Day Zero by Lindsey Pogue

Author:Lindsey Pogue [Pogue, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lindsey Pogue

After parking down the road to remain unseen, I trudged through the snow toward Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. I zipped my jacket up as high as the zipper would go around my neck and blinked the snowflakes that continued to fall from my lashes.

A hospital had never looked so looming as I glimpsed it through the trees. It was shrouded in darkness, and four floors were lined with tinted windows from which anyone could be peering out. As I trekked closer, lights flickered in the emergency wing entrance, and I noticed cars filled the parking lot. A full lot meant two things—there were a ton of bodies inside, and anyone who wasn’t dead could be friend or foe.

Gun gripped in my hand, I followed the side of the building to the Emergency wing entrance, the snow crunching under my heels. A hospital full of dead people was the last place I wanted to be right now, and I paused just outside the rotating door, peering in as I braced myself for whatever and whoever I found inside.

Despite the two-degree weather, I was sweating. I’d never felt so inadequate or scared, knowing what possible horrors I’d be walking into. This was different from the army. Especially now that I felt . . . whatever it was I’d felt with Beatrice. Whether it was a fluke or overactive emotions, I never wanted to feel the shadows of it again.

Taking a deep breath, I forced my feet to move. The door hissed as I pushed through it, my gun aimed in front of me as I scanned the waiting area. The instant the stench of death hit my nose, I breathed through my mouth, refusing to be derailed. Not surprisingly, the lights flickered, but I didn’t see movement or anyone down the hall or at the reception desk.

There were a handful of bodies slouched in chairs and some lying on the floor, and I forced myself to look at each of them for confirmation and nothing more. Lingering meant my mind would wander, and I couldn’t lose my nerve or my focus. A couple of plants were overturned with dirt spilling out in the waiting room, and some of the chairs placed in the hallways as overflow seating were toppled over, as if people had been rushing in and out.

When I saw no one resembling Kelsey and requiring a closer look, I stepped further down the hall, scanning a few rooms with open doors to find more death inside. Some people had been hurt and others looked as if they’d simply fallen asleep. I tried and failed not to notice the peaceful faces versus the expressions frozen in moments of death.

I kept walking. Continued scanning. I would stick to the wings and departments Kelsey would’ve gone to, mental health included, and then I would be out of there.

Monitors beeped incessantly, and the rooms were trashed, but I couldn’t tell if they’d been looted or the hospital had been inundated with sick people and everything was left in chaos as a result.

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