Deadrise (9 page)

Susan knelt beside Zack. His face was ghostly pale, and he trembled as if cold. Sweat beaded his forehead, and although not as watery, his breath still sounded labored. Susan gently stirred him. Zack’s eyes snapped open, and he weakly clawed for his rifle.

"Easy." Susan said, laying his arm across his chest. "We are at the hospital." she said.

"We made it?" Zack smiled.

"I told you we would." she said, squeezing his hand. "Matt and David just went to find a doctor. You're going to be ok." Zack let out a raspy sigh of relief and sank back onto the seat. Susan looked back to her Mom. She was staring blankly out the window. Susan walked back and sat in the seat in front of her mother. One look at her was almost enough to cause Susan to burst into fresh tears. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying. Her face seemed to sag from her skull. She looked…hollow.

"How are you doing?" she asked her Mother.

"I don't know." Sharon said robotically. She turned her head slowly to look at Susan. "Why?" she asked, her voice cracking. "Why?" Sharon’s eyes filled with tears, and she lowered her head and began crying anew. Susan found that she was crying again as well. She turned away, wiping her eyes, breathing deeply to choke back the sobs. She had to remain strong. She had too! Her Father was dead. There was nothing she could do about that. But he had died trying to get his family to safety. She could not let his death be in vain. She was going to see them all to safety. As she fought back the tears she made a silent vow.

Father, I swear you death will not have been for nothing. We will survive.

"I swear it." she said softly as the last sob escaped her. She wiped her eyes, and headed for the front of the bus.

Matt stood on the sidewalk, his assault rifle in both hands above his head, and stretched. It felt so good. His muscles had grown stiff and sore after being behind the wheel all night. The sun had just come up, and the cool morning air was refreshing. He continued stretching, his back popped several times and he sighed with a relaxed pleasure.

"Better than sex." he said.

"What's that?" Susan stood behind him, her father's rifle in her hand. Matt looked at David, who just smiled back at him. Before Matt could say anymore, the soldier came around the front of the bus, followed by a middle-aged man in a white doctors robe, the plain blue uniform, and a pair of stethoscopes around his neck. They could see that the doctor’s robe and uniform were stained with blood.

"You have an injured man aboard?" the doctor asked Matt. The doctor’s hair was a frazzled mop, and his eyes were sunken, bloodshot pits, reflecting the horror he had witnessed these past few weeks. His shoulders were slumped with exhaustion.

"Yes. This way." Matt ran back aboard the bus.

"Has he been bitten by one of the creatures?" the Doctor asked.

"No." Matt said, again. How many times did he have to reassure these people that Zack had not been bitten? "He was shot." Matt stood near Zack’s head while the doctor knelt beside him. Zack had slipped into unconsciousness again. Susan and David stood a few feet behind the doctor, near the entrance.

"Where has he been shot?" the doctor asked.

"In his left arm and side." Matt said.

The doctor patted Zack’s face lightly. "Wake up. Wake up." He said. Zack’s eyes opened. "Relax." the doctor said. "I am a doctor. I am here to help. Do you understand?" the doctor sounded as if he were talking to a child.

"Yes." Zack was barely audible.

"Shh. Save your strength. I need to look at your wounds." This time Zack merely nodded in response. The doctor quickly unwrapped Zack’s arm and examined it.

"Flesh wound. The bullet went straight through."

"We know." Matt said. "That's the bullet that went into his side." The doctor looked at him.

"What caliber of gun was he shot by?" the doctor asked.

"5.56 mm." Matt replied. "An M-16."

"Who shot him?" Matt looked away, giving David and Susan sharp glances.

"Easy my friends." the doctor said with a tired smile. "I know what is going on in the city; nothing but zombies and madmen, and the innocent victims that fall prey to them. We've treated many gunshot wounds these past weeks."

"We were just trying to fill our gas tank." David said.

"No need to explain." the doctor repeated, turning back to Zack. He opened his shirt, looking at the bandage they had wrapped. With steady hands he unwrapped it.

"Good work." he said absently, as if to himself. "You probably saved his life." He set the bloody pad aside and bent closer to look at the wound. He probed it, causing it to begin bleeding again and producing a scream of pain from Zack.

"You see the bubbles?" he pointed. "The bullet has nicked the lung. If we do not remove the bullet and stop the bleeding, he will drown in his own blood." The doctor pulled himself wearily to his feet.

"So what now?" Susan asked.

"We take him over to surgery and they will remove the bullet and stop the bleeding." The doctor left the bus.

"STRETCHER!" they heard him call.

"That guy looked like he hadn't slept in a month." Susan said.

"He probably hasn't." Matt answered. The soldier who had first spoken to them entered the bus.

"Once they remove him, you have to take your vehicle back down the hill."

"But how will we know his condition?" Matt asked.

"You can return in the morning." The guard had said this a thousand times. Would say it a thousand more.

"Can't one of us at least stay with him? To let him know what is going on when he wakes up?" The guard looked as if he was going to say no.

"Please?" Susan sounded so pleading, gave him her most pouting look.

"Just stay out of the way." The guard said, smiling at her.

Men. It works every time.

Two men came aboard the bus, carrying a field stretcher, followed by the Doctor.

"Quickly." the Doctor said. He turned to Matt. "If you would care to return here tomorrow, I'm sure someone will help you locate your friend."

"The guard said I could stay with him." Susan said quickly. Matt cast her a sharp glance but remained silent.

"Did he?" the Doctor said, looking at the guard. The guard just stared back, unblinking. "Very well." The Doctor exited the bus. The two men set Zack on the stretcher and lifted, carefully maneuvering him off the bus.

"Are you sure you are up to this?" Matt asked Susan.

Susan didn't answer for a few moments, but finally she nodded.

"Yes." she said. "I'm sure."

"Be careful sis." David said, hugging her tight.

"Don't worry little brother. Remember who my boyfriend was. I can take care of myself."

"Here, take this." Matt held Franks .357 in his hand. "Its loaded, and here's an extra box of shells." she put both the pistol and box of shells in her purse. You be right here six AM tomorrow morning." She nodded agreement.

"Watch you ass." Matt said.

"That's your job." she said, flashing him a smile and hurried off the bus.

"Here we go again." Matt said, closing the doors, and starting the engine…

Chapter 7

Friday, June 22 2001

University Of Utah Hospital

Salt Lake City UT

7:35 AM

Susan looked around for the stretcher-bearers, and was surprised to see they were already fifty feet ahead of her, disappearing into the throng of people that buzzed about madly. She ran to catch up, holding her purse tightly to her body. On both sides of her lay wounded people. Broken legs, arms, and lacerated scalps, gunshot wounds, all being treated right there in the parking lot. Someone screamed in pain as a broken limb was set. She turned away as a nurse began stitching a young woman's head closed. She passed between two parked army trucks, right behind the stretcher bearing Zack. They emerged into a new area, where everyone here was laying on a table. She could see that every one of them was seriously wounded. Most, like Zack, had been shot. There were four doctors here, moving from patient to patient. They wore white masks, and were covered in blood, fresh and dried. The stretcher-bearers lay Zack on the ground near a table, then bent and lifted him quickly to the table. Without another word, they gathered up their stretcher and were off. Susan looked around for a Doctor. The one who had seen Zack aboard the van was there, talking to one of the free surgeons and pointing towards her. They parted and the surgeon approached.

"Dr. Miller said this man was to be operated on immediately." Susan stepped aside and let the doctor take a look at Zack’s wounds.

"The arm can wait." the Doctor said. "But we have to get that bullet out of his side and stop that bleeding." He turned and waved to a nurse, who hurried over. "I'll need some help here. Get me a tray over here and prepare a penicillin injection." he paused and looked at Susan. "Is your friend allergic to penicillin?" he asked.

"I don't know." she said. He shook his head, dismissing the question, and reached into his robe and pulled out a pair of latex gloves.

"You're just going to operate right here?" she asked, appalled.

"The hospital facilities are being used for the most serious cases… Don't get me wrong. Your friend's wound is serious, but his lung is only nicked. Once I remove the bullet and stop the bleeding, he will recover."

"Don’t you need an x-ray to find the bullet?"

"The x-ray machines ran out of film weeks ago. Don’t worry, I’ve done it the old fashioned way dozens of times." He gave her a smile that was anything but reassuring. Susan looked around, stunned. Surgery, right here in the parking lot! She saw a doctor and two nurses step away from one table, a man lying still on the table, his belly splayed open. Susan caught a glimpse of the man's gleaming red innards before a nurse pulled a sheet over the man's body. The doctor slowly peeled his gloves away, sorrow across his face. She watched, even more shocked, as a soldier stepped up to the corpse and pulled the sheet away from its head. He held a cordless, electric drill in his hand. He grabbed the corpses head, and raised the drill, squeezing the trigger. Over all the noise she could hear the grating whine of the drill. Her shock went to horror as the soldier put the spinning drill bit to the corpses forehead and pushed the bit into its skull. Susan turned away, in revulsion, stifling a gag, not wanting to believe what she was seeing. A drill or bullet through the brain, or being damned as one of the walking dead; was that what awaited her? Her family? Every living person when they died? The nurse had returned with a tray on wheels. The doctor had donned the latex gloves.

"Penicillin." he said, holding his hand out. The nurse handed him a syringe full of a clear liquid. He swabbed Zack’s arm with a gauze pad, and injected the penicillin. He set the syringe aside.

"Novocain." he said. The nurse handed him another syringe full of another clear liquid with the slightest hue of red. This he injected around the rim of the bullet wound several times, each time squeezing a little bit of the painkiller into the wound. He waited perhaps twenty seconds, before he started prodding the wound with his fingers. Zack writhed, groaning in pain.

"As long as you’re standing here why don't you help by holding his legs?" Susan realized the doctor was speaking to her. She stepped up and laid her upper body across Zack’s thighs. Once he was satisfied that she held him properly, the doctor went back to work. Zack’s legs bucked, and he screamed in pain, but his struggles were feeble.

"The bullet is about an inch and a half deep." The Doctor said. "I can feel it with my finger." Susan was glad she couldn't see what the Doctor was doing. "Hemostats." he said. A few seconds later, Zack’s entire body lurched, and he screamed aloud, bursting into coughs.

"Hold him!" the Doctor barked. "Nurse, his shoulders!" Zack’s feet drummed on the end of the table. His knees slammed painfully into Susan’s ribs. His screams were so pitiful that Susan nearly burst into tears herself.

"GOT IT!" she heard the doctor say triumphantly. She heard a wet, meaty tear, and Zack’s body gave one final heave before he collapsed into unconsciousness. Susan looked up to see the doctor holding a large deformed bullet in the Hemostats.

"Quite the souvenir." he said with a tired smile. He dropped the bullet on the tray with a
plink!
Susan looked at Zack’s side. It was covered with blood, and the wound was flowing freely. "On your side my friend." the doctor said, rolling Zack onto his uninjured side. He gagged, spitting up a large semi-coagulated mouthful of blood.

"Is that all?" Susan asked, barely able to find the words.

"That's all," the doctor said. "Now we just have to stop the bleeding." He turned to the nurse. "Bring me a cauterizing unit." She moved away quickly.

"Cauterize?" Susan couldn't believe her ears. "Why don't you stitch him closed?"

The doctor looked at her as if she were an insignificant child.

"His lung has been nicked. If I sew him shut without stopping his internal bleeding, he will drown in his own blood. And since I don’t have the time or facilities to open him up and fix him proper, cauterization will have to do." The nurse returned, carrying something that looked like a screwdriver, with an oversized handle and shaft.