Free The Lazarus Impact by Vincent Todarello

Behind it is a bloodied man filled with rage. Sheryl backs away, swinging the handle frantically with all her might. She strikes him on the head and he falls forward, onto her. She winces in pain at the pressure on her bad arm. The hospital curtain blocks his mouth, but the faceless, unrelenting horror tries to eat her alive through it. She spins out of the way and lets him fall to the ground. She strikes his head over and over. The curtain covering him begins to soak through with blood as she incessantly smashes him. The curtain rips, and blood casts off in every direction as she flings her arm up and back down with each swing. She hears the crack of his skull and sees his brain spill out onto the floor, but she keeps pounding until he stops moving.
    The handle drips with red sludge and brain matter when she’s finished. Her gas mask is covered with filth, and clumps of her wavy brown hair have turned black with the wetness of death. Disgusted, she wipes herself down with another nearby curtain and catches her breath. But not for long. The sun has dipped below the horizon, and night approaches. I need to get home before dark, otherwise things could get much more dangerous .
    She moves faster, trying to ignore the pain that floods her body again after the fight. She starts to hear the rattling sound growing louder. It’s coming from the morgue . As she passes by the swinging double doors she tries to look inside, but it is too dark to see in the windowless room. In a fit of courage she pulls a door and props it open. All is silent but the rattling. The room is dim, lit only by the fading sunlight that creeps in from the ambulance bay. It barely reaches the back wall, which is still shrouded in darkness.
    She sees bloodied bodies left on the stainless steel tables, covered in reddened hospital sheets. Their heads are all smashed open, but will they still sit up in death and come at me? She pokes one with the plunger handle. There’s no response. It must be safe. They’re dead for good. Someone has been through the hospital, killing the undead .
    Blood pools on the floor beneath the corpses, slowly making its way into a drain in the center of the room. She looks to the back wall, and her eyes find the source of the rattling sound; the latch on one of the freezer boxes flickers as it catches the fleeting light with each shake. It’s the one next to Stephen . Someone is trying to get out from inside . It’s BJ, I know it’s BJ ...
    The rattling suddenly stops. Emotions sweep over her like a hot flash as she is filled with thoughts and memories of playing with the boys, cleaning their scrapes from rough housing in the yard, and those first moments in the maternity ward where she gave birth to them. That was just upstairs from where I’m standing . Things were happy then, and easy . She’s overwhelmed with grief, horror, and shock as the rattling of the latch starts again, pulling her back into reality. She resolves to put BJ out of his misery. He’s turned into one of those things, one of those zombies . Unnatural . Evil . She clenches the plunger handle so tight that her pink fingertips turn white. She pushes into the darkness. Her own shadow blocks what she can see in front of her, but she makes her way toward the freezer. Like pulling off an old band-aid, she yanks the door open quickly and jumps back, out of the darkness.
    BJ sits up from his slab and turns toward her. His eyes seem to glow in the dark like an animal’s. The sparse light gives him a vague shape, making him a silhouette among shadows. He slowly steps forward into the light. She can see him now. He’s naked. His jaw is twisted and crooked. One of his ankles drags behind as he moves forward. His arm is broken, as is Sheryl’s will to do what she set out to do. It won’t be like killing the man in the hall . This is my son, one of the only things that bring me joy . I think I can still see the light of love in his eyes . She’s wrong. There is only