Alone No More

by Philbrook, Chris

  So the first few days were the last few days that there were television and radio broadcasts. I sat around plugged into the television while it lasted. It made me feel safe to not move around much, plus I was desperate for information. I think the television reports were up and running for about 3 days. However long it took me to build up the nerve to go downtown, that’s how long the TV worked. The television abruptly cut out when I was watching it around dinnertime, so I’m wondering if there was some kind of severing of the service, rather than a “we’re going off the air now,” kinda thing. It was working, then there was static. Don’t know. Maybe there was a fire at the cable company.

  I didn’t get shit for information off the TV at first. It was more of the same from the reports from “that day.” I can say the spread of whatever it was that caused this was pretty thorough. Mr. Journal if you’ll recall from earlier entries there was a widespread outbreak of attacks on people. All across the world these attacks occurred more or less at the same time. I now know that these attacks were perpetrated by what I’m calling zombies. At the time the media flat out refused to really jump on the bandwagon. It wasn’t until the TV died and the radio became my source of info that they actually fessed up and said that the dead were returning to life.

  So early on as I recall the TV and radio said the attacks were small business. One or two zombies, here and there. Most of the time I think the zombies were beaten back to death with little or no incident. The problem with it getting out of hand seems to have stemmed with corpse storage, and widespread media panic. I know, what the fuck? Right?

  The media reported it was a virus, or perhaps a widespread terrorist launched biological weapon, or whatever. The media had no idea, and they were speculating. Humans, herd animals that we are, all panicked. Well not all, but the panic was widespread and severe. The bites infected the living, that much we knew then, and I know now. What was a bigger deal was that the dead were rising all on their own, all over the world. The outbreaks kept cropping up in different places that seemingly had no connection to previous outbreaks. One of the first and strongest theories was that a latent virus had been spread at the World Cup in South Africa earlier that month. Lots of disparate people from all over the world in one place… Then they go home, there’s an incubation period, and WHAM. Global pandemic. I knew those vuvuzelas were bad news. Fucking horns.

  What that meant (I think) is that people around dead bodies didn’t take proper precautions. This explains why hospitals became such hot zones so fast. Many hospitals have morgues. Morgues are filled with dead bodies. These bodies, already inside the hospital, were sitting up, getting freed, and sending the hospitals into total havoc. Imagine a coroner who is tagging a toe, and his body sits up. He screams for assistance for the person who was almost dead, and proceeds to get bitten while he renders aid. People were rushing to the hospitals at the same time, thinking they were infected, and essentially ran right into their own doom. Now as best as I’ve been able to figure out, the bites seem to take hours to kill. However, someone who just dies... Gets right the fuck back up in minutes.

  What they concluded, and I’ve basically confirmed, is that if you are bitten, it’s like being poisoned, not so much being infected. The bites give you a terminal illness which kills you. However, everyone that dies comes back. Everyone. Bitten or not. That tells me if this is a virus, or a biological weapon, we are all already infected. That makes no sense to me though the more I’ve thought about it.

  How did all these zombie outbreaks occur so quickly, so far apart from each other? How did the second wave of outbreaks occur? I mean we’re talking about outbreaks from Indonesia to Russia to Qatar to Seattle, to Anchorage, to Nairobi to Krakow. It would’ve taken thousands of terrorists to pull it off simultaneously. Also, if this was some kind of naturally occurring virus, how the fuck did it spread so far, so fast? And how did the virus wait, essentially intelligently, to strike at the same moment all across the world? It’s like a biological doomsday clock, counting down to “that day.”

  Now I’m speculating here Mr. Journal. Sheer guesswork. I think this isn’t of this Earth. I am not saying aliens did this. I’m wondering if this is supernatural. It makes a lot more sense when you remove science from the equation.

  If everyone across the world suddenly started rising from the dead, it makes a lot more sense to me if it were “God’s will.” Or if the Devil finally won some argument with God and got to use Earth as a playground for a bit. Oddly enough I am completely okay with those scenarios. I can wrap my head around it.

  It explains why the geographical distance didn’t matter. It also explains why regardless of cause of death, you get the hell back up as a zombie. Perhaps this isn’t an infection, or a virus, or a weapon at all.

  Maybe this is a curse. Surely humanity has earned some payback from up on high. We treat each other like shit, we wage war constantly, we fight over beliefs, we destroy our environment. We seem to do everything wrong en masse, and perhaps some greater power has decided that it’s time we were put in our place.

  I am okay with this. I don’t know why, but whenever I think about it this way, I am not bothered by it. I feel like maybe, just maybe if this is why this happened, I can earn my place on this Earth again. I can deserve to survive. I can get back in the good graces of whatever all mighty beings are doing this to us. I can make penance for my “sins.”

  That’s my current favorite theory. I just can’t wrap my head around an infection in the normal sense. Just can’t do it.

  Anyway, those first few days were a wreck. So many people were just ignorant of the dangers the dead posed. First responders paid the price I guess. They’d show up to a dying person, provide assistance, they’d live or die, and then the dice would get rolled. If the person died, they’d sit up, bite the medic, or fireman, cop or whatever and then they were down for the count. In the waning days of the TV broadcasts they said there were so few medically qualified trained responders 911 calls went unanswered. Doctors and nurses were right at the epicenters at the hospitals, and the EMTs, cops and firemen were the people most likely to get bitten.

  I’m sure you can see what happened after that Mr. Journal. House fires and accidents went unanswered. Car wrecks received no attention, and the sick and ill that needed medical assistance got none. People who would've survived an injury suddenly weren't. Those trying to care for those people were in the wrong place to survive themselves. They often got killed or bitten trying to help, which caused it all to spiral further out of control. I remember hearing reports about the number of people bitten, and the numbers were mind numbing. Tens of thousands all over the place just that first night and day. Every bite victim became a zombie within a few hours, and quite likely, bit someone else.

  Some areas of the world were flat out written off. Haiti was still recovering from their earthquake earlier in the year, and the sudden lack of foreign aid sent the country tumbling into a cholera outbreak. The entire island was written off in days. There were multiple plane crashes that caused entire regions to be turned into forbidden zones. Lots of planes crashed that day. Many went to Greenland after the US and Canada turned them away. I guess no one heard from them after a few days. Israel was a fucking wreck. The riots there caused things to get out of control in hours. Too much end of the world news caused the Palestinians and the Jews to decide to end their millennia long pissing contest with a stream of lead. The Greek economy had collapsed I think in May this year, and when this shit started, the youth revolted again there, causing more riots, causing more death and destruction. Mainland Europe was a disaster fairly quickly as I recall hearing. There were even sketchy reports that North Korea had a civil war break out right at the last moment. Fucked up shit. Some areas fared better than others, but it was all bad before the radio died.

  This thing that’s happening turned on every possible panic button you can imagine. The news had stories of people killing in the grocery stores, trying to get food and such. The governmen
t lost control quickly here, and it all fell down to might makes right. If you could take it and protect it, it was yours. The military was trying to secure their own bases and government centers, and with so many police hurt or killed, law and order became just an old TV show, as opposed to reality.

  Man I’m tired. Talking about this depresses me. I have more to say to though. Maybe I’ll put an entry in tomorrow too. There’s more to say about the first week that shit went down.

  -Adrian

  Putting a Name to a Face

  The morning shift was always Sabrina's favorite. There were many reasons why. She was typically able to get in a few minute early to talk with the night shift nurses on her floor, and get the skinny on everything that'd happened during their shift. No doctor orders ever really came in from the overnight either, so other than the hassle of checking all the logs, and doing an initial med pass, the mornings always seemed pretty great. Of course, things picked up as the day went on, but she also liked driving into the city to the hospital as the sun rose. Even if the dang thing was straight in her eyes half the drive. It was like waking up with the Earth.

  Getting to where the hospital was in the city could sometimes be a hassle. There were large businesses all about, and after getting off the highway and onto the city streets just meant she had to fight through the five intersections to get to the multi floored parking garage the hospital had. Sabrina went directly to the fourth floor of the hospital when she left the concrete parking structure. She always parked on the uppermost levels, so the people visiting their family members could park low, near the lobby floor. If anything, she was courteous to the families, most of whom were already emotionally frayed just thinking about coming to the place where she worked.

  The fourth floor of the hospital was the short stay floor, as well as the NICU. Hers wasn't the largest hospital, so each department wasn't always afforded all the space they would've liked. Patients who had just experienced surgery more robust than outpatient procedures and needed to stay a single overnight, or perhaps just a few hours went to her floor. She frequently spent very little time with patients before they moved along back to home, or to a different unit if they experienced some kind of setback. It was better that way, she felt. Less chance to get attached, and then let down if they fell more ill or died. She worked in the medical equivalent of fast food. Nothing too involved, and nothing long term. It was for the best though. Despite being forty years old, she'd only been a nurse for a year. With the economy shitting the bed she'd lost her longtime factory job, so she reinvented herself as a nurse. A few years of school later, she knew she loved it.

  As Sabrina sat at the nurse's station, going over the overnight information, Catherine, the nurse she was replacing was talking absently about the night.

  "Sabrina you could be up for a really bad day hun. I was watching the news almost all night long, and there are a lot of really crazy people out there. Europe is all in a tizzy, and I'd bet my mother's secret casserole recipe before lunchtime the ER is swimming in folks who are having panic attacks."

  Sabrina looked up, her blue eyes picking out Catherine's through her brown bangs. "You are a paranoid lady Cathy. I think this will all blow over. I only caught a few bits of it on the morning show, and it's all the same. Bird flu all over again." Africa, Asia and Europe were all experiencing riots due to a strange series of infections that were causing people to become violent. It was almost like a strange form of human rabies, but Sabrina thought it was probably more like human paranoia. Things like these were always blown out of proportion by the media anyway.

  "There weren't riots in London over bird flu Sabrina."

  "And there won't be riots here in the city either. We'll probably have our string of ten little old ladies who think they've contracted hyperthyroidism, or sudden onset diabetes, five suspected cases of rabies via cat bite, and that one guy who gets something lodged in his asshole because he's a closet gay man and is too ashamed to tell anyone about it. Happens every time something weird is on the news."

  Catherine snickered quietly, afraid she'd wake some of the sleeping patients in the bays across from the station. "Oh Sabrina, you're so funny. I can see why your husband and kid love you so much."

  Sabrina smiled. "Well if you keep them laughing, they have a much harder time being disobedient."

  "Now that's wisdom. You have a good shift no matter what. I'll see you tomorrow morning," Catherine said as she gathered her purse from under the counter.

  "Of course. Safe drive home," Sabrina said, returning to her charts.

  Her goodbye to Catherine was the second goodbye she'd said that day, and just like the first goodbye, it was the last time she'd ever see that person again.

  *****

  Late in the morning, Sabrina was proven wrong. The emergency room had been busy the entire day. As the two nurses had jested about in the dawn of the day, there were the usual suspects. Elderly people who didn't know quite where to go with the strange events on the television, as well as the normal amount of sick and injured. Nothing too serious had happened all morning, right up until the major accident and shooting down the street.

  At an intersection several blocks away an out of control truck had hit a handful of pedestrians. Something bad had happened in the aftermath of the accident, and there had been a police involved shooting. The ER had been notified by the police that multiple seriously injured patients would be inbound, but something went horribly wrong. As the hospital scrambled to get more staff to the ER to prepare for the glut of major injuries, word came in that the accident had escalated to more than just a shooting.

  Apparently some of the injured people had attacked Samaritans as well as police officers that had arrived to help. The details were sketchy. Instead of four victims as initially advertised, the ambulances were transporting in nearly twelve, most in some fashion of critical condition. Sabrina was pulled from her quiet fourth floor to assist the ER crews when the number of victims on their way swelled from four, to fourteen.

  She was pulled in person, under duress by the hospital's Nurse Manager, Phyllis. Phyllis was nearly out of breath, and looked frazzled. "Sabrina head down and find Doctor Barry. He's going to be working in room one oh four right near the lobby, and he'll be doing triage on the people arriving. Assist him as best you can."

  Phyllis was a nice woman, but she was ruthless when it came to her job. Sabrina was only barely qualified to help in the ER under the best circumstances, so for her to ask for Sabrina to head down there must've meant the situation was dire. Sabrina thought of her son, and hoped he was safe at home with her husband, playing on the swing set in the backyard. It was a warm June day, and that seemed like a perfect vision to her.

  She hoped their small town was far quieter than the city.

  *****

  By the time Sabrina reached the hospital's emergency room, the department was in heavy disarray. She saw four of the six security guards the hospital employed all attempting to maintain a semblance of peace in the entranceway and waiting room, but the men looked strained. Cabot, the largest and most imposing of all the guards was kneeling down low in a hallway to explain something to a frustrated woman in a wheelchair who had her leg elevated. She wore a splint and judging by the grimace on her pretty face she was in some pain. You could never tell how much pain someone was in just by looking at them though. Some people were predisposed to complain and feel pain more acutely than others. Sabrina's son David was impervious to pain. Just last summer he broke a bone in his arm and didn't say anything to her or her husband for a few days because as he said, "it wasn't so bad."

  The look on the young girl's face said anything but, "this wasn't so bad."

  Doctor Barry was a young doctor. She thought he was maybe thirty five. His hair was pitch black and trimmed neatly right down to his skin giving him a very military look. It made sense too as Barry came to the hospital after a career in the military. He had served as some kind of high profile medic in the army, and after gettin
g out he'd completed med school as quickly as could be. Barry was a trauma specialist. If anyone came into their ER with a gunshot or stab wound, there was no better man to see. Barry was lean, and handsome, and was the subject of more nurse gossip at the facility than any other eligible man. She was scared to be in the ER with so much going on, but she was pretty damned thankful to spend some time with him. Her husband didn’t need to know anything…

  "Thanks Sabrina. I appreciate you coming down to help." Barry moved quickly and confidently. He arranged all manner of supplies on a series of trays and table in a waiting room near the ambulance entrance that was typically reserved for a single patient's intake assessment. He'd already prepared it to sit three, and had a series of beds in the hallway opposite ready to take those that didn't need urgent care immediately.

  "Yeah Doctor, you're welcome," she said, failing to hide her apprehension about it all.

  "Nervous aren't you?" Barry asked with a smile, his hands never stopping, prepping more and more supplies for the ambulances that were only a minute or two away.

  Sabrina swallowed, "Yeah. I'm not really the kind of person who deals well with this kind of thing."

  "This kind of thing? You did go to school to be a nurse? They did tell you that at some point in time you might need to step up and help save lives right?" The Doctor replied, still smiling. He was almost flirting with her.

  Sabrina laughed at his jest, "Yes Doctor, I'm aware of all that. I guess my preference is to work with people who aren't in critical conditions. I like helping folks with an existing problem, on the upswing, not necessarily the ones who are coming in with who knows what going on. I think I'm also scared I'll make a mistake and get someone hurt."