Stacie smiled. "I'm really thirsty."

"But you can't have water. In case you have to go into surgery."

"Yeah, but a bucket of ice chips would really hit the spot."

Adam Murray

SO he hadn't exactly told Stacie the truth. Not all of it at least. Nurse Herrick had actually been a little more specific--one of the patients in the ER had apparently injured some people and hospital security was involved. She'd also told Adam to stay in the room and keep the door locked, and as soon as he got back with the ice chips, he planned to do just that.

But Stacie didn't need to know the details. She had plenty on her mind.

He was so proud of her for wanting a natural childbirth. Not that it mattered to him one way or the other, but he thought it showed real bravery on Stacie's part.

He'd been teary all day thinking about holding his son (or daughter--they'd chosen not to know the sex beforehand) for the first time.

After blowing Stacie a kiss, he closed the door to their room and started down the corridor.

Quiet up here on the third floor in this nine-bed maternity ward, and aside from the door to their room, only one other was closed.

He passed the first, heard a woman moaning inside.

The nurses' station stood vacant.

Adam took a wrong turn down a short hallway that dead-ended at the OR. The doors were closed, windows dark.

The hall on the other side of the nurses' station led to a nursery, and across from it, a waiting room and a kitchen.

Both empty.

Adam walked into the kitchen, searched the cabinets until he came to a stack of plastic buckets.

The ice machine hummed in the corner.

As he filled the bucket, he thought he heard those distant pops again over the racket of the falling ice, several floors below.

Back out in the hall, Adam stopped at the big window and peered into the nursery.

Low lit.

None of the glass isolettes was occupied.

His son or daughter would be in there soon.

The doors to the maternity wing swung open and footsteps padded quickly down the hall.

Nurse Herrick emerged around the corner. She was a cute, petite, thirty-something blonde, bit of a cowgirl twang in her voice. He thought he'd seen her at his church before with a seven or eight-year-old boy, but he couldn't be sure.

Adam called out to her.

She stopped and looked at him.

Something was wrong, very wrong--he could see it in her sheet-white face long before he was close enough to notice the speckles of blood that dotted her pink scrubs.

When he reached her, he put a hand on her shoulder--couldn't help himself, comforting was engrained into his nature.

"Carla, what's wrong?"

She shook her head, tears welling.

The ice cracked and settled in his bucket.

"There's been...some kind of outbreak," she said softly, almost too evenly. "It started in the ER, and it's spreading. Fast."

"What do you mean, 'outbreak?'"

She finally met his eyes, and in them, he glimpsed real fear. "People are changing. They're killing each other."

"Where's hospital security?"

"Dead."

Adam quickly turned around. "I have to get Stacie out of here."

He started down the corridor, but Herrick grabbed his arm and pointed back toward the thick, automatic doors she'd just come though, thirty feet beyond the nurses' station.

"That's the only way out, Pastor. You need to understand--the other nurses tried to leave." Her bottom lip quivered. "They didn't make it. I didn't come back up here to help you and Stacie escape. I came back to lock you in, because that's the only chance we have."

Oasis

AS the elevator climbed slowly toward the third floor, Oasis felt like her stomach was turning itself inside out.

She bent over, vomiting up a pile of black bile laced with birthday cake into the corner of the elevator car.

She cried out, mewling like a kitten.

The bell dinged as The car lifted past the second level.

She stared at her arm, and an idea occurred to her--both comforting and horrifying.

She was filled with red candy.

Oasis turned her talons over, stared down at the periwinkle veins running like a highway system under the skin of her forearm.

Her teeth would pass so easily through her skin, it probably wouldn't even hurt. Just a little taste was all she needed. She swore she could smell the blood through her flesh. But what if she loved it too much? What if she didn't want to stop and kept sucking and sucking and--

The bell dinged.

The elevator doors parted.

Oasis crossed the threshold and stepped onto the third floor.

Two bounding strides brought her around the corner into a long corridor of rooms.

A fat, old nurse in purple scrubs had been torn apart twenty feet ahead. Oasis sprinted toward her and buried her face in the open chest cavity like a dog into a bowl of Alpo, but nothing was left. The body held only the faintest scent of red candy.

Oasis stood, big tears trailing down what was left of her face.

She sulked down the corridor, and had just started to think about eating her own arm again when she saw a sliver of light escaping from a room up ahead.

Even as she approached, she could smell it, and when she pushed the door open with one of her black, scythe-like talons, she let out a sharp, involuntary cry of joy.

Jenny

THERE were seven children and three adults in what was called the playroom--an area with several activity tables, a toy chest, and various dry erase boards and easels for watercolors and crayon masterpieces. Running along the far wall was a room-length window, decorated brightly with finger paint. A crudely-drawn bird caught Jenny's eye, its oversized head reminding her of one of the creatures.

When she first became a nurse, pediatrics was her favorite ward. Children, even sick children, had a wonderful innocence about them. They were optimists, even when they were scared and facing death sentences. Though she and Randall had tried, Jenny hadn't become pregnant. If she had, divorcing him would have been so much harder.

She cast a glance at her ex, and saw he was barricading the door they'd entered through, piling chairs and tables against it. Randall...he really seemed to be back to the old Randall. It was almost too much to hope for.

His leg was still bleeding, and Jenny knew she'd have to re-stitch his wound. But first things first. When doing triage, it was important to assess who needed immediate care. She turned her attention back to the sobbing families.

Three of the kids--two boys and a little girl--were sitting with their backs to the window, holding hands. No blood on them, though the boy on the right was bald from chemo. One pre-teen was with an older woman--probably Grandma. They clutched each other tightly, and Jenny wasn't sure who was consoling whom. Another little boy clung to his mom, whose slack, pale expression was an obvious indicator of shock. The last boy, the eldest of them, knelt next to a man, prostrate on the floor, who was bleeding from a neck injury.

Jenny set the bloody hatchet on a table next to some coloring books and hurried to them. The blood pooling around the man was significant. The boy--no more than fifteen--was holding a towel to the man's neck. Before looking at the injury, Jenny checked his radial pulse. The man's skin was cool, sweaty. His face lacked color. Tachycardia--his heart was beating wildly--accompanied by rapid breathing.

Hypovolemia. Stage three or four.

This man was bleeding to death.