by Howard, Bob
He had learned since then it was an Epi-Pen, and for some reason the epinephrine had worked. But he knew there must have been something else because his heart still hurt sometimes, and he still turned pale and began to sweat whenever the stress got too bad. Needless to say, the stress level of living in the infected world was enough to make his heart hurt on a regular basis.
It was hours before a police officer came back to the locked door that opened into their corridor, and the only good news he brought with him was that he had keys. They were startled when he appeared at the doors and came inside, but it didn’t bother them at all when he locked them behind himself. No one wanted those doors to be unlocked, even for a moment. Then he gave them the bad news. It hadn’t gone well up on the ground floor.
The officer explained that the area where they had been sheltered wasn’t a holding cell for prisoners. It was under renovation to expand the evidence room. The evidence stored there would be for high profile cases, so there was additional security. That’s why there was a cell door across the main entrance and on the doors of the individual rooms. They had running water and a restroom, but there was no food or other amenities because the work had been in progress. If it had been finished, there would have at least been a snack machine and a coffee room.
The people in the basement, thirty-six not counting the police officer, had already found the restrooms but they hadn’t found anything else they considered useful. There were a half dozen blankets in a closet, and those were given to the most needy. Everyone had insisted that Phillip should take one because of how sick he had been.
The officer got everyone together in the largest room and told them the building had been locked down. There were only a few officers left in the rest of the building, and they were in scattered rooms watching over small groups of survivors like themselves. If they could get the opportunity, they planned to move everyone from the other groups into the basement along with any supplies they could locate in the building.
Someone asked when that might be, and the officer said he didn’t know. It all depended on what they were told to do by the military. He said that martial law was in effect, and a few things had gotten back to him before they lost communications. People outside at night would be shot.
The officer left them with no food and very little hope but gave the keys to the steel doors to one of the men who appeared to be taking the situation well. The man had been attentive and calm, and the officer encouraged them all to follow his example. He left them with the promise that the police department was ready to meet the crisis head on. They never saw the officer again.
There was no cell service. That added to a sense of growing fear that they were trapped in the basement of the police station, and everyone constantly checked their phones to see if they could call for help. There wasn’t a television or radio in any of the rooms, just small construction supplies and new fixtures to store evidence.
Through the first night they heard gunshots on the floor above theirs. They expected to see the door from the stairwell fly open at any time, and after some discussion, the consensus was to use their small supply of blankets to cover the bars that separated them from the other side of the corridor. It was a false sense of security, but one thing they all agreed on was that the infected could open a door with a panic bar on it just by falling against the device that was intended to save lives during a fire. The door to the stairwell had a panic bar on the other side. If they heard the door open, they would stay quiet until they knew what was on the other side of the blankets.
Hunger became the primary motivation by the following morning. They had taken turns standing watch at the blankets draped across the bars, and a faint sound had everyone holding their breath. They thought it was something in the stairwell, but they weren’t positive. When the sound wasn’t repeated, they weren’t sure what it meant, but they decided they would all sleep better if they turned off the lights. It was a good theory, but no one slept.
Lack of sleep and hunger made people get restless, and a few of the more vocal men voiced their concerns about waiting for the officer to come back. It escalated fast, and the calm man with the keys to the doors was no match for people who decided they had waited long enough. He tried to reason with them, but he barely managed to get out a sentence before a fist hit his front teeth.
Being afraid causes angry people to get angrier. It wasn’t enough to hit the man in the face and take the keys from him. They also had to kick him. Phillip wanted to help the man, but it was shocking how many others joined in on the kicking side. Even after they had the keys there were a few kicks to his ribs, and some of the mob laughed when the man begged them to stop. Phillip and Denise held each other and watched helplessly.
Once the keys were liberated from the beaten man, a guy who could have been a lawyer or a stock broker took over and led the way to the door. They pulled the blankets down, and he reached his arms through the bars. The crowd around him pushed against the steel door, and as the click of the lock signaled the door was unlocked, they surged forward. The man’s arm was still through the bars as he was pushed along with the door, and his scream of shock and pain was lost in the cheer from the dozens of people who suddenly gave in to the claustrophobia that had gripped them through the night. Their fear burst from them as they stepped on anyone who fell down in the rush to leave.
The screams from the man with his arms trapped through the bars rose even higher when the bones in his arm snapped, and they served as fuel for the rising panic. People who hadn’t rushed the door joined the others. Phillip and Denise retreated into one of the evidence cells and pulled the door shut. It didn’t lock, but the crowd in the main room wasn’t interested in them as they hid behind the door of the newly installed evidence locker.
Silence descended on the bottom floor of the police station as the crowd of survivors disappeared one by one into the stairwell. The door swung shut as the last of them went through, and the Corrigans waited a few minutes longer. When they emerged from hiding, they saw that the only people left with them was the man who had been beaten by the crowd and a woman who was tending to his cuts and bruises. Even the man who had unlocked the door was gone.
“Can I help?” asked Denise.
She didn’t wait for an answer. She tore off a strip of blanket and rushed to a sink where she soaked it in cold water. She brought it back to the woman who gratefully accepted the gesture.
“How bad is he hurt?” asked Phillip.
He was asking the woman, but the man answered for himself with a grimace.
“I’ve been worse, and believe it or not, I’m probably better off than those people. If I’m right, none of them has thought about what they’re going to find when they get to the top of the stairs. I hope some of them make it.”
He held out a hand to Phillip.
“Alex, and this is Grace.”
Phillip shook his hand and told them their names, but he was amazed that the man was so calm and good natured after what had just happened.
“You’re a lot more forgiving than I would be right now. A few more kicks and you could be lying here with a punctured lung. We’re also not much better off than we were before. There are just less of us to feed.”
Alex laughed and immediately grabbed his ribs.
Grace said, “Thank you for staying behind with us. We don’t have much longer to wait.”
Before Phillip could ask what she meant, they heard the commotion in the stairwell. It sounded like a crowd of people.
“The key,” said Alex.
Grace seemed to know what Alex wanted her to do. She ran to the door and checked the lock.
“It’s still here.”
She pulled the door shut and reached through the bars to turn the lock. After she retrieved the key she backed away just as the stairwell door burst open. People spilled through the door on top of each other, and the noise they brought through with them sounded like the previous night. Screams and cries for help filled the
air, but there was something else. There was a groaning sound that was almost louder than the screams.
The first few people slammed their bodies against the door and shoved their arms through the bars. They pressed their faces as close as they could toward Grace and begged with wide eyes for her to let them in. Grace took a few more steps backward, but the Corrigans could see that it wasn’t because she was afraid. They turned to Alex with a mixture of fear and pity but didn’t know what to do. These were the same people who had brutalized Alex just a few minutes ago.
Alex said, “I would if I could, but we can’t let them in.”
A bald man in a heavily stained suit was straining to reach Grace. He was pleading in a voice he had most likely never used before now, but it suddenly became even more shrill and desperate sounding. His hand continued to grasp at the air in front of Grace, but his back arched when someone pressed against it, and his chest pushed even harder at the gap between the bars. It looked like he was trying to push his overweight body through the three inch opening. The woman next to him did the same thing only seconds later, and they saw a pool of blood collect at their feet.
From inside, the Corrigans couldn’t see what was happening beyond the people who were trying to get in with them, but they could see the stairwell door was still open. They saw it open further and then retreat toward closing but never quite making it before it would be bumped open again. The groaning grew louder, but then the screams would take their turn again. Through it all there was a rank smell that was suffocating. A copper smell mixed with the smell of human waste.
Grace turned to face the Corrigans, and it was at that moment when Phillip understood she and Alex weren’t surprised by anything that was happening. There was something about their calm acceptance of watching people turn into the blood thirsty creatures that were biting anyone that was still alive in the chaos. They had expected this.
The screams diminished as the living succumbed to their wounds. The floor was slippery with blood, and the creatures that were constantly slipping and falling down were no longer human. The Corrigans didn’t know what disease those people had, but they appeared to be hungry, judging by the way they took over from the living who had been reaching through the bars. They were pressing their faces where the desperate people had been, but now they were groaning and reaching with a different, longing desperation, and as they reached they snapped at the air with their teeth.
The four people on the inside of the bars wore such different expressions on their faces. Phillip and Denise were horrified. They held each other for safety and comfort while Alex and Grace were strangely watching as if they were studying the bloody faces…as if they were observers. Phillip had an eerie feeling that Alex and Grace knew what was going on. He was just about to say as much when there was a new sound behind the wall of crazed faces at the bars.
There were voices, and in between the words there was the steady popping from automatic weapons. The crowd around the door fell away one at a time until there were no more standing, and unfamiliar uniforms filled the corridor. Heavily armed men wearing some kind of breathing gear and protective gloves were dragging the bodies away from the door, making a clear path. Grace stepped forward and handed the key through the bars. One of the men took it and unlocked the door.
******
During the previous night, while the Corrigan’s hid with three dozen people below the streets of Mt. Pleasant, a battle raged between the police and thousands of citizens who converged on the municipal center. The living people only wanted protection, but in the darkness the police couldn’t tell them from the blood soaked people who outnumbered the living.
The municipal center had been moved from its original location after it was flooded during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Its present location was chosen because it was convenient to the major arteries that spread out across the city and led to the bridges that crossed the Cooper River. Over the years the two bridges had been replaced by a much larger bridge that could accommodate more traffic. No one could have guessed that these changes would put the Mt. Pleasant police department at the center of a battle for survival.
As the chaos erupted on the bridge, the swarm of people driving away from Mt. Pleasant abandoned their cars and ran from the infected. The infected moved slowly, but the living could only run as fast as the logjam of people in front of them. They all had the same idea…get to the police station.
On the other side of the massive Ravenel Bridge, thousands of people were escaping from Charleston with the same belief. If they could just make it to Mt. Pleasant, the police station wasn’t far. All they had to do was reach Patriots Point where there were bound to be other people who could help them. Safety seemed to be within an arm’s reach until a convoy of tractor trailers emerged from the darkness of a parking area at Patriots Point and lined up across the lanes, separating Patriots Point from the chaos and closing off any chance of escape to the Yorktown. The drivers abandoned the cabs of their trucks and were collected by an armored vehicle that followed closely behind them. It had oversized tires and the truck drivers had to be helped to climb up to a hatch on top.
Terrified families froze in shock when the armored vehicle drove straight into the crowds of people who had already abandoned their cars. The oversized tires made the strange looking vehicle bounce as it rolled over cars and the unfortunate victims inside them. As quickly as the trucks and the armored vehicle appeared, they disappeared back into the Patriots Point complex. The barricade of the bridge caused the flow of humanity to drain like rainwater over toward the traffic that was trying to exit from Mt. Pleasant on Highway 17, and the result was a total standstill of progress in any direction. What had been a slowly moving exodus in both directions became as congested as an outdoor rock concert, and the darkness only added to the illusion as the shadows of people were almost enough to blanket the headlights.
The mass of bodies swirled as the momentum of the crowd on one side made the tide turn in favor of the escapees from Charleston. If the remaining police officers at the municipal center had been able to see what was coming, they would have understood the futility of their efforts and tried to save their own lives. Too late they retreated into their building where they came face to face with the infected that had died after reaching safety. The officers didn’t know who they had been saving.
Throughout the building the injured were dying, and as they died they turned on their rescuers. People who had been hidden in the holding cells for their own protection found themselves trapped with the infected. In one cell a man who had died sat up and groaned. Everyone in the cell with him screamed and shook the bars of the cell door, but when the dead man put his feet on the floor and stood, the others tried to get behind each other, pushing women and the elderly to the front.
There were cells to the left and the right of the cell with the dead man, and the people in them were putting as much distance between themselves and the bars of the middle cell as they could. It was as if they were afraid the dead man could pull off a second miracle in one day by bending the bars to get into the cell with them. The people in all three cells were screaming, and with as many as twelve people in each cell, the screaming was deafening.
The infected stood still for several seconds, just long enough for the people trapped with it to wonder if they were actually going to get a break. Maybe this one was different and couldn’t see them. It lifted its head and aimed its milky white eyes toward them, and the screaming and shoving became even more frantic. It took one step forward and stopped. Something bounced off of its head and landed on the floor. It was a water bottle.
A young man in the cell on the right was reaching through the bars and waving his hands at the infected.
“Hey you…hey. Look at me,” he yelled at the infected that stood only a few feet from him.
A groan escaped from its mouth as it took a few steps toward the young man. Both hands lifted out at the Good Samaritan who was risking his life for people he didn’t know
. As soon as the infected reached toward him, everyone in all three cells began to scream. It was as if they were sure it would get him, so people began screaming for him to get away from the bars. Even some of the people in the cell with the infected were yelling at him, but as the distance between the two became shorter and shorter, he kept his arms between the bars and shouted taunts at the creature that used to be human.
Before the infected reached the bars, everyone was shocked when the young man struck first. His hands shot forward, and he grabbed the infected by both cuffs of its jacket. He yanked the cuffs as hard as he could, and the infected slammed into the bars face first. The young man held onto the jacket cuffs that had easily slipped past the hands, and he tied the loose material of the sleeves into a knot on his side of the bars. The infected was pinned safely against the bars inside a straitjacket. 0
The screams turned to cheers, and when they died down, the young man yelled for everyone to listen. First, he wanted to know if anyone else was dying in the cells, or if anyone was bitten. There was a general commotion as everyone in each cell turned to assess who their cellmates were and whether or not any of them had been bitten. The reports were almost simultaneous as someone in each of them spoke up and said no to the questions. Secondly, he asked if anyone had weapons or something that could be used as a rope. The next infected to reach through the bars might not be wearing a jacket.
As frightened as everyone was, the last part of his question earned him a round of cheers, but one at a time the cells reported that they had no weapons worth mentioning. There were a couple of pen knives and a pair of scissors. It was amazing how many people had fingernail clippers, and one woman offered up her keychain can of pepper spray. Someone politely thanked her but added that they didn’t think pepper spray would work on the infected.
