Dead Seasons: Part Four

[Morris Hospital/Sept. 24th/2234hrs]

Tim stood alone in the Ambulance Dock outside the automatic doors that led into the E. R. check-in area. He paced back and forth along the pockmarked concrete slabs that made up the sidewalk under the area’s canopy. In the time since they’d arrived at the hospital in Nick’s truck it’d started raining again; not the torrential downpour that they drove through earlier, but, instead, a steady, calm trickling of water from the night sky. It was funny to him that calm was the word that came to mind given that he was anything but calm right now. In fact, he was the very fucking antithesis of calm.

What the hell is going on, he thought to himself for possibly the forty-ninth time since the glass doors had slid shut behind him, effectively closing him off from his friends. Sarah had come followed him out after he’d grabbed Ray, but once look at him when he spun on her outside and she’d held up her hands and slowly nodded her head before turning and going back inside.

“I’ll, uh, go get you a glass of water or something,” she had said as she turned her back on him.

“Whatever,” he’d shot back. He hadn’t meant to be so terse with her--he had had a crush on her just as long as Ray had, but had never acted on it because he loved Amy--but he couldn’t control his words. His rationale had checked out about two hours ago when the love of his life had tried to chew a hole in his face.

“This can’t be happening,” he said out loud to the rain. “Amy was dead. She is dead!”

But that didn’t stop the images of her snapping teeth and lashing arms from flooding his brain again. In those brief moments in the Focus, Tim had gotten a good look at Amy. He’d looked into her eyes and hadn’t like what he had seen. Eyes that had once been full of life and love for the world had suddenly gone cold. The life replaced with…what, exactly? There had been something there but he had never seen anything like it in his life. But he would see it every time he closed his own eyes for the rest of his life.

“Hey,” Sarah’s voice called from behind him, nearly causing him to jump out of his own skin. He turned and was going to ask her to leave, but stopped as he saw her, standing there with a Styrofoam cup in one hand and once of those small plastic cups that came with Nyquil in the other. “The nurse thought you might need these.”

She held up the plastic cup and he could see three small white pills in the bottom. He guessed the other hand held the water she’d gone back in for.

“What is it,” he asked, his voice still hoarse but softer than the last time he’d spoken to her.

“Tylenol, I think,” she replied. She must have picked up on his gentler tone because she took several steps toward him, her hands extending to offer both cups. “She didn’t really say. But, when I asked for the water, she said you could probably use them, so I’m guessing it’s something you should probably take, Tim.”

Tim nodded once and then crossed the remaining paces between them, taking the Styrofoam cup and holding his other hand out, palm up, to accept the pills. She understood the action and tipped the plastic cup over his hand, spilling the white tablets into it. Without a word, he tossed the pills into his mouth and downed the water. The liquid was blessedly cold and he was suddenly aware that he had been ridiculously thirsty. He crushed the cup and tossed it haphazardly toward one of those pebble-covered garbage cans with the sand-filled ashtray on top you see anywhere lots of people gather; the cup’s lack of weight caused its trajectory to fall just short of the can. He stared at it for a moment, debating whether or not to pick it up, and decided, fuck it.

“Thank you,” he said, turning back to Sarah.

“How’re you holding up,” she asked, nodding acknowledgement to his gratitude.

He stood silent for a second, a thousand thoughts flying through his head in the time it took his heart to beat twice, the final thought being the image of Amy’s eyes. They’d looked as if someone had injected milk into them. He could still see her pupils and that line of color around them, but the color was gone. No, not gone, exactly…faded. As if her eyes were looking out through the cloud of whatever had taken over her mind.

His silence must have gone on longer than he thought, because Sarah reached out and touched his elbow.

“Tim,” she said, her voice picking up at the end, posing his name as a question.

He shook his head and looked down at her. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him.

“Really,” he said, reading the unspoken question there. “I mean, you know, as fine as anyone whose girlfriend got shot in the fucking neck and then tried to kill him can be.”

“Tim, we don’t know what happened for sure,” she said, trying to console him. “That cop said they were sending some people back to--”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Sarah?” He didn’t mean to snap at her, he just couldn’t stand here and listen to her bullshit him for the sake of trying to be nice. “I may not be a specialist or whatever, but I’ve played enough videogames and seen enough movies and Discovery Channel shows to know what a fucking bullet wound might look like! And, y’know what? That hole in Amy’s neck spewing blood all over my car was pretty fucking close!”

She took a few startled steps back from him and he sighed. His shoulders sagged with the weight of his reality in the last few hours. How could a trip to Great America with his closest friends turn into something written by George fucking Romero?

And, as if the world had been waiting for that que…

There was a muffled scream and then the sound of breaking glass. Tim followed Sarah’s gaze upward and had just enough time to lock onto the spray of glass and tangle of bodies before he was forced to follow it back down to the ground.

And right on top of Sarah.

The sound was like nothing he’d ever heard before. Sure movies have come a long way in describing something like this, but apparently event the most knowledgeable foley artist was missing something. The closest he could come up with in his own mind would have been someone putting several thawed turkeys in a wet nylon sack and slamming it down onto the concrete. But even that didn’t seem right.

There was a moment of stillness. He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but he was keenly aware of the sound of every piece of glass that hit the pavement; the smack of every drop of blood that hit his face and arms. The world seemed to pause, like some seen in a bad action movie. Then, just when he was beginning to think he might be dreaming this, Cassie’s scream pierced his subconscious and he was reminded, once again, that his world was suddenly starting to suck.

[Morris Hospital/Sept. 24th/2235hrs]

“Oh, what the hell,” Nick yelled as he stepped through the sliding glass doors and caught sight of what it was Cassie was screaming at.

They’d all decided to come outside and see how Tim was doing; and to have a smoke, in his case. What Nick expected to find was a sulking Tim trying his best to ignore Sarah’s attempts to console him. What he saw was something out of a B-List horror flick. A tangle of bodies lying in a bed of glass, more blood than what he imagined should have been there, given the fall, and the kinds of details you always saw in movies but somehow always wrote off as Hollywood exaggeration--bits of bone and meaty chunks of gore.

“Cassie,” Nolan said, placing his arm on her shoulder. “Please stop screaming, babe. We need to--”

“Sarah?!” Ray saw her first. “Oh, my god, no! Sarah!”

Nick’s eyes followed his friend as the taller man pushed through everyone else and ran toward the dog pile of death. It was hard to tell one body from the other at this distance, but, after the initial shock--and the overcoming of his urge to vomit all over Nolan’s back--Nick was able to pick her out among carnage. Though, he suddenly wished he hadn’t.

“Aw, shit,” he was able to get out that much before his gag reflex gave up the fight under this new onslaught of visual assault. However, he was able to twist his head to the side before he heaved and avoided showering Nolan with what little contents his stomach held.

His vomiting lasted long enough that when he was finally under control, he turned to see Ray kneeling next to Sarah’s end of the carnage, trying to push the other bodies off her with one hand while lifting her head in the other. As his hand pulled up on her head, though, it canted at an angle that even Nick knew was impossible, and her neck--swollen to a disturbingly large size--made a sound like bubble wrap being popped under water. It was enough to tell Nick what everyone else must be thinking…

Sarah was dead.

“Oh, Jesus!” Ray was shaking his head and still trying to clear the bodies--there were at least two others, Nick saw now--away from her.

“Oh, man,” Nolan said, under his breath. Then something seemed to click in his head and he spun on his heels and ran back toward the E. R. yelling for help along the way.

“Is…is she dead,” Cassie asked, her hands coming up to cover her mouth.

Nick stepped up beside her, wanting her to know she wasn’t alone in case she felt the need to scream again. “Yes,” he said softly, “she’s dead.”

“What’s happening,” Tim said.

Nick looked up at him, realizing he was standing there for the first time since they’d come out. The man hadn’t moved where he stood in the last few minutes. He must have seen what happened, Nick thought. He must have watched Sarah die.

Tim’s eyes didn’t leave the pile of bodies. Not a single muscle moved, not even to wipe the blood from his face. To Nick he seemed frozen in the moment those people landed on Sarah, but it was quite possible his friend’s mind was still stuck his Focus back on I80, staring down his fiancé as she tried to murder him; even with as her blood poured from the hole in her neck.

“What the fuck is happening,” Tim screamed, nearly at the top of his lungs.

No one answered him, though.

Nick was positive no one could.

[Morris Hospital/Sep. 24th/2236hrs]

Nolan nearly crashed into the Registration Desk, skidding to a halt just inches from the double-paned window with the little white speaker situated in the center. He’d never figured out why the hospital administration had opted for the upgrade to the emergency room check-in area a few years ago; all the upgrades were apparently made in the area of security and Morris wasn’t exactly a high-risk area. He shook the thought away and focused on the immediate needs of the situation and started looking for a nurse and found a completely empty room behind the unnecessary security glass. There wasn’t a single person to be seen.

“What,” he asked aloud. “Hello? Where the hell is everyone?”

We were literally only gone, like, two minutes, he thought angrily, slapping his hands hastily on the glass.

“Hey,” he shouted, “I’ve got a fucking emergency here, people! Put down the sandwich or whatever the hell you’re shoving in your chubby fucking faces!”

He knew he was being a little excessive, but even the rational part of his brain couldn’t argue with the urgency of the moment and the sheer ridiculousness of the sudden lack of a single damn nurse.

“Nolan, calm down, man,” Shaun’s voice pulled his attention from his own reflection in the foremost pane of glass. The younger man was walking toward him from the waiting room area. “What’s going on?”

Nolan spun away from the window, starting in Shaun’s direction but stopping just shy of ten paces from the waiting room proper at the door that lead to the room beyond the glass. His fists came up and started pounding on the heavy wooden door. After a few seconds he grabbed the polished metal handle and shook it in frustration. Locked.

“Fuck!” He kicked the door.

“Dude, what the hell is going on,” Shaun said, his voice rising in agitation.

Nolan suddenly had a thought and spun on his heels and gripped Shaun by either arm. “The cop!”

“Uh, what?”

Nolan shook him once in rising anger. “Fuck, Shaun! The cop you were with like three minutes ago! Where is he?!”

“Dude, you need to calm down.”

“Where is the cop,” Nolan all but screamed.

“Jesus, man,” Shaun exclaimed, stepping back and jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward a hallway junction that led deeper into the hospital. “An orderly came running through here, saw the cop, and told him something about an attack up stairs and they both went flying down the hall. Now stop yelling at me, please.”

“What kind of attack,” Nolan asked, looking over Shaun’s shoulder toward the hallway. He was getting a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he’d swallowed a chunk of ice.

“The orderly didn’t say,” Shaun answered. “Seriously, dude, what has you so worked up?”

Nolan didn’t answer him. He couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. He was frozen in place, too scared to move, his whole body locked up like a bird caught in the hypnotic stare of the snake preparing to eat it. Only, he wasn’t a bird, and the thing staring at him from the other side of the waiting room, just inside the hallway junction, sure as hell wasn’t a snake. Nolan wasn’t even sure it was human anymore. It looked human, sure. But he had never seen eyes like that on any human he could think of.

Well, a part of him said, except for those guys on the highway.

But those guys, messed up as they had been, hadn’t looked anywhere near as…off…as this guy. For starters, he was virtually bathed in blood, from head to toe. It poured from a number of wounds on his body--wounds so obviously fatal that Nolan almost laughed because his brain couldn’t think of anything else to do--like water from a crack in a dam, dripping from his fingers and clothes into slowly growing pools on the white tile under his feet. What little of his skin Nolan could see wasn’t any skin tone he recognized and was, instead, a shade somewhere between the yellowy green of mucus and the dull gray of cement. His head was tilted slightly to the side as a result of the fist-sized hole that had been ripped from it, the edges of the wound vibrating slightly as they rubbed together. His mouth hung open and his face was frozen in what Nolan could swear was an expression of stunned surprise bordering on that near-fitful glee that a child might suffer upon seeing that pony she’d been begging for walking around in her back yard. His eyes--that soapy water color--seemed transfixed by Shaun and Nolan.

“Uh,” Shaun said, tilting his head a little, “dude?”

Then it happened.

Seemingly spurred into motion by Shaun’s voice, the thing in the hallway lunged forward with a speed completely unexpected of his condition. He made no sounds other than the wet phwip-phwip of his blood-soaked clothing as he darted toward them. His speed was such that it nearly caught Nolan completely off guard and he barely had time to react.

“Look out,” he yelled as he shoved Shaun backward.

Shaun, still unaware of the creature behind him, was taken by surprise and tripped on the waiting room’s carpet. As he fell backward, he flailed his arms out in desperation and grabbed hold of Nolan’s shirt collar. The forward momentum and instinct-driven nature of Nolan’s push were enough to send the two of them to the ground when Shaun’s weight pulled his shirt taut. A lucky thing, though, as the fall pulled him mostly free of their attacker’s trajectory. He let out a grunt and Shaun swore as the two of them hit the ground.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Shaun shoved Nolan just in time to see the creature, obviously unable to fully control its motor functions and unable to regulate its own speed, stumble through the space the two men had just been and trip over the small office-type garbage can sitting in the nook opposite the check-in station. It still made no noise, even as it slammed bodily into the wall, leaving a massive splatter of blood. Shaun’s eyes snapped as far open as they could possibly go and he pointed straight at the attacker. “Dude! What the fuck?!”

Once again, Shaun’s voice drew the monster’s attention and it flailed and jerked its way to a standing position again where it stopped and stared at them for a second again; that same giddy shock on its sickly pale face. It didn’t way for Shaun to speak this time, however, and jolted forward with that same impossible speed.

“Oh, shit,” Shaun squealed and began to scurry backward across the floor. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh--”

His back bumped into one of the chairs and stopped him dead in his tracks. The creature was on him in a heartbeat, throwing itself forward in something like a drunken tackle, arms out, mouth open. Shaun screamed with the full force of his lungs and squeezed both eyes shut as he snapped out a kick with all his might. His Chuck T’s white sole slammed into the monster’s jaw so hard that--with the added force of the creature’s opposing motion--it spun its head nearly all the way around; the hole in its neck tearing even further and exposing the glossy white of vertebrae. The creature flopped sideways onto the carpet and started thrashing wildly.

Shaun opened his eyes and looked down at the thing that had just tried to rip him apart. He screamed again and lurched to his feet and made a mad scramble over the set of chairs that had impeded his escape moments earlier; where Nolan now stood. Nolan stepped closer to his friend, finding a need to be within arm’s reach, should that thing make its way to its feet again. Shaun jabbed his finger down at the monster several times and repeated his previous question.

“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?!”

Nolan looked around the waiting room, eyeing the hallway junction more than once. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m not really looking forward to telling Ray he was right.”