by Troy McCombs
***
The unresponsive girl lay on a table in a small, blazing room, bleeding from her nostrils, mouth, ears, eyes, anus and vagina. The blood erupted from every orifice quickly and thinly, but then slowed down suddenly and dried to a rusty brown residue only seconds upon contact with air. No one knew what to do for her, because they had no idea what was causing it. Doctors attempted to stop the bleeding by applying pressure. Nurses scampered about, hooking her up to monitors, getting her vitals, soaking up more blood than they had available rags. Her heartrate was off the chart, filling the small room with sharp, rapid beeps. Nobody noticed her forearm; it had stopped pulsating.
“She's going into shock.”
“Vicky, get Doctor Tillman. Stat!”
One nurse darted from the room.
A second nurse, the one with the big hands, trembled, visibly alarmed. Doctor Harris noticed this and furrowed his brows. What's wrong with her? She's never done this before, not in the four years I've known her. Looks like she's having a panic attack.
“Debra? You okay?”
“Ebola... the Ebola virus makes you bleed from all orifices...” She backed away from the little girl, who had stopped bleeding, and whose steady beep-beep-beeps had turned into one long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...
“Call it.
“Deb, the Ebola virus is native to Africa. I don't know what this is, but it sure isn't Ebola.”
This did not ease her nerves. He didn't sound so sure anyway. She continued to backpedal, bumping into other things in the room.
She looked at the girl, that poor, pale little girl, at the stretcher, at the floor. The girl's insides must have exploded, for blood was everywhere. This wouldn't be something the janitor would want to clean up, no way. A few more drops of red and the room wouldn't be white anymore.
Debra couldn't get over it. Something's not right with this picture. I've been a nurse for four years and have seen more than my share of death and injury and blood and the looks on people's faces when one doctor or another informs a family the news. I've seen things that keep me up at night. This is different, worse.
But she couldn't put a finger on what that was or what it meant. The word supernatural seemed appropriate. That word made everything all the more frightening. Even if it wasn't supernatural, it definitely was not natural.
The doctor told her gravely: “Get Rich to come clean this up. I'll go inform the family.”
Debra nodded, and when she did, she noticed movement from over Doctor Harris' hip. The movement was coming from the deceased girl's forearm. It pulsated, in and out, in large, exaggerated pumps.
“Oh my God!” Debra gasped, pointing. Doctor Harris and Kimberly Mitchell turned and glanced down, puzzled. They gawked. They searched inwardly for an answer. It looked as if something was trying to burst from her forearm. Harris had never seen anything quite like it. Kimberly had. In the fictional movie, Altered States, when William Hurt starts to mutate, his arm bubbled out like this. Rachel's arm ballooned to the size of popeye's. Debra had no doubt that something was going to break through. Skin could stretch very far, but it still had its limit.
“What the hell is that?” the doctor muttered, reaching down to touch the little girl's pulsating forearm. As soon as his fingertips met with her warm, rock-hard flesh, it happened. Debra screamed. So did Kimberly, who slipped in blood and almost fell.
The arm split open, from wrist to inner elbow. No blood splattered, because there was no more to be had. Something did come out of the wound, though. They poured through the wound, dozens of them—spiders. There were probably twenty of them, babies with translucent bodies no bigger than a man's closely-clipped fingernail and legs no longer than a small piece of stubble. Not only was it shocking to see; what was shocking was what these newborn spiders did.
They jumped onto the doctor's chest in one uniform leap. He tried to lean away, to dodge them, but they landed on him and made him fall backward to the tile below, as if they weighed him down considerably. Once they had him grounded, they burrowed through his clothes, bit him, drew blood. A few of them crawled up his nostrils; one crawled in his ear. He began to convulse before either nurse could do anything constructive.
Springing into action, Kimberly lifted her leg and slammed her foot down on a few spiders that had strayed from Doctor Harris. Her mighty stomp did nothing to injure or kill them. It was like stepping onto small, mobile marbles made of metal. They could obviously not be crushed. All her attempt did was make them mad. Two of them jumped onto her instep and crawled up her pantleg. Debra, still screaming, didn't know they'd crawled into Kim's vagina and began eating away at her insides.
Before watching Kimberly fall and convulse like the doctor, Debra fled the room. Upon entering the hallway, she bumped into an old man sitting in a wheelchair and knocked the poor geezer to the floor. He groaned in response, looking around to see what happened. Debra was long gone by that time. She rushed out through the exit doors, got into her Audi, and drove off without looking back.