The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak (9 page)

"I
can’t believe this! They have to save that man, why the hell aren't they doing anything?" Dr. Martin cried out.

"What can they do? Those suits are
too bulky, they need to get security in there," replied Dr. Woods as he turned back to the monitor and pressed the transmit button, "call security, now, one of you call for help before he kills that man!"

From the reaction of the other men in the room Dr. Woods was fairly certain that they still had audio on their end. Three of them turned away from the ongoing fight to look directly at the camera, one of them turned and shouted something to the man who had made a run for the doorway. Since the airlock was sealed until the sensors inside the autopsy suite registered that the air inside the room had been flushed and then pressurized
again, his efforts to pull the door open had been wasted. His position next to the door made him the closest team member to the radios seated in a bank of chargers hanging next to the door. The scientist who was yelling at him must have been telling him to use the radio, he finally gave up on his efforts to open the door and ripped a radio free from the charger and started talking into the microphone.

"Tell them to release the air seal on the room, the security force
can’t get in until the room is completely vacuumed clean of contaminated air." Dr. Martin said.

Dr. Woods shook his head and banged his fist against the desk as what Dr. Martin just said made him realize that there was no way for security to help in this situation. They could not vacuum that room clear until that corpse was neutralized. Whatever contamination it carried would be released from that secure room if they were to allow the doors to open to let in security. Even if every scientist and tech in that room had to die, they could not let the air in that room escape beyond the protective barrier of those rubberized walls.

"They can’t, damn it, they can’t open the door, if they vent the room and release the door they will contaminate the whole field unit. They have to get that thing contained first."

Pressing the transmit button again Dr. Woods backtracked on his instructions to the men in the autopsy suite. "The room is still pressure sealed. You have to get control of this situation before you release the pressure and clear the room. Use the damn autopsy tools, scalpels, knives, saws, whatever the hell you have to do get that thing under control now!"

Turning his attention back to the wrestling figures on the floor Dr. Woods was horrified to see that now the technicians entire hood assembly had been ripped from his body and was hanging uselessly off to the side, with bare skin now exposed his attacker was putting forth all his efforts to attach his snarling teeth to any piece of flesh he could reach. The technician's strength was clearly waning as his attempts to keep his blood crazed attacker from clamping those snapping teeth onto his face or neck were close to failing.

Even though they had been unable to witness the assault on the
first scientist, Dr. Woods believed it must have played out very similar to what they were seeing now. Despite having already gone a full round with his iniial victim this abomination was showing no signs of slowing down, if anything it seemed to possess an unending well of energy and strength against which this second victim did not appear able to overcome. The technician's face showed his level of strain as he tried to summon up the strength to keep his attacker's hungrily snapping teeth as far from his face as possible, if one of his colleagues did not come to his aid in the next few seconds it was a battle he was going to lose. 

A scientist near the stand holding the instruments intended for use during the autopsy was the first to snap out of his stunned daze in response to Dr. Woods shouted comman
ds over the conferencing system. He grabbed a long handled rib cutting knife and moving as quickly as his bulky suit would allow, he positioned himself just behind the crazed attacker, straddling the technician on the floor. Raising the knife high above his head he brought it down in one swift movement and drove the blade completely into the back of the assailants shoulder until the blade actually protruded out from the front. The result was far from what Dr. Woods would have expected, there was little doubt that having an eight inch blade driven through your shoulder would be an extremely painful circumstance, but in this case he could see absolutely no indication that the naked man registered the injury. Instead of reeling back in pain and shock from the force of the blow, the momentum of the knife strike actually aided him in his efforts to sink his teeth into the struggling technician pinned to the ground underneath him. The back of the man's head blocked the view of the camera to what was now happening but an abrupt fountain of squirting blood told those of them watching on their computer monitors that the technician had lost his struggle to keep those teeth clear of his exposed body. The agony of the attack was made even more evident from the frantic kicking of the victim’s feet and legs in response to the ongoing assault. Dr. Woods couldn't tell for sure if those teeth had managed to get hold of the struggling man's face or neck, but that question was answered for him when the attacker suddenly lifted his head free from his prey and revealed a gap the size of a closed fist on the technician’s right cheek. The flap of skin and meat that had been torn free was being chewed and swallowed by the deranged man as his attention was diverted momentarily to something else off camera on the far side of the room. Dr. Woods was suddenly grateful that they no longer had audio on his end, the technician with a quarter of his face missing was now completely visible to the camera and they were able to see his mouth opening and closing as he no doubt screamed at the top of his lungs from the pain that must be tearing through him as a result of the unprecedented attack on his face. Not only was he faced with such excruciating pain but he also was forced to watch in horror as the missing piece of his face was actually eaten by the man still holding him pinned tightly to the ground. The floor all around his head had now turned totally red as blood spilled out from the gaping wound on his face. From the pale look that was coming over the remnants of his face it was obvious his level of blood loss was rapidly draining the last remnants of resistance he was able to muster. Turning his attention back to his now helpless victim the cannibalistic attacker dipped his head down once more and clenched onto the fleshy side of the technician's neck. With three violent shakes of his head he tore lose a strip of the neck that included skin, muscle and a portion of the man's windpipe, resulting in yet another explosive spray of thick dark blood as the teeth also destroyed the major arteries running along the side of the neck. At this point, all attempts at defense ended as the dying man's hands dropped to the floor while his body convulsed and shuttered involuntarily, there was no longer anything that could be done to save the technician. Over the next few seconds all anyone could do was watch as the flow of blood being pumped through his veins slowly ebbed to a trickle as the final beats of his heart came to an end. Like a lion hovering over its prey, this crazed, naked and blood covered abomination dipped his head back and forth along the exposed upper chest to the face tearing free chunks of flesh and devouring them in large smacking mouthfuls.

"I
can’t believe this, am I actually seeing this happen right now?" stammered Dr. Martin.

"
You’re seeing the same thing I am, but just like you I am having a hard time believing it. They have to get a handle on this thing right now."

Turning back to the monitor Dr. Woods once again angrily encouraged the remaining team members in the autopsy room to take some kind of action to subdue the man. He reminded them that they were in a quarantine situation and that under no circumstances could that individual be allowed to leave that room, dead or alive they had to get him restrained.

With a second of their number now having fallen victim to a horrendous attack right before their eyes and along with Dr. Woods continued reminders of their precarious circumstances, the surviving members of the autopsy team grabbed whatever makeshift weapons they could and started converging on the crazed man. With his attention still focused on ripping free and eating chunks of meat from the body he was still straddling in the center of the room, the remaining men formed a rough circle around him and Dr. Woods saw one of them appear to be counting down, all of a sudden all of the suited men rushed forward at the same time and knocked the naked man free of his latest victim. Piling up on top of him Dr. Woods could see three people working hard to hold him down while another two struck and stabbed at any available part of his body still exposed to them. As the men watched the struggling mass of suited scientists desperately fighting to keep control of their subject they saw the entire pile of bodies rise up off the floor and then one by one start to fly free of the naked form they had only moments early seemed to be in control of. The last scientist clinging to the body managed to wrap his arm as well as his own oxygen cable tight around the man’s neck and was still hanging on for all he was worth. Enraged at not being able to free himself from this final obstacle the naked man started backpedaling as fast as he could and rammed himself and his unwelcome passenger with full force into the wall of the autopsy suite. As his body arched backwards against the wall Drs. Woods and Martin gasped at the visible injuries that had already been inflicted on him during that brief tussle on the floor, in addition to the rib cutting knife still protruding through his shoulder they could now see half the handle of a scalpel that had been thrust deep into the chest cavity directly above the heart. From the view they were seeing on their computer monitor, that single wound alone into his heart should have been more than enough to stop a man cold in his tracks, yet somehow it seemed to not faze him in the least. In addition to the wounds created by the two instruments extruding from his body they could also see a handful of other deep penetrating injuries, but in each case they observed that there was also no evident blood loss. The only blood they could spot on his body was that which had come from either of the two men he had just finished attacking.

"How the hell is he not bleeding like a stuck pig? That puncture through the chest above the heart should be shooting blood like a broken hose," Dr. Martin exclaimed.

In the brief moment that they man stood fully erect while trying to ram his back into the wall to throw off his unwanted rider, Dr. Woods had a clear look at the entire front of his naked body and he noticed something that they should have picked up on earlier, but must have missed in all the commotion and surprise from his sudden awakening from the dead. He gasped when the sudden implications of what he was seeing finally became clear to him.

"Look at his lower body, from just below his waist line down to his feet." He pointed towards the screen to highlight his observation.

Dr. Martin followed his gesture and also made the same conclusion.

"That's a lividit
y line, isn't it?" Dr. Martin asked. He was referring to a purple colored ring that was clearly visible just under the waistline of the body and a deep crimson color discoloration from that point down to his ankles. This phenomena occurred after death when the blood remaining in the body, but no longer being circulated because of the loss of blood pressure, would pool to the lowest points of the body by the natural effects of gravity. In this case they recalled that this individual had been found in the medical center waiting room in a seated position. In such a position they blood would settle to the front of the legs and just below the waist. Since the buttocks and backs of his legs would have been pressed against the seat, squeezing the capillaries and sending the settling blood forward, the darkest parts of this blood pooling would be exactly where they were observing them right now. The presence of postmortem lividity was considered in medical circles a definitive indicator of death. Seeing that indicator on this man right now, there was no longer any doubt that this man had been dead for at least a period of three to six hours and had actually reanimated and come back to life.

"That is just not possible," exclaimed Dr. Martin when Dr. Woods confirmed that was exactly what he believed the discoloration indicated.

"Possible or not, were both looking at it happening live and in color, that also explains why we aren't seeing blood loss from his wounds. There is no longer any blood in his upper body to lose."  As he was pointing this out a thought suddenly occurred to him and he reached down to turn the microphone back on. "Go for the brain, pierce his brain with a sharp object!"

The struggle had continued in the autopsy room as the naked man continued trying to slam his back against the walls and various objects to throw off the scientist still desperately holding on with a tight grip around the neck as he tried in
vain to strangle the man. Hearing Dr. Woods’s directives, he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the handle of the scalpel that was still impaled into the man's chest. It took some obvious effort to pull the blade free, but once he finally had it out he immediately attempted a strike at the man's face, but his aim was thrown off as both of them were once again slammed into the wall. Have loosened his grip around the neck to retrieve the scalpel this impact threw him free of the man's back to send him crashing to the floor in a tangled heap wrapped in cords and cables leading from a bank of controls on the wall to a desk full of medical equipment. With the burden from his back now free the man whipped around and spotted the man struggling to free himself from the snarled mess of wires, cables, cords and hoses. With surprising speed he was on top of the trapped scientist and letting loose with a flurry of punches as he worked to break through the suit and reach the tasty flesh beyond. With his back to the room he did not see another man creeping up from behind him, just as it looked like he would be able to break the seal on the trapped scientists hood, a long handled screwdriver was impaled deep into the opening of his left ear and driven straight threw the brain until it struck the inside of the skull on the opposite side of his head. The effect was instantaneous, as soon as the screwdriver pierced the brain his entire body shot into a full upright position and a concussive shiver rippled through him from head to toe as if he had been hit with a sudden charge of electricity. Without as much as another twitch of life he slumped down to the ground and lay still.