Something to Die For by Kaye Blue

Four

Angel

This isn’t happening.

I told myself that over, over, and over again, but no matter how many times I thought it, that didn’t change anything.

This was happening.

What was it?

Fuck all if I knew.

I had degrees in both chemistry and biology, had gone medical school, had interned at the city’s biggest public hospital. I’d worked in a prison for four years, and nothing I had ever seen had prepared me for this.

The infirmary had been full for weeks, due to what I thought was a flu epidemic. A severe one, with some cases so bad I hadn’t been comfortable treating them in the prison.

Which made sense.

The same thing was happening outside the prison, with local hospitals filling up.

But this…

The inmate, one whose name I couldn’t for the life of me think of, had come in earlier today.

Dehydrated, high fever, nothing out of the ordinary.

I’d given him fluids, watched him fall asleep, and not thought anything of it as I went on about my day.

But in that moment, I thanked God that I had stuck with protocol and made sure that he was restrained to his bed.

One moment, I had been doing charts, trying clean up the records as best I could in the downtime that had been so hard to come by recently.

The next, I had heard a sound, one that I had never heard before, one that I couldn’t describe, something between a croak and a moan, a deep, guttural sound that made my blood run cold.

I looked up, watched horrified as the prisoner who had come in with the flu sat up, turned over, and took a chunk right out of the neck of the man who had been lying next to him.

I froze for a moment, but in the next, I moved to intervene.

The emergency call button was something every staff member carried, but something I’d never, thankfully, had occasion to push.

I pushed it then, expecting the blaze of sirens and an immediate lockdown.

There was nothing.

I’d pushed the button without taking the device out of my pocket, but I took it out then, staring at it, wondering why it did nothing.

It was more useless than a stick of used gum.

I let it slip out of my fingers, the clink of the plastic on the floor drawing the inmate’s attention.

Big fucking mistake, Angel.

That moment’s recrimination was all I allowed myself.

After that, I moved into action.

I grabbed a spare IV stand and put it between me and the inmate.

It wouldn’t last long, definitely wouldn’t protect me, but it was the best I had.

I stared at the man as he tried to come toward me, noticed the pallor on his skin, the way it seemed to hang unnaturally off his face.

Saw the bright red and dull brown on his teeth, drying blood and fresh gristle hanging between them.

My stomach threatened to rebel, but I bit back the acid, backed away slowly.

I looked in his eyes, saw that they seem to be covered with a milky-white film, had nothing that I’d call life in them.

I was vaguely aware that I’d started to scream as I stared at his eyes, tried to cut the sound off, but let out another scream when he moved toward me again.

He didn’t lunge, not really, but he was trying to get to me, and somehow, I knew I couldn’t let that happen.

I moved deliberately, keeping the IV stand between me and him, thankful for the soft padded restraint that he hadn’t even tried to remove.

Prayed that the bars were open.

What would I find on the other side of them?

I had no idea and didn’t care.

I just need to be away from…this, and now.

I took a step back, then another, unwilling to turn away from the man, knowing that whatever was behind me couldn’t be worse than what was in front of me.

A thought that was confirmed when the man the inmate had bitten sat up.

Something that shouldn’t have been possible.

Mr. Johns—Franklin, he had finally convinced me to call him—was one of the oldest inmates in the facility, and he had late stage lung cancer. I’d been begging him for weeks to let me transfer him to hospice, but he’d refused. Said he’d spent sixty years in this facility so he might as well spend the time he had left here too.

That saddened me, but I’d abided by his wishes, taking as good care of him as I could.

But he was weak, so weak that I or one of the other staff had to help him sit up to drink water.

You wouldn’t be able to tell that now, not when he sat up, then got up, moving like he didn’t have cancer that had spread to every part of his body.

In fact, though he moved clumsily, slowly, he was also persistent.

And headed right for me.

I took two more steps back, more quickly this time, then froze when I collided with a chest.