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get the hell out of here.”
    “Eric,” Jack said as he turned and ran, “you picked a good time to start shining. How
did you know how to drop them?”
    Eric panted heavily. “When I borrowed that leg, I beat the pulp out of one and it
didn’t even flinch until I split its head open.”
    They hurried through the double doors leading to the hallway and then down to the lobby where they rested a moment.
    “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and realize this was all a dream,” Eric said,
sounding like he was about to cry.
    Jack took a couple of deep breaths. “If this ain’t real, Eric, it’s a nightmare.”
    A shot rang out and Jack turned to look at Eric. "Looks like I’m not the only one with a gun."
    They ran to the administrative hall and there was Keith, sporting
a .357 Magnum over a lifeless corpse. Another body lay face down on the floor, not far away.
    “I guess I don’t have to tell you to shoot them in the head,” Jack said, stating the obvious.
    “The chest shot barely slowed it down,” Keith said, looking at the two bodies on the
floor. “I thought I must have missed the heart so I went for the head.”
    “Well, I laid a round into the spine of one of those things and it didn’t seem to
care,” Jack replied.
    Eric jumped in. “I beat the hell out of one and it didn’t do Jack, no offense Boss,
until I gave it an upper thrust punch to the head. I knew my Kung Fu would come in handy one day.”
    Jack shook his head. “Remind me, Kung Fu Possum, how old were you when you had your last lesson?”
    “Eight, or maybe nine,” Eric replied, “but we got some training in the guard, too.”
    “He hit the guy with a deceased patient’s plaster dipped drumstick,” Jack stated
frankly. “I do give him an A for creativity.”
    Eric beamed proudly.
    Keith shook his head, picturing the scene almost exactly as it had happened.
    “Well, since we probably don’t want to try to find more of the ‘drumsticks’ maybe we’d
better think of some other way to keep ourselves and our patients alive until
the cops show up. How bad is it in the rest of the hospital?”
    “It’s pandemonium in the ER,” Jack replied, dialing 911 on his radio/phone.
    “Marla said there is something going on in the cafeteria, too. Sounds like the whole
first floor is in bad shape.”
    “I told you that it was just a food fight,” Marla said, rolling her eyes.
    “Problem is, we’re the food,” Keith told her. He added, “One of the secretaries said
that Community Hospital is reporting similar attacks.”
    “So it isn’t isolated?” Jack shook his head after a moment. “I’m getting a
recording. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Keith, what’s your medical take
on it? It looks like those that are bitten change a few minutes after they die,
or appear to die. Could it be some bad-ass strain of rabies?”
    Keith thought about Jack’s question for a moment then replied. “Probably not rabies,
but the comment the agent made about the CDC has me worried. If CDC is
involved, seems like it’s got to be some sort of a communicable disease,"
he said. "And whatever it is, it happens fast. The person dies, or appears
to die, then reanimates quickly, though I don’t know how it’s possible. I just
hope to God it’s not airborne as well, though I’d think we’d be showing some symptoms
if that were the case.”
    Jack nodded. Maybe we could seal off the areas in the hospital that aren’t swarming
with these freaks and give ourselves a little safety zone until help comes, if it does.”
    “What about survivors?” Keith asked. He was torn between wanting to get back to the
patients upstairs and wanting to help those that were in trouble downstairs.
    “Keith, did you hear what I said?” Jack asked. “I don’t think you understand just how
bad it is in there. By the time I reached Eric, I didn’t see a single other
person that wasn’t either changed or in the process of being eaten. We were lucky to get out of