Hi guys, thought I'd throw in one of my oldest pieces I ever wrote. This was originally published on Deviant Art (2011) under the pen name Lex-Zaiya (https://www.deviantart.com/lex-zaiya/art/Dead-Shift-263856494)
You are welcome to look at how terribly bad I was at writing over a decade ago.
I have tagged the following people as you guys are already following Mortis Custos:
Also, thanks Zak, I'll be stealing our divider for this story. Hope you don't mind.
I wrote this short story after the first year that I worked in a morgue. It was meant to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek piece as I am terrified of zombies, but some of my friends liked it so much I went ahead and posted it to Deviant Art. Now when I look back on it I realize how terrible it was and spent some time fixing it up to post it here.
Anyway, have fun, be advised this is not child-friendly!
Just another day, like any other. Bored with my job, bored with my life, and longing for some excitement. Anything would have been better than this.
"Alex it is time to go!" yelled Michael a cop buddy of mine, as he half hung out of his vehicle.
"Why are you in such a rush? It's not like the dead guy is going anywhere?" I mumbled as I picked up my collection kit in one hand and draped my lab coat over my shoulder.
"I'm in a rush because you are always in a rush. Where are your boots?"
"I think I left them in the office…I should go back."
"Oh no, you're not!" the cop got up from his seat in the squad car and grabbed my kit from my hand, "I have a spare pair of wellingtons in the boot of the car. We do not have time to wait. The last time we did they washed the body, then you were pissed at me for a month. Get in the car, or I will put you in the back with the cuffs again."
I sighed and took up Michael's seat as he put my collection kit in the boot, "I am driving then."
"Against the law. Move to the passenger side."
"Aw, come on Michael. Just once." I begged as I set my hands on the steering wheel.
"Move." Ordered Michael.
He was a cop, what could I do? I moved through to the passenger seat and grinned at him. He rolled his eyes and started the car. He hated running errands for the pathology lab, but he had no choice. He was their bitch.
Oh? Curious about the pathology lab? Let me explain then. Remember my boring job? I am a Forensic Entomologist. Yeah, I make my living by digging insects out of rotten corpses. Some people think this is disgusting, others think it is awesome, but me? I've been doing this for so long that the near skeletonized bodies no longer had any effect on me.
"Are you going to run again?" asked Michael.
"No. This time I will just grab your nightstick."
"The pathologist will not be happy with you if you destroy a non-rotted corpse."
"It moved!"
"And you screamed like a little girl that you are."
"It moved…" I mumbled.
Michael just laughed and then continued driving towards the pathology lab. He had always thought it was funny that I could not stand fresh bodies in the morgue. It was reasonable! They still had blood. They still had their features. They were all in one piece. They still moved due to rigor mortis. I have a phobia of zombies…yes you heard me right. I have a phobia of zombies. It was a constant point of humor amongst my friends and the staff at the morgue.
They had discovered my phobia when I was new to being a forensic Entomologist. I had walked into the morgue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and ran out a second later when a body had suddenly sat up on the gurney. Even the ambulance staff had laughed at me that day. The driver had been gentle though, he had explained why the body had sat up, but it didn't help. The phobia had stuck with me ever since then. Every time a body twitched, I was ready to run.
At a stage, the morgue assistants thought it would be funny to play a prank on me. Got some makeup, and set a scene in the morgue where one person lay on the dissection table right next to the corpse that I was working on. They waited until I was engrossed in my work before they sat up and groaned at me. That was the first and last time they ever pulled that prank on me. The assistant had to be taken to the hospital as I had spun around and kicked out violently. Three ribs had been broken by my kick while his skull had been cracked from his fall from the table.
"You know Jason has never forgiven you." Said Michael as he turned into the parking lot of the pathology lab.
"He was a moron, and he deserved it." I mumbled.
"You should get revenge." Michael parked the car, "Right. Out with you."
"You coming with?"
"Naturally. You need my nightstick, remember."
"I'd prefer to have your gun." I said as I got out of the car.
"When you learn to shoot, then I will consider it."
Michael escorted me to the office to sign in and then allowed me to move into the inner part of the morgue where the bodies were kept. I steeled myself against the smell and pushed through the double swinging doors. The smell of the blood was vile and always made me nauseous, but this was my livelihood.
"I'm here." I called out to the pathologist as I put my kit down.
I pulled my lab coat on, as there was no point in getting covered in blood. Then I kicked off my sneakers to put on the wellingtons that Michael had loaned me. They were a bright pink, not standard issue.
"Michael loaned me his daughter's pink wellingtons, so mind the color." I looked at the shoes in disgust, "I can't believe that I can fit into a twelve-year-old's shoes."
I looked up to find no one in the room, well, at least not anyone living. My corpse was not too far away. It was actually moving with the amount of insect activity it had. There were also three others, but they were fairly fresh. One was an elderly male It looked like he had gone in his sleep. The old age home must have brought him in. He had already been done. The Y-incision had been neatly sewed up, and all the blood had been cleared away. He almost looked serene.
The next appeared to be a female, young, all bashed up from some kind of accident. She still had the intubation tube down her throat. She had had a leg amputated, and most of her body had been wrapped up in bandages. It didn't look like she had been started on yet. Lastly, there was a body at the far end of the room. This one was still fully dressed and drenched in blood. It was gross. I placed my kit next to the body I was meant to be working on and moved towards the odd body on the other side of the room.
"Is there no one here?" I called out once again.
Still, there was no answer. Annoyed now, I peered into the next room where the assistants usually geared up for autopsies. However, there was no one there.
"I'm going to start whether there is a doctor here or not." I yelled as I turned back to the autopsy room.
The bloodied body caught my eye again. It was dressed in a lab coat, and I say it because it looked completely torn up, and I could not tell the gender. The face had just about been torn off of the skull, all the ribs had been broken out, and the guts had been wrenched out.
"Looks like you had an idiot that was testing on animals illegally, and had his guts torn out. Deserves it, in my opinion."
I continued moving through to where I was meant to be working. I opened my toolbox and removed my notebook. I paged through the various old cases that had been finished this year.
"Impressive! I am hitting my fiftieth case. Wouldn't my parents be proud of me?" I told the maggoty corpse before me, "Shall we get started?"
I was making notes on gender, with the use of some self-taught anthropology. Then I started on the collection of the insects, which were mostly maggots, but then I heard a sound. Looking up I saw the pathologist that usually helped me with all the cases that I was called to.
"Heya Horst. About time. I was yelling for someone, but no one seemed to hear me. I finished my preliminary study of the corpse. I was about to start on the collecting of the evidence."
The man, Horst, was tall, with long dark hair that hung on his face and clothed in the typical lab coat, surgical gloves, and an apron. He usually didn't wear the apron unless he was removing brains which he only did when the medical students were there. That was probably the reason why he hadn't heard me. The whine of the bone saw drowned out most noise in this place.
"You want to help?" I asked as I lifted a plastic container I intended to use to collect some samples from the eye sockets.
Horst groaned but said nothing else as he shuffled over to the ripped-open body. Horst had never liked me underfoot when he worked, and he saw me being in the morgue as some kind of assault on him. He was a doctor and would only be associated with those that had their doctorates already. However, since police needed post mortem intervals on those dead longer than three days, Horst had no choice but to allow me into his abode. I just tried my best to stay out of his way as best as I could.
"I'm gonna start then." I said softly as I made sure that my gloves were correctly on. I didn't need maggots crawling into them.
Horst ignored me and dug both hands into the body cavity of the last body and tore out chunks of what I took to be liver. Surprised at his abruptness, I opened my mouth to say something but closed it as he suddenly stuffed his face full of bloody, raw human liver. It usually took a lot to make me nauseous, but this was beyond anything I had had to experience in my life.
"Horst!" I screamed and threw the plastic collecting bottle at him, "You promised me that these pranks would stop! This is very unprofessional!"
The plastic bottle hit Horst in the forehead and harmlessly bounced away. It did, however, get his attention for the first time since he walked into the lab. He slowly looked up and uttered a low groan. I blanched when I saw his face. Everything from his right ear to his nose had been torn free from the skull beneath. The loose flesh dangled with his hair, and I had not noticed it before.
"That is it. I am lodging a complaint." I could hear my voice quiver, "This is a place where the dead should be…"
Horst pulled the remainder of his lips up in a growl and dropped the liver before he started shuffling towards me.
"These pranks…they have to stop…"
He stumbled forward, as if tripping over his own feet, and as he stood straight I caught a look at his eyes. I knew that look, it was the horrible blank, milky look that all the dead had. I swallowed and took a step back, only to bump into something solid where I thought the door would have been. I looked up and saw Michael.
"Oh thank god…" I started.
Michael opened his mouth as if to say something, but the only thing to come out of his mouth was blood and a part of a human ear. All of which landed on my shoulder and were soaked up by the material of my lab coat. I jumped away from him as he raised his arms and groaned as if in pain. I heard another groan from the other side of the room and realized that Horst was still with us. I looked from the pathologist to my old friend and realized something was very wrong. I could still believe that Horst would pull this kind of prank, but Michael would never.
"Michael…"
Michael groaned again and reached for me. He was missing three fingers on his left hand, all that remained were bloody stumps, they were not bleeding. Neither was the giant hole in the side of his neck.
"No…" I walked back to the basins that were used to wash up after autopsies, "This cannot be real…"
Real or not, the two men slowly shuffled towards me, groaning and reaching forward in their attempt to get at me. This was no prank. Then, as if to add to the sheer terror of the whole situation the body at the end of the room groaned, convulsed, and then sat up. Now I had three of these things to contend with. In my mind, I knew exactly what these creatures were but I was not willing to say it out loud. To say it aloud would make it even more real, more terrifying.
As the two men groaned once more and stumbled forward the third got off of the autopsy table and also made its way towards me. They seemed to ignore each other completely as they only had eyes for me. In desperation, I pulled myself up onto the basin and desperately tried to open the windows that led to the outside, but they would not budge. Behind me, the groans were now much louder and seemed more urgent, or maybe that was in my own mind. A desperate combination of pounding on the window and rattling it only resulted in my lab coat being grabbed suddenly from behind.
Instinct took over as I suddenly grabbed at the burglar bars over the largest part of the window. I heard a low moan, and the tugging got worse. I didn't want to look behind me. I didn't want to see that my worst nightmare had come to life. The tugging became so strong that one of my hands flew off one of the burglar bars. I heard a thud and another moan and dared to look back.
Michael, or what was once Michael, was lying on his back, his hand with the missing fingers still clutching at the lab coat, but what made me happy was that my arm had slipped free from the sleeve of the lab coat. The buttons must have torn off. I hurriedly pulled the lab coat off my body and threw it over the creature. I no longer cared for the window that wouldn't open. I kicked at it with all my strength, shattering the glass and spraying it everywhere. I was grateful that this part of the building was on the ground level as I jumped through what was left of the window with no bars.
I thought I was free. I believed I was free, but the relief was short-lived. I heard moaning from the bereavement garden. Usually, this garden was reserved for the family members who have to come and identify lost loved ones. It was in the center of the morgue building, and it was always well kept but not today. There were several of the creatures here. Each showed some kind of trauma where the flesh had been stripped away yet there was no blood. The noise I had created was enough to attract them to my whereabouts. There were five creatures here. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire.
I froze. Those moans and the reaching of dead hands stopped everything in my body except for functions I had no control over. Blood rushed through my ears, and my heart pounded as I watched these creatures stumble forward moaning. There was no denying it now. The word flashed through my head again and again and again.
"Zombies…" I moaned in terror.
They came closer and closer yet my legs would not allow me to move at all. One, a man, with a chunk of arm missing was just about on top of me before I finally reacted. I kicked with all my strength and connected with the flabby guts, which would have made this man a beast when he was alive. Now it only managed to hurt me and cause the creature to stumble back a few steps. It did not phase it for long, and it continued to stumble forward. I was not going to end up like that.
Looking for anything I could possibly use as a weapon, I spotted some gardening equipment close by. Several types of rakes, a spade, and a pickax. It was exactly what I needed, only one problem though. A young girl was crawling over them to get to me. Whatever zombie had attacked her had ruined her legs and she was unable to move on them. The only way she could move was to use her arms to drag herself forward. She reminded me of some twisted version of a land shark. You would never see her coming until it was too late. Lawn shark…yes that was a good description as any to use for what this creature had become. However, those tools were the only items that I could see that could be used as weapons. I had to get to them.
I ducked under the fat man's arms and ran to the garden where the implements were. They were my only hope. The other three zombies were too far away to try and get to me, so I didn't worry too much about them as I raced towards the weapons. As I got close, the little girl issued not just a moan but a scream combined and tried to rear to her feet. She failed and fell forward. I didn't stop. I was fighting for my survival. I jumped and brought all my weight firmly down on her head. It exploded like an overripe melon. Her moan scream ended in a spray of gray matter. I had seen brains before but never have I seen them all over my Wellington boots. I felt sick with disgust. I had just murdered a toddler. The sound of the splintering skull still rang in my ears, halting my movements. I looked at the gore on my shoes and felt the familiar hollow feeling in my gut. I was going to be sick.
The moan behind me wrenched me back to my plight. The large black man had turned and was not shuffling toward me, and the three other zombies were also starting to move toward me. I had to move. I kicked the little girl's corpse from the tools and picked up the pickax. This would surely stop anything that would come at me. I faced the large zombie as it reached for me. In my panic, I swung the pickax catching it in the chest. The sound of the metal hitting the flesh was appalling but what was worse was that the creature still moved forward, and I could not pull my weapon from its chest. It swung its arms, and I was forced to jump back and release the pickax. My weapon was gone. I was disgusted with myself. A pickax? Really? That was a stupid weapon. Next, I reached for the spade, surely this would cause far more damage.
The large zombie tripped over the corpse of the little girl as I looked up. He slammed to the ground, and the pickax tore through his back. I took the opportunity to jump onto its back and brought the spade down heavily onto its neck. It did not sever its head cleanly it barely managed to get through the vertebrae.
Suddenly the creature convulsed and tried to get to its feet, throwing me clear of it. I fell back, stunned, losing grip on the latest weapon. I watched the zombie get back to its feet, turn and walk back to me. I scrabbled backward; as if I was some hideously mutated crab and reached for the spade. I brought it to bear as the zombie was on top of me. Then all I felt was this heavyweight on me. I was ready for the gnashing teeth and the agony of being eaten alive, but it never came. The body on top of me was not moving. I pushed with all my strength to remove it. That's when I discovered that when the creature had tried to attack me, the spade had wedged into the ground behind me as it came forward. This resulted in it successfully managing to lob his own head off. I wanted to cry with joy and relief at still being alive, but I heard an odd sound. It was something that sounded like a snort and a snarl but very softly. I turned in my seated position and looked. The zombie's mouth flapped open and closed, the odd sounds were coming from it. It was still alive.
"No way…" I got to my feet and nudged at it with my foot.
It surprised me by suddenly snapping at me. It was still very much alive…if you could call it that. In my disgust, I kicked the head toward one of the three zombies still approaching me. It was a woman…or so I thought. She had a blood-drenched dress on but her face had been completely chewed away. Empty eye sockets stared at the flying head and she didn't even try to move out of the way. The disembodied head kept gnashing away and grabbed hold of a chunk of bloodied hair of the faceless zombie, and there it stuck fast. It was a macabre sight indeed. I did not want to stay to see what the zombies were planning next. Keeping my spade closer I grabbed a couple of rakes and ran away from the approaching zombies.
The morgue's layout suddenly popped into my head as I ran. The bereavement garden was in the center of the building. From here I could enter any of the offices or other autopsy rooms. However, to get out of the actual building there were only two exits. The entrance, where the door was opened with the turning of the door handle, something a brain-dead creature could not comprehend, and finally, the garage. The garage had a massive electric door that would open for ambulances and mortuary vehicles. Then with a sinking feeling in my gut, I realized that the door always stood open. These creatures could escape. If they escaped…
"I need to close that door." I hissed to myself.
I knew how to get to the garage, but I had no idea how many of these creatures were still in the building. Where had the first infected come from? How many living people had been prayed on and then reanimated? I looked over my shoulder at the three zombies, well three and a half zombies, shuffling after me. With the three in the autopsy room where I had come from that made six, but there was no way to tell how many there really were. That was a bridge that I did not want to think about, much less cross.
I pushed through one of the swinging doors and entered an autopsy room. This one was thankfully empty, of both corpses and the undead. Using one of the rakes, pushed between the two door handles, I wedged the door shut, it would no longer be able to open up into this room. I took this opportunity to gather my thoughts and catch my breath. This was the main autopsy room, it led directly to the garage, I needed to just get through one more door, and I could escape to where I could get a vehicle.
Then a sickening thought crossed my mind. The garage was where the bodies were brought into the morgue. On any given morning there could easily be twenty or more bodies waiting to be autopsied. However, this was Monday. The morgue only had a skeleton crew (pardon the unintended pun) over weekends, and most bodies were stored over the weekend before they were brought in to be autopsied. There could be as many as thirty or more out there. I felt the color drain from my face. To get out to the garage, I would have to get passed whatever amount of corpses there were.
I looked at my weapons. I had a spade, completely made out of metal, and a wooden rake. I would have to choose which would be better to use. Heavy or not, the spade had already saved my life once. It was worth keeping with me. I set the rake down and slowly crept towards the swing door that swung out into the garage. I peeked through the small window and clutched at my spade in fear. I counted at least four shambling figures that moved between the various cars and gurneys that still had corpses strapped to them. They seemed to happily tear into the cold dead flesh to sate a hunger lust that would never leave them. It was disgusting.I did not want to go through that.
I looked around me in hopes of finding a window that I could escape through, but as this room was on the edge of the morgue, all the windows were barred to prevent theft. It was meant to keep people out, now it only served to trap me in with the living dead. I swallowed back my fear and looked back through the window. All four of the stumbling creatures were now crowded around a body. Perhaps if I was quiet, I could sneak past them. I could see the outside just beyond them. I could think of nothing else. To stay here was nothing short of a death sentence.
Slowly I opened the swinging door and inched through before closing it quietly behind me. I looked up at the feasting creatures, but they had not moved from their meal. I sighed in relief and slowly made my way between the gurneys while keeping my eyes open for any other creatures. I was careful to not nudge any of the gurneys with my movements. I knew it only took a single sound to have these ravenous creatures descend on me. Fifty meters ahead of me there was the button that controlled the electric garage door. I would just have to press that, and this could all just be a bad dream.
Forty meters, I looked up to ensure that the creatures had not been alerted to my movements. They hadn't. Thirty meters, twenty, ten, I reached for the button and pressed it. The screeching of the gears and the shuddering garage door made me jump out of my skin. It made the feasting creatures turn and stare at where the noise was coming from. I had not anticipated this.
Stupid!
The zombies moaned and steadily made their way toward me as the garage door started to close behind me slowly, too slowly. I backed away from the creatures but stopped when sunlight hit my back. I was outside. I could run now. I could be safe, but then I looked at the shambling zombies. They were actually moving faster than the door was closing. They would escape into the surrounding area. They could spread their disease.
I swallowed hard and hefted my spade. I would have to hold them off until the door closed. It was all I could do to stop this plague. It, however, did not stop me from wishing that the door would close faster.
One of the zombies, probably a driver of the ambulance that had stood inside, reached for me and received the flat side of the spade to his face. The bone crunched under the blow. Although this was a stunning blow, it did not stop the creature from moving forward. I was forced to take a step back and hammer the blade of the spade into the space between where the creature's eyes and nose had been. My fear helped power the blow that sliced the top of its head off. Gore flew everywhere and covered my face and arms. I felt sick but held my breath as I spun and slammed the flat side of the spade into the next zombie. The blow rocketed it back, but it was replaced by another that grabbed my arm. I flinched at the cold grip and tried to struggle against the vice but to no avail. I saw the zombie open its mouth to tear a chunk of my flesh. I closed my eyes in horror.
There was a horrible grinding noise then my arm was violently yanked downwards. So hard that I fell forward and cracked my jaw on the tarred road. I saw stars and couldn't help but tear up with the sudden pain. I rapidly blinked to clear my tears and was surprised to see that the garage door had fallen down suddenly. I had not been bitten! It wasn't much comfort when I saw a pair of hands and arms still clutching my arm. I leaped to my feet and tore them away before I fell forward again and vomited violently. My head spun, and my chin hurt, but I was alive.
I took some time to get my bearings. I sat back and looked at the garage door. It hadn't come down normally. The horrible grinding sound had been the door tearing away from one of its components. One side of the door was lop-sided, and I saw sparks flying from where an electrical wire had been exposed. I was not out of danger yet. With ambulances with petrol, and alcohol, as well as formalin further in the morgue, this place was a time bomb waiting to happen. Perhaps I could help it along.
Most ambulance drivers that came here tended to be a little lazy when it came to their keys, and it did not take me too long to find an open vehicle. I quickly gathered what I needed. Several glass bottles, bandages, and some kind of tubing. Making sure that nothing was wandering around outside, I started making some homemade Molotov cocktails. It was a messy affair, and I had no idea if it would work, but it was worth trying. It was a messy trial and error exercise, but I managed to make four Molotov cocktails that seemed like they would work.
I moved off towards one of the open windows of the garage and judged the distance that I would have to throw the Molotov to get it under the ambulance parked inside. Once I was sure I could do it, I pulled my lighter. The same one I used to be teased for carrying one when I didn't smoke. Using the lighter, I lit the wick and threw the incendiary device through a close-by window. It went wild and landed on one of the gurneys instead. The wick lit the linen on fire, and a short time later, there was an explosion. The fire went everywhere as the gurney was thrown into another. It was going to be mayhem soon.
However, I had not hit my intended target. I tried again and this time managed to at least hit the gurney that was close to the ambulance. Its explosion tipped the gurney and its burning victim under the vehicle. It was good enough. The remaining incendiary devices I threw into the embalming room, on the other side of the morgue and one of the offices that held most of the files. This should stop the zombies from leaving this place.
As I limped away from the morgue towards Michael's car, I was struck by a huge sense of loss and accomplishment. I had lost a dear friend, but his curse would not be carried onto anyone else. However, as dear as he had been, he was an idiot. The key was still in the ignition. I climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Behind me, I heard the explosion, it was probably the ambulance. I looked back only long enough to reverse the car out of its parking area, then I only had eyes for the tall fence that surrounded the morgue. I put the car in gear and drove beyond the opened gate. Once outside, I hopped out and swung the gate closed. The chain and lock were nearby. I ensured that nothing could get out even if it survived the fire. Then I drove home.
The first thing I did when I got home was to kick off the gore-splattered boots and proceed to empty more of my stomach contents in the bathroom. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and was surprised to see blood dripping from my chin. I must have banged it open when I had fallen. It took me a while to clean that up before I showered. It was done, the worst day of my life was finally over.
Dressed in fresh clothes a while later, I sat down in front of the television and turned it on. It was a news report. I grinned sadistically when I saw the amount of damage I had managed to do to the morgue.
"Wow, a bad day at work?"
I turned, almost ready to reach for the lamp as a weapon, but it was only my boyfriend Jake that had come home early. He must have been worried about me after seeing the report.
"You have no idea!" I sighed as I started to relax.
He smiled and ran a hand through his short black hair, "Were you caught in that?"
"Yeah. I guess you could say that."
He came to sit next to me and looped an arm around my neck. It was a comfort I needed after a day like today. I closed my eyes and forced myself to forget what I had had to do to be sitting here now.
"By the way." he said as he gently shook me, forcing me to open my eyes to look at a bloodied bite mark on his hand, "Does this bite look infected to you?"
