The Neuropathology Of Zombies (8 page)

CHAPTER 6

As the elevator doors opened I half-jokingly remarked, “You guys cleared the basement, right?”
“I think so,” one of the Marines said, his voice trailing off.
I stepped out first. I stood in a long, narrow corridor. The floor was gray cement and the walls were cinder blocks painted white. Emergency lighting along the ceiling filled the hallway with a red glow. There were several large steel doors along the passageway, probably supply rooms. At the end of the hall was a single double wide white door with the words “Autopsy, Authorized Personnel Only” painted on it.
“Here we are!” I said.
I pushed on the autopsy room door, but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked by a magnetic strip at the top. I noticed a black identification badge reader mounted on the wall.
“Any ideas?” I asked after explaining the situation.
One of the Marines spoke into his radio, “Crow’s nest, do you copy?”
I figured ‘crow’s nest’ was the name of the rooftop camp. After a few seconds a voice crackled over the speaker, “Roger, what’s up?”
Our situation was described and a request was made for some tools. We waited in silence for several moments. My stomach jumped when I heard the elevator begin to rise. I panicked, thinking that the ghouls had broken through both sets of doors and figured out how to use the lift.
Two more Marines arrived. One of them carried a large olive green duffel bag; the tools inside banged together making a heavy clunking sound.
He set the bag down and unzipped it, exposing several promising looking devices. One of my guards grabbed a crow bar and began working at the overhead lock. After fifteen minutes the door to the morgue flew open. We were immediately surrounded by the damp cold that served to slow human decomposition.
“Now we’re talking,” the guard said.
One of my guards unfolded a copy of the blueprints, “This door was secure, the only other entrance, according to the floor plan, is the loading dock out back, and that’s tight as a drum. Unless someone locked themselves in here, the place should be empty.”
“Hello? Anyone here, United States Marines, we’re here to help. Call out if you are inside!” exclaimed the Marine who opened the door, crow bar still clutched in his hand. There was no reply, “Good, it’s empty, let’s go in. Us first, Doc!”
I stood behind all four men as they entered, their guns aimed at the darkness. I followed, for some reason, crouching down, making my profile low. I recognized the smell of the bleach and stale water that was used to clean the autopsy tables, it’s a scent ubiquitous to all morgues. I heard a click, and the room filled with light.
It looked functional, but appeared to be circa 1950. There was a single large white ceramic table in the middle of the suite. Over the table, extending from the ceiling like an upside down daisy, was an enormous moveable light fixture, designed to provide focused light for detailed dissections. The walls were lined by drab hospital-green ceramic tiling and the floor was covered with small brick-red colored tiles that sloped gently downwards leading to a drain in the middle of the room. Metal shelving units stocked with boxes of vinyl aprons, surgical caps, latex gloves, scalpel blades and numerous other useful items needed to perform an autopsy, lined the two far walls. Some of the boxes were on the floor and papers were strewn randomly across a silver steel workstation bench that was screwed into the third wall; it look as though whoever was here left in a hurry.
“The body storage cooler and the loading dock must be over there,” I said, pointing to two oversized metal doors that were located on the fourth wall.
I walked over and pushed open one of the doors. The Marines gathered around me. The hallway was dark. The light from the autopsy room behind us created elongated silhouettes of our bodies that extended like fingers into the dank, empty cavern.
I stepped back into the morgue and flicked the light switch beside the entrance, illuminating the hallway. The loading bay doors were located one hundred feet in front of us, a small desk with a sign-in book used for pickups and deliveries was to the left, the door to the body storage cooler was on the right.
The ruffling of our clothes was the only sound. Without warning, there was a bang, and then another bang, and within a few seconds there was the familiar slow, rhythmic pounding, reminiscent of our friends at the front door of the hospital.
“What the fuck? How did they know we were here?” one of the Marines yelled as he stormed towards the loading bay doors.
I froze in place. I immediately felt as though I had been hit in the face by a basketball; my entire body became hot like furnace, and I sensed I was rapidly expanding with air. It was the kind of sensation you get when you realize something has gone horribly wrong, and there was nothing you could do about it.
“It’s not coming from the loading dock. It’s coming from in there,” I said, pointing at the door to the storage cooler.
Everyone watched me walk over to the door. There was a small window that framed the darkness inside the body storage cooler, beyond it, I could see nothing but black. My heart was beating so loud that it drowned out the pounding sounds coming from the other side of the door.
I turned on the lights inside the cooler and instantaneously, as if by magic, a face appeared in the window. I jumped back and fell, striking my head on the opposite wall. The Marines swarmed the doorway struggling to peer inside. The pounding sound became more frantic. I closed my eyes and rubbed the back of my head.
“Oh my god, oh my god. How did they get in there?” one of the men questioned.
“They?” I thought to myself. I rose to my feet just in time to see one of the soldiers bend over, his movement followed by the sound of heavy liquid striking the cement floor with velocity.
“They?” I repeated to myself and crammed my head between the men blocking the window. A face stared back at me. Its skin had the same dull gray and green appearance as Igor’s, and it was beginning to blister and peel. A large area of the cheek was missing and strands of bloody muscle dangled like worms. The upper and lower jaw bones stuck out from under the gaping wound and pieces of meat clung to the teeth.
I tried to see what was behind him. A gray haired man was kneeling on the floor, hovering over a torn black vinyl body bag, his blue jogging suit covered in bright red blood. His hands were digging violently into the bag and his head bobbed up and down, disappearing for brief moments and then reappearing. It was when the jogger’s hands rose high over his head holding a long loop of bowel that I realized what was going on, and why the Marine had vomited: the jogger was disemboweling the corpse inside the body bag and hungrily devouring it.
The torso of the body on the floor had been ripped open and inside it was a red biohazard bag; the cadaver had been autopsied. After a postmortem examination all of the internal organs are placed inside a red garbage bag and crammed into the chest cavity. The rib cage is placed on top and the initial incision is then sewn to keep everything inside the body. This clinical thought helped me regain my focus.
“How did these freaks get in here?” a Marine shouted.
“I have a bad feeling they were wheeled in there...on gurneys,” I said. “Let’s check the log book and see if we can find out who they are and where they came from.”
I turned to the table and began to flip through the log book. There were three bodies listed on the roster.
“Ok, here we go. One body is Mary Osbourne aged 71. She died three days ago and was autopsied yesterday. She came down from room 4B on the second floor,” I said, my finger moving down the page.
A voice spoke from the dark hallway, “That must be lunch lying on the floor. Who are Igor’s twins?”
“I am not sure. Ok, here it is.” I paused for a second while I read, “A body was brought in yesterday, 55 year old man, name, Winston Marr. He came in from the Marina Star Hotel. And here is the other body, it was brought in yesterday as well, 43 year old man, name, Andrew Donald. He also came from the Marina Star Hotel.”
“Dead?” asked one of the Marines. “They were brought in dead? And now the motherfuckers are walking around inside that fucking ice box?” he continued, his voice loud and shaky.
“Yes, they were brought in dead, or at least someone
thought
they were dead. There have been cases were a person has mistakenly been pronounced, and then ‘rises’. But two people at the same time? Not likely. I think we have to assume they were really dead,” I replied.
I went back over to the window. Both creatures knelt on the floor, pawing at the half eaten body of Mary Osbourne. Our presence was no longer a concern of theirs; they seemed to be more worried about their hunger than about us.
The thought “this is quite unusual” ran through my mind and I laughed out loud at what an understatement that was. I wondered if there was a connection between the two men, they both came in from the same hotel.
I kept my eyes fixed on the Driftwood feeding inside the cooler. “Does anyone know where the name of the hotel where the police officer was attacked?”
One of the Marines picked up his radio, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” He pushed down the talk button, “Crow’s nest, we have two Driftwood down here, they are secure in the meat cooler. But does anyone know the name of the hotel where Igor came from?”
The response was barely audible through the static, “You need help? I can send down a few more guys down.” There was a pause before the voice crackled again, “The hotel was called Martina Star or Star Martina, something like that.”
“Do you mean Marina Star?” the Marine with the radio asked. “Roger that. Sure you don’t need any help?”
“Negative. We’ll be up in a bit and then we’ll figure out what to do with these freaks.”
My heart sank. I now knew that this problem was big, and most likely the result of a toxin or a viral outbreak, most likely at the hotel. It was imperative that I go there and see for myself.
The Marine put down his radio. He looked at me, “What should we do with them?”
“Leave them be for now, I guess. They’re not going anywhere,” I replied, pulling on the heavy metal paddle lock clasped to the handle of the cooler door. “Even if they are able to figure out how to use the emergency door release inside, this lock should hold them. Plus, I think they’re a little too busy right now,” I looked through the window and watched the feeding frenzy.
We left the Driftwood to finish their snack and walked back the autopsy room. I turned off the loading bay lights and locked the door. It was time to head upstairs and check on the medical team in the pathology department.

CHAPTER 7

The elevator doors opened to the first floor. I was surprised to see several soldiers welding pieces of blast steel to the main entrance. The two large bay windows on either side of the entrance were protected by steel grates pulled down from the ceiling. The lobby looked like a shopping mall before the stores opened, except for the Marines, and the walking corpses.

Although there were no windows, the pathology lab was brightly lit. The electric glow of the overhead lighting reflected off the white work benches. I could hear the mechanical grinding noise of the automated equipment coming to life. All the tissue processors and strainers seemed to be on-line and ready to work.

“Any progress?” I asked the technician.
“The blood smear is done and the frozen section of the skin is being stained, should be done in a minute,” the technician replied. He lifted the plastic tray with the frozen section slides out of the last staining solution. “How was the morgue?”

“The facility itself is nice, but there were two Driftwood in the cooler. They were chewing away on the remains of one of the patients who died on the second floor. Here’s the kicker, both Driftwood came from the same hotel, the Marina Star. That happens to be the same hotel where Igor came from. I really think we’re dealing with an outbreak or a toxin!”

I sat down at one of the microscopes and began looking at Igor’s blood smear. There wasn’t much to look at, there were no blood cells. The entire slide was covered by a hazy pink blob.

“There are only a few red blood cells on this slide, maybe the outlines of a few cell membranes, but everything is completely autolyzed. The occasional red blood cell that is here is showing some variation in shape, but I don’t know if it means anything, it’s all so lysed. It looks like deco juice!” I stated, and probably sounded a little annoyed.

Deco juice was a term I used for the greasy, balsamic vinegarlooking sludge left in a decomposed body after all the blood cells had dissolved and the contents of the arteries and veins had been consumed by bacteria. During an autopsy, once all the organs had been removed, the deco juice often forms large pools in the chest and abdominal cavities, making the shell of the corpse look like the inside of a birch bark canoe that has taken on muddy water.

“I guess I’m not surprised, given the way it looked while we were drawing it,” I continued. “How about the smear from his partner?” I asked.
I was handed a slide, I slipped it under the microscope. “It looks totally normal. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Still, we’ll have to keep an eye on him,” I said, placing the slide on the table beside me.
The technician sat down across from me at the scope, “The frozen’s done, shall we?”
We looked into a two headed microscope. It was designed so that the pathologist and the surgeon could look at the cells together. Often this exercise was lost on the surgeons, all they really wanted to know was if it was cancer, and if they should cut it out. I have actually heard a pathologist say ‘red light’ or ‘green light’ to a surgeon, which was really the only information they cared about. I don’t blame them. I find it painful to listen to a surgical pathologist ramble on about the irregular contour of a cell’s nucleus.
I put the slide on the stage and focused the low power objective, “Skin usually freezes like shit, so I am not sure what we will be able to make out. After the blood smear, my cheery outlook has started to fade!”
As I had expected, the tissue was filled with little bubbles, typical of freezing artifact. The top layer, the epidermis, separated from the dermis, a common finding in decomposition; it didn’t surprise me, given the way the skin slipped off when I took the blood samples.
I moved the objective to a higher power, “Now this is interesting. There is a little cleft here between the epidermis and the dermis. There are a few inflammatory cells, not many, but they’re real. The dermal papillae, these little ridges extending up into the epidermis, look rigid. And look at this, there is this weird eosinophilic, pink, stuff hanging off the epidermis in some of the areas where it’s separating from the dermis.” I fondled a lever on the side of the microscope that moved a glowing arrow around the field of vision. “There is some decompositional change to the tissue, but these other findings are real. I’m not sure what it means, but it is a piece of information.”
I sat back in the chair and stared at the wall. A clock said it was 11:45. I tried to think if it was 11:45 a.m. or p.m. I was tired and hadn’t eaten anything since I arrived on the island.
One of the armed guards entered the lab. He cleared his throat before speaking in an almost incomprehensible Southern accent, “Sir’s, General Fitch wants to have a briefin’ back at the barracks in an hour. The helicopter’s ready ‘n waitin’ whenever you’ll are.”
This was good news. It would give me a few moments to eat and have a shower. It seemed like I had been sweating continuously since the air force base in Florida. I stood up and followed the soldier out into the hallway, the rest of the medical team trailed behind me.