Psych Ward Zombies (6 page)

“I hope Chester and Eric are all right,” Janet said. She was genuinely concerned, although the two orderlies had only been gone for a half hour.

“I’m sure they’re fine. I’ll call D Ward and see what’s happening,” Dave reassured, picking up his walkie-talkie. “Wait, I thought you didn’t like Chester.”

Janet’s face flushed a little, but in the poor lighting Dave did not notice.

“Fat guys aren’t really my thing, but I guess he’s all right,” she mumbled. Chester’s recent heroism had caused her to reconsider her biases. Under different circumstances Dave might have teased Janet about this, but for now he jus
t let it go. Besides, he was a little worried about Chester himself. He keyed the microphone on the walkie-talkie.

“This is Doctor Hexer calling D Ward.” He paused for fifteen seconds before repeating his call. There was no answer either time. Dave checked the buttons and knobs on the radio to make sure it was turned on and tuned to the correct emergency channel. It seemed to be working properly. The third call to D Ward once again garnered no response. Dave and Janet shared a glance, knowing they were both thinking the same thing
.

“Maybe we should go look for them,” Janet suggested. Dave pointed out that they still had two animated corpses on the ward along with seven other patients. He, Janet, and Mel were the only staff members on the ward and
they needed to stay there. Plus, as far as anyone knew, the rest of the hospital was fine other than rioting geezers.

About five minutes later, they heard the doors to the ward open and Chester walked in. He was alone and covered in blood. Janet and Dave stood up immediately and ran toward him. Janet was first to speak
.

“Are you okay? Is that your blood?
”

Chester shrugged. “I’m okay, I think. But we did run into some trouble. Whatever happened to Amber and Luther also happened on D Ward. Some of the patients turned into zombies and were attacking everybody else. It was crazy!”

“Chester, these people aren’t zombies,” Dave snapped. He was angry that Chester seemed to be making fun of patients who were sick. “It’s some sort of medical illness. Maybe a virus. I don’t know, but I think it’s contagious.” Dave looked down at the gore covering Chester’s clothes. He took a step back and said, “I think you’d better wash that off.”

Janet directed her attention to the door of the ward and then back to Chester. “Where’s, um, everyone else?”

Chester hung his head and stared at his feet. (Actually, he had not seen his feet in years. He hung his head and stared at his enormous belly.)

“I took what was left of D Ward over to C Ward,” Chester explained. “It’s calm over there and it seemed like a safer place than here. Eric
... uh... Well, Eric got eaten by the zombies.”

“I told you they’re not zomb
...” Dave suddenly realized what he had just heard. “Wait. Did you say ‘eaten’?”

“Yeah, man. They ate that dude! They ate him like a damned old Snickers bar!” Chester said, miming the action of shoving food into his mouth. He shook his head with agitated frustration and started to pace around the room. “This is crazy, man! Just plain crazy!
”

Chester’s experience in the wrestling ring had made him an expert fighter.
However, nothing in the ring could prepare him for seeing a fellow orderly get eaten by zombies. In the moment of intense stress, he had turned to his fighting instincts to get him through it. Fighting had always been how he dealt with things. Now that the fight was over, he did not know how to handle himself. He turned to his other coping mechanism: food.

While Chester got washed up and went looking for his stash of cheese puffs, Janet went to get him some clean clothes. Dave remained at the nursing station, staring into space. His mind could not comprehend what was happening. He felt detached from reality, like in a dream, but he could not convince his brain to wake up. He pinched his leg, hoping to prove to himself that this was not real. The pain in his thigh was disappointingly authentic. He looked at his watch. It was half past three o’clock in the morning. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

Dave stood up and walked to the restraint room to check on Luther. His path took him by Amber, who was still standing by the handrail where she was tied. The straitjacket held her arms folded across her abdomen and the hood was covering her face. Although she did not move, Dave could hear her raspy breaths from beneath the hood. He kept his distance as he passed by.

He arrived at the restraint room where Mel was supposed to be looking over Luther. Mel was never particularly reliable, and Dave had witnessed him sleeping on the job numerous times in the past. It therefore came as no surprise that Mel sat slumped in his chair with his head down. He was snoring loudly. The sound of Mel’s snoring resonated in the sparsely appointed room, mixing with the wheezing sound of Luther’s breaths. In fact, the two noises sounded nearly alike. Dave took a hard look at Mel. He almost roused him, but decided to let sleeping frogs lie. Luther’s status did not appear to have changed, so he seemed stable for now
.

Dave headed to his office to be alone and collect his thoughts.
He unlocked the door and entered. By habit, his hand went to the light switch beside the door, but flicking the switch yielded no results. The room remained dark. It was strange being in his office and not hearing the usual hum of the computer.

Dave dropped his keys onto the desk and sat alone in the dim light that crept in from the hallway. He folded his forearms together on his desk and slumped forward with his head on his arms. It was the middle of the night and he was exhausted. His eyes drifted shut. He was soon asleep
.

He had only slept for about a
half hour before the slumped position caused his neck to ache. He awoke and raised his head, feeling mildly refreshed from the short nap. He looked at his cell phone, although there was still no signal. In his sleep-induced haze, he had to check himself again to make sure he was not in a dream. He yawned and staggered out of his office, pulling the door shut behind him.

Back at the nursing station, Janet and Chester sat slouched in chairs. They were both fast asleep. Dave smiled to himself knowing that he was not the only one who needed a nap. He looked down at the desk and saw the walkie talkie sitting unattended. He patted his empty belt and realized he had left it sitting there when he had tried to call D Ward earlier. A red LED flashed with regular intervals and a symbol of an empty battery was visible on the display.
Dave put the radio on his belt anyway, hoping the battery would last until reinforcements came in the morning. The day shift would start arriving just before six o’clock, so he only had a couple hours to go.

He walked down to the restraint room while stretching some of the tension from his shoulders and back. As he neared the room he could still hear Mel snoring. Who knew frogs snored so loudly? Dave figured he would go ahead and wake Mel, since Mel had been sleeping for quite a while. He turned to enter the doorway but stopped abruptly before crossing the threshold. He shrank away from the ghastly scene before him
.

Luther was still strapped down to the restraint bed, just as before. However, Mel was now crouched atop Luther, ripping the skin from Luther’s torso with his teeth and fingernails. Stringy tendrils of coagulated blood hung from Mel’s chin. His raspy breaths washed in and out of his chest in an irregular pattern. With each breath, Mel spewed foamy bits of blood-tinged phlegm onto his captive meal. The sound Dave had mistaken for snoring had actually been Mel’s death rattle
.

Luther writhed robotically on the bed, with no sign of distress or pain. Despite having a large portion of his chest torn away, he was still alive in some grossly unnatural way.
His blood flowed out in lazy, clot-choked rivers, pooling on the floor around the bed.

Mel looked up at Dave and bared his teeth like a dog protecting his dinner bowl. His reddened eyes were ablaze with rage and hunger
.

“Shit!”
Dave yelled. He grabbed the door and slammed it shut before Mel had a chance to move. Dave slid the manual deadbolt into place. Mel observed the door slam shut and he lowered his head to continue his gory feast.

Dave sprinted back to the nursing station and yelled to Janet and Chester. Both startled awake. They jumped to their feet and looked around, trying to see what Dave was screaming about.
Dave did not have time to explain, but he suddenly froze in his tracks. He peered down the residential corridor where the patient rooms were located. Holding his finger to his lips, he motioned for his companions to remain silent. From the hallway a faint sound of groaning and gasping breaths could be heard. It seemed to be coming from multiple sources. Dave strained his eyes in the poorly-lit corridor but could not see anything.

“Janet,” he whispered. “Where’s your flashlight?”

Janet slipped to the other side of the room, retrieved the flashlight, and handed it to Dave upon her return. He clicked the switch and a thin beam of light illuminated the ceiling above them. Dave swung the flashlight down in a slow arc, settling the beam on the distant corridor. The beam lay just above floor height, casting an eerie spotlight on numerous pairs of legs staggering around in the darkness. Dave panned the flashlight up a bit, revealing a crowd of walking corpses. They appeared to be just wandering in random circles at the end of the hallway.

“
Oh hell no,” Chester said softly.

Janet counted off slowly as she tried to keep track of individuals within the mingling horde. “One, two, three, four
...” She paused. “Seven. There’s seven of them”. As she finished her count, one of the creatures caught a glimpse of the flashlight and seemed to start moving toward it. Dave extinguished the beam before any others noticed. He pulled the walkie talkie from his belt.

“This is Doctor Hexer on B Ward. We need some help. Can anyone hear me?” he whispered into the microphone. He wanted to scream into the radio, but he spoke as softly as possible to avoid drawing the attention of the zombies in the hallway. The radio produced only static and promptly went dead silent. The red light was no longer blinking. Dave
laid the radio on the desk, resisting the strong urge to throw it against the wall.

Janet pondered her math. “So we had ten patients on the ward
... There are seven down on that end, plus Luther. And Jason, who ran off. And Amber.”

“Wait!” Dave’s voice was magnified by a feeling of panic. “Where’s Amber?
”

He recalled walking to check on Luther a few minutes earlier and he now realized that Amber had not been standing in the corridor when he passed. He clicked on the flashlight and focused the beam on the place where she had been tied. The handrail had been ripped completely off its mounts. The large section of handrail was missing, along with the attached zombie. Dave quickly cast the beam around to each day room, to the area surrounding the nursing station, and to the ward entrance doors. He drew the beam back to the long corridor, expecting to see the mob milling around at the far end. Instead, the single zombie had noticed the light and the others had followed him toward its source. The group was now about 50 feet away and closing quickly.

Chester braced himself and prepared to make a stand against the creatures. Dave, however, grabbed Chester by the back of his shirt and held Janet by the elbow
.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.
  They ran toward the entrance corridor, putting distance between themselves and the advancing crowd of zombies.

However, they were soon faced with a choice. Option A was to flee out the exit of the ward and take their chances in the main hospital. Option B was to hide in Dave’s office, one of the few rooms where the door locked from the inside. No one had a clear preference, since neither choice sounded particularly appealing. Dave, being the leader by default, made the executive decision to barricade themselves in his office
.

At his direction, they raced down the hallway toward the office. Dave was leading the way into the darkness.
While he held the flashlight, the desperate pace at which he was running made it difficult to keep the light aimed ahead of him. He did not need a light anyway, as he had walked this corridor a thousand times. He knew the route with his eyes closed. However, as he turned a 90 degree corner he collided with something in the middle of the hallway. His head crashed against a solid object, and he tumbled to the floor. A venomous shriek filled the air. Although the source of the noise was not visible, they all knew what it was. They had just found Amber.

Dave lay on the floor, reeling from the impact. In the darkness he barely knew which end was up. Chester grabbed Janet and pushed her behind him, shielding her. Janet had picked up the flashlight, so she shined it over Chester’s shoulder to light the hallway. She saw Dave lying on the floor at the feet of Amber, who was still strapped into the straitjacket and wearing the hood. An 8 foot section of thick wooden handrail was lodged in the bindings of her straitjacket and stood upright like a flagpole. It was wedged tightly between the floor and ceiling. Dave realized he had just crashed headlong into the handrail.

Since Amber’s face was still covered by the hood, she could not see the three people who were just a few feet away. She had felt Dave collide with the pole but she did not know what had happened after that. She hissed and growled blindly at no one in particular. Dave crawled to his feet and put some distance between himself and Amber, rejoining his friends
.

Amber stood squarely in the center of the
small hallway leading to Dave’s office. She was blocking their path, although technically she was still restrained. Dave glanced back to the main corridor. The other zombies had not yet reached the intersection.

Another decision: T
o squeeze by Amber and go to the office, or to retreat to the ward’s exit. Dave decided to continue to the office.

He pressed his back against the side of the hallway as firmly as possible. Janet held the flashlight on Amber so Dave could watch her movements. Dave side-stepped slowly through the opening between Amber and the wall, holding his breath as he went. Janet followed suit without much problem. Her years of daily yoga had paid off, allowing her to slip
through the narrow space with the nimble grace of a ballet dancer. She met up with Dave on the other side and then shone the light back toward Chester. The light landed on Chester’s face, which showed a combination of frustration and disgust. He looked to Janet and Dave and then gestured with his eyes down to his rather wide body. He looked back to his thin companions and silently mouthed the words, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Hearing the raspy breaths of the zombie horde closing in behind him, Chester pushed his back to the wall and tried to suck in his gut as much as possible. It was a useless endeavor, as there was no way he would possibly be able to squeeze around the zombie without making significant contact
.

“Come on,” Dave whispered harshly, with a tone that conveyed both encouragement and irritation.
The shuffling footsteps approached closer.

Chester shot Dave one more dirty look and started to force himself into the tiny opening. He pressed his back against the wall hard enough to crack the drywall. Despite this, the front of his chest, abdomen, and groin was mashed against the twitching, rotten body of the zombie. Chester grimaced as Amber turned her shrouded head toward him and gasped a wheezy moan
just inches from his face. He had now wedged himself between Amber and the wall, and suddenly his forward motion stopped. He tried to push Amber back, but she was smashed against the immovable handrail.

“I’m stuck!” he yelled, figuring there was no need to whisper anymore. Janet and Dave stepped forward and tried to pull Chester through the gap, but their tugging just seemed to wedge him in tighter. The group of zombies was approaching quickly from behind Chester, and there was no going backward now
.

Dave suggested a synchronized effort, and began counting down. “Three, two, one, go!” he yelled. They all heaved in unison and the big man began to move. The handrail attached to Amber began to crack. The wood suddenly snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. Everyone, including Amber, collapsed together in a heap
.

Dave scrambled to his feet and grabbed the flashlight from the floor. Janet had dropped the flashlight when she landed on her back. She seemed to be okay, but was slow to rise. Chester lay face down and did not move
.

“Chester, are you okay?” Janet shouted, shaking his shoulder desperately. Chester remained motionless. Dave and Janet grabbed the big man and shoved him over onto his back. As he rolled into the supine position, the light of the flashlight revealed his face. His eyes were open and he wore a huge grin
.

“What the hell, Chester?” Janet shouted. Chester pointed to Amber and chuckled, “Just like a grape, baby.”

During the pile-up Amber had fallen beneath Chester’s massive frame. Since she was already half-rotten, her fragile body could not support the weight of the big man. The hood over her head now had a flattened shape, no longer resembling the form of a human skull. Brain matter leaked from the hood’s lower hem.

Amber was no longer a threat, but the mass of pursuing zombies would be upon them in less than a minute. Dave bounded the four yards to his office door and tried the handle. It was locked. He held the flashlight in his right hand, and with his free hand he reached into his left pants pocket. He then patted his right pants pocket in a frantic search for his keys. He checked again, with no luck. He pointed the beam of the flashlight through the small window and could see his keys lying on the desk.

The keys were plainly visible yet impossibly out of reach. Dave considered smashing through the door’s window. He raised the flashlight and prepared to strike the window pane, but stopped with the realization that the window was made of unbreakable glass. All glass in the hospital was unbreakable, for safety reasons.

“Uh, guys. We’ve got a problem,” he said. “My keys are locked in my office.”

Chester picked himself up off the floor and joined Janet by Dave’s side. They all stood staring at the door for a few seconds before Chester volunteered a solution. “I could break the door down.”

Dave sighed. “Chester, if you break the door down, how will we keep the zombies out?
”

Chester just shrugged
.

“It looks like we have to go back the way we came,” Dave said. The trio turned to see the mob of zombies blocking their way. Chester stepped over to where Amber’s squished body lay and picked up a four foot section of the broken handrail. The hallway was far too narrow to swing it like a baseball bat. Instead, he grabbed the rail with a hand at each end and held it horizontally in front of his body.

He turned to Dave and Janet and nodded to them. “The Chester Train is leaving the station. Better get your ass on board.”

As his companions positioned themselves behind him, Chester started running down the hallway toward the zombies. He started off slowly, but he picked up speed as he went along. He held the piece of handrail in front of him like a cow catcher on an old steam locomotive.
The zombies would have been too slow to turn and flee, even if they had enough working brain cells to realize what was about to happen.

Chester hit the mob at full speed, sending a shower of rotten body parts flying into the air. All seven zombies were driven backward down the hallway to the intersection with the main corridor. Their rearward motion stopped when they smashed into the opposite wall. It was like being caught between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. A couple of the zombies were split in half at the waist and several others were rendered immobile by the splintering of the bones in their limbs and spinal column
.

Chester continued to pin the zombies to the wall with his wooden battering ram. Janet and Dave exited the hallway behind him and they turned toward the exit. After his friends had passed, Chester dropped the pole and started running toward the exit after them. Three of the zombies extricated themselves from the pile and shuffled after Chester.

Once beyond the doors of B Ward, the humans sprinted toward the central area of the hospital. Dimly-lit corridors split off in every direction, offering numerous choices for means of escape. These passageways led to the other wards, the cafeteria, the gym, and the lobby. The trio had put some distance between themselves and the pursuing zombies, so they paused at the crossroads to collect their thoughts. They knew D Ward was already infected, and screams could be heard coming from C Ward’s corridor. B Ward, from whence they had just fled, offered no refuge. The remaining options were A Ward, the juvenile section (E Ward), or the large common areas.

“Hey, guys, I think we need to check on the kids,” Janet suggested.

“I agree,” Chester added, and Dave had no objections.

They darted down the corridor leading to E Ward, glancing behind them periodically to ensure no zombies had followed. They arrived at the children’s ward and stopped for a moment to listen at the door. There had already been too many surprises tonight, and there was no guarantee of what lay behind this door
.

All was quiet. Satisfying themselves that the greater danger likely lay behind them, they crept inside. The ward was as silent as a tomb. Like the rest of the hospital, it was also rather dark. Dave, Janet, and Chester huddled together and slowly crept down the corridor toward the nursing station. They strained their ears for any indication of grunting, groaning, moaning, sh
uffling, wheezing, screeching, or any other hideous noise a zombie might make.

They arrived at the desk of the nursing station to find an elderly nurse serenely working on a crossword puzzle by the dim light. She was dressed in a cardigan sweater and wore horn-rimmed reading glasses tethered to her neck with a beaded cord. She looked like the stereotypical librarian
.

“Is everything okay here?!” Dave asked frantically.
“Have you had any problems with—”

His question was cut short by an abrupt shushing sound that emanated from two pursed, wrinkly lips. A crooked, bony finger was pressed over the lips. The owner of the bony finger was Mert, and she ruled over this ward with an iron fist. No horseplay, shenanigans, yelling, or rude behavior were allowed. Dave was well-acquainted with Mert and could get along fine with her, but he did not understand why she was sitting there with a crossword puzzle in a time like this.

He tried again, this time using a different approach. “Um, excuse me, ma’am. Are you aware of what is going on in the hospital?”

Mert looked at Dave over the top of her glasses. “Young man, there is a power outage. Everything is under control and there is no excuse for sneaking up on me and acting like a hooligan.”

Dave looked at his companions, sharing a common feeling of disbelief. “So, didn’t you hear the radio?”

Mert seemed unconcerned. “Why, yes I did. I heard that simpleton nurse on D Ward carrying on about a riot, or something silly like that. She is always turning some minor issue into a huge drama.” Mert paused to scowl and then continued, “Her shouting was threatening to disrupt the sleep of my patients, so I turned the radio off. Did you know that quality of sleep is the most vital determinant of a young child’s mental health?”

Dave was taken aback. “Well, no. I didn’t know. I mean, um...”

Chester
was growing increasingly frustrated and angry with the situation. He interrupted Dave’s stammering with a less delicate response. “Look here, you old bitch! Zombies are taking over the hospital and we’re here to save your wrinkly old ass! So get up, put on your big girl panties, and let’s get this place secured!” Chester leaned over the desk and presented a menacing sneer just inches from Mert’s face. Mert’s reading glasses fell from her nose. Her mouth moved as if trying to speak, but no words came out. Chester added just one more word.

“Now.”

Mert sprang to her feet with a quickness not expected from a woman in her 70’s. Chester’s rant also drew the attention of two orderlies, who came running from the hallway where the patient rooms were located. Dave took over from here, reassuring everyone and explaining the need to work together. He directed the group to fortify the unit by moving all furniture that was not bolted down to block the door. Mert joined in the effort, although she kept a sizable distance from Chester during the process.

The commotion on the ward had woken several of the children. They began to peek out of their rooms and a few ventured up to the nursing station to see what was going on. One of the children was Samuel. Dave recognized the boy from earlier in the night and asked him how he was doing.

“I’m okay,” Samuel mumbled, still half asleep. “I’m just sleepy. What are you guys doing out here?”

Dave was not sure he wanted to start a panic among the children just yet, so he made up a quick lie. “We’re, uh, building a play fort. We’re piling up all the furniture and it’s going to be really cool.” Dave paused, waiting to see if his lie had been believed.

“Your play fort sucks,” was the child’s honest response. His fingers counted out syllables. “Why is it so dark in here?”

“Um, well, we’re playing the flashlight game while we build the play fort. Any other questions?”

“Yeah. Why was that fat man yelling about Nurse Mert’s underwear?”