'Jack, can I ask you a question?'
'Sure John, shoot.'
'Have you seen what happened to Juan before?'
'No John, I haven't.'
'So you don't know what it means?'
'No John, I don't.'
Chapter 14
Back at the maternity ward Juan worked with the men to clean up the hallway, paying particular care to get the window cleaned off, it just looked filthy to him and long after he had wiped it clean he kept staring at it, as if he expected it to be grimy again. One of the Doctors approached him and asked if he was alright.
'Oh si, yes. I am fine. How are the women and babies doing?'
'They are good Juan. Look, the group has a few questions about you, about the guys you are with, who sent you and all and about you, you. I mean, we all knew about the zombie Rafael, you didn't, he, well he killed people right in front of us, usually by beating them to death then biting through their throats, this was before the group got so small, in the west wing of the building before they smoked the chaplain out.'
'Chaplain? Tell me about that.'
'In a minute okay? You first, then I will go.'
Juan proceeded to tell the doctor, Sam McAfee, about what he and Hank had been through since the whole mess had started. He summarized it quickly and was done in about five minutes. He kept thinking he was leaving something out, after all on the rooftop it had taken Hank most of two hours to get through the story when telling Kevin. Hank was more of a story teller anyway, Juan guessed. He ended with Mary getting bitten downstairs and then looked to Sam, saying, 'Okay now you, what happened to the chaplain?'
'Well it was weird, we have a chapel here, St Joseph's Chapel, and we have a full time chaplain, and one part timer too, although he was not here three days ago when all this happened. The chaplain on duty was trained Catholic, he moved over to become our private chaplain about two years ago. His name was Brian Donahue, he was a priest too, but working here with us became his calling. I knew him pretty well and he was going to go back to the official clergy in another few years, but right now he felt called to serve here. He made damn good money too, but always kept his wages to what he would have earned had he been the head of a parish somewhere. That took a lot of balls too, I mean this is not exactly low end hospital and his wages had to be five or six times what he would have earned elsewhere. Anyway he was very devout, gave probably half of his earnings back to us in the form of private donations and the rest of it went to his local church. I remember the fuss about that, let me tell you! He had his paycheck set up to take the percentage out and have it deposited directly into his choice of charities and when the local administrators found out how much he was giving away, man you should have heard them, you'd think he was giving away their money!' Sam got a faraway look in his eyes.
'So what happened to him?' prompted Juan, who was Catholic himself and now had more than a passing interest the fellow.
'Well I only have the story second hand, anyone who was there and saw anything is dead now. I think John, that kid who went with Jack, was there, but he didn't see anything, he was in the west wing, I think. Anyway I heard from one of the other guys who made it over here after….well after they killed Donahue, what had happened.
He said that he was standing in the west hallway, looking towards the chapel and saw their leader, never knew his name, but saw him calling out to Donahue through the doors of the chapel. Donahue said he would not come out and if they felt they could overcome God's will they could come in and get him. That is just it though, the zombies, they wouldn't go into the chapel. Even the stupid ones that their leader tried to force through. It was a standoff, only Donahue was not exactly doing anything to the zombies except praying for them and trying to compel them to go to their final rest. He was telling them to resist Satan and a bunch of other things. They guy who told me this said sometimes it worked.' Juan felt a faint tingle inside of him, some inner voice that said things might not be that bad after all.
Sam let that hang out there a minute before continuing, 'Finally the leader he had had enough, the father was in there with about thirty patients and their families and while he didn't seem able to go into the chapel himself, he didn't seem to have any difficulty firing guns into the chapel, he ordered some of his brighter zombies up front and center, gave Father Donahue one last chance then fired into the chapel, it was a slaughter. From what this guy told me anyway, Father Donahue was kneeling in prayer before the alter, he was the last one shot, and get this, even after they were all dead the zombies still couldn't go into the chapel, couldn't or wouldn't.'
'So Juan that answers you about the chaplain, now are you going to tell me how you managed to kill their leader's third biggest bad boy in about ten seconds? And tell me what the hell happened to you when you did. Because, Juan, something happened to you. We all saw it through the glass.'
Juan looked at the doctor, cast his face down and turned away without a word, he walked about fifteen feet away and assumed a guard like stance in the hallway. The doctor started to go after him, but stopped when Juan looked him in the eye and shook his head slowly from side to side. Sighing Sam shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Maybe later, huh?' and ducked back into the maternity ward, leaving Juan to answer an empty hallway, 'No, not even later.'
Jack and John got back a few minutes later to find Juan alone in the hallway, they looked at each other and then Jack said, 'It is pretty clear, John says the zombie's leader cleared everybody out to hike after the radio dj yesterday. We found a few dead people, but no one alive or zombified.'
'Si. No problems here either, ready to go get the others and get the doors blocked up?'
Jack and Juan left John to guard the doctors and nurses and went down the hallway to load the corpses onto a gurney and take them down the elevator to the ER. As they passed the other zombie that Juan had killed one of the men, paused to kick him several times, explaining he had killed his wife, then they tossed the body on top of the other four and continued out into the ER. Once there they moved all the other bodies out of the way to make a path to the door, where they took their burdens outside to the corner of the building and dumped them. Several more trips and all the bodies in the ER were gone but the place was still a gory mess. A couple of the men got mops and did some clean up while the rest of the group figured out how to turn off the automatic doors. Outside the zombies were still trickling in, but they were all of the slow variety and easily dealt with. The crew from the club salvaged everything they could out of the trucks before they filled the foyer area between the inner and outer doors with furniture from the lobby, it was not fool proof, but nothing was going to get through there without a lot of effort and a lot of noise. Then they called back to the Mike's Club and heard that the other convoy was just getting underway, eight vans, cars and trucks filled with the first thirty people and some of the supplies was heading out and should be there within an hour. Among other things they were bringing about a thousand shells of shotgun ammunition.
The group in the ER went back upstairs to let them know what was going on and then they split into groups one headed down to the hospital cafeteria to clear it for the incoming food, and maybe get something to eat. The others stayed up in the maternity ward, including Charlie and Mary, whom they put into a room nearby, the Doctors were all over her when they heard she had been bitten. The others, including Terry and Jen, just kept watch on the hallways, in case there were some zombies running still around that they had missed in their quick sweep of the building. The group that went into the kitchen had an unpleasant surprise in the form of one of the cooks who had turned into a zombie. This woman jumped out at them from the shadows before they had the chance to turn the lights on. Luckily she was a typical slow zombie and other than the initial scare factor, she was easy to put down. They tossed her body out the back of the kitchen into the loading dock area for the cafeteria then quickly locked the doors against the three or four zombies that were drawn to their movement when they opened the door in the first place. Again the men from the maternity ward got out mops and cleaned the area, spraying disinfectant over all everything to make the decontamination complete.
