DAY ONE:

When it all started, I was working. Of course I was working, I was always working, even before the news filled up with reports of the madness this disease brought to the streets, I was working 12 hours shifts, 5 days a week. When I wasn't working I was sleeping. I am a doctor. I refuse to say I "was" a doctor. I didn't waste half my life in school to suddenly stop being a doctor when the shit hit the fan.

Anyways, I digress... I was in the ER, dealing with the flood of people who were scared that they had whatever this new disease was, and soon enough more and more people were flooding in with bite marks and scratches and we treated them the best we could... the only thing that seemed to save anyone was amputation, but we couldn't amputate the arms and legs of every single person coming in with a small bite or scratch, we couldn't tell the difference to know if it was the right thing to do...even if we could no one wanted to lose a limb for something so small, no one realized that it was the only thing that would actually save their life...and the lives of however many people they would be killing a few hours later...

My shift that night wasn't even my shift but the hospital was overrun. I knew the virus was contagious and definitely causing the deadly manic episodes of crazed people screaming and running through the streets, killing people they had loved without a second thought, but I also knew that this was what I had signed up for when I had become a doctor. When the hospital called me in on my first night off in 5 days, I only asked that there be fresh coffee in the break room. I was supposed to be working 3-11pm. It was pretty busy when I got there but no busier than a Friday night usually was after the appearance of a new virus such as H1N1, or whatever this was. The vast majority of the people in the ER would be people with colds, just worried out of their minds that they had something worse.

By 5 PM the ER was crowded out the door, there are (or were, I suppose) at least 70 chairs in the large waiting room and every one of them was taken by someone groaning in pain or coughing their lungs out. We know now that the coughing had nothing to do with the virus.

We tried to take people in order of importance. By which I mean, take someone who is bleeding from a gaping bite wound on their neck before taking someone with a bad cough but by 5:30, half of the people in the ER were bleeding all over the place and by 5:45 we were forced to close our doors. We couldn't even handle the people who were already in the emergency room, much less any more.

The army? Coast Guards? I still don't know, they never spoke to us...Some people in military camoflauge uniform came in and shot nearly everyone in the ER after someone reported the first patient who died and then...came back to life. I don't like to put it this way because they didn't come back to life. They were still dead. He was hooked up to a heart rate monitor when he got back up and he was still god damn dead. I don't even remember his name. I was working on him, I was bandaging him, I was there trying to resuscitate him but no, I never stopped to check his name. I have no idea who he was but after he flatlined and before we could unhook him from the machine, he got back up and bit the nurse nearest to him. By the time the men in uniform got there, that one man had bitten and killed at least ten other people.

We saw over 20 more of our patients turned into those insane humanoid things running through our halls before we ran into the stair well, the stair well is key card only and I watched those things slam up against the small glass window until the military men shot most of them. It was clear that the sound of their guns attracted them, the infected creatures rushed the military men and...ate several of them but the military fought back for a while before they were overwhelmed.

By the time the surviving military members fled the building, it was unclear how many infected creatures were still out there. Even if we were pretty sure the military had reclosed the entrance doors to the hospital on their way out. We could hear their helicopter taking off. I didn't cry until I heard that helicopter leaving.

The fact that we had locked the hospital's doors right before the streets became cemeteries was nothing more than a fluke, a stroke of luck, if you can even call it that. We had successfully locked ourselves in a building with roughly 80 dying people who were about to turn into the things rampaging outside and at least 50 who had already turned, but we had also locked ourselves out of the reach of the ones outside.

By 8 PM the screams coming from the bottom floor of the hospital were indistinguishable from the screams coming from the streets outside.

I and 2 other doctors, 4 nurses, and 5 nursing assistants had gone up the stair well and blocked off the entire top floor of the hospital. We counted out our supplies and it was clear to see we didn't have enough to last all 12 of us more than a week comfortably. We could "survive" for maybe 3 weeks but "surviving" would be all of us starving and dehydrated, slowly waiting to die.

We understood that we would have to go downstairs. If we could get to the break room we should be okay, it was accessible only by the slide of an access card carried by hospital staff. Inside the room were two snack machines and a soda machine, as well as the fridge not that it would have much in it. Those vending machines could expand our life expectancy to 2 months though if we rationed it. The amount of water in the vending machine alone would keep us alive for that long.

By 11 PM we had decided that we would go down in the morning. The top floor of the hospital was empty. It was full of hospital beds but no patients. It was the maternity ward. We hadn't had a birth in days, mothers were too scared to leave their homes the past few days and this was lucky for us. The last thing we needed was a screaming baby attracting those things to us.

That night we crowded 12 hospital beds into the largest room and tried to sleep together. Not a single one of us did.

When the light peeking in through the blinds of the hospital window finally began to creep onto my face I decided it was time to go. My phone had 20% battery remaining and it could tell me the time but it hadn't had any service since 9 PM last night. I hadn't even thought about the possibility of the service going out until it was too late to call anyone. I didn't have anyone to call anyways. Both of my parents were dead. I had no siblings or extended family that I truly cared about. I had no boyfriend and very few friends. The police? The military had already been here and had fled, so the police were pointless.

I felt bad for the others in the room with me though. Most of them had families and like me hadn't thought about the possibility of having no way to contact them until it was too late. Marina, a 20 year old CNA had spent most of the night crying. I didn't know much about her but I knew she had a young daughter. In the early hours of the morning she whispered to me that she was in day care. Marina was supposed to have gone to pick her up at 6. I didn't know what to tell her.

I rolled out of the bed and powered off my phone. All hospital personnel are required to wear a watch and since my phone now has no power, there is no point to it. I put it back in my pocket though. On the off chance service comes back I'll want to have it and I'll want it to have that 20%.

I quietly head over to the nurse's station where I know there will be a coffee maker even though there shouldn't be. It still works thanks to the generators and I make coffee for all of us, knowing the small comfort of something familiar alone will do us some good. I take one of the small plastic cups and fill it with my own coffee. Most of the rest of our group are still lying in the hospital beds, though none of them are sleeping. Marina has come out to join me and I pour her a cup before we go together to the bathroom. When we come back out, most of the group is now crowded around the coffee maker, pouring their own cups and so I take mine to an empty room and take a deep breath before peering through the blinds.

Bodies.

There are bodies everywhere.

Blood paints the sides of buildings, some splatters reach up to what must be 20 feet. There are about fifteen of those...zombies...(what else could I call them?) ambling around down there. I can't hear them for how high up the floor is but I don't need to, I know what the ones downstairs sound like and I have been hearing it in my head all night. I can't help but wonder what makes the difference. Why are some people dying and getting back up when there are clearly tons of people who are not? I can only see so far down the street from the window's angle and I feel certain that there are plenty more creatures roaming around but at the moment it appears there are more dead bodies lining the streets than...dead...walking ones. I wonder if maybe some of the ones down stairs have died, or if maybe the military went everywhere killing as many as they could before they abandoned the city completely.

I feel like crying again but I don't. I head back to the nurse's station and take in the others' ongoing conversation.

"Well, it's not like we can just walk right in there and grab what we want or none of us would be up here!" Mario is saying. I only know his name because of his name tag. He's another nursing assistant and one I'm unfamiliar with but he's clearly hot headed. I try not to be too judgemental because the situation is stressful for all of us. It's hard to call anyone hot headed under the circumstances.

"That's not what I'm trying to say, Mario. I just think that we have a decent shot of going back down to the floor and sneaking into the break room." Rebecca says calmly, but I can tell she's getting irritated with him. She's a doctor as well, one I've worked with often and one of the few people I can call a friend, she's smart and rational and I smile warmly at her when she notices me.

"Then what will we do? Huh? Where does your big plan go from there? I don't know if you've noticed but there's no window in the break room door. We have no way of knowing if more of those things are in there and if we get in we have no way of knowing when they are right outside the door. We will be walking into a certain death trap!" He shouts and bangs his coffee cup down on the counter, spilling it onto his hand. He yelps at the heat of the coffee.

"Shut the fuck up!" I hiss at him, the entire group jerks their heads to look at me. "Those things can hear us and just because they haven't found a way up here yet doesn't mean that they never will. Be have to get into that room one way or another, you've made some very good points about the window, okay? All of these little factors are important but I think I have a plan... They're attracted to noise. This is a fact. The second those army men shot one bullet, those things flooded to them and even though they could see us in the window of the stairwell, they didn't come for us. I'm not sure if this means that they're blind, but I'm not exactly willing to bet on it, you know what I mean? But I'm positive they can hear us..."

I took a deep breath. I had no idea how to say what I needed to say. I avoid contact with any of them and continue, "I think one of us should run around down there making as much noise as possible to lead them into a room and trap them there."

Marina gasps, Rebecca looks like she's just found out she has cancer but at least like she's turning the idea around in her head. Mario just looks angrier than ever. The others murmur amongst themselves a little and exchange concerned glances.

"What would happen to that person once they all catch up to them?" one of them asks, finally. His name tag is missing, and he notices me looking for it, "Brian. My name is Brian. LVN."

I nod at him and introduce myself even though I have my name tag on still. "I'm Reenee Tyrid. MD." I smile at him as much as I can but I know I must look unhappy anyways. "I think we can do this without losing anyone if we do it right... I think one person can run through the hospital making noise to get all of their attention and lead them through the halls once around so two more of us can come out of the stairwell once the coast is clear and get behind the doors on either side of the waiting room. Since the waiting room has two entrances, the runner will lead the monsters through one door and then sprint through the other, the rest of us will be in charge of closing the doors behind the monsters once they're all in the room and closing the other doors once the runner is out."

The group looks at least a little less concerned now, like they think this is sounding less crazy and more plausible. This is good. The more people that choose to cooperate the more chance we have of this working.

"This is insane! And what are we supposed to draw straws to decide who will be sacrificed!? If even one of them doesn't get trapped in that room we'll have a man eating monster on our hands anyways! This won't work!" Mario yells, gesturing wildly.

"I already told you, you need to keep your god damn voice down. I won't have you putting all of us at risk." I hiss at him again and he moves forward, stooping down slightly to put his angry, sweaty face in my personal space.

"What are you going to do about it, REENEE?" He sneers at me and I lean forward and whisper to him, "I will do what I have to, to keep the rest of these people safe."

Rebecca steps forward and gets between us. "That's enough. We need to work together or we don't have any chance at all." Mario huffs but backs away a step and says nothing. "I think this is as good of a plan as we're going to get, Reenee. I take it there are no volunteers to be the runner?" She asks turning to the rest of the group. They all avoid eye contact, even Brian.

"I'll do it." I murmur. She turns to look at me. "Reenee?...are you...sure?"

I nod and drink some more of my coffee, I'll need it. "I go running every morning. It will be just like any other day..." I shrug and give a small smile. I'm trying to write it off like I'm not terrified so maybe the others will gain some bravery. Mostly they just look relieved that they won't have to do it themselves.

"I'm going to need all of you down there and ready to barricade those doors though. You all saw how strong they were bashing themselves against the doors to try to get at us in the stair well last night. We're going to have to use bars or something to block the doors or this won't work."

Rebecca pours the last of the coffee into my cup and leans back against the counter of the nurse's station. "You're nuts, Ree..." she murmurs back at me and I grin genuinely at her over my coffee cup.

Mario sighs. "I think they keep some chains and padlocks in the janitor's closet. Can your key card get us in there?"

I frown to my coffee. "I'm not sure. I've never tried. Is it on this floor?"

"One below."

"Rebecca, do you know?" She shakes her head at me.

I sigh. "It's worth a shot...if we have those...we'll be set."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I will be trying to update this every day or at least every other day! The new season of The Walking Dead has rekindled my love for the show as a whole and of course especially Daryl! 3 We will hopefully be running into Daryl in this story by the third chapter so please hang in there and always thank you for reading! I know it's mostly set up but I hope I kept it interesting, and reviews and constructive criticism is always appreciated!