Chapter Two

The ten-minute drive to St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital stretched into a lurid, slow-motion nightmare, each second thick with a dread that was rapidly solidifying into a new, terrifying reality. The world outside the windshield wasn't just chaotic; it was unraveling at the seams, and our beat-up sedan felt like the last flimsy capsule of normalcy, hurtling through a landscape descending into hell.

The ride was agonizingly bumpy, not from potholes, but from the debris scattering the road—a discarded suitcase, a shattered plant pot, a single high-heeled shoe lying on its side. Every jolt sent a fresh wave of agony through Gary, who was slumped in the backseat, his breathing a wet, ragged thing. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned bone-white, my focus divided between the treacherous path ahead and the rearview mirror, where Gary’s ashen face was a ghostly smudge.

Cars screamed past us, not with the orderly panic of a city-wide emergency, but with the feral desperation of animals fleeing a forest fire. They weaved between lanes, horns blaring not as warnings but as primal screams of fear and impatience. Through the passenger window, Elise watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the fabric of civility tore apart in broad daylight. A group of men used a trash can to batter down the grille of a pawn shop, their movements frantic, their faces masks of greedy opportunism. Further down, a woman staggered out of a boutique clutching an armful of dresses, her eyes wide with a confusion that mirrored our own.

“Shit, this is like a fucking movie,” Elise breathed, her voice barely a whisper yet deafening in the tense silence of the car. She wasn’t just looking; she was cataloging, her wide eyes reflecting the flickering images of a society in collapse. The comparison was apt, yet utterly inadequate. Movies had a score, a predictable rhythm. This was a discordant symphony of panic, a silent, screaming terror that no soundtrack could ever capture.

My eyes flicked back to Gary. “You still with us, man?” I asked, my voice tight.

A low groan was his only reply. Elise turned from her window, her face pale. “Gary, stay awake. Come on, talk to us. Tell us about… about your stupid fantasy football league.” It was a desperate, absurd gambit, but it was all we had.

“Yeah… good…” he slurred, the words thick and heavy. “The… Ravens… are gonna…” His sentence dissolved into a wet cough that shook his entire frame. The bandage on his leg, a makeshift thing we’d fashioned from an old t-shirt, was now a dark, ominous crimson.

“Just keep your eyes open, Gary,” I begged, the plea becoming a mantra. “Just until the hospital. You’re not going to die on me. Not here. Not in this fucking car.” The thought was a silent scream in my head. Not here, not here, not here. It wasn’t a hope for his survival, not exactly; it was a desperate, selfish prayer to delay the inevitable, to push the moment of truth into a sterile, professional environment where someone else could be responsible. The guilt of that thought was a hot coal in my stomach.

“I know, right?” I responded to Elise, my own attempt at normalcy sounding hollow and brittle. “Shit!” I cursed, slamming on the brakes as a figure lurched into the road. It was a man, his business suit torn and smeared with grime, one side of his face a mask of dark, drying blood. He didn’t look at us, didn’t seem to see the car at all. He just stumbled across the street with a singular, mindless purpose, his eyes vacant. My heart hammered against my ribs. Were people just running, or were they… dying? The line was blurring, and everything was happening too fast for my brain to process.

The road to the hospital became a gauntlet of human suffering. We passed a woman kneeling on the sidewalk, cradling the head of a man who lay motionless on the pavement. We saw a family huddled around their broken-down car, the father waving a tire iron wildly at anyone who came too close. The air itself seemed thick with a psychic miasma of fear, a taste like copper and smoke on the tongue.

Huffing and puffing, not from exertion but from sheer, hyperventilating terror, I finally wrenched the steering wheel, pulling into the hospital parking lot. It was a scene of pure bedlam. The ten-minute drive had felt like a lifetime, and the sight before us promised an eternity of worse. Cars were abandoned at haphazard angles, some with doors still hanging open. The air was filled with the sound of sirens—some approaching, others fading away—and the cacophony of a hundred raised, panicked voices.

My head was spinning, a dizzying carousel of fear and exhaustion. I was sure my legs would give out the moment I stood. But Gary was the priority. He looked worse than bad; he looked… empty. The vibrant, loud-mouthed friend who’d been joking about graduation just a few hours ago was gone, replaced by a waxen doll whose skin had taken on a terrifying, pale grey hue.

“Gary, are you ok?” Elise asked, her voice trembling as she opened the back door and leaned in. The smell hit us first—the coppery tang of blood mixed with a sour, sickly-sweet odor of infection.

“I’m… fine…” he whispered, the words a puff of foul air. He tried to move, but his body was a dead weight.

“No, you’re not. We need to hurry,” I said, my tone sharper than I intended. Fear was curdling into a brittle anger. I moved to his other side, sliding my arm under his shoulders. The heat radiating from his body was alarming. “Shit, looks like we’ll be here a while,” I muttered, taking in the scene at the main entrance.

It was less a hospital waiting room and more a refugee camp at the brink of annihilation. The crowd spilled out of the automatic doors and onto the pavement. Through the glass, I could see a sea of people pressed together, a mosaic of bloody bandages, tear-streaked faces, and wide, terrified eyes. Stretchers lined the walls, occupied by figures who moaned and thrashed or lay deathly still. This wasn't a protest; it was a triage zone in a war we hadn't known we were fighting.

“Come on,” I grunted, and together, Elise and I hauled Gary out of the car. His legs buckled immediately, and we took nearly all his weight. He was far heavier than he looked, a dead, uncoordinated mass. A part of me, a small, shameful part, resented the burden, the sheer physical misery of it. But who was I to complain? Everyone here was carrying a weight far heavier than Gary’s body.

We squeezed and shuffled our way through the crowd, a slow, agonizing journey towards the front desk. The atmosphere inside was a solid wall of sound—a baby wailing, a man shouting incoherently about his wife, the frantic, clipped announcements over a crackling PA system. I could smell sweat, blood, and the sharp, antiseptic sting of bleach that failed to mask the underlying stench of fear. The confusion was a palpable force, a current of panic that threatened to sweep us off our feet.

The woman at the front desk was a monument to crumbling professionalism. Her hair was escaping a once-neat bun, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. She didn’t look up as we approached, her fingers flying over a keyboard.

“What’s your emergency?” she rattled off, her voice flat and robotic.

“Um… an injured leg, ma’am,” I answered, my own voice sounding small and childish.

“Number of patients?” she asked, still not making eye contact.

The question was so absurd I almost laughed. “One,” I said, the word dripping with a sarcasm I didn’t feel.

“Cause?”

“Bite.”

This finally made her pause. Her eyes flicked up to mine for a fraction of a second, a flash of pure, unadulterated fear. “Infected?”

I swallowed hard, the memory of the creature that had done this—a man, it had to have been a man, but with those blank, milky eyes and that animalistic snarl—flashing in my mind. “Yes.”

Her panic was now a living thing between us. She looked down, typing furiously, her movements jerky. “Fifth floor. Use the elevators on the left.” Then, without another glance, she yelled, “Next!” and we were dismissed, swallowed by the tide of humanity behind us.

The journey to the elevator was a Herculean task. Gary’s feet dragged, and people jostled us, their own emergencies making them blind to ours.

“I can’t… move…” Gary whimpered, his head lolling against my shoulder.

“We’re literally holding you up!” I snapped, the strain and fear boiling over.

Elise shot me a venomous look and punched my arm. “Ouch!” I glared at her, but she just shook her head, her eyes pleading for patience.

“It’s just a few more steps, Gary. You can do it,” she said to him, her voice softening into a soothing tone that seemed alien in this place.

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime that felt obscenely calm. Inside, it was packed, a silent capsule of shared dread. No one made eye contact. The air was thick with the smell of sickness. When the doors opened on the fifth floor, the scene that greeted us was a vision of a particular kind of hell.

It was swamped. Every plastic chair was occupied by the walking wounded—people clutching arms, holding bloody rags to heads, their eyes glassy with shock and pain. Those who couldn't sit lined the walls, sliding down to the floor in exhaustion. The noise was a constant, low roar of pain and fear. A harried nurse with a clipboard barely glanced at us.

“Take a seat. We’ll get to you,” she said, her voice hoarse, before turning to call another name.

But there were no seats. The line was a theoretical concept, dissolved into a formless crowd of waiting.

“Let’s check the exit side,” Elise suggested, her practicality a lifeline. “I’m sure there’s space.”

She led us away from the main throng, towards a quieter corridor near a fire exit. A small water fountain bubbled incongruously. Here, there was space. We lowered Gary to the floor, his back against the cool wall. He slumped immediately, his chin dropping to his chest. Elise sat on his left, taking his hand, while I sat on his right, my own body trembling with adrenaline crash.

We watched a macabre parade. Nurses and orderlies moved with a frantic, weary efficiency. Patients were called in, some walking, some wheeled. But it was the others who held my gaze—the ones who were brought through a set of double doors marked ‘RESTRICTED ACCESS – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’. These patients were different. They were often restrained, their limbs secured to the gurneys with thick leather straps. Some thrashed violently, emitting guttural, non-human sounds. Others lay still, but their stillness was somehow more threatening. They were wheeled through those doors, and they never came back out. Where did that door lead? My mind, seeking order, suggested a more equipped ICU. But a colder, more primal part of me whispered something else entirely.

“Guys…” Gary’s voice was a dry rustle beside me. We both leaned in. “I think… I’m getting worse.” He began to cough, a dry, hacking sound that deepened rapidly into something visceral and wet. It was a cough that seemed to tear at the very lining of his throat.

Elise and I exchanged a look of pure, undiluted terror. On instinct, we both scrambled to our feet, stepping back from him. It was an involuntary reaction, a gut-deep revulsion that shamed me even as I did it.

Gary removed the hand he’d held to his mouth. It was stained with bright, arterial blood. He stared at it with a kind of detached curiosity before another cough wracked him, this one spraying a fine mist of crimson onto the floor tiles.

A silence fell around us, a bubble of quiet that spread rapidly. Whispers started. Heads turned. The chaos of the waiting room focused, zeroing in on our little tragedy.

“Nurse!” Elise screamed, her voice cutting through the din. “Help! We need help!”

But I was frozen, a statue of horror. I watched as Gary’s body began to convulse, his back arching off the wall. And then I heard it—not just from him, but from other corners of the room. A chorus of coughs, wet and bloody, erupting like a dreadful symphony.

Suddenly, the situation escalated with breathtaking speed. Two men emerged from the restricted doors, but they weren’t doctors or orderlies. They were clad in bulky, white biohazard suits, their faces obscured by reflective visors. They moved with a grim, practiced efficiency, pushing a stretcher equipped not with medical supplies, but with heavy-duty chains.

“Hey!” I found my voice, a raw shout. “He’s having a seizure! You’re not supposed to move him!”

They ignored me completely, one of them injecting something into Gary’s neck while the other began securing his thrashing limbs with the chains.

“Hey! Stop! What are you doing?” I screamed again, rushing forward. One of the suited figures turned, placing a gloved hand on my chest and shoving me back with impersonal force. I stumbled, falling against the wall.

They had Gary on the stretcher now, chained down, and were wheeling him towards those forbidden double doors. Elise was still screaming for help, but her cries were lost in a new, overwhelming wave of panic.

As the biohazard team reached the doors, one of them punched a code into a keypad. The doors hissed open.

And hell spilled out.

A nurse, her scrubs drenched in blood, stumbled through the opening. She was missing a hand; a raw, jagged stump waved grotesquely in the air. Her face was a mask of agony and terror. She took two stumbling steps into the waiting room, her mouth open in a silent scream, before collapsing to the floor.

For a heartbeat, there was absolute silence. Then, a figure emerged from the darkness behind the doors. It was a patient, still in a hospital gown, its jaw hanging loose, its eyes the same milky white as the thing that had bitten Gary. It let out a guttural snarl and lunged at the downed nurse.

The room, already a pressure cooker of fear, exploded.

The sound was deafening—a unified scream of pure, animal terror. People surged away from the door, a stampede of bodies. Chairs were overturned. The line between the sick and the healthy, the orderly and the chaotic, vanished entirely.

“Eth!” I heard Elise’s scream, high and sharp, from the other side of the room, but she was instantly swallowed by the rushing crowd.

“El!” I screamed back, twisting and turning, trying to fight against the current of fleeing people. I caught a glimpse of her blonde hair for a second before it disappeared. My head spun, the world becoming a dizzying blur of terrified faces and flailing limbs.

The chaos intensified. The nurse on the floor, the one who had been bleeding out, suddenly stopped screaming. Her body went rigid for a moment, then she pushed herself up with her one good arm. Her head swiveled, those vacant, milky eyes locking onto a man trying to help her up. With a speed that was unnatural, she lunged, her teeth sinking into his arm. His scream of pain was cut short as others, the ones who had been coughing up blood, turned on their neighbors. The infection wasn’t just a sickness; it was a contagion of violence, spreading through the room like wildfire.

My body was frozen again, trapped in a nightmare. Should I wait for Elise? Should I try to find her? Or should I run, save myself, and hope she made it out? The internal debate was a frantic scream in my head.

It was cut short by a sound so sharp, so definitive, it sliced through the bedlam.

A gunshot.

I whipped my head around. Near the main elevators, a man in a blood-stained business suit held a revolver, its barrel smoking. He fired again, and again, into the chest of a charging figure that had once been an elderly woman. The bullets tore into her, but she barely slowed, until the final shot took her in the head.

The man stood there, panting, the gun dangling from his hand. He looked at the carnage around him, his face a blank slate of shock.

And that’s when it hit me. The final, fragile illusion of society, of order, of help, shattered into a million pieces. This wasn’t a riot. This wasn’t a temporary crisis. The men in biohazard suits, the chained gurneys, the bloody cough, the biting… the gunshot executing the infected.

This was the end. The world wasn’t going crazy. The world was gone. This island, this hospital, this room—this was the new world.

Shit. This is the apocalypse.