Infected (4 page)

He would have to go back into the emergency room. People dying in there.

George hurried down the hallway that led back to the emergency room. He was hoping Emma would get back soon. The backup would be welcome, and this would go quicker with her around. He wanted to be home working his way through a six pack of Yeungling and devouring a microwave pizza. Instead he was chasing after a freak who was intent on single-handedly fucking up the hospital.

He heard screaming and crashing coming from the ER, and he reached the corridor with the patient rooms. At the end of the corridor another creature  - like Marty- hunched over a dead doctor and was tearing through his guts. It ripped out handfuls of guts, loops of intestine. It threw them against the wall and they spattered.

The thing turned its gaze toward George and charged. He dropped into a shooter's stance, two hands on the gun, aimed and fired. The Glock sounded like a cannon in the hallway. The thing's head snapped back and blood painted the wall. It kept coming, crawling at him, and he put another round in its skull. It twitched a few times and stopped moving.

He approached the thing, which had been human not too long ago. It had been a man in a pink polo shirt, jeans, and loafers. Now, the shirt was painted red. He studied the thing for a moment. There were bit of flesh stuck in its teeth.

Chapter Six

Emma caught up with George, who was standing over a dead man with jelly for brains. “What the hell happened?”

George told her how Marty had gone apeshit in the CAT scan room, and how he'd found one of these humanoid bastards tearing someone's guts out.

“The virus. Whatever it is. It's changing them,” Emma said. “How many more in the emergency room?”

George said, “Don't know. We'll want to find the doc and ask him how many infected.”

There were six bays in the corridor. If you turned the corner, there was an open area with room for seven more gurneys around the walls.  From this area came a series of crashes and screams. They couldn't wait any longer. She drew her Glock and said to George, “We've got to go in.”

George nodded. They turned the corner and saw five more of the things. Two were hunched over dead bodies, chewing the necks and stripping away muscle and flesh. Emma drew a bead on one of them, put two shots in its head. The other one, hearing this, turned its head. She blew half its face off. That left three more.

The other three tore out of the main room, busting through the double doors. Emma followed to the door, opened it, and squeezed off three shots. They missed, and the creatures loped around a corner and disappeared.
Son of a bitch
.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and was wound so tight, she spun and backhanded the man across the face. Her face went red as she realized she'd just clocked Doctor Weiss. He stood rubbing his cheek, which had sprouted an angry red welt.

“Hello to you, too, Sheriff,” Weiss said.

“Sorry. Wound tight.”

“Why are you at the door?”

“Three of those freaks just took off that way. Towards the main lobby.”

“We can't let them get to the upper floors.”

Emma said, “How many patients with this. Would you guess?”

“We have a hundred beds. Almost all full with this...whatever it is. So figure at least eighty to ninety, plus what was in the emergency room.”

“Dammit. That's a lot to handle.”

George sidled up to Emma. “I just called for backup. Orr's tied up?”

“I sent him to the Ramsey building,” Emma said.

Their backup choices were thin to begin with. Orr was the only other one on duty tonight. Her other deputies were either off tonight or away on vacation. And she didn't have time to track people down.

“We need to get the riot guns from the cars. Doctor Weiss, what floors would the non-infected people be on?”

“Generally seven and eight. Those are the surgical floors. There's a kid on nine, too. I've seen him a number of times. Chris. He'd be in peds.”

“What about the military?” George asked.

“The nearest base is two hundred miles away,” Emma said. “We need help now.”

“Might be worth calling,” George said.

“The shotguns, George. Time's wasting. I'll have Orr call them.”

Tim Orr pulled his cruiser up in front of the Ramsey building. He parked, got out, and headed for the front door. Chief Ross had sounded panicked on the phone, telling him something about a pervert assaulting her daughter. And that some weird stuff was going on at the hospital. She couldn't say what, though.

Tim was the newest member of the force, on for a little over two years. He liked the job well enough, but you could only break up so many fights at Yancy's Tavern or write so many speeding tickets before things turned deadly dull. Maybe this case would be different, something exciting. He might even get to chase a suspect.

He radioed to the Chief that he was on scene. The building seemed quiet and he approached the front doors and went inside. The building didn't seem much warmer inside. In fact it almost matched the cool October air outside. The lobby was all marble and granite, giving the place a cool feeling.

He heard an elevator ding and then some voices. From a corridor off the main lobby, two men and a woman appeared. One man had white, bushy eyebrows and dressed in a suit that probably cost more than a month's pay. The woman was in her early twenties, wore a short skirt, and walked like she was advertising ass for sale. The other guy was a twenty something with a nose piercing and spiky hair.

“Someone had a problem here?” Tim asked, and they all stopped.

The old man said, “One of my employees. He's up on eight with his daughter. Says she got assaulted by our maintenance guy.”

“Where were you all headed?”

“Home,” the woman said.

“Not yet. I'll need you to stick around.”

“Why? It doesn't involve us.”

“Just stay put, huh? You said he's on eight?” Tim asked.

“Yeah. Suite eight-ten,” the old man said.

“I'm going up. I want to see you all here when I come back.”

Chapter Seven

Maria Gilardo had never seen anything like it in her years as an ICU nurse. Two patients who had been brought in with the bug had coded. A third was on his way out. She'd had the bodies sent down to the morgue, not wanting to cause a panic. It seemed a little late for that.

Now, she rushed with a crash car down to ICU number fourteen. Her twelve-year-old had asked her if she'd ever seen someone die, and she'd said no. Lied to the kid. She'd seen plenty, tried to help them as they left this world. He didn't need to know that yet.

The patient in question was Alexander Hammas, who was a healthy thirty-five-year-old male up until two days ago when he started becoming sick with a sniffle. He'd come up here nearly comatose and just flatlined.

She went into the room where two of the nurses were working on him.

Maria said, “Page Doctor Stanton.”

She wheeled the crash car up to the bed. As she did this, Hammas – to her surprise – sat up. When he opened his eyes, they were white.

“Call security,” Maria said. “Everyone out.”

The other two nurses backed out of the room and Maria made a break for the nurses' station, where she intended to call security. In the corridor behind her there came a crash and she glanced over her shoulder. Alexander Hammas stood in the hallway.

The other two nurses had lagged behind, and Hammas pounced on the one closest to him, driving her face-first into the floor. He twisted her neck and it snapped with a sickening crunch. Hammas then sprung onto the second nurse, catching her from behind and biting her face.

At the nurses' station, which had monitors showing each patient's vital signs, buzzers went off, the heart monitors flatlining.  She could only guess that whatever flu this was would cause them to turn into monsters. She was the last nurse left on the floor. They'd been short-staffed tonight, and her co-workers were dead.

She had to get help.

Looking down the corridor, she saw Hammas loping towards her. She had to arm herself and spotted a pair of scissors on the desk. They sure as hell didn't teach anything like this in nursing school. Hammas reached the waist-high desk, and she backed up. As it started to climb the desk, she thrust the scissors into its eye, which dripped an ugly black goo. The thing howled and grabbed at the scissors.

She ran for the elevator, reached it, and punched the button. As she looked over her shoulder, she saw the thing fall to the ground and convulse. Spittle flew from its lips. Hopefully she had hit the brain and it was going into death spasms.

The elevator door opened and she stepped on. Her first instinct was to go downstairs, get to the lobby, and get out. But there were other patients on the floors above. She had to warn them. She pressed the  
Up
button.  As the elevator ascended, she thought she heard a chorus of shrieks and screams. It sounded like tormented souls suffering in Hell.

Doctor Lori Weiss strolled through the basement corridors of St. Mary's hospital sipping watery coffee from the vending machine. From overhead came the hiss of steam pipes and the knocks and groans of the heating system. Despite the bright yellow walls, the place made her want to start taking Prozac. A basement was a basement. She hoped to transfer out of here soon.

She reached her office and sat at the desk. A pile of papers awaited her, autopsy reports and death certificates to fill out.

“Doctor Weiss?”

She looked to the door, where an orderly in green scrubs stood peeking his head inside. “What is it?”

“Just wheeled two more down for you. They're in the morgue.”

“All right, thank you.”

“Sign this please,” the orderly said, entering the office with a clipboard. She signed in the necessary spots on the forms. He ripped off the top copy and gave it to her. “Have a good night.”

“I'll try.”

Lori took off her classes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. A hot headache had settled in behind her eyes and all she could think about was getting away to the Finger Lakes with Mike for the weekend. They had reservations at a hotel/spa, and planned on hitting wineries all over Keuka Lake. No dead bodies. No stink of blood and shit from open abdominal cavities. Just her, Mike, and a ton of great wines.

The orderly strolled off, whistling a tune. She looked at the paperwork. These were patients who'd succumbed to the flu that was flooding the hospital. She could guess the cause of death:fluid in the lungs. This bug was nasty, and paranoia had spread in their little town. The high school and middle school had been closed for the last two days. She actually saw a handful of people walking around with paper dusk masks on. The world was getting crazy.

The families would likely want an autopsy.

She'd have to get someone down here to help her move the newly dead into the cooler. She got up and strolled across the hallway into the morgue. The sheet-covered bodies lay on gurneys. She should've had that orderly help her move them into the drawers. Have to call someone.

One of dead, whose belly jutted out, making the sheet look like a snow mound, twitched. Lori continued to watch. It twitched again. Then a hand dropped from beneath the sheet. Perhaps it was too close to the edge.

She approached the body and found her self gasp as the hand curled into a fist. Uncurled. She stopped. Had someone upstairs messed up? This person wasn't dead.

The person under the sheet reached over and ripped off the covering. Sat up. It was a man with enormous jowls and a fleshy double chin. She gasped. “Sir?”

The man opened his eyes and they were a grey-white. The man shifted his bulk and rolled off the gurney, getting his legs down and steadying himself. A series of gurgles and hisses came from deep in his throat. The hospital gown fell away, revealing folds of flesh and a belly that hung to the man's thighs.

He opened his mouth and drool poured onto his chin.  

“Shit. I'm going to get help.”

He lunged for her, but Lori was quicker, backing away until she bumped into the wall. The door was right next to her and she slipped out as the fat man charged. After slamming the door, she pushed her shoulder against it. From the other side, the fat man banged on the door, a mess of grunts coming from him.

She reached into her lab coat pocket and took out the key for the morgue. Hands shaking, she managed to get it in the lock and turn. The fat man repeatedly slammed into the door. Trying to get at Lori and do God-knows-what to her.

Lori returned to her office and dialed Mike's cell. He picked up on the third ring. “I need help.”

“I'm a little busy hon. My emergency room's torn to hell.”

“One of the stiffs sat up and attacked me.”

“It's happened up here, too. Are you somewhere safe now?”

It unnerved her that he didn't seem shocked. “What?”

“Multiple. The ones with the flu. Turning into some sort of mutants. They're loose in the hospital. Are you okay?”