The Hospital

"Sturdy bastard!" Rendal grunted trying to pull the axe out of the crushed skull but with little success. The sharp blade split man's head in half to the base of the neck and wouldn't budge.

"Goddammit!" Rendal muttered and pulled again. No luck. "Should have been more gentle," he said, trying to catch his breath. "You all right, kid?"

"Thanks, Rendal," Mark replied, sitting on the tiled floor. "You saved my skin."

"My pleasure, son," Rendal said and placed his right foot on the shoulder of the corpse. "Let's try again." He put all his weight into the effort. This time the blade finally gave in. Blood and brain fragments spilt across the floor from the deep cut, forming a growing pool of red liquid around the body.

"Disgusting, eh?" Rendal wiped the blade of the axe against the cotton shirt of the diseased. "Looks like new again." Satisfied with the result, he turned to Mark and reached out his hand. "Let me help you up, son. And next time try to aim for the head. It seems to do the job."

"I know. That thing came at me so fast. Caught me by surprise."

"Yep. The bastard was surprisingly fast. It's a good thing I was nearby; otherwise, we wouldn't be talking right now," Rendal said, tapping young officer on the shoulder.

Just seconds ago, Mark fired three shots to the now-dead attacker's chest before the ghoul tackled him to the ground. Although he missed only once, bullets did nothing to stop the man from getting to him. The attacker sank his teeth into Mark's left wrist like a rabid animal. If Rendal hadn't come to his rescue, the outcome of this encounter most likely would have been very different.

"Damn it hurts," Mark said, examining his wound. Edges around bite marks were swollen, blood still seeping through.

"That will leave a scar for sure." Rendal passed him one of the towels from the nearby storage cabinet. "You better have that checked, son. Looks messy and god knows what this guy had. It might get infected."

"Thanks." Mark nodded and took the towel. "Just a tiny cut. I will be fine."

However, it was furthest from the truth. The virus, transmitted through the diseased saliva, already reached Mark's bloodstream and spread through his body. The silent microscopic killer began the irreversible corruption process and would take its time to manifest before crawling out of the hiding. Unbeknownst to Mark, his fate was already sealed.

"Step aside, people!" Sheriff Jimmy White's voice echoed somewhere behind the wall of curious bystanders. Overcrowded hospital corridor offered little room for manoeuvre. Still, a bit of elbowing and pushing did the trick and Jimmy finally squeezed his way through.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked, finally emerging next to his deputy.

"For starters, you are about to mess up your fancy shoes, Sherriff," Rendal replied and pointed his axe to the puddle on the floor.

Jimmy instinctively took a step back. "Just bloody great."

"You can say that again," Rendal chuckled.

"Cut it, Rendal," Jimmy almost growled. Right now, he wasn't in a mood for jokes. Turning his attention back to Mark, he immediately noticed the soiled towel wrapped around the wrist. "Mark, you all right?"

"Will live, Chief," Mark replied and holstered his handgun. "He came out of nowhere and jumped on me. If it weren't for Rendal here, I would be dead now."

"Anything to help." Rendal bowed and added, "This deadbeat here used to be Nick Perton. I knew the man. Wasn't the brightest character."

Jimmy frowned. He hated surprises - especially nasty ones. And today was quickly turning into the motherload of the most vicious.

"How the hell did he end up here? It's the third such incident in the last two hours. Are you sure there is no back door entrance in this part of the building?" he turned and asked Barry Larson, hospital's maintenance Chief, who followed him through the crowd.

A short, chubby man in his fifties shook his head." Never been one, Sheriff. The only way in or out is through this corridor."

"Then how do you explain this?" Jimmy reiterated his question and pointed at the body.

"He must have been here this whole time," Rendal said shrugging shoulders. "Drunk as always or high as a mountain. Maybe was mistaken for one of the dead? Just look around you, Sheriff. There are more corpses than people alive. Probably just woke up and went on a frenzy. Wouldn't be the first time I saw him doing crazy shit. "

"On that, I have to agree with you," Jimmy said, looking at the corpse. "Well done with that axe of yours. Lots of people could have been hurt otherwise."

"Just doing my civic duty, officer." Rendal smiled and bowed again. "Anyway, do you have a better explanation?"

"I have no explanations," the Sheriff said quietly, scratching the back of his head. "At least not yet. But this is becoming a problem. There might be more of them lurking around. We'll have to recheck every room in this wing of the hospital."

"We have been stocking up bodies from here to the freezer," Barry pointed out. "Nothing but bodies." Sweat was pouring from his forehead down the thick chin. Barry was unaware he contracted the virus earlier that morning when some homeless guy attacked him on his front porch. The man bit him in the shoulder, and by share luck, Barry managed to get into his car and drive away. Now fever was rapidly taking over, his antibodies losing battle against the aggressive invader. He wasn't alone. Majority of the people now trapped within hospital walls had suffered various degrees of injuries and were in advanced stages of infection.

"Then we will have to check the bodies," Jimmy said. "Maybe we missed some. We can't afford to have more of them sneaking on us from behind."

"Boss!" Judith, one of Jimmy's officers, wriggled her way through the crowd. Her uniform was dirty and dusty, full of bloodstains, but none seemed to be her own. She was visibly shaken and took a second to catch her breath. "We need all available support on the barricade, a.s.a.p. Those things are relentless, and we have another large group incoming. Guys are low on ammo. We lost almost half of our men, and the other half are mostly wounded."

"It just gets better and better," Jimmy said quietly. The feeling of desperation was building inside him. And he hated it.

"Chief, what do you want us to do?" Mark asked after a brief uncomfortable pause, which felt like a very long one.

Jimmy White took a deep breath. This whole thing seemed like his worst nightmare. This very morning, life in their little countryside town was calm and peaceful just like every other day, with the town's folk going about their usual business. That was until he started getting reports of random attacks and cases of violent behaviour around the area. At first, it seemed like isolated incidents. Officers and ambulance crews answered the call but soon ended up calling for help themselves. As more officers joined the rescue, all hell broke loose. People started attacking bystanders on the streets, allegedly trying to kill them. His deputies soon confirmed it to be true. Some of his officers claimed to witness acts of cannibalism in broad daylight. Most of the attackers didn't seem to be local. The situation was getting out of control. Low on manpower, Jimmy tried to contact surrounding counties for help only to find out the same was happening everywhere.

Whatever drove these individuals mad made them utterly ignorant to any reasoning. No amount of warnings by armed officers or pleads to show mercy by victims affected them.

With the situation spiralling out of control, the Sherriff had no other choice but to allow the use of live munitions. His officers spared no expense. Strangely enough, body shots only slowed the crazies down. They kept attacking with only one intent: to kill. It took some time, and more lost members of the task force to figure out the only way to stop the psychos was to shoot them in the head. Civilians also took up arms trying to defend themselves and their families. Most wouldn't make it.

By lunchtime, the whole town had turned into a battlefield with shots echoing nearly in every neighbourhood. Dead bodies littered now deserted streets. Sporadic vehicle and building fires raged out of control. The town's fire brigade was wiped out in the early hours of the event with no one left to tackle the flames. Local ambulance services shared the same fate.

The outbreak quickly decimated the town hospital's staff to a handful of doctors and nurses, desperately trying to deal with an increasing stream of injured people.

The Sherrif's office issued public announcements ordering everyone to stay indoors and stay quiet, avoiding contact with outsiders, especially anyone acting strange and aggressive. Despite all the efforts, the number of people exhibiting violent behaviour kept growing. Jimmy received reports that some of the town residents joined the ranks of those already affected and began assaulting neighbours and even own family members. But without solid confirmation, Jimmy dismissed them. He had no time to chase rumours. How wrong he was.

All efforts to contact the District Governor's office failed. The mayor's cellphone was switched off the whole day, meaning Jimmy had no other choice but to put himself in charge of trying to regain control of the situation. He was struggling.

By the early evening, it became evident all the Sheriff's efforts to restore order miserably failed. Half of his officers were dead or missing. Few decided to go back to their families. Jimmy didn't judge them. Probably he would have done the same if he had one. Lots of people panicked and tried to leave town through only two public roads. The outcome was predictable. Traffic got jammed, followed by widespread panic when large groups of crazies roamed the area and attacked people on the road and inside their vehicles.

Jimmy, coordinating efforts to regain control from the police station, could only witness the massacre through a local news TV channel as the news helicopter hovered low above the scene. The cameraman zoomed in on the stream of people below, running away or hiding behind cars. Another group of twenty or so individuals chased them, attacking everyone in their path. The camera caught a glimpse of a man and a woman carrying a child. They tried to escape from the crowd. Three people chased them into the fields and finally caught up with them. The man tried to fend them off, but the trio quickly tackled him to the ground. The woman screamed with the child in her hands. She hesitated to leave her husband. That was a mistake. One of the attackers suddenly jumped up while the other two ripped her screaming husband apart and leapt onto her. Jimmy changed the channel. He could not bear watching the unfolding massacre, feeling useless and helpless. Those people needed his help and protection, and their Sheriff failed them.

Other news channels reported similar events. The same was happening nationwide; cameras captured widespread chaos and riots all across the country. Footage from major cities drew a grim picture of destruction and death. According to some reports, the National Guard and Armed Forces struggled to contain the outbreak.

With the number of his task force dwindling, the Sheriff decided to pull all remaining officers to the town's only hospital and secure it as much as possible.

"Chief!" Mark brought Jimmy back to reality. "What's the plan?"

What a lousy day this turned out to be, Jimmy thought before answering.

To be continued