It won’t be long before the flies and disease crop up from so many bodies. Most of the diseases, plague, cholera, and typhoid in particular, will become rampant in the most populated areas. I am not so keen on going back in there. I just won’t shine my light on the bodies and head over to the nurses’ station, I think reaching down and taking the pillow case off the pillow. Folding the pillow case into a triangle, I tie it around my face covering my nose and mouth; not so much as a precaution for disease, but more so for the smell.
Crawling back in, I keep the light and M-4 pointed at the ground straight ahead. Approaching the counter, I notice bloody footprints leading down the hall. Not just one or a couple, but lots of them. Too many to count and they form a trail. I suppose they could have been from hospital workers here before or during this tragedy, but with my experience from the gas station and the footprints there, I am going to assume there are a few of those things in here. My thumb subconsciously slides the selector to ‘burst.’
Stepping behind the counter, my light catches a multitude of charts and papers lining the desk. Some charts lie open and others are just stacked on top of each other with individual papers scattered in every way. I shine my light on the charts hoping for a folder that would give me information on what I am looking for but they only have individual names on them. Keeping my ears open, I check out the various papers on the desk. One is a memo detailing the immediate cessation of the Cape Town flu vaccinations, another outlining a quarantine area and ordering those with flu symptoms to report there or medical staff observing these symptoms in others, to call security. I search through files and desk drawers but come up empty on anything related to CDC or military findings. So, that leaves the medical services commander or hospital administrator.
Near the phone in middle of the desk is a hospital telephone directory. On the top page is the commander’s name, Col. Sarah Jensen, ext. 2856, room 350. Of course it would be on the third floor, I think setting it down and looking at hospital diagrams taped to the top of the counter. Using my folding blade, I liberate the diagrams from the counter, each diagram depicting a floor of the hospital. I notice the commander’s office two floors above me on the complete opposite side of the hospital. Wow! Two for two. A third strike and I’m outta here, I think stepping from behind the counter and into the hallway.
Heading quietly down the hall, I come to an elevator and a steel stairway door to my right. The bloody footprints continue down the hallway fading and disappearing altogether a short distance away. I shine my light at a doorway across the hall from the elevator and see a black engraved sign on the wall that reads ‘Dispensary.’ The door is a half door in which the upper half can be opened separate from the bottom half with a small counter separating the two halves. And, the top half is open. Aha, my luck seems to be changing, my thought bubble hanging out there in hope.
I edge across, alternating my light between the dispensary opening and the hallway. Reaching the door, I pan my light around the small interior of the room. Bottle-filled shelves line the walls with three smaller bottle-filled shelves in the middle of the room creating small aisles between them. A small, open doorway opens in the middle of the left wall.
Entering the room, I quickly clear the small aisles inside and swing back to the open doorway. It is a small storage room and is empty with the exception of several open cardboard boxes filling the wall space to the left. Bringing the empty boxes into the dispensary room, I fill them with various bottles. Now, I am no Pharmacist by any stretch so I start with the ones I do know. Various antibiotics and pain killers start the transfer from shelf to box followed by most everything else I can pack into them. Time to sort later, I think filling box after box. There is a Pharmaceutical book on the counter so that goes with. Can’t Google stuff anymore so we’ll need this. After the boxes are filled, I bring them to the front doors making several trips, making sure to keep an ear and eye alert for any sound or movement.
I head back into the hallway and the metal fire door leading to the stairwell. Yes, I plan to go further inside than what I told the kids. I pull slightly on the handle and the door swings open. Opening the door, I shine the light inside while holding the door open with my foot. A flight of concrete stairs leads upward to a landing with another flight of stairs leading off in the opposite direction to the next floor. I step into the stairwell noticing only a folded wheelchair next to the wall in the alcove next to the stairs as the door slowly closes behind me. Focusing my light on the stairs and landing above me, I step onto the first stair. The stairwell is completely dark except where my flashlight radiates a small circumference of light. Away from the light, an oppressive darkness prevails and presses in on me. No emergency exit lights. No light of any kind.
I proceed up the stairs counting them as I go and focusing my light and carbine as far up the next flight as my vision permits. My stomach is clenched tight with a tingling sensation as my system continues to pump adrenaline through my bloodstream. No matter how many times I have done this in the past, it is always the same feeling. Hyper-alert. Time slowing. My heart beats strong in my ears, to the point where it seems that it can be heard externally. With a team around, this feeling was minimized to a certain extent, but when solo, the feeling intensifies. You can get used to the feeling but not the circumstances. Keep focused and keep moving.
Approaching the second floor, two metal fire doors exit from the landing to either side. With my back to the wall, I continue up to the third floor landing. Two additional fire doors exit here. Crouching by the left door, I ease it open with my shoulder, and enter into an inky black hallway. To my left, towards the emergency room parking lot, the hallway goes a short distance before turning left to another hallway. A single door sits closed in the wall at the juncture with a small amount of light leaking from under it; a natural light most likely from windows facing the parking lot.
To my right, the hallway extends into darkness and with several closed doors set into the walls. The stairway door closes behind me with a soft thud. I check to see if it opens, find that it does, and so I am not stranded having to find another way down. The hospital diagram shows the administrator’s office lies down the hallway to my right at the other end of the building. I edge down the darkened hallway panning my light from left to right. The third door on the right is open.
As I approach the opened doorway, I see it is actually a set of double doors and begin to hear a faint panting sound. Much like a room full of dogs on a hot day or after a day of chasing sticks but heard from a long distance. This sound fills my ears at the same time as my light zooms into the room. There, I see the end of a folding table on its side jutting slightly out into the doorway with several orange plastic chairs lying upended and scattered throughout the room. And, against the far wall, huddled together on the floor, lie fifteen to twenty bodies, their skin pale and blotchy. It is from this huddled mass that the panting sounds emit.