CODE Z: An Undead Hospital Anthology Read online

  CODE Z

  An Undead Hospital Anthology

  Edited by

  Lyle Perez-Tinics

  CODE Z

  An Undead Hospital Anthology

  Published by KnightWatch Press

  This edition published 2012

  Copyright KnightWatch Press 2011

  All rights reserved

  This anthology is a work of fiction. The characters and situations in this anthology are imaginary. No resemblance is intended between these characters and any persons, living, dead or undead.

  Conditions of sale.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by: David Naughton-Shires

  www.theimagedesigns.com

  Edited by: Lyle Perez-Tinics

  Formatted by: The Mad Formatter

  www.themadformatter.com

  Table of Contents

  Undead on Arrival

  By Armand Rosamilia

  And in the Beginning

  By Anastasia Wraight

  To Walk the Halls

  By Rebecca Besser

  Skin and Bones

  By Rebecca Snow

  Anticipating Death

  By Pembroke Sinclair

  Broken

  By Jeremy L. Mahan

  Deliver us from Evil

  By Peggy Christie

  Fast Food

  By Jonathan Wood

  Lockdown

  By Shawn M. Riddle

  Mommy and Daddy

  By Bowie V. Ibarra

  The Night of the Beasts

  By Eric S Brown

  Our Lady of the Resurrected

  By Monique Snyman

  Showers

  By Steve Gierman

  Dead Inside

  By Jim Bronyaur

  Undead On Arrival

  By Armand Rosamilia

  “Doctor Davis, telephone please. Doctor Blair, Doctor Blair. Doctor J. Hamilton, Doctor J. Hamilton.”

  Doctor James Hamilton woke with a start, his eyes trying to focus in the pitch black of the doctor’s lounge. He groped in the dark and found the familiar lamp next to the couch and clicked it on, his head pounding.

  According to his watch he’d slept for three hours, although it felt like three minutes. He ran his fingers through his graying hair and over his stubbly chin.

  The knock at the door wasn’t a surprise. “Come in.”

  Nurse Victoria Davis entered, and James couldn’t help but smile at the beauty. Last year there’d been a tryst…

  “You need to get down to the ER. Two meat wagons just pulled in with half a dozen soon-to-be-stiffs.” Victoria – Tori as he called her when they were alone, used to be alone – always had a way with words.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” James said and stood on shaking legs. He was tired, having just pulled a double shift. Someday he’d get back to his trendy condominium and relax. He was glad he didn’t have a pet, because it would be long dead and rotting by now.

  James followed Tori down to the third floor elevator banks and leaned against the cold wall, glancing down at her slender wrists.

  She smiled. “Still married,” she said and held up her left hand. The wedding ring gleamed in the fluorescent lighting.

  “Same guy?” he asked.

  Tori laughed, the deep throaty sound bringing back memories of the Bahamas and the deserted beach, and her on top of him. “Funny. We need to hurry. You don’t want to get your colleague/my husband mad at you, right?”

  “I guess not,” James said and tried not to grimace in front of her. She loved to see him squirm. “How are the newlyweds doing?”

  “Great. We just celebrated two years.” Tori smiled wickedly. “Tom wants to take me to the Bahamas in January. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “Bitch,” he whispered as the doors opened onto the E.R..

  Before them was chaos. It didn’t faze them in the least.

  The main doors were held open by two bloody EMT’s and a line of gurneys were being wheeled in.

  Doctor Blair, resplendent in freshly-pressed scrubs and his patented yellow tennis shoes, approached the two with a grin on his face. “What a surprise, the two of you together.” He turned to Tori. “How is the Mister doing?”

  Tori ignored him and moved to the desk.

  James wanted to punch the man squarely in the face but refrained. “I heard the page.”

  Doctor Blair – Harry to his friends, if he even had any – stared at James with his typical sardonic look. “As did I, although it took me half the time to get down here. Sleeping off a long shift?”

  James looked away. He didn’t want to be goaded by the man just now, not with everything going on around him. He needed to focus and forget that the man was a World Class Jackass. “Double yesterday with three hours of sleep. More than enough.”

  “I’m sure.” Blair walked away, still talking. “There’s been a major accident on I-95 and six ambulances have been rerouted here from Clara Maas.”

  “Six rerouted?” James asked as he caught up. “How many are involved?”

  “We don’t know. It seems like every fire department, ambulance and police car in the Tri-State area is on-scene. It’s all over the news.” Blair grinned again. “Of course, you slept through the first three hours of it, eh?”

  James stared at the man and smiled, unconsciously naming every bone in the man’s face as he did. He wondered how many he could break with one jab.

  “We’re running out of space. Already we have several that have died before we could get them into a room,” Tori said from the desk. “This is insane.”

  Doctor Blair turned his head and hissed. “Professionalism at all times, nurse.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at her.

  Tori glanced at James and then lowered her head. “Of course, doctor. I’ll call in every available person and prepare other rooms.”

  Doctor Blair glanced at James. “Any reason you’re just standing there?”

  James immediately followed the nearest gurney into ER-14, a young man with a vacant stare and blood staining his white shirt. James noticed with dismay that his lower abdominal area had been eviscerated, and he stopped the EMT pushing the man in. “Is he still breathing?”

  “Hardly any of them are still breathing. I’m just trying to get them out of the fucking parking lot. Four news vans are out there shooting this shit, you know? We’re just trying to get them inside.”

  “Alright. Then do us all a favor and get the D.O.A.’s into one room, if possible. Can you do that?” James glanced at the man’s name tag. “Ronald? Can you secure a few good men to help you?”

  “Yes, doctor.” Ronald wiped sweat from his face. “It’s a madhouse out there. I’ve never seen so many dead people in one place, not even after that damn plane crash in ’88.”

  “We just need to do our jobs now. If anyone is still breathing we need to get them into a secure room and work on them.” James patted the man on the back and watched as he began to do his job. “Now it’s my turn.”

  James loved his work and this hospital – he even begrudgingly admitted that despite his abrasive personality, Doctor Blair was one of the best doctors in the field today – but days like these were trying. Of course, at the end
of the shift, when lives had been saved and the ER grew quiet for that brief moment before the next shooting victim or car crash pileup, you could afford to sit back and relax and crack open a cold one.

  Tori was attending to a child on a gurney right outside ER-14, blood dripping to the floor. James caught her eye. She looked overwhelmed. They nodded to one another before James turned to the man before him.

  “What happened?” James noticed the large welts on his face and the crusting blood on his shirt. His legs had been mangled on both thighs, but on further inspection James noticed multiple bite marks, as if a rabid dog had gone to task on this man’s flesh. His breathing was heavy and labored, his eyes closed and mouth parted, showing several broken teeth.

  James checked and felt a maniacal pace to the man’s heart rate. He glanced around for a nurse to assist him but was dismayed to see another group of stretchers being pushed through the double doors.

  “James?” Doctor Davis, Tori’s husband, came into the room, covered in blood. “I think I need your help up on two.”

  “What happened?”

  Rick Davis held up his left hand. “One of the patients bit me. Can you believe it?”

  “All that blood is yours?” James asked.

  Rick laughed. “I’ve been pulling the dead into the service elevators for the last twenty minutes. Bloody work.”

  “It’s all bloody work.” James followed his colleague to the bank of service elevators, where a dozen EMT’s were busy organizing victims into three groups: those who needed immediate medical attention, those who had minor injuries, and those who were deceased.

  “Where to begin? I guess we can pull a couple of criticals up with us, but be prepared. You think it’s bad down here? The halls are piling up. This is no way to run a hospital,” Rick said with a laugh.

  They selected two females on rolling tables and pushed them into the elevator with them.

  “How have you been? I haven’t seen you much in too long,” Rick said.

  James flinched. I’ve been having fantasies about your wife still, and…”I’ve just been busy, pulling extra shifts.”

  “Bullshit. We all catch just as many extra shifts as you do.” Rick leaned forward over the wounded and stabbed a finger at James. “I think you’re ducking me, and I want to know why. Out with it, man.”

  James unconsciously stepped back and leaned against the cold wall. All he could do was shrug. He didn’t know if he wanted to get into something right here and right now. What could he really say without offending his friend? Tori and I shared a great weekend last year and I can’t get that night out of my head. Sorry your wife cheated with your best man.

  The doors opened and it was like the silence before a bomb explodes.

  The first thing James heard was the screaming from down the hall. Rick pushed the first table into the hall and out of the way. James pointed at the bloody handprint directly in front of them on the wall, a stark contrast to the sterile environment.

  “I thought downstairs was chaotic,” Rick said, always the positive one. “This accident is bigger than I thought.”

  Another scream came from a closer room, and this time a nurse stumbled out and fell to one knee not twenty feet in front of them. James knew it was Betty Tate, a veteran who’d been working at the hospital going on thirty years.

  Her left hand was missing, her arm ending in a ragged stump pulsing blood. Betty stared at it in shock. Rick ran to her, removing his lab coat as he went. He wrapped it around the stump and pulled her back into the room.

  James followed but stopped in the doorway, unable to comprehend what was going on. A woman, her torso drenched in gore, was strapped to a gurney. Her arms had been bound at one point but her right arm was free and she was trying vainly to pull herself off of the bed. Several of Betty’s fingers lay on the floor in a puddle of blood.

  Betty, still in shock, leaned down at the foot of the gurney and closed her eyes. The woman became enraged, jerking herself up and down and staring at Betty.

  Rick moved closer to the woman but James put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait. Something is wrong.”

  Rick laughed. “No shit. Look at her vacant eyes. I’m not getting any closer than I have to.”

  Another scream down the hall made them both wince.

  James couldn’t move. Despite the woman thrashing on the gurney, Betty bleeding everywhere and the cacophony of noises around him, James went rigid. Time seemed to slow down for him. The air-conditioning kicked on above him, someone else screamed in another direction, and he could hear ambulance and police sirens even through the thick walls.

  Rick grabbed his arm and pushed him out into the hallway, his other arm wound around a fading Betty. “What the Hell was that?” Rick asked.

  James shook himself from his stupor. He was a doctor, damnit, and needed to focus. “One nightmare after another,” he whispered.

  Two men were literally fighting over an orderly at the other end of the hall, ripping pieces of flesh from his body and stuffing it into their mouths.

  “We need to get out of here,” Rick said quietly.

  At that moment Betty grunted and went limp, falling hard to the floor.

  Both of the eaters stopped, letting the gristle and blood pour from open mouths, and stared at James and Rick.

  “Fuck me,” James said as they started moving towards them.

  Betty rolled over onto her back and Rick went to help her up but hesitated. “She’s, um, she’s…” was all he could manage.

  James looked at the former nurse, now glassy-eyed and reaching for them. Without a word they ran back to the elevator and jabbed at the button.

  Betty propped herself up and tried to stand. A single, thin moan escaped her lips.

  James decided the stairs would be the better solution, but when they opened the doors, the stench of rotting flesh assailed them. They could see shadows moving slowly below them and decided to go up.

  The next floor was locked so they moved to the next. Quietly they turned the lock and pulled it open, waiting to be attacked. It was empty.

  “Which way?” Rick asked. They were at the easternmost end of the Maternity Ward.

  “The back stairway leads to the landing that will take us to the roof,” James said.

  “How do you know that?” Rick asked.

  James turned away. That’s where I went with Tori the last time we were together. “I just know, ok? Let’s get moving.”

  It was darker on this floor, with the lighting out and no windows on this side of the building. James wished he had a flashlight. He actually wished he was home or would soon wake in the doctor’s lounge from this nightmare.

  They had taken two steps when they heard an explosion somewhere deep in the bowels of the hospital. The floor shuddered for a second.

  “I need to find Tori,” Rick suddenly announced. In the silence it was like he was screaming.

  “We need to find a safe spot first, and then we’ll go back for her.”

  “We? She’s my wife,” Rick said, but with a laugh and not confrontationally. “I need to do the good husband thing and save her.”

  “We can’t be splitting up. We need to get to the roof. Maybe there will be helicopters flying in or out.”

  “Maybe. You go check it out, but I need to get back down to the ER and save my wife.” Rick patted James on the back.

  “Then why did you come all the way up here in the first place?” he asked, realizing his voice had risen a pitch or two and he was borderline whining.

  “I panicked. There are people eating people down there and I ran. Now that I’ve had a breather I realize that the most important thing in the world to me is my wife. Without her I’m nothing.”

  James felt a lump in his throat. He felt so guilty, but not guilty enough that he wouldn’t take another chance with her. Hell, he’d lost count of the times he’d alluded to it with her but was rebuffed. He felt like a dick right now. “You do what you have to do.”

  Rick stuck ou
t his hand and James shook it. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” James asked.

  “For being the best friend any guy could have.” Rick winked at him. “There are no secrets when it comes to friends, right?”

  Now James felt like a total dick. “Rick, I have to tell you something.”

  “Save it.” Rick ran back down the hall. “I’m sure it can wait until Tori is safe.”

  James pushed his self-loathing back and went in search of the staircase to the roof. Without Rick at his side he felt suddenly vulnerable. The door to the stairs opened with a creak and he held his breath, waiting for an onrush of biting monsters.

  Monsters?Really? Is that what’s down there, ripping apart nurses and doctors and other patients? James couldn’t believe it. None of it made sense, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. Maybe he was still sleeping. He pinched himself on the neck. He felt it and felt foolish even though he was alone.

  Now what?

  He had moved up a couple steps when he heard a door below slam. He didn’t know if it was opening or closing and didn’t want to stand here and find out. Trying to be quick but quiet, he took the stairs two steps at a time. He stopped at the next landing when he saw the door was open. This was an administrative wing of the hospital and the door was normally closed with a pass code required to open it. It was dark and James felt such fear that his feet wouldn’t move. He’d seen way too many horror movies as a kid and knew that the second he tried to get past, something hideous would jump out and grab him.

  Sounds from below made him look over the edge. Below, shadows danced in the stairwell, and he could hear someone – or something – walking slowly. He was sure it wasn’t someone he wanted to meet in these close confines.

  “I need to get to the roof and secure it for when Rick and Tori get there,” he said to himself.

  The hand on his shoulder made him jump and he nearly went over the side, plummeting to certain death. At first he didn’t comprehend what stood before him: a woman, in her early forties, dressed in a business suit, with golden hair and bright red lips, had touched him.