Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 7:45 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 66 Hours, 56 Minutes Remaining
Nguyen was moved quickly.
They didn't do it gently—there was absolutely no room for bedside manner right now—but they did it carefully.
Her slight body lay completely slack on the metal transport gurney, the heavy chemical sedation dragging her deep into the dark. Her right hand rested on her stomach, wrapped thickly in stark white combat gauze where an index finger no longer existed. The stump was clean. It was brutally cauterized. It was controlled. Sharon had done that part herself, and the sickening, sweet smell of burned human meat still hung heavy in her own nasal passages.
"On three," Patel grunted, his dark eyes hollowed out above his surgical mask. He gripped the front of the gurney.
Sharon grabbed the rear handles. Her gloves were sticky with drying blood. "One. Two. Three."
They pushed her forward. The gurney's wheels caught for a fraction of a second in the tacky, black puddle of Evan's blood on the linoleum, then broke free, rolling toward the heavy wooden door.
Outside the room, the hallway was a mess of noise and terror. Officer Daniels was leaning his entire body weight against the doorframe, physically holding back Evan's mother. The woman was completely hysterical, her face slick with tears and sweat, her fingernails clawing at Daniels's uniform shirt.
"Let me in!" she shrieked, a raw, ragged sound that physically hurt to listen to. "Evan! Let me see him!"
"Open it," Sharon told McAllister.
McAllister pulled the heavy door inward.
The amber-lit hallway hit them like a physical wave of heat and panic. Daniels immediately shoved the weeping mother backward, putting his broad chest between her and the open doorway to block her view of the horrors inside.
"Move!" Daniels barked, clearing a narrow lane through the huddled civilians.
Sharon and Patel pushed the gurney out. The wheels whispered over the corridor tile, a sound that felt entirely too loud in the sudden, terrified hush that fell over the crowd.
Evan's mother stopped fighting the cop for a split second. Her bloodshot eyes locked onto Sharon. She looked at the bone dust dusting Sharon's chest, the dark, coagulated smears on her gown, and the bloody scalpel sitting on the tray at the bottom of the gurney.
"What did you do to him?" the mother whispered, her voice dropping into a devastated, hollow rasp. "Where is my baby?"
Sharon didn't stop pushing. She couldn't look the woman in the eye. If she did, she knew she would fracture into a million pieces.
"I'm sorry," Sharon said to the floor, her voice barely audible. "He's gone."
The mother didn't scream this time. Her knees simply gave out. She collapsed onto the hard tile like her bones had been removed, folding in on herself with a low, whimpering keen. Two of the remaining floor nurses immediately rushed forward, wrapping their arms around the shattered woman, physically dragging her away from the door toward the nurses' station.
"Keep moving," Daniels ordered, stepping backward and pulling the isolation room door firmly shut. The heavy latch clicked into place, locking the mutilated, thrashing teenager inside.
Every single squeak of the gurney's wheels seemed to echo down the wing. Every fluorescent flicker from the emergency backups overhead felt like it was actively judging them.
The civilians watched.
They always did. Trapped in the sweltering dark, the fifty-one uninfected people huddled in this ward had absolutely nothing else to do but watch the doctors and wait for the end of the world.
Sharon felt the heavy, suffocating weight of their gazes. She watched their terrified eyes track the thick bandages on Nguyen's hand first.
Then their eyes drifted up to Sharon's sleeves.
Then they looked at the undeniable absence where a piece of a human being used to be.
Troy Barlow stepped directly into the center of the hallway before anyone could stop him. He was a broad-shouldered guy, usually quick to smile, but right now his face was flushed, his jaw tight with the kind of defensive aggression that comes entirely from feeling helpless. His heavily pregnant wife was sitting on a vinyl waiting bench a few feet away, her hands resting protectively on her swollen belly.
"What the hell is going on now?" Troy demanded, planting his feet. His eyes darted frantically between Nguyen's covered stump and the gore on Sharon's chest. "You gonna tell us why people are getting dragged around like prisoners?"
Sharon didn't slow the gurney down. She just pushed it straight at him.
"She was injured," Sharon said, her voice flat and completely devoid of inflection. "We're relocating her."
"Injured how?" Troy pressed, refusing to move out of the way. "Because I heard that woman screaming. And then I heard you lock that kid in a room. And now this—"
Daniels stepped around the gurney, putting himself right in front of Troy, his palm held out flat.
"That's enough, Barlow."
Troy scoffed, the adrenaline making him stupid. "Or what, man? You gonna shoot me? You guys are hacking each other to pieces and hiding it from us!"
"Or you make this significantly worse," Daniels said flatly, completely unbothered by the posturing. "And we are already sitting on a powder keg. Get out of the damn way."
Troy looked at the cop's cold eyes, then glanced back at his weeping wife. His shoulders slumped slightly. He took a slow step backward, pressing himself against the drywall to let the gurney pass.
The hallway went devastatingly quiet again.
Too many people were listening. Too many people had suddenly stopped breathing normally.
Sharon could physically feel it—the massive psychological shift in the ambient air.
She saw the way husbands and wives subtly moved their hands away from each other.
She saw the way people instinctively pulled their long sleeves down over their wrists, hiding their skin.
She saw the terrifying way the healthy civilians took slow, deliberate steps backward from anyone in the crowd who looked slightly flushed, pale, or was sweating too heavily.
They rolled Nguyen into a small, former family consultation room located directly across from the main desk and shoved the door shut behind her. Dr. Reyes, looking like she was about to throw up, stayed inside the room with the unconscious surgeon. Another floor nurse stationed herself solidly outside the door, arms crossed over her chest.
Containment within containment.
Sharon turned her back to the door and looked out over the main wing.
She saw it perfectly clearly now. The floor wasn't one unified group of survivors anymore.
It was factions.
Parents were aggressively pulling their children into tight circles. Couples were pressed together in the corners, eyeing everyone else with open hostility. Single men were standing completely apart, their backs to the walls.
Everyone was tracking hands. Everyone was staring at sleeves. Everyone was looking for teeth marks on exposed necks.
The fear had stopped being an abstract concept about the monsters outside.
It had become forensic. It was a witch hunt waiting for a spark.
Daniels followed Sharon's gaze down the corridor and swore softly under his breath.
"We don't keep this together right now," Daniels murmured to Sharon, his hand resting on his gun belt, "we lose the entire floor. They'll start throwing people out the windows."
He turned to the intersection, squaring his shoulders, and raised his voice. He didn't shout, but he projected firmly enough to easily cut through the terrified murmurs of the crowd.
"Everyone listen up!"
They did.
Not because they inherently trusted him. Because he was wearing a badge, he had a gun on his hip, and because the illusion of order was the absolute last familiar thing left in their lives.
"There are fifty-one people trapped on this wing," Daniels said, his deep voice carrying a heavy, undeniable gravity. "That includes patients, families, hospital staff, and sixteen infants in the NICU nursery right behind me."
The number landed incredibly hard on the crowd.
Sixteen.
Sixteen tiny sets of lungs. Sixteen non-existent immune systems. Sixteen absolute reasons why panic would spread like wildfire if it caught.
"We have fourteen nurses. Three doctors. One security officer," Daniels continued, laying out the stark tactical reality of the board. "We have fifteen postpartum patients. Three women currently in active labor. Two scheduled surgeries postponed indefinitely."
Daniels let the pause hang in the hot air.
"And a whole lot of scared people sitting on the floor with absolutely nothing to do but imagine the worst."
Troy crossed his thick arms again. "So what? We just sit here and wait our turn?"
"No," Daniels said firmly. "We work."
That got their attention.
"We assign tasks," Daniels continued, pacing slowly across the linoleum. "You give people something to do, they stop tearing each other apart in their own heads."
Sharon nodded once, understanding exactly what he was doing. "Agreed."
Daniels pointed a thick finger down the hall toward the amber lights of the NICU. "Mothers who can walk—nursery rotation. Two at a time. You go in, you help the nurses feed, rock, and change them. Keep that room completely calm."
Several exhausted women hesitated, glancing nervously at the dark hallway. Then a young mother stepped forward, her jaw set tight. "I'll help."
Another woman instantly followed her. Then another.
It wasn't that they were incredibly brave. They were just desperately refusing to drown in their own thoughts.
"Men who are able-bodied," Daniels said, sweeping his gaze over the fathers and husbands. "We secure doors. We reinforce what we can. I want you to scour these empty rooms and find absolutely anything usable as a weapon—not to play hero, but to defend your families if something gets through that barricade."
A few of the men nodded grimly. One young father swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Like what?"
Daniels didn't sugarcoat it. "Heavy fire extinguishers. IV poles. Metal IV stands. Anything that puts physical distance between you and their teeth."
That horrifying image quieted the men instantly.
"You," Daniels pointed directly to a cluster of younger civilians sitting near the papered-over exterior windows. "Start making signs. Big, bold ones. Use the medical tape and the fetal monitor paper. Write 'SURVIVORS HERE.' Write 'INFANTS PRESENT.' Whatever you can think of, and tape it facing out."
The cynical teenager in the back scoffed loudly. "Like help's actually coming."
"Like hope actually matters right now," Daniels shot back, his voice cracking like a whip.
He turned again, addressing the entire crowd.
"Phones. Two-way radios. Laptops. Anything with a digital signal—you try to connect. You do not stop trying just because it fails once."
A woman lifted her dead iPhone into the air. "There's no service. Nothing."
"Then you keep checking every five minutes," Daniels commanded. "Because the exact moment you stop trying to reach the outside world is the moment this place officially dies."
The movement began.
It was slow at first. Heavy. Reluctant.
But it was tangible movement.
People finally peeled off the floor into their assigned roles—not because they genuinely believed a cardboard sign or an aluminum pole would save them from the apocalypse, but because standing perfectly still in the dark had become unbearable.
A young man violently dragged a heavy, rolling supply cart across the hall, wedging the steel frame aggressively against the handles of the secondary double doors. Two mothers walked toward the NICU nursery, moving exactly like drafted soldiers reporting for duty. A terrified young nurse began meticulously taping handwritten, desperate signs to the exterior glass with violently trembling fingers.
Sharon stood near the wall, watching it all happen, her heart incredibly heavy in her chest.
Maintaining control in a crisis wasn't about projecting brute force.
It was entirely about tactical distraction.
It was about actively preventing the psychological spiral. It was about keeping fifty-one exhausted, terrified people from fully realizing exactly how incredibly thin the drywall of this hospital actually was.
As the civilians went to work, a small pocket of quiet settled around Sharon. The immediate, blinding adrenaline of the amputation began to slowly recede, leaving behind a deep, aching void in her chest.
She leaned her head back against the cinderblock wall and closed her eyes.
Justin. The phantom pain flared up again, a sharp twist directly beneath her ribs. She didn't know where he was. She didn't know where Tally was, or if her sweet Anna Belle was safe. Justin was a smart kid—stubborn to a fault, but fiercely protective of his sisters. He would have gotten them out of the house when things went sideways. He would have found somewhere to hide. He had to have.
She pictured his face. The dark hair falling into his eyes, the grease permanently stained under his fingernails from working on that old Jeep in the driveway. She pictured Tally rolling her eyes at him, and Anna Belle clinging to his leg.
Just keep them safe, Sharon prayed silently, entirely ignorant of the horrific reality that her oldest son was already lying dead in a freezing parking lot across town. Just hold on until I can get to you.
Then, a sound violently cut through her prayers and the controlled movement of the ward.
Low.
Wet.
Highly rhythmic.
It wasn't a desperate human shouting for help. It wasn't a terrified civilian screaming in pain.
It was just the persistent, agonizing scrape of something dead and heavy actively straining against thick fabric and plastic.
It was coming from down the hall.
Directly from Evan's isolation room.
Sharon physically stiffened, her spine going completely rigid against the wall.
So did Officer Daniels.
They didn't speak a word to each other. They didn't need to. They both turned perfectly in unison, walking slowly back down the corridor toward the heavy wooden door.
The sickening sound grew significantly sharper, more defined, as they approached the room.
A long, agonizing creak.
A violent, heavy pull.
The distinct sound of industrial nylon restraints under immense, unnatural tension.
They weren't breaking. Not yet.
Daniels significantly slowed his steps as they neared the door, his right hand hovering instinctively over the grip of his weapon, but he didn't draw it. He leaned slightly toward the wood, listening intently to the horror inside.
The noise wasn't a frantic, panicked struggle.
That was infinitely worse.
It was incredibly steady.
It was endless.
It sounded exactly like something that absolutely didn't get tired, didn't feel pain, and would never, ever stop trying.
Inside the sweltering isolation room, the heavy leather straps violently groaned against the metal bedrails.
There was a slow, dragging, heavy thud—Evan's mutilated, brain-damaged head aggressively hitting the vinyl mattress, again and again and again, blindly testing the physical range of his restraints.
A wet, rattling inhale of dead air.
A sharp, violent click of shattered teeth snapping together.
Sharon stepped up directly beside the officer.
She could physically feel it now—a faint, rhythmic vibration transferring directly through the heavy wooden door into the floorboards beneath her sneakers. The soft, relentless thud of violent movement restrained by heavy canvas straps that were never, ever medically designed to hold something that didn't feel tearing muscle or breaking bone.
Down the hall, somewhere deep in the dark, beyond the barricaded stairwell, a distant, collective moan immediately answered the thudding.
It was significantly closer than it had been ten minutes ago.
It wasn't incredibly loud.
It was just terrifyingly near.
Daniels exhaled slowly, a long, shaky breath of foul air.
"If that thing keeps making rhythmic noise like this," Daniels said quietly, his eyes locked entirely on the narrow observation window, "we are going to have heavy company very soon. It's a dinner bell."
Sharon's jaw set into granite.
She reached out and placed her bloody, gloved hand flat against the heavy steel door handle.
She wasn't opening it.
She was just desperately trying to ground herself in the physical reality of the moment.
The metal felt incredibly cold. Solid. Real.
On the other side of that heavy wooden door was a terrified, innocent teenager she had desperately tried to save, and a mother sitting down the hall whose heart was entirely shattered.
On this side of the door were sixteen incredibly fragile newborns and fifty other human lives hanging by the absolute thinnest of threads.
"We can't just leave him in there like this," Sharon said, her voice a hollow, devastating whisper. "He's acting as an acoustic beacon for the entire horde. They're going to breach the fire doors trying to get to him."
Daniels nodded grimly, his hand tightening on his gun belt. "And we absolutely can't risk anyone else in this ward by opening that door to put him down. If he gets past me, he's in a hallway full of pregnant women."
Another violent, heavy thud hit the inside of the door.
It was significantly harder this time.
The heavy metal hinges audibly rattled against the doorframe.
A thick, dark smear dragged slowly downward along the small, wire-mesh glass pane—highly acidic saliva, heavily mixed with black blood from his shattered teeth.
Sharon didn't blink.
They stood there together in the amber light—the brilliant, devastated doctor and the exhausted, terrified police officer—listening to the restrained, mutilated dead thing inside the room violently remind them that time was absolutely no longer on their side.
The math of their survival was shrinking by the second. If they didn't silence the beacon, the barricade would fail. If they opened the door, the monster might kill them all anyway.
And they knew with absolute, chilling certainty that every single decision they made from this exact point forward would cost human blood.
One way.
Or another.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:22 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 66 Hours, 19 Minutes Remaining