Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Sean looked at his friend in the bright morning light that shone into the kitchen. He was shocked at how sick his buddy looked. “Dude, are you all right? You look like shit. I mean, you really look bad,” he said, now very concerned.

  Brian Dunn stood in the middle of the kitchen, practically swaying back and forth. He looked ashen, and his skin appeared clammy. When he looked at Sean, his eyes were very bloodshot and seemed almost dull.

  “Hey…here, man,” Sean told Brian, grabbing another chair. “Sit down before you fall down.”

  He guided Brian onto the chair and glanced up to see Mike and Jack standing in the doorway, looking worried. They came in as Sean got down on one knee in front of the now-seated big man.

  “Do you want some water? I think it may help,” Sean said. Turning to Jack, he added, “Hey, give Brian a glass of water. Okay?”

  Jack ran to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Poland Spring water and, twisting off the cap, hurriedly brought it back and handed it to Brian. After taking the bottle with a shaky hand, Brian slowly brought it to his mouth and took a sip.

  “I dunno53, guys,” groaned Brian. “I really feel like crap.”

  “What do you think it is?” asked Sean. “What symptoms are you feeling?”

  “I have this splitting headache.” Brian closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “It starts from the back of my neck and runs over the top of my head to behind my eyes. It feels like my head is about to explode. All my joints and muscles feel sore and kind of stiff. Even my hands feel achy.” Brian looked down and picked his hand up from his lap, then curled and uncurled his fingers like claws. He let his breath out in a long exhalation. “Man, this sucks!” He took another sip of water.

  “What do you need us to do?” asked Jack.

  Brian gave a disgusted shrug. He sat there for a minute or two, just staring into his lap. In the quiet of the moment, they heard the reporter on television talking about a new attack at New York-Presbyterian University Hospital and something else up in Boston.

  Sean stood and looked at Mike. Mike met his gaze and raised his eyebrows; both of them had the same unspoken thought. They looked at Jack, but he kept alternating his gaze back and forth between the television, which he could just see around the doorway to the living room, and Brian, who was sitting dejectedly in the chair, softly groaning.

  Mike took a step closer to Brian, rested a hand on his shoulder, and bent down. “Brian? I think this might have something to do with what’s on the news. They said anyone who’s had the Pandora virus is getting sick again. I think we should take you back to the hospital. I know you don’t want to go there again, but this is real serious, bro.”

  “Yeah, what do you say, Brian?” asked Sean.

  Brian looked up at them then looked down again, rubbing his hand through his uncombed blond hair.

  “All right,” he said simply.

  “Great!” said Sean, brightening up slightly. “We’ll all come with you.”

  “I’ll get my Jeep,” Jack offered. “You guys get him ready to roll.” He quickly walked to the hall table near the front door and grabbed his keys.

  Sean and Mike helped Brian up to a standing position and gently guided him to the front door, which was now open, as Jack had run out to get his Cherokee started. Now that they had him moving, Brian looked even paler than he had before. Yet he gave them a feeble smile and said gamely, “I hope that cute nurse is still there.”

  He was referring to a very nice, very petite blond nurse at Saint Mary’s Hospital who had been his night nurse when he initially had come down with the Pandora virus. Brian had been between girlfriends at the time and had asked Mike to have his girlfriend, Susan Tolliver, maybe fix them up on a date. Susan also was a nurse at Saint Mary’s but in a different department; she worked on the oncology floor. During the Pandora epidemic, the virus had run rampant throughout the ward, probably brought in by visiting relatives. Susan had lost a great many of her patients due to their depleted state from cancer. It devastated her, and she talked about transferring to another floor, maybe the cardiac unit, because she was so distraught. She was still there, though, having decided to tough it out.

  The two housemates managed to maneuver Brian down the front stairs and to the side of the driveway, where Jack was waiting, his car idling in the morning light. He stuck his head out the window and called out, “Are you guys okay?”

  Just then Brian gave out a soft cough then another that sounded almost as if he were gargling. As they stopped at the edge of the lawn, Brian bent over, his face scrunched up, and let loose a prodigious amount of bloody vomit over the new spring grass.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Sean exclaimed, backing up while still holding Brian’s arm. “That’s disgusting!”

  Shooting him a baleful glare, Mike turned and said to Brian, “Do you want to stop?”

  “N-no. I…I think I’m done.” He returned to gasping and spitting on the grass, which was now more red than green.

  Mike looked back at Sean and said, “Let’s get him in the car now.”

  They struggled over to the Jeep, opened the door, and sat Brian in the backseat. Jack turned around in the front, with one hand pushing his straight hair out of his eyes, and said sheepishly, “Hey, can you sit him near the window in case he pukes again?” The three others looked at him. He smiled, embarrassed. “The car’s still kinda new, you know.”

  Sean and Mike looked at each other and laughed. Jack just sat there looking over the console, with a pained little smile and his eyebrows raised as if in question. Everyone always thought he looked just like John Stamos, haircut and all.

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” Sean said, grinning. “We’ll keep the window open.”

  Mike slid into the other rear passenger side and put his hand on Brian’s shoulder, patting it reassuringly.

  Sean jumped into the front seat next to Jack and thumped the dash twice. “Let’s go!” he yelled.

  The ride to the hospital was thankfully uneventful. Brian sat slumped in the backseat, his head back and his eyes closed, as he breathed shallowly through his mouth. When they arrived at the emergency room, they screeched into a fortunately available parking space and quickly manhandled Brian out of the Jeep. They helped him into a wheelchair that Jack had noticed outside the entrance doors and had commandeered. Wheeling Brian through the entrance, his head swaying drunkenly to and fro with the movements of the chair, Jack turned to Mike and said, “Stay with Brian. Sean and I will go get someone to help him.”

  As Jack and Sean ran over to the nurse at the admissions window, Mike sat next to Brian, who was slumped in the wheelchair, and looked around the filled-to-capacity waiting room. Some seemed to be there with seemingly routine illnesses and injuries. He saw crying babies held in their mothers’ arms, a few people holding various limbs and wincing, and even an old Hispanic man holding a bloody towel to his head while his probable grandson, neck tattoos peeking out from his collar, glared at everyone. There were, disquietingly, a few people, sitting with concerned family members, looking discomfortingly similar to Brian. They all appeared very pale and listless. One teenage boy, sitting directly across from Mike, had in his lap a blue plastic pail, obviously brought from home and partially filled with a bloody froth that seemed to contain pieces of what almost appeared to be his insides. He stared intently at Mike with hooded, horribly bloodshot eyes and a chilling red-smeared smile on his ashen face.

  Michael quickly looked away, his skin actually getting goose bumps from that creepy look. He looked down at Brian and put an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, Brian. We’ll get a doctor here soon to look at you. Don’t worry.”

  Brian nodded his head slowly then coughed. A wad of bloody phlegm arced out of his mouth and landed with a splat at his feet. He opened his eyes and looked back up at Michael with a long red strand of thick saliva hanging from his lower lip.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said with a voice that sounded as though his lungs were filled with oatmeal. “I�
��I think…I think I’m dying.” His voice choked up on the last word.

  “No, no, no,” soothed Michael unconvincingly. “You’ll be okay. Hang in there. Just wait for the doctor to get here. He’ll get you fixed up in no time.” Mike was near tears now. Between seeing one of his best friends going down like this, listening to what was going on in the world and connecting that with Brian, and sitting in this hospital waiting room, seeing the reality of things and that creepy, gore-smeared, death’s-head version of a kid leering at him from across the aisle, he felt as though he might lose it.

  While this was happening, Sean and Jack were at the admissions window, arguing with the nurse seated there.

  “No, no,” insisted Jack. “Brian Dunn is gravely ill. Look at him sitting over there in that wheelchair. Look at him; he’s not going to last. He has to see a doctor right now. Here’s his insurance card. Look, see: he’s covered.” Jack leaned in as close as he could. “He’s had the Pandora virus before and was hospitalized here. Now he’s back and checking in like the news said he should. Please. He’s really, really sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the nurse. “We have other people with identical symptoms ahead of him. The doctors will see him, but it’ll take a little time. Please have a seat, and I promise he will be seen.” It was obvious she was overwhelmed and at the end of her patience. She looked at Jack. “Please.”

  Jack turned away, frustrated. He looked at Sean. “Shit!” he said. “They’re so swamped here that I don’t know when he’ll get seen. We’ve got to do something.”

  Mike walked over to them. Brian had been making a rattling sound deep in his throat, and it freaked him out. It was the last straw. He stood in front of Sean and, in a teary voice, said, “Sean, he’s really not good. It’s bad, real bad. I think he may die.”

  Jack looked at him askance. “What!”

  The three walked over to where Brian was now slumped forward. The long string of bloody saliva hanging from his lower lip was now connected to the leg of his jeans. Sean grabbed his shoulders and sat him back in an upright position. “Brian…Brian, stay awake, man. Stay awake.”

  Brian’s head swung back and forth like that of a bobblehead. Jack leaned in and put his hand on Brian’s chest then moved it up to his neck, where he placed two fingers on his carotid artery. “Oh, shit, he’s dead,” he said incredulously. He spun around and yelled at the nurse, who now looked very concerned. “His heart stopped! He’s not breathing. Get him some help now!”

  At that, the nurse bolted up and ran through the doorway to the emergency room. A second later the double doors flew open as the nurse and a young, harried-looking doctor raced into the waiting room. The doctor took one look at Brian then at Jack, who blurted, “I’m a doctor, I know.”

  The young intern grabbed the handles on the wheelchair, and he and the nurse rushed Brian into the emergency room proper, with Sean, Jack, and Mike trailing close behind. Right before the double doors closed, Mike turned around and looked back at the teenager, who was still sitting in the waiting room. The boy was still staring at Michael, his eyes bloody and wild, his grin spreading in a wide slash with shining teeth stained red with blood. Mike thought he never had seen anything so frightening in his entire life.

  The doors swung closed on this visage, and Mike turned to see the other four wheel Brian into a curtained cubicle. He rushed over to join them. Two other aides hurried over, and they all grabbed Brian and maneuvered his limp body onto the hospital bed. The doctor called out instructions over his shoulder as one aide ran to get the defibrillator. The doctor, starting CPR on Brian, yelled out, “Never mind the defibrillator, and get Dr. Bennett and Dr. Patel.”

  “But why not shock him?” asked Sean incredulously.

  The doctor, whose name tag read “Dr. Andrew Lantana,” glanced up with annoyance at Sean. “Because he’s either bradycardic or his heart has stopped completely. Either way it would do no good.” He spoke quickly as he pumped Brian’s now-bare chest. He said to the attending nurse, “Can we clear the area, please?”

  As the nurse started to physically guide the three friends out of the cubicle, two more doctors briskly strode up. They seemed very authoritative as they looked in at the activity. Jack glanced at their chests and saw they were the Drs. Bennett and Patel that Dr. Lantana had called for. Dr. Bennett also had “CDC” after his name.

  Dr. Patel reached over and placed his hand on the young intern’s back. “You can stop now,” he said gently.

  “He’s obviously one of them. Let’s put him over with the other two in the corner. We’ll then isolate the bodies in another area,” Dr. Bennett said brusquely.

  “One of them?” asked Sean. “One of whom?”

  Dr. Bennett and Dr. Patel looked at Sean, Mike, and Jack as if they had just appeared in a puff of smoke.

  “Please get all nonessential people out of the ER,” Dr. Patel told the nurse.

  She continued to push the three men toward the doors.

  “What do you mean ‘nonessential’?” yelled Sean. “He’s our friend!”

  At that tense moment, the three paused to look around the room. Everyone appeared frazzled and very frightened. The corner at the end of the emergency room, where Dr. Bennett from the Centers for Disease Control had pointed, was curtained off. Directly opposite it were four police officers surrounding a bed with the rails up. On the bed lay a middle-aged black man, his hands handcuffed to the rails. He had a strap around his chest, holding him to the mattress. His clothes were soaked with blood, and though restrained, he still fought and pulled at his cuffs, trying to escape his bonds. He kept bobbing his head forward like a chicken, trying to bite at the police surrounding him, his teeth snapping so hard the three friends were sure he must have broken several of them. The officers looked confused and a little afraid. The staff and patients couldn’t seem to get far enough away from him. An old man in the next bed was staring at him, shaking with fear. Mike almost had reached the closed double doors when a high-pitched scream issued from the waiting room. He took a step back, not wanting to see what had caused it.

  Sean and Jack burst through the doors with the nurse in tow. Michael moved hesitantly behind them. At this point everyone in the waiting room was screaming and crying out. Chairs crashed to the floor around them as they climbed over one another, fleeing from the chaos against the wall near the admissions station.

  The teenaged boy who had so scared Michael was kneeling on his chair and leaning over his father. Growling, he yanked his head up. A big chunk of his father’s neck was in his mouth, strings of flesh and tendon connecting them like bloody rubber bands. He rose from the chair, looking around the room, his teeth grinding the meat between them. His father was splayed out in his chair, legs straight out in front of him, heels spastically banging a death tattoo on the tiles. The boy’s gaze rested on an obese woman to his right, who seemed to be trying to climb the wall in front of her. She was looking over her shoulder at him, screaming something in a language no one else seemed to understand. The teenager’s growl grew louder. Forgetting his dying father writhing in front of him, he took a step and leaped on the panicked woman. They both went down hard, with her breaking the magazine table underneath her as he fastened his teeth on her exposed shoulder. Head shaking side to side like a dog with a chew toy, the boy pulled a piece of flesh from her meaty form.

  The nurse turned and ran back into the emergency room, as patients scrambled for the exit doors. It was at this moment that the glaring, tattooed, young Hispanic man jumped up from his seat. His eyes were bulging at the sight of the two struggling figures. He dug under his shirt, his hand reaching into the waistband of his baggy shorts, and pulled out a gun. Holding it gangster style, he screamed, “Madre de Dios! Hijo del Diablo!”

  With that he started shooting.

  Everyone ducked and ran. Shots flew everywhere as the shooter, not a good marksman to begin with, panicked and hit not only the attacking teen but also just about everything else.

  As S
ean, Mike, and Jack were trying to get back through the double doors to safety, the doors burst open from within. Three of the police officers who had been guarding the manacled man inside suddenly poured out into the room, guns raised.

  The policemen came to a halt. Pointing their weapons at the young Hispanic man, they shouted, “Drop your weapon!” He stopped shooting then lowered his arm and looked at the officers, his mouth open and eyes wide. The cannibalistic teenager took this opportunity to stand up between them. He had at least four or five bullet holes in his body but appeared unaffected. When the ghoul hissed loudly at the police, the Hispanic man screamed and raised his gun again, and the three very jittery cops started firing at the two of them.

  Through the haze of plaster dust and cordite, Sean heard someone in the emergency room yell, “Oh, fuck! He bit me!” He turned to Mike and Jack and said, “Let’s get out of here now.”

  The three ran toward the outside doors and plowed their way through. They scrambled for Jack’s Cherokee and piled in, panting. Sirens heading for the hospital already were getting louder. Sean said breathlessly, “We’d better get out of here now, or else we never will.”

  “Right,” Jack shouted, starting up the Jeep.

  He backed up and squealed out of the lot and down the ramp to the main road. Mike leaned forward from the backseat and put his hand on Sean’s arm.

  “What about Brian?” he asked, voice rising. “What are we going to do about him? We can’t just leave him there.”

  As Jack threaded the car in and out of traffic, Sean turned and said, “Look, Brian is in a hospital, where he should be. If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do for him. If he’s alive, he’s where they can help him.” He paused then said softly, “There’s nothing else we can do. There’s nothing…nothing.”

  During the ride home, the car was silent as each man sat lost in his own thoughts, until they were a block away from their house. Jack had just begun to make a right onto their street when a woman dashed across the lawn of the corner house, trampling the pretty flower bed at the edge of the property, and ran right in front of his car. Jack slammed on the brakes. Fortunately he wasn’t going fast. As the Jeep bucked to a stop, Jack and the woman locked eyes. Her mouth was hanging open, her eyes so wide she resembled one of those big-eyed paintings of kids you used to see. Without stopping she ran past the car, across the street, and down the opposite sidewalk. As they all swore to themselves and watched her disappear, Jack was sure he saw blood on the front of her apron.