Warm Bodies: The Little Brown Bear

The Hospital

There were lots of smells at the hospital. So many interesting scents. He'd been drawn here on his first solo walk through the city, before the humans had organized enough to go on sweeping raids, and still fled in panicked disarray at the sight of a single corpse.

He'd tracked a strong life scent to an old man who lived on the top floor, close to the roof where the man set traps for pigeons, and he'd fed for a while, then wandered again, drawn to something new. A human smell, but so new it was almost alien. He'd stood outside a room, looking through a glass window at a sea of little tables, some still holding discarded hats and tiny socks.

For a long time he'd stood there, on the other side of the glass, staring, drinking in the smell. The cries of newborns echoing in his mind from the empty cribs.

Life started here. And life had moved on.

He moved on too, shuffling deeper through the hospital. More smells drew him, strange smells that tasted wrong, very much dead human, but spiked with something that his being did not like. Jars filled the room he walked into, strange devices, and slices of things he recognized but couldn't touch. The jars held organs, limbs and other parts he had pulled from people, but they were bloodless and pale, lifeless. It disturbed him greatly, and he left as quickly as a shuffling corpse could.

As he passed a double door on the way out of hospital, he caught the slightest scent of life. So faint he'd missed it on his way in, drawn by the stronger buzz of the old man. The door swung in, and back out and in again, and he sniffed the air, confused. It was such a faint smell.

With shuffling steps, he moved down the hall, following, then losing the scent. There were signs above his head, and all around, but they meant nothing. He backtracked, rediscovered the scent, and continued down another hallway. Papers littered the floor, beds had been rammed up against doors. Death smell came from one room, he ignored it and moved on.

Finally he reached a door at the end of the hall, and the scent was the strongest it had been, though there was a strong smell of death too. Something was rammed up against the door, some machine, and he casually threw it aside. It crashed against the opposite wall and went rolling down the hall.

The door was locked. It took more effort than he normally expended, but eventually, he shattered it inwards, and stumbled into the room, lit by warm sunlight spilling in through the corner window.

There were two people in the room. One was dead. A woman with long black hair, her body swollen with decay, hands dangling on either side of the chair she sat on. A dramatic spray of her life blood, dark and dried, spattered the wall, the chair, the floor. A gun lay just below her puffy fingers.

His nostrils flared. Her death smell was laced with something very familiar, and his eyes fell to a messy gash on her forearm. A bite. With a soft sound, he walked to her and he looked for a long moment into her clouded eyes.

A breath. The sound was unexpected in the still space, so absorbed was he in the woman's death, that he turned quickly, surprised. It was something he did not experience very often. He gazed down at the other figure.

The man lay stiffly on the bed, legs and arms evenly spaced, tubes going in and out from machine to man and back again. Tape covered his eyes, and his curly blonde hair was strangely short on one side.

The man breathed again, soft and shallow.

The man did not have long to live, the corpse understood this, could taste it in the man's scent, in the air from his lungs.

But for now, the man was alive.

And the corpse was hungry.

This was something new for him. Food that didn't fight. He groaned, feeling the need inside, and the noise had no effect on the man. The figure didn't stir.

Confusion rippled through him. For a moment, he felt the strangest urge to leave. To back out of the room, shut the shattered door and move on, move to where life pulsed fast and strong. Where life could only be taken with effort, with risk, with struggle.

Because it wasn't fair otherwise.

Frowning, he stared down at the man. The thoughts were strange inside his head, and he had never felt these things he was feeling before. It disturbed him, and he realized he didn't like it.

He snarled down at the man, and the man did not move, and it made him feel... angry.

Feeling strange, feeling wrong, feeling more than he ever had since leaving the airport, he grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him from the bed. The man hung limply, so he shook him. No life stirred in the man's taped face, but the life smell tugged at his senses, dizzying this close.

Finally, he bit, and the feelings that had so disturbed him dissipated, and everything was as it should be. The blood and meat flowed into him, filling him, his body buzzed with it.

Before the heart could stop, he shattered the man's skull against the bed frame and pried it open.

Then he ate everything the man was, and dreamed of being Jack for a very long while, as he sat, slumped against the blood spattered wall.

Just another dead thing in a dead hospital.