Pulse (3 page)

He began typing, advising they make an official announcement as soon as possible, and reviewing each bit of concrete information they knew so far.

He glanced at the word ‘dangerous’
on his notepad.

Adam wasn't a religious man, but he was considering a life change.

Lindsey Price's daughter Sally fell off her swing set and complained she had pain in her arm. The five year old had developed a tendency to dramatize lately, and she claimed it was broken. If it weren’t for the fact that she said the very same thing about her leg last week, they would’ve taken her to the hospital the instant it happened.

But since Sam lost his job they didn’
t have health insurance and the trip to the hospital would cost them dearly for another alleged broken limb. His on and off farm and landscaping work was barely enough to get them by as it was.

It took an hour of discussion before Lindsey resolved to ask her parents for money if they weren’t able to get a good payment plan for whatever bills they incurred.

“We are not bad parents,” Lindsey told Sam firmly. “I can’t believe we waited this long.”

Sam had a job that day, so Lindsey went alone.
When they arrived, something was off. It was the attitude the staff had; distant and irritated. The nurse was on edge as she took Sally’s weight and height, her mind elsewhere. Lindsey asked her a question regarding Sally’s height just to see if she was paying attention, if Sally was meeting the average height for her age, and the nurse didn’t even answer. When the doctor came in he had the same attitude.

“Do I get a lollipop after?” Lindsey asked him, her tone commanding.
“I got one last time I was here, and mom and dad don’t let me have sugar at home. She had to ask twice before the doctor shook himself as though coming out of a daze and nodded.

“
Of course. I’ve got red, blue, and orange.”

She pursed her lips, displeased with the options. “I like green.”

Lindsey rubbed Sally’s back, wanting to speed up the exam. If they weren’t going to give her the time of day, she didn’t want to be here. The sooner they could get an X-ray and find out if her arm was broken, the sooner they could leave. In the meantime, she had to derail the oncoming tantrum Sally was about to have.

“Honey, you like blue, too.”

Her daughter shrugged. “Green.”

The doctor glanced at the door. Lindsey set her jaw, glaring at the doctor as she told Sally, “We’ll get you ten green lollipops at the store on the way home.”

“Ok.” She smiled.

The doctor
wasn’t amused. He’d only just began checking out her arm when the commotion started. At first it was a series of scuffles, then it sounded like people were knocking things over.

The doctor excu
sed himself from the exam room in a rush. Lindsey cracked the door open to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on. When she saw the crazy people and the blood, she knew she had to get her and her daughter to safety.

She told Sally to be brave. She carried her down the hall, eyes darting about. Nurses were panicking,
racing to and from rooms. The screaming was picking up. Sally was crying about pain in her arm. But all she focused on was getting out.

As she rounded a corner she slipped and came crashing down. Sally fell from her arms face first into a pool of blood.

“Mom! Mom, I can't see!”

Lindsey picked her up and wiped as much blood from her daughter's face as she could. “I know baby, we're leaving. It's going to be okay. I have boogie wipes in the car.”

“Mom, it tastes gross,” Sally cried. Spit and blood dribbled from her mouth. “I want to go home! I want to go home
now
!”

In front of them a crazed woman stood behi
nd the reception desk. Her chest heaved as she breathed. Blood and spit spattered from her mouth. Lindsey bolted passed her and out the doors, praying she wouldn’t pursue.

They made it out and to the car just as police were swarming the building. Lindsey asked for help, but three people ran from the hospital and began attacking the police.
When the deafening roar of gunfire began, she knew there was no help for her there.

Neither of them were hurt
, besides Sally’s arm. She took Sally home and cleaned her up, researching home remedies for temporarily aiding broken limbs until they could get to a doctor. Each time Lindsey thought of the event, trying to make sense of it, it was a blur. She put her attention to making sure Sally was comfortable, bringing her water with ice chips in her favorite princess cup and making sure her stuffed animals were arranged to her liking.

When she finally fell asleep, Lindsey retreated to
the office where she began calling every doctor’s office in town that she could, researching the nearest hospitals. Sam never kept his phone on him during work, making her feel alone.

What a mess,
she thought as another recorded message told her the office was closed. She set down the phone. The other private doctor’s offices around town weren’t answering. All they could do was make the trip to the nearest ER, nearly sixty miles away. At times like this Lindsey cursed living in such a remote area.

Sam spent his entire life in only a few towns in North Dakota doing farm work. He came to Boston to help his high school friend remodel a house, which is where he met Lindsey. She fell in love with him the day she met him. His time in Boston went from a couple months to a year and they got married. Sam wanted to return to North Dakota, convincing her it was a great place to raise the child she was pregnant with. She agreed.

After the miscarriage he started drinking. Lindsey didn’t blame him. Words couldn’t describe the depression she spiraled into afterwards. It took years before they tried again. When Sally was born
, Sam got sober and they resumed their lives.

She went into her daughter's room. The afternoon light cut though the blinds and illuminated her sickly form. The bedding was soaked. The acrid stench of sweat and what smelled like rot almost choked her. Lindsey’s pulse quickened. Her palms grew damp.

Sally had a fever and was sweating heavily. She’d shown no signs of being sick when they got home, but it seemed like she was in the throes of an awful flu.

“Sweetie? We're going to take you to a different doctor, okay? Let's get you ready.”

She sat on the bed and her daughter groaned.

“Mom, I don't feel good.” She whimpered. “My belly hurts. Can you rub it?”

“Sure, of course.” She peeled the blanket away and moved her hand in circular motions over her daughter's stomach. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suppress the nasty feeling of the slimy sweat against her skin.

Then s
he felt something moving. Undulating. As Lindsey lifted the shirt and beheld the skin shifting, as though something were alive beneath it, she saw spots then blackness as she fainted.

Two days after the North Dakota accident it became a blip on the news. Dom heard no customers at work speak of it. Normally the original Starbucks location in Pike Place was packed and a hub of conversation. Not a trace of it was on the news. Unlike what he suspected about it being sensationalized, the news seemed to run out of information to tell and repeated the same report, sometimes the wording or angle barely changed.

People on the internet still brought it up on occasion. There were a few memes, but non
e funny enough to pick up speed. Much of the panic buying of ammunition and food at local stores died down.

Things were almost back to normal when, on the third day since the incident, the seven remaining living victims went insane and began massacring people at a hospital. The news didn't need to sensationalize it. The footage they played nonstop on every station said it all.

Insanity wasn’t an overstatement. It was exactly right.

Cell phones and
leaked security footage captured scenes of brutal violence and gore. Bloodied, spastic aggressors tackled people to the floor and beat them. Sometimes they used their mouths and tore out huge chunks of flesh. They kept going until there was nothing but pulpy mess and broken bones left.

It would’ve been easy
for Dom to plop down on the couch and surf every news channel for more details. For another personal story or new angle. To feed his morbid curiosity. He’d done it before with various murder cases or tragedies, but this time Dom stopped watching after the first ten minutes. He'd seen the worst horror movies. He’d played the most M-rated videogames. He considered himself desensitized to violence because of them. Yet what the TV was showing made him sick. This was worse than anything he could ever have imagined.

Desensitized? It was impossible to make yourself immune to the scene of a man beating a toddler’s head against a counter.

The world started watching about an hour after it started happening. Eight hours later and most of them were probably still there, glued to it, basking in the chaos and tragedy. They were calling their loved ones, making sympathetic noises and talking about how terrible it all was.

Brian cycled through three news channels, his laptop, and his phone to maximize his information absorption rate.

Brian and Chelsea insisted it was a zombie apocalypse. For real. Viral. The man who attacked the people at the grocery store must have been infected and the ones he didn't kill were infected. Brian bet the reason why police weren't able to get it under control was because more people were being infected, their numbers growing. And it seemed true. The situation was spiraling out of control. If only seven people started the attack, and it was still going in an
entire
hospital, there had to be something escalating it.

Dom's stomach was tight and he felt on edge. He felt immense sorrow for the victims in the hospital, but at the same time...

Anne closed the coffee shop down early in respect for the incident and everyone got to go home early. If he didn’t know what a heartless bitch she was, the gesture would’ve been good. But he knew she did it because it made her look like a good, sympathetic manager.

The potential zombie apocalypse had only just started and he was already benefiting from it. A free day off from work?

Dom mentally slapped himself. He was no better than the news channels profiting off the tragedy. There he was, drooling over a day off when people were killed over nothing.

He found himself wandering to the pantry and extra bedroom to check how much food and ammunition they had. He was right when he told Chelsea they had enough food for two months. If they rationed well. Growing up, his mother emphasized disaster preparedness and it stuck with him. He tilted a flat of soup from Costco to check the expiration date. It expired mid last year, but it was still good.

“I think we should get supplies.”

Dom jumped at the sound of Brian's voice. He hadn't seen him move for any reason but to eat or relieve himself all day. “What?”

“The CDC just made a statement. Come look.”

He followed his roommate to the living room, where something from CNN was paused.

Brian hit play and Dom watched the two minute announcement.

“Get your keys,” Dom said, the second it was over. “We're going to Wal
-Mart.”

***

“Full quarantine on the entire state. Can you believe that?”

Dom shook his head. He was still trying to believe it. “There's no way they can stop it from leaving the state. If it's as bad as they said, once it reaches more populated areas it will snowball.”

“That's why we're gearing up now,” Brian said. The car swerved into the other lane. He wasn't a good driver to begin with; his emphatic hand motions as he spoke made it even worse.

The drive across I90 started to seem like a more dangerous venture than the task at hand. The nearest Wal
-Mart was almost thirty minutes away, but it was the cheapest and most well stocked store. They could get everything they needed in one stop.

“I wish we started preparing sooner, to tell you the truth. Days ago.” Dom sighed. “We've seen every zombie movie, read like every zombie book. If we were really serious we would've gotten food and ammo four days ago when this thing first started.”

"Let it be known, I
did
say we should on the first day," Brian snapped.

He gritted his teeth. Brian had, but if he hadn't been so damn catty about it maybe Dom would've listened. Besides, he also held himself accountable. He thought about it, too.

“Anyway, remember bath salts?"

“Exactly. We didn't do anything to prepare," Dom said. He was glad Brian mentioned it; the blame went to both of them, then.

They coasted off their exit. Away from Seattle the roads were more spacious, the buildings shorter and farther apart.

“We didn't, but here is the huge difference
: the government actually said we're in trouble. They’re for real shutting down entire states!”