Escape From Dead City Read online

  He looked deep into the eyes of the woman he loved. “And listen, it’s going to get a whole lot worse as well. I’ve had a quick walk through the waiting room; they’re getting as mad as hell in there with all the waiting. There’s also a couple of people in there that don’t look too good; it looks like the infection is rife in there as well.” He took her hands in his, “What the hell are we going to do now, Pauline? We need to make the decision soon, darling, do we stay or do we get out of here as well?”

  She did not have a chance to reply. The rear doors to the Emergency Room burst open and more than a dozen armed soldiers flooded through, wearing full-face gas masks. Closely following behind them were three men dressed in full, head to toe, white biological suits.

  The couple of nurses who were left screamed as the machine guns were pointed right at their heads.

  “Everyone, get up against the wall, move it!” the first soldier shouted, his voice muffled slightly by the mask. “Do it now people,” another almost whispered to Pauline and Gordon as he pushed his large gun towards their faces, “or we’ll have no option but to use deadly force.” The remains of the medical team had no choice but to do just as they were told.

  The men in the biological suits walked past Pauline and the other medical staff as they headed straight for the line of green-sheeted bays, it seemed they knew exactly where, and what they were looking for.

  After only a few minutes, one of the suited men came back out carrying a wide selection of blood and tissue samples, no doubt from both the recently dead and the recently re-animated. The first one called over to a couple of the soldiers, and after what could only have been a single word or two, half the armed men went into the booths.

  Then the low rat-a-tat-tat of short bursts of heavily muffled gunfire echoed around the room.

  “Shit,” Gordon said under his breath to Pauline. “They’re frigging shooting every one in the booths, they don’t even care if they’re infected or not.” Instinctively, his hand went down and took a good hold of hers, they could do nothing else but just stand there; waiting for whatever was coming next.

  “Strip down,” the unknown man in the white suit called out as he came face to face with what was left of the E.R team. “You must remove all of your clothes so we can inspect your bodies, and let me be clear about this, if you refuse, you shall be shot dead immediately as a suspect infected.” All of them could hear the loud clicking of the guns as the soldiers prepared for the order to fire. The first scientist then continued with his little speech, “Do it now please, if you’re given the all clear, then you will be safe here with us, you have my word on that.”

  They, of course, again had no choice but to obey; layer by layer, they all removed their clothing until the four of them stood silent, cold and naked before the line of masked, armed men.

  Two of the white suits carefully checked every single inch of their flesh, searching out for any early signs of the infection, seeing if they were indeed cursed to die right there or not. In a near perfect unison, they turned to the other white suit and shook their heads.

  “Okay, well that’s at least some good news for you folks,” he removed his full head mask to show a man just in his early thirties, but with that close cut haircut which shouted out that he was part of the army. “I’m Lieutenant Nathanial Curtis; and from now on, you’ll all be working for me.”

  ***

  07:40 A.M

  One by one, the people from the waiting room were lead into one of the remaining booths at gunpoint. The doors to the hospital had already been sealed shut, they had nowhere to go, and they were trapped. One man did try to escape but all he managed to do was get gunned down as he darted along a corridor in a desperate attempt to find his freedom. Once the suspects were inside a booth, they were also forced to strip bare and were inspected by either one of the local medical team, or the two other army men that once wore those white biological suits. The one who had called himself Curtis, sat alone throughout the inspections at the main ward desk and was constantly relaying the most up to date information by laptop to someone, to somewhere.

  During these deadly checks, seventeen times the call had to be given, all that was said was code green, not shouted or screamed, just softly spoken. The soldiers in each booth now had long silencers fitted to their pistols. With the minimum of fuss, a single shot was fired into the back of the infected head, they did not care an ounce if they even looked healthy or not. Both Pauline and Gordon had to make a few of these calls themselves, so much for the Hippocratic Oath.

  They cleared the whole waiting room in less than half an hour. It was then that Curtis called them all together around his new desk.

  “Well done everyone, that was good work,” he said. “However, this is only the beginning. We have been ordered to keep this station open; we have to filter through the civilians that the army will be bringing to us. I suggest you go and get some rest while you still can, I’ve got the feeling it’s going to get a little bit busy around here.” With nothing else to say, his eyes dropped back down to his paperwork as he returned to filling out his precious reports.

  “Are they zombies?” Pauline took a step forward.

  “You are here to do a job Doctor, no questions please. Just do what you are told.” Curtis never even bothered to look up.

  “If you want us to give these people a death sentence, then surely we at least deserve some answers?”

  With a wave of his hand, Curtis summoned a soldier over, no orders were required. Immediately he marched the doctors away, his commanding officer was not to be disturbed.

  Back in their mess room, Pauline and Gordon had to whisper to each other so that the solitary guard left to look after them could not hear.

  “I can’t stay in here any longer,” Pauline said as her eyes were drawn over to the window. “We need to get out of here now.”

  “I know darling,” he said. “Do you think I like being stuck in here, handing out a death sentence to all those people?”

  “It’s not just that,” she whispered back. “It’s Margot, my little sister, she’s still out there. She’s all the family that I’ve got left, Gordon. We need to find her; and then we need to get the hell out of this city before it’s totally overrun with the undead.”

  “We can’t get out,” he looked over towards the guard standing by the doorway. “There’s no way they’re going to let us leave, they need us too much. Anyway, the army seems to have got it under control; if we just wait here for a while, they might get them all.”

  “Don’t put your head in the sand. You’ve been to all those seminars just like me, you how easily an infectious disease can spread through a major city. There is next to no chance of surviving inside, the only chance they’ll have of defeating this is to totally quarantine London and leaving us in here to die.”

  He gave her a little nod after a few seconds of thought; he guessed that she was right, as usual. “Okay, Pauline,” he said as he glanced over at the guard again. “I agree that we need to get out but how the hell are we going to manage that? And how are we going to get in touch with your sister anyway? They’ve taken away our phones.”

  She got even closer to him, “The maintenance room at the far end of the corridor has an outside line, the nurses use it sometimes to save money on their own phones,” then a little smile broke out on her face. “It’s also got its own fire escape door just in case something goes wrong, if we can just get down there we can easily get outside. We just need to get him out of the way.” It was then her turn to glance over to the grim faced guard.

  “And just how are we going to do that?” he said, his eyes were not looking over at the soldiers face; he was looking at his gun.

  “Just follow my lead,” she said, as she quickly rose up and walked over to the tabletop coffee machine. Gordon’s heart raced like a pneumatic drill in fear at what stupid plan she was hatching, but even so, he got himself up from the table and followed her.

  “Well, it should be air
borne by now,” Pauline stuttered as she poured herself another cup of what was loosely called coffee. “That means we are probably all infected already, we need to keep a close eye on each other. When the time comes, please just let me go, I don’t want to turn into one of those things.”

  Gordon caught on pretty quick. “I’m not so sure, Doctor. I think it may take at least 24 hours for it to mutate from its present state. We should still have some time to get away, not a hell of a lot granted, but at least some.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” the soldier grunted as he came over. “They told us we could only get infected by a bite.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Pauline appeared startled by him. “Well... I’m sorry but I don’t think they have told you the whole truth. You see, all known viruses will mutate into an air borne variety eventually.”

  The soldier immediately let go of his machine gun and it swung down to hang at his waist. Fumbling about in his bag, he tried to get his gas mask out. Pauline took her chance. The contents of the cup of coffee she held was sent flying right into his face, as he recoiled with the burning pain, Gordon grabbed hold of the round glass jug. Smash! One hefty smack into the side of his face sent the soldier sprawling down onto the floor.

  Gordon instinctively dropped down to his knees to take a check on the soldier’s condition.

  “Leave him be!” Pauline shouted. “We don’t have the time; come on man; we need to get moving now before any of his friends turn up.” But Gordon ignored her, he checked out his pulse, on finding him still alive, he placed him in the recovery position. He had a quick look at the shards of glass that were stuck in his face and decided the blood loss was not going to be life threatening.

  “I said come on, just bloody leave him,” Pauline grunted as she placed her hand on his shoulder and pulled. “Please Gordon.” This time he did as he was asked, but his glance showed he was far from happy.

  Opening the door ever so slightly, they peered in both directions and saw that it was clear. As quietly as they could, they made their way down to the plain looking door that was right at the very end of the corridor. As usual, it was not locked and the two doctors carefully entered. The smallish room was filled to over flowing with shelves which contained everything from toilet paper rolls, to spare parts for all the various medical machines. And there right at the end was another wall-mounted telephone, just what they were after.

  Pauline dialed 9 and then her sister’s mobile number, it just rang and rang for what felt like a lifetime.

  “Hello...who’s this?” a sleepy sounding voice eventually answered.

  “Thank God,” Pauline spoke as loud as she dared. “Hey, Margot it’s me, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Do you understand? You need to listen to me now?”

  “What the hell are you on about?” she replied, her voice groggy, but Pauline could still sense the ire. “Wait a second...” The phone then went quiet again for far too long. “Do you know what time it is? Christ, it’s just after eight on a bloody Saturday morning, have you finally gone mad?”

  “Just turn on the television please,” Pauline snarled down the phone. “Get on to the news channels and tell me what they’re saying, please can you just do that for me.” She could hear some movement and could only hope that her sister was doing as she asked.

  “Pauline,” Margot came back on, her tone now much softer than before. “There’s nothing on any of the channels, all they’re showing is a screen with Emergency Curfew on it and some crap below it about keeping calm and staying indoors. What the fuck is going on?”

  “It’s a virus, and it’s spreading,” she said. “We need to meet up and get out of the city as fast as we can. Where are you, are you still living in your studio flat down by the river?” Pauline did not get an answer this time, she just heard her sister talking to someone else. “Margot!” Pauline, forgot about the soldiers for a moment, she shouted down the phone. “Come on, are you even bloody listening to me?”

  “Yeh, sorry sis, now what type of virus is this? Is it safe for us to walk around the streets, won’t we just breathe it in?”

  Pauline spent the next five minutes explaining to her twenty-year-old sibling what was happening and the urgent need for them to get out of London.

  “Hi, Pauline,” a man’s voice then came over the phone. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Arthur, Margot’s boyfriend. I’ve been listening on speaker phone and that’s one hell of a story.”

  “Yes I do remember you, Arthur,” Pauline said, more than a little disappointed that her sister was still seeing him. “Can you please put Margot back on now?”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I know of a way we can get away, my work phone has been going mad with all these messages. There’s one last train leaving from Victoria station down to the coast fairly soon, and I think that I can get us on it.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Arthur, but please just put Margot back on, I need to speak to her.”

  “Hey sis, calm down, you have to trust him...you have to trust me about this. If he says he can do it, then we need to follow him. Just meet us on my side of Westminster Bridge and we’ll all go to the station together. And sis, you’d better hurry up, we’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” Pauline said as she looked over at Gordon. “We’ll meet you there and then we can decide what we’re going to do, and don’t worry, we won’t be late.”

  She hung the phone up and along with her man they headed straight for the bright red Fire Exit door.

  2- A trip along by the river

  Margot’s apartment

  08:25 A.M

  Jumping out of bed, Margot grabbed for her clothes that were untidily strewn across the floor and started to get dressed. Looking back over, she saw Arthur was still lying down and fiddling around on his Blackberry phone.

  “Just bloody leave it alone, will you?” she snapped at him. “Come on, we ain’t got the time for you to be mucking about on that thing.”

  “Okay, okay, just another minute,” he muttered, his eyes still stuck on the fancy phone screen. “I just want to find out everything I can about the train...” Before he could finish, his jeans were thrown right in his face. With a little smile to his girl, he took the not so subtle hint and got himself out of bed too.

  The second her clothes were roughly put on, Margot went into the living room and across to her fancy French windows. Sliding them open she gingerly stepped out onto her small, third floor veranda. It was a wondrous view that she took in every single morning, the wild beauty of the raging river Thames below, and beyond, the famous sights of London sitting proudly over on the north bank. When their parents had died two years before, she used her inheritance to buy the place. Her work as a barmaid at one of the nightclubs just about paid her bills.

  This morning however, it somehow felt very different, and it was not only those faint and unrecognizable shouts that she could just about hear over the roar of the river. There was also something else in the air that she could not quite put her finger on.

  “Okay, that’s me ready to go doll,” she heard him calling out from back in the bedroom. “Come on then, we need to get moving.”

  “Just give me a few seconds,” she said as she came back in and joined him again. Grabbing hold of her favorite backpack from on top of the wardrobe, she disappeared deep into the tiny kitchen area. Throwing open her two cupboards she grabbed a variety of tinned food and some bottled water and stuffed them into the tatty, multi colored bag.

  “And what makes you think we’re going to need all that stuff?” he said as he peered into the little room, wondering what she was up to now.

  “And what makes you think that we won’t?” she grunted back without turning. Shrugging his shoulders, he left her to it; he had learned a long time ago not to bother arguing with her when she was in one of her moods. Instead, he picked up his faithful pool cue case and removed the fat bottom half. If what Pauline had said
was indeed true, then there was a good chance that he would need to defend himself. Tapping the lump of wood in the palm of his hand, he at least felt a little bit better.

  Once her backpack was filled to the brim and after nodding to Arthur, she headed for the front door, but they both stopped for a second before they opened it. Arthur flashed a little comforting smile as his hand went down to the round handle, with a little twist it opened. Peering down the long hallway, they found it perfectly quiet.

  “So far so good,” he whispered as they slowly inched their way towards the elevator. As he pressed the call button his face suddenly changed, he took a good, tight hold of Margot’s arm and stepped slightly backwards. “You know what?” he said as he gently pulled her back too. “Maybe it would be best if we just used the stairs. I don’t really fancy being stuck inside a little metal box.”

  Looking at the steel doors and remembering what her sister had said, she quickly agreed. “Yeh,” she said. “That might be a good idea.” As the elevator headed up towards them, they darted towards the door for the stairs. As they reached the wooden doorway, they heard the usual loud ping that signaled the elevator had arrived on their floor. For some reason they stopped and stared along the corridor as the doors slowly slid open. For what felt like an age, they waited for someone to appear from inside. They only started to breathe again when no one did.

  “Come on,” Arthur said as he pushed the door open. “Let’s just get the hell out of here, babe. I’d much rather be outside in the open.”

  Step by step they hurried down the stairs until they reached the sparse, little foyer, but ground to a halt when they saw her standing there. Jean Maguire, from the same floor as Margot, was already there and peering out of the main glass doorway.

  “Oh Margot, my dear girl,” the woman called out as she spotted them slowly approaching her. “Thank God you’re here, I need your help.”