Dead, but Not for Long (27 page)

“Once you’re done eating,” she said, eyes on the
bundle in the woman’s arms, “we’d like to have one of our doctors check your
family over.”

“No,” the woman said quickly, eyes fearful.

“You can all be in the room together,” Lindsey told
her. “We won’t separate you.”

The woman started to argue, but her husband spoke to her quietly and she nodded.

“That’ll be fine,” he said.

Lindsey watched Brian’s expression for a moment. He
looked exhausted but there was something darker in his eyes, something that caused
her feeling of apprehension to grow even stronger. Not convinced that the
family was going to cooperate, Lindsey went to look for Dr. Winston, who was on
duty at the time. He wasn’t anywhere to be found on the first floor so she went
to look for him in the fifth floor doctor’s lounge, where he seemed to be
spending much of his time. She informed him that they had newcomers and he lay
down his book with a sigh.

“I hope everybody realizes that we can’t keep
bringing others in. We’re already crowded and food is becoming an issue.

Lindsey bristled at his words. He’d complained every
time survivors had arrived.

“They would have died out there. We’ll just need to
figure out a way to make it work. We’re not turning anybody away.”

“I’m still not sure what makes all you low-level
workers think you’re in charge,” he snapped, standing. “But you go ahead and
have your little power trip. Before we know it, this will be over and
everything will be back to normal. When that happens, don’t think I’ll forget
any of this. I’ll make all of your lives a living hell.”

“Oh, you already do,” Lindsey assured him, walking back to the stairs.

Not ten minutes later, loud voices could be heard
coming from the ER. Lindsey hurried over there with Autumn close behind. Doune
carefully set his microscope on the table before following them.

Dr. Winston was yelling at the woman, Ginny, who was
trying to cover her baby’s head. Brian was standing between his wife and Dr.
Winston, trying to calm both of them. Two big bikers were already there, trying
to figure out who needed to be restrained. They pulled both the father and Dr.
Winston back as Doune arrived on the scene.

“That child is infected!” Dr. Winston yelled,
pointing at the squirming bundle in the woman’s arms. “Let go of me!”

The biker let go and Winston continued. “It’s
already changed. We need to destroy it!”

This set off a whole new round of yelling, from the
mother and father as well as the two children.

“You can’t have him!” the woman screamed, hysterical.

“Lady, if that baby bites you, you’ll have to be
destroyed as well,” Dr. Winston yelled at her.

The woman was having trouble holding onto the baby,
who seemed to be growing very active under the blanket. Lindsey knew that they needed to act quickly.

“Does he have teeth yet?” she asked. From what she
could tell of the child’s size, it was not a newborn but was probably several months old.

“He has four teeth,” the daughter said in a
terrified voice. “Please don’t kill my mommy.”

Lindsey glanced at the girl and hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

“Ma’am, you need to think of your other children,”
Lindsey said, desperately. “They need you. It’s too late for the baby, and
there is nothing that can be done for him now. He’s already gone.”

The woman looked at her other children and burst
into tears again before shaking her head and backing away.

“Buddy, you need to help us out here or you’re going
to lose your wife,” one of the bikers said to Brian, who was trying to block them.

“Dad?” the girl said, tears on her cheeks. The young boy was crying, too.

The father looked at both of them before closing his
eyes in pain and stepping away with a nod.

“No!” the mother screamed as the two bikers stepped
forward and finally wrestled the child away from her.

“Be careful!” Lindsey reminded them. “Watch his mouth.”

Another biker restrained the mother long enough for
Dr. Doune to inject her with something that quieted her almost instantly.

“Don’t you hurt my mom!” yelled the boy, running over.

“She’s fine,” Doune assured him. “This will just
allow her to sleep for a while.”

The child watched intently as Doune helped his mother to a chair.

“You can stay here and watch her if you want,”
Lindsey told the boy. “See? She’s breathing quietly, just sleeping.”

Her words seemed to calm the boy and soon his sister
joined him, sitting in the chair on the other side of their mother.

“I want to see him first,” Brian said, his voice
breaking as the biker started to walk away with the wiggling bundle.

The biker hesitated and lifted the blanket to look
at the infant before making a decision. He quickly put the blanket back into
position, shaking his head.

“No, you don’t,” he said quietly. “Just remember him
how he was, all right? Not like this.”

As the biker turned to walk away, Brian tried to go
after him but he was immediately grabbed by a couple of other men. As they
restrained him, one gray arm slipped from beneath the blanket and began to claw
at the biker, who hurried to get him wrapped up again. The sight of the arm seemed
to stun Brian and he instantly stopped struggling, collapsing into a chair near
his family, his eyes distant and vacant.

Doune walked past Dr. Winston and said, “Check the
mother for bites.”

Dr. Winston started to protest but Doune was
already gone, planning on getting some samples of the child’s flesh for his
lab. The parents would not be told about this, of course.

~*^*~

Keith jumped when he heard his phone start playing, “You’re No Good.”

“Shanelle?” he asked.

“Hey, Babe, it’s me,” she said, though there was so much static it was hard to hear her.

“You okay?” Keith asked, covering his left ear to block out the sounds of voices down the hall.

“So far,” she said. “I told the others what you said
about getting to the roof, and we’re going to try it.”

“Good, good,” he said, relieved. He suddenly
realized something. He wasn’t sure exactly which building was hers. He knew the
general area but since she had moved out of the house, their only contact had
been over the phone. “Hey, what’s the address of your building? I’ll tell this
guy, Lt. Reynolds, and he can look for it next time they go to check for
survivors.”

Keith heard only static. “Shanelle?” he asked, but she
was gone. He quickly texted a message to her, asking for the address and he made
a mental note to talk to Reynolds about it the next time he came to the hospital.

~*~

“Do you know how long it took the infant to turn?” Doune asked Lindsey.

“No,” she admitted, keeping her voice down so the
family wouldn’t hear the discussion. “I never actually saw the baby when the
family came in. For all I know he may have already turned before then.”

“I don’t think so,” Wombat said. A couple of the
other bikers agreed. “That baby wasn’t moving when we picked them up. I’m
betting it was dead then.”

“I’ll talk to the father once he’s calmed down,”
Doune said. “In the meantime, I need to find Harold and ask him a few things.”

“I can go look for him,” Autumn said, bored. “Theresa
said she’s making cookies today, too. Maybe I can nab a few for us.”

“Mmmm, I haven’t had a cookie since this whole thing
started,” Lindsey said, mouth watering at the thought.

Doune wrote a note for Dr. Winston with his
questions on it and handed it to Autumn.

“Just give him this. Maybe he can write down the
answers and I won’t have to speak to him in person.”

Autumn grinned and grabbed the paper, leaving Doune
and Lindsey to discuss some of Doune’s findings. Within twenty minutes, Autumn
was back with three cookies and crumbs all over her face. She placed two of the
cookies on a desk for the others. “I couldn’t find Dr. Whinealot.”

Doune had to fight a smirk at the name she’d found
for Harold. “Did you try the doctors’ lounge?”

“First place I checked. He told someone in the
kitchen he was going to rest for a while. He said he was just too tired and was
suffering from exhaustion from doing all the work around here.”

“Poor Harold,” Doune said, rolling his eyes. “I
guess he’s not used to working more than three hours a day. This must be quite
rough on him.”

“I ran into Dr. Sharma and gave her the note,” Autumn
said. “She promised to give it to him if she sees him.”

~*~

It was almost two hours later when all hell broke
loose in the emergency room once more. Lindsey hurried over with Autumn close
behind. Nick sat his pen down with a sigh and went to join them.

The mother who had lost the baby had woken and was
hysterical. Dr. Sharma was trying to calm her but was not having much luck. At
the same time, Snake was trying to stop the bleeding on the arm of one of the
bikers. Nick glanced at the hysterical woman and the wounded man and headed
over to the biker.

“What happened?” he asked Snake.

“The genius was messing around and he cut himself,” Snake said.

“With what?” Doune asked

“With a banana,” the biker answered sarcastically. “He
was messing around with his knife.”

Doune gave a long sigh before asking, “What kind of
knife? A kitchen knife, perhaps? Or maybe a weapon that could have infected blood on it?”

“Oh,” the biker said, glancing at Snake. “Oh, crap.
I think I cleaned it after I used it last.”

“Did you just wipe it off, or did you spray it with
bleach and wash it off, like I told you guys to do?” Snake asked. They always
carried one or two of the spray bottles with them when they went out.

“I think I sprayed it. I really can’t remember,” the biker answered nervously.

“Well, I think that we should assume that you didn’t,
to be safe. Stay here,” Doune said, leaving to retrieve gloves and bandages.

When he returned, he cleaned the wound and bandaged
it but insisted that the man spend a few hours in the ER with a guard.

“We’ll keep an eye on him, Doc,” Snake said then
turned to his friend. “If you don’t end up going zombie, I’m going to give you
a good thumpin’. I can’t afford to lose any guys to macho knife throwing games.”

Doune turned to see if he needed to administer drugs
to the sobbing woman but Dr. Sharma assured him that she had things under control.

“I’ll give her something if she needs it,” she said,
not quite hiding the look of annoyance in her eyes. She was fairly certain that
Doune’s wish to help the woman had more to do with keeping her quiet than any
concern over the grief-stricken mother’s well-being.

No sooner had Doune turned to go back to the lab
when a call came over the loudspeaker saying that a doctor was needed on the fourth floor.

“Where the hell is Harold?” Doune asked, angrily.
Everybody else had been working long shifts and he was getting a little tired
of Winston disappearing every couple of hours while the rest of them picked up
the slack. He looked around and found Autumn. “I’m going to see what they need
on the fourth floor, but will you try to find Dr. Winston? Dr. Sharma and I
have our hands full and I still need to check on the fifth floor patients or
Amelia’s going to come looking for me.”

“I’ll go look around,” Autumn said.

Dr. Doune handled the emergency on the fourth floor
but Marian, the nurse on the floor at the time, said that Dr. Winston hadn’t
been to see any of the patients yet.

“Do you have the schedule?” Doune asked.

She handed him the paper and he looked at it. Dr.
Winston was listed as being on duty in the ER for the morning shift but had
been assigned to the fourth floor for the afternoon. Nick shook his head.

“He went to take a nap a couple hours ago, from what
I heard, but I assumed he would be back by now. I need to check on my patients
upstairs but I’ll try to find Dr. Winston in the meantime.”

Doune had just gotten done with his rounds on the fifth floor when Autumn appeared.

“I found him,” she said. “I guess he has the flu and
he’s taking the rest of the day off because he’s just too sick to work.”

“Oh, please. The flu? Did he diagnose himself?”
Doune asked. “If he did, it could actually be anything from the common cold to rabies.”

“Yeah,” Autumn replied, “he was all pale and
sweating. First he said he was suffering from exhaustion. Then he changed it
and said he must have caught the flu because he was soooo overworked.”

Doune shook his head. “We’re too busy for him to be
taking the day off. I think I’d better go pay him a visit myself. Where was he when you saw him last?”

“He checked himself into a private room on the third
floor so Keith and Marla can wait on him hand and foot, and Keith doesn’t seem
too happy about it,” she replied. “I think if the flu doesn’t kill him, Keith will.”

“I don’t imagine Keith will put up with much from
him,” Doune said. “I think I’ll pay Harold a visit.”

He took the elevator to the third floor and found Keith at the desk.

“I sent Marla in to deal with him for a while,”
Keith told him after Doune asked about the GP. “He’s being a pain in the ass.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Doune asked.

He started to leave but Keith stopped him.

“I think Dr. Winston might be infected but he
insists that it’s impossible.”

“On the contrary, it’s very possible,” Doune said,
telling Keith about the infected infant. “Dr. Winston was the one who looked
the child over so he has been exposed recently. We’ll need to check him for bites.”

They headed toward the private rooms.

~*~

“Well, Harold, what seems to be the problem?” the surgeon asked once he stepped inside.

Winston was deathly pale and had developed dark
circles around his eyes since Doune had seen him a few hours earlier.