The Last Alive

Chapter Two - Infection Overload

"Get out of here!" he shouted at me.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know." He came toward me.

"Can I help with something?"

"Are you staff?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No."

"Then no. Just, please, for your own good get away from here," he pleaded.

"I don't understand..." I started.

"I shouldn't tell you this, but we have a nurse who has lost it. She's biting everyone, and I have never seen anything like it."

My face dropped. "Were you bit?"

"No, this is blood from everyone else."

"Others were bit?" I looked toward the busy room.

"Yes."

"How many?" I asked.

"I'm not sure." He shook his head wiping his hands on his pants.

"Is the nurse Rose?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"She was my sister's nurse," I whispered.

"Was?" His piercing blue eyes met my own green ones.

"Yeah, my sister is kind of dead."

"Kind of? Stop being cryptic. If it's something that can help here, tell me!" he shouted, grabbing onto my shoulders. He moved them a little too late. I looked at my shirt and saw the bloody handprints. "Sorry. I'll pay for a new shirt."

"My sister, Becca, was dead. Now she's undead." I ignored his offer to pay for the shirt.

"Wait, what?" The poor man looked even more confused and flustered.

"She died. Now she's not dead. She's, well, just come with me and I'll show you."

"I can't leave this mess right now."

"Get Rose strapped to a bed, that's all you're going to be able to do; same thing with everyone who was bit."

He stared at me like I had a horn growing out of my forehead and a third eye.

"Trust me," I said.

"Trust you? I don't even know you!" he yelled, pushing past me and searching the cart that was next to the desk.

"Doctor whatever-your-name-is, you have a serious problem on your hands right now. Everyone who was bit is going to turn into an undead biting, eating machine."

"I don't have time for this." He pushed past me with a container of needles and tubes.

"You need to make time for it, doc! You are going to have a serious epidemic on your hands very, very soon."

He paused and glared at me. I knew it was insane for him to even consider my crazy notion. Zombies? Really? If I hadn't seen Becca I wouldn't believe me either. He turned and walked back down the hall. He pulled aside one of the guards and asked him for something because the guard took off running down the corridor. I waited and watched. The group of doctors and nurses struggled with the woman. I could hear her growls and snarls. People screamed, I would have to assume, each time they were bit. Worry and fear bubbled in my belly.

How many are there now? Are they all infected? How fast are they turning? Can this be contained? What if it turns into some epidemic? What if the disease means the end of the world? I shouldn't have joked about zombipocalypses all the time.