Waiting to Die (Book 1) Read online

  WAITING TO DIE

  A Zombie Novel

  Richard M. Cochran

  Cover art by Peter Fussey

  Richard M. Cochran can be contacted at [email protected]

  WAITING TO DIE

  Richard M. Cochran

  Acknowledgements

  To Iain for all your help and encouragement and for writing some of the best zombie horror out there.

  To Persephanie for dealing with my frantic writing sessions and my lackluster approach to love.

  To Meagan for your input and support and proofreading gusto.

  To Paul for your words of inspiration and support.

  To Wild Wolf Press for publishing my first short story, “In the End” in Holiday of the Dead.

  To Permuted Press for all the great Undead Horror!

  And last, but not least, to all of the fans who have bought my stories and beaten me to death with questions like, “How does Waiting to Die end? ...here’s your answer.

  An R. M. Cochran book

  ISBN-13: 978-1480035010

  ISBN-10: 1480035017

  Waiting to Die copyright © 2012

  by Richard M. Cochran.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission of the author or publisher.

  · 1

  Cocked back in his chair, feet resting at the edge of the desk, Bill watches the clock. The hands seem to go forward once and back twice before finally resting at five o'clock. His eyes become heavy as he leans farther back, intent on sleeping for the last two hours before he can punch out and leave. He has never been good with busy days, and today is the busiest he has seen since he’s been working at Our Lady of Grace.

  Beep!

  Hiss, “Bill, are you there?”

  Leaning forward, Bill pushes the intercom button on the phone. “Yeah, what’s up, Becky?”

  “We have a couple more bodies up here that we need you to pick up,” Becky replies, a hint of fatigue in her voice.

  “Christ,” Bill rests his head in his hands upon the desk and wipes his face before he starts to speak. “That will make six in the past three hours. I was trying to take a nap,” he chuckles, trying to make light of the situation.

  “You can nap after you pick these bodies up.” She hesitates. “They’re creeping me out,” Becky confesses.

  “Throw a sheet over them.”

  Becky becomes silent, pausing for a moment, “They’re pretty messed up. All the sheet does is hide the fact that they might be human.”

  “Wow, really? I'll be up in a second.”

  Throwing on his lab coat, he heads toward the exit and pushes the door to the side. The outer hallway of the morgue is stale and depressing. A heavy smell of formaldehyde hangs in the air, drowning out any other odor that dares expose itself. With a whoosh, the double doors close behind him, pivoting in on themselves with reversible hinges, allowing them to swing wide into the hallway before reversing their course and clacking back into place.

  Tired from the previous pickups, Bill drags his feet slightly before entering the elevator. He enjoys the silence, glad that Doctor Pratt had the wisdom to demand that the music be removed last month in a heated argument with the staff coordinator. Really, there wasn't any need for music in an employee only area beside the fact that one of the higher ups thought it would boost morale.

  In tranquil silence, Bill waits for the motion of the elevator to subside, effectively stopping the feeling of his stomach being pushed down into his toes.

  Ding.

  The doors open so slowly it is as if they are taking their time before allowing the occupant to escape. Bill yawns while he waits. The sterile smell of bleach greets his nose, welcoming him to the first floor. He points himself left and wanders toward the reception desk as the soles of his shoes squeak, creating a shrill echo along the empty hallway.

  Leaning over the counter, Bill looks at Becky and tries to get her attention as she places files in a cabinet. She shuffles through each file until she finds an appropriate folder and places it in the drawer. She wears an expression of deep concentration as she shuffles through the alphabetical arrangement and slides the next in line into its spot.

  Becky catches an image out of the corner of her eye and turns, “Fuck!” she exclaims. “Damn it, Bill! You scared the shit out of me!”

  Bill lets out an amused chuckle, “It isn't like you didn't know I was coming.”

  “Still!” she raises her voice. “Give me some warning, you jackass!”

  Smiling, he replies, “Sorry about that, Becky. So where are you hiding the stiffs?”

  Becky looks over her shoulder towards the emergency room. “They’re being kept back there in one of the rooms,” she says, shuddering from the mental images from earlier when they were brought in. She motions toward a room at the back of the ER with a disgusted look.

  Bill turns on his heels, following Becky's gaze.

  “Bill?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They look pretty bad.”

  “I've probably seen worse,” he laughs.

  “I doubt it,” she says as Bill heads off.

  Automatic doors slide out of Bill's way as he enters a bustling emergency room. Nurses barely miss one another as they run from room to room, carrying supplies by the armload. Every second that passes brings several new cases through the busy doors, cramming the waiting room with a combination of sick and languid faces.

  A pink blur of scrubs whirls past Bill as he stares into the waiting room. He holds out his hand, reaching, “Wait, Angie!”

  The nurse turns, pauses for a moment, “What is it, Bill?”

  “What's going on? Was there an accident somewhere?” he asks.

  “You mean because of all the people?” she asks, too involved with her work to fully understand what he’s getting at. “No, I don't know what’s happening. People started flooding in about an hour ago.” She checks her watch and diverts her gaze back to the supplies she’s carrying. “Sorry, Bill, but I have to go,” Angie twirls around, half jogging to the next set of curtains, throws them aside, and hands another nurse the bundle of bandages.

  In awe, Bill sidesteps nurses and doctors, making his way toward the back of the ER and through a doorway. He gasps deeply when he sees a bloodstained sheet haphazardly thrown over a gurney, pushed into the far corner of the room. What he sees barely passes as a body; creases in the sheet where no indentations should be, lapses of space where limbs should clearly form outlines in the cloth. He tells himself not to look, pleads with his curiosity to subside, but yet his fingers reach, open and twist, grasping at the sheet to tug it aside.

  Slap! A clipboard hits the counter along the doorway.

  “What are you doing?” Dr. Benton asks.

  “Oh, um... I was getting ready to bring the body to the morgue, sir,” Bill replies, slightly shaken.

  “Then don't you think you better get to it?” The Doctor asks.

  “Yes, sir,” Bill grasps the gurney, pulls it back to unlatch the wheel locks, and pushes it forward through the door.

  “You really need to get your head out of the clouds. We have quite a situation going on here. Now get that out of here and come back for the other,” Dr. Benton gestures to the other gurney. “I swear I have to do everything around here.”

  Bill shakes off the insult and pushes the body out through the rear entrance of the ER.

  With a static hiss, the hospital inte
rcom hums to life, “Dr. Cerda and Dr. Mersh, please come to the ER... Dr. Cerda and Dr. Mersh to the ER,” the voice repeats.

  Once in the silence of the passageway that winds through the rear of the hospital, Bill sighs. He breathes easily once he’s away from all of the commotion. If his job had entailed being around that many people on a daily basis, he wouldn't have lasted a single shift. He could handle the blood, he could deal with the death, but the pompous doctors were well beyond what his nerves could endure. He thanked his good fortune that he had been placed with Dr. Pratt who seemed to have a firmer grasp on reality and a very minor amount of ego to deal with.

  With a series of random squeaks and shimmies, one temperamental wheel jostles back and forth, pivots and resumes working for only a moment before going spastic once again as Bill pushes it along the seemingly endless hallway. He wonders why a hospital can’t afford better equipment, or at the very least, a handyman who could repair it.

  From the corner of his vision, Bill watches as a leg slides out from under the sheet and flops against the side of the gurney, trailing blood in its wake. He jumps at the sudden movement, letting the gurney roll ahead a few feet before it nudges up against the wall and comes to a rest.

  “Fuck ...” Bill says aloud and shakes his head for being so on edge.

  Grasping the cuff of the corpse’s leg, Bill returns it to the gurney, and tucks it under the sheet, keeping mindful of the blood saturating the corpse’s pants. Curious, he lifts the sheet to the side, exposing a mess of ragged and torn flesh. “Jesus!” he exclaims, putting the sheet back in place. The mutilated remains flash through his mind like a train wreck, impossible to turn away from. He lifts the sheet once again, feeling the light cotton fabric against his hand. The body is missing a leg which looks to have been ripped from its socket, torn from the hip, exposing a blackened hole with clotted blood lingering around the edges of jagged skin and protruding veins. Portions of the abdomen are agape; slick pink intestine juts through torn skin and ripped muscle, mocking its previous containment.

  Eyes wide at the scene before him, Bill returns the cloth to its rightful place and tries to scrape the remnants of the images out of his mind. With a deep breath of resignation, he pushes the button to call the elevator and waits patiently until the doors open. Once inside, he waits again for the doors to close and the elevator to descend to the basement where the morgue is located.

  An arm twitches beneath the sheet, catching Bill's attention. Again, there is a sudden movement and the arm lifts from the gurney at an angle and points upward toward the ceiling. Alarmed, Bill darts backward, hitting the far side of the elevator in shock. He stares, waiting for another movement, gripping the scuff plate behind him. The appendage remains motionless, idle in its upright position, transfixed until a whooshing sound emits, sending a noxious smell through the elevator. The cadavers arm falls exposed to the gurney as if it had never moved.

  “Son of a bitch!” Bill exclaims, finally able to speak. “It is just gas. Just gas... the body is expelling gas, and that's why it moved. You learned all of this in medical school. It's a normal reaction that rarely occurs when the body begins to decompose, nothing at all. You're perfectly fine, everything is good.” He bites his lower lip and gives a quick, decisive nod. “You’re perfectly fine, everything is good,” he repeats through deep breaths.

  Ding.

  “Now you are going to wheel the lifeless body into the morgue where Dr. Pratt can perform the autopsy, and you can go back and get another body from upstairs when you’re ready,” Bill tries to calm himself.

  One of his deepest fears involves the dead moving, shuddering through the electrical impulses and gases that form from decomposition. When he was twelve, his grandmother passed away in her sleep. While waiting for the Ambulance, her body suddenly jerked, her arm flailed as if it were trying to reach for him. It took years of therapy and a rather expensive degree in medical sciences to calm him. Now, more than anything, the dead merely unnerve him rather than making him feel like hiding in a dark corner and waiting for the urge to vomit to subside.

  “Are you okay?”

  Bill jumps at the sound of the voice, “Shit, Doc!” He glares at the Doctor. “You need some louder shoes.”

  “Easy there,” Dr. Pratt smiles and takes a sip of coffee from a paper cup, holding it leisurely by the cardboard flaps that serve as handles. “So, what do we have here?” he asks as he lifts the sheet to the side. “Someone who has had a very bad day, I see,” he pauses for a moment and investigates the remains. “Are those teeth marks?” he asks aloud as he leans down closer to the wound.

  In the examination room, Bill and Dr. Pratt lift the body off of the gurney and place it onto the autopsy table, adjusting what remains of its limbs into position. Dr. Pratt immediately goes to work by removing the clothes and placing them into small plastic bags he unravels from a box in the corner.

  “There's another one upstairs,” Bill says. “I'll be back in a couple of minutes,” he informs and waits for Pratt to reply.

  With a dismissive nod and a wave of his hand, Dr. Pratt continues with his work, engrossing himself in the task at hand. In a sudden bout of realization, he turns. “Wait for a minute and I'll get a few samples. If you would be so kind, you could drop them off at the lab on your way to the ER,” he says, looking at Bill over the top of his reading glasses.

  Dr. Pratt removes the plastic wrapping from the tubes he has retrieved from a cabinet and goes about taking samples of the cadaver. Placing each scrap of skin, hair, and tissue into the containers, he seals the cap with a label. After taking a few notes at his desk, he hands the samples off to Bill.

  “Make sure you tell the techs that these samples take priority. I'll need the results back as soon as possible.” Dr. Pratt makes eye contact with Bill to make sure he has been heard. “Understood?”

  “Yes, sir, but why are they so important?” Bill asks.

  “There's something strange about this case. I'm not positive, but it looks like he was attacked when he died.” Dr. Pratt points down at the torn flesh, gathered around the subjects missing leg. “You see here? Those are bite marks, and they're human.”

  “You're kidding. Someone bit the guy?” Bill asks, taken aback.

  “Not just bit. If I didn't know any better, I would say the man was eaten alive,” the Doctor explains.

  “Damn,” Bill's expression turns to a look of disgust, “Who would do something like that?”

  “Well, that's what I hope to find out with those,” he says, motioning toward the samples.

  “I don’t believe it,” Don says as he looks through the microscope.

  “What is it?” Grace asks, moving closer.

  “Have a look.” He moves away to give her enough room to look through the eyepiece.

  She adjusts the magnification. “What the hell is that?”

  “I'm not sure.” He squints. “It's as if the cells are reproducing. I've never seen anything like it,” he admits. “Those are the samples that Dr. Pratt sent over, right?”

  Looking up from the microscope, Grace turns her attention to Don. “Yeah, but the body was pronounced dead over an hour ago. Even with a living subject, that type of activity wouldn't be normal. It's like the cells are mutating.”

  “This isn't good,” Don says, taking a few steps back from the table.

  “What do you think?” Grace asks.

  “We run another set of tests.” He scratches at the stubble on his face. “If we can't figure this out on our own, we'll have to get the CDC involved.”

  “The Center for Disease Control?” she asks in an alarmed tone. “Is that really necessary? They'll lock this place up and quarantine everyone in the hospital!”

  “If we can't come up with a better diagnosis than mutating cells, we won't have a choice.” Dan removes the sample and takes it toward the back of the lab, placing it on another machine. “I'll run it through the system and see if it comes up with anything.”

  “And what if
it doesn't?” Grace asks.

  “Let's hope that it does. The last thing we need is for the CDC coming in here, snooping around.” Don runs his fingers through his hair and closes his eyes in thought. “We'll call them when every other option has been exhausted.”

  Bill makes his way towards the back of the ER and picks up the second body. He steps back from the doorway when he notices several more gurneys covered by sheets, placed in rows, waiting for retrieval. Checking the tags at the bottom of each of the bodies, he notices that each case has been pronounced dead within minutes of each other.

  Confused by the sudden additions, he goes to the front desk where Becky is working feverishly on patient files and asks, “What's the deal?”

  “With what?” Becky looks up for only a moment before going back to work on the patient records, her hair in shambles.

  “With all of the bodies in the back,” he says. “The last time I was up here, there was only one, now there are six. What's going on?” he asks, confused.

  “Bill, I don't know. It's like the whole world has gone crazy. I swear, if I see another mangled body, I'm going to lose it.”

  “Has there been anything on the news?” Bill inquires.

  “I haven't had time to check,” she replies, stuffing a stack of insurance papers into a file. “This place is such a mad house. Every couple of minutes, the ambulances drop off another injury. I don't know how much more we can handle.”

  “After I bring the bodies down to the morgue, I'll see if I can get some more information,” Bill says, turning toward the back room to retrieve another body.

  “Bill,” Becky calls, stopping him mid step.

  “Yeah?” He turns and waits for her to speak.

  “One of the ambulance drivers said something about protesting downtown,” she says, searching her thoughts for the information. “He said that the police were getting pretty rough with the people there. But that was over an hour ago, and I haven't heard anything since. Let me know if you find anything out, okay?”