The Somber Shoe Read online

doors, most of the other people were struggling with each other, fighting to get their loved ones or themselves out of the cars. Officer Adams could be heard yelling among the crowd, yelling for everyone to remain calm.

  Yeah, that was going to happen, Charlie thought, feeling sorry for the poor plump Officer. Hopefully more law enforcement officers would be arriving to help him.

  Creeping in the front doors, trying to not get noticed by anyone in the angry mob outside Charlie almost collapsed with relief when he felt the bright hospital lights hit his face. But he couldn’t, the scene inside of the hospital didn’t appear to be much better than the terror going on outside. In fact, the scene inside the hospital could be described as a bit more bloody and frenzied.

  Almost as soon as he stepped inside the doors Charlie violently fell to the ground, pushed by an invisible attacker, hitting his concussed head on the hospital linoleum. Warmth spread over his face and filled his mouth. He struggled to swallow before he realized what had happened. Blood, he was drowning in blood. It took a moment for him to realize that it wasn’t his blood he was drowning in.

  On top of him rested a crazed looking man with wild hair, bloodshot eyes and one missing right hand. Blood squirted from the stump of the man’s arm, hitting Charlie in his face, washing his eyes, filling his open mouth, which he quickly snapped tightly shut, the blood quickly warming the ground underneath him. It took a moment but Charlie realized that the man had been shouting something at him.

  “Get out of here, they’ll kill you. They are killing everyone and no one can stop them. I saw one being shot and it kept coming. It kept coming! Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m telling you? Look at what it did!” the man shouted, shoving his bloody stump further into Charlie’s face.

  Charlie pushed and rolled himself out from under the crazy man. The man just lay on the ground, continuing to shout about some sort of invincible monsters, and showing the entire room his bloody stump of an arm.

  Cough after cough racked Charlie’s body as he attempted to spit the blood he had swallowed out of his mouth. If he knew how he would make himself vomit to get the guys blood out of his stomach. Disgust plastered itself on his face as he wiped the back of his right hand over his left eye. His hand was covered in the handless man’s blood, and besides being totally gross Charlie didn’t know what kind of diseases the man might have. Questions quickly assaulted his confused head. Would Charlie now get AIDS because some strange crazy dudes blood had been ingested by him and washed over any cuts or open wounds Charlie had earned when his face hit the dash of the car?

  The urge to get further away from the bleeding, screaming man, forced Charlie to advance into hell, he would have gone back but the emergency room doors were filled with struggling, bloody, injured, shouting people. He was so tired and leaned back into a light blue, which felt like it could be the only thing holding him up. Bloody handprints stained doors and opaque windows to examination rooms, and he pushed himself, desperately searching for help.

  White uniforms splattered with red and green and brown ran past him in a blur of color. Injured people screamed and cried as they stumbled, walked dazedly, or crawled past him. Several people had open wounds that looked like bite marks, blood dripped from torn body parts, broken bones poked out from tears they had made in fragile skin, hair matted against head wounds, a young girl ran past screaming for her mommy holding a piece of her cheek that looked like it had been ravaged by strong fingers.

  Charlie suddenly felt sick, nauseous, dizzy, shaky and feverish. He wanted to sit down; he thought the car accident finally caught up to him. But no, for him there would be no help, and he would never understand why.

  There was no time to grasp or understand what he felt and suddenly a seizure vibrated through his entire body, dropping him in a grotesque, broken heap to the ground.

  His shoulder length black hair swung back and forth as his head banged continuously against the pale blue wall of the hospital corridor he had been struggling down. Blood stained the wall as his head cracked open by the force. His dark brown eyes rolled up into his heads until only white ghostly eyes looked down the hallway. Every part of his body flopped and he became a gasping fish out of water. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

  Silence. Stillness. Charlie’s body lay hushed by a vicious disease, one last breath escaped before death claimed him.

  He blinked, some small part of his brain reawakening, and the hunger was ravishing.