Blood Red (18 page)

“Bonnie!” comes a voice from the corridor.
“Bonnie!”

“In here!” Bonnie calls back.

A harried-looking woman appears in the
doorway, her eyes darting around the small room. It takes Rachel a
moment to recognize her as Irene. “Okay, I’m ready,” she says to
Bonnie. “We have to get out of here.”

“You’re leaving?” Rachel says, looking up at
Bonnie.

In the ensuing silence, Bonnie glances from
Rachel to Irene. She shakes her head, coming to a decision.
“No.”

Irene responds, appalled:
“What?!”

“Things have changed,” Bonnie says, looking
up from her work. “I need to help this man.”

“But—those bodies are alive!” Irene says.
“They’ve become—animals! They’re alive, and they’re—they’re—”

Rachel looks up at Irene carefully. She’s
suddenly very different from the emotional, seemingly fragile woman
she first encountered when she walked into the hospital with Alan
and Sarah. She knows it’s a glimpse of human nature that she’s
getting; we can take only so much before our natural tendency
toward empathy shuts off in favor of self-preservation. And
panic.

“You’re right,” Rachel says, “something’s
happening to them. But they’re paralyzed. They can’t move their
whole bodies—not even close. I mean, yes, whatever is happening is
weird. It’s scary. But they can’t really move a whole lot.”

“
Yet
,” Alan says.

“Right,” Rachel says emphatically. “I think
that’s the thing. Those bodies are gradually becoming
something—something new. And they’re not done yet.”

“And you want to be here when they’re
finished?!” Irene blurts.

“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on
with them,” says Rachel, “but from what we’ve seen, they’re not on
their feet or anything. It’s not like they’re zombies, eating
brains or whatever.”

“What if that’s exactly what they become?”
Irene asks the room, her voice pitched high. “Like, ten minutes
from now?”

“Here’s what I’m saying, okay?” Rachel asks,
her own voice surprising her with its strength. “If we want to stay
on top of this thing, we’ve got to take a stand. We’ve got to
figure out how to deal with them. And I think we have an
opportunity to do that.”

“I can’t believe you actually want to stay
here,” Irene says, looking from Rachel to Bonnie.

“Yes, I do.” Rachel also glances at Bonnie.
“Not only for my dad. Jenny and I learned a few things while we
were out there. I want to try something.”

“Try something?” Bonnie asks while bending
over her dad’s forehead, continuing her stitching. “What do you
mean?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Bonnie …?” Irene is close to whining.

“It’s all right,” Bonnie says, looking up. “I
trust this girl more than, well, than almost anyone who’s come
through here. She’s got some spunk, this one, and I think you’d
have to agree that she’s got guts.”

“She’s a—she’s just—” Irene is flailing about
desperately. “No offense, young lady, but you
are
just a
young—”

“One of the sharpest young ladies I’ve come
across,” Bonnie cuts in. “She needs our help. And if she’s got
ideas about what’s going on, I’m willing to listen. It’s more than
we’re getting from Scott. And I don’t even know where he ran off
to, so…” She shrugs and bends down to her stitching.

“Look,” Irene says, trying her best to remain
calm even though Rachel can tell that she wants to sprint out of
the room. “I’ll say it again. I say we get in one of these cars and
take our chances, find a safe place away from all this. Think of
all the bodies in this hospital! We have to go to a place that’s
not so populated and barricade ourselves, right? Wait for the Army
or something. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Rachel looks out into the hallway. Even as
she watches, two people stumble toward the admissions area, bound
for a hiding place, probably.

“I don’t think hiding somewhere and hoping
this all goes away is the right thing to do,” Rachel says.

“What, you think you can fix everything?”
Irene asks pointedly.

“I’m not saying that, but I’m not one to
cower away when—”

“You little bitch!”

All the women are silent for a moment,
stunned. Irene puts her hand to her lips, immediately regretting
the words.

Rachel is nodding. “Actually, I deserved
that.”

“Okay,” Bonnie says quietly, “I think we have
to keep our emotions under control here. We’re all in this
together, right?”

Irene bursts into tears, shaking her head. “I
can’t do it, I can’t do it! I can’t go back in there, I have to—I
have to go.”

“Wait, wait—” Bonnie says, finishing a final
stitch. “Okay, this is done. Rachel, if you’ll take an alcohol wipe
and clean up the stitching, I want to talk to Irene outside.”

Rachel takes to the task wordlessly, and
Bonnie walks out with Irene, who is shaking her head and wringing
her hands. Jenny goes to the door and peers out at the bodies atop
the gurneys. Despite the humidity and heat inside the hospital, she
hugs herself and shivers.

“What are they doing?” Rachel asks as she
opens a packet of antiseptic wipes.

“Same.” She turns back. “That’s fucked up,
right there. Sorry, Alan.”

“How are you two girls doing?” he asks Rachel
and Jenny quietly. He’s sorting through the supplies on the
counter, aimlessly searching, not really knowing what to do. “I’m
glad you’re safe.”

Jenny sighs. “I’ve had better days.”

Normally Rachel might have laughed at the
joke, but tonight it seems like a deadly serious pronouncement. She
finishes up the cleaning, stands up straight, and stretches.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she says. “I feel
safer in here tonight than out there in the darkness. That might
sound crazy, with those things doing…whatever they’re doing.” She
gestures toward the hallway. “Outside it’s so bleak, and … I don’t
know … dead.”

They can all hear the restless gasps coming
from the hallway.

Jenny gives a half smile. “Maybe that does
sound a little crazy.”

“I know, I know.” Rachel is watching her
father’s face. “I just know I want to be here right now.”

“Done?” Alan asks.

“Yes. Let’s see what we’re dealing with out
there.”

Rachel, Jenny, and Alan make their way
cautiously into the hallway. The low gasps increase in volume,
raising the hair on the back of Rachel’s neck. Stretching along the
corridor are the gurneys holding the victims—the dead—and there’s
movement atop every one of them.

She closes the door to her father’s room
behind her, then turns with the others to watch the corpses. The
bodies on the gurneys are moving minutely, attempting to arch their
backs. The arms and legs appear mostly immobile. The movement is
largely confined to the head, neck, and back, and even that
movement is spasmodic, twitchy. But the flat, dead eyes are fixed
on them, their dry mouths open and emitting a hissing sound. The
sight fills Rachel with a sharp dread, she can’t deny it.

A human stink fills the close, humid air,
amidst the hospital smell of alcohol and disinfectant, and Rachel
believes she can actually smell the recent fear.

She scans the long hall, and her eyes go
quickly to a gurney ten feet away, on the side opposite them, where
a female family member is clutched in the loose, twitching embrace
of a corpse, a teenaged boy, no doubt her son. Only the woman’s
back is visible, and her legs, which slouch uselessly to the floor,
the sandals doing a slow, dragging shuffle.

“Oh my god,” Rachel whispers, gesturing.

The woman’s upper body flops unconscious
against the table and against the newly animated body. The boy’s
arm juts out at an odd angle, jerking spasmodically but clearly
trying to bring the woman closer. The rest of his narrow upper body
heaves against her, the crown of his head pushing senselessly
against her neck. Rachel can’t make sense of what’s happening. She
can’t see either face. But she can hear the sound the boy is
making, an awful, guttural growl.

Jenny tries to bolt toward them, suddenly
fearless in the face of this horror, aiming to help this woman.
Rachel catches her arm.

“Jenny! It’s too late!” Rachel whispers
hotly.

Her friend eases back, a tiny whine escaping
her throat.

Rachel scans the line of corpses again, her
gaze coming to rest on the gurney directly in front of her, across
from the entrance to her father’s room. On this one, the body is
moving with less muscle involvement, its shoulder twitching and its
head clicking left and right on its stiffened neck. She looks down
the rest of the corridor and confirms that none of the corpses have
become so animated that they threaten to leave their beds. Is it
possible that these things might, at some point, evolve to such an
animated state?

This shit can’t be real! It can’t!

Rachel takes a step forward, toward this
first corpse, watching it closely. Jenny’s hand shoots out
instinctively to stop her but she snatches it back, letting Rachel
move forward. Rachel takes another step, and now the corpse, once
an athletic-looking man, goes instantly still. Hideously, it cocks
its head, creaky on the neck, and one eye peers backward at her.
It’s a dead eye, a fish eye with its flat, wide pupil, but it sees
her, she’s sure of it. And barely, Rachel can perceive the red glow
of that glowing orb coming from the open mouth.

Her entire body goes cold, her hands
clutched, white-knuckled at her sides.

And then the thing is screeching at her, its
dry mouth open at an unnatural angle. The sound is horrible,
abrasive, inhuman. The body’s limbs shudder and twist across the
gurney’s hard surface, disregarding the white sheet that has been
placed over its body. The sheet bunches up and finally falls to the
floor, giving Rachel a look at the whole corpse. There’s a weird,
manic energy everywhere down the body, which is clad in a black
tee-shirt and shorts, but as she suspected, the energy isn’t enough
to actually lift the body from the gurney and propel it in any
meaningful way. The muscles twitch almost painfully, not in
control, but in the grip of some inner conflict.

At the sound of the screech, the older woman
who was awkwardly clutched by her son’s corpse finally falls to the
floor in a heap, and the son is also now staring at Rachel with its
dead eye, the head barely turned, the eye twisted too far back in
its socket. Its mouth, too, begins to work hideously, and to
screech. Soon the entire corridor is a dreadful chorus of guttural
screams.

Jenny claps her hands to her ears. For a long
moment, the young women and Alan can only stare down the hall, at
the similar scenes atop gurneys reaching into the flickering
distance.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Jenny cries loudly.

Rachel shrugs off Jenny’s cries and takes
another step toward the closest animated corpse.

“Rachel, what the fuck!?”

“Hold on!” Rachel says, not taking her eyes
off the thing.

As she approaches, step by careful step, the
corpse again goes still, watching her with its dead eyes, and then
the screeching assaults her again, and the thing starts flailing
its mostly unresponsive limbs with renewed vigor. The thing’s snarl
immediately reminds Rachel of the raspy sound that brayed out of
the janitor’s mouth at her dad’s building. There’s a presence in
these corpses, and it’s alive. It’s a presence that is apparently
struggling with the uncooperative shell that surrounds it. Rachel
takes one more step, until she’s two feet away from the thing, and
now it’s snarling, nearly barking at her. There’s an urgent fury on
its face, as the body clenches and jerks. Rachel notices that the
facial movements are all wrong, the muscles beneath the skin at
odds with one another, as if they don’t understand how to work in
concert.

“Rachel! Come on! Jesus!”

Rachel backs away and reaches to take Jenny’s
hand.

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Learning,” Rachel replies.

Her heart is slamming in her chest, and as
they move toward the double doors leading to the admissions area,
she works hard to calm her breathing. She glances back, listens as
the screeching corpses lose their volume.

“Damn, girl,” Jenny breathes, giving her a
look. “Learning, huh? It’s a lot easier to learn at Front Range,
huh? When there’s not scary shit going on all around you,
right?”

Jenny is referring to the classes they share
together at the community college, and the reference stabs at
Rachel. The morning history class there constitutes her last
recollection of Tony, alive and well, winking suggestively at her
from the other side of the room while Mr. Emmitt droned on. Tony’s
longish brown hair—too long, she thought—his eyes deep like water
at night. Jenny somewhere behind her in the classroom, Rachel not
thinking of her then, more in retrospect now, but back there
somewhere. Her last words with Tony were probably in the car
yesterday morning. “Love you, crazy-ass,” he always said.

Not anymore.

Although the memory is less than two days
old, it seems almost ancient already.

Another life, certainly.

The memory conjures her most recent image of
Tony, in his bed, lifeless. Is his body, right now, going through
this transformation, exhibiting signs of unnatural life when she
knows very well that he’s gone?

“What’s that?” Alan says, gesturing.

The end of the hallway is flashing with the
strobing light of some kind of emergency vehicle. Rachel, Jenny,
and Alan leave behind the hallway of twitching corpses and make
their way to the admissions area, which is deserted. In the quiet
waiting room beyond the desk, a number of magazines are strewn
across the floor, and an end table sits crookedly beneath a long
window. Rachel’s eyes dart to a turned-over gurney off to the left,
near the stairwell leading to the upper floors. There’s a body
crumpled on the floor, shifting rhythmically. She can see its legs
twitching. She points at it silently, and the other two see it.