“Need help in six!” In an instant, the young nun was back at her side and then placing saline bags each side of the man’s head, and a flat hand on his forehead. Nurse Greene removed her hands and pulled up the frames of the bed quickly before rushing to the sink, washing her face and eyes, and rinsing her mouth. The young nun never left the patient as the doctor and two other nurses ran into the cubicle. Nurse Greene was soon back, joining in the frenzy of activity and telling the others to use face masks and shields. The seizure subsided, and as the doctors and nurses moved about the business of securing the patient, the young nun excused herself and moved to return to her charge in the next cubicle. Nurse Greene called after her.
“Sister?” she said, holding out a hand. The nun did not accept it, but simply held her palms out apologetically.
“I would rather clean up before I shake hands, nurse." The young nun smiled again, a little embarrassed. “I am sorry; I did not get your name.”
“Greene,” she replied. “Angela Greene,” she added with a small wave of her hand in place of a handshake. The nun did the same in response
“Sister Mary Jude of the Our Lady of Perpetual Hope Convent, pleased to meet you.” The nun was one of the few left who continually washed her hands. Only six months since the last reported case of the common cold, influenza, or any other major disease, including cancer or AIDS, but old habits die hard. “I am also a trained nurse, but I have not yet had the chance to travel to Africa and help out with the mission there. I leave in June.”
The nurse smiled back at her and wished the nun luck, before making her apologies and thanking her again. Nurse Angela Greene wanted to change her scrubs and wash up again, still feeling dirty from the spit of patient Welsh, Robert. Unfortunately, she was not aware that she had only twenty-three hours and fifty-one minutes left of her life.
If Nurse Green had known, she would not have killed her husband when she kissed him next morning and passed on the virus. Mr. Greene, on his way to the airport, would not have passed the virus onto the twenty dollar bill he gave to the cab driver. The twenty dollar bill that killed another forty people that day, as the virus moved on a generation, speeding up the incubation period to twenty hours.
Of the twenty hospital staff and patients that came into a cross-contamination situation with patient Welsh, Robert, AKA 'Bob', of the fishing vessel Newport Maiden, over one thousand people became infected within that day. A microscopic organism, passed on through contact and interacting with the anti-bodies that formed from a drug known as 'Hilary' began to create a new virus that would breed on the bad habits of a human race that had forgotten how to protect themselves from germs in just six short months.
Others, such as Sister Emily Rose, breathing softly into her oxygen mask, should have been safe. She was under the watchful eye of her young companion Sister Mary Jude. However, she was unwittingly infected by a man that never saw her. Leroy St. John, a Jamaican-born man had worked at the Rhode Island Hospital in the transportation department for three years when he entered the cubicle of patient Welsh, Robert, a little after 3:00 that morning. Leroy’s job was a simple one, but he enjoyed it. He moved patients on cots or in wheelchairs from one part of the hospital to another, and he was a happy man.
Leroy kept a modest apartment with two roommates in the city. He worked long hours and took home a good paycheck and was able to pay for classes in a local community college. One day soon he would be qualified as an accountant, but for now, this job was his means of working toward a better life. This patient was like all of the others he moved in the night, that is, either tired or asleep.
His clothes smelled a little stronger than others as he lifted the patient's bag. He also placed his boots into a bag for him, not noticing the blood smeared across them. It was blood that had come from Number 1. He went to the faucet, washed his hands and left the tap dripping before taking his patient down to the surgical unit. Twenty minutes later his patient was forgotten, and so was the faucet.
When Nurse Jose Aguilar walked in and turned off the faucet in the now-vacant cubicle, he continued into the room of Sister Emily Rose, removed her oxygen mask, wiped her cheeks and mouth and replaced the mask once more. He even smiled to the pretty young nun watching over her. Sister Mary Jude’s red hair was showing through her more modern headdress that the nuns were wearing these days. They were not the same habits that the nuns of his youth in Jamaica wore, and the young nun was certainly much prettier than the strict women that had tormented his school days.
“They will be moving her up to a room shortly, Sister” he said with a smile, and went to the sink to wash his own hands. The sweet, low voice of the nun thanked him and he went about the business of his duties, ignorant to the fact that the lethal virus was now mixing with the saliva of the older nun, mixing in her bloodstream and multiplying at a rate that would see the effects of the virus manifesting in a horror that the world was yet to know.
Jose later high-fived the cop, Donahue and Donahue had said goodnight as he went off to meet his relief with his hand against his face to stifle a yawn, thus pressing the virus to his lips and allowing it to enter his body.
“Hey Scolastica, how’s it going?” he said to his relief.
“It’s good, Donahue. Anything I need to know?” the police officer said, sipping at a coffee.
“Nah, quiet night, just be on watch for gunshot victims and such. The sooner hospital security gets off of this damn strike and lets us get back to work, the better, but I am going to hit the sack now, buddy. Have a good one.” The two police officers exchanged a few more pleasantries and wished each other goodnight.
Donahue headed back to the precinct, but stopped for coffee along the way. He dragged a hand across his face and lips before rubbing at the five o’clock shadow on his chin as he grabbed his coffee cup (infecting the next six cups), the handle of the coffee jug (infecting the next twelve customers who bought dark roast coffee from that store), and a dome lid - the first of which he passed to a pretty woman standing next to him. She would be dead within twenty hours also, or at least something that should be dead. She went on to infect the train conductor and seventy-eight other people who used the train that morning to Warwick.
Once at work, she infected thirty-three other people accidently, who in turn spread the virus to an additional one-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-nine people via handshakes, kisses, hugs, and in a few cases, an act as simple as having sex or sharing a glass. Her boss however, Mr. Jonathan Grainger, had a reputation among those in the office as being a “Prick in a Suit”, and he did everything to earn that title.
He had a little party planned for that evening with a couple of escort girls in New York - a pair of Russian girls who liked to share a line or two of his very expensive, high-quality cocaine before indulging in practices his wife would never approve of.
The incubation time was now down to sixteen hours, and as they placed the rolled up one hundred dollar bills to their noses - a bill that all thirty or forty people shared at one point that night, to draw the narcotic crystals into their noses - the virus hit New York. All of the other girls' clients, and everyone else that would come into contact with every “Prick in a Suit” at that party would become infected.
Through one form of contact or another, by the time the twenty-four hour mark of patient Welsh, Robert’s dog bite incident arrived, the virus was at six-hundred and twenty-three thousand people. At that time, not one of them knew what was happening because, since the arrival of 'Hilary', the last reported case of any communicable disease or virus was over one-hundred and eighty-three days ago.
No one seemed to care. The infected, unwillingly and unknowingly went on infecting others as they travelled across the United States and beyond. They were ignorant, until fourteen minutes past noon that day that the end of the world had begun.
5
Signs
When it came, it came quickly, and it started at 12:14 pm in the Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI. Althou
gh events had been set in motion for the preceding forty-eight hours, the outbreak was already set to make a strategic strike against humanity, like a king surrounded by an opponent’s chess pieces.
And it started with a scream.
Everyone on the nurse's station heard the scream. It was like no other sound. Like the screech of a bird. Like the yelp of a wounded animal. Like the scream of a child in pain. You are stunned into temporary paralysis. Then reality catches up and propels you into action.
The scream had that exact same effect on everyone in the ward as they ran in its direction. And then they saw him, patient Welsh, Robert, stumbling into the hallway, his IV and stand dragging on the ground behind him, saliva drooling from his mouth.
The first nurse saw the IV rip from his arm, blood dripping down to his right hand, and he moved toward her, quickly now, grabbing at her and sinking his teeth into her throat and collar bone, tearing her open and severing the carotid artery, sending a fountain of bright red blood into the air. She struggled a little, but soon the stream of blood stopped reaching her brain and she dropped into unconsciousness for a moment while her life slipped away.
Patient Welsh, Robert dropped to her body and bit into it more. Scratching at the open wound, his teeth tearing flesh and muscle from the bone as he greedily fed on her dying body. The hospital porter, Leroy St. John was standing on the ward at that time and ran at Welsh, tackling him to the ground, but St John became the victim of a bite to the lower forearm.
The burning sensation was almost as bad as the pain he felt as the teeth of the patient hit his bone. With his free arm Leroy punched him repeatedly, but nothing could distract the blood-soaked patient from his gore-filled feeding ritual.
Soon after, other patients and hospital workers jumped in to try and restrain the crazed patient in 211, but he continued to chomp, bite and scratch until he broke free. Leroy looked up at the patient known as Welsh, Robert, dripping with a mixture of blood from several victims.
Welsh, Robert was ready to leap onto the Jamaican hospital porter when his chest exploded outwards. Then there was another explosion, the spray covering the faces and bodies of all of those around him. A third shot and the lifeless body of Robert Welsh fell in a crumpled heap on top of his victims. Before Leroy passed out he saw the image of officer Scholastica, legs slightly apart, one weapon in both hands, in a haze of smoke.
Robert Welsh was the first. He was the first of many that started on Plumb Island, moved to Providence and had already spread across the country.
6
Destinations
If there was one thing that Staples hated, it was the term “Ground Zero”. He’d hear it and get nauseous since the day the Towers came down, and with 9/11, he had understood its metaphor. Although it was not a nuclear impact, for which the term “Ground Zero” was intended, it was the start of a war that was still going on today.
It had a worthwhile symbolic meaning; however, it had become one of those media buzzwords that were used for a multitude of reasons. "Ground Zero for the hurricanes landfall.”, “Ground Zero for the snowstorm.”, “Ground Zero for the protest on oil prices.” He found the over-use of media buzzwords to be a smudge on the profession of journalism.
What was wrong with a good old-fashioned “epicenter” all of a sudden? Not enough drama? Yet here he was, in another news story with its very own Ground Zero, and as he saw the camera switch to green, he determined to avoid the phrase at all costs.
“That’s right, Mike,” he began as the news room passed the story over to their 'Reporter in the field at Ground Zero' for the form up of police at an hotel siege.
“Here I am at the epicenter of police activity…” (Fuck you, 'Ground Zero', Staples thought) “…where there have been reports of a guest smashing up a room and attacking the manager whom has since been taken hostage.
Police report that they have the floor sealed off, and are trying to negotiate with the hotel guest. He is reported to be a Rhode Island native by the name of Philip Greene. Greene’s wife, we understand, works at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, which as you know, has been on lockdown all afternoon. John Staples, RCNN, Philadelphia.”
The SWAT team of the Philadelphia police department was no stranger to breaching a door. It happened often enough. Not usually here in center city, but up in the north or western parts of the city. To the SWAT team, a door was a door, and whoever was behind it could be armed with any weapon, regardless of race, culture, wealth or background. The lieutenant in charge of this particular raid had a gut feeling that this was some businessman wired up on drugs and having a bad trip.
As no contact had been made with the perp, and they were unclear on the state of the hostage, a breach was ordered and now the lieutenant and his men stood poised to enter. The lieutenant had a man on the stack ready with a stun grenade, filled with CS and enough sound to send out a deafening explosion capable of distracting anyone.
If that was not enough, a flash of magnesium so bright that it would temporarily blind anyone not prepared for it would complete the trifecta. Another six men behind the grenade man would follow him in, and flood the rooms of the suite ready to shoot dead anyone with a weapon, or anyone that may be threatening the life of a hostage.
But nothing could happen before the lieutenant gave the order for a group of eight of his men to smash in the door lock with a 30-inch long battering ram. The lieutenant would be the last SWAT team member to enter the room after shouldering his MP5 submachine gun. All they needed was a single word from him, and the raid would begin.
“Go!” There was a smash of metal hitting a door lock, a splintering of wood, an ear-splitting bang and a flash of light among the smoke filled hallway. Then the men of the SWAT team swarmed into the room in a highly choreographed performance. Then several shots rang out.
The press on the street, as well as the crowd that had gathered all looked up in unison, hearing the volley of shots. Glass shattered high above them on the 12th floor and a body glided through a window and danced through the air until it hit the street with a grotesque thud. Anyone looking up could see it was a policeman who had fallen. Several more popping sounds of low-velocity gunshots rang out, followed by silence. It was a silence that was disguising the flurry of activity high above them on the 12th floor
“He fucking bit me!” yelled one of the cops, running out of the room, clutching at his arm, his radio screaming.
“10-13, 10-13, I have two men down! There were two of those motherfuckers in here!” it screamed as another officer came limping out of the room, blood soaking the left leg of his pants.
“I shot him in the head and he kept coming," he was saying to a partner who, holding the limping cop's arm around his shoulder, was helping him walk as another radio squealed a message.
“We have two dead civilians in here. One is the manager. I got two dead SWATs, several wounded. This is a fucking mess!”
It took less than a minute to get the two wounded policemen into the ambulance, one of them screaming his protests about how the manager had attacked him as soon as he entered the bathroom.
“I swear, he just jumped out and bit my arm!” But the medics were working feverishly on the wounds, too busy to worry about what he was saying. The door slammed shut and the ambulance left, sirens blaring. It was a short ride to the Hospital University of Pennsylvania and the ambulance was going as quickly as possible. They were almost there when the cops went into seizure.
When the outbreak reached Grand Central station in NYC, the chaos was much more widespread. At a little after 17:15, EMTs got a call about a man on the main concourse who appeared to be in a spasm as if having an epileptic fit. When they arrived they found a man half-crazed, chasing after several people, many with bite marks and blood everywhere. Another man was in a state of seizure. There were several pops and thuds as the crazed man was shot - yet the man did not fall.
He did however charge at the cops who had shot him, and was quickly joined by the other man
getting up from the seizure. There were several more gun shots, but the EMTs were no longer paying attention, as they were already moving those who had been bitten - which seemed to be a lot - out to a casualty collection point. Then there was a third case. People ran to help as a fourth and a fifth person fell to the ground. Then the screams started; screams that froze most everyone in their tracks and thoughts.
"What the f….” one EMT started, but his patient tore out his voice box with his teeth before the sentence was finished.
The police received several calls to lockdown Grand Central, and as a practiced drill, progress was quick, but over 30,000 people were locked inside.
“What the hell is that screaming?” asked one of the young cops, dressed head to toe in riot gear. Two hours later, he would be bellowing the same noise.
The news was about to break with the leading story of a major disturbance at Grand Central station and riots in Providence and Philadelphia, but the news of a plane crashing into downtown Chicago trumped all of that. Little did the reporters know that all the stories were related.
The fact that the pilot had requested an emergency landing due to a patient in seizure a few moments earlier went unnoticed. If the black box had ever been located, they would have heard the weight of panicking passengers breaking down the door and, even greater panic as the crush forced the pilots away from their controls and the plane fell into a nose dive. However, all that information would remain unknown as the news channels died along with countless agencies of the government.
The first case to reach the west coast did so quietly, early in the day in the form of twenty-three infected passengers arriving in San Francisco on the 11:35 flight out of Atlanta, Georgia. The infection was carried onto the flight by the same women who had had the misfortune of accepting a domed coffee cup lid from a police officer in Providence. She had gone directly to Logan Airport, where she caught the 6:10 flight to Atlanta. When the plane arrived, she was not feeling well. She decided to drive directly to her hotel, the Grand Hyatt near Union Square.
Zombie Outbreak Z1O5: Countdown Page 3
