by Ryan Casey
“I mean, you look knackered, son. It’s alright going for a run every now and then, but you’ve got to moderate these things. You’ve got to build up from the bottom. Can’t just throw on some jogging shorts and think you’re Mo Farah all of a sudden.”
Jonny listened to his mum’s words. That’s all they were really—words. But then again, that’s all they had been for months. Detached. Void of their surface meaning, always laced with undercutting, hidden meanings and intentions. He just wanted something to do. He just wanted to go to Anita’s party right now and just get completely and utterly pissed with his mates. A way of keeping his mind distracted. A way of… of continuing to live.
Denise, who had her work’s handbag over her shoulder, dressed in the same white polo neck she seemed to wear every day (or maybe she had a load of identical shirts), shrugged and stepped out of the room. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to, well… Whatever it is you’re doing. I’ll put some tea on, if you fancy?”
“Oh, Mum,” Jonny said, as his mum disappeared out of the door. “You, erm… You might want to order a takeaway in. Or something. I, well… I got pretty hungry.”
While his mum was rustling up something or another from whatever was left in the fridge, Jonny went through his wardrobe and tried to find something he used to wear from the shirts that were still freshly ironed from months ago. A striped white shirt. A dark blue, sleeveless shirt. A shirt with little baseball images on it even though he didn’t know the first fucking thing about American sport.
He grabbed the striped white shirt. Safe. Plain. Not too flamboyant. He was going to announce his re-arrival in style, but it had to be he who was the centre of attention, not his quirky dress sense.
When he got downstairs again, fully dressed in the striped white shirt, skinny black chinos and dark loafers, hair washed and body showered, he stood in the door of his kitchen. His mum had made some kind of pasta dish. He felt the hunger in his stomach again. He felt the weakness, the shivering in his arms. Just nerves. Just nerves, before he went out tonight for the first time in months. That’s all it was—apprehension.
Denise’s eyes widened as she stared at her son with a glass of red wine in hand. She scanned him from head to toe, examining every inch of his body closely. When she finally reached his eyes again, he saw that her eyes were watering. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
“Figured I’ll head on round to Brad’s before we go out,” he said. He just needed to get out of this house and get some fresh air. How funny. The difference a day out with his dad made. He couldn’t even pinpoint the exact moment he’d started feeling this… this weird way. Some point after the train. After the coffee with Dad’s fit old workmate, Sarah. Some time later that day, it had to be.
Before his mum could say a word, proud tears welling up in her eyes, Jonny rushed to the door and opened it up. He didn’t know where this energy had come from—he’d been flat-out knackered a matter of minutes ago. But the hunger. The hunger, clawing through his stomach, crawling through his body. Was this happiness? Was this acceptance?
Or was it something else entirely?
He closed the door and let the cool, frosty air surround his body.
Then, he ran.
Donna Carter thought she was at her desk, still playing that stupid little app, when she realised it couldn’t be her desk because she was on her back and unfamiliar noises were bleeping around her.
She opened her eyes. The bright light above her made her eyes sting. They felt so tired, so heavy, burning with fatigue. She knew she hadn’t slept much, she didn’t think. Yes—that was what had happened. She’d been really tired. She’d felt really rough and then she’d…
Oh, shit. She’d collapsed at her office door. Collapsed with exhaustion. Collapsed with illness and the longing need for sleep.
She tried to arch herself upright but her back was still. She was lying on a hospital bed, she knew that now. The pillows were always so high in these places. And the bright white lights, and the blue curtain. Yes, this was a hospital. She’d collapsed with exhaustion and she’d been taken to hospital. That made sense. Complete sense.
She tasted something unusual in her mouth as she swirled her tongue around. Fuck—a sharp pain shot right down her tongue. She remembered the taste of blood. The warm, juicy, metallic blood, oozing down her throat. The pool of blood on the white tiles outside her office. She’d bitten her tongue upon contact with the floor, that’s what it was. Smacked the floor with her chin and bitten right into it, or something.
As she reached for her face to scratch an itch under her eye, she realised her arm was completely paralysed. She couldn’t move it. She tried the other arm, but no luck with that one either. What was happening to her? Was she paralysed, or something? Had she hit her head in such a way that she’d done some real damage?
When she looked at her arms, she realised she couldn’t be further from the truth.
And yet, what she saw scared her even more than paralysis.
Her forearms were tied down with thick leather belts. They were so tight that the bottom of her forearms were completely purple. Veins bulged through her hands. She could see her hands wiggling, as her brain sent out signals for them to move, but she couldn’t feel anything. Not a thing.
“Hello?” she called, and as soon as she did, she realised how sore her throat was. How dry it was, as if she’d swallowed a cocktail of glass and sandpaper and spewed it back up again. She coughed. Blood dribbled out of her mouth onto the white handkerchief wrapped around her neck.
She heard a shuffling outside. Saw the blue curtains twitch. Somebody was whispering out there—two people whispering, as if they were trying to avoid attracting her attention. Why would that be the case in a hospital? She was here to be cared for, wasn’t she?
Then she noticed something on the wall above the curtain. Something she might have spotted before, but hadn’t really registered. The letter “T,” surrounded by a large letter “C.”
She wasn’t in hospital after all. She was in the very same building where she’d collapsed. TCorps medical bay.
The curtain opened. She caught a glimpse of a large glass mirror. One-way reflective, no doubt. All of a sudden she felt even more alone—even more segregated—than she’d first thought.
A man walked through the curtain. He was wearing a blue hat, and a white mask over his face. He also wore the traditional blue costume that all TCorps medical team wore. But they rarely wore masks like this. The TCorps medical bay was just for minor treatment—treating wounds, checking out strange coughs potentially related to experiments, and such. They didn’t look so… professional in TCorps medical bay. Only in the Quarantine Zone.
A realisation hit her square in the chest as the man stepped to her side and jotted down a few notes, not saying a word to her. The ties around her arms. The glass window, separating her from the rest of the medical bay. The way the man was dressed—so professional, so serious.
She thought of the rat, dangling from her finger. The coldness. The emptiness. The dizziness and the longing—the longing for… something.
The reason it didn’t seem like the standard TCorps medical bay was because it wasn’t the standard TCorps medical bay.
She was in Quarantine.
“Open your mouth for me, Mrs. Carter,” the doctor said, now directly above her, staring down at her, moving his rubber-glove-covered hands closer to her face.
Donna struggled. She tried to speak, but doing so was so hard—doing so would mean admitting defeat. There must be a mistake. Why would she be in quarantine? It was just a cold, that’s all it was. Just a simple little virus.
Just… just tiredness.
“Come on, Mrs. Carter,” the man said, his hand edging closer to her mouth. “We can be grown-ups about this.”
“Why?” Donna said. It squeaked out of her chapped throat. She barely recognised the sound of her own voice. “Why am… I here?” Speaking seemed unnatural. Forced.
The man moved h
is hand away. He stared at her with his grey eyes, his face otherwise covered. “You know why you’re here, Mrs. Carter. We both know why you’re here.” He turned the clipboard around. On it, in a little square area in the corner, there was a picture of the rat. The rat, lying across a table. Dead.
She understood now. Her fears—her paranoia—they must’ve been justified. “It’s just… It was only a little bite. Just a little nip to my finger, see.” She tried to lift her plastered finger to show the man, but realised she couldn’t as she was still restrained. And it was worthless anyway. She knew the truth. She knew what this meant, all of it.
She was in Quarantine. Which meant she wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.
“Little bugger came running back to Phillip a few hours after it disappeared. Eaten its other side, it had. And y’know, the way Phillip put it, it looked like it was never gonna stop eating. Until he, y’know… Put it out of its misery.”
Donna shook her head. She thought about her parents. She imagined them, all the way across the ocean in America, no idea what was happening to their daughter—their estranged daughter.
She thought of Little Paul, smiling away on that photograph at Gibraltar. She wished he was here with her. She wished she could just hold him and understand what was happening to her.
“I wish we had some place nicer to put you, Mrs. Carter. But the truth is, we have a bad feeling. You’re showing symptoms of some kind of serious contamination. So we’re keeping you in here for your own safety, first and foremost. But for the safety of everyone else, too.”
Her own safety. If they gave a crap about her own safety, she wouldn’t be strapped down to a bed in Quarantine Zone.
“Now I’m personally convinced that you’ll pull through your symptoms in no time. We’ve already done some scans on you and there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary in your system, except a rather high CD4 count. Something we looked for right away with our state-of-the-art tech that I won’t bore you with the details of. And, y’know, because of the formula that was in the rat’s system. But that should cause no lasting problem. If anything, you’ll be… well. You’ll be healthier. A lot healthier.”
She saw the twinkle in his colourless eyes then. She got it. This wasn’t just any old quarantine situation. This was a test. And she was the subject. TCorps—Mr. Belmont, all of them—they’d seen the increase in CD4 in her system; the increase that Sarah Appleton had informed her of, and now all of a sudden they were interested. An HIV cure. A miracle formula.
“It’s just very important that you stay here and that you stay calm, Mrs. Carter. You… What you did to your tongue. I mean, everything comes with side effects, right? But we wouldn’t want you endangering yourself. We mean that.”
Her tongue? She’d just bitten it, hadn’t she?
She ran it against her teeth and it stung. Shit, she must’ve bitten right into it. Like, chewed into it. Perhaps they weren’t being completely insincere when they said they were looking out for her own safety after all.
The man held up a needle and, without any warning, jammed it into Donna’s forearm. He drew out some blood, and Donna felt herself going heady again, drifting away into the clouds.
The man removed the needle and placed the vial of blood into a clear plastic bag. “We just want to do another few tests, and then we’ll be able to get you out of those… well, this security. We’ll get you out of here and you can have a chat with Mr. Belmont about the next step.”
The next step. Donna didn’t even bother asking whether she’d be able to leave this place any time soon. She knew the answer. She was a “dangerous infected individual” now, or at least, TCorps would have her believe that. They “weren’t testing on her,” more “caring for her.” Fine line between the two when one really thought about it.
The doctor walked over to the curtain and turned back to look at Donna, his face still completely covered but for his eyes. That was his face to her. Whatever was behind it was like a skull—another person altogether.
“We’ll get you back to full strength, Donna. Just please… Have a little patience and we’ll be able to get you out of here soon. You’ll be fine. More than fine.” The twinkle in his eyes again.
Then he was gone.
Donna leaned back on the plump, hard pillows. A part of her wanted to shout for help, but something else inside her forced her to resist. Something forced her to just lie there, staring up at the ceiling. It was the same something that brought on the cold, shivery feeling. The same something that manifested in that horrible emptiness inside her.
Their warm hands against her body. Warm, blood-filled hands, full of muscle and tendon and luscious, juicy flesh.
The side of the rat’s body as it sank its teeth into its greasy, matted fur, blood pooling out beneath it.
Metallic, nutritious blood.
It was only when she felt a dripping sensation against the back of her throat that she realised she was biting her tongue again.
15.
He ran for an hour before getting to Brad’s drenched in sweat.
“Jonny,” Brad said, as he opened the door. His cheeks reddened a little, the grin on his face faltering. He examined Jonny from head to toe, then back again, before forcing a smile. “You—you made it.”
“Course I did,” Jonny said. He walked past Brad and entered his hallway. He had to keep moving. His hands were buzzing. His legs were buzzing. He had to move—keep moving. Couldn’t keep still. Couldn’t let the hunger take over, not again.
Brad appeared in front of him. He held a hand up to stop him getting any further down the hallway. In the kitchen, Jonny could hear voices. Laughter. Familiar voices, actually. Voices he swore he’d heard once upon a time in his life. Maybe his past life.
“Jonny, if I’d known you were coming for real, I’d have, erm…”
But it was too late, because the kitchen door was open and inside were all of Jonny’s old friends, staring back at him, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.
The kitchen drew to a silence.
“Jon-Jon,” Phil said, breaking the silence. He hopped off the stool at the breakfast bar and walked over to Jonny, punching him on the arm. “You made it. You really fucking made it.”
Slowly, one by one, the rest of the kitchen stepped over to Jonny. Baz, Pete, James, Wayne—all faces he used to recognise; people he used to have no trouble insulting for fun or messing around with. He was one of them and all of them. They were a living, breathing machine of friendship.
But since he’d stepped in the kitchen, the room had lost its buzz. Conversation had gone quiet. Smiles and laughs were forced.
“I would’ve mentioned something,” Brad said. He couldn’t meet Jonny in the eye. “I mean, you know you’re my best mate and all that. But I dunno. I just wasn’t sure whether after all this time… well, you coming to pre-drinks. I didn’t know what the right thing was. For you.”
Jonny smiled. He could understand where Brad was coming from. At first, he’d felt a little awkward at seeing all his old friends in here, laughing and joking without him, but he got it. Brad was just looking out for him. Considering his best interests.
“It’s alright,” Jonny said. “I get it, mate. Don’t want me spreading my AIDS around the place.”
Brad frowned and shook his head. “No I didn’t mean it like—”
“I’m joking,” Jonny said. He punched Brad on the arm, perhaps a little too hard judging by the way Brad winced. Then, he turned back to the room, who in turn looked back at him. “So, where’s the booze?”
Jonny was completely smashed before they even got to Anita’s place.
As soon as they got there, he was even more smashed.
She lived in a small flat just on the outskirts of Preston city centre, in the student accommodation area. However, looking at the place, packed with at least fifty people, it resembled a cramped nightclub dance floor more than anything. Broken glass lined the floor. Flashing green and red lights pulsated above. Music blasted
from the huge, out-of-place speaker system over by the window.
Jonny was dancing, moving, jumping around like the rest of them. They were all smiling at him—hot girls, old mates—all smiling at him and laughing with him at his jokes. He felt it inside him. The spark. The spark that once lit Old Jonny. He felt it gradually growing larger and larger, flickering like a flame, as he danced and danced and danced.
He felt the other feeling too. The hunger. The intense desire to do something. But all this moving and drinking and dancing, it was keeping his mind off it. It was keeping it at bay, whatever it was. Then again, whatever it was was a good thing, right? It had got him eating loads again. It had got him running. It had got him drinking and partying and out of the house.
The night went on and on. More drinks were consumed, more bottles smashed, more coke snorted. Jonny was in a trance-like state, now. Everything moved in slow motion. He could hear the music thumping through his ears but he couldn’t piece it together. It was all just an abstract bunch of sounds and noises, unrelated, completely distant and yet inside him.
And then a girl was in front of him. Blonde, shorter than him. Rebecca, he thought her name was. Rebecca—yes. He remembered her from some of the old parties. Pretty, white-toothed smile. Soft-looking hair. Had he slept with her before? No. Never slept with her.
And here she was, talking words he couldn’t hear or understand, and he was speaking words that were making her cover her mouth and giggle; giggle like they used to when he spoke his words to them, and then before he knew it she was holding his hand and dragging him out of the room, away from the throbbing, pulsating lights and music, out of the broken-glass minefield and out of the house.
The fresh air on his roasting hot face was a relief. Rebecca—or was it Rachel? Which was it? Could he ask her again? No. Irrelevant. Didn’t have to ask names. Anyway, Rebecca, she was dragging him down the well-lit street. Other people wandered past and muttered things. He could feel the heat coming off them. The warm heat from their hands, their chests, their necks. He could feel it as he walked past them, but mostly he could feel it from Rebecca’s hand intertwined in his.