isolatin -chapter 3 - alive

8/9/2019 Isolatin -Chapter 3 - Alive

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In the dark he had nothing, but his thoughts. Charlie thought he was dead. His

senses abandoned him and he wondered why he couldnt feel, see, or hear anything.Blackness engulfed everything, but his mind. He wasnt a Christian and thought for sure he

would be in the fiery pits of hell by now, but nothing happened. No fire or smoke, no man

with a pitchfork jabbing him to leap off into the lake of fire. Nothing. A void of emptiness.

A black sea of infinity caught him, trapping him in the undertow.

Then it happened.

All his senses came rushing back to him like an explosion. His eyes flew open, his

ears all but exploded, and pain racked his body. Charlie shut his eyes from the sudden light.

He put his hands to his ears to try and ease the pain. The pain in his body he could deal

with in time. He was alive. It almost felt like being reborn. The sudden realization made

him jerk. He realized he was on his back on the floor. Then another feeling came to

Charlie. He was cold. Then he remembered. Charlie didnt open his eyes. He was too

afraid. It all came rushing back to him in bright flashes in his mind.

He remembered being late for work, Grayson bursting through the door, the Doc

coming back to life being a part of the undead, the note with its last hope filled plea, the vial-

within it-salvation, cold hands that grabbed his neck, and then falling down into thedarkness.

Charlie propped himself up. He used his arms as supports; elbows locked and

placed behind him. It was hard to do with his eyes shut, but he managed, barely. His ears

were working. He heard his hands slide across the floor and his necklace jingle when he

propped himself up, but there was no other sound, but the steady hum of the overhead

lights. Charlie was afraid to open his eyes. He didnt know what he would see. He figured

out where he was because of the cold. He was in the lab and that couldnt be good. The

Docs note told him not to go down there. The bad ones were done here. Now hewas

down herewith them. Would they be waiting for him? Would the undead come and

devour him whole once he showed the slightest signs of life? What if he opened his eyes

and the Doc was right beside him sounding that ungodly racket. Charlie didnt know if he

could take that. Everything else was shocking and totally surreal, but the Doc as an undead?


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That might just send him over the edge. Charlie inhaled a deep breath and held it. He

slowly opened his eyes.

The light was intense, the glare maddening to his mind and eyes. He blinked several

times to adjust to it not wanting to really see anything yet. His fear was mounting. Charlie

breathed quickly in short quick spurts. He could feel his pulse start to race. His temples

thumped a quick dull beat and echoed in his ears. He opened his eyes again slowly and

feared the worst.

Charlies vision blurred. He wondered if the fall had messed up his eyesight. The

bright lights rained down on him from above. He knew they were the labs fluorescents.

Charlie expected to feel cold hands grab about him again, but they never came. He moved

his head left and right and saw fuzzy shapes contrasted against the bright light. It was like

looking in a fogged bathroom mirror. Charlie blinked again to bring the world into focus.After a few moments the world became clear and Charlie was speechless.

They stood there like lifeless dolls, not moving, not breathing, nor speaking just

standing there. They were lookingno, staringat him. He counted ten of the Docs dead

patients with a brief look of his eyes. They had come back to life, back from the dead. A

chill ran through his body. Charlie shook. He thought any second they would charge him

and begin eating his flesh, taking parts of him down to their empty lifeless bellies. But

nothing happened; they juststood theresilent. Puzzled, Charlie sat up further. His arms

relieved from the task of holding himself up. He rubbed their lengths and didnt feel

anything broken and then did the same for his legs and body. Charlie watched them as he

ran his hands across his body waiting for the smallest movement from the undead that

would begin his end, but it never came. He finished and realized his body was whole and

Charlie sat there for a moment counting his blessings.

Charlie rubbed the nape of his neck and felt a trail of dried blood that ran down his

back. His skin was torn from the bite, but the wound didnt seem that bad. I guess the

serum worked. Charlie said out loud. Thanks, Doc.What made Charlie cringe was that he knew the people standing before him. Well,

he didnt actuallyknowthem, but he knew their names, their history, and their cause of death

and that was enough to give him the shivers as they stood staring at him with vacant eyes.

He was with them since the start of this maddening ordeal, him and the Doc who tried to

play God. He looked at them again to see who was standing before him.


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Carlee Kingswerth was there, forty two years old and with a Y mortuary incision

peaking above her white gown. Luke McDonald, sixty five, white haired with stitches

encircling his head standing there like a miniature version of Frankenstein. Leslie Neal,

eighteen with arms that looked like rot grubs had eaten away her flesh from all of her

heroine injections. Skip Bankston, who while at the age of fifty eight died of an aneurism,

stood there looking through him to some unseen point in space. Felicia Banks, African

American, twenty five and from New Orleans who was shot down in the street while

walking by the French Quarter. Her body looked like a woodpecker had gone mad on her

skin. Multiple bullet holes dotted her body and made her look like the human version of

Swiss cheese. Frank Stillinger, thirty eight and killed by his ex-wife over a land dispute. The

stab wounds on his body covered his entire torso. A total of fifty eight stab wounds were

counted by the Doc and Charlie while waiting in the lab on test results a little over a weekago. Bobby Whitmore stood hunched over, sixty nine with a bad ticker that just stopped

one day. He was short for a man, only five feet tall. As he stood there hunched over, which

made him even shorter, Charlie thought of a troll with its black eyes and smirk grin, only

Bobby wasnt smiling. His mouth was in a grimace of pain. The mortuary didnt bother

fixing him up so well since he was coming straight to the Doc for testing. Charlie shuddered

when he looked at Bobby and quickly moved his eyes away from the little man who looked

like a monster come to life out of a fairy tale. Alice Goledean stood there, all three hundred

and sixty five pounds of her in her short four foot eleven height. The Doc had said he

imagined she looked like a walking tomato with legs and arms in life. Charlie almost laughed

at this while looking at her, but feared if he started laughing he might not stop because of

the madness that was at the edge of his mind just waiting to grab hold of him and take him

for a long ride with no chance of return. Douglas Newland stood; his overweight frame

seemed like a miracle to hold his grossly fat body. Sleep apnea claimed his life at the ripe old

age of thirty. What a way to go, Charlie said. Thinking that to die in ones sleep was

probably the easiest and least painful way to die. He looked to the last person standingbefore him, the young Philly as the Doc called her, Jessica Breeman.

Charlie had a soft spot in his heart for Jessica. She was 23, five foot five and

weighed dead even at one hundred pounds. Her cause of death was an accident.

Impalement while water skiing in Tennessee. Charlie thought it an odd and unfair fate for

one that possessed such natural beauty as Jessica did to die at such an early age, just barely


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The phone was ringing and Charlie looked back over his shoulder expecting to see

them staring at him and they were. None of them had moved. They just stood there staring

at him. He turned his back to them and waited for the operator to pick up. He wondered

what was taking the emergency staff so long to answer. Maybe the lady was out getting a

snack or on break, but shouldnt there be someone at the phones 24/7? This was the 9-1-1

emergency number after all. It wasnt long distance either. The towns emergency 9-1-1

office had its own little building in the center of downtown. He remembered two ladies that

always worked there, but their names were lost to him while the phone rang the number.

Charlie hung up after the twentieth ring. He dialed the boarding house where he

lived. He knew at least someone would be there to pick up the phone. Charlie wasnt sure if

he would tell anyone at the boarding house about what was going on just yet, but he had to

make contact somehow with someone living. If he didnt he might just go mad with allthese dead people around staring at him. Charlie began tapping his foot waiting for

someone to answer the phone. It rang twenty times just like it had for the 9 -1-1 number.

No answer.

He hung up the phone angry and then afraid. Could the Docs dead people have killed

anyone yet? The Doc said they were mean. Hmmmm? Charlie thought. The thought of the whole

town being killed didnt help Charlies mood. It scared him and he began looking around

the room for anything with telephone numbers on it so he could call them and tell them this

madness. He found nothing.

He was at the far end of the lab when he remembered the lab phone couldnt make

long distance calls. Well, they could, but the Doc was the only one who knew the

combination. Charlie began running for the stairs and thats when the dead started to move.

Before he could get to the other end of the stairs they moved to stop him. Hands

reached for Charlie and he lost his footing, dodging the splayed out hands. He almost went

down to the floor, but somehow caught his balance.

Hands grabbed him.It wasnt all of them, but it was enough. Charlie tried to turn around, but the cold

arms of the dead held him fast. They didnt want him to escape. Four of them, Jessica,

Alice, Bobby and Frank grabbed at Charlie and pulled at his clothing. He couldnt believe

their strength. It was abnormal and this made Charlie all the more uneasy in their presence.

A few moments passed and he stopped trying to break free. Charlie thought he was about


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to be bitten numerous times with cold dead mouths. He cringed and waited for the sting of

teeth on his skin, the tearing of his flesh and the blood that would soon flow, but none

came.

After he became still the hands let go. Charlie didnt turn to look at them this time.

He needed to get upstairs to the phone to try calling againany number he could find, even

the operator if it meant he had to call someone from outside of the town. He couldnt do

this. Not for a million dollars could he sit there any longer and look at those dead people.

Something must be done. His determination got him going. He walked away from the ten

dead people waiting to see if they would grab him again. None did so after he got a good

distance away from them he ran.

It was all a blur to Charlie. He heard his own footsteps on the cold tiled floor, but

he heard other footsteps or shuffling steps behind him, too. Charlie turned and the ten werecoming after him. They moved slow as he suspected they would. He could make it outside

to the light and get out of this confined space with thesehell, he finally said it. Zombies!

He reached the stairs and glanced over his shoulder as his right foot hit the first step.

He was way ahead of them. They would not catch him. All he had to do was make it to the

top of the stairs and grab one of the Docs cordless phones. Hope lit up in his mind. It was

a new beacon, a new shore with new beginnings and hopefully survival. His other foot hit

the stairs and he pushed propelling himself up the steep steps in anticipation of making it

upstairs and then outside into the light of day.

He turned back to the stairs to look at them so he wouldnt trip. One fall down

these steep steps could do some real damage. He already fell once and he was lucky that

nothing was broken or sprained. Charlie didnt think he could be that lucky again. He

looked up to the top of the stairs and in an instant all of Charlies hopes faded to

nothingness.

Grayson Stant waited for him at the top, arms out stretched for him, mouth open as

if to eat him whole, and still naked.Charlie screamed and continued to run up the stairs.

isolatin -chapter 3 - alive

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