Infection: Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (3 page)

“Are the other two children here in the hospital? Maybe I could get an idea of any potential toxicity from them.”

“Yeah, they’re down the hall. Ginny, you stay here while I take the Doc to talk to Danny and Jules.” Mr. Houser’s expression suddenly soured as he asked, “Oh Jesus. What about Alec?”

“Alec?” the physician repeated.

Attempting futilely to bury his hands in his short, thinning hair, Mr. Houser said softly, his eyes glancing over at his poor, tortured wife, “Our older son. He’s still down at the cabin. All alone.” He looked beyond his wife this time, trying to see past the scores of miles that separated him from his oldest boy.

Alec was smart but he was a teenager. Mr. Houser was fully aware of the decision-making capabilities of a teenage brain succumbing to the potent mix of raging hormones and newly emerging ego.

Mr. Hauser’s worry for his son was evident to the doctor, who sympathized with the man’s concern. He said hopefully, “Does Alec have a cell phone?”

The worried father nodded but said dejectedly, “Yes, but they don’t work up here we discovered.”

Ginny, rising from her plastic chair with surprising agility, pleaded, “Please…” but her words were smothered by her sorrow that stole away her voice and her breath all at once. She fanned her face with her thick, soft hand and tried to no avail to fight back her tears, which streaked down her fiery red cheeks.

Mr. Houser, as small as he may have been compared to his wife, wrapped her tightly in his arms and kissed her gently on the forehead. He held her against him for a time without saying a word. Then he said, “You take care of our boy and I’ll be right back. Everything’s gonna be fine. Okay?”

Ginny nodded through her tears and sat back down in the chair next to the bed. Martin was breathing in quick, shallow breaths. He hadn’t opened his eyes in quite some time and hadn’t said a word for an even longer time. The top of the sheet nearest to his face and neck was damp with sweat, as was his hair. The half-moons under his eyes had grown darker, giving the impression that his eyes were sinking deeper into their sockets.

And then Martin Houser was struggling to take in a breath. He started to shake horribly. Ginny grabbed his hand and started pleading, “Breathe, Marty. Breathe. Listen to your momma. Breathe honey, please.”

Unable to take her eyes away from the single bar of light that crawled across the life monitoring machinery, she shouted to the closed door, “Oh God, somebody come help me! Help my boy! Please God no! Somebody help me!” She held her son’s limp hand and refused to let it go.

A nurse ran into the room and immediately checked Martin, checked the machines to which he was attached, and then checked Martin again. “Mrs. Houser, I’m going to need you to step outside for a moment, please.”

Sounding almost sick, Ginny countered, “I’m staying with my boy. He needs me. My boy needs his momma. Marty, momma’s here honey. Please wake up honey. Please! Oh God, please!”

Another person and then another came in, but Ginny didn’t even really notice anymore. They tried everything they could to revive little Martin. But try as they might, nothing they did seemed to work. He was absolutely unresponsive to any and all life saving procedures they attempted. His little body was just too ravaged by whatever it was that was attacking it. Luckily, it wasn’t a long battle. His body merely quit and nothing seemed to matter.

Ginny, still holding Martin’s rapidly cooling hand, fell onto the floor and sat there weeping. The terrible, dull, cold pain that filled her chest and fouled her stomach was like nothing she had ever known and something that she could have gone her entire life without knowing. The day and all that had happened seemed but a blur of images and then only agony. Had it only been one day? She wasn’t remotely certain anymore. The one thing that she was sure of though was that her little boy was gone...forever.

One of the nurses, the first to have arrived in the room, leaned closer to Ginny and whispered, “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Houser.” It was then that the grief finally grabbed hold of her. Her weeping became loud sobbing. Attempts to lift her from the floor were swiped away with her moist, meaty hands. “Just leave me alone. Leave me be. Let me have a few minutes with my little boy. I only want a few more minutes with my boy.”

Realizing that it would be just as well to let her calm down in the room rather than out in the hallway and risk disturbing other patients, the collection of white and blue clad medical staff all decided to leave her where she sat. Once alone, Ginny hoisted herself up and into one of the chairs in the room. She sat there quietly for several minutes while she tried to digest what had just happened. Could her little Martin be gone? Her face was hot with sorrow and tears and her head pounded painfully.

She sat there, staring blankly at the wall. When the sheet covering her now motionless Martin moved, she was startled and a little excited. Had they made a mistake? She stood up and got closer to the bed as he sat up.

“Marty? Are you okay honey?” Standing next to his bed, Ginny leaned in and took the child in her arms. She held him tight against her, resting his head on her shoulder. She couldn’t have been happier. Her boy was all right.

She neither saw him open his eyes, nor did she see the burning hunger that colored his blackened irises. She felt him move but didn’t see his mouth open wide just before he dug his teeth into her throat. In terror, she tried to scream but was unable to as his jaw crushed her windpipe while he ripped huge chunks of soft white tissue from her neck. She fell backward with a look of profound astonishment across her face. Marty leapt from the bed and followed her down to the floor.

Mr. Houser and Dr. Caldwell had, meanwhile, been talking to Danny about the attack and the animal that bit young Martin. Neither of the men accepted that it was a caveman of sorts that had been responsible. They asked Danny again and again in every way they could imagine to describe to them what had happened and what had done it. Nearly to tears, Danny couldn’t seem to impress upon them how serious he was, nor how sure he was of whom or what had bitten poor Martin.

It was Jules who came to the rescue with, “Danny’s right. He’s telling the truth. He’s on my camera.”

Mr. Houser asked, “What?”

“Go ahead. Look.”

“What’s on there honey?”

“He is, I think. He was too scary to look at so I just turned my camera off, but he’s still on there. Go ahead, look.”

Mr. Houser grabbed the camera abruptly from his daughter. He pressed the power button and the idling camera turned off and beeped: dead battery.

“Jules honey, did you actually turn the camera off?”

“Uh, I thought I did.”

“Goddamnit! D’you have the power cord?”

“Uh huh,” she said and produced the black cord from her bag.

The doctor grabbed the first hospital staffer he saw, a young Certified Nursing Assistant named Jerry. He didn’t know Jerry that well, but he did know that Jerry was young, likely electronically inclined, and could more than likely make this camera work again.

“Take this camera and the three of them to the nearest outlet and make this thing work. As soon as you get it going, come find me. Drop everything else that you’re doing and get this done now. Got it?”

The doctor didn’t bother to wait for a response. He turned and was about to speak with Mr. Houser again when a scream from down the hall drew both of their attentions. It was coming from the direction of Martin’s room. The two of them ran down the hall, Mr. Houser shouting to Danny, “Take care of Jules!”

Danny nodded, though Mr. Houser was no longer facing him, and followed the new guy that was taking them to an office only two doors from where they were. Jerry fumbled with a key chain that, in Danny’s estimation, probably held keys for every door in the hospital, as well as Jerry’s house, his car, and the doors of all of his neighbors. They rattled and jingled a song while he sought the proper key. He finally got the door open, and on the other side of the door was a small office cluttered with file boxes in one corner, a computer monitor and CPU on and under the corner of a desk of sorts, and a pair of chairs that just barely fit into the small space. Jerry moved a picture frame of several someones, none of which were Jerry, and exposed a black power outlet that amazingly wasn’t being used.

They all sat down, Jerry in the bigger, more plush office chair, and Danny and Jules sharing the other chair. They watched the little light on the side of the camera go from red to green in a matter of seconds.

Jerry, a nineteen year old who had just earned his GED and Nursing Assistant certification a few months ago, had been working for Providence Health Systems for about six months but had just moved to the hospital from one of its long term care annexes from around the city. He was glad to have made the change. He liked what he did, even the nitty gritty of helping elderly folks dress, bathe, and care for themselves. He found it difficult, however, to work in a setting in which he constantly saw those for whom he had cared and grown accustomed to seeing die. He realized that was the nature of such a facility, but it was still hard for him to get close with some of these folks. only to arrive some mornings to find that Mrs. Gillum died last night or that Mr. Fredericson had elected to go home to spend his last hours with family. He wasn’t prepared to be reminded of his mortality in such aggressive ways so early on in his medical career. He wanted to work somewhere that he might be able to save lives and not just to...well, not just to watch people die. It had become very depressing, and he was all set to go back to work as a cashier at Fred Meyer when he was presented with the opportunity to move over to the hospital and work as a Floater, moving between departments.

He knew that helping doctors directly and getting them to know your name was one way that he might meet the right person who could help steer him toward the best opportunity to advance his career. He wanted to get a degree in the health industry, but was unsure of whether he wanted to complete a degree in Nursing or to get a series of certifications that would allow him to really diversify his worth to any hospital or medical group. He knew that he wanted to be in the medical field, he just wasn’t sure in what capacity that might be. Before he started his vocational training classes, he never would have thought it possible that he would be thinking in such long term possibilities and now that was all that he could do. He finally could feel his future opening up to him and for once he was excited about something beyond next weekend.

Jerry lifted the camera, saying, “Do you mind if I have a look?”

Jules, partly surprised to have an adult ask her permission to do anything, nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, how do you...oh, never mind, got it.” Jerry pressed two buttons and was then advancing rapidly through a day’s worth of tourist photos. Barely pausing to even see the pictures as they passed, he asked, “What are we supposed to be looking for? What did the Doc want us to find?”

The next image was his answer. What he saw in that picture was frightening. “Is this real?”

Both kids nodded to him.

“Where was this?”

Jules, lifting her shoulders, said innocently, “Far away...in Alaska.”

Danny added, “I think I heard something about a place called Seward somewhere close by, but I don’t know for sure. This is my first time up here.”

Almost as an afterthought, Jerry said absently, “Welcome to Alaska. First time, huh?

“Yeah.”

Jerry couldn’t change the camera’s digital facade. The face contained therein was horrifying and a little familiar. He had seen faces like this one before but never in his wildest dreams did he think he would see them thus.

The face was hideously disfigured and grey, with skin stretched tightly across his cheekbones and jaw. In some places, those same bones were emerging from breaks and tears in the upper layer of tissue. There were no eyes in the empty and blackened sockets, but the face did seem to be looking, searching. His gums were the same color and seeming consistency as tar and were spread out over his few brown jagged teeth.

This wasn’t a caveman as the kids had suggested, but he couldn’t get his mind around what it appeared to be. Things like this existed only in horror movies or video games. He knew that for him to tell someone—anyone—about his suspicions, he would first be laughed at, and then sent to the lab to have a urinalysis drug screen performed. How could he possibly approach someone, especially someone of authority, and tell him that he thinks they have a zombie problem?

The screaming down the hall had intensified to an almost feverish pitch. Jerry could tell that the level of activity and, in all probability, chaos, had also increased. There had been several calls for security personnel over the public address system. To the chorus of screaming had been added an accompanying rhythm of smashing furniture and a melody of shattering glass.

Instinctively, Jerry knew that he needed to get out of there. He looked at the two kids in his charge and paused. What was he to do with them? He could just say that he had to get out of there and leave them to their own luck. He could venture down that hallway and try and find their dad or at least the doctor with whom the dad seemed to be working. Or...

He looked at the little boy. “What’s your name?”

“Danny.”