Page 6 of Dating After the End of the World
“Is she shaking?” Nate squints.
I notice it too, a slight tremble, and I’m immediately at her bedside. “Ms. Klein, are you okay?”
Her teeth chatter, and her body quakes.
“Where’s her medical chart?” Nate asks.
“I gave it to Nurse Garcia, so she could set up a CT scan,” I explain.
Ms. Klein shakes even harder. Instinctively, I press the back of my hand against her forehead. It’s cold, like the metal railings outside the hospital on a winter night. “Her fever broke.” I pull my hand away and look to Nate, cocking my head in confusion.
“That’s good.”
“No, Garcia took her temperature maybe fifteen minutes ago. It was 102.4. This ... isn’t possible.” I grab a thermometer and a disposable guard from a box set beneath her bed.
I tell Ms. Klein that I’m going to take her temperature, but she doesn’t seem to register my words. Maybe her chattering teeth are too loud for her to hear me.
Swiping the thermometer across her forehead, I bring the screen to my line of sight, waiting for it to beep and a number to appear. When it does, my mouth drops open.
“What is it?” Nate asks, grabbing my elbow to steady me.
“89.8.”
“What? That’s . . .”
“Impossible,” I say, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah, unless we were pulling her out of Lake Michigan or a meat locker.”
“He needs help,” a woman yells, stealing our attention.
She wears a look of horror as she points at the bed one down from Ms. Klein’s—where the man with the shiny goatee was writhing in pain just a few moments ago. He now lies completely still. I run to him and immediately check for a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there beneath his cold skin. His mouth is parted, but his eyes remain closed.
“Pulse?” Nate calls out, still tending to Ms. Klein. He helps her lie back and covers her with blankets.
“Barely, and he’s cold too,” I say.
Nate’s eyes widen with fear or surprise—I’m not sure which. “Watch out!”
Just as I turn my head, the man with the shiny goatee lunges up at me and sinks his teeth into my flesh. It happens in a flash, giving me no time to react. The first thought that goes through my head is that I should have seen it coming. The pain is instant and excruciating. He clamps down harder, ripping through skin and sinew. I howl in agony and try to pull away, but his bite is too strong. I ball up my free hand and thrust it into the side of his head. The two-carat diamond on my ring finger slices at his flesh, but does nothing to stop him from gnawing on my arm.
Nate pins him down by his shoulders, yelling for security.
Screams and cries fill the hall, my own and others.
Fed up, Nate punches the man in the side of the head as hard as he can, over and over, until his jaw goes lax. I jerk away, falling back and landing on my ass.
“We need security!” Nate shouts again, still pinning the crazed man down as he thrashes and growls, snapping his teeth. I scramble to my feet, grabbing a hospital gown and wrapping it around my wound.
A piercing scream cuts through all the chaos. Four beds down, a nurse tumbles to the floor, blood pooling from her torn-open cheek. The patient she was tending to staggers toward the downed nurse, his mouth and teeth stained red. There’s another scream, and another, each one more earsplitting than the last. Several of the repeat patients have become feral, attacking anyone in sight, their nails and teeth tearing into flesh, painting the once sterile hall red. It’s complete madness, and as much as I want to help, I already know it’s a lost cause.
“Nate, we have to get out of here!”
He’s still trying to restrain the man, but the scene unfolding around him is far more dangerous. A security guard bursts through the emergency waiting room doors, his gun already drawn. Nate releases the guy and rushes to my side. We back up behind security as the man swings his legs out of bed and lurches forward, snarling and grunting, his lips and teeth coated with my blood.
The security guard shakily points his gun, telling the man to stop, but he doesn’t.
“I’m warning you. Stop or I’ll shoot.” His voice has very little conviction in it, so I’m not even sure he’s capable of pulling the trigger. I consider taking it from him and doing it myself, but his gun only holds ten bullets max, and I know he’s gonna need a hell of a lot more than that. Nate and I continue backing away, watching in horror as patients and staff are ripped and torn apart by other sickly patients. This isn’t some flu-like virus.
