The shouts coming from the elevator shaft roared louder the closer they moved to it.
“You sure they’re below us?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, we need a drop key to get the doors open. I went looking for the maintenance room, but I couldn’t find it,” Ulysses replied.
“It’s downstairs. I saw it on my way up,” Mike said.
Mike flew down the hallway and rushed back down the stairs. When he reached the first floor, the number of people inside had doubled.
Mike stepped forward and his boot slid on the tile; he stuck his arms out trying to steady himself. He looked down and saw his boot print smeared in blood. His eyes followed the trail to other fluids staining the white hospital tile.
Mike pushed his way through the growing masses in the hospital’s lobby. When he reached the maintenance door he saw Garry was right where he left him. Mike paused, glancing at the covered heap of flesh.
The maintenance room was chaotic and unkempt. Mike hunted through drawers with mixed tools, light bulbs, and spare screws. Blue jumpsuits hung on a rack along the wall. He searched the pockets, turning them inside out. He reached the last jumpsuit on the rack and as his hand dug into the outer pocket he could hear the jingle of keys. Mike flipped through them until he found the three-inch long rod with a hinge piece hiding amidst the rest of the silver and bronze keys surrounding it.
Ulysses had gathered more candles and was joined by two stocky built men, Adam and Sam. Mike handed Ulysses the elevator key and he jammed into the hole letting it fall into place. The elevator doors’ locks released.
Adam and Sam pulled the doors open. Mike glanced down and saw the elevator was stuck between the second and third floor five feet below them. The shouts were more audible.
“Help us!”
Ulysses stretched out his hand to grab the cable and Mike knocked it away.
“I’ll go down and check first,” Mike said.
Before Ulysses could protest Mike shimmied down the cable. His landing shook the elevator car a bit and he yanked the service hatch open.
A nurse in scrubs was furiously pumping a patient’s chest on a gurney while a young girl squeezed an air mask over the patient’s face.
“What happened?” Mike asked.
“His pacemaker went out when I was taking him upstairs for some tests. We need to get this guy out of here and into surgery now,” the nurse said, while continuing to pump the man’s chest.
“Adam, I’ll need your help getting him out,” Mike said then looked over to his dad. “As soon as we get this guy out of here you’ll need to start CPR on him.”
“Okay,” Ulysses said.
Adam took Mike’s place on top of the elevator and Mike slid through the service hatch. Mike noticed the trembling hands on the young girl holding the mask. Her face was down and her hair hovered over the patient’s head. Mike placed his hands over the young girl’s. She looked up when their hands touched. Her eyes were misty.
The nurse brought the straps from the side of the gurney and tightened them over the patient’s body.
“We’ll move him on three. One, two, three,” Mike said and he and the nurse lifted the patient to Adam’s extended hand.
Mike pushed the patient up through the service hatch with the nurse’s help and watched it disappear out of sight. He folded his hands like a step and motioned to the young girl.
“C’mon, you’re next,” he said.
The girl placed her Converse sneakers into Mike’s hands and he lifted her up to the ledge of the service hatch above. He could see Adam’s hands grab under her arms and pull her the rest of the way.
“Thank you,” the nurse said.
“Up you go,” Mike said and thrust the nurse up to freedom.
Once everyone was out of the shaft, Sam jumped down to the top of the elevator next to Adam and the two of them lowered their arms inside the service hatch. Mike jumped and grasped both of their hands. He felt himself being yanked up through the hole in the ceiling and then his feet landing on the metal casing on top of the elevator.
The nurse and patient had already disappeared. The young girl wrapped her arms around Mike when he stepped back into the hallway. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. His hand held the back of her head gently and then, without a word, she left.
“Appreciate your help, boys,” Ulysses said shaking Sam’s and Adam’s hands.
“Yeah, thank you,” Mike said.
The two men nodded and disappeared into the crowd. Ulysses pocketed the maintenance keys. Mike gave him a frown.
“They might come in handy later,” Ulysses said.
“Dad, we need to find the pharmacy here,” Mike said once the others had left.
“What for?”
“We need to grab you as much insulin and needles as we can.”
Beyond the busy operating rooms and ICU, the rest of the hospital was eerily quiet. Mike could see shadows moving in the rooms he passed and hushed murmurs coming from the inside. The deeper they went into the center of the hospital the quieter it became. Patients sat in the darkness, some with loved ones, others completely alone.
Finally, Mike saw “PHARMACY” painted in bold black letters across a door window. Inside he found a twelve pack of 10 ml bottles. Mike found a backpack and emptied the contents. He stuffed the pack full of insulin and disposable needles. He tossed one to Ulysses.
“Take one now before we leave,” Mike said.
“I have that stuff back at my place. You don’t need to steal it, Michael,” Ulysses said.
Mike’s gut turned sour. That’s what he was doing wasn’t it? He’d never stolen anything in his entire life. Then he remembered the hordes of people trampling each other to get into the police station. He saw the young man with the gunshot wound. He wasn’t going to let his father die when he had the means to save him.
“C’mon, Dad. We need to get out of here,” Mike said.
Mike peeked around the corner outside the lab. The hallway was empty. He motioned for his father to follow and he walked briskly down the hall.
On their way back to the stairs, Mike noticed a large group crowded around the window. He pushed his way through the crowd and made it to the edge of the windowpane.
The streets were chaos. Looters smashed windows and ran from stores with whatever they could carry in their hands. People were jumping and stomping on car roofs. Police officers were in full force in their riot gear trying to calm the riots breaking out everywhere, while those not joining in the riots searched for places to hide.
Mike pushed his way back to his father.
“What’s going on out there?” Ulysses asked.
“Nothing good. We’ll have to take the back way out of here. I-279 is right behind us. We can hop on that and take it to 65 back to my place. I’m not sure how safe it’ll be, but we should be fine as long as we make it back before dark,” Mike replied.
Mike and Ulysses rushed down the stairwell and burst out onto the first floor. Almost everyone that wasn’t dead or dying had crowded near the large lobby windows to watch the events outside.
They hurried down the hallways, turning left and right around corners, searching for the back exit of the hospital. Around every turn was death. All of the failed equipment in the hospital had turned the place into a morgue. There were so many individuals that couldn’t survive without the aid of machines and the computer chips that powered them.
When Mike and Ulysses finally made it out the back they shielded their eyes from the sun. Mike could hear the shouts of voices coming from the other side of the hospital, voices with a mindless purpose of chaos.
The Highway