpectedly found herself getting sucked into. Until, of course, she reached the end of the hall where it opened up into the fine dining restaurant nestled at the bottom of the station.
The restaurant’s entrance was located on a hostess deck above the main dining floor and opposite a long wall of windows that allowed the powerful sun to beam light all along the room. Situated on a well-designed perch in the mountainside, the restaurant’s view offered one that justified the menu’s steep price tag. Through the glass, lunch patrons could casually gaze out upon a pristine row of Rocky Mountain peaks that pierced into the clear blue skyline.
It was a breathtaking view, indeed. But Chris, Peter and Stephanie were more awestruck by the large crowd of belligerent people wandering around the dining room floor. Made up of all different ages, sexes, and races, the gathering was a strange sight as its attendees continuously grumbled and moaned while walking around the restaurant’s tables and chairs. There was no talking, stopping or communication of any kind. In fact, it wasn’t until the trio looked closer that they noticed the people’s dumbfounded faces were covered in red.
Each one wanted to move forward and get a closer look at the floor below them. But they had yet to be spotted, and none of them wanted to be the first to alert the strange, zombie-like people to their presence.
For almost a full minute they all stood there watching the overcrowded group drift about without any rhyme or reason until Stephanie ended the silence. “What are they doing?”
With Peter too concentrated to answer, Chris responded to the girl’s question. “I don’t know.”
Still not satisfied, Steph posed a follow up. “They kinda look infected, but why aren’t they all crazy like the others?”
And once again, Chris was the one to offer a response. “If I knew that I would’ve answered your first question.”
Finally deciding to join the discussion, Peter offered a more specific topic of conversation. “I’m more concerned about what’s on their faces.”
Feeling that it was his responsibility to address all inquiries, Chris squinted his eyes to try and focus in on the crowd below. “It looks like…is that…blood?”
And as soon as he uttered the last word, a louder, more hostile version of the zombie moan pulled the group’s attention back behind them.
They all turned together and were instantly met by an old, bearded man whose twisted, pain-filled face was completely covered in the blood oozing from his eyes, nose, and mouth. To Stephanie and Peter, the horrific man before them was just another victim of the mysterious terror plaguing the mountain, but Chris immediately recognized him as Phillip O’Neill.
His former partner was so close that by the time Chris turned around Phil was practically on top of him, pushing him down to the ground. Caught off guard by the sudden attack, they both fell hard to the floor, and before he knew what was going on, Chris was frantically fighting to keep Phil’s bloody face away from his own.
The whole incident happened so fast that neither Stephanie nor Peter had time to form an emotion. As soon as they saw their companion go down, the odd pair was already pulling at the crazed ski patroller pinning Chris to the ground.
With his mouth wide open, desperately trying to latch his teeth onto Chris’s face, Phil continued to let out a loud groan, which bubbled from the large quantities of loose blood dripping into his mouth. His noisy grunts only added to the loud racket caused by the struggle. And it wasn’t long before the fight caught the attention of the horde roaming aimlessly around the restaurant floor.
First it was just one curious busboy, turning to the restaurant’s entrance with a slightly confused look on his bloody, emotionless face. Then it was a female skier, who also turned to the noise with the same blank expression. One by one the loud struggle grabbed the attention of every zombified guest, and they all began a brisk, lumbering walk in the direction of the commotion.
“Get him off me!” Chris screamed over and over again while Stephanie and Peter continued to pull at his assailant’s arms and legs. But Phil frantically flailed his limbs about, squirming around while continuing his pursuit of Chris’s flesh.
Amidst the skirmish, Stephanie’s eyes glanced up to see the blundering horde moving towards them like a clumsy, disorganized wave. At first, she was slightly intrigued that they weren’t running like the ravenous monsters she’d met earlier, but the danger was still very real and far outweighed her curiosity. “We gotta leave. Now!”
With his hands already wrapped around Phil’s head, the exclamation in Stephanie’s voice prompted Chris to quickly jam his thumbs into his attacker’s eye sockets. It was an unnatural feeling, voluntarily forcing his fingers to penetrate the soft, mushy tissue of Phil’s eyeballs. And it did nothing but add to the waterfall of blood already pouring down onto Chris’s face. But the attack caused Phil to let out a strange, animal-like shrill as his body slowly went limp.
For Chris, it felt just as physically awkward removing his fingers from Phil’s eye sockets as it did sending t
hem in. But that was nothing to the emotional anguish he experienced having killed the man who taught him so much. Chris knew he had no choice, and technically, Phil might’ve already been dead.
But it didn’t hurt any less as he pushed the bloody corpse off him and onto the restaurant floor. “Sorry, old friend. Goodbye.”
Now free from the body pinning him down, Peter and Stephanie began pulling at Chris to stand up. But the heartbroken ski patroller wasn’t nearly moving as fast as they hoped, and Peter let him know it. “Pull yourself together! Come on!”
With his eyes still stuck on Phil’s lifeless body, Chris started to look up and saw the advancing horde was a lot closer (and larger) than he thought. The immediate danger pumped adrenaline throughout his body, shocking his system back into action and causing him to scramble to his feet.
Once Steph and Peter realized their partner finally summed up a sense of urgency, they all took off together, backtracking their way through the station. In his light and less cumbersome footwear, Peter led the pack while Stephanie and Chris trailed behind, struggling to run and climb the stairs in their bulky ski boots.
But even with their awkward pace, Chris still managed to take several quick glances behind them and see that their pursuers were struggling to keep up. The mob’s brisk, uncoordinated walk caused several of the stupefied zombies to trip over one another as they bumped and blundered their way down the hall. Like Stephanie before him, Chris most definitely noticed a change in these fiends from the others. But also like Stephanie, he didn’t stop to further investigate his curiosity.
Once they reached the top of the stairs, the group entered back into the station’s gondola dock and it wasn’t the same desolate place they were in before. The commotion they caused had spread throughout the building, attracting more of the delirious, bleeding madmen up from other stairwells on either side of them. The floor was quickly filling up with the bumbling zombies converging on the center of the room.
