Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

While this was happening, Sean and Jack were at the admissions window, arguing with the nurse seated there.

“No, no,” insisted Jack. “Brian Dunn is gravely ill. Look at him sitting over there in that wheelchair. Look at him; he’s not going to last. He has to see a doctor right now. Here’s his insurance card. Look, see: he’s covered.” Jack leaned in as close as he could. “He’s had the Pandora virus before and was hospitalized here. Now he’s back and checking in like the news said he should. Please. He’s really, really sick.”

“I’m sorry,” said the nurse. “We have other people with identical symptoms ahead of him. The doctors will see him, but it’ll take a little time. Please have a seat, and I promise he will be seen.” It was obvious she was overwhelmed and at the end of her patience. She looked at Jack. “Please.”

Jack turned away, frustrated. He looked at Sean. “Shit!” he said. “They’re so swamped here that I don’t know when he’ll get seen. We’ve got to do something.”

Mike walked over to them. Brian had been making a rattling sound deep in his throat, and it freaked him out. It was the last straw. He stood in front of Sean and, in a teary voice, said, “Sean, he’s really not good. It’s bad, real bad. I think he may die.”

Jack looked at him askance. “What!”

The three walked over to where Brian was now slumped forward. The long string of bloody saliva hanging from his lower lip was now connected
to the leg of his jeans. Sean grabbed his shoulders and sat him back in an upright position. “Brian…Brian, stay awake, man. Stay awake.”

Brian’s head swung back and forth like that of a bobblehead. Jack leaned in and put his hand on Brian’s chest then moved it up to his neck, where he placed two fingers on his carotid artery. “Oh, shit, he’s dead,” he said incredulously. He spun around and yelled at the nurse, who now looked very concerned. “His heart stopped! He’s not breathing. Get him some help now!”

At that, the nurse bolted up and ran through the doorway to the emergency room. A second later the double doors flew open as the nurse and a young, harried-looking doctor raced into the waiting room. The doctor took one look at Brian then at Jack, who blurted, “I’m a doctor, I know.”

The young intern grabbed the handles on the wheelchair, and he and the nurse rushed Brian into the emergency room proper, with Sean, Jack, and Mike trailing close behind. Right before the double doors closed, Mike turned around and looked back at the teenager, who was still sitting in the waiting room. The boy was still staring at Michael, his eyes bloody and wild, his grin spreading in a wide slash with shining teeth stained red with blood. Mike thought he never had seen anything so frightening in his entire life.

The doors swung closed on this visage, and Mike turned to see the other four wheel Brian into a curtained cubicle. He rushed over to join them. Two other aides hurried over, and they all grabbed Brian and maneuvered his limp body onto the hospital bed. The doctor called out instructions over his shoulder as one aide ran to get the defibrillator. The doctor, starting CPR on Brian, yelled out, “Never mind the defibrillator, and get Dr. Bennett and Dr. Patel.”

“But why not shock him?” asked Sean incredulously.

The doctor, whose name tag read “Dr. Andrew Lantana,” glanced up with annoyance at Sean. “Because he’s either bradycardic or his heart has stopped completely. Either way it would do no good.” He spoke quickly as he pumped Brian’s now-bare chest. He said to the attending nurse, “Can we clear the area, please?”

As the nurse started to physically guide the three friends out of the cubicle, two more doctors briskly strode up. They seemed very authoritative as they looked in at the activity. Jack glanced at their chests and saw they were the Drs. Bennett and Patel that Dr. Lantana had called for. Dr. Bennett also had “CDC” after his name.

Dr. Patel reached over and placed his hand on the young intern’s back. “You can stop now,” he said gently.

“He’s obviously one of them. Let’s put him over with the other two in the corner. We’ll then isolate the bodies in another area,” Dr. Bennett said brusquely.

“One of them?” asked Sean. “One of whom?”

Dr. Bennett and Dr. Patel looked at Sean, Mike, and Jack as if they had just appeared in a puff of smoke.

“Please get all nonessential people out of the ER,” Dr. Patel told the nurse.

She continued to push the three men toward the doors.

“What do you mean ‘nonessential’?” yelled Sean. “He’s our friend!”

At that tense moment, the three paused to look around the room. Everyone appeared frazzled and very frightened. The corner at the end of the emergency room, where Dr. Bennett from the Centers for Disease Control had pointed, was curtained off. Directly opposite it were four police officers surrounding a bed with the rails up. On the bed lay a middle-aged black man, his hands handcuffed to the rails. He had a strap around his chest, holding him to the mattress. His clothes were soaked with blood, and though restrained, he still fought and pulled at his cuffs, trying to escape his bonds. He kept bobbing his head forward like a chicken, trying to bite at the police surrounding him, his teeth snapping so hard the three friends were sure he must have broken several of them. The officers looked confused and a little afraid. The staff and patients couldn’t seem to get far enough away from him. An old man in the next bed was staring at him, shaking with fear. Mike almost had reached the closed double doors when a high-pitched scream issued from the waiting room. He took a step back, not wanting to see what had caused it.

Sean and Jack burst through the doors with the nurse in tow. Michael moved hesitantly behind them. At this point everyone in the waiting room was screaming and crying out. Chairs crashed to the floor around them as they climbed over one another, fleeing from the chaos against the wall near the admissions station.

The teenaged boy who had so scared Michael was kneeling on his chair and leaning over his father. Growling, he yanked his head up. A big chunk of his father’s neck was in his mouth, strings of flesh and tendon connecting them like bloody rubber bands. He rose from the chair, looking around the room, his teeth grinding the meat between them. His father was splayed out in his chair, legs straight out in front of him, heels spastically banging a death tattoo on the tiles. The boy’s gaze rested on an obese woman to his right, who seemed to be trying to climb the wall in front of her. She was looking over her shoulder at him, screaming something in a language no one else seemed to understand. The teenager’s growl grew louder. Forgetting his dying father writhing in front of him, he took a step and leaped on the panicked woman. They both went down hard, with her breaking the magazine table underneath her as he fastened his teeth on her exposed shoulder. Head shaking side to side like a dog with a chew toy, the boy pulled a piece of flesh from her meaty form.

The nurse turned and ran back into the emergency room, as patients scrambled for the exit doors. It was at this moment that the glaring, tattooed, young Hispanic man jumped up from his seat. His eyes were bulging at the sight of the two struggling figures. He dug under his shirt, his hand reaching into the waistband of his baggy shorts, and pulled out a gun. Holding it gangster style, he screamed, “
Madre de Dios! Hijo del Diablo!
”

With that he started shooting.

Everyone ducked and ran. Shots flew everywhere as the shooter, not a good marksman to begin with, panicked and hit not only the attacking teen but also just about everything else.

As Sean, Mike, and Jack were trying to get back through the double doors to safety, the doors burst open from within. Three of the police
officers who had been guarding the manacled man inside suddenly poured out into the room, guns raised.

The policemen came to a halt. Pointing their weapons at the young Hispanic man, they shouted, “Drop your weapon!” He stopped shooting then lowered his arm and looked at the officers, his mouth open and eyes wide. The cannibalistic teenager took this opportunity to stand up between them. He had at least four or five bullet holes in his body but appeared unaffected. When the ghoul hissed loudly at the police, the Hispanic man screamed and raised his gun again, and the three very jittery cops started firing at the two of them.

Through the haze of plaster dust and cordite, Sean heard someone in the emergency room yell, “Oh, fuck! He bit me!” He turned to Mike and Jack and said, “Let’s get out of here now.”

The three ran toward the outside doors and plowed their way through. They scrambled for Jack’s Cherokee and piled in, panting. Sirens heading for the hospital already were getting louder. Sean said breathlessly, “We’d better get out of here now, or else we never will.”

“Right,” Jack shouted, starting up the Jeep.

He backed up and squealed out of the lot and down the ramp to the main road. Mike leaned forward from the backseat and put his hand on Sean’s arm.

“What about Brian?” he asked, voice rising. “What are we going to do about him? We can’t just leave him there.”

As Jack threaded the car in and out of traffic, Sean turned and said, “Look, Brian is in a hospital, where he should be. If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do for him. If he’s alive, he’s where they can help him.” He paused then said softly, “There’s nothing else we can do. There’s nothing…nothing.”

During the ride home, the car was silent as each man sat lost in his own thoughts, until they were a block away from their house. Jack had just begun to make a right onto their street when a woman dashed across the lawn of the corner house, trampling the pretty flower bed at the edge of the property, and ran right in front of his car. Jack slammed on the brakes. Fortunately he wasn’t going fast. As the Jeep bucked to a stop,
Jack and the woman locked eyes. Her mouth was hanging open, her eyes so wide she resembled one of those big-eyed paintings of kids you used to see. Without stopping she ran past the car, across the street, and down the opposite sidewalk. As they all swore to themselves and watched her disappear, Jack was sure he saw blood on the front of her apron.

Jack started again and eventually pulled into their driveway. He shut off the ignition, and with the car knocking a couple of times, they sat in complete silence. No one could quite believe the sequence of events that had just occurred.

3

S
ean, Jack, and Mike were about to mount their front steps when Mike abruptly turned and headed across the lawn to the house on their right.

“I’m going to check on Edith,” he said. He looked over his shoulder and, seeing the two of them standing there, looking concerned, slowed and said, “I’m just checking, is all.” He paused. “I just can’t go into our house right now. Not after all of this.” He turned back and continued to their neighbor’s house, while Sean and Jack reluctantly started up the stairs.

Edith Schoenbart had lived in the neighborhood for fifty years. She was eighty-one years old, spry, and quick-witted. When the boys first had moved in, she sort of had adopted them, inviting them over for home-cooked meals (she was a super cook) and baking them cookies. They, in turn, looked after her, shoveling her walk and driveway when it snowed, picking up groceries and medicines when she felt under the weather. All in all, she loved doting on them, and they adored her.

Mike climbed her stairs and walked to her door. A pretty spring wreath hung on the front of it, and just looking at this symbol of normalcy made him smile. He rang her bell. After a minute the door opened, and Mrs. Schoenbart peered out. Seeing Mike standing there, she immediately broke into a smile. After opening the door farther, she pushed open the screen door and looked up at her neighbor.

“Well, hello, Michael,” she said brightly. “It’s so nice to see you.”

“You too, Edith. Just checking in.”

“Well, thank you, young man. I’m just dandy. My niece Emily is here. She’s staying over for a few days.”

Mike remembered Edith’s niece from the last time she was there. Emily Frost lived on the other side of town. She was about forty-eight, overweight, and dowdy, with stringy hair always pulled back with a rubber band. Michael felt sorry for her. While she seemed nice, though a little slow, it was obvious she was forever destined to be alone.

“Emily wasn’t feeling very well, so I offered to let her come here and rest for a few days. You know,” Edith whispered conspiratorially, “ever since she came down with that Pandora virus, she’s never been quite right. She said she started feeling funny again, so I told her, ‘Emily, you come right over here now, and I’ll take care of everything. You need someone.’ I was just going upstairs to bring her some nice, hot soup. Nothing makes you feel better than a good bowl of soup.” She smiled and nodded as if hers were the words of Solomon.

Mike felt sicker and sicker as she spoke. “Edith…maybe I should call an ambulance for your niece. This may be serious. I think that—”

“Oh, pshaw!” Edith laughed with a wave of her hand. “Emily will be just fine. She came down with a bug—that’s all. I’ll take good care of her.” She started to close the screen door. “Now you run along, and don’t you worry. We’ll be just fine.” With that, she closed the screen then started to close the front door.

“Wait, Edith,” said Michael anxiously. “Maybe you should call the authorities like they’re saying on TV.”

“I’ll do no such thing, Michael Quinn,” Edith said, taken slightly aback by his insistence. She smiled again then glanced over her shoulder into the interior of her home. “Oh, I hear Emily calling me from upstairs now.” Still smiling she turned back to Michael and said, “I have to go. I have a patient to take care of, you know.” She gave Michael a pleasant smile and a little wave then closed the front door with finality.

“But…” started Mike belatedly, as he stood staring at the closed door. He reached up to knock but quickly brought his hand down.
A waste of
time
, he thought. As he turned and walked back down Edith’s front steps, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He figured she would thank him later if what he was worried about turned out to be true. As he strode along the lawn back to his house, he took his cell phone from his pocket and punched in 911. Putting the phone to his ear, he waited. After a few rings, there came three electronic tones and a female voice saying, “The number you have reached is busy. Please hang up and call back later.” Michael took the phone away from his ear and stared at it incredulously.