Apocalypse Hearts

Chapter 6 - Blackout

Sally was thinking of bringing all the food they could get since an additional almost twenty people would go with them. She and Alon glanced at each other. Alon understood. He told everyone to bring supplies to the wall fast.

Ronald immediately went to the injured security guard. The torn tablecloth around the man's forearm was already soaked through with blood.

"I'm going to look at your arm."

The guard instinctively pulled away. "Don't touch me."

Ronald stopped. "I'm an Intern."

"I don't care." The guard's breathing grew faster.

"What if you're infected?"

The words settled heavily over the room. Camille slowly knelt a few feet away from the guard. She kept her hands where he could see them.

"You don't have to let us help."

The guard looked at her but said nothing. She offered a small, reassuring smile.

"But if that wound gets worse, it'll hurt a lot more."

After a long pause, the guard extended his arm. Not because he trusted them, but because he had run out of better options. Ronald carefully unwrapped the blood-soaked cloth. The bite wasn't there. Instead, a jagged piece of broken glass had sliced deep into the man's forearm. Everyone in the room quietly exhaled.

Alon moved fast; he was sweating now. The others were receiving the supplies at the wall and stockpiling them inside the maintenance corridor. Camille didn’t go far from Sally. Mang Ben wandered toward the pantry. His experienced eyes swept over shelves stacked with rice, canned sardines, instant noodles, cooking oil, sugar, salt, dried beans, bottled water, and cartons of shelf-stable milk. He counted without speaking. He calculated that it would be enough to feed these many people for maybe four days. Perhaps five days, if they rationed carefully.

Alon always looked at the blocked entrance of the dietary service. Making sure that it was always blocked. Sally approached him.

“Maybe we should watch the news on the TV?” Sally pointed to the TV on the wall.

Alon opened the TV, immediately pressing the low volume on the remote control. Static appeared on the screen, and there was the voice of a news anchor.

"Department of Health advises the public to remain calm..." The voice dissolved into interference, "...avoid unnecessary travel..." Static. "...reports of violent incidents in..." More static.

Finally, one sentence came through clearly. "...all hospitals are advised to implement full lockdown procedures..."

Full static. No explanation, no reassurance.

The janitor looked at Sally, "My wife is eight months pregnant." He swallowed hard, "She's at home in Marikina."

Sally opened her mouth. No words came. She didn’t know what words could comfort him.

The cashier spoke, "My son is in Grade Four. I was supposed to pick him up after work. God, I need to see my son.” She cried.

A relative whispered, "My husband doesn't even know I'm here."

One by one, people began speaking. Still in low voices, not to ask for help but to say who they were worried about, or to hear something hopeful after sharing their worries. The room filled with names. They are mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses. Every person had somewhere they wanted to be.

Camille looked at Sally, without saying anything, they understood the same painful truth. Sally then remembered to check the signal on her phone. It had two bars. She immediately called her Mama.

Without a warning, there was a bang on the entrance door. The people can’t help but scream. With their sounds, the bang became louder and more efficient. Ronald could see the steel door moving through banging as if the infected were throwing their bodies on the door.

Sally cut the call. She signaled everyone to move faster, bring supplies and go to an opening in the wall. Someone screamed outside the entrance door of the dietary section. Very loud scream of pain. They all paused. Suddenly, not knowing what to do. The screaming stopped. The banging on the door resumed.

They carried many supplies, almost everything, when the door went inward with non-stop banging. People run to the wall with supplies in hand. Sally and Ronald keep on looking at the door. Now, they can see that the middle was slowly tearing apart.

“Let’s go!” Alon said in a loud voice.

All raced to the wall. Half of them had gone inside when the phone inside the pocket of her scrub rang. She peeked at the screen, Mama. She immediately silenced her phone.

Sally turned toward the shattered service door. Some infected had already slipped through the opening. He stood abnormally still in the dim emergency light, shoulders squared, head slightly lowered. For a fleeting second, he looked like an exhausted hospital worker catching his breath. Then he slowly lifted his face. Sally thought she recognized him. She had seen him before, somewhere in the hospital, sometime that day, but the memory refused to surface. His eyes settled on her with an unsettling calm, not empty or wild. There was an intent. He took a single step. Just like Nurse Diane, it was unhurried, deliberate. It wasn't the way he walked that frightened her. It was the feeling that he wasn't wandering aimlessly. She thought he was coming for her.

Mang Ben, Ronald, Alon, and others instantly shut the heavy door after the last, Sally, went inside. The infected hit it immediately as it was closed.

“We must go!” Sally said.

They walked carrying what they could. Sometimes, Mang Ben would peek through thin windows on the wall to check. After several minutes, he opened the wall.

“Welcome to my office. Let us just eat and rest.”

Alon, Ronald and the others immediately barricaded the door with tables and chairs. The others find their own space on the floor. Mang Ben’s office is not too big, but people huddled together, not wanting to be left alone, making Mag Ben’s office enough. Camille and other volunteers help portion the food for everybody.

Some are starting to doze off. Sally, Mang Ben, Ronald, Alon and Camille gather on the table and plan the next move. The entire room trembled. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Metal trays crashed to the floor. Someone screamed again from another part of the hospital. The lights sparkled once, then twice. Now it's total darkness. Darkness swallowed the office. Only the emergency lights remained, bathing the room in a dim, reddish glow.

Camille immediately said, “Stay where you are, don’t panic. It’s just a blackout. You should sleep; we need energy.” Her voice was soothing. Always sweet.

Sally gets his headlamp from the backpack and puts it over his head to the neck without turning it on. Alon did the same. The guards and paramedic checked their emergency lights dangling from their pants pockets. Just being prepared, then turned back to sleep.

Somewhere in the hospital, a generator tried to start. It coughed and failed on the first try. Tried again, failed, the hum died.

Mang Ben's face had gone pale when he realized something, "If the backup generators don't work," He looked toward the ceiling, as though he could see through the concrete to the wards above. "...patients on ventilators..." He couldn't finish the sentence.

Then the hospital changed without electricity or the generators, the building no longer sounded alive. The constant hum of ventilation systems disappeared. Air-conditioning units fell silent.

Sally looked at him, "What happened to the generators?"

"They should've started in ten seconds. It's been almost a minute."

Ronald looked toward the service corridor, "Can they be repaired?"

Mang Ben hesitated, "Yes, if it's a mechanical failure," he paused. "But if something happened inside the generator room, that could be something else, and irreparable."