Disclaimer: I don't own TWD, just this story line and my OC's

Notes: Massive thanks to my Beta Angelinaa, (as always! Oh trust me, you know you wanna look! HAHA *wink*)

And huge thanks to the readers/reviewers you guys are awesome!

This update is for enchantmentanjel who ALSO doesn't know what day of the week it is; Which cracked me the Hell up and since I have to look about every five minutes to remind myself I thought such lunacy should be rewarded...so...BOOM! Update. A day early. You're welcome. HA! ; P

Rated M! This is a pretty graphic chapter...(though maybe not for this genre's fans)...but warnings for potential icky, bloody, walker descriptions...

anyways, ENJOY!...Which in hindsight is probably the wrong sentiment for this Chappie... O_o

Chapter Four

The warm night air presses against my skin; makes me feel damp and sticky the moment I'm through the double doors no longer under the influence of the forced cold air inside the Emergency room hallway.

The sun isn't up yet, but the sky over the tree line is just starting to grey, fog presses around the parking lot turning cars and SUV's into nothing more than hulking masses colorless and vague in the distance.

By the time the sun rises enough to split through the trees the fog will have burned off; another sweltering day well underway for everyone else. I tug my backpack strap higher against my shoulder and trudge tiredly up the sidewalk towards the lot where interns are allowed to park.

I'm just rounding the corner of the building stepping off the curb into the empty ambulance bay when he hits me. Growling snarls fill my ear for a split second before searing white hot pain tears through my shoulder, hands grab at my tank top scratching my stomach pawing violently at me while teeth tear through the cotton. I scream jerking my elbow up bashing my attacker in the face wrenching him off me gasping in agony when his teeth take half the skin over my shoulder and upper arm with him.

I stagger in pain and disbelief tripping and stumbling backwards until my back makes contact with the brick wall of the building stopping me. My fingers clutched to my bleeding shoulder staring wide eyed at what I tripped over…or who…

"Get away from me!" But he doesn't, he's staggering towards me again; gait the most un-natural un-coordinated jerking motion I've ever seen…his feet don't even line up turned out pigeon toed; his knees bent awkwardly in at odd angles while he snaps his teeth at me in obvious threat.

I jerk myself off the wall before he reaches me; pins me in—try not to think about the sounds of the guy earlier in the night; how it took four guards and two nurses to subdue him enough to get him in restraints; and then to try to start a line to sedate him before he disappeared from the Emergency Room and nobody seemed to know where he was taken...

I drive my fist into his stomach grab his shoulders and smash my knee into his gut hoping to stun him enough that I can get away get help… he doesn't go down though it doesn't even seem to wind him and how is that possible his teeth tear at my arm, fingers breaking the skin on my sides digging into me clawing while I reel and jerk back kicking out in outrage and panic.

Blood runs down my elbow and forearm dripping onto the concrete I jerk backwards diving away from him getting a good look at what I can only describe as a half-eaten mutilated body wearing an blood stained and ripped EMT uniform hanging from the back step of the Ambulance that missed the parking spot it was aiming for; jumped the curb completely and crumpled it's front end against the brick wall steam pouring up from the rippled bowed hood.

I jerk around the front of another parked ambulance, dive behind the wheel well my eyes darting to my shoulder stomach turning at the torn bloody edges of my skin. I lean there gasping for air, heart pounding in my chest when they lurch around the front corner of the hood…both of them.

The guy who bite me…and the EMT guy who was dead just moments before…and no. That can't be right… but it is; he's stumbling towards me part of his intestines hanging from the hole in his uniform like a sausage loop. I jerk backwards away from the ambulance, backing toward the clear parking lot, and there is no way this is happening…

This is the stuff of nightmares, science fiction; horror movies…

I reach over and pinch my blood slicked arm because that's what you're supposed to do right? When you're dreaming and you desperately want to wake up?

Only it doesn't do a damn thing, but the throbbing ache of agony in my shoulder and arm is getting worse.

I'm starting to feel nauseous and that might be because the dead-EMT-who-isn't-dead-anymore just stepped on his own intestines while stumbling after me. Effectively eviscerating the rest of his insides onto the pavement in a blood splattering rush that squelches onto the pavement…

Part of his small intestines wrapped around his shoe dragging behind him over the concrete and he doesn't even pause…

I gag and retch cursing feeling my head shake in denial because real or not—that is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen… if this is a nightmare I want to wake up now. I find myself repeating it like a mantra frantically while I shudder in revulsion and back further away.

"Wake up now, wake up now, It's not real…"

Only I'm not waking up and with the stabbing sharp throb in my shoulder that seems to go all the way to the bone it feels very, very real…

I'm past the open ambulance bay door now empty of the body currently pursuing me.

I need something a weapon, only what the hell do you use on somebody that is so drugged up they somehow manage to keep coming at you after they've ripped their own insides out?!

My heel strikes someone's chest and I jerk screaming expecting this body to lunge at me too…except it doesn't….it just lays there its sleeve ripped and bloody while the rest of its uniform is intact… and why wouldn't this body get up…there's less damage to it than the other one…My eyes dart to the pursuing EMT; his teeth snapping at me around snarls…

His head is intact; whoever this is fell out of the back of the ambulance when the bay doors opened; landed head first on the concrete; the creeping puddle around his dented skull spreads undisturbed but for the bloody dragging footprint that staggers away from the scene; probably the EMT's boot print…

Why, why didn't he get up?

The head injury… the brain.

I reach inside the ambulance doorway; leap onto the blood slicked steel grated step grabbing the door handle bar for support with my good arm, eyes searching for something…anything that will let me…There. I wrap my good hand around the metal pole first responders use to tighten the bindings over open pelvis fractures so they can transport them to the hospital. Then I leap back to the pavement just ahead of the guys hands grabbing for me mid-air.

I turn the second I land swing the two inch heavy steel bar like a baseball bat grunting in pain as the movement rips through the already overwhelming pain in my shoulder. The bar connects mid-swing with the guy's face; smashes his nose in, sends his head snapping backwards.

I don't wait for him to fall. I step forward twisting into the second arc smashing the EMT's face the same way. Then I spin back to the first guy already trying to stagger up and raise the pole like a golf club over my shoulder swing down and clubbing him in the back of the head knocking him to the pavement with a spray of blood that arcs far enough to paint the side of the Ambulance with trickles of bright red.

The EMT is staggering, twitching his fingers lock around my ankle and I jerk leaping backwards shrieking and stumble very nearly falling backwards. And that can't happen because slow or not if this thing sinks its teeth into me again; gets its hands on my skin I can only imagine how long it will take it to rip me to shreds. I bring the pole down repeatedly in a wild panic against the guy's head until blood spreads around him in a droplet ringed puddle. I back away from them gasping, choke back a panicked and horrified sob at what I've just done.

I've just killed two people…

Because no one will believe me that they were already dead…

I drop the pole to the pavement with a loud metallic clatter as it rolls away from me a few feet. I press my palms over my knees bent double and gasp feeling dizzy from pain and lack of oxygen, my vision darkening around the edges.

I press it down; try to calm myself gulping in three large steadying breaths holding each one for a moment before I blow it out again.

I can't hyperventilate right now… I need to go back inside; find the police…tell somebody….except I don't move.

I just keep standing here staring at the ever spreading pool of blood on the pavement almost reaching my shoes now; listening to my pound of my racing heartbeat in my ears.

My eyes slide to my broken skin, to the gaping wound in my arm the teeth marks weeping blood over my collarbone against my the dark cotton of my tank top strap. Fear claws at me again, prickles along my skin in warning.

I stare at the EMT…at the bite mark on his neck…at the gaping hole where his insides ripped out. My skin prickles over my spine and a cold sweat from my earlier exertion and fear trickles down from the small of my back.

I can hear a police siren over the pounding of rush of blood in my ears, several in fact.

I jerk my black fleece jacket from around my waist curse and hiss sliding my hands into the sleeves, jerking it up over my shoulder as quickly and carefully as possible hiding my injuries my fingers unsteady and shaking as I zip it up ignoring the damp humidity already pressing against my skin; The thin cotton of my shirt clings to the sweat on my lower back, presses against my skin under the fleece a combination of exertion and fear.

I step away from the bodies, climb as quickly as I can with one good arm back into the Ambulance grabbing a bottle of hydrogen peroxide I stuff under my armpit and a bag of saline fluid I don't even bother climbing back out of the ambulance, there's no time. I rip the cap off the brown bottle dousing my blood soaked hands with the clear fluid watching it foam and fizzle over my skin eating away at the blood discoloring my skin.

I keep pouring it over them until it runs clear, then I quickly douse my shoes, biting the cap off the saline bag and squirting a heavy stream of clear liquid over their surface rinsing the obvious blood from them. I'm lucky my scrubs pants are black like my jacket, it's almost impossible to see the blood splattered across them in the pre-dawn light unless you look really closely.

I drop the saline bag to the now empty blood soaked sheet on the stretcher inside the vehicle, and leap back out onto the pavement. Quickly race to where I dropped my bag by the corner when the guy grabbed me the first time and snatch it up, sliding it over my ruined shoulder with a heavy pained grunt; grinding my teeth.

I grip my book bag strap and move away from the ambulance's bay just as three cop cars swing into view, a large olive green military convoy truck behind it.

Guys with severe looking crew cuts in military fatigues pour out of the back of the canvas covered vehicle at the same time the cops leap from their cars guns all drawn.

I jerk my hands into the air too terrified to pay any mind to the motion shooting white hot jabs of pain down my arm…I can feel my sleeve slowly soaking, blood trickling down to my armpit under the fleece to soak into my under shirt.

I'm certain they're coming to arrest me for killing two people…except they're yelling at me to get out of the way. One of them grabs me by my good arm, thank god; hauls me away from the bleeding bodies on the ground asking me if I'm alright, and was I bitten?

All the hairs on the back of my neck stand up while I shake my head no; stammer my answer before asking him what is going on. But he's already passing me off to someone else; and now somebody else repeats the question.

A large man in army fatigues with close cropped hair and a pinched severe looking face. I shake my head no staring at the assault rifle in his hand… because who takes an M16 to an ambulance crash…?

But then he's passing me off to someone else, they're moving me farther and farther away from the building as more vehicles arrive; surround us and people are running and there's shouting all around me.

And every time someone hands me off to someone of less importance as new personnel arrives it's the same question over and over again; 'Were you bitten, did they touch you?' and not 'Did you kill those men?' and it's all a rushing buzz; static and white noise as someone races by us with gasoline containers in their hands and it seems like a strange time to refuel a vehicle when there's a gas station not two blocks away….

Men are shouting and yelling and I can hear a helicopter from somewhere up in the fog… Someone's hand is still on my arm busy dragging me backwards farther away asking me my name and have I had contact with the infected but I don't answer.

I'm too busy craning my head back; watching the plum of acrid black smoke rising up against the grey morning sky burning off with the fog.

The ambulance is on fire…two smaller trails of smoke join the largest and they're burning the bodies…not investigating who killed them and that doesn't make any sense, and it certainly doesn't help the rolling gnawing dread in the pit of my stomach.

They tell me to 'stay here, they'll be right back,' and I nod but I don't wait. I keep moving. Certain as I have ever been of anything in my life that if I remain and they find out I've been bitten there will be one more body burning to ashes on the blood soaked pavement right outside the hospital doors…

The second they turn away I slip across the lot; ducking between the jeeps pulling in and the soldiers rushing past and no one stops me. No one even notices as orders are barked all around and I reach the first line of parked cars and break into a run the fog curling around my calves as I race away, swirling behind my back in my wake while all around me fog drifts off the top of dew speckled car roofs and hoods like thin wisps of white smoke without the flames, miniature parodies of the acrid black smoke choking out my view of half the hospital's brick side when I glance over my shoulder still running.

I reach my car unlock the door with shaking hands and climb inside just as the gunshots start somewhere back in the fog.

Alarms are going off jerking me up from the heavy darkness of sleep.

I'm halfway across the room before I've taken in the information on the monitors, processed their meaning.

I press my hand to his forehead; confirming my fear: his skin is on fire again. I grab more chemical ice packs from the drawer activate them in my hands and lay them on his skin, hoping to offer him some relief even asleep. Then I grab the empty syringe upturning the right bottle and filling it with the dosage I need.

I press the medicine into his IV checking the lines quickly and hanging another bag while I work. Keeping him hydrated and lowering his temperature is only half the battle. I've got to stop the infection that's steadily killing him.

I take his temperature and curse frowning at the read out because right now I've got to get his fever back down or it's all going to be over very quickly. I leave his room moving down the hall to the ICU supply closet to find the pale blue cooling blanket in the light coming through the small window.

It's tucked away rolled carefully on one of the shelves high above my head. I climb to reach it, grabbing the sizeable pack and cords that comes with it stopping at the large utility sink in the hallway to fill the tank with water. I lug it all back down the short awkward distance to Carl's room ignoring the way the heavy tank bangs against my side hard enough to bruise.

I plug it in setting the tank on the cleared nightstand, rolling Carl up carefully and swapping out his sweat soaked sheets, adding the pale blue square already cool to the touch of my fingers against his back. I swap the rest of his linen out for dry sheets and blankets adding a wet cold washcloth to his face more because it makes me feel better than for any extra cooling properties it offers.

I sigh leaning against the bedrail stretching my stiff back eyes closed listening to the beep of his heart monitor slowly decline again. I add another bag of IV fluids, I need to keep him hydrated especially with the high fever. Then I move back down the hall pulling his door shut behind me.

I wish the lab was closer to the ward where I've got Carl set up, but there's nothing I can do about it—short of carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment up the stairs.

I sweep the rest of the hospital's hallways quickly on my way down, check for any Walkers I missed the last few days or signs that other people have been here since.

The lab equipment draws a lot of power, but it's unavoidable if there's even going to be a chance of Carl living. I drop onto the rolling stool near the table, press my palms to my temples staring at the printouts scattered on the flat black surface wracking my brain for the answer… any slim chance; some small hope to hold onto.

That chance is feeling slimmer and slimmer by the hour.

I've rarely felt so helpless.

:: Walking Dead ::