May 23, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 94.35 Hours / 3.93 Days - 2:03 AM
Eury Morrissey
Davis stopped in his tracks like I was a glaring stop sign. “Eury?” The man beside him didn’t really get the memo and took a few more stumbling steps before colliding into an overturned chair.
“Please don’t tell me that you’re with him,” I said, looking to Alaska.
Alaska shrugged. “It’s not like I wanted him around. I brought him here when things went south, and he came with us after it got worse.”
“It is your job to protect and serve, isn’t it?” Davis said, helping the man up. For the moment that the man’s hands were away from his face, the strips of skin between the deep lacerations were loose and fell apart from themselves until he held them back together.
“That ain’t the department's motto dipshit!” Alaska retorted. “Now get Chuck to the back. And Boyde, go with him. Make sure there ain’t any crazys, then I’ll need a hand locking this place down.”
Boyde nodded, leading the way with his flashlight and baton.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Davis said to me as he walked past with the groaning Chuck.
“Can’t say the same,” I muttered as they disappeared into the hallway.
“Who’s your friend?” Alaska asked, finally acknowledging Kelly, who had until then had managed to blend into the dark wall, holding his sword.
“That’s Kelly. He’s… cool.”
Cool? Cool!? What the hell is wrong with me? Is that really the best I could come up with? Good god.
“Cool, huh?” Alaska studied my face for a moment, then turned her inquisitive gaze on Kelly. “What are you supposed to be, some sort of bargain bin ninja?”
“It’s all I could find,” Kelly said, not moving a muscle.
“Uh-huh. Can you use it?” Alaska pointed at the sword, which he lowered.
“Yeah.”
“Good. ‘Cause there’s a group of ‘em coming and they are mean, like, Black Friday mean. Ain’t like those ones outside.” She said, pointing to the small pile at the doors.
“Were they faster? What did they look like? How sick?” I rattled off questions as they came to mind.
Alaska scratched her head. “They look kind of like rotten blueberries, and smell like them too.”
“So like those ones?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
But were they fast?
Oh god, could I be wrong? Were they drinking water? They didn’t seem to be aware enough for that but—
“Earth to Major Eury! Hello!” Alaska snapped her fingers in front of my face. “You there?”
“Not at a hundred percent,” Kelly said, walking up to my side. I appreciated the censor, but if anyone here could understand, it was Alaska.
“Are you sick? Did one of those fucks get you?” Alaska said, her voice heavy with worry.
“I don’t—”
“No!” Kelly interrupted. “Not sick with this thing, at least. She’s just feeling a bit weak from all the running around.”
“We don’t—” I tried to say again, but Alaska didn’t hesitate to interrupt me for a second time.
“Is there anything I can get for you? Anything I can do?” Alaska’s oddly smooth hands squished my cheeks as she held my face. “Maybe we could ask Chuck. I’d ask a doctor, but all of them around here appear to be raging assholes.”
Kelly picked up where Alaska left off. “We just need the key to the pharmacy. Did that Chuck guy work here or something?”
“Yeah, he did, and I—”
“Hey!” I interrupted them both and broke free from Alaska’s vice grip. “Forget about my cough. Let’s worry about the problem coming down the fucking street.”
A mob of at least twenty or so infected were coming at the clinic. They moved slightly faster than a slow walk and were surprisingly focused.
I felt a lump form in my throat.
“Get the door!” Alaska yelled, and Kelly jumped to action, starting to push the cabinet back in place. “What’s that cart?” Alaska pointed at our wagon.
“My LOX and our supplies.”
“Get that out of here as fast as you can.”
“What? Why?” I asked, then I saw Alaska load her shotgun from the pouch of shells at her hip. “Oh okay.”
“You can help Davis with Chuck. I need Boyde out here. Now.”
“What? Why me?”
“Because it’ll be—”
“Because it’ll be dangerous? For fuck’s sake, Lask. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?” I said, showing off my fire poker.
“You’re the closest thing to someone with a brain here, and Chuck’s gonna bite it if you don’t help.” She finished slipping in the last shell. “I’ve got this. You get that. And besides,” Then, with a definitive motion, she racked the slide. “My stick is bigger than yours”
I didn’t like it and I liked the idea of working with Davis even less, but she did have a point.
“Use this instead.” I offered my fire poker, “It’s how you use it. At least this way, you won’t draw any more of them.”
Alaska shook her head. “I can’t take your only weapon.”
“I’ve got this,” I said, unholstering the handgun. “Don’t worry about me.”
Seeing the pistol, Alaska smiled.
Like a banshee’s wail, a scream drowned out all of the grunts and forlorn howls approaching the clinic. There was something terribly familiar to me about that sound. A clear ringing bell, vibrato and all. It sounded no different than the night we crossed the bridge.
Kelly looked first at me, then at Alaska, who’s face told me that the scream was familiar to her as well.
“Boyde. Now.” Alaska grunted out. Although she was gripping my fire poker tightly, I couldn’t help but notice that her shotgun was still close at hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said before I disappeared into the dark hallway with the cart. I looked back at Kelly and our eyes met one more time. “Be safe, not stupid. Remember this isn’t a suicide pact!”
Kelly laughed nervously but nodded anyway. “Same goes for you.”
I looked away as the first of the mob arrived at the door. The sound of the fighting, and screaming, wasn’t enough to drown out another one of the banshee’s wail.
Deeper into the clinic, the sound of the fighting faded, replaced by moans of agony and pain at the end of the hallway. Blood and sick and broken doors lined all the way down I went. I could only imagine the chaos that happened on the first night. Assuming what Kelly said was true, I have no clue how Alaska and Davis even got out of here. I ignored the crunch under the cart's wheels as I crossed a particularly dark patch on the ground.
I reached the surgery room in time to see Boyde rip open the already ransacked cupboards. In the center of the room, half illuminated by the flashlight, I could see Davis fighting to hold down a flailing Chuck.
“Chuck! I know it hurts man but just pull it together. We’ll get you something quick!” Davis said, trying his best to shout over Chuck’s groans of pain. “Boyde!”
“What the fuck am I even looking for? There’s nothing even here!” Boyde slammed one of the cupboard doors in frustration.
“Bandages, gauze, I dunno. Hydrogen peroxide?” Davis continued wrestling with Chuck on the operating table as I approached.
The flashlight, knocked over in the struggle, did little to illuminate Chuck, but even then, I could tell he wasn’t doing well. I picked the light up from the floor and shone it directly on him so that I could survey the damage. Or evisceration, in this case. I highly doubted some gauze and peroxide was going to help. The large gashes, that were obvious even in the dim moonlight in the waiting room, were only the largest of a multitude of cuts and gashes that separated the skin across his face. Deputy Boyde ran past us, opening a side door near where I left the cart. It couldn’t have been anything but a fairly large supply closet.
“OOooooh! Fuck!” To my relief, Chuck actually spoke like a person, and not like one of them.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I looked down on Chuck’s diced face and said the only thing that came to mind. “Oh god.”
I doubt he’s with us anymore.
“Here,” Boyde said, dropping a mismatched pile of loose bandaids alongside gauze and a larger bandage or two.
“What the hell is this?” Davis said, throwing the bandaids off of the table.
“It’s what was there! If you want to fuckin—”
“Hey!” I shouted. “You, Boyde? Lask needs your help.” Then, begrudgingly, I turned to Davis. “Hey, I’m gonna need a hand here, get him ready. We’ve got to wrap this all.”
For the second time since I’ve met him, Boyde snapped to attention and ran off towards the waiting room. Closer to a dog, rather than a deputy. A wild dog maybe.
“Thanks, that guy’s such an—”
“Shut it. We’ve got work to do.” Not only was Chuck bleeding profusely, but I also had no inclination to talk to Davis at that moment. The cauldron of emotions that were slowly spinning in my heart, were poisoned by whatever this sickness was. Even knowing that Alaska was alright wasn’t enough. There was a dour, anger that was fogging everything else. The only thing that made it better was focusing. And Chuck just happened to need a lot of that.
Davis had already gotten most of the blood wiped off his face, using a rag from who-knows-where but it wouldn’t matter for long. I opened the bottle of peroxide and a second before getting started, I realized that my patient was still gasping at the pain like a fish.
“Chuck! Close your mouth and eyes. This is gonna burn like hell.”
“Should we give him something to bite down on, like a wallet or something?” Davis asked.
I hesitated for a second and looked at him. The idea was dumb enough to give me pause. “Do you have a wallet?”
“I think I lost it.”
“Then don’t offer.”
Chuck managed to close his eyes and mouth, so I dumped the bottle of peroxide over the entirety of his face. The clear liquid first washed a majority of the blood from his face, then a pink foam began to violently bubble from the largest gashes down to the smallest scrapes.
So, I’ve been through some medical pain in my life, multiple surgeries, injuries during my years of martial arts training, enough that I had a particularly acute empathy for injuries. But the kind of pain Chuck was going through the moment that pink foam turned red, could only be described as indescribable. Even with Davis holding him down, the small man shot up in his seat, shaking off Davis’ full body weight. While Davis managed to keep one of his hands down, the other—my responsibility—made it to his face. Within the second it took for me to wretch his hand back on the operating table, Chuck managed to dig his grimy fingers into his wounds. Not only did it make things worse, it spread the pain to his sliced open fingertips.
“Jesus, Chuck! What the hell were you thinking!” Davis shouted at the man, but his words barely seemed to register.
“We need to bandage him before he does anything else stupid,” I said, ripping open as many packages of gauze as I could. I got to work placing them all over Chuck’s hatchwork face. Each of the crisp white squares turned blood red the moment it touched his skin. “This isn’t going to be enough. The pharmacy would have what we’re looking for, but the damn door is locked.”
Suddenly, Davis reached into Chuck’s deep pockets of his magenta scrubs and retrieved a ring thick with keys. But, the moment he took his hand off him, Chuck’s hand returned to his face, ripping at the gauze.
“Fuck! Okay, bandage this shit up first, get him settled and—” In mid-sentence, my knees buckled a little from under me. Whether it was the sight of the blood, the intensity of everything happening all at once, or just plain old hypoxia, my strength was just enough to keep me standing.
“Eury are—Chuck! Stop!—Eury, are you okay?” Davis struggled to divide his attention between the half gauzed Chuck and me.
“I think… I think he might be infected, Davis.”
“What? No. There’s no way, he’s been fine, he’s just bleeding.”
“Euuuuahhhhhowww! It burns! My fucking face!” Chuck said, writhing again.
“Hold him down,” I said, fighting against the world spinning around me while I reorganized the gauze, replacing the ones that I could, then tightly bandaging them all down.
“That should be good for now,” Davis said, although Chuck still kept trying to claw his face.
“I’ll head to the pharmacy, grab some more bandages. What should I get him for the pain?” I said, rechecking the handgun at my waist.
“Opioids, probably. Morphine, oxycodone, oxycontin, maybe lidocaine if you can find it? Anything to numb his face. I might be wrong, but I doubt Chuck’ll give you a straight answer.”
“I’ll be back.” I really wished that I didn’t have to.
I grabbed the key and Kelly’s flashlight from the cart before leaving for the pharmacy.
The waiting room was under siege. The door’s windows were blocked by chairs stuffed into the frames. This left enough room for Kelly and Alaska to slash and poke through the gaps. While beneath them, Deputy Boyde pressed against the filing cabinet, holding the doors shut.
I flicked through the keys until I found the one labelled “Pharm”. I moved fast once I got into the pharmacy. The fighting looked exhausting, and there was no way they could keep it up. And it was only a matter of time before someone got hurt.
Using the flashlight, I searched the pharmacy’s storeroom for any of the drugs Davis had mentioned. The bandages and gauze were easiest to find. Several severe injury first-aid kits were near the front. I grabbed one of them, then moved on to the medicine. Thankfully, the drugs were alphabetical order, so if there wasn’t any morphine, the oxycodone would be close. And lidocaine wasn’t much further. At the “M” section, I worked my way down the shelf. Finding nothing, I prepared to work my way up the “O” section, but, as I switched shelves, an unsorted and packed box sitting beneath the “N” shelf caught my eye. Amongst the perfectly organized storeroom, the small, damaged cardboard box felt kind of out of place. Curious, I pulled the box out. It contained several hundred tablets of something called Nitazoxanide—an anti-parasitic. And from the invoice, it arrived at the clinic only a day before I got to town. The packaging was ripped open and it looked like a bottle was missing.
My curiosity was interrupted by another one of the Banshee’s screams reminding me of my time limit and of my situation.
Back to my search, I found some oxycontin, and then found a small bottle of lidocaine. Trying to balance my haul in my hands, I rushed back out to the hallway. Then, I heard the shotgun get racked.
“Boyde, no!” Alaska tried to stop the deputy, but she was too late. An infected man had managed to break one of the thick glass windows of the waiting room. And just as he appeared, his head was disintegrated by the shotgun blast.
BOOM!
My ears rang worse than after a long night at O’Brian’s.
Then, if the situation couldn’t get any worse, the Banshee’s wail raised in both pitch and fervence. It was getting closer.
“Kelly, Lask, we’re getting the hell out of here!” I yelled from the hallway.
Kelly, who unlike Alaska, was not currently attacking an infected, turned from his kill station and hurried to me.
“Did you get something for yourself?” Kelly whispered just loud enough over the tinnitus.
“No!” I hissed. “I’m fine. Just get back over there, and get ready. I’ll be bringing Davis and Chuck up here soon enough.”
Alaska looked back at us for a second, but before she could say anything, another one of them showed up and occupied her. Boyde, too engrossed in the fight, barely noticed Kelly away from his post.
“Don’t just stand there. Go!.” I said, heading back towards the surgery room.
Kelly wanted to say more, but he was clearly needed at the barricade, so he let the matter drop for now.
As I continued on towards the surgery room, it sounded like Davis was still having trouble with Chuck. The oxycontin and lidocaine would hopefully calm him down.
Looking back at the siege in the waiting room, a single thought came to mind. How the hell are we supposed to get out of here? That thought was immediately followed by another.
In body bags, or shambling out, by my reckoning.
Shut the fuck up! Shut up! It’ll be fine, we’ll figure—
My thought was cut short when I returned to the surgery room. Instead of struggling on the table where I left them, Davis was now nowhere to be found, and the haphazardly bandaged Chuck was banging on the door to the supply room.
In my shock, I accidentally dropped the bottle of lidocaine.
Chuck turned and charged at me.
I dove out of the way, letting him slam into the wall. Scrambling to my feet, I reached for the handgun, but in my haste to stand, the world around me began to whirl violently.
Fucking body!
Chuck had already recovered from his collision, and aimed himself at me again. Without even thinking—or truly aiming—I squeezed the handgun’s trigger.
BOOM!
The shot left my ears ringing. Though, unlike the shotgun, it didn’t put Chuck down. In fact, I don’t even think it hit him. Again, I had to leap out of the way to avoid his outstretched arms. There was no wall for Chuck to run into so he recovered faster than I could stand. I stumbled to get my footing, but I managed despite the spinning floor.
Chuck agonized moan increased to a fever pitch as he charged. Without thinking, I stepped behind the cart, hoping that like before, Chuck would barrel head-on where I was standing, as he had before. And he did. Directly towards the cart. Davis took a step out of the storage room right when I realized my mistake.
At the same time, Kelly jogged into the surgery room. There was no time. No time at all.
“Run!” I screamed at Kelly. As Chuck collided with the cart, I dove into Davis, tackling him back into the storage room.
From behind the storage door, I heard the cart clatter to the loud on the ground like a church bell dropped. I covered my ears, hoping the door would hold against the following explosions. Except, as the seconds passed, I was still laying on top of Davis, and there was no explosion. Not sound at all.
I looked up to see Davis’ perplexed face staring down at me. I took my hands away from ears but heard nothing. No explosion. No Chuck banging against the door. Then, I heard the door behind me swing open, and Davis’ face was illuminated by a flashlight.
“You okay?” Kelly’s voice was quiet and curt.
Davis awkwardly looked at me still on top of him. “I’m good.” He said.
I got to my feet, which was easier said than done since neither of us wanted to lay a hand on each other. By the time that I was up, Kelly had already managed to get the cart righted.
“Is the tank okay?” Kelly asked, shining the flashlight at it.
I nodded.
While I didn’t see any damage, I couldn’t help but notice Chuck’s blood splattered over the tank.
As I ran my hands over the metal, I left a streak of dark red blood. Panic set in as I began searching myself for the source. The amount of blood that had been on my hand couldn’t just be from a small cut.
“There’s a door over here. Mr. Davis, you grab the cart, I’ll get the others.” He said as he stepped into the hallway. “I’ll get the others and we’ll meet you back there.”
“Uh, okay,” Davis said as he tried to move the cart. but instead of rolling along with him as it usually did, it took two hard tugs before he got it rolling.
Davis and I followed Kelly out of the surgery room down to a small hallway with an exit sign above it. I guess Kelly had been here enough to know about the tucked-away escape route.
I shone the flashlight at my bloodied hand. It was red, bright and fresh, not dark like Chuck’s.
Davis leaned his head back and sighed. He must’ve been exhausted, god knows how long they were running for. I felt the same, but I had no time to rest. I eyed Davis up and down, searching for anything that was out of the ordinary, or anything that—
That was when I saw it. It blended in well with the brown leather of his belt, but it was blood. Maybe Chuck scratched him while they were wrestling on the operating table.
Or maybe, Davis just didn’t tell anyone.
If he was still acting normal, I couldn’t do anything about it.
But should that really stop you?
I clicked off the flashlight. He didn’t need to see me, and I didn’t want to see him. Time crept by, as I watched his silhouette shift back and forth.
Do it. Now’s your chance.
The thought came like a wave of nausea. My lungs burned like I needed to cough, but I held it in harder than I held the pistol in my hand.
It would be easier if I couldn’t see his face. So fucking easy.
Don’t you—
“Thanks for that back there,” Davis said, breaking the spell I was under. “If you weren’t here, god knows what would have happened.” And he sounded so sincere too. He didn’t know how lucky he was because I decided not to do it.
Still, as the rest of the group arrived, I leaned towards Davis’ silhouette and whispered, “we need to talk.”
May 23, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 93.50 Hours / 3.90 Days - 3:10 AM