Demonspawn (43 page)

Danny leaned close to Joe. “What the hell is
wrong with him?”

“I don't know, but look at him. Something's
really off.”

“Oh really? You think so?”

Joe ignored his supervisor's sarcasm. “No, I
mean, just
look
at him. It looks like he's-”

“Dead,” Danny finished.

“Uh, guys,” someone said from the other side
of the truck. “You'd better get over here.”

Everyone jogged around the trailer and joined
the group on the other side. Joe stopped just a few feet away from
the driver's side door. He could hear Anthony, still moaning and
reaching out for them. But he almost seemed like an afterthought
now.

The woman who drove the Civic, dead just a
few minutes ago, slowly crawled out of the broken window of her
car. She let out a moan just like Anthony. The entire group winced
as she fell to the ground hard. She didn't hold her hands up,
didn't try to break her fall. She just fell face first onto some
shattered glass. She didn't let out a single cry of pain. She
didn't even flinch. She just kept letting out that dreadful
wail.

“Uh, ma'am,” Danny said. “You've just had an
accident. You might want to take it easy.”

He took a step toward her. Joe reached out
and grabbed him. He didn't think it was a good idea to even get
near her.

She slowly climbed to her feet, an act itself
that looked odd. It almost looked like her muscles didn't want to
work. She stumbled a few times, falling against the car. Her eyes
were just like Anthony's, milky white and lifeless. The piece of
glass that was in her neck had fallen out, leaving a huge cut. But
blood didn't gush out. It simply dripped down her neck onto her
dress, like her heart wasn't even beating anymore.

She surveyed the group quickly, then lunged
toward Danny. She was surprisingly fast now that she was on her
feet. Danny and Joe both ducked out of the way barely in time. She
stumbled and fell once again to the ground. Danny and a few guys
from the electrical department jumped on her back. She struggled to
move and reached for anyone to grab.

“Lady, you have to calm down!” Danny
shouted.

Joe looked up at Anthony, still trapped
behind the seat belt. He let out another agitated moan and reached
out through the broken window.

“I don't think they're gonna say anything.
They're crazy now or something.”

They heard a voice from the other side of the
trailer.

“Uh, guys.” It was Brian. “I'm not feeling so
good over here.”

Joe and a few others ran back to the other
side. Joe didn't mean to, but he gasped when he saw Brian. He
looked terrible. He still sat on the curb, cradling his arm in his
lap. His face was pale white and covered with sweat. Joe could
still see his eyes, unlike the woman and Anthony, but they had huge
black circles around them.

“I think I'm gonna be sick,” he said.

No one stepped toward him. Joe pointed at the
ground behind him. “Just lay down, on the grass there. Help's
coming.”

Joe had doubts that help was on the way. If
there were riots happening all over the world, would ambulances
care about one little phone call at a warehouse?

He grabbed his cell phone and called his
wife. It took three tries to get through. He wanted to tell her to
get in the house and lock every door and window. A woman answered
the phone, but it wasn't Sarah.

“Hello?”

“Margie? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, Joe, everything's fine.”

He felt panic, then quickly shoved it aside.
“Where's Sarah? What's going on?”

“Here, talk to him a sec,” she said.

Margie handed the phone over.

“Joe?”

It was Sarah. Joe closed his eyes with
relief.

“Sarah. Honey, what's happening?”

“Well, uh, we're getting ready to have a
baby. I tried to call you, but I kept getting some message about
all circuits being busy.”

“The baby? But you're still two weeks
out!”

“Yeah, well, tell
her
that.”

Joe had waited for this moment for months. He
knew it would be one of those moments he'd never forget. He often
wondered where he'd be when it happened. Maybe at home in the
middle of the night, at the store, or outside doing the lawn. He
even prepared himself for that phone call when he was at work. He
had his drive to the hospital all planned out. They had a bag
packed near the front door of every possible thing Sarah would
need. Spare clothes, a camera for pictures, a list of every single
friend to call. They had a car seat already installed in the back
of Sarah's car. They had planned for everything.

Now, as Joe held the phone to his ear, Brian
leaned forward to vomit. Danny was struggling keeping a violent
woman pinned to the ground. Anthony lashed out at everyone within
ten feet of the truck. They were in the middle of an emergency.

“You're going to the hospital?”

“Yeah. I tried to call Doctor Rivers, but
couldn't get through to him. Meet us there. But Joe, please, be
careful. There's some really weird shit happening on the
roads.”

“Fights?”

“Yeah. It's really scary. We just missed
having an accident. Some guy knocked someone down right by the car.
We almost hit him. It looked like he was trying to
bite
him.”

They lived in the suburbs. The riots that Joe
had seen on the news hadn't spread that far yet. But it sounded
like it wasn't far off. He looked up at Anthony once again. What
could possibly be going on?

Joe tried to think positive, but it wasn't
working.
Sarah and Margie are going to the hospital, where no
doubt everyone else is gonna go. But they have no choice.

“Okay, I'm leaving work now. I love you,
Sarah. Put Margie back on.”

A brief silence. He heard Sarah breathing
uncomfortably in the background. He wanted to be with her
desperately, to shield her and their child from the things
happening around them.

“Joe? What's up?” Margie asked.

“Listen. Don't stop at any red lights. Take
it slow, but don't stop for anything, okay?”

“Yeah, no problem there. Whoa! Joe, we just
passed three people beating the shit out of some guy against a van?
What the hell is going on?”

He took a breath. He wanted to tell them what
was happening on the news and at the plant. But it would take too
long.

“The news isn't quite sure yet, but it's bad.
Just get to the hospital. I'll be there soon.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

He put his cell phone away and jogged back to
Danny. He was still struggling with the woman. He had his knees
driven into her back now, but she still fought and wailed.

“I have to go. Sarah's in labor.”

Danny nodded. “Get out of here. Be safe out
there.”

Joe ran across the parking lot and climbed in
his truck. He sped away from the warehouse back toward the
suburbs.

Two minutes after he left, Brian's heart
stopped beating. Four minutes after that, he stood back up. He bit
Danny and a few of Joe's coworkers. Not long after, everyone that
worked with Joe that Saturday wandered the parking lot without a
purpose, with no memory of their previous life. It was only when a
few other delivery trucks arrived that they perked up.

Brian, Danny, Anthony, and the rest of Joe's
coworkers feasted on the truck drivers until there was barely
anything left.

*****

Joe sped through the streets toward the
hospital as fast he could reasonably go. He kept his emergency
flashers on and slowly cruised through the red lights. For a while,
he drove without incident, and it looked like whatever was
happening across the world had skipped over his town. But then he
saw police cars with their lights on stopped at a corner. They were
trying to pull two women off of a child while a crowd gathered to
watch. He drove another block, and saw what looked like a riot
inside a corner Starbucks.

He didn't know what was going on. But in the
back of his mind he knew it was huge, world-changing big. But he
didn't care about the world. He cared about Sarah. He had to get to
her. He had to be there for the birth of his child. Then they would
figure this whole thing out. All he needed was his family, and he
could survive anything.

He narrowly missed hitting a woman as she
fled from another man. He saw a motel just off the road on fire. He
had to weave his way between a few cars that had stopped to look.
The firemen, instead of putting out the fire, were trying to pull a
woman off of one of their own.

He was a block away from the hospital when he
decided to call Sarah. He didn't know anything. He didn't know what
room she was in, if she went through the main entrance or emergency
room.

The phone didn't even ring. It went right to
a recording saying that all circuits were busy.

“Dammit!”

Joe tried to keep calm. He would park his
truck, and go to the main entrance. He would ask whoever was
working the front desk where his wife was. Then he would kiss her
and everything would be okay.

His jaw dropped as he slowly pulled up to the
hospital.

An ambulance had crashed into the front, near
the main entrance doors. Fire danced from under the hood, throwing
black smoke everywhere. No one was trying to put it out at all.

He didn't even bother looking for a parking
spot. He pulled his truck onto the curb and killed the engine. As
he climbed out he heard gunshots and a few screams off in the
distance.

He didn't move for a second. Fear and
confusion just locked his legs. It was only a picture of Sarah in
his head that got him moving again.

Denise Hutchins didn't put herself through
six years of nursing school to work the front desk of the hospital
emergency room. But that's exactly what she was doing. Her friend
Lisa had called out the night before. Something about being sick
with a fever. So Denise was in the middle of a midnight to noon
shift, and it didn't take long to realize something was wrong.

Most overnight shifts weren't too bad. There
were the drunks that were brought in to sleep it off, then
released. There were some car accidents. There were the freaky sex
emergencies that always gave Denise a chuckle, like the one time a
woman popped a hip riding her boyfriend.

But this shift was far different.

The first patient was a woman in her young
twenties, like Denise. She got into a scuffle with another woman at
a nightclub and actually got bit. Her wound was treated and she was
sent on her way. Then three more people came into the emergency
room with bite wounds. One woman had bites all over her body. She
said two men pulled her into an alley. They didn't sexually assault
her in any way. They just bit her. A bite wound on her leg was
really nasty, like whoever it was that did it was biting into a
tasty drumstick.

Then the man with the cowboy hat came in.

The emergency room was already half full when
he limped through the sliding doors. Nearly half the people waiting
to be seen had bite wounds. Cowboy stumbled in and leaned his
weight on one of the waiting room chairs. He had a bloody towel
pressed to his neck. The color was completely gone from his face.
He looked around the room, dizzy.

“Please,” he whispered. “Help me.”

He collapsed to the floor. He dropped the
towel, and blood poured from his neck. Everyone in the waiting room
took in a breath and backed up. Denise quickly paged Doctor
Blair. She ran out of the emergency room corner
office and knelt next to Cowboy. She pushed the towel back to his
neck and checked for a pulse. She had seen death enough times to
recognize it immediately, but she had to go through the
motions.

No pulse, no breathing. He was gone.

Still, he wasn't really dead until Doctor
Blair said so. He burst through the swinging doors, along with two
nurses, that separated the waiting room from the rest of the
hospital. Denise stepped back and let them go to work.

She felt a quick stab of sadness, like she
always did when someone died in the hospital. She wanted to be a
nurse to help people. But she learned she couldn't be a good nurse
if she dwelled too long on the people that died. She used to do
that all the time. She would think about the people that died on
her watch, what they did for a living, how their families would
act.

Not this time. She just wanted to go home.
Two more hours, and her shift was done.

As she took a step back toward the front desk
she heard the television in the corner.

“. . . the dead are returning to life . . .
“

The attention of everyone in the waiting room
was divided. Some were fascinated by the sight of Doctor Blair
trying to revive Cowboy. Others were glued to the strange news on
the television.

“. . . this is not a hoax or a prank.
Authorities still don't know if what is affecting the global
population is a virus, biological attack, or natural phenomenon.
But they do know that it is reanimating dead tissue. If you've been
bitten by one of the infected, seek treatment immediately.”

A six-year-old son looked up at his father.
“Daddy, Brandy bit me on the swings today. Am I going to die?”

“No, no, of course not,” he said. “That's
ridiculous.”

“It
is
ridiculous,” Doctor Blair said.
He'd just finished trying to revive Cowboy, but that wasn't
possible. Cowboy was dead. He gestured for one of the nurses to get
a gurney, then pointed at the television. “Turn that off. There's
no need to make people panic. I've been listening to that all
morning. What they're saying is impossible.”

There was a loud crash outside. Denise's
heart thumped in her chest. Most everyone in the waiting room ran
outside to see what was going on. Denise wanted to join them, but
her professionalism kept her behind her desk, and well as her fear.
She was terrified. She could feel something terrible was going
on.