4. Eliza
4
ELIZA
T he surgical lamp flickered, casting a sterile light over the operating table. It kept coming on and going off again.
I can’t work like this. What the hell am I playing at?
Eliza’s gloved hands moved with the precision of the seasoned surgeon she was despite her nerves. She’d managed to escape the turmoil of ER and was now in her comfort zone. The OR had always felt like home to her.
She wasn’t just removing a leg—she was trying to save a life in a world that had clearly gone mad. Never had Eliza seen anything like this in her entire career at Holy Souls. The teenage boy on the table, his face pale and drenched in sweat, had been bitten. Eliza thought she knew what this meant, but she wasn’t prepared to admit it to herself just yet. Nor was she prepared to lose this kid.
The air around her and the two nurses she’d managed to drag in to help her was heavy, not just with the usual smells of antiseptic and bleached floors, but with fear—raw, unfiltered fear. Eliza had always prided herself on being composed and professional, but right now she had a severe case of the jitters. The nurse beside her, Bobby, who’d only recently arrived in Campdale, kept glancing at the door, his breathing audibly quick and shallow.
“Bobby, come on. We need to focus here,” Eliza said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Bobby rubbed his temples. “I know, but this is crazy. I mean, a kid with a zombie bite? It’s just that…”
Eliza cut him off with a long sigh. “Bobby, please. Let’s not use that word, alright? We don’t know what’s going on yet. Just keep your shit together.”
Bobby shook his head in frustration. “Wow, I’ve never heard you curse before, Dr. Carter. I just don’t get it, though. How does a kid get bitten? His mom said his older sister did this. I can’t get my head around it.”
“Then don’t,” Eliza replied, feeling her irritation move up a notch. “It’s happened. It’s happening now . And this kid is counting on us.”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed with a mix of curiosity and fear. “But someone in his own family did this to him?”
Eliza nodded without moving her eyes from the boy on the table. “I don’t think anyone’s saying much. From what I understood, the sister was frantic. His mother was almost catatonic when she brought him in.”
Bobby let out a shaky breath. “So, what does that mean? Is the mother a zombie, too?”
Eliza hesitated, her hands momentarily stilling as she tried to wrestle with her thoughts. “Bobby! Quit it with the goddamn zombie talk. There’s a bug going around. It’s a disease like any other, but with what looks to be a high infection rate. I can’t comment on where, how, why, or when his sister did this to him, so leave the questions for later. And preferably for someone else.”
“I reckon that mom was hiding something,” Bobby continued, his voice growing more urgent. “What if she knows more than she’s letting on? What if this isn’t just some random attack, but part of what’s going on…out there?”
Eliza’s eyes met his. “Your guess is as good as mine at this stage. But we need to stay focused on the kid. If he’s showing symptoms?—”
“Symptoms of what?” Bobby asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Eliza swallowed hard. “Like fever, disorientation…aggression.”
“Sounds like what people are saying has been happening with the infected,” Bobby said, voice trembling. “But nobody really knows for sure. And nobody wants to fucking talk about it.”
Eliza glanced up just in time to see the other nurse, an older woman whose name she didn’t know, dart out of the operating room. She noticed her hands shaking as she fumbled with the door, her tear-streaked cheeks tense with distress.
Eliza caught Bobby’s eye. “Look what you did. Get back to work, Bobby. We’re on our own now.”
As they turned their attention back to the boy, the room itself seemed to hold its breath. Eliza’s hands shook slightly as she continued her work, determined to push through despite never having felt so vulnerable and afraid.
As she worked, Eliza’s thoughts wandered. It was as if her mind was attempting to make a brief escape from the urgency of the moment. She thought about how, just a week ago, the biggest worry in her life had been juggling her almost impossible workload with yet another fleeting relationship. She and Steve had called it quits after only a couple months of dating. Her romantic life—could she even call it that?—was a string of one-night stands and brief flings, each ending in basically the same way: a good old ghosting.
She’d always told herself that her career was the reason behind her disastrous love life. But she also blamed Tinder and its ridiculous algorithms for sending her dud after dud. The long hours and the emotional toll of the job were too much for most people (for most men ) to handle. But deep down, she knew there was probably more to it than that. She knew, and her brother had reminded her of it time and time again; she was emotionally reserved and guarded. That made it hard for anyone to get close. Several partners had told her as much. “You’re just…I don’t know how to put it. You’re closed off, Eliza,” one of them had said a few months before walking out of her life, never to be heard from again.
And now, as she stood over this young teen who might not even make it to his first date, she wondered if she’d maybe gotten it all wrong. Had she spent her adult life pushing away every chance for a real connection? Had she prioritized saving strangers while allowing herself to be utterly alone? Because that’s how she felt: utterly alone. The world seemed to be falling apart, and she didn’t have a single soul to turn to.
“Dr. Carter! Watch out!” Bobby’s panicked voice interrupted her, yanking her back to the present.
Eliza’s gaze snapped to the monitors. The patient’s heart rate was plummeting, the rhythmic beeping speeding into a frantic, disjointed alarm. “Damn it,” she muttered, her hands moving faster now, working against the clock. “Get the crash cart ready!”
“On it!” shouted Bobby, rushing to get the necessary equipment.
She pressed the paddles to the patient’s chest, her mind a blur of focused intent. “Clear!”
The boy’s body jerked as the electric current surged through him, but the flat line persisted.
“Again!” she barked.
Another shock, another jerk, but still, the line stayed flat.
“Come on, kid. Don’t do this to me,” she whispered, more to herself than the patient, who she knew couldn’t hear her. She refused to lose him. They tried and tried to bring him back.
But even as she worked on his body, a voice in the back of her mind whispered that it was already too late. This wasn’t just a virus; this was something much worse. She just didn’t know what. What she did think was that no amount of medical expertise would be able to stop what was coming.
“Time of death, 18:47,” Bobby said quietly, his voice laced with exhaustion.
Eliza stood frozen for a moment, the reality sinking in: she’d failed. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to push the creeping sense of dread to the back of her mind. But it was no use.
What the hell is going on here?
“I guess we did everything we could, right? I’ve never seen someone that young die of heart failure like that. Have you?” Bobby asked. But his words fell flat.
Eliza stripped off her gloves and tossed them into the bin with more force than was necessary. “We need to get him to the morgue,” she said, her voice low and hollow. “There’ll be more. We need to make room for the next one.”
Bobby didn’t argue. Together, they started to wheel the lifeless body out of the room. The ER was beyond chaos—screams, cries, the occasional thud of something heavy hitting the floor.
I can’t cope with all this. What’s become of my hospital? This is out of control!
“Dr. Carter, it looks like Sheila…” Bobby began, but Eliza cut him off.
“No, Bobby. Not now. I need to think.”
“Dr. Carter! Come over here—now!” Sheila screamed from across the hallway.
Eliza’s mind had barely processed the request before she let go of the gurney and ran toward Sheila, her medical coat flapping behind her like a banner of hope. Bobby, pale and panting heavily, followed close on her heels. The pounding in her chest seemed to sync with the frantic beats of her footsteps.
As they reached Sheila, she pulled them through a doorway and toward the side entrance.
“She was just here! River…an old friend of mine. She was right here, I swear!”
Eliza looked through the double-glazed glass and saw immediately that the scene outside was nothing short of apocalyptic. Townspeople, patients, and even hospital staff in white coats had begun attacking each other with a feral intensity. Their faces, twisted into grotesque masks of rage, made Eliza’s stomach churn.
“Holy God. Let’s hope your friend isn’t out there,” Eliza breathed, taking in the horrifying scene. She watched as a man and a younger woman snarled and roared at each other. Their guttural screams echoed through her entire body.
“We can’t go outside!” Eliza shouted. “They’re consumed with…infection. These people are getting ill too quickly! This isn’t a coronavirus. It’s not possible. Jesus! We have to find some way out of here! What the fuck is this?”
Sheila, her face pale, stood there looking through the glass doors, tears running down her face.
“She was right here,” she repeated.
Eliza’s mind raced, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The bites, the aggression—everything’s pointing to a rabies outbreak…
As the small group made their way back inside the hospital, hoping to find safety, Eliza saw that the familiar corridors had totally transformed within mere minutes. Her heart pounded as she forced herself to focus.
As they rounded a corner, the scene grew even more harrowing. The infected were spilling into the hallway, their movements erratic and uncontrolled. The air was thick with the stench of blood, feces, and vomit, a nauseating mix that made Eliza’s stomach twist. Her mind flashed back to her training.
Rabies is transmitted through bites. It leads to severe aggression and death. This is a nightmare scenario. We don’t have what it takes to handle it.
“Eliza! Bobby!” Sheila’s voice cut through the chaos, filled with a desperation that matched Eliza’s own fear. “Let’s get to the staff dorm. We can lock ourselves in!”
But before Eliza could respond, a horrifying shriek pierced the air. Eliza turned just in time to see an infected patient—her face a mask of swollen flesh and primal rage—lunge at Sheila. The woman’s movements seemed unnaturally quick and violent as her teeth sank into Sheila’s neck. Eliza stood there, her mouth ajar, as a spray of blood spewed from Sheila’s mouth.
“No! No! No!” The wails of the infected swallowed Eliza’s cries. Sheila’s body crumpled to the ground, the light in her eyes fading fast as the infected figure continued its gruesome work.
She’s eating her! She’s eating Sheila!
Eliza’s heart thumped wildly with the sudden shock of losing a woman who’d been such an incredible friend and colleague, but there was no time to grieve. The world had gone insane, and there was no room for anything other than survival.
“Don’t look, Bobby! Leave her! We need to get moving!” Eliza shouted in anguish.
Bobby’s face was ashen, his eyes wide with fear as he started to retch. “Sheila’s gone. She’s dead! How can this be happening? What do we do? What the fuck is happening!?”
Eliza could only offer a strained nod through her tears. “We keep moving, Bobby. We have to get to the dorms before?—”
As they made their way down a service staircase and onto the basement level, a loud crash startled them as an infected patient burst through a nearby door. The creature twisted his mouth into a grotesque snarl. Eliza noted that his—or its—eyes were filled with a mindless fury. Eliza and Bobby scrambled down the hallway to avoid the creature, but there was nowhere to go.
The infected were everywhere now, in front of every door, their movements a nightmarish blur of rage and violence. The floor beneath their feet was littered with debris—shattered glass, broken medical equipment, and the bodies of those who’d fallen victim to the infection…or the infected. Eliza stumbled over a discarded stretcher, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Hey! You two! Over here!” a voice called out from somewhere behind her. But when she turned, she saw nothing but a wall of infected figures closing in.
“Dr. Carter!” Bobby’s voice seemed distant, his cry swallowed by the moaning of the infected. Eliza glanced back to see him struggling against a group of snarling…she didn’t know what the word was for them.
They’re zombies. Fuck me…I’m going out of my mind here. But they’re fucking zombies…
Bobby’s efforts to fend them off proved futile. In a matter of moments, he was totally overwhelmed, his screams lost amidst a host of snarls and roars.
Jesus, no. He’s gone. I’ve lost him. No, no, no, no, no…
“Bobby!” Eliza screeched, her voice breaking. She watched in horror as Bobby was dragged down, the infected swarming over him with brutal efficiency. This second loss within just a few minutes was overwhelming. Eliza felt like she was losing the will to live.
What’s the point in trying? They’re going to kill me no matter what I do.
The infected closed in on her now, their groans and hisses growing louder and more desperate. Eliza’s mind raced with terror…and then resignation. The infection was spreading too quickly. There would be no escape, no way to contain the outbreak. No hospital in the country had the resources to deal with this.
Eliza’s thoughts turned inward, filling her with a storm of regrets. She thought of her family, the faces of her parents and brother flashing through her mind. Memories of family dinners, laughter, and warmth filled her thoughts.
Why didn’t I spend more time with you guys?
Tears streamed down her face as she braced herself against a cold wall. The infected were nearly upon her, their jaws snapping as they closed in. The thought of never seeing her family again, of never having the chance to make things right, was almost too much to bear. The finality of the situation was heartbreaking.
As the infected reached out with bloodied hands and hungry eyes, Eliza’s breath caught in her throat. She prepared herself for the inevitable—she was about to be bitten.
The world seemed to narrow to a single, terrifying moment as a tall, hefty male zombie towered over her, his jaws closing in. Her mind went blank as she looked up at him, ready to face the darkness that was about to engulf her.