The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  No, he thought. You’re losing an intimidation battle with a camera.

  Ellis sighed and focused. The drop of black, a lifeless eye against a cold steel backdrop, seemed to stare at him. He wanted it to move. To do something. And at the same time, he wanted it to just sit there and die. He reached out and picked up the lighter. The blue plastic wand felt sturdy in his gloved hand. He positioned its flexible end next to the blob of black. Face shield down, Ellis said a little prayer, and pressed the lighter’s trigger.

  A teardrop of orange and blue flame erupted from the end of the wand. The black drop slid sideways in a jiggling motion. He nearly jumped out of his chair, the lighter falling to the floor from his unsteady hands. The spot of darkness ceased moving. It was no longer in the basin’s center, but to the left side. The steel, already shining and looking polished, now had a streak of ultra-reflective, mirror-polished metal.

  Holy shit, he thought. Doesn’t have to be much of it to move around. It just needed a reason.

  Ellis kept his eyes on the drop until his breathing slowed and his heart no longer felt like it was going to leap through his rib cage. He glanced down at the lighter on the floor to gauge where it was and then looked back at the basin. The drop was in the same place.

  His suit crackled as he reached down and groped for the lighter, eyes still locked on the basin. One of his gloved fingers touched its edge, but he managed to knock it further away rather than closer. Cursing, he tore his eyes away from the hostile drop of liquid and picked up the lighter as fast as he could. Skin prickling with fear, he stood up quickly. The black was still in the basin, still in the same place, and motionless. Ellis took another deep breath. His heart finally slowed, but it took longer than he liked.

  The CDC doctor slowly stood holding the lighter in a shaking hand. He moved it next to the drop of dark fluid. Another deep breath, another silent prayer, and he clicked the button.

  The teardrop flame appeared again. The drop started to move, but Ellis stabbed out quickly. The flame touched the drop and a ten-centimeter-tall fireball erupted from the basin, leaving a scorch mark on the stainless steel surface. As with the UV light test, there was no remnant of the sample—it had combusted into nothing.

  Ellis slowly grinned. He tapped the mic. “Moore. You can tell the SWAT team that fire will work. This shit is highly combustible.”

  “So I saw,” Moore said. She sounded slightly disinterested.

  He fought the urge to scream at her, ask her why the hell he was bothering to risk his life when she’s the one that had him trapped in here. In the end, he merely sighed. “I think this concludes the usefulness of my tests.”

  Pause. “You are correct, Dr. Ellis. I don’t see there’s much more you can do from there.”

  He looked up at the camera. “Good. Now get me the hell out of here.”

  Pause. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dr. Ellis. You’ve been exposed to the pathogen.”

  “It’s not a goddamned pathogen!” he yelled. “It’s alive. And not like a damned bacteria or virus. Don’t you get it? It grows faster than anything we’ve ever seen. It organizes itself and knows, even at the size of a millimeter, how to escape danger.” Ellis threw up his hands. “It’s not contagious in the traditional sense. Not at all.”

  “You don’t know that,” Moore said. “Krieger was infected by a tiny amount of the substance, and it ended up killing dozens of people that we know of. And it’s in the hospital right now, killing more people as we speak. We can’t take the chance the same thing will happen if we let you out of there. You are in quarantine, and you will remain there until I’m satisfied that you and the contents of the command center are not a threat to anyone.”

  The fear and terror he’d felt just moments before evaporated. Even the crushing exhaustion departed. What replaced them was white hot anger.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said to the camera. “And frankly, I don’t give a shit. You want to help my team? You want to help those people in the hospital? Then get me the hell out of here so I can do my goddamned job.”

  “You’ve done your job, Dr. Ellis,” the calm, cold voice replied. “I suggest you get some sleep. I’ll call you again with any updates or if I have any questions.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Moore sighed. “I understand how frustrating this must be. But I want you to put yourself in my position. Would you let a potentially virulent and dangerous organism out of a quarantine area?”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. But I also know when something’s contained and when it’s not. By your logic, any person in a hazard lab can never be let out.”

  “Then allow me to elucidate, Doctor. You yourself said we don’t know what this substance is, although it’s certainly biological. You think the vector has to come into direct contact with a host. But you can’t say that for certain, can you?”

  He opened his mouth to reply and then stopped. “I can’t perform those kinds of tests here.”

  “No,” she agreed, “you can’t. You have had your respiratory protection off multiple times since you entered the vehicle with the sample. As soon as it was ‘contained,’ you treated it like you would any other pathogen.”

  “Correct.” His mouth had gone dry.

  “And we both agree this is not a normal pathogen, don’t we?”

  He nodded. There was no need to speak. She was no doubt watching his every facial tick. All the emotional oxygen feeding the fire inside him departed. The flames of anger sputtered and then died. She was right. Goddamn her, but she was right. He couldn’t get out of here. Not until they knew for sure, and could prove it.

  “So I’m stuck here for forever?”

  “No, Dr. Ellis. I’m not your enemy and I’m not unreasonable. My team is working on a strategy to get you and the sample out of there. As soon as we do, you’ll be the first to know. Until then, I suggest you try to sleep, or at least rest. There’s nothing more you can do from there. And you have done well.”

  She could pay him all the compliments she wanted. It didn’t matter. Bottom line? He was screwed and they both knew it. Ellis heaved a sigh and stared at the sample test tube. There wasn’t much of the substance left, but it was still more than enough to infect or even kill him. The only way he was getting out of here alive is if he figured out a way to destroy it without blowing himself to hell and back.

  “You’re right,” he mumbled.

  “What was that?” Moore asked.

  He raised his eyes back to the camera. “You’re correct, Dr. Moore.”

  “Again, I’m sorry it has to be this way, Dr. Ellis. If you have any ideas to help my team solve your particular problem, please let me know.”

  “Thank you.” The words dropped out of his mouth, tasting like ash.

  “You’re welcome. Get some rest. We’ll talk soon.”

  Ellis reached over and muted the command center microphones. He opened his mouth to yell, scream, anything to let out the anger and fury. But in the end, he bit his lip until it bled just to taste the blood. The pain was deliciously soothing and put him back on an even keel.

  He swiveled in the chair and faced the test tube of M2. The black substance sat in the shadows, inert, lifeless, and non-threatening. But he shivered just the same. Inside the hospital, there were people dying. Inside the hospital, monsters walked the halls. Inside the command center, there was just him and the black, waiting for rescue.

  Chapter 36

  The creature, a prisoner of pressure, struggled to find a way out, but there wasn’t one. It was trapped by the unyielding air behind it and something metal blocking its way. It couldn’t move. For a while, it simply maintained its position and continued dissolving any and all bio matter it could find. When it finally exhausted its pitiful food source, the entity became desperate. Food. Food was what it needed to grow. And without growth, it would cease existing.

  It manufactured a small, blunt pseudopod and pushed against the barrier. Without any leverage save the pressu
re behind it, it was an impossible feat. It dissolved the appendage, reconsuming the matter and adding it back to its whole. The creature pushed again, but fanned itself out into multiple tendrils. This time it found a chink in the barrier’s armor.

  The liquid found small perforations. Microscopic, but there. It pushed against them and was rewarded. The material wasn’t metal. It was rubber. The seal quickly dissolved. As it consumed each complex molecule, the seal deteriorated into nothing. The creature grew infinitesimally from the tiny meal. Pressure started escaping from the pipe. Its prison buckled. The creature created another appendage and expended enough energy to harden it. It pushed again and this time, the barrier rose no more than a centimeter.

  The creature reabsorbed the appendage again and then pushed upward, narrowing its liquid mass until it was less than a millimeter wide. It streamed through the barrier and found freedom.

  Chapter 37

  Fourteen hours. Fourteen goddamned hours. Those thoughts kept rolling in her mind over and over again. Dr. Hazel Wachtman walked out of the shower, towel wrapped around her chest. Her wet salt-and-pepper mane hung down past her breasts. And was she going to run a brush through it? No. Was she going to do anything to it besides putting it in a ponytail? Hell no.

  The little voice inside her head urged her on, but kept getting drowned out by the last delivery. And it was a strange one. Hazel wasn’t sure she ever wanted to go through one of those again.

  The mother, Gloria Melendez, was 41 years old. Women having children at that age was becoming more and more routine, but mainly because the potential problems were well known. However, it was more difficult when you were 41 and it was your first baby. Not to mention the Nicaraguan woman’s hips were narrow as hell. Hazel had figured out after their first meeting that Gloria was going to need a caesarean. But still, there was the labor to deal with and all the normal problems to look out for.

  Hazel and the nurse monitored the mother and fetus for nine hours. Nine hours of goddamned labor. And that was after Hazel induced it and then waited. And waited. And waited. Three prior deliveries that day, one unscheduled and two scheduled, had all gone smoothly. It just had to be the last one of the day to ruin her week.

  When the baby, Raul, was finally ready for delivery, Hazel had to perform a caesarean and then deal with her first ever postpartum hemorrhage. In all her years of delivering children into the world, she’d never had a situation where the mother started bleeding after delivery. But the Melendez birth just couldn’t be routine.

  At first, Hazel thought she’d nicked an artery while performing the procedure to remove the unborn child. Then she realized the damned placenta hadn’t been pulled from the womb, but torn. It took her nearly 20 minutes to find the bleeder and two units of blood and fluids to get Melendez back in the safe zone. Worst goddamned night ever.

  At least the baby was okay. He’d shrieked and cried while she and the nurse worked on his mother. Another nurse had finally come into the room to help out with the baby, but it was up to Hazel to save the new mother’s life. She’d managed it, but it had been a close thing. Too goddamned close.

  Hazel walked to her temporary locker, opened it up, and removed her street clothes. T-shirt? Check. Jeans? Check. Boots? Sweater? Rain jacket. Oh, and the purse, of course. Don’t forget the damned purse.

  She finished drying her body, flung the towel in the nearest hamper, and began dressing. Once her lower half was garbed, she pulled the wet towel from around her head, tossed it after the other towel, and then pulled on the shirt. Her wet hair soaked it immediately, but she didn’t care. From what she’d seen through the windows, rain was falling in sheets, punctuated by lightning and rumbling thunder. She tied her hair in a tail, and then pulled on the sweater. Fully dressed, she closed the locker and turned to leave.

  Keys in hand, she walked from the locker room and into the delivery lounge. Reclining chairs, a comfy futon, and a refrigerator sat in the empty room. No people. No nurses. No doctors. It seemed as though she was the last to leave.

  The lounge was where doctors and nurses holed up while waiting for their patients to go through labor. Hazel wondered just how many hours of her life she’d already spent in this room. And how many more would she spend through the rest of her career.

  Sighing, she opened the door and headed out into the hallway. When the door closed behind her, she stopped in her tracks. There was a smell like a backed-up toilet mixed with overcooked food. Her nostrils wrinkled, nose hairs wilted, and her eyes watered.

  The door to the lab was partially open. Blood tests, urine tests, every kind of test you could imagine was performed in there. Pregnancies were fraught with possible complications from infections, HIV complications, and even parasites. Getting a leg up on problems before they became life threatening to mother or baby was damned important. Especially for the malpractice lawyers and insurance companies.

  But this late at night, there was rarely anyone in there. “Hello?” she called. No answer. She was certain the eye-watering stench was coming from the lab. Hazel walked forward to the door and knocked on it. “Hello?” she said again. The door opened wider at her touch and she peered in.

  Most of the lights in the lab were off. One workstation, monitor still on and displaying tables of numbers, burned brightly in the dim room. She didn’t see anyone inside.

  She walked further into the room. The smell was stronger than ever. She took another step and then stopped. A sizzling sound started at the back of the room. Hazel swung her eyes to the nest of shadows beyond the lit workstation. The sound grew louder.

  Hazel squinted into the darkness. The shadows moved. She took a step backward without thinking. Her foot struck the back of the door and she nearly screamed. Adrenaline rushed into her bloodstream. “Hello?” The word came out in a hiss of breath, barely audible even to herself. The shadows seemed to tremble. A crackling sound joined the sizzling.

  A shape rose from the gloom. Hazel’s mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing. A wide branch of darkness, blacker than the shadows, waved in the air. Frozen in fear and awe, she watched the shape coalesce into something alien. A creature that shouldn’t exist moved toward her. Hazel was too terrified to scream. When it got within a meter of her, she tried to flee.

  A tentacle lashed out and took off her head. Soon after, there was nothing left but the keys that had once been in her pocket, her cell phone, and the rivets from her jeans.

  Chapter 38

  The cool darkness was welcome. The creature sat near the half-open door as it finished consuming its latest meal. It sprouted another set of legs, pulled itself up, and scuttled around the lab. It dragged a trail of liquid after it, the black eating every particle of consumable matter.

  When it finished with the floor, it scoured the lab tables. Its tentacles found skin cells, cleaning fluid, and the occasional particle of biological matter, but little else. It couldn’t consume the metal and glass making up the tables and the equipment, but it dissolved as much of the plastic as it could. It added more to itself, modifying the matter, changing it, transforming it. The creature grew slightly. There wasn’t enough food here. Not nearly enough. It had to leave the room and find more.

  Its eyestalks waved in the air and finally found the door. It scuttled across the tiles, its hard, black shell smacking into the tables and knocking over a microscope before it reached the exit. One of its many tentacles reared back and then rushed forward. The door opened wide. The creature stepped through and into the hallway.

  Its multi-jointed spider-like legs dug into the carpet. It dragged trailers of liquid behind it, the carpet smoldering in its wake as it dissolved the consumable matter. With each step, it grew. With each cell it dissolved, it added to its form. By the time it reached the main hallway, it was twice the size it had been when it started in the lab. And it knew more food was just steps away.

  Chapter 39

  Harrel somehow managed to fall asleep against the wall. Mathis knew she wouldn’t be t
hat way for long. The moment Ellis or that horrible Moore woman hit them on the radio, she’d be up like a shot. He was tired of sitting in the damned hallway. Mainly because it was boring. One of the operating rooms still had the remains of the surgical team, such as they were. The other? Two corpses. He decided to go visit the dead rather than be annoyed with the living.

  Through the glass walls, he saw the doctors and nurses in the surgery. They still looked the same—glassy eyed and in shock. At least the one nurse, whatever the hell her name was, had finally stopped wailing. In fact, she looked asleep. Maybe the rest of them would fall asleep too and wake up to a host of military or police dragging them out into the storm when this was over. If it ever was over.

  He wished Moore would pipe in communications with the SWAT team. At least then he’d have some idea of how they were doing and more importantly, if they were still alive. They were chasing that thing. The image of its blacker than black insectile eyes rotating on even darker stalks made him shiver. That was a memory he was sure he’d have to live with for the rest of his days. With any luck, there would be a lot of them left. Unless that thing comes back down here, he thought. “Fuck that,” Mathis said aloud and entered the vacant surgery.

  There was little of interest. Very little. They’d wheeled the corpse from the other surgery into this one. The unfortunate ex-patient lay on the stretcher, a sheet covering his still-open chest. The other patient was still on the OR table, sheet covering him as well. It was cold enough to keep the bodies from stinking up the joint, but he didn’t know how long that would last. And speaking of cold…

  Mathis held his arms around himself and shivered. The room was getting very cold indeed. Either the heater in the building was fried or something else was going on. Maybe that thing had not only destroyed the central heating, but had managed to open a damned hole in the roof. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.