Vernon was making Heggy nervous. It was something of a specialty of his, and had been, ever since they were kids.
“Vern,” she said to him, “at the risk of bein’ rude, you really shouldn’t be here.”
“Sis, I kind of have to be.”
“Why?” she asked. “This sort of drudgery is high above your pay grade, Vernon.”
The two Marteneiss were working on clean-up duty. At the moment, they were lifting a corpse off the ground.
“Watch your step,” Vernon said, as they carried the body across the hallway and dumped it in the wheeled clothes-hamper—their third. The hamper was four walls of fabric in a wood and plastic frame, and it looked as old as it smelled.
“As for your question,” General Marteneiss said, “I’m here because I have to show you guys that my men and I are no different from you.”
“Yeah, well, how many of your guys have gone to medical school, or a fuckin’ nursing’ program?” Heggy asked.
Vernon rolled his bloodshot eyes. “No, Heggy, I mean that we’re no different from you in the sense that we’re all in this together.”
“Shit. We must really be deep in it if you’ve resorted to platitudes like that.” She tried to smirk, but was overwhelmed by a coughing fit. Even though Vernon was still in his black, military-grade hazmat suit—seemingly safe from the Green Death—Heggy still felt the need to turn away as she bent over and coughed.
Angel, her chest hurt.
Heggy figured she was getting feverish. All things considered, it spoke to how frickin’ effective masks and PPE were at spreading airborne contagions that even a nightmarish plague of fuckin’ supernatural or outright divine origin had had some trouble overcoming them. Had this been an earthly disease, good public health measures and sensible decision-making might have stopped the plague in its tracks.
In other words, it would have still been a beasteaten shit-show.
Dr. Marteneiss cleared her throat as she went behind the hamper and pushed it forward down the hall.
The mess was never-ending.
“Vern,” she said, “I hope you realize the only reason folks aren’t burnin’ you at the stake is because they’re just too sick to do it?”
“The spores would also explode,” Vernon said.
Speakin’ of explosions… Heggy thought.
“Vern?” she said.
“Yeah?”
She stared her brother in the eyes, to let him know she meant business.
“What is it?” he asked.
“What about the nukes?” she asked.
Vernon’s expression turned grave. His lips quivered as they vacillated between a smile and a sob. The next words out of his mouth were soft and delicate. “The answer is that there is no answer,” he said, “and there might never be one.”
“What?” Heggy said.
“Central Command hasn’t been responding to our comms,” Vernon said. “Sure, there’s always a chance a voice might call out from the wilderness, right now, we’re operating under the assumption that everyone at Central Command is dead, or worse.”
Heggy stopped in her tracks. The wheels of the corpse-filled clothes-hamper squeaked as they ground to a halt on the vinyl floor.
“What in the Angel’s name could be worse?”
“Some psychopath mounted a coup, and succeeded,” Vernon said.
Heggy quietly groaned. “Why are people so fuckin’ stupid?” she asked.
He sighed. “There’s a chance the orders to nuke Elpeck have already gone through.”
“If that happens, is there anythin’ we can do?” Heggy asked.
“Yeah,” Vernon answered, “pray that they didn’t put a computer in charge of the delivery.”
“Fuck,” Heggy said, with quiet finality.
“I can either be here and be useful, or I can dwell on the Sword that may or may not be hangin’ over our heads,” Vernon said.
“Alright, alright,” Dr. Marteneiss said, “I get it,” and then the two of them returned to their work, gathering a few more bodies, until the hamper was nearly full.
Stepping away from it, Heggy raised her voice and called out. “Any other recent deaths?” she asked.
But there was no response, aside from ambient sobbing and moans.
Heggy had come to terms with the fact that her job as a doctor was finished, not just because her body was hosting a developing Type One NFP-20 infection, but because doctors weren’t really needed anymore. That bein’ said, it was certainly one hell of a time to be a mortician.
Ward E’s medium-sized lobby and reception area looked like Crownsleep International Airport at the height of the winter blizzard season. The place was a human dump. There were as many people sprawled on the floor or up against the walls as there were in the benches and the seats. The reception counters at the front of the room were all unmanned, on a count of their receptionists having died. A couple had been taken away, but a few had to be left in place, because the fungus in their bodies had started to grow out along on the counter and the wall, and it was too difficult to pull it or them away, and everyone was just too damn scared to try. Finally, there was Betty, who was now in the garage with the other transformees.
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Lifting the bodies into the hamper was hell, especially if they weren’t quite dead yet. You also had to check beneath the corpses, in case they’d piled on top of one another.
There were just so many bodies. Heggy had never seen anything like it, not even in her worst PTSD-induced nightmares.
Nearly everyone on the staff who wasn’t either dead or wyrmy was now on corpse duty, helping to dump the dead onto one of the rapidly growing piles out in Garden Court.
“Dr. Jordan?” Heggy said, calling out one of her colleagues’ names. “Has anyone seen Mortimer?”
“Did he have a tie?” a nurse asked.
“I don’t fuckin’ remember,” Heggy said.
The nurse pointed. “There’s a pile of bodies with ties over in that corner. Maybe he’s there.”
“Wonderful,” Heggy muttered.
If sarcasm could kill…
A nurse came in with a new hamper, rolling it in through the lobby’s double doors.
“Go on, Heggy,” Vernon said, “you can take the bodies out. You could use the fresh air.” He gave her a wistful stare. “I just don’t want you to work yourself to death,” he added.
Heggy didn’t know if it was supposed to be a joke, but whether it was or it wasn’t, she really wished Vernon hadn’t made it, because it made her laugh, and that laughter quickly sputtered out of control into a coughing fit that ripped what little breath she could catch right out of her lungs.
Dr. Marteneiss let out a hoarse sigh. “You and your damn jokes,” she muttered.
Trying to clear her throat as best as she could, Heggy got behind the filled hamper and wheeled it out of the lobby.
To expedite corpse-removal, the maze of cordons and plastic barriers that had been set up around the entrances to WeElMed’s various wards had been moved out of the way, leaving the path out of Ward E unobstructed as Heggy rolled the hamper around the corner and onto the broad, interward hallway. The interward hallway was a shaft through the hospital’s Central Wing that opened up at the back of the Hall of Echoes with an almost anatomical directness. A strip of glass along the wall gave Heggy a view inside Ward E’s reception lobby.
While her eyes had been lingering on the far end of the glass strip, Heggy noticed a mountain of a man—bald peak and all—sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. It was a bit difficult to make out the details, what with all the furniture, corpses, and corpses-in-training that were in the way. Maybe that was what made her stop for a moment and focus, just to see what was there to be seen.
And see, she did. It took a few seconds for Heggy to process what she saw, and once she had, she came to a standstill, except for her heart, which was pounding in her chest like dancers around a bonfire.
The mountain of a man slumped against the wall and the glass was worse than dead. A reticulated blister rose from his collar up to his neck like the head of a giant slug. Swollen growths in the shape of upside-down raindrops snaked out through a chasm in his skull. Fungal filaments grew out from the body and pressed up against the glass, making Heggy think she was looking at an overgrown aquarium. More of the upside-down raindrop structures rose from the growths, ripe, plump, and ready to pop.
Adrenaline flooded Heggy’s veins. Her combat training kicked. She looked left and right, searching for the nearest exits.
The Hall of Echoes was too far, as were the doors to Ward E, and the doors were closed, so yelling wouldn’t help.
Heggy reached into her PPE pocket, to pull out her console, only to realize it wasn’t there. A moment later, she remembered, and then cursed.
“Fuck.”
She’d left it on the reception desk before joining Vernon in the lobby.
Ward D, she thought.
The entrance was right at her left. She could go in, commandeer a PA, and notify everyone about the corpse. And maybe, just maybe, they could get it out before something awful happened.
Abandoning the hamper, Heggy ran into D Ward. Right as she burst through the double doors into D Ward’s lobby, however, she heard a muffled scream.
Heggy turned around just in time to see that one of the upside-down raindrops had popped, letting loose a green ghost. Several pops followed in quick succession as the other fruiting bodies ruptured, spewing out their sporey loads. Gobs of blood and other pigments splattered the glass, which immediately began to bubble and fizz as the corrosion got to work.
So many things happened in that moment.
The skeleton crew on duty in Ward D’s lobby raced toward Heggy, only to stop cold and look up.
Then, stepping back, Heggy joined them.
The big, wall-mounted consoles in D Ward’s lobby displayed footage from the lobbies of the other nearby Wards.
Everyone was looking at the one for Ward E.
More than one set of hands made the Bond-sign.
Through the camera, Heggy saw people running to the doors. There were stampedes in every direction. Ear-splitting warning sirens blared as metal plates rose up from the sills above and below the lobby’s doorways, inside and out, creating a double-layered seal. One such seal blocked off the double doors Heggy had just walked through.
In the chaos, someone must have triggered the emergency quarantine lockdown protocol.
People near Heggy gasped at the sight of nurses, doctors, and desperate infected batting hands and fists on the doors as the barriers rose to entomb them. The pounding was incessant and frantic.
Not wasting a moment, Heggy ran past D Ward’s reception desk, taking the long way to the Hall of Echoes. Passing through the Hall, she took the grand staircase up to the second floor and then trekked back toward Ward E, pressing elevator button after elevator button until she finally found one that the quarantine protocol hadn’t locked out of Ward E.
She rode it down, and then made her way to the main reception desk, at the back end of the lobby.
You’d think being at death’s doorstep would be enough to stifle any displays of fear or grief, but you’d be wrong. The onlookers were heartbroken and horrified. Heggy spent a minute standing there, utterly helpless, darkly spellbound by the bangs of fists on metal.
The plangent noises slowly petered out, only for a fresh wave of muffled screams to break out inside the lobby wall.
The alarm started up again, this time to signal that the metal quarantine barriers had begun to recede.
Break the Tablets… Heggy thought.
“Someone’s flicked the switch from the inside!” someone yelled.
And everything happened all over again.
Chaos turned to violence as half of those gathered on Heggy’s side rushed to the doorway, ready to throw open the doors as soon as they could. The double doors’ reinforced glass window panes jostled in place from the force of all the people trying to break free.
“No! What are you doing?” a soldier yelled. “Stop!”
As the barriers opened, Heggy beheld a vision of Hell. Anguish was as thick as the green haze of spores. A small wall of people gathered against the walls of their glass prison. People knelt down in prayer. Staff in PPE stood like divers on the barrens at the bottom of the sea. And, behind it all, the burst corpse’s fluids painted the surrounding, fungus-touched walls like a demon’s sigil.
From where she stood, Heggy could tell who had triggered the emergency lockdown. Vernon stood at the far end of the room, behind the desperate infected huddled by the door. His hands were still on the wall-mounted console.
A soldier stood at his side, fending off people who wanted to beat the General to a pulp.
Heggy saw her brother’s lips move. He’d been staring right at her, and though she couldn’t make out his words over the screams, she knew Vern well enough to read the expression on his face.
Without a moment’s delay, Heggy turned around and ran over to the console at the central reception desk, behind her, spinning its swivel-mount around to face her.
She scanned her chip, tapped here and there, and then pushed the big red button.
One last wave of screams belted out from the lobby as the metal quarantine barriers’ half-open jaws reversed their course and closed once more, quashing the glass doors’ violent tremors, trapping everyone inside.
“Fuck…” Heggy muttered.
She bashed her fist into the wall and yelled, tears trickling behind her PPE visor.
“Fuck!”