Videos of burning buildings, soldiers in tanks and the dead walking the streets looked like a scene from the popular zombie movies and television shows of the last few years.
Virginia Hayes continued, “This is happening everywhere.” She showed videos of New York, London, Moscow, and other cities suffering from zombie attacks. “The Surgeon General has stated that it’s not just their bite but their blood that carries the contagion. Blood sprayed from infected zombies into the eyes is enough to infect others with Z-phage. The National Guard has orders to stop civilians from mobbing zombies. Orders are to desist or be shot on the spot. Your local stations will keep you informed on the nearest evacuation centers.”
Janelle swallowed hard. “My family lives in San Pedro in LA County.”
Dora draped an arm over her. “By the ocean. I’m sure they’ve been evacuated.”
She slowly nodded.
Dr. Grover switched off the TV. “Why don’t you both go home and call your families? You can be on standby. Dr. Shaddock and Dr. Conway called in to say
they’re available for the late shift.”
Janelle shook her head. “No, my leukemia patient is coming in.” She stared at her watch. “She’s four years old. I promised to read her a Babar
story during chemo.”
Dora turned to him. “I’m staying, too. You’ll need me to screen. Things are bound to go crazy, especially if people cross over the state lines.” Since the first cases of Z-phage, border crossing into all states had been subject to close inspection. Anyone with a bite was immediately turned away. So far here in Austin, there had only been thirty cases and panic had not set in. Texas had been the strictest to enforce the rules, resulting in fewer zombies. However, guarding the entire state border proved futile. Houston became the first Texas city to go the way of the dead. “I just need to check my messages in case my parents or Josh called.”
“He’s in Northern California, right?” asked Dr. Grover.
“Across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, but his partner, Victor, is a cop in San Francisco.”
She’d never mentioned Josh’s sexual orientation to her supervisor, Dr. Grover. Her stepbrother was gay and married to Victor. She’d mentioned that they’d adopted a now six-year-old Korean girl two years ago. He probably assumed Josh was married to a woman.
“Well, it’s good to be married to a policeman who owns guns. I think it might be a good idea for all my doctors to be armed before things get worse.”
“Spoken like a true Texan,” Dora quipped.
He scoffed. “It’ll be twelve years since I relocated from New York. But you, California girl, need to learn how to shoot.” He patted her on the shoulder and left.
Dora had always been anti-gun but now owning one seemed like not just a good idea, but a damn smart one, too.“Actually, I’m joining the NRA,” she joked.
Janelle dropped her head and looked guilty. “Sorry I ruined your birthday.”
“Nah, it’s not your fault Z-phage is spreading.”
Janelle hugged her and then held her at arm’s length. “I know, but you deserve one day with no worries.”
Dora shrugged and smiled. “I’ll escape by reading
My Viking Master
. If the end of the world is coming, I need to know if Erik and Deidre live happily ever after.” Her phone buzzed. “It’s Josh.”
Janelle smiled. “Tell him to take care of little Melanie or he’ll answer to me.” She closed the door, leaving her alone with the zombie inspired dessert spread.
Dora answered her phone. As Josh and her niece, Melanie, sang “Happy Birthday,” first in English, and then in Korean, she grinned. Leave it to him, to be the perfect parent and learn Korean so Melanie
Min could feel at home.
“Hi, Auntie Dora.”
“Mel! How are you, sweetheart?”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too, honey. How’s first grade?”
“School is closed. Daddy doesn’t have to teach. We’re going on vacation. Daddy Victor will come soon.”
“That sounds great. Let me talk to Daddy Josh. Love you.”
“Love you too, Auntie Dora.”
Josh spoke, “Hey, Dora. Didn’t I tell you not to worry about today?”
Though Josh was her stepbrother, they were still as close as biological siblings. He was nine and she was six when her widowed father married his mother. He promised she wasn’t going to die on her birthday. He even sent Dora a twenty-eighth birthday gift. A plane ticket to Hawaii, good for one year from today. All expenses paid. Purchased, of course, before the zombie pandemic. She clutched her cell phone, aching to be with him. “It’s you I’m worried about. Is Victor home?”
“Go on honey and pack, Daddy needs to talk to Auntie Dora.” He returned and lowered his voice, “No. You know him. Hero to the end. I begged him not to, but he said it was his duty as an officer of the law to protect and serve. Same old, same old. I’m worried sick. Things in San Francisco are deteriorating. Go online. You’ll see our mayor caught on camera turning zombie in his office.”
Though she’d watched tapes of transformations, it still shocked her. Dora braced her heart for the worse. “Have you heard from Mom and Pop?”
“No. Have you?” They lived in the marina. The last time they spoke, her dad said they were leaving for their cabin in Lake Tahoe. All roads had been blocked and people trapped in their cars, sitting ducks for zombie swarms. After a brief silence, he comforted, “I’m sure it’s because there’s no reception.”
“Right, that’s what I heard.” They were dead. It was illogical, but she’d sensed it for the last couple of days. “Just promise to call me at least every other day.”
“Not a problem. My solar charged cell phone is designed for the apocalypse.”
“Where are you heading?”
“Marti’s. She invited us to stay as long as we want. Her freezers have at least a six month supply of meat and a pantry of canned goods and bottled water taken from the disaster handbook.”
Josh’s eccentric friend, Marti Carson owned an endangered big-cat breeding program in Mendocino. Her home stood above the cat compounds. Visitors walked on elevated bridges to view the cats. An ideal shelter, since zombies couldn’t climb. “I have to stay, but once the borders are opened, I’ll come to California. Doctors are allowed, too.”
“As long as you don’t treat patients with Z-phage.”
“These days I’m mostly doing diagnosis.” She wanted to treat patients, but because of her unusual gift of diagnosing them with just a few symptoms, Dr. Grover insisted she do nothing but screen patients before they were seen by other medical staff.
“Good.”
They chatted about her birthday party, and how he missed teaching his third grade class, since all the school closures. After the call, she pressed the phone over her heart. At the end of this week, she would arrange to go to California with the Red Cross.
****
The emergency room turned out to be a madhouse as Dr. Grover predicted. Higher than usual heart and asthma attacks, not surprising with the stress from the fear of zombie attack. Dora entered room A, and switched on the computer. She stared at the screen. Good, no new patients. So far. Three of the patients in the waiting room raised her guard. Flu-like symptoms. There was no blood test to determine infection during the first stage. She reviewed her checklist of early symptoms: bloodshot eyes, headache, fever and numbness in their limbs. Minor compared to hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg or the Ebola virus where patients’ insides literally melted. Within a day or less after a zombie’s bite, the patient would slip into a coma, die and within seconds reanimate into a flesh-eating mindless creature.
With no other accurate diagnostic tool, Dora checked the body for bite marks. Not an easy task. People lied to avoid quarantine. Parents of young children were especially protective. In fact, the most common emergency patient, the child with fever, was down to only one tonight. Worried parents would rather risk being bitten by their infected children than parting from them. Watching children, crying and screaming, wrenched away from the arms of distressed parents sent to isolation facilities, broke Dora’s heart. She couldn’t imagine her niece being carted away to die alone.
Dora glanced at the clock, 9:00 p.m., and left the office to see her first patient.
I’m still alive
.
Maybe I’m not a member of the 27 Club.
She opened the drapes and smiled at the blonde curly-haired two year old squirming in her mother’s arms. She looked at the chart. Lindsey Benning. She knelt. “Hi Lindsey, aren’t you a pretty girl?” She glanced at her mom and offered her hand. “I’m Dr. Adler, what seems to be the problem?”
The mother whispered, “A fever of 101. My mother takes care of her while I work, so she wasn’t exposed to any other kids. She won’t be quarantined will she?”
The child tugged at her inflamed earlobe. Dora suspected an ear infection. “Sounds like she hasn’t been exposed.” Dora did her best to ease the mother’s concerns with a gentle voice. She knelt down and let the toddler play with her stethoscope as she scanned for bite marks or open cuts. None. Dora checked her eyes. Not bloodshot. “Hold still, Lindsey, I’m going to take a peek in your ears.” Hmm. Pus in the middle ear. A sigh of relief escaped her lips. “Thank God.”
Oops, get a grip
. “Your daughter has an ear infection. I’ll have Dr. Smith come in and set you up with
Amoxicillin.”
The young mother raised a brow. “You can’t?”
“I’m sorry, tonight I’m the screener and I must move on to the next patient. Dr. Smith is our pediatrician on duty. She can advise you on how to prevent exposure to…Z-phage.” The mother nodded with a relieved smile. Ear infection always wins over zombie infection.
Dr. Grover waved her over. “Dr. Adler.”
She smiled at the mother and daughter, and left to meet with Dr. Grover. “Who’s next?”
“Just came in. That man, over there. Drunk driver. He just hit and killed a woman. Dead on arrival.” He pointed his chin to the entrance. Paramedics wheeled in a large covered body, then they rushed off. “We need to hurry; the EMTs are off to a five car accident.”
Dora read his chart. “Blood alcohol .08 and a head wound.” She glanced at a man in his fifties, dressed in a business suit. A nurse had bandaged his forehead but blood still steeped through.
She used her ophthalmoscope to check his eyes. Slightly red, but expected of someone this drunk. “Mr. Harrison, do you have any other injuries?”
He stared at the wall behind her. No doubt, in shock. “She just walked in front of my car.”
She wanted to scold him for driving drunk and hitting a pedestrian but held her tongue as she observed his cut. “You’ll need stitches and then I’m afraid you’ll be placed under arrest for DUI.” Not that he really would be. The police were overwhelmed with calls of possible zombies. “First though, I’ll need to check you for bite marks. A routine examination, Mr. Harrison.”
He slowly shook his head. He bent and pulled up his pants from his ankle. A fierce bite mark beneath his sock. Dora’s voice hitched. “Oh shit.”
“The woman looked normal. I ran out to help…but she bit me. She must have been a recent zombie. I got in my car and ran over her again. She was a big woman. I made sure she was down.” Panic flushed on his face. “I might be immune, right?”
“Umm.” She stopped before telling him no one was immune. “You’ll be quarantined downstairs and treated with antiviral drugs to slow the disease.” It was a big lie. No such drug existed. Every known antiviral drug failed to stop or slow the Z-phage. By tomorrow, this man would become a zombie and the shooters would deliver a bullet to his brain. “Stay here.” Dora drew the curtains around him and left. “Where’s the hit and run victim?”
“She’s still in the hall to be taken down to the morgue,” said a nurse.
Dora yanked on the biohazard alarm, alerting everyone to the Level 4 danger and grabbed a surgical blade. The National Guard ran in but Dora was already by the empty gurney.
“She’s gone!” She turned just as a heavy body slammed her to the floor. The thirty-something zombie in a black sweat outfit exceeded two hundred pounds and Dora at one hundred and fifteen pounds lay crushed beneath her. “Help!”
The zombie drooled on her, like a dog ready to eat a steak, Dora screamed as she tried to push the hefty woman off. The zombie chomped down on her arm, tearing through her sleeves. Finding flesh, the zombie bit deep into her muscle tissue, making eager chewing sounds. The pain savaged her mind, like a zebra eaten alive by lions in too much of a hurry to bother killing her first. An unnatural holler escaped Dora’s throat and she flailed, stabbing the woman’s face with her blade.
Time slowed. Two guards lifted the hefty woman who then charged them. They fired and she collapsed. Pandemonium set in as patients, even ones with broken limbs, and many medical staff dashed out of the building.
Dizzied, she held her bleeding arm as five people in biohazard suits rushed in. One lifted her from the floor. She held her arm, afraid to look at the damage.
“Dora!” Dr. Grover tried to rush to her side, but an armed quarantine guard grabbed him. “Let me go. She needs medical attention.”
The man in the biohazard suit raised a palm. “We’re taking her and the other patient to the decontamination room. They’ll be given morphine and kept comfortable.”