“Hello?” she yelled out. “Boy?” Only the wind and the water answered her. “Come back,” she hollered. Dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled to the other side of the trailer. She stood up on the unsecured side of the ring of cars and brushed sand off her clothes. Beach met her feet. Small tracks led away from the vehicular palisade, a little mop of blond hair bouncing over the sand.
“Stop,” she called after him. The boy turned toward her, considering her with a half-smile. He let out a high-pitched giggle. She ran after him. The sand ate her feet up, ensuring she made slow progress. The boy topped a sand dune and disappeared. Goddamn kid, he’s going to get himself killed. Along with me.
After a few moments, she crested the same sand ridge, and the boy stood below playing near the waves. He held a stick in his hand, battling the waves with it. Every time a wave would roll onto the shore, the boy would run inland, laughing at the wild water, swinging his stick wildly at it. He bent his small legs, picked up a rock, and threw it back at the offending waves.
“Come here,” she scolded. Her finger pointed to the ground at her side.
The boy turned in her direction, a smile on his lips. The splashing of distress forced her eyes away from him. Her mind instinctually thought of a shark or of somebody drowning, but a man’s head and upper torso emerged from the waves.
The infected man’s skin sagged low and gray off his face as if it weighed too much for his body, almost as if he were a bloodhound in human form. Wading through the waves, the man was followed by another. And another. They wore hardly recognizable shirts and pants seemingly melted to their waterlogged skin. She drew her knife in a second.
“What are you doing?” a voice shouted behind her. She spun around toward the voice. Ahmed bounded down the dune at her. He held a bat in his hand.
“The boy,” she shouted at him. “Help me get him.” Ahmed looked over her shoulder, worried.
“Where is he?”
“He’s right here,” Gwen said, turning back toward the big lake. The boy was gone, only the dead walked in his place.
“He was just here. Help me. Boy! Boy!” she called out.
“I only see infected.” Ahmed gripped his bat nervously with both hands.
“Help me.” She ran into the water. “Boy! Boy!” she screamed. The ugly faces of the infected struggled for her. She swept the water with her hands. “He was just here,” she cried.
Ahmed’s bat cracked off the side of an infected head, and it splashed facedown into the water. The torso followed the head, arms spread wide. The body floated on the surface of the waves, tossed around by their force.
Frantic, Gwen spun around in a circle. Where is he? Where is he?
“We should go back,” Ahmed grunted, as he bashed another skull. Pieces of white cranium splintered and were launched free as pink brains exploded outward.
“He was here,” she yelled, wading through the water. Angry sediments floated to the surface of the brown water as she stirred up the lakebed. An arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her up from the shallows.
“Come on,” Ahmed’s voice reverberated in her ear. As she thrashed in the water, he half-carried, half-dragged her to the beach. “Gwen, please,” he muttered, not fighting, but blocking her from going back. More forms came out of the shallows.
“The boy,” she breathed, exasperated. Ahmed scowled at the infected in the water.
“I see no boy. If he’s smart, he’s already back at camp. Come on.” They ran back to camp as fast as the sand would allow them. Ahmed snatched up his M4 from their campsite.
“You can’t,” she breathed. I’m so tired. “Go by yourself.”
“If only you listened to your own words.” He flashed a quick smile at her. “We need to put them down before they reach the perimeter.” He raced up a ladder on the backside of a nearby camper.
The slamming of car doors drew their attention. Her bearded agent, deep scar running across his scalp, stepped out of a red Ford Ranger. Mark. Thank God he is back, and there is that hussy.
Tess threw a pack on her shoulder, joining Mark as they entered the camp. Her tight black pants revealed her narrow hips, small ass, and petite all-around frame like that of a cat burglar. She turned, saying something to Mark, and he smiled and barked a laugh into the air. There’s no way he finds her funny, that, that pothead.
Mark made eye contact with Tess as they marched toward her and Tess met his eyes, giving him a soft cradling smile. It may as well have been an invitation back to her camper. When he turned back to Gwen, his eyes quickly darkened as though the sun had eclipsed above them in the sky. Have I lost you? Moans rolled up the dunes, and he dropped his pack and ran for them.
JOSEPH
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, CO
The lights from above revealed everything. They shone down unrelentingly from the ceiling, displaying all of the doctors’ dirty deeds below. The heart rate monitor beeped. Byrnes and Dr. Nguyen cut away at Patient Zero like he was a thick steak. His body rocked beneath the restraints, still living under their dissecting blades.
Joseph stood in the back watching them take piece after piece off the man. After each piece was taken, whether it was a lobe of lung or a piece of the brain’s frontal lobe, they would sew him back up as if they had just completed a successful surgery. Dr. Hollis had been allowed to leave after an hour to assist Dr. Desai in running a gambit of tests, leaving Joseph with the two butchers in blue HAZMAT suits.
Byrnes looked over his shoulder. “Dr. Jackowksi, will you assist Dr. Nguyen with acquiring a biopsy of his heart? That shouldn’t be outside your comfort zone.” Joseph circled the table. His feet obeyed, his will already overcome by his peers. Dr. Nguyen looked up at Joseph as he stepped up beside him.
Patient Zero’s eyes had been taped closed, and his mouth gagged, but beneath the partially open lids, his eyes darted back and forth. Whimpers of pain exited his mouth as if he was exhausted from crying.
“I’m thinking we will make our incision here.” Dr. Nguyen’s blue-suited finger jabbed Patient Zero in the lower part of his armpit. “Below the swollen lymph node. The node was almost black beneath his pale almost translucent skin like a lump of coal underneath the snow.
“You don’t think the groin or stomach?” Joseph asked, referring to other areas to enter into with a catheter in order to reach the heart.
“We had a few difficulties with his gastrointestinal areas.” An x of freshly opened and then sewn up again scars crossed Patient Zero’s belly.
“I see that,” Joseph spat. Richard would probably never be able to relieve himself on his own. Portions of his intestines, stomach, and colon had been snipped away like he was a hairless cat in a middle school science lab.
“But I agree, Dr. Nguyen. Let’s try a spot that hasn’t been hacked to pieces already.” The Asian doctor’s eyes narrowed only as far as they could go while still staying open.
“I’ll let you guide me then, Doctor.” Dr. Nguyen bent close to Patient Zero. His scalpel slid neatly below the blackening lymph node. Dark brown blood seeped from the open wound, and he wiped it away with gauze.
“I am searching for the axillary artery that runs through the upper torso to the heart.” A single finger explored the slit he had created. “Ah, there.”
“Catheter, please.” Joseph picked up a clear tube and handed it to him. The tube was a rigid sheath that would keep the puncture site open for insertion of the flexible thin tube with a camera on one end. Dr. Nguyen threaded the thin tube through the sheath into the artery.
Joseph flipped a switch on a monitor. “Camera’s on,” Joseph said. A tunnel image came up on the monitor. A round image of the white walls of the artery lined the tunnel. Dr. Nguyen glanced at the screen. “You may begin to feed.”
The camera-headed tube drove through the artery, grazing its walls. Dr. Nguyen barely tried to be gentle while feeding the catheter. Joseph glanced at Patient Zero’s face. His eyes were only white, rolled up inside his head.
“Of course. It’s a normal biopsy,” Byrnes said from across the table. The man looked angry that they might stop their collection.
Dr. Nguyen nodded and continued to feed the tube. “I’ve reached the aortic arch. Entering the left ventricle now.” The walls of the tunnel on the screen pumped in time with the beating of Patient Zero’s heart. The pressure inside the artery slowed, the pushing of blood becoming a drip-drip instead of a thud-thud.
“Dr. Nguyen, get a good sample from there.” The colonel pointed on the screen. “Why is that black? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is part of his heart dying? Literally, the tissue appears to be deteriorating,” Joseph said. They stared at the screen, ignoring the beeps that crept lower and lower. Until he flatlined. Beeeeeeeep, the heart monitor screamed attention to his predicament.
“He’s in cardiac arrest!” Joseph shouted. He placed his hands two inches above the end of the sternum. He let his arms stay straight and began pumping Richard’s chest to the beat of a song. After thirty seconds of pounding Richard’s chest, he looked at the other doctors. They stood watching.
“Somebody help me,” Joseph demanded. Byrnes had the nerve to step back. He held his bloodied hands upright in the air, the backs of his hands to Joseph and Patient Zero. “What are you doing?” Joseph’s voice came out in a screech. “He’s flatlining.”
“We don’t really feel the need to resuscitate the patient. In fact, much of this work would be easier if he was already dead.”
“Are you kidding me?” Joseph screamed between pumps of his chest. “You are a doctor for Christ’s sake. Dr. Nguyen. Help me.”
“I’m curious to see the virus after the body expires. It would be interesting to see if he reanimates like the others.”
“Get me an AED,” Joseph commanded. “I didn’t scour this country to find this asshole so I could bring him here and have you hacks kill him.” No one moved.
“We only have a paddle defibrillator. We’re a research facility, not a surgical center,” said Dr. Nguyen. Joseph shoved past Dr. Nguyen, pushing him into a tray that toppled over onto the ground. Joseph ignored his complaints.
Joseph gripped the edges of a metal cart holding the paddle defibrillator. He pulled it toward the flatlining Patient Zero. Byrnes let himself be shouldered to the side. The heart monitor echoed its shrill, dead victory cry over the living.
“Why are you wasting your breath on this creature?” Byrnes hissed. He leaned toward Joseph. Joseph turned away from him. “After what he did to Rebecca?” he whispered.
Joseph flipped a switch on the paddle defibrillator. It warmed up with a high-pitched whine. “Because he’s a person. His name is Richard. Now, step aside, asshole.” Byrne’s eyebrows narrowed, but he took a step back. Joseph rubbed gel on the handled paddles, wires still attaching them to the machine. He swirled them together as the machine warmed up.
“Clear!” he yelled at the other doctors. Joseph stuck the paddles on either end of Richard’s heart, and the machine squealed a high-pitched scream as it prepared to put the heart back into rhythm. Bump. Richard’s body bounced on the table as far as his restraints would allow.
The heart monitor showed a single flat line. “Again,” Joseph said, if only to himself.
Bump. Richard’s body leapt off the table. “Again,” Joseph screamed. The paddles warmed up, and he placed them around Richard’s heart.
“Let him go. He’s suffered enough,” Byrnes said. He laid a hand on Joseph’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch me.” Joseph shrugged off his hand. He rubbed the paddles together as much to distribute the gel as for good luck. “One more time, you infected bastard,” he growled. Patient Zero laid unmoving.
Joseph placed the paddles on the unresponding man’s chest. “Clear,” he shouted at Byrnes. He made sure to stare the man in his eyes, not caring what he thought.
Bump.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
The heart rate monitor clucked away.
“I want you off my project,” Byrnes growled into his ear.
Joseph hooked the paddles back on the machine. “I couldn’t be happier than to leave a team full of goddamn quacks,” he said to Byrnes with a finishing glower for Dr. Nguyen.
***
Hours later, he found himself in Dr. Weinroth’s room. Her reclinable hospital bed sat perpendicular with the white wall. A stainless steel sink and a door leading to a bathroom lined the wall. A white dresser sat next to her bed. Her research tablet laid on it. She could make notes and access data files from the doctors on the network.
Joseph pulled up a black metal chair that could be burned or just as easily sprayed down for disease.
He adjusted his surgical mask on his face.
She awoke as he shifted in his chair. Her eyes encrusted with sleep, her head rolled toward him. “You’re back,” she whispered in a tired voice. Her brown eyes were softer than normal. Their pigment was changing as the disease took hold.
“There’s no other place I’d rather be,” he said with a smile beneath his mask. He could tell she was smiling beneath hers even if it was faint. The honesty of his words struck him. Is this true? I would rather be spending my time with a terminally ill patient who will die and rise again and try to kill me? But he spoke the God’s honest truth. Being with her made him feel weird, warm, and fuzzy at the same time. It felt as if he had just discovered the sweet taste of chocolate and craved its sweetness more and more. Chocolate that he would never taste again.
“I was only taking a nap. I’ve been so tired lately.” Her eyes drifted down at her body as if it betrayed her. He reached out and touched her hand. She was still warm. She flinched beneath him but let him hold it. He spun her wrist looking at it.
A thick kevlar band wrapped around her wrist topped off by a plastic brick. “What’s that?” he asked.
Her eyes regarded the plastic brick in shame. “It’s a sensor that goes off if I try to leave this room. They don’t want me wandering around and succumbing to the virus in an area with people.” He released her hand. How dare they? But can I blame them?
She peered down at her chest. “I have to make sure I keep my heart rate monitors on. If my heartbeat stops, the room locks down.”
“I have a feeling you aren’t the first one they’ve done this too,” he said.
“No,” she said sheepishly.
“Richard flatlined today.”
Fear, anger, and pain crossed her eyes. “Did you bring him back?”
“Yes.” He rubbed a finger underneath his glasses. “Colonel Byrnes didn’t want to. He wanted to pull the plug.”
“That man is infuriating. He wasn’t like this when I was at Detrick. He has changed, I fear, for the worse.”
“He wants me off the team.”
She coughed into her hand in exasperation. “He can’t. He wouldn’t do that.”
Joseph flattened his mouth. “Well, he’s trying. I will apologize to him so we can carry on, but I don’t think it will be long before I need to find a new place of employment, probably outside this mountain fortress.”
“Have faith, Joseph. We’ll find a way.” Her eyes believed every word she said. Blind faith had gotten lesser people through more. Joseph didn’t believe her, but he continued to soak in her image as if he would never see her again. She stared back, blinking. They sat in silence. He wanted to rip her mask off and kiss her, even if it meant his own death.
She coughed a bit and reached over, grabbing the tablet. How can I be falling for a woman that is about to die?
“When I don’t feel like hell, I’ve been studying these genomes.” He could tell she was giving a weak smile underneath her mask. “I’m basically trying to do the work that would take a team of doctors years in about a week. There’s so much data. But look here.
” She turned a tablet toward him and clicked play on a video.
“The monkeypox uses multiple viral ligands and cell surface receptors to fuse to the membrane of healthy cells here. The monkeypox virus is partially absorbed by the healthy cell. The central sheath penetrates the final part of the membrane like a cattle farm compression gun and injects its genetic material with its phage along with the satellite virus here. Once in the cell cytoplasm, the virus unpackages new DNA here, but here, look.”
A buckshot of the monkeypox virus DNA sprayed into the cell. The satellite virus released along with the monkeypox DNA, almost floating like a lazy balloon. Monkeypox went to work in the retooling of the host cell.
“Here the human body is attempting to defeat the monkeypox virus, but the satellite is still hiding in all the cells both dead and alive. The body isn’t recognizing it. I can’t figure it out. It’s almost as if the satellite virus didn’t do anything. At least not in Patient Zero. It’s lysogenic, or lying dormant in his cells, but not active.”
“The monkeypox virus is doing all the heavy lifting,” Joseph said.
“Correct, but if you look here.” She swept to the side and brought up another video. In the corner, it read Patient Four. “Look, the satellite virus is raging in this host.”
“But that host is dead,” he said.
“That’s correct. It doesn’t make sense but look. The satellite virus has reprogrammed the cells that the monkeypox has commandeered, creating its own new viruses.”
“I can’t wrap my mind around it either, but I will upload our new data from Patient Zero’s biopsies for your review.”
“I’ll take a look,” she said with a sigh. “But I need a nap.”
“I’ll let you sleep.” Please don’t turn. Not yet. Not ever.
TESS
Little Sable Point, MI
The cracks of gunshots sent an odd tingling down her spine. She watched Steele and Ahmed in action. Witnessing Steele rapid fire from atop the camper gave her a feeling of euphoria. It was as if she watched a human machine that had a systematic successive fire almost like a computer operated semi-automatic rifle.
The Rising (The End Time Saga Book 3) Page 17