Outbreak, page 4
part #3 of Reign of the Dead Series
“What’chu doin’ out here my Nigga?” the unnamed shooter asked Owens. “Tryin’ to get yourself killed? What would we do without my brother here to represent?”
The two men laughed like old partners in crime who had lost touch with one another. It was as if they were completely oblivious to the bloody carnage on the street around them. The other two men continued to comb the area for guns, drugs and any other loot they might have missed at first perusal.
“Jerome, you’ve got perfect timing as always.” Jamal took a step back to look at the man in front of him. “These fuckin’ Greaser-Bangers think they know somethin’. They know Jesus now.”
Jamal motioned to the Latino kid with a bullet hole in his back. “They fucked with the wrong nigga this time.”
Jamal’s eyes grew wide with shock as the kid began to struggle up from the pavement and move toward Jerome. Jerome’s back was turned and he could not see the approaching apparition, only the shocked look on his friend’s face alerted him as Jamal uttered, “What the fuck?”
The pock-faced kid Jamal had shot in the crotch was now pulling himself up the side of Jamal’s Mustang. Two others staggered to their feet simultaneously from the black pavement. The two looters were now facing their bloody, shambling, upright corpses.
Pock-face fell on the nearest looter with his maw opened wide. Saliva rolled from the gaping orifice as he chomped down on his nemesis like he were taking a bite out of a human burrito. As he struggled to get away from the determined grip of his attacker, a huge blade appeared in his hand seemingly out of thin air. He buried it up to the hilt in the throat of the crotch-less Mexican.
Pock-face fell back against Jamal’s car chewing on the piece of flesh that he had torn out of the human burrito’s bare back. He seemed temporarily contented to just enjoy his little snack, oblivious of the fact that his genitals had been effectively blown off, or that there was a knife handle protruding from his throat just beneath his chin. It bobbed up and down rhythmically as he chewed the chunk of ragged flesh from the looter’s back.
“Fuck man. Fuck,” Jamal exclaimed to his friend, “I can’t be in this shit, Jerome. I’ve got too much to lose.” Jamal tucked the pistol into the waistband of his baggy jeans, shaking his head emphatically at his former partner in crime and like a track star at the sound of a starting pistol, Jamal took off, sprinting up the alley toward Fifth Avenue. “Jerome, man, I can’t be in this, Dog. I can’t.” He glanced back at Jerome over his shoulder as he retreated. “You deal with this, you know what to do. You know who to call,” he shouted, as the macabre dance of black and brown mutilated gang members began to tear at each other behind him. “Man—shit has done gone bad.”
Jamal stopped then, reached in his pocket, and threw the keys of the vintage Mustang to Jerome who promptly reached out in the semi-darkness and miraculously plucked the flying keys from the air in front of him.
“Jamal?” Jerome stood stunned, watching the back of his retreating friend.
“Take it man. It’s a borrowed ride. Know what I mean? Get the fuck outta here. You ain’t seen me, understand? You ain’t seen me. You keep it clean now. No tracks back to me.”
Jerome stared at the keys and then to his friend as he hurried away. “What, you want me to take care of your hot shit and this mess in the alley? Fuck that, and fuck you!”
Jamal did not stop again as he hurried away, trying to grasp what he had seen unfold and process what it meant for him. It meant trouble; big, career ending, life in prison kind of trouble. Jamal didn’t know much, but he did know that he was not going back to living that kind of life again. “This shit has done gone bad, bad, bad. Believe it,” he repeated, as he disappeared around the corner with not so much as a wave to his friend and rescuer. His parting words echoed back to Jerome, bouncing off the buildings, fire escapes and dumpsters in the alley. “I owe you brother,”
It was a debt that Jerome would never collect. It was the last thing he heard before the crotch-less Mexican spun him around and promptly ripped out his throat with the prettiest, whitest, straightest teeth Jerome had ever seen.
Deep in the shadows of the door stoop behind a blue dumpster, Chuck Longfellow held his friend Duane in a headlock. His hand firmly covered his endlessly moving mouth. Chuck pointed to the retreating form of Jamal Owens. With his lips pressed against Duane’s ear, he whispered, “There—stay out of sight or we’re both as good as dead. Follow him outta here.”
The two country mice slipped past the fray of blood and carnage and moved silently up the alley in the wake of the black antagonist, unnoticed by the other actors in the macabre play.
4
Nurse Beatty lunged for Doctor Adam Riker.
He met her attack with extended arms, holding her at bay as she clawed at his face. Her eyes were wide and wild; a crazed look replaced her usually calm veneer. In spite of her feral thrashing, it required only minimal effort to control her. It was the mental effort that took most of Adam Riker’s strength. He had known her for most of his professional career. To see her like this now made it difficult to stay focused. He called out to her and she lunged in close, her throat releasing a raspy whine.
Doctor Whiteman leaped from the corner to help the guard as he struggled to keep the other two reanimates at bay. With his uninjured arm, he grabbed a middle aged, potbellied man with a fat face. The injuries to his internal organs seemed to have little effect on his ability to be aggressive and move offensively. He bulled forward, pinning the doctor against the wall.
Riker slung nurse Beatty away from him and grabbed a metal stand that held two IV bags and hit her in the face with the bottom of it. The nurse fell against the wall and slid to the floor, landing firmly on her rump.
“Everyone, out of the room!” Riker screamed, and tossed away the IV stand in favor of a push broom. He used the broom to push the other two reanimates away as he backed out of the room and swung the double doors closed.
“We need something to keep these doors shut.”
The guard pushed him aside and wrapped an extension cord through the two handles several times, then tied it into a triple knot before joining Doctor Riker and the others who were watching from several feet away.
Two dead faces screamed at them from the other side of the door’s small windows. Then a crash, as Janice joined them.
“They’ll get out of there eventually,” the Guard said.
Riker nodded, “There’s something wrong with them. They aren’t rational. They don’t seem to be thinking clearly—like rabid animals. Has anyone called the police?”
A special report on the waiting room television grabbed their attention and in spite of the cacophony beyond the emergency room doors, they turned to watch as the reporter reluctantly gave them the news.
Michael collapsed into a chair by the window. He was trying to make sense of what had happened as he listened to the man on the television. A nightmare, he thought. But that was wishful thinking. This was really happening.
“This is a special report from the WVNY television studios,” the talking head announced from behind a shiny, blue desk.
“Now from the field, here’s Peter Johnson.”
The operating room door thundered with the relentless pounding of fists and furniture as the reanimated bodies continued their assault on it.
“Reports are beginning to cross the wires of numerous acts of violence in Atlanta, Washington D.C, Philadelphia, and New York. Perpetrators of these crimes are said to be strange in appearance and often injured in some way. In many cases they seem to be in a trance-like state and unresponsive. Communication or reason with these violent individuals has so far been unsuccessful.”
Riker turned and watched the crazies on the other side of the door with growing interest as the reporter spoke.
“It is the recommendation of the President of the United States that all citizens in affected areas remain indoors until this emergency has passed.”
The screen changed to a field reporter in Atlanta, Georgia. The man was obviously only minutes from being in bed asleep, his hair and clothes disheveled. In the background a hellish mob pushed and shoved its way through a street sealed off with concrete barricades and policemen.
“A state of emergency exists in Atlanta.” The reporter shouted above the clamor. Once past the barriers, the mob crashed into the line of policemen. The ones that reacted quickly enough withdrew and ran past the reporter. Others fell under the sudden swarm and were lost beneath them.
“We have to go now,” the reporter said nervously, and dropped his microphone. The camera became shaky and fell to the ground beside it where the scene unfolding was seen at an angle as the crowd lurched forward. There was a scream, and the picture went blank.
Riker sent a lamp crashing from the top of a table and then shoved the table in front of the ER doors. The guard followed suit and in a few minutes the doors were covered with the furniture from the emergency room waiting area. Michael stared into the room. “My wife is in there with them,” he said, softly.
“Your wife is one of them.” Riker said, a bit harshly. He regretted his tone as soon as he had said it. “Don’t try to open those doors,” he continued more evenly, trying his best to put forth his professional bedside manner and at the same time sound calm.
Michael wanted to ignore the Doctor’s warning and pull Rebecca from inside the room with the others. If he could isolate her from them, maybe she would calm down. But he knew that he was trying to rationalize an irrational situation. That was not his Becca. It was something else.
“What has she become? What are they?” Michael asked.
Riker walked close and stared into the room with him. “I’m not sure, but I think—they are dead.”
***
Jeffrey Brown listened as the morgue became an echoing chamber of howls and moans. The walls pulsed with whatever was on the other side, thrashing about inside the shelved drawers.
At first he thought he was surely going mad. Certainly the sounds were his imagination and not from within the walls where the dead were kept in cold storage.
From time to time, Jeffrey Brown would pull them from their cool slumber for a peek, especially the more attractive females. He liked to touch them, and caress their cool skin. Even into death he appreciated their beauty and their quiet compliance. The unmoving dead were clean virgins, unstained by life’s problems, sinful lusts, and greedy ambitions. In his mind, they were perfection in its truest sense. But now he wondered if his fetish for the deceased had gotten him into trouble with the keepers of afterlife and he grabbed his hair and pulled from both sides until he screamed.
For a moment, the racket stopped, the room was silent, and he was once again alone with his thoughts. It had been his imagination after all. Something he had eaten maybe. What would the dead want with the living? Certainly they were dead, and dead meant dead. The dead were unmoving…silent…perfect.
Jeffrey sat in his chair, both hands over his heart, breathing deeply. With each breath his temporary madness faded until he was again calm. Yes, something he had eaten. Or maybe he had fallen asleep in his chair. That was it, a nightmare, just a bad dream.
Jeffrey blew a long sigh of relief and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.
Then, two recent cases for study on the tables to his left fluttered beneath the sheets. Jeffrey’s heart began to pound again as he watched, breathless.
The sheets slid from their faces as they sat up revealing pale, vacant stares. The first one to rise was a young brunette that he’d fancied right away. Earlier that night he had leaned down over her face. He hovered there briefly, staring at her perfect features. How beautiful she was with her waist-length, chocolate mane and slender form. For a moment he contemplated a kiss. Her full lips beckoned him to do so. But he covered her again, unable to find the courage to do such a thing.
She stood there now, at least six-feet tall with her right arm extended. Her hand closed as if grabbing an imaginary object from the empty air. A raspy sigh escaped her full, dark lips as they parted.
Jeffrey stood, unable to take his eyes from her now that she was alive and standing in front of him.
“No, you’re dead to me now.” He could hear himself saying it, but somehow he still wanted her, even in her imperfect state.
“Do you HEAR? Leave me alone…you’re dead. Go back to sleep. I wish you had never been brought in here. You’re not real. You’re just a bad dream.” He felt a warm tear slide down his cheek and realized that he was crying and that he was also very awake.
One of the wall doors popped open and the corpse stored there fought to free itself from the confined space; an old woman with many wrinkles stuck her face out and screamed loudly at him.
She was not one of his desirables. She was nothing like the thirty-something brunette with the full lips. “No…I don’t want you. Get back in the wall. I don’t want ANY OF YOU!” he cried.
The two corpses from the tables moved toward him in ungraceful steps. The other, a man with his left arm severed in a car crash, groaned hellishly as he lumbered across the hard floor in baby steps as though learning to walk for the very first time. The woman, no longer attractive to Jeffrey, bugged her glazed eyes. Both were nearly on top of him before he reacted and ran for the door.
***
Riker moved to the main desk and dialed nine for an outside line. He was met by a busy signal. Not the normal kind of busy signal but a fast, irritating one. The kind that usually meant ‘out of order.’
Two police cars raced past the hospital with their lights on and sirens blaring. Doctor Riker watched them through the window as they raced by. Their piercing wails were followed by the hospital’s fire alarm. This provoked even more panic, and the waiting room emptied. Only the doctors, a few staff members, and Michael remained. Riker was staring at the red alarm bell on the ceiling as it rang when Jeffrey Brown exited the elevator and fell into the waiting room.
Jeffrey placed his back to the wall and tip toed as if walking the ledge of a tall building to the other side of the room. Once there, he cocked his head and squinted his eyes in interest, fascinated by the reanimates that were slamming their bodies against the double doors of the Emergency room.
Jeffrey pointed back toward the elevator. “There are more of them downstairs,” he said barely above a whisper to Doctor Riker. “The dead, they got up. The morgue is full of them. I didn’t touch them. It’s not my fault.” He spoke slowly, and without emotion in an effort to retain his composure.
It seemed the absence of a response from Riker led Jeffrey to believe he had not heard him. “Did you hear me?” he said. “They’re coming up.”
Riker said, “How many are down there?”
“Eight or ten, I think. I’m not sure. I didn’t stick around to count them.” Jeffrey pointed to the hall. “They’ll come up the elevator, or the stairs. They came after me. It isn’t my fault. I didn’t touch them. Understand? You believe me, don’t you?”
“We need to try to keep them down there.” Riker told him. “We can block off the stairs. Maybe they won’t know how to use the elevator.”
Suddenly, the door to the stairs flew open and Riker spun on his heels.
The morgue’s occupants staggered into the hallway, first one, then two, until the hall was filled. Jeffrey Brown whimpered, bolted for the exit door, and disappeared into the early morning darkness.
Adam Riker slammed the door shut between the waiting room and hall and then backed away as that door too became a rhythmic pulse of beating hands.
“They’ll figure out how to open the door,” Riker explained. “I’m going upstairs with the other patients. They’ll need my help. You should all follow me.”
Michael Longley could take no more. “No! If we go to the upper floors we could get trapped. In case you weren’t paying attention to the man on TV, this is not a phenomenon limited to this hospital. This is something worse, much worse. Besides, that goddamned fire alarm probably means there’s a fire in the building somewhere. It’s best we leave, and leave now.”
“It might be even more dangerous outside.” Riker cautioned. “What if we go out there and there’s more of them?”
“It will be light soon. The police will be on top of this— whatever it is. And quickly, I hope.”
Adam said, “The patients upstairs…I should be up there with them.”
“Fine, you do what you want Doc,” Michael said, “But I’m leaving. I won’t allow myself to be backed into a corner with no escape.”
“Neither will I,” the big hospital guard said. “Upstairs is a bad idea.”
Riker’s instinct for self-preservation took momentary precedence over his Hippocratic Oath and he reluctantly followed the others outside. Indeed he did smell smoke. And he was sure there was nothing in the rule book that said he was duty-bound to lay down his life in an impossible situation. And with that thought, Adam Riker did feel better for the moment.
Last to leave, Michael stopped and turned at the door.
He had seen the dead on more than one occasion. His job as a policeman in Chicago had given him a front row seat to all sorts of atrocities. He watched his wife as she continued to bang her hands against the blood-stained window. The hospital alarm only slightly registered in his ears as if it were far away. The sound of her fingernails clawing at the door with shrill scrapes as they dug into the wood rang louder in his mind than the alarm. He continued to watch as she moaned pathetically. She did not know him. He could see it in her deadened eyes. And yet, she seemed to hold a kind of passion for him there. And though there was vacancy of life in her eyes, there was also that strange, unfamiliar passion and longing. For what, he could not grasp. What could the dead desire? The back of Michael’s throat tightened and he forced himself to turn away. He would never see her again. And this is how he would remember her.
