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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY
By Wayne Webb
Chapter 9.4
“Tom?” Sarah pulled him into the limelight
again, and walked him to the gurney “Take Lisa to the morgue…” Then she added
the instructions, because it was not exactly commonplace to be sending people
to the Clinic’s morgue these days unless you worked in it. “Through the double
doors and take the second elevator to the basement. You’ll find the restraints
there, but just in case…” She handed tom the handheld beacon device that
pacified the undead.
“Thanks.” Tom pulled on the gurney and it
did not move, so he pulled harder and then it stayed in the same spot. There
was a titter of laughter followed by a blush from Tom as he looked to see the
wheels had brakes on them, to prevent the bed from rolling away.
“Let me give you a hand.” Robert piped up,
now looking to align himself after being publically shamed.
“No, need thanks Robert.” Tom raised a hand
to stop the man but Robert ignored him and continued on.
“Come on Tom, let me help, I know my way
around the Morgue. It’s the least I can do.”
“Literally the least.” Sniped Sarah but she
walked away from the two men, and they moved the deceased Lisa together.
“Damn.” James had to get out of the way
pretty quickly now, if it had just been Derek then they could have had a quiet
reunion and be done with it privately. With this annoying extra man that would
make things a little more exposed, difficult.
Not impossible, just difficult.
James walked backwards rapidly and clicked
the button on the lift, the doors opening behind him silently, allowing him to
slip inside and jam at the buttons to close the doors.
Not before the double doors swung open and
he got a full look at Derek, and he got a look at his brother, over the head of
the man who was helping him, walking backwards through the doors and guiding
them to the lift.
James signaled that he would wait for him
down from where they were, that was the most sign language they could manage in
such a short gasp of time and attention. The doors closed before they could get
any more into the small window between them.
Derek pulled the gurney to a stop, making
Robert step backwards on his heels, but also preventing him from turning around
while Derek fussed with the wheels and the table. He did not want the man
seeing the indicator on the lift showing the movement. No one was supposed to
be back here and he did not want to alert the man to any potential things out
of order.
When the lift settled two floors down the
gurney suddenly became more mobile and the two men moved down the linoleum
corridor to call the lift back for their turn.
Derek held his breath as the doors opened,
his arms and legs tensed and ready to do battle with the smaller and older
Robert if his brother had somehow managed to not get out of the lift two floors
below. The doors parted painfully slow
and he was relieved though unsurprised to see the car empty.
The wheels jolted with a loud clang over
the threshold of the elevator and they wheeled the body under the cloth into
the car and clicked on the B for basement level, where they had the morgue for
this clinic.
Derek was still no one the wiser about what
was going on here and why this town seemed to revolve around this facility, but
obviously something connected them to this change in the way the world worked.
Talk of machines and the Cull, it made him suspicious of everyone. The more
mundane and ordinary they seemed on the surface, with their office worker
mentality and the communal night at the cinema, the more he suspected their
motives and the truth of what lay beneath.
The morgue was dark when they got there,
the light only shining out from a few computers and their active screen
savers. Robert hopped off the elevator
and walked immediately to the light switch and flicked it on.
Derek saw his brothers head dip quickly
behind a partition across the room, looking for whatever cover he could find.
Robert saw it out of the corner of his
eyes. “Hello? Is anybody there?”
“Just me?” Said Derek and shrugged his
shoulder’s at Robert, suggesting he had no idea what he was talking about.
“You didn’t see that? Seriously?”
“See?”
“I thought I could…. I don’t know shadows
play tricks on you sometime.” He said this too loud and too bold, he leaned to
be more private to his new friend ‘Tom’
and whispered, “Keep your eyes peeled, just in case.”
“Ok whatever you say!” Derek whispered back
in the loudest most obvious stage whisper he could manage.
“Let’s get her assigned a berth then.”
Robert dismissed his nervousness and relegated what he thought he saw to just
that, something he thought he had seen, rather than what he may have actually
seen. He tapped on the computer, the
screen flaring to life and then scanned through an online manifest and then
started muttering numbers and letters.
“Bee Seven it is then.” He said finally and
the gurney with the Late Lisa on it was wheeled to the section of the wall
where Column B was contained. The seventh berth down from the top, where “1”
was clearly marked was then pulled open and the sheet was lifted from the
corpse.
Lisa was paler and more damaged than Derek
had recalled her being, but she had been through death recently and faced an
animation to living death in the next few minutes.
“One, two…” Robert had one side of the stretcher part of the gurney and on three they heaved their cargo onto the metal tray sticking out from the B 7 bay in the wall of body storage B. She had not yet woken up to zombie life and the next five minutes they spent attaching restraints and cords to the undead body there and securing her for when they thought the rise was coming,
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