Zombies! Episode 2 - Abby's Bad Day (3 page)

The doctors ran a basic physical. They took
his blood and gave him back a stress test. They hooked some
electrodes up to his chest and monitored his heart rate. Heron was
in excellent health. Except for the cancer.

"Been smoking?" his doctor asked.

Heron shook his head. "Going nuts,
though."

Was that ever true! You don't smoke for
thirty years and then quit cold turkey without side effects. Night
sweats and ravenous hunger. At times, he thought he was a zombie
himself. And he took it all out on his wife. Alicia, that poor
woman, absorbed the brunt of his attacks for two reasons. The first
was that he needed to vent in order to heal. The second was that
she was adamant that he not take out his discomfort on their five
year old daughter.

When it was all over, Heron dressed and went
to his doctor's private office to wait. He already knew how the
conversation would go.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

You be here at six then and I'll be here at
ten.

And then he would laugh because the patient
had four hours of prep work before the doctor even had to show
up.

He was sitting in a leather chair across from
the doctor's huge desk just waiting when the commotion began
outside. At first he ignored it. It was hospital business, none of
his concern. But the door was open and several telling words
floated in. One of those words was
zombie,
said with a just
a hint of the flare of the ridiculous. Heron couldn't ignore
that.

So all of a sudden he was at work. He stood
from the chair and went out the door. He saw his doctor coming down
the corridor for the meeting.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Anthony…"

But Heron cut him off with a wave of his
hand. A nurse and an orderly were now talking in hushed tones over
by the nurse's station. Despite the fact that their voices had
become inaudible, he could tell that they were having a very
animated conversation.

He marched right up to them. "Did I hear the
word
zombie
?"

They ceased their conversation at once and
looked at each other. Then the nurse's face transformed into the
one that she used to instruct patients in the gentlest of ways to
mind their own business. Before she could speak, though, he was
showing his badge.

She said nothing, but the orderly looked at
the badge a long time and said, "They've locked down the ER."

***

ABBY
screamed as Karl bit deep into
the neck of the nurse who'd come to assist him. His teeth weren't
cut out for tearing the living flesh from a human but he was
determined. He twisted his jaw and pulled as blood leaked and then
spurted from the wound. The poor nurse flailed helplessly, too
shocked by the attack to have any real strength even before the
wound had become severe. She would have fallen to the floor but he
held her up, chewing patiently on the large hunk of flesh in his
mouth. Abby's gaze shifted from Karl's monstrous and bloody face to
the nurse's. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she passed out.
Karl adjusted her body for another bite but slipped on the blood on
the floor. The two of them fell like a pair of ragdolls. Karl's
foot hit the table and twisted oddly. The nurse's skull hit the
ground hard.

It seemed a long time that Abby was alone
with the monster. She just stood there watching as Karl battled the
slippery blood and tried to regain his feet. He wasn't Karl
anymore. That much was clear, but she couldn't stop thinking of him
as Karl. This poor meaty boy who liked to come into
Push Ups
and work out with the weights. What was he now?

Now someone parted the curtain and several
people turned to look.

Confused by the number of people around him,
and there were many, Karl took one lurching step one way and then
another in a completely different direction.

"Kill him," Abby whispered to herself.

At last, the zombie found its balance and
took one halting step toward Abby. A young doctor, the same one who
had been pumping Karl's chest minutes before, seemed like he was
going to ask a question and then stopped himself.

All around the ER there was silence. Murmurs
of everyday business drifted out of the closed curtains and even
from some of the private exam rooms but everyone who could see Karl
and Abby and that poor nurse stopped and fell silent. Even behind
the noise proof and bullet proof glass wall patients lost interest
in magazines, TV, and even their own ailments. Necks craned and
eyes strained to get a better look at what was unfolding
inside.

A low moan escaped Karl's lips, the sound of
air being forced unnaturally through dead lungs.

"Nobody move," said a doctor. She was an
older woman, probably close to sixty. Her coat was immaculately
white except for one small brown stain just under the ID badge. The
badge itself was clear and read Doctor Veronica Leke.

"But, Jane…" someone started.

"
I said nobody move!
" Dr. Leke shouted
and drew Karl's attention right to her. At the moment she was in no
danger. She was standing several feet from his position. There was
a thermometer in her hand and a small child on the table in front
of her. She was three curtains away. The mother who'd brought the
child in whispered a prayer in Spanish and hugged him close.

Abby's breath came in short gasps. The smell
of blood was beginning to turn fetid in her nostrils. She
desperately wanted to bolt but her legs wouldn't work.

"Cover all of the exits," Dr. Leke said to no
one in particular. "No one else comes in." Several staff moved
toward various doors. They were mostly orderlies and nurses. There
were two security guards in the room but they didn't move to the
exits. Their job was yet to come and it would be much more
difficult.

Dr. Leke's next order was chilling. "Peter
and Marie and Todd and Sven, gowns and gloves. We've got to
restrain him and help Jane."

Todd and Sven were the security guards. Todd
was black man with thick neck muscles. His chest and arms were
hidden by his shirt but Abby could tell that he was ripped. In
fact, she was sure she'd seen him in
Push Ups
a couple of
times. Sven was exactly as his name indicated. He was tall and thin
with long blond hair tied into a pony tail. Peter and Marie were
doctors, both young, Peter that one young doctor who didn't seem
able to escape the Kurious Kase of Karl the Zombie, Marie a short
stocky woman with jet black hair and a round baby face .

The two doctors knew just what to do and went
to do it. Todd and Sven seemed a bit fuzzy on the whole gown and
gloves thing and so got help from nurses.

All the while, Karl just stood and stared. It
was impossible to tell whether he was confused or just docile. He
hadn't been docile moments before but then again he'd now had a
meal. He watched Dr. Leke curiously as she began to ferret patients
toward the glass entryway. Nurses and orderlies who were not
otherwise occupied were moving those patients who could not move
themselves. All the while, Dr. Leke, calm as if running a class
trip, was saying,
Come on, come on. Right this way.

Abby watched all of this with the perspective
of an observer. She felt as if the whole thing was on television
and she was just sitting on her living room couch with Martin. She
found that all of her fear had left her. She was not a part of
this. Until…

"You too please, ma'am."

Abby looked over at Dr. Leke.

The older woman nodded. "You need to leave
now."

Todd and Sven were suited up and ready to
move in. They held billy clubs in their hands and wore masks over
their mouths and nose. They'd been given goggles, too. Abby
wondered if the zombie could bite through that gown. Abby wondered
if the billy clubs would have any effect whatsoever.

"Please, ma'am," Dr. Leke said never
betraying that calm exterior.

Abby took a step away from Karl and two
things happened. The first was that Karl went into motion. For some
reason, it had been Abby who had been holding him stationary. He
started to walk toward her, shuffling forward on his bad foot. The
second thing that happened was that Jane, the wounded nurse,
dragged herself to a sitting position and that was the event that
sparked the chain reaction that created bedlam.

Marie shouted Jane's name. Unbeknownst to
Abby, Marie was a struggling first year resident. Jane had helped
ease her into a comfortable methodology so that she could evolve as
a doctor. But their relationship had transformed from mentor
student to friends to lovers over the course of several months.
Marie's fear of Karl had kept her emotions in check for the past
several moments but when Jane sat up, Marie rushed to her. She went
to her knees and grabbed Jane in a big hug. At first it seemed as
if Jane were returning the affection. Her arms came up and around
Marie as well. But they held tight and her mouth opened and her
eyes opened and it was clear that Jane was dead and gone. All that
was left was hunger. She bit into Marie's neck the same way Karl
had bit into hers. The gown held back her teeth a bit but she just
bit harder. Caught in the ravenous grasp of the undead, Marie
struggled like a rabbit held by the scruff of its neck. Even before
the gown broke, her skin broke. Then Jane's teeth burst through the
gown and took a bite of flesh. Abby couldn't decide whether or not
zombies had a sense of taste but something about the gown made Jane
spit out the chunk of Marie's neck and toss the poor girl away.

In that instant, as Marie was going to the
floor clutching her wounded neck, other things were happening as
well. Todd and Sven rushed Karl. Doctors, nurses and orderlies were
rushing patients through the doors. Peter Ventura, standing in a
gown and a mask and gloves, saw the epidemic happening. He saw it
spread from Karl to Jane to Marie and he understood what he needed
to do. Though Dr. Leke shouted an order, he didn't hear it or
blatantly disobeyed it. Instead he rounded the desk and reached
underneath for what Abby suspected was a panic button.

As Sven grabbed hold of Karl by his
midsection, Todd landed a blow to the zombie's mouth that split his
glove and his knuckle. His momentum carried him around and he saw
Peter. Todd was a security guard and they all knew what was under
the desk. Peter planned to lock down the ER, trap them all inside
with those things. Todd was no coward but he was no fool. There was
a six second delay between the time Peter would hit the button and
the time that the doors would seal. Abandoning Sven, he rushed one
of the side entrances, batting away the guarding nurse even as
Peter hit the button. Todd heard the alarm go off but he was just
in time and made it through the door.

The open glass door swung shut, shoving a
poor old woman with a sprained ankle and the nurse helping her
backwards. The woman fell as the nurse let go. Locks chunked into
place. At the other exits, most of which were still manned by
nurses and orderlies, more locks could be heard sealing into
place.

Abby looked once at Peter Ventura, this boy
barely out of med school and she knew he had done the right thing.
They would all die in there now, but at least it would stop there.
Or would it?

***

HERON
was on the phone with Naughton
almost immediately. He knew the ER was locked down but he also
wanted a lock down of the entire hospital. No one in or out.
Naughton asked for details but he didn't have them. But it was just
a short flight and a long corridor down to the scene of the
carnage. He needed to know just how bad it was.

It was bad.

The waiting area was practically empty, all
of the prospective patients having fled in terror. Through the
glass he could see all he needed to see.

"Send everyone, Lance. Send absolutely
everyone."

He hung up the phone and took in the
scene.

Whichever one of the survivors had had the
wherewithal to lock down the ER was Heron's new hero. He could see
two zombies feasting upon a hapless security guard. There was a
woman on the floor with a neck wound. Three doctors and one nurse
were well enough away from the scene to be considered safe for the
moment, but they were trapped inside.

Then there was Abby.

He recognized her immediately as someone he'd
interviewed in connection to a case, but he didn't put it all
together until he noticed the name tag from
Push Ups
gym. He
and Stemmy had spoken with her the week before about Larry
Koplowitz. It was the information she had given them that had led
them to the Koplowitz apartment and Stemmy's ultimate fate. For a
moment, Heron felt an irrational hatred for her, blaming her for
Stemmy's death. But it passed so quickly that he wasn't even sure
it was real.

In the distance, he heard sirens. That was
quick. That was good. But he needed an assessment of the
situation.

"Who are you?"

Heron turned to see a man in his late sixties
or early seventies. He was approaching with a stern look on his
face and two security guards in tow. He was a doctor for sure, but
an administrator on top of that.