Wolf Running (3 page)

The other body was face-down on the cold floor. Cautiously she turned the body over to see a young woman, probably in her mid-teens. Beneath a fringe of light-brown hair her faded blue eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling. She was wearing a pink tank-top over shorts, and her mouth was smeared with blood and glittery lipstick. Her feet were bare and dirty, although the purple nail polish on her toes was still shiny. In one half-curled hand was cradled an eyeball.

She gulped back the rising bile in her throat and examined the teen-ager. There was a hot-pink phone protruding from the front pocket of the dead girl’s khaki shorts. She pulled it free and turned it over in her hands. Shimmery sequins on the back of the phone were interspersed with small gold-colored stickers. She pushed buttons at random and managed to get the screen to light up. It showed one new message. She slid the phone back into the shorts pocket.

She rose from her crouch and stepped back from the dead bodies. All the strangeness she had seen since she had been woken by the screams had been disturbing but distant, kept separate by walls and windows. Now it was here and real, sprawled on the floor in front of her. The coppery tang of blood floated on the air, and when she inhaled it she felt the last vestige of fear disappear. A tingling like a mild electric shock coursed through her body, and, strangely, she felt hungry.

She shoved this thought aside and concentrated on what was at hand.
Were there more people like this out there, victims and victors? Or was this an isolated incident?
Something told her that it wasn’t.

She stepped over the bodies and looked out into the hall. The dichotomy between the bright lights and the disarray around her was startling. To the right she saw chairs and small tables from a waiting area further down the hall strewn about. A metal cart was upended, towels and sheets scattered like dandelion fluff. Drifts of paper led down towards the nurses’ station, a trail of white spotted with red. She couldn’t see any people, either living or dead. She looked left, towards the elevators. It was the same - furniture tossed about, no people to be seen.

Which way? Nurses’ station?
She turned right and headed down the hall. The silence, the stillness lay like a blanket over everything. She checked other hospital rooms as she passed them, peering cautiously around the door frame if the doors were open or looking through the window if the doors were closed. Most of the rooms were empty, although they all looked recently occupied. And abruptly deserted, to judge by the tangled sheets on the floor and the beds knocked askew. One of the rooms had two patients, lying with open mouths and trailing limbs on their beds. A cautious tap on the door elicited no response.

She approached the nurses’ station carefully. It was a large, well-lit space that faced a waiting area and wrapped around the corner where two halls met. The station hadn’t escaped the chaos. The computer monitors were smashed on the floor. Clipboards, pens, pencils and other office supplies had been thrown about. Blood was everywhere, streaks on the floor and smears on the walls. Gore pooled on the counter-top and trailed off the far edge, leading her around to where a heavy-set nurse in green scrubs sprawled on the floor. A blue-handled pair of scissors had been jammed deep into the woman’s right eye. The other eye was closed, as if to not see any more.

A soft sound drew her to a door marked ‘Utility’. She approached it carefully when suddenly it swung open and a woman leapt out, brandishing a mop.

“Stay back! I mean it! I’m not afraid to use this!” the stranger shouted, waving the mop around. She was young, with disheveled blonde hair and wide, shocked blue eyes. “I’ll jam this right in your face! Wait...I know you. You...you’re the Jane Doe. Right?” The halting voice was familiar. It was the same one, the young-sounding one, she had heard talking when she lay semi-conscious in the hospital bed.

The young woman stepped out of the closet, still clutching the mop. “Yeah, that’s right. You came in with the blood...all...over...” Her voice trailed off as she took in the destruction around her.

“Who are you?” Her raspy words cut through the strange woman’s daze.

“My name is Jamie. Jamie Woodley. I’m a nurse here, on the medical floor. My God, what happened here?”

“Who am I?” she said.

Jamie looked at her. “I...don’t know. Don’t you know who you are?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know where I am.”

The other woman sighed. Well, you’re in the hospital. Exeter General. How about your name?”

“I don’t remember anything. Anything at all.”

“Well, I guess I can call you ‘Jane Doe’.”

She thought back to the words she had heard while she was drifting in and out of consciousness, and what she had taken for someone’s name. “No,” she said, “call me...Nowen.”

The nurse cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “Ok, sure.” She looked around the trashed nurses’ station. The mop, which had been slowly dipping towards the floor, rose up again. “Did you do all this?”

Nowen shook her head. “No. Of that, I’m sure.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring. ‘Cause you look kind of scary.” Jamie stared at the drying blood on the counter front. “Where is everybody?”

Nowen motioned back down the hall that she had come from. “There’s some dead people in my room.” She decided against describing the state she had found them in. “Also there’s a dead woman behind the counter.”

The mop fell with a clunk as Jamie looked over the countertop. She gasped and covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, no! That’s Marcy. Oh, God, who did that to her?” Tears ran down the nurse’s face. “She was so nice, always helping me find where things were around here...” She looked up at Nowen. “I just started here two months ago. This is my first real nursing job. Damn it, where is everyone?!” Her voice rose. To Nowen, it sounded like she was approaching hysteria.

“Earlier, I saw people outside, running like lunatics, as if they were fleeing something. And I saw someone get killed. I think. You’re a nurse - can you tell me what’s going on?” Nowen spoke sharply, cutting through the other woman’s distraction.

“I’m not sure.” Jamie’s voice was shaky. She looked at her wristwatch and tapped the dial, as if what she saw was unreliable. “About six hours ago or so, everything went nuts. I think it started in the ER. A lot of people had come in from a riot down at City Hall. Some of them got shifted up here to ease the strain. Suddenly we had Code Blues going off everywhere. People were just dying left and right. We were trying to move bodies out to make room for more incoming patients and we couldn’t keep up with them.”

Jamie’s hands were twisting around each other, her fingers tangled together. Her voice faltered as she continued with her story. “And then it got...weird. I heard emergency calls coming in from all over the hospital. Calls for help and for security backup. A lot of the calls...came from the morgue. I mean people just started freaking out, running and screaming...patients and staff were fighting....I saw Mr. McGurk doing something to his mother....there was a lot of blood... “ Her voice trailed off for a moment. “I ran for the utility closet while he...finished with her.”

Nowen saw the far-off look in Jamie’s eyes. She snapped her fingers to get the nurse’s attention. “We can’t be the only people left in this building. The phones. Can we call someone?”

“Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that!” Jamie gasped as she grabbed one of the white phones and pulled it toward her. “What the hell is wrong with me?” she murmured, punching buttons. She tried one set of numbers, listened, and then disconnected. She hit more buttons on the phone. “I tried Admitting, and no one’s answering. So now I’m trying 911.” Jamie listened, and then slammed the handset down. “A recording. Why aren’t emergency services answering?” She looked up at Nowen with haunted eyes. “Oh, Jesus, how bad is it out there?”

“Is there anyone else you call?” Nowen urged.

“I’ll try other numbers here in the hospital”. The young nurse went through a series of calls, each ending the same way: no answer. With the last number she tried she listened longer, her eyes clenched shut. Finally Jamie set the phone back its cradle. The look she turned on Nowen was full of despair and her blue eyes shimmered under a haze of tears. “My parents. No one’s answering there, either.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

Nowen walked a few steps away to give the other woman some privacy.
Should I say something? Maybe. But why? I don’t even know this woman.
When the sniffling behind her stopped she looked back over her shoulder. “So, what now?

Jamie wiped her face. Her eyes were still bright with unshed tears, but she seemed calmer now. “Uh, let me think. We should look for other survivors. Just because no one answered the phones doesn’t mean no one’s there. They could be hiding, waiting for help, like I was.” She snapped her fingers. “The intercom! I can call for everyone still in the hospital to come up here.” She was reaching for the microphone when Nowen’s hand shot out, blocking her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, why not? It’s the fastest way to contact everyone.”

Nowen pointed at the dead nurse on the floor. “Whoever killed her could still be around. We might not want to announce our presence.”

“Oh. Right.”

“We should still search the building for more people. Or go outside and see if we can get help.”

Jamie checked her watch and shook her head. “It’s already after 9. I think it would be safer to stay inside until we contact someone, or someone contacts us. Or until the sun comes up.” She sighed and ran her hands through her tangled hair. “Let’s go to the staff room. We can try the TV there.” She started back down the hall that Nowen had come up.

Nowen turned to follow, glancing back down at Marcy. Something seemed different but she couldn’t tell what. The dead woman’s one good eye was staring up at the ceiling.
Hadn’t that eye been closed?
Nowen shook her head, dismissing the thought. Her memory had betrayed her; who knew if she could trust her other senses. As if in agreement, her stomach growled. The scent of blood seemed to be everywhere. She swallowed a mouthful of saliva and hurried to catch up with Jamie.

As they passed the room where Nowen had seen the dead people Jamie went in and checked them, just to make sure. On the way out she paused a moment in the doorway, gazing back at the bodies. She shrugged her shoulders at Nowen’s questioning look. “No obvious wounds that I can see. Neither of the patients is even that old, so a cardiac event, while not impossible, seems unlikely. And they haven’t been dead that long.” She tapped her knuckles against her lips thoughtfully. “They’re not familiar to me, so they must be recent arrivals. Probably more-”

A sound from behind them caught the two women’s attention. They turned as one to look.

Someone was crawling from Nowen’s room.

Chapter Three

Then

The girl in the pink tank-top was laboriously dragging herself from the room, her bloody hands clawing for purchase on the white-tile floor. Jamie gasped.

“Why didn’t you tell me there was someone injured in your room?!” The young woman’s voice was outraged. She shot Nowen an angry look and started down the hall. Nowen reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, realizing for the first time that she towered over the other woman by at least a foot.

“Wait!” Nowen said, urgently. “Don’t do that. Something’s not right.”

“What are you talking about?” Jamie pulled free and whirled to face Nowen. “That girl is hurt, and I need to help her!” Again she started toward the girl, and again Nowen stopped her.

“Something’s not right - listen to me! That girl killed someone. That blood isn’t hers!”

“Yeah, something’s not right here and it’s you.” Jamie retorted. “I’m going to go help her, and you can just-”

A low growling interrupted the nurse. In the short time they had been arguing the girl had gotten to her feet, and now she faced them. Her skin was a sickly shade of blue-green-grey. Her lank brown hair hung in her face and her eyes were yellow as autumn leaves. They almost glowed with the intensity of her gaze. Pale lips slicked back from her teeth as she bit at the air. Her jaws met with a snapping sound that echoed down the hall.

Jamie shuddered and stepped back. “Um...you might be right.”

The girl’s bloody hands were twitching like dying spiders. She swayed slightly, and then, without warning, she opened her mouth and shrieked, a sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. In the next moment she was running toward them, bare feet slapping on the floor. She was fast but uncoordinated, and had taken no more than a couple of steps before she fell. The teen-ager didn’t try to break her fall and her face smashed hard on the tiles. Dark blood spilled from her nose. Almost instantly she was scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor, trying to pull herself upright.

Nowen didn’t wait to see what would happen. “Move!” she shouted, and she and Jamie turned and ran toward the nurses’ station.

Where Marcy now stood.

The heavy-set nurse looked much like the girl in the tank-top, but she was moving much slower. Gracelessly the nurse lurched forward, one yellowed eye focusing like a laser on the two of them.

Nowen never slowed. Running at full speed she dropped to the floor and slid on her back between the stolid legs. She grabbed the thick ankles as she went through, pulling the woman down behind her. She rolled over and clambered up the woman’s body until she reached the head, slapping her hands over each ear. A hard twist to one side and the nurse’s body went limp. Nowen stood, noticing faintly that the eye still blinked and the teeth still gnashed, even thought the rest of the body was limp.

The dive to the floor and the neck snapping under her hands had taken only a handful of seconds. Nowen looked up to see Jamie staring wide-eyed at her, just as the girl further down the hall regained her feet. Nowen grabbed Jamie’s hand and yanked her forward. The dead girl swung her head back and forth, and then caught sight of them. Her eyes locked on and she shrieked again, the primal sound jolting them into action. They ran, swinging right around the nurses’ station and down the adjoining hallway. Behind them, the sound of bare feet on tile was getting louder.