Medora: A Zombie Novel (17 page)

Suddenly,
he stopped; there was water flowing somewhere, leaking out of something. He swiveled his head back and forth trying to pinpoint the direction of the sound and headed back down the hallway in the opposite direction. The sound became louder, more refined and changed in character, making him no longer sure that it was running water. Turning a corner and down another hall, the sound was louder still and began to have the quality of a mixing sound, like stirring a thick soup.

Approaching the threshold of a room, he knew it was the source of the sound. He quickly cut into it from his jogging pace, stopped abruptly and fell over a gurney that was positioned at the entrance of the door. He looked up from a kneeling position and saw four people in the corner of a patient
wardroom on their hands and knees huddled around something. Quickly on his feet, he grabbed the first hard object closest to him on a bed: a bedpan. None of the four people seemed to notice or turn around to him. Stark could see that they were busily occupied with what he discovered was feeding on a human being. One woman, a lab tech he recognized named Jodie, was crouched down low with her jaws tightly clamped onto the corpse’s thigh. She gnawed up and down, trying to free the meat from the leg. Stark saw that the back half of Jodie’s skull was somehow cracked open, exposing parts of her brain. Half her scalp was still hanging onto the edge of the wound with a ponytail of hair still attached, swaying vigorously with the erratic feeding movements of her head. The other infected had positioned themselves likewise, assuring that they all had their own spots to devour the meat.

Stark’s felt a heavy dizziness thinking about the surrealism of the scene that an outbreak had apparently happened here
at the government’s classified facility for finding a cure to a disease that was currently ravaging New York state, right in the middle of the nation’s capital. He slowly backed out of the room, put each foot down as quietly as possible until he could run like hell down the hallway. In essence, he had no idea what to do next but he did want to leave that room.

Backing out slowly, the pager on his belt suddenly burst into life, sending a
high-pitched electronic squeal through the room. Simultaneously, four heads turned at once to him. Jodie quickly got to her feet and began walking briskly towards him, a long white tendon hanging from the corner of her mouth. Another also stood up, but his left knee quickly buckled beneath him, making his approach slower. In his hastiness to leave, Stark turned to run but accidentally butted his chest into the corner of the doorframe and stumbled back. Jodie was almost on top of him now. Gripping the bedpan tightly, he waited for her to lunge at him and then he swung it squarely into the side of her face, making her tumble over.

Turning towards
the door, he sprinted out, losing one of his loafers behind. Running down the long hallway, his foot now kept slipping as his sock slid along the smooth tile, but he still managed to put distance between himself and the sick. He looked over his shoulder and saw only Jodie following him several yards down. The others must have been happy with the meal that they already had.

Making it back to his lab, he slammed the door and locked it. How far was the outbreak? Was it just on this floor?
This building? Had it made its way to the streets? Stark quickly looked out the window to the botanical gardens across the street and saw cars whizzing back and forth and a heavy set teenager waiting at a bus stop. He had to get hold of someone to stop the infection at the building. Hurriedly, he went to a locker, took out his gym bag and put on some tennis shoes. He wasn’t sure who to call for what was going on. 911? He wanted to, but he didn’t want to go prison for the rest of his life for revealing a classified government lab. Then it hit him; the pager, someone had paged him. He didn’t recognize the number but he hoped it was Rambert so he made his way to the wall receiver and called.

After one ring, someone picked up “Stark!”
It was Rambert.

“Larry, we’ve been compromised over
here. The infection has gotten out and has spread to the employees. I’m not sure how or where…“

“Tell me exactly what’s happening in every detail.” His voice had a
quiet, patient quality to it.

“At least this floor has been over run. I’ve been
bitten myself but I haven’t turned into one of them and I’m not sure why. I’ve seen several employees, four at least that are infected and at least one who is dead. Danny Krumpke is missing. He turned, Larry, and I don’t know how, but I went to take a lab draw from him and he bit me right on the finger. The kid finally turned; somehow the virus got the best of him.”

“And how did the child get out of his cell?”

“I honestly have no idea. As soon as I was bitten, I just collapsed for what I think was at least an hour or two. I thought I saw Beckfield, but…did he call you? Where is he?”

“I haven’t heard from the man.”

“Do you know how far the virus has gotten? Is it beyond this building?”

Rambert
cleared his throat. “There have been a number of police reports in the last hour.”

“Oh, no.”

“A handful of people have been shot by police for acting ‘crazy’ and biting people. We’re trying to keep it quiet at the White House to prevent widespread panic here.” Rambert let out a long sigh, “Dr. Stark… I just don’t know what to do any more. How could this happen? What happened? How can this…” Rambert’s voice trailed in disbelief, his mind trying to shut out this new situation that he was faced with.

“I underestimated the virus
. I never thought Danny would turn. I got lazy and was bitten. I’m sorry; I don’t know what to say.”

There was a loud thud at the door, Stark look through the small rectangular window and saw Jodie slamming her face into it.

“What was that?” Rambert asked.

“It’s an infected employee trying to get into the lab.”

“Oh, my hell.” There was a moment of pause between the two. “Dr. Stark, what’re you doing over there right now? Give me a plan, I need to hear something right this minute.”

“I need to analyze my own blood.”

“I understand that you’re worried about yourself but…”

“No, as far as I know, I’m the only one bitten who hasn’t turned yet, just like Danny. I need to figure out why. This could help us if I figure out what is giving… temporary immunity.”

“Yes, okay, I see.”

“Also, I need access to the thirty eight survivors of Medora and I need it now.”

“At this point, all I can do is to ask the President.”

“That’s good enough for me but you’re aware, the sooner the better.”

“I’m going to make it down to the blood lab a few floors down. Can I call you on this number?”

“
Yes, for now.”

“Alright, I’ll call you soon.”

“Dr. Stark, you need to be as quick as possible
. There is some talk going around right now at the White House that is extremely disturbing.”

“What is it?”

“Some people are putting forth some extreme measures to contain the spread of the infection from New York.”

Stark coughed, “They want to bomb it, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

Stark chose to show
no reaction to the information. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Good bye, Dr. Stark. Be aware,
your building is going to be surrounded by SWAT teams in a matter of minutes. It needs to be contained. Make sure you make the teams aware that you are not one of the infected. I’ll let them know there is at least one survivor.”

Stark hung up the phone and immediately began looking around the room. He needed a weapon fast. Going from one lab bench to the next, he couldn’t find anything that would give him any sort of leverage over one of them. Finding only glass lab equipment, he finally turned to the wall and kicked in the glass pane of a fire extinguisher, lifting it from its cradle. There was intermittent pounding coming from the door. Stark look
ed out and saw that Jodie had another join her, the two of them leaning onto the door, and repeatedly slamming their arms onto it. He took a moment to think of his next plan of action. Pausing, bringing his hands to his face to think, he then unlocked the door and quickly opened it widely. The two fell into the lab face first, landing on their stomachs. Without hesitation, Stark quickly brought the base of the fire extinguisher squarely down onto the back of Jodie’s skull, completely collapsing her head into the tile. The sides of her head opened outwards, releasing chunks of brain and skull fragments beneath her hair. Her body jerked a moment longer and then ceased to move.

The other one had rolled over and was trying to get to its feet. Stark recognized him as another of the lab techs that he saw before in the patient ward. Holding the fire extinguisher by the nozzle
end, he slammed the base into the side of the man’s head, making him fall back to the floor. He lifted it high into the air and brought it down again, shaking the man’s body with his arms flailing wildly and his legs kicking at the white tile. On the third blow, Stark felt the front of the man’s skull cave inward with a sickening crunch. He looked down and saw his forehead, nose and eyes sink inward into his head mixed with a gelatinous white liquid that oozed from within his face bones. Stark backed up from the two people that he had just killed and stared down at them, wondering. They were only remnants of human beings now, a shadow of the functioning miraculous feat of engineering of the healthy human mind. He thought about what a lovely girl Jodie had been and left the room, ignoring his confused conscience.

Holding the fire extinguisher, he moved quickly down the hall towards a stairwell to the blood lab beneath. Approaching the stairwell, he was encouraged at the silence coming from the doorway but stopped quic
kly when he saw another of the sick standing silently at the top of a set of stairs with his back turned to him. Moving swiftly, Stark approached the man, grabbed his shirt at the shoulders and twisted his entire body sideways over a railing to the stairwell below. His body landed almost silently on the concrete steps. It happened so quickly that the infected man had no time to react or even make a sound. Stark looked down at his crumpled body, grabbed the railing and stepped down the stairs, two steps at a time until he was at the body. He lifted the fire extinguisher and brought it down on the man’s head, crushing it between a step.

Stark was feeling a mixture of fear at his new callousness towards killing someone and a
n infused confidence in himself, a confidence to adapt to his given situation and act swiftly. Never in his life had he crushed the skulls of three consecutive people but the current situation did not allow time for his reflection of his actions. There were no standards of normalcy any more for him to compare. There was only action, movement and running. He was also hungry.

Stepping over the body, he
climbed down the staircase, one level after the next, until he saw the sign that said, B4. Quietly and carefully, he opened the door to the floor and saw only the well-lit hallway that he expected. People must have run as soon as they saw any hint of infected people, he thought. All the floors appeared well deserted. Just across from the doorway were the white metal doors to the blood lab. He entered, locked the door and sat down at a massive microscope. Producing his blood sample from his white coat pocket, he inserted a small sample into a blood count analyzer machine and began the scan. He then took another small sample of the blood, placed it onto a glass slide and inserted it into the sample port of the electron microscope. Sweat was pouring down his face. He took off his glasses and wiped his face with the sleeve of his white coat.

The light from the microscope hummed and
blew warm air into the room. Stark looked into the eyepieces of the microscope and saw exactly what he expected: the long, spindly arms and diamond shaped body of the virus, dancing along with his red and white blood cells. He saw the exact same thing with Danny’s blood.

Looking back at the blood count machine, he saw a printed sheet of results and ripped it out of the slot. He glanced over the numbers quickly and stopped. His white blood cell count was one hundred times the normal range.

“I have leukemia?”

It took several dark moments to realize where she was. There was only darkness in front of her eyes. She stretched her neck forward in some sort of effort to see more light somehow, but there was nothing. Then she looked down and saw the rounded, wooden entrance to the doghouse that she now remembered crawling in. Her muscles ached with an exquisite soreness that felt much worse than the pain she was used to a day after an intense workout. Her mouth felt like a dried out socket with her tongue sticking to the sides of her cheek from lack of moisture.

Ellen remembered the dog she had found and reached out to feel some semblance of comfort from his furry coat but realized that it had left. Managing to turn herself around in the doghouse, she slowly stuck the top of her head out to see any threatening people that
might be around. The yard looked relatively innocent except for the entire back fence being knocked to the ground.

Slowly, she crawled out of the
doghouse, found the same sprinkler head from before, and sucked long and heavily from it. She was certain that she had never been so thirsty in all her life. After several minutes of drinking, she now felt a little nauseous from all the water in her belly, but she felt ready to move on. Looking at her watch, she realized that only about twenty minutes had passed and she now needed to get to the school and find her daughter. Looking out past the collapsed fence, she saw the same chaotic scene of people, children and cars emerged in a radiating pattern surrounding the school.

She then heard branches breaking behind her and saw three infected people moving towards her with a speed slow enough to let her consider her next move. In her
mind’s eye she could see it. She could see a path into the school, so she stood up from the grass with green stains on her skin, and ran straight for the truck bed of a pickup that was a few yards off. From there, she began jumping and sprinting from the trunks and roofs of cars and minivans while people dribbled between the cars beneath her. It felt as if she were hopping from stone to stone in a streambed, using her arms to control her balance. Ignoring the pain in her muscles and joints, she arrived at two metal double doors of the school and threw them open, wincing from the pain in her shoulder.

The double metal doors closed behind her. She wanted to take the gun from her purse but felt too ridiculous wielding a gun while walking around an elementary school. At any
moment, she felt like she would go into the gym and see all the parents and children for a Parent-Teacher Conference and she couldn’t possibly come around the corner and point a gun at all of them. She decided she would just rest her hand on the gun inside her purse.

Looking down the hallway, Ellen saw people scurrying back and forth between doors, across the hall and running towards her. A man carrying a small child ran past her, the child being jolted back and forth with every step the man took. To her right was a small reception room that went into a teacher’s lounge. No one was at the desk and it appeared to her that all of the administration offices were empty of faculty or secretaries.

From the entrance she came in at, Ellen knew exactly where Jayne’s classroom was. Down the hall ahead of her, turn left at the computer lab, right at a huge statue of a multi-colored horse and down the same hallway on the right. She moved swiftly. The hallway was littered with tiny overturned school chairs and sheets of paper. Someone had rolled out a copy machine that Ellen saw had its glass smashed in. Another woman ran past, holding the hand of a pre-teen looking boy. Ellen felt relieved, as she could see that parents were finding their children and leaving for home with them. Stepping past the kindergartener’s classroom, she looked it in and saw a small child on its hands and knees next to a table. The rest of the room was deserted. She looked down the hallway toward the computer lab, then back toward the lone child, and stepped into the classroom.

“Hey
there, sweetie, where’d everyone go?” She began to kneel down towards the child and then quickly jumped backwards when she saw its face. A copious amount of cream-colored liquid was slowly weeping out of his bottom eyelids. His upper lip had been shredded by what Ellen had guessed was from his constant chomping from his bottom teeth that she could see he was doing repeatedly. The child, breathing erratically, looked up at Ellen and lunged from his already crouched position. He was quickly reeled backwards by an extension cord wrapped around his neck that someone had tethered to the leg of the table.

Ellen stood up and
cried, “I’m so sorry, little one. I’m so sorry this happened to you.” Backing away from him towards the doorway, tears began to stream down her face as she thought of the sick boy, all alone and stuck on a leash like a dog. This boy had two parents that were looking for him and probably had no idea what he had become. A boiling anger began to brew at her at the supposed public officials who were on their way with a new flu vaccine that would save everybody. They were lying, she thought, lying through their teeth just to pacify the masses until they figured out what to do. There was going to be no help from the government and she had to find her daughter and her husband, and then get out of the city.

She left the room, wiping her face and continued down the hallway, looking into each classroom as she passed by them. Now passing the computer lab, she looked into the windows and saw whom she recognized as the Principal sitting at one of the computers.
Stepping into the lab, she approached him, “Hello, Mr. Vicharelli?”

The man stared straight at the computer, silently moving the mouse back and forth. “Uh…
yes, yes, what can I do for you?” He looked up at Ellen.

“I’m Jayne
Sander’s mother and I’m looking for her. Have you seen her or Miss Stutsen, her teacher?”

“Miss, uh… Miss Sanders, parents and teachers have been running in and out of here for the past couple of hours. I’ve no idea what’s going on any more. I’ve called the police so many times and it’s just over
. There’s nothing to do right now. Try to find your daughter and get her out of here as soon as possible.”

Ellen was bothered by the lack of alarm in his body language
. He simply sat and continued looking straightforward at the computer screen. She turned to look at the screen that he was on and she saw that he was watching an animated kid’s movie. “Mr. Vicharelli?” she said again now with a condescending tone.

“Yes?” He glanced up at her over his glasses, clearly annoyed at this point.

“Could you please help me find my daughter?”

“No, I’m sorry
. I have my own family to worry about.”

“
Oh, my hell,” she said at him and walked away, out of the computer lab and around the corner that led to Jayne’s classroom, her hand still in her purse.

Walking past the library, she looked
in, only saw a few silent rows of bookshelves and continued until she heard the scream of a child coming from within. Backtracking, she slowly walked in, past the book detectors and to the receptionist counter. “Hello?” she said to the shelves. Another scream came from down one end, past several rows of bookshelves. “Hello, I’m coming. Who’s over there?”

“Help me! Please!” It was the voice
of a girl, yelling out over the bookshelves.

Ellen looked up and saw a pre-teen girl perched atop the top row of a bookshelf, throwing large books downward at someone that Ellen couldn’t see.

“I’m coming! Just stay up there, okay?” Ellen yelled out at her.

She removed the gun from her purse and took the safety off, moving her feet slowly over books scattered across the floor. Ellen knew who was over there
. It was the carpet guys in her basement, Jackson her neighbor, or it was the sick in the street trying to bite at her. She removed some books from the aisle that she was standing in to get a better look at the attacker and saw some movement through the books about three aisles over. Through her limited view, she knew there was more than one person over there, moving their arms up and down and bumping their bodies into the bookshelf, crudely trying to rock it to get the girl down from off the top.

Ellen loudly whispered up to the girl, “Hey, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she quietly responded

“I’m going to count to three. When I get to
three, do you think you can jump off the top of that to the table below you? Do you see it there?”

The girl moved awkwardly on her hands and knees on top of the narrow shelf and looked down, “
Yeah, the brown wooden one just right there?”

“Yes, that’s the one.
When I get to three, just jump right down on top of it. It doesn’t look like it should be too much of a fall. I’m going to try to knock the bookshelves down on top of them.”

The girl paused, looked down again, mentally assessing the distance
. “Yes, okay, I can do it.”

“Okay, here we
go, Hon,” she loudly whispered back. Backing up as far as she could away from the bookshelf she was at, she got a running start and slammed her entire weight into the bookshelf. It didn’t move an inch. Again, backing up even more, she lunged at the bookshelf, barely rocking it. The exerted energy then forced her into a coughing fit. She leaned over and violently let out repeated barking coughs.

“Hey, Miss…?” the girl called out to her, “it’s not
working, Miss. I think they hear you!”

“Alright, that’s it,” Ellen said to herself. Standing erect, she swiftly moved out of the aisle she was in and
walked directly over to the infected that were trying to get at the girl. There were two of them, a man and a woman; teachers that Ellen had recognized. They saw her, left the bookshelf alone and began to clamor towards her, grabbing at each other in an attempt to get to her first. Ellen lifted her 9-millimeter pistol, fired three shots into the man’s head, and two into the woman’s. The woman spewed some grayish liquid from her mouth and fell over the infected man who had already doubled-over from the shots to his head. After some jerking of their limbs, they stopped moving.

Ellen looked up at the girl
. “I’m sorry there, Hon, but I had to do… that.”

The girl was still perched on the top of the bookshelf, watching the scene. “That was… I know,
it’s okay.”

“Okay, come on down,
and let’s get you out of here.”

The girl slowly let herself down and stood on top a table, still looking at the bodies. “Make sure not to touch them, they have the flu.”

“I certainly won’t be doing that. My name is Ellen Sanders, what’s your name?”

“Maryanne
Reed.” Her cheeks were bright red and her ponytail disheveled making an entire bun of hair sink to the side of her head.

“Maryanne, you seem like you’re… twelve?”

“Yes.” She let out a small breath, looking down at the bodies.

“Maryanne, let’s walk out of this library now, okay?” Ellen moved and put her hand gently on the girl’s shoulder.

“Yeah, okay.”

With Ellen leading, she and
the girl made their way back out into the main hallway outside of the library. At this point, Ellen carried the gun to her side, pointed downward. She turned to the girl, “Okay, Maryanne, do you know where your parents are? Have they been here?”

“No, my teacher said they had called and that they were on their
way, but that was… a while ago, so I’m not sure what happened.”

“And where did your teacher go?”

“Not sure, she just left somewhere so I went and hid in the library and then Mrs. Griffith and Mr. Hummel came in acting all sick like the other kids today. It’s okay, I know that they’re not acting like themselves.”

“That’s right, they were just sick. They wouldn’t really try to hurt you like that.” Ellen turned from the girl and looked down the hallway at the end room where she knew Jayne had her main class. “I’ve got to go down to the end of the hall to see if my daughter is down there. I think it would be good if you just stuck with me until we find your parents, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay.”

Ellen turned to start walking but the girl tugged at her hand, “Um, Ellen… are you… okay?”

Ellen turned and looked down at herself. She hadn’t noticed until now but her once blue T-shirt had been charred black and the zipper on her jeans had essentially been blown out from her pants from the electrocution of the power line. “You know what? No, I’m not. I undoubtedly need to go to the hospital but I first need to find my daughter Jayne. I’ll be okay for now.”

“Okay.”

They moved deliberately down the hallway, stepping over a shattered fluorescent light bulb that had fallen from the ceiling. Ellen’s body moved without hesitation, each step with purpose and direction, her muscle pain muted by the overwhelming maternal instinct to find Jayne. Across another overturned chair, they made it to Jayne’s classroom and stepped in. Empty. It appeared when looking at the rows of desks, as if all of the desks had been purposely scooted away from one lone desk in the center of the room. Ellen approached the single desk and saw small drops of blood on the surface and a small tuft of hair that had wedged into the side of the desk in between the wood and the plastic binding rim.

She studied the classroom, surveying the desks. On the wall, an entire row of small backpacks was hung up. She saw Jayne’s black and red backpack and walked towards
it, trying to find some clue within. Lifting it from the hook, she just held it in her arms for a moment, thinking. Thinking about what the next step should be, where Jayne would have gone and with whom. She wanted to start thinking about Keith but didn’t feel ready yet.