I originally sent this to be published on Tales of the Zombie War (http://www.talesofworldwarz.com/), but they haven't responded or anything yet, so, if they don't publish it, I will here. That way it doesn't die, y'know.
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As I woke up, the whole thing went by in a blur: Susan, the kids, the truck speeding toward us. It all went by so fast that I almost couldn't tell what was what at first. Then the now came into focus. I could see the white room I was in. Sterile. One window. An IV pole next to me. I was in a hospital? I hadn't died when that truck hit us? Wow. I must have been one lucky guy. I sat up and looked around. The door into the hallway was shut, the door the bathroom was not.
I grabbed the IV for support and slid to the floor. The IV kept me upright, but my legs were shit for the moment. I was surprised I could stand at all. I used the IV to slowly walk over to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. There wasn't any. Shit. I used cold water to wet my face a little. After that, and still using the IV, I walked over to the door and opened it into the hallway.
The hall was empty. Only emergency lights were on. Weird, I thought at the time. I kept using the IV until I had the hang of walking again, at which point I'd gotten from one end of the hallway to the other. The whole time, I kept wondering why the place was so deserted. The reception desk at the end of the hall was completely trashed. A half printed email rested in the printer. I took it and read it.
"Emergency procedures: Anyone showing signs of infection are to be placed in a designated quarantine area and left there until National Guard personel arrive. Designated quarantine areas are: St. Luke's Memorial Hospital; GenCo Corporate headquarters; and the temporary military outpost outside the city."
What the hell? Infection? Quarantine? What happened?
"Just as a reminder, the signs of infection are:
1.) Lack of coordination
2.) Lack of necessity for oxygen
3.) Extreme hunger, even after having just eaten
4.) Desire to bite any open skin on an uninfected individual
5.) Paleness of the skin
6.) Opaqueness of the eyes
7.) Memory loss not due to any previous registered illness (ie. Alzheimer's, dementia)
"These are the currently known symptoms of the infection. If you observe these signs, or any others not caused by a known illness, please send the individual to a registered quarantine area immed—"
That was where the email cut off. Most of those symptoms sounded like what makes a good zombie in a zombie movie. They sure didn't sound like the symptoms of any disease I'd ever heard of. Weird, again. I looked around for anything more on this unknown disease, but that email was the only thing that looked semi-official. There was one sheet of paper with information about a patient that seemed to have the afformentioned symptoms.
I decided to take a look around. Maybe there were people around that knew what the hell was going on. I walked to the stairwell and decided to go down. Hopefully somebody was down there. If this was all still recent, maybe there'd be somebody down in the emergency room. Where else would somebody go in an emergency? I secretly knew I was far too fucking wrong.
The stairwell was pitch black. I stayed next to the wall and grabbed a railing whenever I could. I somehow managed to make it down a floor or two without stumbling, but on my third floor, I slipped and fell on my ass. Damn, that hurt. Along the way, I felt for doors. After taking my little fall, I found one that wasn't locked and opened it. Good! I'd found the ER!
Sadly, it, too, was a ghost town. I kept to the walls, once again, and looked around everywhere. The emergency lighting was good, but it left too many shadows. I felt like there were eyes watching me from everywhere. I couldn't see anything, but something just told me that They were there. Not lower-case they, but They. Them.
The first ER I came to was pitch black, but I could vaguely see the outline of a person. I tapped on the door and opened it a little. "Hello?" I said to the person. The outline turned toward me. It was the shape and size of a man, maybe early thirties. "Sir?" I spoke again. He said nothing, he just stared at me for more than a second or two. After that second or two, he started lumbering slowly toward the door. He pushed the door open and I was taken quite aback.
His nose was broken severly, almost to the point of hanging off. His right leg was dislocated, and dragging behind him. His right arm was missing flesh in a straight line from his shoulder down to the middle of his forearm. One side of jaw was just plain gone.
I was pretty sure I puked.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and jammed his face into my chest. He started to open his half-a-mouth, but I kneed him in the stomach. He kept on with his strong grip, but his mouth wasn't near my flesh anymore. I kneed him again, this time I managed to get one of his hands off of me. I pulled the other one off and kicked him into the wall.
I ran. I'd only seen one or two zombie movies, but I knew that the only way to kill a zombie was to destroy its head in some way. I looked around for anything that might help, but all I managed to scrounge up was toilet plunger from a utility closet. I was damned sure I was fucked. I stood at the end of the hall, by the utility closet, and waited for the undead doctor to slouch his way over to me.
My fears were, thankfully, unanswered. Well, at least by Doctor Zombie, M.D. A severe jolt of pain hit me, coming from my shoulder. I turned my head in a second and saw a zombie taking a bite out of my shoulder. With every last ounce of strength in my left arm, I elbowed the zombie away. Then I backed off and readied the plunger. The zombie was a nurse, mid-twenties, light brown hair. She would have probably been beautiful if she still had half of her face and wasn't decomposing.
I don't know why I even cared. Whenever a zombie bit you in a movie, you were going to die and become a zombie not long after that. Maybe I didn't care because I was fucked either way. If it wasn't this zombie that bit me, I was sure that another would probably come along and do it eventually. Then again, maybe I did care because maybe somebody else would stumble upon this hospital and get bitten by this zombie bitch.
I pointed the tip of the plunger at the zombie's face and shoved it through her eyeball. She went down fast. The eyeball wasn't even that tough to go through. Maybe death softened parts of you. Maybe it was just whatever the fuck it was turning people into zombies that softened parts of you. I didn't know and I didn't care. I picked a nice, simple spot to sit down and closed my eyes.
I guess in an hour or so, I'll be dead, and my story won't even matter to any of you. Of course, I'm writing this on toilet paper right now, with a pen I picked up from the reception desk upstairs. Then again, I doubt anybody's gonna even find this toilet paper with my little zombie story on it. And if you do, you'll probably find me there, staring up at you with dull, dead eyes. My left arm will be hanging down, practically hanging off. I wouldn't be surprised if I look quite malnourished.
I won't have had anything to eat for a while.
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