In case you haven't seen my book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-72TLaRdE

(A/N: I'm really sorry if the second half of the chapter feels rushed. More was supposed to happen, but I was more focused on getting it done and getting to the ending, and I messed up the order of part 2 and had to restart, so this isn't the greatest chapter ever, but hopefully it gets better)

12. The Hospital

Lottie let go of Ravi, and he slumped down against the wall, leaving a long smear of blood as he slid to the floor. She scrambled back over to Aubrey, grabbing her shoulders and gripping them tight as she tried to shake her awake. She racked her brain, cycling through the mounds of textbooks Ravi had made her read. What were you supposed to do when someone had a fit? Lay them down was step one. Make sure airways are unobstructed. But that might not work. Maybe nothing was working, and Aubrey was gone, and what she was shaking awake was the beginnings of a monster.

She wanted to cry. What was she supposed to do?

She wasn’t a nurse. Not really. She was just a kid in a costume who was good at putting plasters on cuts and saying there there, all better now to whoever was hurt. Come on, Lottie, darling, she thought to herself in the same voice she would use to calm down Marnie or one of the smaller, more easily frightened children on the ward. You can do this. You’ve gotten through harder times. Except she hadn’t. Not on her own. Ravi had always been there to help.

Before her was an anomaly, an illness that had no chapter in the textbooks. A girl who might soon not be a girl anymore, and it was all her fault. There was no protocol for this. Ravi had planned to watch Aubrey change, if that happened, record all the necessary details, then lock her away as he had with his dad, throwing in scraps of meat every night to keep them alive. Not alive. It wasn’t living. To keep them was a more apt description. Like pets. Behind her was someone very much human, bleeding out and in desperate need of stitches. What if saving one meant the other would die? What if saving Aubrey killed them all when she turned, what if…

‘Lottie?’ interrupted Neus. ‘Lottie, stop shaking her so hard.’

She let go of Aubrey’s shoulders immediately. Aubrey lolled forwards, almost tipping herself out of the wheelchair with the momentum. Lottie struggled to push her back in and then looked up at Neus, who was standing there, foam drying on her hoodie.

‘Help me!’

Neus pushed the wheelchair back forward and helped get Aubrey’s limp body back in the seat. Lottie looked back at Ravi, who was pale and unmoving except for the weak and raspy rise and fall of his chest. Seeing him like that, pathetic, useless, bleeding, made a hot and unfamiliar feeling rise in her chest. She didn't have a nice word for it. She wasn't sure she'd ever felt it before, not really, not like this. He was supposed to be the doctor. He was supposed to be the one fixing people, not the one who needed fixing. With a surge of adrenaline, she jumped up and stormed back to him. With a harsh snap, she smacked him across his cheek.

‘Wake up!’ she screamed, slapping him again. ‘Tell me what to do! Please, please, Ravi!’

Ravi stirred, his one eye flickering open. ‘Daddy.’

‘Your daddy is gone!’ she shouted, spit flying from her mouth. ‘Tell me how to save her!’

‘You can’t,’ he lisped. ‘She either turns or she dies.’

‘Then what do I do?’

He raised a hand and pointed weakly at his eye. ‘Fix me. I’ll give you the key to Jack’s room if you help me. Lottie–’ he grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, her face just inches away from the jellied mess that hung from his socket. ‘We need to find him. My dad… my experiment…’ 

A shadow loomed over Ravi, and Lottie felt Neus's hand rest upon her shoulder. ‘Leave him. He’s not worth it.’

‘I can’t just–’

‘Yes, you can,’ Neus said flatly, more like a fact than a comfort. ‘What are you going to do, stitch him up so he can thank you and reward you like a good dog? You can do that later, if he’s still alive. Aubrey might be experiencing her last few moments as a human being, and she’s stuck in a crappy wheelchair. If she does turn–’ she shook her head; her black and red streaked hair falling over her eyes. ‘She should at least be somewhere safe. Somewhere she won’t be able to hurt anyone. Lottie, come on. You’re the one that ran this hospital. The kids down there need you!’ Neus crouched down beside her. ‘Remember that first night, after you and Ravi barricaded the doors? Everyone was crying, and there was blood everywhere. We’d all just seen our parents and friends killed. Do you remember what you did? You started making the beds. You made dinner. You got out a mop, and you mopped the floors. You found the music player and the CDs and the books. You made do. Please please don’t freeze up on me now. I need you!’

Lottie sniffed and nuzzled her head into Neus’ shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You’re stronger than he is. You don’t need his help. We can find whatever key he’s talking about by ourselves. He’ll be lucky to receive such good care when he’s been nothing short of a twisted psychopath,’ she glared at Ravi. ‘So rack that big brain of yours and help me with Aubrey.’

Lottie nodded and wiped her wet eyes, and when she spoke, she tried to put sunshine in her voice as she did for the children. ‘Right, right, okay. Let's get her comfortable, shall we?' she smiled, getting back on her feet. ‘We need to get her onto a bed, get her lying down, make sure nothing is obstructing her airway,’ she recited from memory. 

‘Should we restrain her?’ Neus asked, her voice cracking. ‘In case this is… it?’

‘Yes, for her own safety too, in case she rolls off. Get that gurney, from in there,’ she pointed at the room where not ten minutes ago she had held Aubrey down as Ravi injected the parasite into her, the very reason this was happening. ‘Help me get her on it. We can tie her down.’

Neus wheeled the gurney out. There were pools of blood and gelatinous chunks of sclera from Ravi’s eyeball splattered across it. Lottie swiped them off with her bare hands, wiped the residue on her scrubs, and then helped Neus lift Aubrey onto it. Two fabric straps ran across her body; one across the torso, one across the hips. Another secured her arms down, but there was nothing to keep her feet in place. That wasn’t a problem whilst she was still alive, but would she still be paralysed when… if she turned?

Aubrey fretted, straining against the straps in her sleep. ‘Macey?’ she called out, the word slurred and slow. ‘Mm… m… Ma…’

‘Shh,’ Lottie cupped Aubrey’s face and stroked her thumb across her cheek. ‘It's all going to be okay, darling, I promise you.’

Leaving Ravi passed out on the floor, Lottie and Neus wheeled the gurney through the double doors and back onto the ward, where the shouts of several children could be heard coming from the cafeteria. They quickly pushed Aubrey into an empty ward, leaving her by the window, under the pale moonlight. The possibility that Aubrey might turn into a crawler had never left her mind, and so she quickly ran to the kitchen and grabbed another knife to keep beside her. She hoped she didn’t have to use it.

‘Neus, how would you feel about a promotion?’ she asked, forcing a grin in Neus’ direction.

‘Huh?’

She nodded her head at the noise. ‘You can be my second in command. You know them all so well; go quieten them down, get them back into bed. Marnie will need her vitamins, and Josh will need his inhaler. All kept in the filing cabinet in the corner. Here,’ she chucked Neus a key from her pocket. 

Neus caught the key in one hand. ‘I can’t do it the same as you,’ she said. ‘I can’t do all the smiley stuff.’

‘Then do it the Neus way!’ Lottie said, bustling past her and back into the hallway. ‘I need to help Ravi. You’ll be great. I know you will.’

She hurried back down the corridor and barged through the double doors back to where she left Ravi. Her heart dropped.

He was gone.

There was no way he could get far, she thought, trying to calm herself; he’s too hurt. Yes, too hurt; but also crazy. She worried that he might have tried to escape and go after his dad.

There was a trail of blood, starting with the smear across the wall where she left him and a pool on the floor where he had been sitting, followed by a splatter of small droplets leading towards his office a few feet down the hall. She let out a sigh of relief. Okay, he hadn’t tried to escape. He just wanted to go to his office. 

She approached the door cautiously and knocked three times. ‘Ravi? It’s Lottie. Can I come in?’

There was no response, and then she felt stupid for knocking and pushed the door open, revealing his once neatly ordered office in a state of disarray. Ravi was on the floor, trying to gather up pages that had been strewn everywhere. 

‘Oh, Ravi,’ Lottie said, her heart breaking just a little for him. ‘Come here, let me do that.’

She knelt down beside him and gathered the documents up in one big bunch and stacked them back on the desk. With one arm around his waist, she pulled him up again, her eyes doing a quick swivel around the room to see if she could spot the key to Jack’s room. He would need feeding soon. 

Ravi clocked onto what she was doing and let out a gargled laugh. ‘He’ll die without me, you know that?’

‘Then give me the key.’

‘You left me behind for that girl, that cripple,’ he said, almost toppling over into Lottie as he tried to step away from her support. ‘No, that creature, that’s what she is.’

‘For like, five minutes!’ she defended, keeping her arm tightly around him as she led him out of the office. ‘I came back for you. And you said yourself – we don’t know if she will turn, we don’t–’

‘Fix me,’ he demanded, limping harder now. ‘And I will give you the key.’

‘Is that a promise?’ 

He turned to her, using all his strength to push her against the wall. ‘You don’t believe me?’ he said, bringing his disgusting eye socket close up to Lottie’s face. He pulled out a silver chain from under his white shirt, a necklace that had been hidden around his neck. From the end of it dangled an ordinary brass gold Yale key. ‘I’ve done more for Jack than you have. You think I would jeopardise him now? Fix me, and I’ll give you this, since you’re so ungrateful. You’ll come running back once you realise how hard it is. You’ll kill him if you don’t–’

Lottie pushed him away and grabbed his arm, storming down the corridor and practically dragging him behind her. ‘Just shut up. You’re not in charge anymore. I’m the nurse, and you’re my patient, and you will sit on a bed and let me help you!’

Being loud and angry at him seemed to work. Either that, or he’d remembered just how injured he was. Lottie brought him to the same ward as Aubrey, so she could keep an eye on both. Her tools and medicine were also kept locked away in here, and she opened up the cabinet and grabbed the saline solution, the antiseptic, the gauze swabs, a box of latex gloves and the suture kit. 

Ravi watched her with his eye. ‘Lidocaine?’ he asked, hopefully.

She rummaged through the cabinet again. ‘That’s what I’m looking for.’

‘Morphine?’

‘I’m looking,’ she replied, but there was none left. When the hell had she used the last painkillers up? Had she not been keeping track of them? ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a big, brave boy and go without it.’

‘Fuck you,’ he curled out the words viciously. 

‘Shut up and keep still,’ she said, sterilising the equipment and pulling on the gloves. She pulled up a stool beside his bed and began peeling back the ruins of his shirt. ‘This is going to hurt.’

His shirt had stuck to his cut, and when she tugged it out he winced, squirming under her. She pulled a pair of scissors out of the suture kit and snipped away as much fabric as she could before using some boiled water to ease the rest of the fabric away without ripping it. 

‘You’re doing ever so well,’ she said, more to herself than Ravi.

There were three distinct gouges across his chest. The largest one was just below the ribs, exposing a dark bubbling seam of fat and a peek at the pale, fibrous sheen of muscle beneath. She used a syringe to draw the saline out of the bottle, then slowly squirted it into the wound, tipping Ravi’s body slightly to the side so the liquid ran off him and pooled on the bed, taking small bits of debris and dried blood with it. 

Ravi let out a series of small gasps. ‘It stings!’

‘Well, of course it would,’ she smiled. She felt a little bad about it, but she was really beginning to enjoy seeing him in so much discomfort. She refilled the syringe and repeated the process until she was satisfied the wound was clear, and the bleeding had stopped. ‘Just take a big, deep breath, okay?’

She soaked a gauze pad in the solution and began dabbing gently at the sides of the wound, wiping outwards, towards the edge. When she was satisfied that it was clean, she binned the pad and gloves, and pulled on a fresh pair. That was the easy part done. Next came the stitches. She had stitched up two wounds before. One was a little boy on the ward called Joshua who had gotten into a jar of sugar, ate half of it, then bounced off the walls until he knocked into a table and sliced his knee open. The other was Neus’ arm, just after the initial bloodbath, three months ago, but she had been sworn to secrecy about that. Neither of those wounds were as deep as the ones on Ravi’s chest.

‘Is it too deep?’ Ravi asked, trying to look down at himself.

Lottie pushed him back. ‘I’ll assess that, just stop moving.’

If the wound was too deep, she knew she couldn’t attempt to stitch it. She’d have to pack it and change the dressings accordingly, keeping it clean and away from any dirt or germs. Without painkillers, Ravi would be in agony if he moved. He would also be in agony with the stitches, but they would heal quicker. She inspected the wound again. It was certainly deep and wide. The entire slash ran across his torso, but the deep cut was only five or so inches long, and a little less than an inch wide. The muscle exposure was what was worrying her. She patted the area around the wound dry.

‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ Ravi jeered.

‘Shut up,’ she responded, but he was right, wasn’t he? She looked back and forth between his wound and the suture kit, and then picked it up with a shaking hand. 

‘If I still had both eyes, I could do it myself,’ he said solemnly. Lottie opened up the kit and pulled out the needle and thread. She held both up, then spun around on her stool so that she could hold it up to the light and push the thread through the eye of the needle. Aubrey was still sleeping, twitching slightly.

‘Okay, another deep breath for me,’ she said, then took one herself. She pinched the end of the wound together and pushed the needle through. 

‘Fuck!’ Ravi gasped, grabbing the edge of the table.

‘You’ll be okay,’ Lottie replied. Remember, it’s a ninety-degree angle, she told herself, a few millimetres back from the edge of the wound. Once it was through both sides, she pulled the thread out and knotted the end. This was an uninterrupted suture, she remembered. Each stitch was separate, so if one came undone, it didn’t reopen the whole wound. She did it again, pinching, then pushing, then pulling, then tying, finding a rhythm in it. By the seventh stitch,h the wound had stopped gaping and started, instead, to look like something that might actually heal. The stitches weren’t perfect, but she almost couldn’t believe that her own hands had achieved this. She tied off the final knot, snipped the thread and then taped a folded pad of gauze over the entire wound, smoothing the tape down with her thumb the way she would smooth a plaster over a child's scraped knee.

‘There,’ she said, quickly cleaning out his other wounds, which were more superficial and would just need redressing every day. ‘Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’

‘Jack’ll be getting hungry by now,’ Ravi said through seethed teeth, still evidently aching from his pain. He clasped the key against his chest. ‘You better hurry up and pack my eye, or maybe he’ll die all alone up there.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ she sighed, pulling the gloves off again and pulling on another new pair. She pushed Ravi’s head back and began inspecting his socket. There was nothing left of his eye that actually looked like an eye. What remained of it sat collapsed in the socket, deflated and wrong, torn along the side and then pushed further back where Aubrey had jammed her thumb in. 

‘Ocular penetration,’ Ravi mumbled, his eyelid twitching and trying to blink over something that wasn’t there. 

‘I know what it’s called, thank you,’ she replied, ‘I know it’s called a globe injury, and I know your retina is detached–’

‘There’s no retina left!’ Ravi cried, seemingly woozy from all the pain. ‘There’s nothing left to save.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ she said, turning around and grabbing the saline again. ‘But we can contain it and clean it. Patch it up, give you a cool eyepatch.’

‘Perfect,’ he huffed. ‘I will look like an evil villain.’

‘You are an evil villain,’ she stated, stopping for a second and meeting his eye with hers. ‘Look at Aubrey over there. That’s your proof. Using Jack to blackmail me. Keeping a crawler locked up in a hospital!’

‘I did it all in the name of research,’ he said as she tipped his head forward and sprayed a gentle stream of saline into the socket. ‘With no adults, how else do you expect society to progress? No one else will be looking for a cure. I bet that no one else even knows about the parasites! They’re all too busy running around and screaming and killing the creatures or getting themselves killed to even think about researching what was actually happening!’

‘Not everyone is as lucky as you,’ she said, sending another stream of saline into the socket. ‘Not everyone has access to all this medical equipment and their dad’s research and knowledge.’

Lottie began packing the socket. Sterile gauze first, folded into soft layers and tucked in without pressing. Pressure would have nowhere to go but wrong. Then she packed in a second layer, thicker, to hold the first in place. She looked around for something to tape over the eye to keep the packing secure and not let it get knocked, and all she could find was an empty plastic cup, abandoned on the side. She rinsed it out, sanitised it and then cut the bottom off of the cup and positioned it over his eye.

‘That’s jagged,’ he moaned, so she used the flat edge of the scissors to roughly sand it down before putting it back over his eye and winding a length of bandage around his head to keep the whole arrangement from shifting, finally securing it with some tape. 

‘There,’ she said. ‘How are we feeling?’

‘Tired. Do we have Zopiclone?’

‘There’s some left, yeah.’

‘Get it for me,’ he demanded, holding up the key. ‘And then you can have this.’

She grabbed the box from the cupboard and opened it up, popping one 7.5mg tablet out of the foil wrapper and handing it to him. He swallowed it dry, then took the key from around his neck and handed it to her.

‘You did well,’ he admitted. ‘And Jack doesn’t deserve to be alone. I’m sorry.’

Not wanting to leave him alone with Aubrey before the Zopiclone worked, Lottie quickly hailed Neus from the cafeteria where she seemed to be playing a game of ‘the floor is lava’ with the younger kids, and asked her to keep an eye on him.

‘Sure thing,’ Neus nodded. ‘What are you doing?’

She held up the key with a genuine smile. ‘Seeing my brother.’

***

When Aubrey opened her eyes, she thought for a moment that the whole thing had been a dream. That she had just woken up from her coma after the crash, and everything that had happened in the past two days had been a product of her imagination. Perhaps she would roll over and find her parents standing over her, overjoyed that their only child had pulled through. Maybe Macey would be standing at the end of the bed, tears in her eyes, begging Aubrey to forgive her for the crash. Sunlight was beaming down at her, and she felt warm and happy, as though she would be able to swing her legs over the edge and jump down onto them.

But when she tried to roll over, she found herself stuck down with several restraint straps. She sighed, accepting that it was all real and cursing herself for ever imagining that Macey would apologise. 

‘Hello?’ she called out. Her throat was dry and hoarse, making her sound like a cackling old witch.

There was a soft patter of footsteps, and suddenly Neus’ face appeared, staring down at her. ‘You’re awake!’

‘I am,’ she said. She noticed how pretty Neus’ eyes were. Green with little slivers of gold. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘About twelve hours,’ Neus answered. ‘This means that you’re okay, right? Are you not infected? You’re not going to turn?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aubrey said quietly. ‘Can you release me? I feel like Hannibal Lecter, here.’

One by one, Neus released the straps and then helped prop Aubrey up. Her wheelchair had been parked next to the gurney, always ready for her. ‘I’ll have to get Lottie to help me lift you down.’

It was then that Aubrey noticed him, sleeping in the corner of the room. ‘What’s he still doing alive?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Neus scratched nervously at her neck. ‘Lottie fixed him up. She said she’s in charge now, but I don’t think I’ll feel safe with him here.’

‘No, me neither,’ she said, reaching her hand up to the base of her skull where he’d injected her. There was a small, raised bump. 

‘What did it feel like?’ Neus asked. ‘When you were not turning?’

‘I kept having weird dreams. I was sure I was going to turn into a creature and that I was reliving my entire life in seven seconds or whatever it is they say happens when we die. It was nice. I saw Macey – my cousin. And my friends from school and my parents. But I kept seeing these flashing images of a farm burning down.’

‘A farm?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve never been to any farm.’ She paused and looked down at herself. ‘Jesus, I look disgusting.’ She lifted her arm and smelt the fabric of her blue hoodie. It stank like death, decay and BO. ‘Eurgh. I don’t know the last time I washed.’

‘Here,’ Neus said, pulling off her own hoodie, which was a similar blue to Aubrey’s. ‘I got this for myself when I found your clothes. I’ll wash yours and have that one for myself.’

Aubrey tugged her hoodie over her head and passed it to Neus, then pulled her one on. ‘Thanks. You saved my life, you know. You and Lottie.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You saved ours.’

The door to the ward opened, and Lottie strutted in, a smile plastered across her face and a bounce in her step. ‘Oh my gosh! She’s awake!’ 

‘I am!’ Aubrey beamed back, and then noticed that Lottie was holding something in her arms, a small bundle of blankets. ‘What you got there?’

‘This,’ she said, slowly unravelling the blanket. ‘Is Jack!’

She held up a baby. A tiny baby with chubby cheeks and big blue eyes and a tiny wisp of red hair on his smooth scalp. He made a noise that sounded like a quack and waved his arms around. Aubrey and Neus both stared at him, stunned.

‘Well, say hello!’ Lottie said, passing him over to Aubrey, who reluctantly took a hold of him and cradled him in her arms.

‘Your brother’s a baby?’ Neus quizzed, looking at the baby as though it might bite her. ‘Why was Ravi–’

‘The incubator!’ Lottie said, clearly too eager to tell the story. ‘The backup generator was faulty. He had to keep a close eye on it and on Jack because he was a preemie. He was born four months early. Which means when this all happened, he was still a tiny thing that needed proper medical care. Ravi knew how. He always knows. But he threatened to turn the incubator off, because it was draining all the power. He held that over my head.’

‘The bastard,’ Neus shook her head. ‘I knew there was something going on with your brother. We all thought he was older, that he’d turned and you were keeping him hidden away somewhere like, well, like what Ravi did with his dad. How come you never told me?’

‘I had to protect him. He’s been so fragile; any germs might give him an infection. But look at him now! Healthy and as cute as a button, right, Aubs?’

Aubs. That made her smile. She hadn’t been called that since she was a kid. She was staring down at Jack, studying his tiny nose and rosy lips. She supposed he was kind of cute, but babies were all just mess and sick and nappies. That’s what her parents said, why they never had another child after her. ‘He’s alright,’ she said, handing him back. ‘I’ve, err, I’ve never really liked babies. I don’t think I’ve ever held one before.’

‘Aw, well, I’m glad Jack was your first. You’re gonna be his Auntie Aubrey!’ Lottie said, holding him up to her face and nuzzling against his nose. 

‘How the hell are you going to raise a baby and look after all those kids and nurse and evil junior doctor back to health during the zombie apocalypse?’ Neus laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. 

‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage. As long as I’ve got you two by my side!’

Aubrey felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her entire body ran cold, as though somebody had just walked over her grave. She shivered and tried to shake it off, but the sinking feeling that was growing in her gut made her feel as though something bad was near. She craned her neck around and tried to look out of the window.

‘What’s up?’ Neus said, walking over to the window. 

‘I don’t know. I just like, feel something. Is there anything out there?’

Neus peered through the glass. ‘No, noth– oh, there are a hell of a lot of crawlers out there. Is that what you’re sensing?’

‘Show me,’ she demanded, and Neus pushed the gurney around so Aubrey was facing the window too. At first it looked like nothing, just the same grey city, the same abandoned cars rusting in the daylight. But then the shapes at the edge of her vision resolved into movement, and she could see dozens of crawlers, crawling around like ants. She felt sick. She pressed a hand to the base of her skull again, to the small raised bump where the needle had gone in, and the feeling sharpened, like something behind her eyes had turned to look at the same thing she was looking at. Her vision seemed to focus incredibly, and it was like she could sense every tiny movement down there. She could feel the claws against the concrete, the wind against exposed flesh, the sun in their eyes. They were heading down the road; she could feel that they had spotted a meal. Why could she feel that? Why had she known they were there? The base of her skull was throbbing, harder and harder, and she felt like she was going to be sick. 

Neus peered at her, and then shot Lottie a worried look. ‘She’s gone a funny colour.’

Lottie ran over to her, hugging Jack close to her chest. ‘Aubrey? What’s wrong?’

‘I think I can feel them,' Aubrey whispered, staring intently at the road. Her eyes suddenly flicked a little further down the road, as though she had sensed movement, or fresh meat. Her stomach tensed. She wanted to cry. There was a black jeep, as small as a beetle in her vision, stationary in the middle of the road. Squinting, she could just about make out the shapes of people inside it. ‘A jeep. With kids in it.

‘Look at me,’ Lottie said, tipping Aubrey’s head towards her own. ‘Your pupils are dilated. Let me take your pulse.’ She pushed two fingers into Aubrey’s wrist. ‘Way too fast.’

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped. Jack started to cry. She dropped her head into her hands. It was all too much.

Neus grabbed Lottie's arm without looking away from Aubrey. 'Forget her pulse. Look where she's looking. There are people down there that need help!’

Below, a boy's arm punched up through the sunroof, fingers splayed against the sky.