Facing the Dead Chapter 1 - The Dead Have Risen

Darren Brooks is an average person. He is a firefighter and a former is a former marine. He has a wife and 2 children. He lives in Nashville, TN. One day Darren had to go to the doctor to have his kidney removed at Vanderbilt Hospital. It has been killing him all week. Darren has to take off work for the day. He reaches Dr. Warren Lewis’s office at around 6 AM. Nurse Lucy his favorite nurse checked him in and took him to his room. He had been to the hospital recently a couple times. He gets to the room at about 7. Darren is put to sleep. As he awakes he sees nothing but the sun shining through the operation room window. No one is there. The time on the clock is 7:22 AM.  The surgery could not have been that short. It was expected to be a 2 hour surgery. Darren gets up and stumbles a little but he manages. He finds that the door is locked. He yells for help multiple times. There was no answer. He looks for something in the cabinets in the room to bust the door down. He found a note lying on the table. It read, “Darren, you need to stay put in this room. I will give you details later. I locked the door for your own safety. Everything I could think of was taken out of the room to prevent you from escaping. I’m even going to put a couple refrigerators on the other side. I will return. Stay put.Dr. Warren Lewis”

Every thought is going through Darren’s head. This crazy son of a bitch wants me killed. That’s why there are no nurses coming to get me. He’s told them not to. Now he was trapped. What can he do? Suddenly Darren spots the window. His surgery had been on the 6^th floor of the hospital. Darren removed the blinds from the window. He looked out. The parking lot of the hospital was nearly empty. That never happens. NEVER! Darren removes his IV machine and throws it at the window. Glass shatters everywhere. Surprisingly, the alarm did not go off. Something was weird. All Darren was worried about now was his wife Laura and his kids Josephine and David. He wanted to get to them and out of this damn hospital. Luckily, the window had a fire escape ladder. As Darren made it to the fourth floor on the ladder, something startled him. At the bottom of the ladder there was a dead body. He had to get to it. As he made it to the ground, what he thought was a dead body got up and started making noises at him like the person was sick or ill. He asked what was wrong with him. Suddenly it started trying to chase him. Darren went back up the ladder. He took his elbow and put it through the second floor window. He jumped in quickly. Was that person a person at all? He was losing a lot of blood now. The room he had landed in was a patient room for checkups and what not. He dug through the cabinets and found some bandages and he wrapped his wound up. It wouldn’t last for long. He went out the room and saw that the halls of the hospitals were empty. No nurses, no doctors, no anything! He made it to the elevator but when he tapped the button to go down nothing happened. He took the stairs, and when he made it to the bottom floor he felt relief. He could not see a thing on the staircase.

Just as the second floor was, the main floor was the same. It was empty. Papers everywhere and in the corner of his eye he saw a nurse going in the opposite direction. He hollered for her. The nurse turned looked at Darren. But this was no ordinary nurse. One of her eyes was missing and she looked dead. She looked like she was dead but alive at the same time. The nurse chased him like the guy outside did. As the nurse approached him he grabbed a pair of scissors off the front desk. He warned the nurse not to get any closer or he would stab her. The nurse kept coming and he did what he had to do. He stabbed the nurse right in the skull. He realized this was no human being but something else. A zombie. As the nurse fell to the ground, he heard a bang on the floor. It was the nametag of the nurse. It read Lucy. Darren had just killed his favorite nurse. But really was it his favorite nurse at all. Was it even a nurse? Darren made his way out of the front door to see the deserted parking lot. He was now off to his house. He looked for his car, but he could not find it. His car was gone, but he had the keys. Luckily he only lived 2 miles away. He walked. He walked until he came across another zombie. He didn’t even bother. He made a run for it and made it home in 25 minutes flat. His wife’s car was gone. Darren took out his front door keys and opened up the door. He looked around the whole house and could not find his family anywhere. He kept looking and on the dining room table his wife Laura had left a note. It read  “Darren, honey, if you’re reading this note me and the kids are gone to the café for food. We will need it with all that’s going on. I’ll probably be back before your surgery ends though so, I probably wrote this for nothing. What am I thinking they probably postponed your surgery because of all this. Just make sure you stay safe, and I hope your surgery goes well if you ever had one. Love, Laura.”

Darren sprinted out of the house and went to the café down the street. That’s where Laura had worked at. He passed a couple more zombies along the way. He reached the café out or breath and exhausted. Outside the front door, Darren picked up a copy of a newspaper article. It was titled The Dead Have Risen. He read how you shouldn’t get near them and that they carry a virus. The date on the paper was 2 days after his surgery. How many days have passed? This made him really scared for Laura and the kids. He walked in hollering and screaming for his wife and children. He received no answer. He remembered that Laura said she was coming here for food. So he went to the back room where the food was stocked. No one was in there. His heart dropped to his stomach. His wife was gone. Darren dropped to his knees and yelled Why Me. As he did this he heard something. He heard something down on the floor below him. He heard a knock. Thump! Thump!