After the storm - part one
Luke is so tired he hardly makes it out of the bed when the alarm goes off at 6am. Over the past three weeks, he´s been travelling from one Grimaldi office to another, and right now, he isn´t even sure which town he´s in.
He thinks it´s Seattle, but for all he knows it could just as well be San Francisco or Los Angeles. The only thing he does know is that he´s getting damn tired of hotel rooms by now and he would do anything to be home, in his own bed, and to be able to stay there for a whole day. He rubs at his eyes and forces his body to roll out of the bed and stumbles into the bathroom.
He heads for the shower when he sees the post-it note stuck to the bathroom mirror, which says “GO RUN!” in his own messy handwriting. He groans and contemplates ignoring it, but he recalls his phone call to Casey the week before and how his friend had said that if Luke ever were to get a boyfriend he needed to stay in shape, and Luke hadn´t done any training at all in the last few weeks. Not that he needs it either, his body is in fairly good shape, but Casey had insisted that after you turn twenty five, everything you eat goes straight to your hips, and apparently nobody likes love handles.
Sometimes Luke thinks Casey is gayer then he is.
But he turns around and walks back in the room, pulls on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and heads for the door, cursing Casey the whole time.
It´s chilly outside and Luke shivers when the cool March breeze hits him, but at least it isn´t raining, which is something to be grateful for. He checks the name of the hotel when he´s outside, so he´ll know where to come back in case he gets lost. It wouldn´t be the first time it had happened, he´s ashamed to admit, but he recognizes the hotel and the surroundings outside and is pleased to see he was right, he is indeed in Seattle. He turns around and heads east, thankful that it´s still early enough for the streets to be somewhat empty.
Luke isn´t particularly fond of running and only does it when there´s no other option, like when he´s on business trips, but it´s surprisingly easy to get into the rhythm of it. He´s a few blocks down when he realizes that not only did he forget his iPod, which is bad enough, he also forgot his room key. Thankfully, he´s stayed here so many times by now that most of the hotel staff recognize him.
He´s so caught up in his own thoughts that he doesn’t see the car approaching when he crosses the street. When he does see it, it´s already too late, and almost as in slow motion he hears the screaming brakes and sees the terrified face of the man behind the wheels. His last thoughts before getting hit is, is that he´s already done this once, and then there´s pain everywhere before his whole world goes black.
***
The first thing he registers is the smell.
Luke has spent enough time in hospitals to recognize the distinct hospital smell, something between antiseptic and disinfectant which smells like plain alcohol. He hated it as a child and no matter how many flowers or air fresheners his mother had put in his hospital room back then, it could never completely erase the smell. When he got older and had a kidney infection that nearly killed him he found another reason for disliking the smell. Turns out he still hates it, even though it’s been over five years since the last time he was in a hospital. There´s machines beeping and he feels a hand on his arm and a voice he doesn’t recognize is talking to him but for some reason he can´t decipher the words. He tries to open his eyes or move his arms but his body doesn´t respond at all and he wonders what he´s gotten himself into this time. For a fleeting second, he fears he´s been drinking again but then he remembers the car that hit him and his last thought before everything goes dark again is that he really hopes he isn´t dying because his mother would never forgive him if he did.
He isn´t sure if he´s dreaming or if he´s moving in and out of consciousness but sometimes he thinks there are people around him, talking with soft voices and there´s always the sounds and the smell to let him know where he is. One time he thinks he hears screaming and shouting, which is something that most definitely doesn´t belong in a hospital, but then he drifts off again.
***
The second time he wakes up, his thoughts are clearer. He´s not sure that he´s still in a hospital though, because while the room still smells faintly of disinfectant, there´s another smell that’s emerged that reminds Luke more of urinals than anything else. He tries to open his eyes and while his eyelids are heavier than usual and his vision´s cloudy at least he´s able to see.
He´s clearly in a hospital room.
He raises his hands to rub at eyes and is relieved when his muscles obey him. Another sign that something isn´t right is the silence. He eyes the machines beside him and sees that they´re turned off, which is weird since he´s connected to god knows how many of them. He still has a needle in his hand but the IV bag is empty and when he manages to sit up he sees that his drainage bag for the catheter is broken and there´s urine all over the floor. He frowns and feels slightly embarrassed, but at least that explains the smell.
He pushes the call button to his right, but it doesn´t make a sound nor does it light up as it should. He removes the needle in his hand and is surprised to see how much it´s bleeding. He quickly presses the sheet against it and searches for something to wrap around it. There´s a bandage on the bedside table and he clumsily wraps it around his hand to stop the bleeding.
Then he takes a deep breath and pulls out the catheter while wincing slightly at the uncomfortable pain. He slowly stands up, careful not to step in any of his own pee, because gross. It takes almost a whole minute of steady breathing until the dizziness goes away and he can let go of his shaky grip on the bed frame and walk over to the wardrobe. It´s not very surprising that the only thing in there is his running shoes and hospital clothes, considering he´s been hit by a car, his own clothes must be ruined. So, he puts on the ugly green pants but decides to skip the robe he´s wearing for a long-sleeved shirt.
The pants are almost too loose and he realizes he´s lost some weight which makes him wonder how long he´s been out. But more than anything, he’s wondering where the hell all the doctors and nurses are? Finally dressed, he walks over to the door, pushes it open and walks out of the room and what greets him is a complete mess.
There´s wheelchairs and food trays and abandoned beds spread out all over the corridor of his room, and if Luke didn´t already have a feeling that something was wrong he would now. Because, in his experience, no matter how busy hospitals were, they wouldn´t look like this. And where are all the people? He moves rapidly towards the exit sign, because this scares him more than he likes to admit and he thinks that if he just can make it down to the reception, they can explain to him what´s happening.
Sadly, Luke soon discovers that he´s on the third floor and since the electricity doesn´t seem to work he has to take the stairs. There´s fifty-six steps to get to the first level and when he´s finally at the bottom, he´s so exhausted that he has to sit down and rest. He has no idea how many days he´s been out but since there´s no obvious bruising on his body, he fears it´s longer then he´d like. He should have checked his journal, but there´s no way he´s climbing all those stairs again. He can´t help but wonder why he´s family isn´t here. He didn´t give them his complete schedule when he left but surely the Grimaldi office would have called to let them know he hadn´t showed up where he should have. Or was the Seattle office one of those he was going to give a surprise visit to? That could’ve meant errors in communication.
Luke can´t remember and it shouldn´t really matter, at least the hospital should have contacted his family when he came in. Unless of course, the hospital didn´t know who he was, seeing as Luke distinctly remembers having no personal information at all on him when he went out for a run. Not even his hotel key.
Luke groans and shakily stands up; his mother must be worried sick by now and Luke has to call her immediately. He walks out to the reception and is both surprised and not surprised to find it empty. The mess is even worse here, there´s papers all over the floor, covered in something brown that looks like dried blood, but that can´t be the case, can it? He walks towards the reception desk and when he´s there he lifts the phone intent on calling his mother but the phone line seems to be dead, no dial tone heard. He finally gives up and decides to leave the hospital sure that he needed to know exactly what is going on.
But first, he´s going to destroy the soda machine next to the reception desk and bring as many sodas he can carry with him, because now that he sees it, he´s so thirsty he has no idea how he managed to function this long without something to drink. He doesn´t likestealing nor destroying hospital property, but when he´s back home he´ll pay them back and make a hefty donation.
After he´s downed two sodas and found a bag to put five others in, he heads for the exit but gets sidetracked by a newspaper lying on the floor. It´s ‘The Times’ and he only picks it up to check the date but the headline stops him.
THE END IS HERE? is printed in large, bold letters and Luke sits down on the floor to read it. He isn´t sure what he´s reading though, because this feels more like a terrifying joke than reality. According to the article, all the larger cities in the country have been infected with a weird virus that makes dead people alive again. There´s a blurry photo of what Luke thinks is a man kissing a woman’s neck and another of the same man walking straight forward with his arms raised but Luke has no idea what that´s supposed to show. He can´t help but wonder if he somehow got hold of a fake newspaper, but he puts it in his bag with the sodas and walks out of the hospital.
When he gets outside, fear creeps up his spine and he realizes that the newspaper wasn´t lying. He´s been to Seattle many times before but never did it look like this. There are more papers spread out on the ground and abandoned cars on the roads, some of them with their doors still open. What used to be a quite busy street is now an empty one, no people, no life. He forces out a raspy “Hello?” in his clearly unused voice a few times but no one answers. There´s nothing, not even a bird or a stray dog and Luke needs to take a few deep breaths to steer the panic away. He pinches his arm hard, but no, he´s not dreaming, this is really happening. He looks around, trying to decide where to go when he sees the church right across the road and almost sighs with relief.
Churches have always been considered to be a refuge of sorts and he hopes he´ll find someone in there who can help him. Or at least someone who is alive.
Luke´s never been good at being alone and the thought of being the only person alive in Seattle is too terrifying to imagine. The second he opens the door to the church it’s the smell that hits him. It´s excruciating sickly and even though he immediately knows what he´s going to find inside, he still needs to see it to believe it, he can’t help himself. He takes a few deep breaths and tries to cover his nose and mouth with his shirt sleeve before entering. It´s dark inside and it takes a while before his eyes adjust, but when they do he can´t help but wish he would have walked away instead, because the sight that greets him is like something that’s sprung up out of a horror movie.
The floor is covered in blood and something else he suspects, but doesn´t really want to think that they are rotting human body parts. He briefly wonders what kind of virus could have done something like this; it looks more like a massacre than anything else, and that´s when he sees them. The first three rows on the right side is full of people, there has to be at least thirty people lying or sitting on the benches and even though he logically knows they have to be dead, his mouth opens anyway.
“Hello?” His voice is muffled and barely more than a whisper in the quiet church so he reluctantly removes his arm and tries again. “Hello? Is there anyone alive?”
He feels somewhat ridiculous since he doesn´t really expect an answer so when he sees a few people moving he takes a quick step back. Everything inside of him screams that this is wrong, it´s not possible that these people are actually alive and well and he should turn around and run, but then one of them stands up and Luke can’t help but freeze on the spot.
Luke doesn´t know many people in Seattle and he´s never been much of a church goer but whenever Damian insisted in joining him on his trips here, he´d always wanted Luke to attend at least one service with him. Luke always found it quite hypocritical, as if going to church would somehow make Damian´s somewhat questionable business methods more acceptable, but he had spent enough time in church to know the priest’s names and this is without doubt Father Stevens, Damian´s favorite preacher.
“Father?” He asks with a shaky voice that he almost doesn´t recognize as his own.
The priest makes an awful sound, something between a growl and a shout and it doesn’t sound human at all, before he starts moving towards Luke. His gait is jerky and reminds Luke of something out of the numerous zombie-movies Casey forced him to watch when they were younger.
To be honest, Luke had never really enjoyed them so when his mom forbid him to watch them, probably because she´d grown tired of him waking up screaming from nightmares every night, he had felt relieved more than anything else. Casey had been disappointed though, and when Luke came out a few years later, Casey had teased him mercilessly and blamed Luke´s ‘gayness’ for his delicate senses.
The closer Father Stevens gets, the more Luke wishes this was one of those nightmares and for a fleeting second he contemplates closing his eyes and scream in the hopes of waking up safe in his own bed, but he´s too terrified to actually do it. When the priest is only a few feet away from him Luke gets a clearer look at his face.
His mouth is bloody and his jaw keeps moving like he´s chewing on something, and there is a thought Luke quickly pushes away, but the most terrifying thing is his eyes. They´re completely bloodshot, and not in the really bad hangover way either, it actually looks like they´re bleeding while his pupils are more white then black. It´s the most horrendous thing Luke has ever seen and when the priest reaches out to grab a hold of him, Luke finally springs to action and swings the bag that is full of soda cans, at his head.
Apparently, lying in a coma for God knows how long seriously weakens your muscles, so while Luke actually succeeds in hitting the priest, the only thing it accomplishes is another one of those awful growls, so there´s nothing left for Luke to do than turn around and run as fast as he can.
He runs aimlessly and tries to think of a place where he can hide safely, but comes up with nothing. A quick glance over his shoulder confirms his suspicion that he´s being followed. There´s at least eight people behind him, with Father Stevens firmly in the lead, and to Luke´s horror they are pretty damn fast. The zombies in the movies were always ridiculously slow and when he wasn´t busy trying to discreetly hide under a blanket, he had found it somewhat amusing that no one ever managed to outrun them.
Now though, with his heart beating way too fast and the sudden trouble with his breathing, he realizes that if he doesn´t find shelter soon he´s not going to make it. His body is too weak, and they´re way too fast. He runs past a gas station, where all the windows are smashed and scans the buildings around him.
“Over here!” someone shouts and Luke makes a sharp turn to the left and runs towards the voice. Two people are standing in front of what used to be a video store, and he thinks it´s a man and a woman, but since they´re dressed in what looks like SWAT-uniforms, he can´t be certain. One of them, the one he thinks is a female, is holding the gate open while the other one stands ready with what looks like a homemade Molotov-cocktail. When Luke reaches them, the first one takes his arm and pushes him inside while the other one throws the flask at the zombies, before following them inside and securing the gate. There´s a big explosion that throws Luke to the ground and makes his ears ring and he guesses the man must have set the gas station on fire.
“What the hell was that?” He asks when he manages to catch his breath. “And who are you?”
The man, because he was right about that, snorts and removes his helmet, revealing short and curly auburn hair. He´s definitely a few years older than Luke, probably in his mid-thirties, and according to the shallow part of Luke´s brain that doesn´t seem to care all that much about his recent near death experience, really good looking.
“That,” the man says as he turns his gaze directly on Luke, “was me saving you from being dinner.”
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