The characters are in the hospital room, they've barricaded the door, but now they're feeling like the need to get out and get down to the lobby. Lucille takes her fire ax and starts breaking through the back wall, eventually beat out a hole large enough to squeeze through. They emerge into a similar room being used for storage, and go out into the hall.
The hospital is eerily quiet. They head for the staircase, but then they notice the nurse's station and that something red is blinking. Following good horror movie logic, they investigate, and find Sgt. Priest on the floor.
There's a suggestion to smash her head in before she gets up and attacks, but Mia vetoes that idea, and goes into the station to check on her. She's alive, but barely, and she has terrible wounds on her legs and back. Patricia heals her enough that she comes to, and although Heather is convinced that she's a zombie, she's able to talk and accompany the characters.
They make their way downstairs and to the ground floor, and peek into the lobby. They rather wish they hadn't. The lobby is full of corpses whose hearts are being eaten or corpses that are eating the hearts. Many of those corpses are soldiers or cops, many more are in scrubs, and of course a lot are just people in street clothes. Heather spots one zombie in a uniform, and watches as her father raises his bloodied face toward her.
Heather begins to fall into despair, but the zombies don't much care; they rush the group. The characters run, bursting out the side door into the sunlight, just in time to hear soldiers scream at them to get down. They do, and try to explain what's happening, and Lucille risks her life to jam the door shut with the blade of her axe, but it's not until Priest emerges that the soldiers (in gas masks) listen, pulling the characters to safety. They put them into a bus equipped to quarantine, and turn their attention back to the door.
The zombies burst through the door and charge the soldiers, and the characters realize in horror that more - these in hospital gowns, are dropping from the upper windows. Mia gets in the driver's seat and starts the bus, and they peel out to the sound of gunfire and screams. And then they all hear a chopper zoom in overhead, and explosions behind them...
They talk about where to go, but they run up against a couple of obstacles - they have no money or ID on them, and they're all covered in blood to a greater or lesser extent. They decide to go to the sorority house; there's some worry that the cops will be watching, but Lucille points out that the cops have better things to do today. Lucille also mentions that she has a great survivalist aunt who lives north of the city, should things reach that point. Daisy, though, mentions that maybe they should tell the authorities what they know - where the zombies come from and how to destroy them. Priest says that the authorities (specifically General Grantham) are unlikely to listen if they start talking about "zombies" and "magic red thread."
Maybe, then, they can find Dr. Stephens, whom Daisy believes started this whole thing somehow. They go to the sorority house and get clean clothes, and take the time to shower off (not in that order). They gather up everything of use - Patricia cleans out the medicine chests, Heather grabs sanitary napkins, someone grabs liquor, and Lucille grabs her bug-out bag - and they get back on the bus. They decide to go to Stephens' office; maybe there they can find some answers.
They park the bus outside the building, and Daisy, Heather, Lucille, and Priest head in. Lucille knocks in the door on Stephens' office and the sisters search the room. Heather finds a leather-bound book with handwriting in it, including notes on a ritual meant to give "eternal life." But for whom? It doesn't say. The ritual involves sacrificing a victim, tearing out their heart, exposing the spine, and binding it up with red thread.
They figure that the first victim must have been Stella Aminat, Stephens' GA - that would make her the first zombie. But Stella is capable of spreading the condition to others, who can then spread it on their own. Daisy theorizes that destroying Stella might end the plague, but who knows? The book is no help; the next page merely mentions that the ritual was performed and that those involved have taken a "vow of secrecy." Those pages are also bloodstained.
Lucille touches the book and prays for wisdom, and sees Dr. Stephens in a panic room, holding a pistol. Something is pounding on the door. She relays this to the others, and they grab a faculty directory and look up Stephens' address.
Meanwhile, outside, Mia sees a cop approaching their bus. She rolls down the window, but the cop lurches up and grabs at her, snarling. She floors it, and Patricia whacks the cop's fingers with a meat mallet (which she took from the sorority house). The zombie-cop falls under the wheels, and Mia reverses and runs him over until he stops moving.
The others get downstairs and they see the cop and the forming crowd. Patricia yells to everyone to run, but of course they don't. They all head to Stephens' house, and when they arrive, they see two cop cars out front and the door smashed in.
Lucille grabs a shotgun out of a cop car and they all head downstairs to the sound of chaos. They see three zombies - Stella Aminat and two cops - pounding on a metal door. When the characters show up, though, the zombies turn and charge.
Daisy summons holy fire and destroys Stella immediately. Lucille shoots one with a shotgun and staggers it, but it doesn't drop. Patricia touches Heather and blesses her, and Heather shoots the other zombie cop right in the throat, blowing out the back of its neck and severing the red thread. It collapses, and the characters surround the other one. Lucille picks the zombie up (with the strength of ten, one might say) and rips out the thread, destroying it, and then pulls the panic room door aside.
Inside, they find Dr. Susan Stephens...dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. On a whiteboard, she's written: "ARMAGEDDON MEA CULPA".
Closing credits.
No comments:
Post a Comment