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Hosptial - Chapter One
By Guilty Spark
It was a slow morning at Ridgeton General and an even slower evening. As 8pm rolled around on the clocks, the hospital workers quietly went about their work. “Paging Doctor Junkee. You’re needed on level four.” The voice echoed down the halls. Dr. JP Junkee was already on the his way to the fourth floor. As he rushed out of the elevator, and down the narrow hallway, he wondered what sort of situation awaited him. The nurses station was almost vacant except for the lone nurse on duty up here, JP3girl, who looked to be near asleep. It was a very slow day today.
“Doctor Junkee,” JP3girl piped up as she saw him approach, “Mr. Randle says he needs you and he won’t talk to anyone but you. He claims it’s an emergency.” Junkee rolled his eyes. One of his patients was an older gentleman by the name of Martin Randle, and he tended to be a little bit on the crotchety side. Junkee strolled on into Martin’s room and smiled at the older fellow. “Hello Mr. Randle, what seems to be the problem?”
“The Jello,” Martin bellowed at him, “it isn’t jiggly enough. They brought me the strawberry Jello. I hate strawberry Jello. I hate strawberries! I want plum. Bring me some plum Jello.”
“Mr. Randle,” Junkee took a deep breath, “I’ve told you before, I don’t think they even make plum Jello, and if they do, we don’t carry it at this hospital. We have strawberry, grape, and watermelon on Tuesdays.”
“Plum! Bring me some plum Jello, you educated imbecile!”
“Let me see what I can do for you Mr. Randle.” As Junkee made his way down the hall away from Martin’s room, he heard “Make sure it’s got some jiggly to it, too!” echo out of the room behind him. As Junkee passed by the nurses station, he spared JP3girl a look, “How much morphine are we giving him?”
“None, why?”
“Well, start off giving him enough to keep him off my back, ok?”
ELSEWHERE
“I will tell you now, that Chuck Norris could kick Seagal’s ass anyday.” Outside in the courtyard of the hospital, security guard Guilty Spark was deep in debate with his co-worker, Mr. Camel. Camel took a long drag off of his cigarette, and tossed the butt of it into the nearby bushes. Camel smiled, “So what’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“What’s it like to be so wrong all the time?”
“Shut it,” Guilty got up and stomped out the burning embers of Camel’s cig, “You’ve got an ashtray right there man, you’ve got to toss it over into the bushes?”
“What? It’s bio-degradable. I think it is anyways.” As Camel pondered the finer points of cigarettes, a helicopter flew by overheard. Then two more followed it. Then another one. The four helicopters circled the building. Guilty looked up at the choppers as a resident surgeon, Parasaur, joined them. Suddenly one of the helicopters flew up right over the center of the hospital: the courtyard. All four helicopters lit up high-powered spotlights, and shone them upon the hospital. A loud voice came out of a megaphone in the sky, “Please evacuate the hospital immediately. All patients and employees up to the roof. You have five minutes.”
Doctor Sandra Rex had been sitting in her office, looking over the records of a rehabilitation patient by the name of Cameron. After being discharged from the marines, he went on a drinking binge, and landed himself here. That’s what Sandra Rex had been doing, but now she was racing from room to room, assisting orderlies and nurses get patients up to the roof. She had no idea why the building was being evacuated, and didn’t have the time to ask. Almost everyone was up on the roof now, and the Chinooks were taking turns picking people up. Sandra turned to see Cameron, the patient who’s sheets she had been reviewing, helping some of the slower patients up onto the helicopters.
JP3fan and Junkee were racing across the roof towards the helicopter pushing a stretcher with the patient Mad Rex on it. One of the wheels caught a crack in the roof just right, and jammed. Junkee was still pushing full force and the stretcher flipped over onto it’s side. Junkee and JP3fan tried to lift the screaming Mad Rex back up, but he was in too much pain to lift so quickly. This was going to take time.
“One minute.” The crew chief on the last Chinook called out to Junkee. Junkee looked up, wild eyed, at Sandra who was closer to the helicopter. He held up four fingers, and she instantly understood. Sandra turned back to the crew chief, “We still have people down on the fourth floor. If we could get a few more minutes or something.”
The man looked her coldly in the eyes, “No. I’m sorry, but we don’t even have anymore room. You’ve got thirty seconds lady, to get you and those people over there onto this helicopter.” Sandra looked at the man in disbelief. How could anyone be so uncaring? Junkee and JP3fan were still struggling to get Mad Rex, who by now had passed out from the pain, to the helicopter. He was too heavy for their small frames to carry and the wheel on the stretcher was trashed.
Cameron, who was standing behind the crew chief looked over at the two hospital workers struggling to drag the heavy-set man, and Dr. Rex racing to help them, and he knew what he had to do. He shoved past the crew chief and jumped down from the helicopter, his bare feet making a dull smack on the ground. His gown blowing in the wind created by the rotors of the Chinook. Cameron ran over, and with fairly little effort, the built man lifted Mad Rex up onto his shoulder, and started back towards the helicopter.
The crew chief looked down at his watch, and back at the crowd on the roof as Parasaur, Camel, and Guilty raced out from the stairwell waving their arms. Sandra and the chief made eye contact as the helicopter started it’s lift towards the heavens. As the helicopters all flew out of sight, Sandra realized how quiet it really was tonight. Unnaturally quiet.
Doctor SnakeMark hurried past the elevators, and down the hall constantly looking over his shoulders. This was all his fault. He rushed past a bank of payphones, and around a corner. He needed something to help get his mind off of things, maybe a soda pop or a cup of coffee or some chips. Just anything to distract himself from these thoughts. Around the corner and into the cafeteria. But the doors to the cafeteria were blocked by something. Doctor JP Junkee looked up at the man who had just ran into him.
“SnakeMark! You’re still here? I thought you would have been on the helicopters.”
“No,” SnakeMark replied, “I didn’t get up there in time.”
“Well, unfortunately, neither did I. In fact, quite a few of us didn’t. That security guard Camel and I went around room to room, and gathered up whatever patients didn’t get up to the roof. We gathered everyone up in the cafeteria so we can make a go at figuring this out, and getting out of here. All the doors to the outside of the hospital are locked down, and nobody’s keycard seems to be working properly. I was just about to take a look down here in the basement to see if there was anyone around. You alright?”
SnakeMark had tried to hide it long enough, but hearing about the people who didn’t get out, who weren’t going to get out, broke his heart to the bursting point, “It’s my fault Junkee. It’s all my fault. Follow me.” SnakeMark led Junkee down and around the maze like hallways of the hospitals basement to the lab. There he showed Junkee what he had been working on.
“Zodiac Pharmaceuticals hired me,” SnakeMark began, “But they’re just a cover for the Zodiac Project. It’s a secret government organization that’s working on experimental ways to make a super-soldier. They wanted me to find a better way to preserve tissue. Human flesh Junkee. They wanted a way to keep it alive. They wanted to make a soldier that’s harder to kill.” Junkee watched his old friend explain all of this and began to understand where it was going.
“Snake,” Junkee tried to sound as calm as he could, “What happened?” SnakeMark beckoned him over to the window that viewed into the morgue of the hospital. Dead bodies, or at least what had been dead bodies, roamed aimlessly in there. They were looking for a way out. “Junkee,” Snake started, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know the vent was jammed. I thought I had this place sealed off.”
“What does it do to living flesh? What does it do to those who are still alive?”
“Nothing that I can tell. I’ve been exposed to it, in fact, everyone in the hospital has now. The thing is, Zodiac has locked down this hospital. Quarantined it, and marked everything in it for extermination. Including us. They know about the zombies, because I sounded the silent alarm to them.”
“We’re all going to die,” Junkee’s eyes went moist, “All of us. They’re going to blow this place up.” Junkee’s words struck something within SnakeMark, and he remembered something, “No, no they won’t. They told me when I started this that even if it failed it would be of some use to them. They would want the information I had recorded so they could see what kind of progress I had made. They can’t blow this place up, because they still want that information, right? So they’ll be sending someone in to get it, right? So when they send that person in, that will show us what way they left open, and we can all get out!”
Junkee realized how crazy and how brilliant this idea was all at once, “We have to tell the others.”
A lone helicopter landed almost soundlessly on the roof of the hospital. It’s shape was foreign with sharp lines and corners. Out of it stepped a tall, thin man wearing a black suit, a white button-down shirt, and a black tie with sunglasses despite the fact that it was night. Behind him, he dragged out a huge case which made thud that echoed in the night air. As the helicopter pulled up and away, he lifted a cellular phone up to his ear.
“I’m here.”
8/30/2006 1:48:53 PM
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