Dead Living Read online

  Now, as Joe held the phone to his ear, Brian leaned forward to vomit. Danny was struggling to keep a violent woman pinned to the ground. Anthony lashed out at everyone within ten feet of the truck. They were in the middle of an emergency.

  “You’re going to the hospital?”

  “Yes. I tried to call Doctor Rivers, but couldn’t get through to him. Meet us there. But Joe, please, be careful. There’s some really weird shit happening on the roads.”

  “Fights?”

  “It’s really scary. We just missed having an accident. Some guy knocked someone down right by the car. We almost hit him. It looked like he was trying to bite him.”

  They lived in the suburbs. The riots that Joe had seen on the news hadn’t spread that far yet. But it sounded like it wasn’t far off. He looked up at Anthony once again. What could possibly be going on?

  Joe tried to think positive, but it wasn’t working. Sarah and Margie are going to the hospital, where no doubt everyone else is gonna go. But they have no choice.

  “Okay, I’m leaving work now. I love you, Sarah. Put Margie back on.”

  A brief silence. He heard Sarah breathing uncomfortably in the background. He wanted to be with her desperately, to shield her and their child from the things happening around them.

  “Joe? What’s up?” Margie asked.

  “Listen, Margie. Don’t stop at any red lights. Take it slow, but don’t stop for anything, okay?”

  “No problem there. Whoa! Joe, we just passed three people beating the shit out of some guy against a van! What the hell is going on?”

  He took a breath. He wanted to tell them what was happening on the news and at the plant, but it would take too long.

  “The news isn’t quite sure yet, but it’s bad. Just get to the hospital. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  He put his cell phone away and jogged back to Danny, who was still struggling with the woman. He had his knees driven into her back now, but she still fought and wailed.

  “I have to go. Sarah’s in labor.”

  Danny nodded. “Get out of here. Be safe out there.”

  Joe ran across the parking lot and climbed in his truck. He sped away from the warehouse back toward the suburbs.

  Two minutes after he left, Brian’s heart stopped beating. Four minutes after that, he stood back up. He bit Danny and a few of Joe’s coworkers. Not long after, everyone that worked with Joe that Saturday wandered the parking lot without a purpose, with no memory of their previous life. It was only when a few other delivery trucks arrived that they perked up.

  Brian, Danny, Anthony, and the rest of Joe’s coworkers feasted on the truck drivers until there was barely anything left.

  * * *

  Joe sped through the streets toward the hospital as fast he could reasonably go. He kept his emergency flashers on and slowly cruised through the red lights. For a while, he drove without incident, and it looked like whatever was happening across the world had skipped over his town. But then he saw police cars with their lights on stopped at a corner. They were trying to pull two women off of a child while a crowd gathered to watch. He drove another block, and saw what looked like a riot inside a corner Starbucks.

  He didn’t know what was going on. But in the back of his mind he knew it was huge, world-changing big. But he didn’t care about the world. He cared about Sarah. He had to get to her. He had to be there for the birth of his child. Then they would figure this whole thing out. All he needed was his family, and he could survive anything.

  He narrowly missed hitting a woman as she fled from another man. He saw a motel just off the road on fire. He had to weave his way between a few cars that had stopped to look. The firemen, instead of putting out the fire, were trying to pull a woman off of one of their own.

  He was a block away from the hospital when he decided to call Sarah. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know what room she was in, if she went through the main entrance or emergency room.

  The phone didn’t even ring. It went right to a recording saying that all circuits were busy.

  “Dammit!”

  Joe tried to keep calm. He would park his truck, and go to the main entrance. He would ask whoever was working the front desk where his wife was. Then he would kiss her and everything would be okay.

  His jaw dropped as he slowly pulled up to the hospital.

  An ambulance had crashed into the front, near the main entrance doors. Fire danced from under the hood, throwing black smoke everywhere. No one was trying to put it out at all.

  He didn’t even bother looking for a parking spot. He pulled his truck onto the curb and killed the engine. As he climbed out he heard gunshots and a few screams off in the distance.

  He didn’t move for a second. Fear and confusion just locked his legs. It was only a picture of Sarah in his head that got him moving again.

  Chapter 2

  Denise Hutchins hadn’t put herself through six years of nursing school to work the front desk of the hospital emergency room. But that’s exactly what she was doing. Her friend Lisa had called out the night before, something about being sick with a fever. So Denise was in the middle of a midnight to noon shift, and it didn’t take long to realize something was wrong.

  Most overnight shifts weren’t too bad. There were the drunks that were brought in to sleep it off, then released. There were some car accidents. There were the freaky sex emergencies that always gave Denise a chuckle, like the one time a woman popped a hip riding her boyfriend.

  But this shift was far different.

  The first patient was a woman in her early twenties, like Denise. She’d gotten into a scuffle with another woman at a nightclub and actually got bitten. Her wound was treated and she was sent on her way. Then three more people came into the emergency room with bite wounds. One woman had bites all over her body. She said two men pulled her into an alley. They didn’t sexually assault her in any way, they just bit her. A bite wound on her leg was really nasty, like whoever it was that did it was biting into a tasty drumstick.

  Then the man with the cowboy hat came in.

  The emergency room was already half full when he limped through the sliding doors. Nearly half the people waiting to be seen had bite wounds. Cowboy stumbled in and leaned his weight on one of the waiting room chairs. He had a bloody towel pressed to his neck. The color was completely gone from his face. He looked around the room, dizzy.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Help me.”

  He collapsed to the floor. He dropped the towel, and blood poured from his neck. Everyone in the waiting room took in a breath and backed up. Denise quickly paged Dr. Blair. She ran out of the emergency room corner office and knelt next to Cowboy. She pushed the towel back to his neck and checked for a pulse. She had seen death enough times to recognize it immediately, but she had to go through the motions.

  No pulse, no breathing. He was gone.

  Still, he wasn’t really dead until Dr. Blair said so. He, along with two nurses, burst through the swinging doors that separated the waiting room from the rest of the hospital. Denise stepped back and let them go to work.

  She felt a quick stab of sadness, like she always did when someone died in the hospital. She’d wanted to be a nurse to help people, but she had learned that she couldn’t be a good nurse if she dwelled too long on the people that died. She used to do that all the time. She would think about the people that died on her watch, what they did for a living, how their families would act

  Not this time. She just wanted to go home. Two more hours, and her shift was done.

  As she took a step back toward the front desk she heard the television in the corner.

  “…the dead are returning to life…”

  The attention of everyone in the waiting room was divided. Some were fascinated by the sight of Dr. Blair trying to revive Cowboy. Others were glued to the strange news on the television.

  “…not a hoax or a prank. Authorities still don’t know if what
is affecting the global population is a virus, biological attack, or natural phenomenon. But they do know that it is reanimating dead tissue. If you’ve been bitten by one of the infected, seek treatment immediately.”

  A six-year-old boy looked up at his father. “Daddy, Brandy bit me on the swings today. Am I going to die?”

  “No, no, of course not,” he said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous,” Dr. Blair said. He’d just finished trying to revive Cowboy, but that wasn’t possible. Cowboy was dead. He gestured for one of the nurses to get a gurney, then pointed at the television. “Turn that off. There’s no need to make people panic. I’ve been listening to that all morning. What they’re saying is impossible.”

  There was a loud crash outside. Denise’s heart thumped in her chest. Most everyone in the waiting room ran outside to see what was going on. Denise wanted to join them, but her professionalism—as well as her fear—kept her behind her desk. She was terrified. She could feel that something terrible was going on.

  Dr. Blair and the rest of the crowd saw the ambulance buried in the front entrance of the hospital. The tires kept spinning, but it couldn’t get any deeper into the lobby. Blair thought he saw flames under the hood.

  People ran all over the parking lot. The accident was drawing a crowd on the sidewalk.

  Denise just stared at the sliding glass doors from behind her desk. She could hear the television, but she wasn’t focused on it. She looked at the few people still in the waiting room, including the father and son.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said, not believing her own words. “We’ll get you fixed up and out of here.”

  The little boy couldn’t look at anything except the dead body, still on the floor. His father tried to keep him facing the wall, but the boy would turn his head just slightly and take peeks.

  Cowboy twitched.

  The boy didn’t scream. His jaw just hung open and he pointed. Denise followed the boy’s finger.

  She did scream. “Dr. Blair! Get in here!”

  Cowboy was slowly pulling himself to his feet. Dr. Blair and two others stood at the emergency room entrance while people ran around in the parking lot. Everyone just stared in amazement.

  Cowboy lunged for the closest person: Dr. Blair. He sunk his teeth into the flesh just under Blair’s eye and they both fell to the ground. The father and son screamed and cowered in the corner near the television. Blair tried to push Cowboy away, but that only sent more shocks of pain through his face.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Denise looked to the exit doors. She recognized one of the men that had been patiently waiting in the emergency room. So many names and faces passed through her mind each day, she didn’t remember his name. He had shot Cowboy in the leg.

  “Sir, release that man now. Or I will fire again.”

  Denise guessed he was a cop. She prayed he was.

  Off duty police officer Frank Kinkade watched for a few more seconds as Cowboy continued to chew on Blair’s face. He expected Cowboy to cry out in pain, roll over and hold his leg. He did no such thing.

  “Get him off me!” Blair shouted.

  Frank felt silly for only a moment, then he pistol whipped Cowboy seven times in the head. He still didn’t make a sound, but he did let go of Blair. Frank grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Blair kept a hand pressed to his face, blood squirting everywhere.

  Cowboy looked up at both of them and let out an angry moan. Blood dripped from his teeth and tongue to the floor.

  Frank didn’t hesitate a second time. He raised his gun directly at Cowboy’s head and pulled the trigger. Brain matter exploded from his skull and sprayed on the floor behind him. He fell to the floor, dead a second time.

  The father and son were openly crying now. Denise couldn’t find any words. No one spoke at all. The only sounds were the chaos in the parking lot and the television.

  Blair was the first one to speak. “You…you killed him.”

  Frank shot him a look. “Haven’t you been listening to the news? Hell, you checked him yourself. He was already dead.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  They didn’t get a chance to continue the debate. Two women walked into the emergency room. One was very pregnant, and waddled slowly. The other had her hand on her friend’s shoulders, just slowly walking with her.

  “What is going on outside?” Sarah Thompson asked.

  Both women stopped and cried out when they saw what was left of Cowboy sprawled on the floor. Dr. Blair was treating himself, rubbing his face with alcohol and pressing gauze to the wound Cowboy had left behind.

  “My friend is having a baby,” Margie said.

  Dr. Blair took a deep breath. This was turning into a crisis, if it wasn’t already.

  “I’ll take them back,” he told Denise. “Get some help up here.”

  Dr. Blair grabbed a wheelchair and helped Sarah sit down. Denise knew this was against procedure, but she couldn’t remember procedure at that moment. They didn’t know the woman’s name. She wasn’t logged into the system. No insurance information. Nothing at all.

  Sarah tried to turn her head to Denise as Blair pushed her down the hall. “My husband is coming!” she called.

  Denise barely heard her.

  Frank took a quick peek outside. The parking lot was empty, but he could hear the violence off in the distance. Screams, gunshots, people running, those awful moans.

  He walked around Cowboy and up to Denise at the desk.

  “Ma’am, I’ve been here for two hours now. I came here with my sister, Brandy Kinkade. They took her back a while ago. Can you tell me where she is?”

  Denise was quiet a moment, just looking at Frank’s face with her mouth open. He had to shake her shoulder to snap her out of it. She was embarrassed. She was a medical professional. She was supposed to have better control over herself.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Brandy Kinkade.” She sat down at the computer. “Let me see.”

  She didn’t get the chance to look.

  A mob of people burst into the waiting room. Some came from the outside, while others came from the stairwell in the corner. They ran right to the father and son near the television.

  The mob didn’t show any mercy.

  Frank raised his gun, but he held off from firing. He was afraid to draw attention his way.

  He fought off the guilt and the sounds of a boy and his father dying. He quickly opened the door to the office that Denise was in. She was shutting the glass window that separated her desk from the waiting room. Frank locked the door behind him. They both climbed under the desk and just listened.

  Denise kept a hand clamped over her mouth while tears streamed down her face. She heard the father and son screaming in agony, then they were quiet. She heard the sounds of the mob feasting. Disgusting, horrifying noises. She saw shadows on the back wall that hinted at the Hell that was happening. The office itself was locked, but the glass window didn’t lock at all. They weren’t safe.

  They’re just twenty feet away. We’re next.

  Over the sounds of the creatures eating, they could still hear the television.

  “…have here footage in Brazil of an attack at a funeral. I know it’s hard to believe, but it looks like the body actually climbed out of the coffin. The deceased died from a broken neck at a construction site, but it didn’t seem to slow him here. Only physical brain trauma seems to put them down, whatever they are…”

  Frank and Denise stayed under the desk for ten minutes. There was nothing they could do. The creatures grew bored of the cold flesh they shoved in their mouths. They rose up and wandered away, searching for their next hot meal. Some went outside, while others went deeper into the hospital.

  Denise almost let out a cry when she saw a small shadow rise up on the back wall. There was a moan that was a higher pitch than the others. The mob had left just enough of the boy for him to rise among the dead.

  The waiting room grew
quiet, but that didn’t make Denise feel better. An hour ago, she was doing her job. Now, the world was tearing itself apart. Reporters on television were interviewing witnesses to different attacks. One interview was cut short when a mob of people attacked the camera team. Frank lowered his head as their screams turned into a technical difficulties message.

  Frank thought desperately about his next move. His sister was somewhere in the hospital. She was all he had left, after their parents died in a car crash four years ago. He had to find her, then get someplace safe. It was that simple. Whatever was going on in the world, they could figure that out later.

  There was a voice in the waiting room.

  “Oh my God! Hello? Is anyone here?”

  Denise poked her head above the desk. A lean man with no shirt looked at the corpses on the floor. He had some blood on his hands, but didn’t look injured.

  She waved wildly and finally got his attention. She pointed to the door behind her. “There’s a door on the side here! Hurry!”

  Several moans from just beyond the double doors leading into the hospital got Joe moving. As he sprinted to the door Frank was moving to unlock it. Part of Frank, even the law enforcement part, told him that Joe was on his own. But he fought those feelings and let Joe in. He couldn’t help the father and son against the huge mob that attacked, but he could help Joe.

  Joe nearly fell into the office as Frank locked the door again. They quietly scurried under the desk as five more of the creatures burst into the waiting room.

  The creatures sniffed the air. They knew more warm flesh was nearby. They didn’t know it was just six feet away on the other side of an office wall. They didn’t even know what an office wall was anymore. After a few minutes, they stumbled to the parking lot, where the scent of flesh was much stronger in the open air.