Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (14 page)

"So, it's possible for someone already showing signs to get better?" Mason asked, taking Mackenzie's hand in his.

Walker looked at the girl's pretty face and made a point of declaring confidently, "Most certainly. Especially if that person is young and healthy and strong."

Mason allowed a smile of appreciation and felt Mackenzie give his hand an excited little squeeze. She said nothing, but that squeeze spoke volumes to Mason. He considered asking the doctor if anyone had actually recovered from this particular virus, but he already knew the answer. If there had been, Walker would have said.

"Anyway," Walker looked nervously to his lap, "by yesterday morning, hard decisions had to be made. We were forced to begin advanced triage."

"Huh?" Mason cocked his head, "What's advanced triage?"

"In a normal situation, patients are treated in order of need, you see? A lacerated finger trumps a cough, labored breathing trumps a laceration, chest pains trump labored breathing, and so on. With
advanced
triage, only those patients who have the best chance of survival are treated. I know it sounds heartless, but the idea was to keep from squandering what was by then extremely limited resources on those already in stage two, and tend only to those in the initial stages of infection."

Mason nodded glumly, "I think I can guess what you mean by 'stage two'."

Walker swallowed hard.

"Psychosis. Delirium. Dementia. Madness. Take your pick. Yesterday, we still labored under the illusion that we actually stood a chance to stem the tide. We called in police and private security to barricade the clinic from the increasingly violent mob, but it was already too late. By midday, we had to abandon the ER and the entire ground floor, and move everyone we could to the upper floors. When a patient manifested stage two, they were sedated, but eventually, even our most powerful sedatives were useless. And then, just like someone throwing a switch, the whole thing collapsed. And just like that, we were in a fight for our very lives."

"The tipping point," Mason surmised.

"Like a nuclear chain reaction," Walker shuddered at the imagery, "The few policemen and security guards who survived thus far took it upon themselves to, dare I say,
attend
to those who couldn't be sedated, and none of us could raise a hand to stop them. Honestly, at that point I don't think we would have even if we could. By then, it was all about survival in a place of utter chaos.

"And then the worst possible scenario came to pass," Walker's hand went to the rolled towel in his lap, "The back-up generators died. By one a.m. this morning, it was abundantly clear that we were entirely on our own. No one was coming to help, and the clinic was under siege. We did what we could to seal off the upper floors, but the mob quite literally tore through the last of our security. Those who saw an opportunity to make a break for it did so, but I wasn't so fortunate. I found myself surrounded and took the only avenue of escape I could. Eventually, I found myself up here, utterly alone. But not utterly alone, after all, you see?"

"Your patients," Mason sighed.

"An entire ward packed to the rafters with patients on the verge of progressing from stage one to stage two."

"So you dealt with the threat," Mason concluded. "You…..
attended
to your patients."

The doctor hung his head.

"I told myself that I was sparing them from an ignoble end, but really, I was just being a coward. I was afraid, and I dealt with the imminent threat to my survival the only way I could."

Mason saw tears once again welling up in the doctor's eyes and told him honestly, "That was the smartest thing you could have done, Doc. It was also an act of mercy."

Walker actually chuckled, but it was forced.

"Everyone thinks that doctors swear first and foremost to do no harm. Oddly, nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath do we make that promise. But we
do
promise to tread with care in matters of life and death." He recited from memory, " 'If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life, and this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty'. It has an ironic ring, doesn't it….….considering?" Walker's lips turned up in a broad smile, but tears came to his eyes as he looked to Mason, "And do you know what the very next line of the oath is? Get this, you'll love it. 'Above all, I must not play God'. How's
that
for hilarious!"

Mason imagined the weak little man moving from room to room with the pistol, then retiring to this room, discarding the uniform of a profession he'd abandoned in the most unambiguous way possible, and tossing the still-smoking gun atop it. The image was positively rife with metaphor, but Mason didn't dwell on it.

"I don't suppose Hippocrates ever envisioned a day quite like this," Mason advised the doctor gently, "Believe me when I say, Doc, no one is going to judge you. Before today, I wouldn't have swatted a fly, but I've since come to change my attitude."

Walker chuckled again, but this time it wasn't forced. It was the disjointed giggle of a man pushed close to his breaking point.

"Yes, I'll be sure to bring that up to Saint Peter," he cackled, "Or, more likely, his more…..
southern
cousin."

Mason could see that the man was perilously close to losing his shit, but he wasn't overly concerned. He outweighed the good doctor by eighty pounds, so any confrontation would be over before it'd begun. And besides, he reasoned, maybe borderline insanity was what it took to survive in this new world.

"Doc, you said that some people made a break for it. Did you actually see Sarah get out? Did she say anything? Was she heading home? Was anyone with her?"

Walker shook his head, and it was clear that he was fighting back his tears.

"Honestly, I don't know. We tried to stick together, but it was a mad rush. People were everywhere, running…..screaming…..dying. Once I closed myself off here, I looked out of the window and saw a group of people run into the parking lot at the rear of the building. I saw them from up here, watching them get away." He saw a spark of hope come upon Mackenzie's face and tried to fan it, "They got as far as the alley. That much I know. I'm sure I saw a woman with short blond hair. It
might
have been Sarah." He watched Mackenzie's eyes open wide as she drew in a deep breath of anticipation, and suddenly his tone was resolute. "Yes. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the woman I saw was Sarah Cullen. There is no doubt in my mind that Sarah got away, safe and sound!"

Little Mackenzie curled her lips into a circle, and she squeezed Mason's hand hard.

"Oooo, Mace! Did you hear that?"

Mason threw his arm around her shoulders and drew her in tight.

"I heard it, Mack."

He shared in her enthusiasm, but he was regarding Walker with suspicion. The man was nowhere as certain as he claimed. He
may
have seen someone who
might
have been Sarah, or the whole thing might be a lie, but he wasn't about to deny Mackenzie her glimmer of hope. Still, the amelioration was dubious at best. Mackenzie's spirits were buoyed for the time being, but it only meant the fall was going to be just that much harder.

His concerns evaporated when the girl hands leaned into him and planted a delicate kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you, Mace," she said sweetly, "Thank you for bringing me here."

There was nothing for it now. The deed was done. Mackenzie was happy, and for now, that was enough. They would continue to take this journey one step at a time and deal with the future when it came.

"S'okay, Mack."

Mason patted the girl's hand and looked back to Walker, considering. What was to be done with the good doctor? He had an instinctive dislike for the man, but that was only par for the course. He had the same instinctive dislike for everyone.

With a few notable exceptions
, he allowed, giving Mackenzie's hand another gentle pat.

In a normal world, he would have preferred to never see Walker again. But in this new normal, could he afford to be so cavalier? The man was a doctor, after all. Weak, absolutely, emotionally damaged, to be sure, and cowardly, most assuredly, almost to the point of impotence, but a man's lack of mettle didn't disprove his worth to Mason. In his book, there was absolutely nothing wrong with a timely exit at full speed with tail tucked firmly between ass cheeks, but even with that consideration in mind, a niggling little detail kept gnawing away at the back of his thoughts. When this man should have been either running or fighting for his life, he had chosen instead to withdraw completely, compliments of a needle. That showed more than cowardice, it showed capitulation; full surrender in the face of adversity. Still, with a full accounting of his own panoply of faults, Mason couldn't hold that single failing against the man. After all, how many times had he, himself, sought solace in a bottle? And Walker did acquit himself by
attending
to the immediate threat, and that couldn't have been an easy thing, especially for a doctor.

At last, Mason came to a decision, and though he tried to tell himself that it was a coldly calculated reckoning of the benefits of sharing the road with a medical man, he knew that it was really more a product of his lingering and
damned
annoying sense of morality.

"You can come with us if you like, Doc. We have a way out if you want it."

Walker dropped his eyes to his lap and considered for several long moments, then he released a heavy sigh and brought up the rolled cloth to lay it on the table.

"I think I should very much like that," he admitted meekly.

Mason gave the doctor a nod of consent, then he looked to the white cloth and flicked his head toward Mackenzie.

"Leave the drugs behind, Doc. I don't mind a little recreational chemistry, but I have to draw a line."

There was a long moment where Walker stared at Mason uncomprehendingly, but then he understood and forced a chuckle.

"No, no, no, you have it wrong. Like I said, I'm a coward. This was going to be my escape." He unfurled the cloth and let the vial clatter to the table. "Look, see? Propofol. An easy transition from this world to the next. No pain at all. Just…..…oblivion."

Mason couldn't help but scoff.

"A bullet's faster, Doc."

Walker glanced down at the gun on the floor and shrugged. "And if I'd had one, I'd have used it, believe me."

"That's too bad," Mason scowled his disappointment, "I was hoping you had a few extra clips."

Even as he said the words, a dark shadow passed through his thoughts. It was like the first vague tickle of a notion; a notion far too horrible to imagine.

"Sadly, no," Walker said. "I saw that poor policeman's gun on the floor and grabbed it as I ran. I'd never even
held
a gun before. I don't know what I was going to do with it, but it seemed right to take it."

The tickling persisted. The shadow was growing darker. But it couldn't be. It just couldn't.

"I saw the cop," Mason narrowed his eyes, "and the empty holster. The spare magazines were gone, too. I assumed….."

He let the words trail off and studied the man. What Walker said next would either allay Mason's concerns or give full life to that dark, dreadful thought.

"No," the doctor scowled down at the pistol, "Like I said, things went bad quickly. I guess the poor officer did all he could do. The gun was empty."

Shit.……

Wrong answer.

Just then, Mackenzie's hand gripped Mason's hand like a vice. She gasped and stared wide-eyed toward the doorway.

"Doc," Mason felt his blood run cold, "Without bullets, how exactly did you
attend
to your patients?"

Walker shrugged and rolled the vial in his hands.

"Propofol is quick and painless. They didn't suffer, I assu—.…."

Something clattered to the hallway floor beyond the break room, and they all jumped to their feet.

Christ!

Mackenzie clung to Mason's side and hushed a firightened, "Mace……."

Mason threw an arm around her shoulder and bent to whisper in her ear, "I know, Mack."

Another crash. Far down the hall.

"I don't understand," Walker peered toward the open door with widening eyes, "They're all dead, I assure you. Every last one of them. I'm a
doctor
, for chrissakes!"

Something metal clattered to the floor close by.

"W-who is out there?" Walker stammered. "W-what is it?"

Mason turned a steely eye to the doctor, and his words fell in a hush.

"Doc, welcome to stage three."

CHAPTER XIX

"We gotta go. Now!"

Mason felt Mackenzie's hand in the small of his back and heard a whispered, "Ready, Mace," but  when he looked to Doc Walker, he saw the man visibly shaking from head to toe.

"I-I don't understand," Walker manage, "D-Did they follow you? I thought you said you had a way out!"

"I
did
," Mason gruffed, and padded toward the open door.

He poked his head around the corner and saw a creature at the far end of the hall; an old man in a hospital gown with an IV tube dangling from his emaciated arm and trailing behind him like a tail. As he stumbled awkwardly toward the break room, a young woman emerged through a doorway and filed in behind him. She, too, was wearing a hospital gown, but hers hung from one shoulder to expose skin already mottled with the lividity of death. Like the reanimated man in the back room of the coffee shop, the movements of both were awkward and staggered. They didn't run, but came at a constant slogging shuffle.

Walker pushed up beside Mason to have a look, and before Mason could stop him, he blurted a frightened, "Good God!" into the hallway.

At the sound, the two creatures fixed their sightless eyes ahead and snapped their jaws.

Mason withdrew from the doorway and shoved the doctor rudely back.

"
Christ
, Doc!" he scolded him in a hush, "They can't see, but they can
hear!"

Walker's face was a mask of abject terror and confusion as he gaped at Mason.

"It's impossible!" He howled.

Mason stood over the little man and raised his weapon threateningly. "Keep your voice
down
, you damned fool!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry….…." the doctor's voice fell to a whisper, "But I don't understand…. This is impossible! I remember those two. I checked their vital signs. They were
dead!
I swear to you, no one on this entire floor had a breath of life after I… …..after I….." He let the words trail off.

Mason glared at him angrily, "Yeah, they're dead, Doc. But dead ain't dead anymore."

He whispered to Mackenzie to stay put and hurried back to the pistol lying on the floor. He popped out the magazine and cursed softly, then he tucked the thing into his waistband and looked around the room for anything else that might be used as a weapon.

"Grab a chair!" he hushed to the doctor, "The stairwell is our way out. We have to move fast before the rest of them turn, but we have to be as quiet as possible, understand?"

The doctor was lost in a stew of confusion. He couldn't understand any of it, but he couldn't deny the evidence of his own eyes, and he instinctively knew that his only chance lay in the hands of this big, capable man. He did as he was told and retrieved the chair he'd been sitting on, then he ran back to Mason's side at the doorway and peeked around the corner.

"Shit!" Mason cursed in a whisper. Two more creatures had appeared; one at the far end of the hall, and the other stumbling clumsily from the opposite end of the ward. "Hold the chair in front of you, Doc. Use it to keep them back if they get close, and I'll do what I can to clear a path."

The doctor nodded nervously and turned the chair sideways, legs outward. Mason returned Mackenzie's hand to the small of his back, heard her hush, "I'm good, Mace," and together, the three of them stepped into the hallway.

Within seconds, the numbers doubled. As more creatures appeared out of doorways up and down the hall,  suddenly there were eight creatures, all snapping their jaws and clawing the air and somehow following their dead gaze to converge on the break room. Since they no longer drew breath, there was no air passing through their vocal chords to produce a growl, but their silence actually made them more frightening. Now, instead of feral beasts, they were wraiths, and their silent advance made them seem somehow otherworldly, like ghosts. 

Monsters from the id
, ……Mason thought, but kept the notion to himself.

Even as Mason prepared his little band of survivors to move, more creatures stumbled out one by one to join the swarm. The old man with the tail was the closest; less than a dozen feet away and raking the air with gnarled, arthritic claws. Mason didn't run at the man, but stepped quickly forward, raising his weapon as he advanced. When he was close enough to smell the stench of decay, he put all of his weight behind the rebar and drove the end of it directly through the old man's eye. He felt the weapon strike bone at the back of the man's skull and watched as the force of the impact threw the creature to the floor.

Walker bellowed a horrified,
"Jesus!"
but Mason ignored it. Rather than admonishing the doctor's indiscretion, the only consideration now was flight. The stairwell was just fifty yards distant, but the swarm between here and there was thickening even as Mason advanced. He jerked his weapon free from the old man's skull with a grating of metal on bone just as the woman with the ill-fitting hospital gown made a lunge. Unable to bring his weapon to bear in time, he raised his foot and levelled a ferocious kick at the creature's legs. There was a harsh
snap!
as her knee joint exploded, and she fell to the floor. Mason brought the rebar up over his head to bring it down like a club on the woman's head, but the hallway was more confined than he'd anticipated. The end of the weapon struck the ceiling and blocked his swing, and before he could adjust for the close conditions, the woman clambered clumsily to her feet. Despite her shattered knee, she once again lunged at Mason, and he was forced to back up a step as he swung wildly with the rebar. This time, the steel rod caught the creature on the temple and she collapsed against the wall and slumped to the floor, but it hadn't been a killing blow, and as she struggled to regain her footing, Mason called out in a hush to Walker.

"Stay close, Doc!"

He gathered his disparate group together and sped down the hallway. With more of the horrible creatures appearing by the second, their only chance was to get to the stairwell, and get there
fast
. Where there had been eight, all at once there were a dozen dead things converging on them, and soon enough, there would be twice that number and the way would be blocked. Mason changed tactics in mid-flight, and instead of taking the time to fight the creatures one by one, he drew his weapon horizontally across his chest at arm's length and charged headlong at the advancing swarm.

He ploughed into the next two creatures and bowled them over bodily, barely slowing as he hauled Mackenzie over their writhing bodies. A bent little man was a few yards further along, stumbling down the center of the hallway, and Mason ran straight at him. The heavy rebar impacted him directly between his snapping jaws with a horrible
crunch
and a hail of shattered teeth, and the little man folded backward to the floor. Mason stepped over the body easily enough, but he had a nervous moment when he felt Mackenzie's grip on the back of his waistband falter as she stumbled. She quickly regained her footing, though, and wrapped her free hand around his middle, sticking to him like glue as they both ran on.

Behind him, Walker followed along at a loping run, panting with the exertion and holding the chair in front of him like the world's most implausible lion tamer. At first, there was little he need do other than hurdle over squirming corpses, but then one of the creatures knocked down by Mason's headlong charge began to rise awkwardly to its knees directly in his path. With no time to second-guess his actions, he centered the creature's head between the legs of the chair and thundered into it. The force of the impact brought him to a stop, but the blow also threw the creature back, and its head smacked the floor with the sound of a coconut striking stone. He felt a sting on his ankle as he stepped over the fallen form, but then he was past it and tearing after Mason with a newfound determination.

Mason continued his charge, racing down the hall and barrelling into several more creatures in rapid succession. Running at full tilt with the sturdy steel weapon as his battering ram, the creatures weren't difficult to knock down, but they never stayed down for long. Mason stepped over, around, and sometimes overtop the creatures as they fell, always with a protective hand around his back to make certain Mackenzie didn't stumble again. There was only one frightening moment when she yelped once as one of the bodies began to rise beneath her feet, but Mason hauled her quickly over the thing, and it was soon left in their wake.

They'd made it nearly halfway to the safety of the stairwell when the reckless charge was brought to a sudden halt. Ahead of Mason stood a man as big as a redwood. Thick-limbed and heavy-chested, the creature ambled down the middle of the hallway, its lips curled back in a silent snarl. Already in a full run, Mason adjusted his direction by two degrees, raised the heavy rebar a foot, and only increased his speed. It was his intention to catch the creature above its center of gravity with as much momentum as he could muster and see if the old adage was true about the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but when he finally slammed into the goliath, he discovered that the sufficiently big didn't necessarily fall at all.

It was as if he had run into a brick wall. He thudded off the big man's chest and reeled back, but quickly collected himself and brought the rebar up like spear. He made a stab at the creature's eye, but just as he lunged, the creature teetered awkwardly and the weapon only glanced off of hard bone. A flap of skin now hung from the creature's forehead, and a thick pasty ooze dripped down its face, but the creature ignored the affront and stumbled on. Mason took two steps back to gain distance, then he drew back the weapon and put all of his weight into another lunge. This time, the rebar pierced the creature's face just above its upper lip, passed easily through the nasal cavity, cracked through a thin layer of bone at the back of the sinuses and skewered the brainstem like a pig on a spit. Immediately, the big man's back arched stiffly, his muscled tightened in a spasm, and he began to roll back on his heels. As the goliath teetered, Mason couldn't help but imagine a silent
timberrr…..
as the redwood finally toppled and crashed to the floor with a resounding
thud!

He'd managed to fell the giant, but in the few short seconds it took him to accomplish the feat, the swarm had only grown. The stairwell was still twenty yards away, but it may as well have been a mile. Already there were no fewer than twenty creatures between them and salvation. It was too many, and the swarm was thickening even as he watched. The door was right there. Right fucking
there!
  It was so close that Mason almost tried for it despite the swarm, but even as he debated and second-guessed and calculated and reconsidered, he couldn't deny the math. The fact was, the narrow window of opportunity they might have had was irretrievably gone. They would never make it. Not a chance. They had to retreat. They had to withdraw back to the break room and barricade themselves in and come up with another plan. He had no idea what form that plan would take, but of one thing he was now absolutely certain; they sure as hell wouldn't be going out the way they got in.

He spun around, found a panting Walker at his heels, and his heart suddenly rose up in his chest. As he looked past the staggering, gasping Walker, he saw that the swarm behind them had grown every bit as much as the swarm in front. There may have been twenty or more between them and the break room. Mason looked longingly back to the stairwell, but it was all but obscured by the sheer mass of the swarm converging from the front.

They were trapped. They couldn't go forward and they couldn't go backward, and every moment they hesitated, the worse the odds became. With the undead converging on them both sides, Mason's active mind could only see one option left.

"In there!" he shouted to the doctor, then he took one last swing at a creature standing in his way, gathered Mackenzie into his arms, and carried her across the hallway and through an open doorway.

It was a patient's room. Two beds were within; one recently vacated, and the other still occupied by a big woman, not yet reanimated. Mason lowered Mackenzie to the ground, saw Walker huddle himself in a corner, and dashed across the room. The woman's eyes opened just as Mason swung his weapon high over his head, but then her skull exploded in a spray of red, and she lay still. Mason ignored the resultant splatter of gore and raced back to the door. Already, a young female and older male were in the doorway, but Mason acted quickly. He clubbed the man over the head, shoved the woman back with a foot against her chest and threw the door closed. He reached for the deadbolt, but there was none. In fact, there was no lock at all. Not even a latch. Mason cursed aloud, but he couldn't help but understand the logic of it. After all, why would a patient's room need a lock? Thinking quickly, he slid his rebar through the handle and wedged it against the door jamb as a makeshift drawbar, then he tested it with a hard pull on the handle. It scratched along the jamb, then it stuck fast. It wouldn't hold for long with any kind of weight behind it, but it would buy them a few minutes. Minutes he had no intention of wasting.

He ran to the tall window on the far side of the room and looked down. The Secret Garden was below, but it was several yards to the left, and his mind immediately set itself to the math that would see them clear. He formed a picture in his mind, directed Mackenzie to the empty bed, filled her hand with a corner of the bed linen and told her, "Strip the sheets, Mack." He then turned to Walker and howled, "The sheets! We need a rope, Doc! Tie the sheets together!"