Escape From Dead City
Escape from Dead City
By
John McCuaig
To Kaitlin, my little princess
Prologue
02:45 A.M
Old Park Lane, Mayfair, London
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
She tried her best to clear her mind from the madness. To only think of the constant beat from that old grandfather clock which hid itself away in the dark shadows behind her.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
She failed. She was always going to fail.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
A storm was coming. An unrelenting force was out there, patiently waiting to be released upon the sleeping world. And the rhythm of the clock was like the heartbeat of the earth, she closed her eyes and waited for it to stop.
***
A sharp knock on the door quickly snapped her back to reality. Spinning around in her chair she watched as a tall, fine suited man walked straight in without bothering to wait for a reply. Stopping abruptly, and peering into the darkness of her office, he could barely make out her slight figure sitting behind the oak desk.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late ma’am,” he spoke softly, seemingly unsure if she was still even awake. “But you asked to be informed as soon as it started.”
“It’s okay, Jack,” she replied as her eyes slowly adjusted to the bright light that was flooding in behind him. He need not have worried about her; there was no way she would be getting any sleep tonight. “Please come on in and tell me where, and when.”
“Well….it’s everywhere it seems, all over the country,” he mumbled back. “The first reports are starting to come through now; but they’re still a little bit vague I’m afraid.” Walking over next to her, he handed over a single sheet of crisp white paper. As she flicked on the table lamp, he could see her pupils rapidly close from the extra light then slightly widen as she scanned its contents.
Standing up, she scooped together a bundle of files off the desk and shoved them under her arm. “Very well,” she said as she marched right towards the still open door. “We’d better get a move on then.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said as he followed, keeping his usual few steps behind her. “They’re already here; they’re waiting outside for you in a car.”
Suddenly stopping, she waited for him in the long, wooden paneled hallway. Once he got up close, she spoke softly, “Goodbye my dear Jack, and I’m sure you’ve already realized it may be quite a while before we see each other again.” Grabbing a hold of his hand, she gave it a gentle, little squeeze. “Now please, promise me that you’ll look after yourself.”
“Of course I will and goodbye to you as well ma’am,” he said as he gave her a gentle nod and forced a smile. “And if I may be so bold, good luck.”
She was not smiling. Opening the front door and walking out into the bitter, cold night air she knew that she was going to be needing a hell of a lot more than just luck.
After watching the car disappear around the corner, Jack went back into the drawing room, unlocked a tall glass display case and removed two long, double barrel shotguns. He had worked for her for years and no matter how much respect he had for her, he would not be relying on her succeeding. After loading the shells, he placed the guns down on her desk and waited. It was his turn to listen to the clock, and as it beat inside his head, he tried not to imagine what lay ahead.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Reaching forward, his hand wrapped around one of the guns which was soon perched on his lap.He too wanted, needed, something more than just luck.
1-Outbreak
04:05 A.M
St Thomas’ Hospital, Central London
Sipping slowly on her not so warm coffee, Pauline McCann took a few moments to look around at the rest of the medical staff as they hurried around the Accident and Emergency room. It was yet another typical Friday night. A chorus of shouts and screams echoed from the long line of bays as the wild array of drunks, and junkies had their various cuts stitched, and their broken bones reset.
However, her eyes kept being drawn over to Gordon Henry, the short, balding, and bespectacled doctor who, as usual, was darting around in a not so mild panic. She could not help but smile. Her friends always wondered what she saw in him, and to be perfectly honest, so did she at times. After all, he was a good ten years older than she was and almost the total opposite; he was always so quiet and reserved when they were not at work while she was confident and the life and soul of the party. Then a little glance from her boyfriend of the last year and a half showed her the reason why, love and devotion shone from his blue eyes, melting her heart. Every single time he looked at her, he showed that same adoration.
“Well Doctor McCann, are you going to be joining us again this morning or have you had enough already?” He playfully asked her as he wiped away a long run of spittle from the front of his white coat. “Come on my dear, I’m sure you’ll have some fun.”
“Why certainly, Doctor,” she replied, struggling to keep a straight face. “If you can’t handle things around here, then surely, I’ll be more than happy to help you out.” After a little bow, she put down the half-empty polystyrene cup and grabbed the next manila file from the large pile that was stacked high on the counter.
The triage nurse had already filled in most of the front.
Name/Sex- Tim Matthews/Male
D.O.B- 28/02/1988
Injury- Lacerations to both arms and hands
Cause- Suspected human bites
Prognosis- Sutures and Antibiotics
She sighed, having worked far too many of these Friday nights to get even the slightest bit shocked anymore by the things these men could do to each other. Snapping on some fresh rubber gloves, she got herself ready before entering the booth at the far end of the room to get a look at her next patient.
“A good morning to you Mister Matthews and how are you feeling now?” She said as her eyes kept downwards as she scanned through his meager notes. The second she glanced up for the answer, she knew he was in trouble, big trouble. Sweat poured out from every pore on his skin, foam slipped out from the side of his mouth and his body writhed in violent twitches every couple of seconds or so. Racing to his side, she placed her hand on his clammy forehead and felt it heat, pulling open his eyes, she saw they were clouded and grey.
“Code Blue,” she yelled out at the top of her voice while pulling open his shirt. “Code Blue, bay twelve.”
Gordon was the first one to join her; he left his own patient to his self-inflicted pain as soon as he heard her calling out for help. Throwing open the curtains and barging past her with his usual fuss, he set about examining the rapidly convulsing man. He took hold of the patients arm and showed it to Pauline.
“Shit, come over here and have a look at this. There’s some sort of deep rooted infection going on, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
The man’s skin was changing to a light brown while his veins were showing, and throbbing, a dark green. Quickly he checked on the man’s pulse and breathing. “He’s going into shock, come on, quick, get me some adrenalin.” But before Pauline could even move a muscle, the victim went into one last massive convulsion before flopping back down, limp and unmoving.
“Crash cart!” Gordon called out as he jumped up on the bed, knelt over the man, and began chest compressions, his hands thrusting up and down on the now still chest. “Get that bloody crash cart in here now.”
After five minutes of increasingly powerful electric shocks in an attempt to save him, Gordo
n looked up to the clock and decided to give the call. “Okay I think that’s enough folks,” he said to Pauline and the three nurses as he stopped working on the lifeless body. “We’re not bringing him back.” He pulled the sheet over the young man’s face and left the booth without saying another word.
Pauline immediately followed him out, leaving the nurses to it. “What the hell happened to him?” she said, pinging off her latex gloves. “I’ve never heard of that much infection spreading so quickly.” She looked back at the bay as her tone suddenly changed. “Crap,” her voice had also lowered to barely more than a whisper. “Gordon, do you think the triage nurse might have missed it somehow, he must have been that ill when she saw him?”
“Who knows?” Gordon continued, as he got ready to go back over to his original patient. “Whatever it was, you’d better go and write it up now, and please make sure it’s done by the book.” He pointed his finger to the floor, “and you’ll need to get him down to the morgue and sharpish.” Then his finger just as quickly pointed all the way up to the ceiling. “The bigwigs will want the autopsy done first thing in the morning; they sure as hell don’t like anyone dying down here.” He almost snickered at the thought of it. “All they seem to worry about these days is not getting sued for malpractice.” Just as she was about to leave him, he gently grabbed a hold of her arm. “Hey, do you need a hand with him?”
“No thanks, darling,” she managed to smile at him again; there he was, worrying about her as usual. “I’ll manage it just fine by myself.”
On leaving him, Pauline entered the booth and picked up the late Mister Matthews notes that were hung from the end of the bed. First thing she did was write in large letters, DECEASED, across the top of the brown file along with the exact time that his death was finally confirmed. As she perched herself on the edge of the mattress, she started to scribble down what had happened to her patient, although he had only been that for a few minutes before he passed away. There was in fact not a lot for her to put down, there was no use in her even guessing what had killed him, it was now up to the coroner to find out the reasons why.
Just as she got herself up to leave, she felt the sheets move beside her, startled, she turned and saw them twitching. Sniggering away to herself for jumping, she still headed out; it was not unusual for some electrical signals to fire through the body long after death. Then she heard it, it was a wheeze, no; it was more like a small moan. She stopped and focused on the spot, turning her head, her gaze now frozen on the single bed. Hundreds of times before she had heard air escaping from a corpse, but this seemed different somehow. Her mind raced, had they now also made some sort of mistake, was he somehow still alive under that sheet?
“Gordon...” she shouted out before remembering where she was. “Doctor Henry, can you come over here please, and quickly?” Edging herself closer to the top of the bed, she gently pulled the sheet away from the young man’s face. His eyes were open and looking back at her.
In one slow movement, the man called Tim Matthews, sat up straight in his bed and stiffly turned, his eyes permanently stuck on Pauline. With another wheeze, he swung his legs out from under the sheets and stood up tall on his shaky legs. The infection had now spread all over his face, brown and green streaks madly zig-zagged across his skin and seemed to meet near his eyes. Near those grey, clouded, and still dead looking eyes.
“Mister Matthews,” Gordon stuttered as he raced back into the booth and slid to a grinding halt, shock spreading all over his face. “Please sir, will you get back into your bed now, we’ll be able to help you once you get yourself back down...please, sir?” As usual, he was not doing that well at keeping his cool.
“Gordon,” Pauline shouted over to him. “He ain’t listening to you, how the hell can he! He was frigging dead a minute ago.”
“Mister Matthews!” Gordon was also shouting, but at the slowly shuffling man. “I’m warning you for the last time, sir, if you don’t get back in your bed right now, I’ll have no choice but to call security.”
With each of the small steps that the recently dead young man was making towards the cornered Pauline, it moved just a little bit more freely. From those first stiff, jarring steps, it was now back to moving almost normally, slow but almost normal.
Pauline could not wait any longer for Gordon to come racing to her rescue. As the thing got closer and closer, she reached around behind her, searching for the heaviest thing she could lay her hands on. Just as its colorless hands reached for her face, she swung around, the small black oxygen bottle smashing off its left temple. It staggered backwards towards the bed but before it could regain its balance, it felt the full force of a second attack. Again, the thick steel tube smashed into its skull, and all around could hear the sound of the crushing bone.
“My God,” Gordon muttered as he looked down at the once again motionless body. “What the hell have you done Pauline? I don’t believe it; you’ve gone and bloody killed him.”
“I had no choice,” she mumbled back at him, her own eyes also stuck on the body. “Come on, you pronounced him dead yourself not more than five minutes ago. Just have a look at his wounds, go on, please tell me if that is normal.”
Gordon Henry knelt down and looked closely at the fallen man; he saw the blood coming from out of his ears. Then something inside told him to look again, this time he peered down even closer. It was not a bright red blood that was dripping out onto the floor; no, this was a thick, jet-black sludge.
“What the hell is that,” was all he could say before another voice started shouting out behind him.
“Code blue...cold blue...code blue,” another nurse was calling out from the other end of the room.
With one last look at the now still body, both of the doctors ran to where these new calls for help were coming from. On entering this next small booth, they came across a sight which shocked them both to the bone.
A raven haired, skinny teenage girl was writhing on the bed; her symptoms were the same as the man, except the unknown infection was already spread all over her face. Before they could get anywhere near her, she arched her lithe back for the last time and then lay still on the bed. She too, had died on their watch.
“Restrain her,” Pauline shouted over to the nurses. “Tie her down tightly; we need to make sure she doesn’t get off that damn bed.”
They did not move on her order, with open mouths, they just stared back at her, this poor young girl had died in their care and it now seemed that the doctor had lost her mind too. Pauline glared over towards Gordon, demanding that he help her out this time.
“Just do as she says, please,” he eventually mumbled. “And get it done quickly, before it’s too late.”
The two nurses duly followed the command of the senior doctor on duty, they did not even begin to understand his orders, but they still set about placing her limp limbs into the heavy leather straps. However, no matter how fast they worked, they were still not quick enough.
Just as her last hand was being placed into the strap, the girl shot up in bed and sank her teeth into the cheek of the closest nurse.
Chilling screams grew as the dead girl pulled her head away with a hefty slice of pink flesh stuck deep in her mouth. As the sobbing nurse dropped to the floor, the beast chewed away on the sweet meat as two thin dribbles of blood raced each other down her heavily infected chin, and fell onto her blouse.
Both the doctors instinctively grabbed the nurse up from the floor and tended to her nasty wound. As they cleaned and dressed the gaping hole in her cheek, they shared a couple of knowing glances; they would need to keep a careful eye on this poor nurse. All through this time, the moans from the dead girl grew and her hopeless fight against the heavy restraints continued. Anger raced all over its face, it had tasted a piece of the living and it was still hungry for more.
The second he was finished tending the nurse, Gordon got out of the booth and grabbed hold of the wall mounted phone. He was calling for help, telling the Centre for Infectiou
s Disease, the Department of Health, he told everyone, and anyone who would listen to his story.
“Go on then, please tell me you told them what they were,” Pauline joined Gordon by the phone as soon as he had hung up for the last time. “Please, just tell me you told them what we’re dealing with here.”
“Stop talking crap. We don’t know what the hell’s wrong with them,” Gordon said as he tried to walk away from her, he was doing his best not to think about it. “It could be anything.”
“Come on, Gordon,” she said getting in front of him, stopping him in his tracks, she was by now losing the last little bit of patience she had left. “You’ve seen all those films just like me; you know fine well that they’re zombies. What else can come back from the dead and eat people?”
“There’s no such thing as frigging zombies,” he muttered, still unable to look her in the eye. “That’s just all some made up Hollywood rubbish. Come on yourself, you’re supposed to be a doctor after all, aren’t you? Think about what you’re saying, you’re a woman of science; you must know all that nonsense is impossible.”
“And yesterday I’d have completely agreed with you, my darling,” she said as she picked up the now stone cold cup of coffee and stared down at its tepid, unappealing content. “But after this morning, I don’t have a damn clue what to think anymore.”
Then those words started to ring out again.
“Code blue...code blue.”
***
05:15 A.M
The Doctors station
“That’s now four of them we’ve had to restrain,” Gordon said as he looked up and down the room at the various closed off booths. “Three of them have already turned into whatever, and the fourth, Nurse Cobb, will be joining them shortly going by the speed her infection is spreading. I honestly don’t have a clue what the hell is going on, never mind how we can cure it.”
Pauline was barely listening, her eyes continually scanned around the room, “We’ve only got two of the nurses left, Gordon. It looks like the rest have just run off home or wherever. And to be honest, I can’t say that I blame them for doing that.” She had even looked at the exit door more than a few times recently.