Day 341 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 5.2 - (1,105 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 5.2

The room was spinning underneath him as his eyes closed, it was as if he had been on a boat all day and his equilibrium had adjusted so much that land felt like it was in constant motion too. The dizzy swaying sensation was too much to bear and he felt a little sick so he opened his eyes, figuring her could sleep later.

“You’re awake?” Came a voice, not one he recognized and then his vision adjusted to the change in circumstances. He had thought that his eyes were closed for mere seconds, but the room was now full of people, including the father and son that they had lost sight of, and a handful of other people. The small room was crowded now and it was like the appeared from nowhere.

“Was I asleep?” James asked even though logically he understood that he must have been, but he could have sworn it was only a few seconds, but it must have been minutes or longer.

The walls were vibrating with the heavy wind and there was a low rumble as the storm railed at the boxes they lived in, trying to tear them open, crack them like eggs. James held out a hand and placed it on the wall next to where he was lying, and then seeing that he was no longer on the floor at all. He was on the bed where he had laid the girl with the dislocated shoulder, and she was nowhere to be seen.

James looked around quickly; wondering how much else had changed. “Where is she?”

“In the bedroom resting, actually I was surprised you did not wake up when we put her shoulder back in to place, it was not quiet.” The woman speaking had moved into his personal space with authority and an air of professionalism, James partially recognized her as the Doctor in this part of the City.

“I don’t … um who are … what’s happened?” James was confused, he had lost an hour or more maybe, it was hard for him to know. The time shift was disconcerting and interfering with his perspective for processing information.

“Look straight ahead, and …” the woman was trying to look into his eyes with an ophthalmoscope, the little light it gave off flickering in his eyes as he tried to look around it. “Eyes front!” The woman snapped her fingers with a violent crack of skin against skin to get his attention.  “That’s better, now to the left. Left!” Her commands became more pointed and definitive, she was not taking her time or letting him adjust to whatever it was she was dong.

“I…” James started to say, but was unsure where he was going, he just felt the need to object. As his eyes adjusted and he followed the light as she looked into his yes, then the nauseating feeling started to dissipate and the seasickness subsided.

“Look at this, you can see it!” the woman said excitedly and pulled across one of the others crowded behind her and held out the device, with an enthusiastic grin on her face.

“Where?” the younger person asked and looked in at James’s eyes, issuing a similar set of commands, “Look ahead… left… right…. and ahead again.” while he was looking intently into James’s face with the ophthalmoscope. “Oh yes, there they are, I can see!” The excitement was now high in his voice as it had been with the doctor.

“What? What are you talking about? What can you see?” James said in a confused voice.

“Nothing, nothing we’re just looking at the effects of concussion on the … on the human eyes, and all the … it’s just a good teaching moment, there are not any medical schools left now are there” The doctor neatly skirted answering the question and he knew she was trying not to say what she was really doing, which made James even more suspicious. 

He tried to stand up but the dizzy feeling while it had lessened, it was still there and the vertical motion made it slightly worse, like he was fighting his own body’s will to stay seated or preferably horizontal. James shook his head and smacked the side of his temples to try and shock himself back into an even keel, blinking through the feelings as quickly as he could.

Something was going on, and he was being kept out of the loop, a knowledge that had been there since he had met Ben and his party, something that Derek had seen and mistrusted immediately. He would get to the bottom of it when he could, but maybe not right now when he was so out of sorts and other people were in danger.

“How is she, I’m sorry I don’t know her name, or her mothers or … yours?” He pointed in a general arc at all of the people in the room as he did not technically know anyone, only the doctor looked familiar, and that was without a name.

“Don’t worry about that, just get some rest.” The Doctor who’s name he still did not know just pushed him lightly backwards and sent him tumbling to the bed, his eyes closing as he did so. Inexplicably he was more tired after his previous nap than he thought he was and he could feel consciousness slipping away.

“What’s that?” he asked as out of the corner of his closing eyes he saw the sound device they were using to corral and control the Zombies was on the table, and the light was pulsing a green hue, different from the red glow that the barrier sticks gave off. James was closing his eyes to sleep when he saw a hand pick up the stick and fiddle with the knobs on it, changing the light from green to blue and then his eyes snapped shut like a closing curtain.

He opened them almost straight away, like he had willingly closed them because he was so tired and stressed by the nights events, but as much as he needed the sleep James could not sleep and so he opened his eyes again.

He was not in the house and he was not alone here at all. He had been moved and was now in some kind of hospital ward, not in the village but in a fully lit and functional hospital ward with a gaggle of others in beds and robes. He was in hospital with the lights and amenities that he had never seen in the City, and now he was living in a museum.