Beyond Dead | Book 1 | The Cough Read online

  Thud –

  Kelly looked.

  Thud –

  Kelly stared.

  Thud –

  Unbelieving.

  This wasn’t real. It was some kind of sick joke made with costume makeup. A mistake. A biohazard drill that was meant to be believable, but it was so fake that it was laughable. And she smirked, as she stepped away from the wall in front of that rectangle of glass, started to laugh at the obscene joke that was being played on her. On all of them. Kelly stood there laughing, the stun gun having fallen out of her hand.

  On the other side of the door, face pressed against the glass so that Kelly had a very up close and personal view, the man in his business suit with his visitor badge identifying him as a pharmaceutical rep was trying to chew his way through the glass. The dark yellow swirl of his cornea locked on Kelly’s face. He began to grow more agitated. The gnawing on the glass intensifying, fingers pressing against the door, dragging bloody prints down the glass. Two of the pharmaceutical rep’s fingernails bent at an awkward angle and then snapped away from the skin. He didn’t notice.

  From his mouth came this phlegm-choking cough. The rep continued to cough, hacking at the glass, while trying to bite it. Wads of mucous, the color of fungus growing wild on a tree, splattered out at Kelly. The sound of the coughing was like a call, a dialect of its own, as another person, thing, stuttered down the hall, it’s head slowly lolled in the pharmaceutical rep’s direction. At first the other person, the one who looked sick with grayish skin and yellowed eyes, just froze peering down the hall. Then it coughed. A small hack. Whispered. The sound of a person clearing their throat as quiet as possible in a crowded movie theater. Kelly saw as the pharmaceutical rep’s eyes turned for a slight moment away from her as though it recognized the voice of a friend. He coughed. The man frozen down the hall followed with a hack of his own. Jesus Christ, she thought, their talking. They’re fucking talking to each other.

  Another person stumbled down the hall. Behind that one another and another. The sound of coughing echoed between the chanting:

  THIS IS JUST A DRILL

  CODE ORANGE.

  The crowd grew and began to herd together as they came down the hall, pressed against each other, a slow-moving stampede, until the corridor was so packed with bodies that Kelly was unable to see beyond them.

  All of a sudden, the writhing corridor of coughing bodies stilled. Yellowed eyes looked over shoulders and under arms and between splayed fingers and all fell on her face, but the bodies that owned those waxed dead eyes were still and silent. Kelly’s heartbeat was heavy in her chest and loud in her ears, her legs still unsteady and shivering from the adrenaline. She was as still as the crowd, afraid to move, to breathe. And then the pharmaceutical rep, his face crushed a little around one eye from the exuberant pressure of the crowd, opened his mouth as wide as it could, revealing the crowns on the molars in the back of its mouth, and he appeared to be gagging. There was no sound coming out of his mouth only this clenching of the throat muscles while his tongue retreated to the back of his throat.

  Cough –

  The cough came out in a fit like a person with emphysema who just took their dying drag of a cigarette. The crowd erupted into a frenzy of jerking bodies ripping at one another to get to the door. Not the door though, that wasn’t right. They didn’t want to get to the door. They wanted to get to her. To Kelly. She screamed and that aroused them even more. Kelly lunged back when the glass splintered and fingers were able to pry through the glass, skin tearing in long bloody threads, extending toward her.

  She ran.

  Kelly was down the hall and skidding around the desk as her sneakers slapped against the linoleum. Left behind in front of the door was her cute little pink stun gun that would be crushed by the horde of invading bodies, when the pressure of their combined force finally bent back the hinges and the door bent until the frame snapped, the lock still holding as the frame fell away from the wall.

  Kat and Sarah were standing at the door of the room that Kelly had ordered them to pack all three of the expectant mothers. They were yelling to her. Kat was crying while Sarah appeared calmer. As calm as one could be in an unknown situation with a loudspeaker exclaiming that the hospital was on lockdown. Kelly was about to join them when she ran past the bright red letters on a glass cabinet that read: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS. If ever there was a time. Kelly smashed the glass with her elbow and triggered the fire alarm. She pulled the fire ax from the cabinet and ran with it past Kat and Sarah. The door slammed shut behind her.

  “Get the sofa!” she yelled.

  Kat cried, “What’s going on?”

  “Get the fucking sofa!” Kelly had already pulled the nightstand away from wall and was pushing it toward the door, the fire ax riding on top.

  No one was moving.

  Why the fuck wasn’t anyone moving?

  They were, all seven of them, just staring at her in stunned silence.

  “Kelly?” Kat spoke so softly that Kelly almost wasn’t sure she had spoken at all. Her hands were clutched together in front of her mouth like she was praying when she asked, “Please? Please? What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to die.”

  8

  “If you don’t get that sofa over here and block this goddamn door!” Kelly barked. Telling everyone in that room that they were all going to die if they didn’t get their asses moving. “Unplug them.” Kelly ordered Sarah.

  “What?”

  “Fuck I don’t have time for all of you to be questioning everything I tell you to do. Now do your job, Sarah, and unplug them.”

  Reluctantly Sarah did her job. Cassandra Ross’s husband Paul was trying to move the heavy sofa by himself. Kelly ran over and did her best to help him, but it was a pullout for when the husbands – or grandmother in the case of Cindy Rutland – spent the night during the long days and nights of labor. Kelly was straining against the weight, but she had been a track star – cross country – and had the leg strength to bear down and help Paul get the job done.

  “AHHHHH!” Emily roared in pain. Everyone stopped except Kelly who continued to push the sofa, pushing her shoulder against it and driving her legs to get it across the room.

  “In,” she grunted, “the…pillow.” Kelly told Kat.

  “Here.” Kat handed Emily Bowen the pillow; and when the next scream came, she bit down into the plush pillow and roared in agony. Fresh blood was leaking from her vagina and saturating the sterile white sheets beneath her. Everyone in the room saw what was happening and Kelly could see on their faces the fear. This was nothing like the fear they were about to experience if that door wasn’t blocked.

  They were coming.

  “She’s crowning!” Sarah yelled.

  Kelly looked. She couldn’t see Emily’s baby crowning, but Sarah was between her legs trying to hold them open while Kat held the pillow for her to scream into. There was too much blood. Something was wrong and there was no one coming. Only her and the other two nurses. The other two mothers were startled with fear and both weeping with hands over their mouths. Paul was still helping Kelly push the sofa against the wall but she was distracted now and frozen as she assessed the situation and tried to think of something.

  Anything.

  “On three,” Kelly told Paul, “One…two…three…errrrr.” Kelly and Paul pushed with all their strength and got the sofa right up against the door. “Get as much as you can, anything you can, on the sofa and blocking that door.”

  Kelly was on Emily’s bed and helped Sarah to keep her legs open. The baby was coming.

  “What do we – ”

  Kelly interrupted Sarah and spoke directly to Emily, “Push.”

  “Aghhhh,” Emily cried into the muffled pillow. “My baby.”

  “Push, Emily, push.”

  She screamed out again. Kat forcing the pillow against her face while tears dripped down onto her hands.

  Sarah said, “The shoulders.”

&nb
sp; The baby was almost here.

  The blood loss was catastrophic. Emily had ripped and more blood flowed like a broken water pipe. There was very little strength left in her legs to fight against.

  “Emily?”

  “Hmm?”

  Kelly looked at Kat to pull away the pillow, but it didn’t matter anymore. They were coming. Kelly could hear their feet dragging across the floor outside and hands pattering against brick, fingernails dragging along wooden doors. She could only imagine with the other two families were thinking. Gunman. Wouldn’t that be anyone’s thought? The only rational thought for a hospital lockdown? Certainly not what Kelly had seen. That was only for the movies.

  “Kelly?” a very wide-awake Emily suddenly spoke as clear as day without any hint of pain in her soft voice. The corner of her mouth was upturned in the cutest most innocent smile, and, all of a sudden, she looked much younger than her twenty years. “Save my baby. Save my baby, Kelly. Okay?” Emily asked, nodding her head, waiting for Kelly to approve her request.

  Kelly nodded. The faint sting of tears slightly blurring the edge of her vision.

  “Push,” she whispered.

  Sarah and Kelly pulled, and the baby came into a new world with a frantic newborn cry. Sarah wrapped the baby in a blanket and put him on Emily’s chest. She was very pale. His eyes were closed, and Sarah had to hold the baby on her because Emily didn’t even try to lift her arms.

  “It’s a boy,” Sarah told her.

  “Hmmm, my baby boy.” Each word Emily spoke grew more silent. Her eyes never opened again. Kat helped Sarah pull Emily Bowen’s arms around her tiny newborn son so his mother could feel his love even as she faded away. Emily nuzzled her cheek against the top of her son’s baby soft skin and exhaled her soul over him.

  9

  Emily Bowen was dead, and they were about to join her.

  Something outside the room continued to scratch at the door. What had sounded like only one person scratching, was growing in number. If they didn’t do something fast Emily would not be the only casualty tonight. Kelly knew the door would hold but not for long. Probably not even as long as the secure maternity ward entrance.

  She ran to the window and looked out at Prospect Street. It was quiet. Up the street a couple blocks, she could see lights on Main Street. Kat and Sarah would make it. They could take the baby. Even Paul and the grandmother would make it. However, that would mean they would have to leave the two pregnant women behind. Left behind meant left to die.

  There was a chance that Paul could carry his wife. He was by no means a model of athleticism but desperate times and all that. Maybe, a very long stretch of the word, maybe Kat and the grandmother could move Cindy Rutland. Give her a fighting chance.

  Thud –

  It was time to make a decision. Kelly brought back the ax and was ready to smash out the window and almost had when she saw it. Over there, walking across Prospect Street to the parking garage. One person. He or she was moving toward the ramp that led up into the garage. She studied the figure. The person bumped against the entrance gate to the parking garage and began pushing against it. Not with its hands. Not trying to lift it or go under or over. Just bumping into it and trying to continue walking, as though it wasn’t even aware of the entrance bar.

  There were speckles of others moving around in the darkness. A car drove by, illuminating them with their headlights, but the motorist did not appear to notice or care about what was roaming the streets. The car continued to the end of Prospect Street, put on its directional to go right and after stopping took a right turn on red.

  Thud –

  No help was coming.

  “We need to move,” Kelly told them. “We need to go now. Get up everyone.”

  “I’m in labor. Where are we going to go?” Cindy asked.

  Kelly pointed, “Out through there.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “This is madness.”

  “NO!” Kelly screamed at all of them and silenced their chattering voices. “What’s out there is madness. You have no goddamn idea what is coming for us through that door. The only chance, and I cannot stress that enough, is if we make a run for it. I understand it seems difficult even impossible but for the sake of your families and unborn children you don’t have a choice. So every little bit of pain you feel, you use that to give you strength to keep that child alive. Because if you stay here, in this room I promise you Emily will not be the only death tonight.

  “Get them up,” Kelly instructed Kat and Sarah. They didn’t hesitate. The grandmother looked like she had something to say but when Kelly’s eyes found hers, she looked away. Paul was already helping his wife.

  Thud –

  There were no locks on the maternity room doors. Slowly, the door was being bent open. Discolored and bruised hands pried through the crack in the opening trying to get through. The heavy sofa keeping them at bay. For now.

  “Get up, get up, get up!” Kelly ordered them as she ran toward the window swinging the fire ax. It shattered the glass and the sound encouraged what was beyond the door to work harder. The door was shaking with violent attack and there were now hands emerging from the crack, pushing and pulling, banging and thrusting as the sofa crept half an inch here and there away from the door. Kelly was using the heavy ax head to push away as much glass from the windowsill as she could. Kat ran over and threw as many of the sheets that she could gather over the windowsill to help stop any shards of glass left behind from cutting them as they escaped. It was a thought that never crossed Kelly’s mind.

  Paul leapt over the windowsill and fell the short distance to the ground.

  “Come on, Cassandra,” he called up to her.

  “I don’t think I can do it.”

  “Let’s go!”

  Kat pushed Sarah to the windowsill with baby Bowen. Sarah climbed down and then Kat handed the wrapped baby to her. Kat was then trying to get Cassandra to move. She wasn’t. Paul was getting agitated. Yelling at his wife to move, scaring her instead of comforting her.

  Cindy and her mother had joined the other four at the window.

  “I’m not going to make it,” Cindy’s mother told her.

  “Mom, come on.”

  “No, dear. I’m old. I won’t make it a block before my hips are bothering me. Go.”

  “I’m not leaving you mom,” Cindy begged, “Please?”

  Thud

  Thud

  Thud

  They were almost through. The sofa was now being pushed several inches at a time. Cassandra screamed as a grey skinned face pushed its way through the crack in the door, pieces of flesh torn away from its face, dangling like shed snakeskin. It was coughing up spittle’s of blood that arched in the air and landed in droplets on Emily Bowen’s pale white face.

  Kelly ran to the door with the ax hefted over her head and brought it down into the thing’s head, where it split the skull in half. It still tried to come forward, unaffected by its brain being split. Kelly struggled to free the ax until it popped out with a spray of blood that stung her eyes. She wiped at the blood trying her best to get it off her face and out of her eyes. But her eyes were burning, and it was hard to see.

  The ax dropped from Kelly’s grip.

  She pressed her hands against the door and did her best to try and push it back against the horde.

  “You need to go,” she pleaded with the others.

  “Cindy, now! Move your fucking ass,” Kat yelled and pushed her toward the window. Cindy was crying out for her mother, but Kat was able to get her to the window and out of it. Below, Sarah was waiting in the darkness with baby Bowen.

  Alone.

  “Paul?” Cassandra looked down into the dark and where only Sarah, Cindy, and the baby stood on the well landscaped grounds. “Paul?” she begged.

  He was gone.

  Cassandra collapsed on the floor.

  At this point there was nothing more that could be done for her. She couldn’t move to escape when her husband w
as yelling for her, now that he was gone, there was no hope. It was over for Cassandra. She would share Cindy’s mother’s fate.

  “Go! We’ll catch up,” Kat told Sarah. Sarah grabbed Cindy by the arm, and they started moving toward the lights. Toward Main Street and hopefully help. All they had to do was reach the light and they would be safe.

  Kat ran to Kelly, picked up the ax and started swinging it at the hands that were coming through the door. She lobbed them off one at a time. Their bloody stumps landing on top of the sofa or rolling over it with a soft, wet thwap on the floor.

  “Let’s go!” Kat said. She grabbed Kelly by the arm, but Kelly didn’t budge. She still tried to hold the door. But now she was coughing. Wheezing deeply with each breath she took.

  “You need to go, Katherine. It’s too late. I’m infected with whatever they have.”

  “How – how do you know?”

  “I know, Kat.” Kelly gave her a sad smile. “Save the baby. Let something good come from all of this.”

  “What am I supposed to do? How do I just…just – ”

  “Leave me?”

  Kat nodded.

  “You just turn around and go. Don’t look back. Block out anything you hear. And you run to that baby and you keep him alive. That’s your job, the oath you took when you became a nurse. Save that baby.

  “Please. Please, Kat. Don’t give up on him. He fought to get into this world you don’t let that be for – koff koff – nothing.” There were dribbles of blood around the corner of Kelly’s mouth.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you to, Kitty-Kat.”

  “I hate when you call me that.”

  “I know.”

  Kat ran. She cried as she left her friend, Cassandra Ross, and Cindy Rutland’s mother, whose name she could not even remember. She didn’t look at them when she ran past and out the windowsill, still clutching the ax.

  Not far away Kat could see Sarah running with Cindy and the baby. Out of the shadow something reached out and grabbed Cindy knocking her to the ground. Sarah stopped, but only for a moment, and then she sprinted away. Cindy struggled screaming and fighting until she was still. Kat crossed the street and picked up her pace, never looking across the street at Cindy lying with someone on top of her, and she never stopped when she heard the crash coming from the maternity ward and the screams that lasted all the way to Main Street’s streetlamps.