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Chapter 32


“It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark.
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart.
You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it.
You start to freeze, as horror looks you right between the eyes.
You're paralyzed…”

“Darkness falls across the land. The midnight hour is close at hand.
Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize y'all’s neighborhood…”

“And though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver,
For no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller…”


For anyone reading this who doesn’t know where those quotes come from, you’re completely uneducated in music. Maybe you came after 4/15, though, so I’ll educate you. Those are part of the lyrics of one of the most genius songs in pop music history. (Before 4/15 ended it and made us start over, anyway. I don’t use the other name; Brian is the one who uses it the most. It’s too long – 4/15 is easier.)

But back to the song… The song is “Thriller,” sung by the most infamous Michael Jackson. He had a lot of hits, but damn nothing ever topped “Thriller,” though I gotta say “Billie Jean” came close. That’s a whole ‘nother can of worms though.

So why am I discussing “Thriller”? Good question. It’s because on the night of 4/15, I woke up to a horribly bad imitation of the 80s music video that changed music indefinitely. There were armies of the undead, but there was no dancing, there was no music, and the 80s version of Michael Jackson was nowhere to be found.

The worst thing was, unlike watching it on the internet (or on TV when it got aired around Halloween)… I couldn’t shut it off. It was horrific; it was real, yet…

I still heard the song playing in my head the entire time.

Funny what shock can do to a person, isn’t it?



Sunday, April 15, 2012
3:33 a.m.


There wasn’t anything that could have woken him up, he later realized, when thinking back on that day. There was no one to disturb his peaceful rest, no touches to jolt him out of sleep, no poking or prodding. He wondered, later, what could have woken him up and never found a truly rational explanation. But awaken he did. His blue eyes shot open and absorbed the stark, white lighting in his room.

Nick looked to the TV, but it wasn’t working. There was no noise, except for the standard beeping of the monitors next to him. He groaned as he slowly rose in his hospital bed and took a good look around for the first time in two days. He didn’t remember much of the past weekend. The last crystal clear memory he had was of getting into a stupid bar fight when he was getting drunk. After that, it was a mixture of fuzzy images and memories of sleeping on and off in the hospital for two days straight.

He glanced at the other bed in his room and saw that his “roommate” was sleeping, so he tried to stay quiet. Nick was curious why he couldn’t hear anything except the monitors, but wasn’t terribly bothered by it. Staring at the cords hooked to him, Nick ripped out his IV, not needing it anymore, but wincing at the slight pain it caused. Following along came the other wires, pasted along his chest to monitor him. Hopefully, it would get someone’s attention and bring them down there quicker. He stretched again and got off his bed, wanting to do anything but lie down. It was the cool air hitting his behind which reminded him that all he was wearing was a hospital gown. With a swift tug that carried the curtain around his bed for privacy, he decided to hunt down his real clothes.

Spotting them in a bag beside his bed, he happily grabbed them and changed. Maybe he could find a way to finally check out of there. He wasn’t sure how bad his injury was, but he felt fine now. Surely, they’d be okay with him leaving. After changing, he tossed the hospital gown aside on his bed and decided to take a peek into the hall. If he could get a nurse’s attention, she could send whoever was supposed to be watching him over and hasten his escape.

Nick had never liked hospitals. Hospitals and Nick had never meshed well. He’d always gotten nervous in them and had just bad feelings about them altogether. It was a completely illogical fear that gripped his chest anytime he was forced to be in a hospital, but it had always been there and never faded, as he’d hoped it would after he grew up. His logic always went to the fact that this was supposed be a place of healing, but more people died than lived on in hospitals. He wanted to get out soon, before something else happened to him.

Scowling at the ridiculous notion, he chuckled at himself. His mother always said things like that, always pessimistic, always critical. After years of striving to cut out all the bad parts she had ingrained in him, he got annoyed when some notions of hers flared up in him. He never wanted to be anything like her. He wanted to be himself; he wanted to be Nick – happy, optimistic, comfortable-with-himself Nick. It’d been harder since he had returned to Florida, though.

Nick ran a hand through his hair and debated going to find a bathroom to try and fix it. No, he decided; that could wait for later. He stepped out into the hall and was shocked to find it completely empty. That was, until he looked again and saw that he was wrong. It wasn’t empty. It was just didn’t have anyone alive in it. There were plenty of people, looking like bundles upon the floor, until you looked closer and saw that, instead, they were bodies.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, the first words he’d uttered aloud since he’d woken up. Nick ran down the hall, checking rooms as he did. Everywhere he went, he found the same thing: bodies, corpses, all covered with some type of purple sores and vomit, their eyes open and unblinking.

Again and again and again, he kept up his pace, checking every room he found. There had to be someone alive in there. He couldn’t be alone. This was a hospital, for God’s sake. His long-running fears about hospitals were supposed to be wrong and irrational. They weren’t supposed to actually happen.

“HELLO? Can anyone hear me!?” he bellowed. His voice echoed within the halls. He waited, but no response. He kept walking. Nick had no idea where he was in Tampa General and decided the first thing was to figure that much out, so he could get the hell out. Then, maybe, he could find out just what exactly was going on. A light above him was flickering sporadically, and that was the final touch in completing the creepy, horror film stereotype in his head.

“Hello? Is there anyone here who can hear me?” Nick called out yet again.

He kept hope alive in his idea that, perhaps, he might actually find someone who wasn’t dead, but his search continued to prove fruitless. All these patients, the doctors, the nurses, all of them, had been dead at least a day. How had this happened? Had this all gone down while he’d rested, obliviously, in his bed? Could all this really have happened within a day? He tried to will his mind to remember something, anything, to help him try to figure it out.

“Alright, Mr. Carter, how are we feeling today? Apparently, that little bar brawl of yours did more damage than we thought…”

He sighed. No images; just a fragment. Nick wished he could focus enough to try and picture the doctor who’d said that to him, but nothing came. That had been on the first day. Wait, what day was it? He pulled out his cell phone, which had a four-day lifespan before it died, if it had been fully charged.

Damn, glad I charged it on Thursday, he mused. The phone read April 15, 4:00 a.m. He blinked. It was Sunday morning? He had been hoping he’d been wrong about being in there, sleeping mostly, for two straight days. Apparently not.

“Okay Nick, think. You get smacked with a damn bar stool, and you end up here on… um…” He thought for a moment. “Friday morning. Okay, and the bastard did some damage, ’cause you stayed here for two days, sleeping and shit. Maybe one day…” He looked around again, reminded that all the doctors, nurses, everyone responsible for saving lives, had failed in the most epic of ways. “… and then, the second, everyone ran… or died…” He started walking again. “Need to find a way out of here…”

Soon came the sight he had been looking for. Simple, welcoming, and inviting elevator doors greeted him like an old friend. He only hoped the thing worked. Running over, he slammed his fist against the elevator button for ‘down.’ He wasn’t sure where he was, but he obviously wasn’t on the first floor.

“This Hospital of Horrors is giving me the fucking creeps,” he muttered, as the doors opened. His eyes went up to the light above the elevator, and finally, he learned where he was: the third floor. Nick wasn’t sure if stepping onto the elevator was the brightest of ideas, considering, so far, the place was empty. He could get trapped inside with no one to hear him. At the same time, he wasn’t thrilled about the idea of hunting down the stairs, so he stepped inside and hit the button for the main lobby.

There was no elevator music, no noise even then, with the exception of the whirring of the elevator as it descended. It pinged once it reached level two and then stopped. Raising a brow, he stared, as the door opened a floor too early. He stepped out. His senses were on high alert. Obviously, something didn’t feel right, but that wasn’t what had his attention. No, this was something different.

What came next, his reactions, he could only attribute later to pure instinct.

A sore-covered, pale, gray hand lunged for his throat, and only seconds before he dived down and rolled out of reach. Standing again, he breathed heavily for a moment and got a look at his attacker before it groaned and reached for him again.

“What. The. FUCK?!” he yelled. It looked like a doctor. Well, like it had once been a doctor. The eyes were cloudy, unfocused, unblinking. The mouth was slack and emitted no noise. It began to make its way towards Nick, not actually walking; it was more like a dragging shuffle, lacking any type of true coordination.

Then, once he realized what he was actually facing, he began to panic. He turned and ran blindly down the hall, not caring even slightly about where he was going, at that point. A glance back showed the creature following him at a slow and haunting pace. It moaned loudly as it began its chase, the noise echoing throughout the halls. Once a comfortable distance away, Nick paused and bent over to catch his breath.

“Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Get it together, Nick. Just… just because… you’re in a hospital, where everyone’s dead, and now… now…” He shook his head. No, it couldn’t be real. Had to be a dream. What else could it be? Nick pinched his arm sharply. “OW! Damn it. Okay, it’s real… I just… I just saw a zombie.”

The moan came once again, and it wasn’t far off. He glanced around hurriedly. “Need to kill it. Need to get the hell out of here. Weapon, weapon, who’s got a weapon?” He pushed crash carts aside, shoved everything out of his way, and slammed his fist against the wall, letting out a long string of curses. Then he looked above his head and gave another silent Thank you, Lord when he spotted it. A red, glass case was fixed upon the wall. The glass read, Use in Case of Emergencies. He grabbed a small device from the crash cart he had shoved aside before and hurled it at the case. The glass shattered. Carefully reaching in, Nick pulled out a long and deadly sharp axe, ready to wield it when necessary.

“I’m either fucking crazy, this is somehow a dream, or I’m in some horror flick come to life.” He was talking to comfort himself, trying to settle his nerves with the sound of his own voice. However, nothing could calm him now.

The moment came only seconds later, when the previously-encountered, undead doctor came back again to greet him. Nick gulped. He wasn’t ready for this. This didn’t seem real. By all rights, it shouldn’t be real. It was like he’d woken up in an alternate dimension or something. Some part of his mind wished he had, and then he’d have a chance of escaping this hell. He was frozen in fear, unable to move the way he knew he should.

The zombie grabbed for his neck, but, thanks to Nick’s quick motion, was only able to get his shirt. The mouth opened, a putrid smell escaping, along with yet another groan. Nick took the precious seconds he had and swung the axe as roughly as he could at the creature’s neck. The head flew off into the air, landing atop another body, and the grip it had on Nick released, as the headless corpse fell.

Nick released ragged breaths, and despite the cool air, beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. He wiped his brow, staring down at his handiwork and then at the axe still held in a death grip in his hand. The blade was spotted with brown blood, and when his gaze shifted downwards, he noticed it was on his shirt, as well.

“I need to get out of here.” He ran, looking for any signs of stairs. He certainly wasn’t going near the elevator again, after what had just happened. Once he saw the sign pointing the way to the stairs, he almost wanted to cheer, as he headed that direction.

He was only a few feet away when he heard the noise that made his own blood run cold. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” A long moan, followed by a harmonic chorus of the same sound, that seemed to be stemming from the depths of Hell. He had not one iota how many had just made that sound, and he couldn’t care less, as the noise came around the corner, drifting in his direction.

“Cause this is Thriller! Thriller night… and no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike… Thriller! Thriller night…you’re fighting for your life inside a killer… thriller…” he sang shakily, a pure nervous reaction when his eyes took in the dozen zombies headed his way. Nick’s mind raced for a plan. There was no way he’d be able to take them all alone. He needed something to delay them even more. He needed a window of time to get away and out of sight.

Nick’s thoughts went back to everything he’d learned about zombies in horror movies. He had no idea how much of it was true, but it seemed best, for the moment, to act like all of it was and learn what wasn’t later. One of the things he knew was that if he could get out of sight, they would forget about him, and he could manage to escape. He needed a plan, and his eyes skipped around endlessly, in search of anything that could help him.

He brightened when he saw the fire extinguisher hanging upon the wall. “Thank you, fire safety.” It would be the second time he’d been saved by emergency fire setups. Gripping the extinguisher fiercely, he waited for them to get a bit closer, so the impact would be stronger. He stared at the beings headed his way, all doing the exact same, awkward, dragging shuffle, all of them staring with milky eyes and slackened jaws. The smell that hit him was intense, and he was forced to repress his urge to vomit. They were patients, they were doctors, and they were nurses…

It hit him then, just as he pulled the handle on the extinguisher, grunting as it thrust him backwards. The zombies were shot back in brute force. The spray made some of them tumble back onto the others. They all fell down like nothing more than dominos. They toppled like bowling pins. He tossed the empty extinguisher aside, but the realization slammed into him.

They had all been victims of whatever had killed them. All had had those purple sores he’d seen on every corpse he’d encountered. Leaving that chilling thought for later, he bolted down the stairs, battle axe in hand and ready to go. He needed to get out of there. He could figure everything out later. First, he had to live.

He reached the ground floor and was able to see the lobby from where he was standing, by the ER rooms. There were more bodies there than anywhere else, he noticed, except maybe the morgue. A place he definitely did not want to go.

He picked up his pace, running to the lobby. He couldn’t stick around any longer; it was obvious Nick would be dead mighty quickly if the bodies down there began to rise. Outnumbered and doomed would be the ultimate understatement if that happened. He skidded to a stop, just beyond the help desk. A creature rose to greet him. Before it could even moan, Nick swung around his axe, slamming it directly into the top of its skull. Congealed, brown, gooey blood sprayed into the air from the force of the blade, and the body slumped to the ground.

He reached down to grab the axe, pulling it forcefully out of the now shattered skull. Nick heard another groan about to greet him. Leaving no time to think, he ran for the doors. Bursting through them, he took one last look back, before running fearfully out into the night.

***