Rikke doesn’t look completely convinced. “So, if it’s just some kind of nasty disease, why aren’t people dying from it?”
“I’m sure they will, eventually. That last stage apparently lasts a little longer than it does with rabies, but a virus this aggressive will no doubt end up killing its host.”
“Oh,” Rikke says, smiling bleakly. “Well that’s nice to know.”
“Hey, I told you not to worry. You’re not going to get that far, trust me. Now, open wide.”
Rikke frowns and looks at the swab in Dorte’s hand. “What are you going to do?”
“I need a cell scrape from your throat.”
“Lovely.” Rikke opens her mouth. When Dorte is done, she asks: “So why are the sick people attacking others? That’s not normally something you do when you’re sick.”
“Actually, it’s very common with rabies for the patient to become aggressive. They will also try to bite you if they get the chance. Ever seen a picture of a rabid dog? All that foam around the mouth, that’s something the virus does to enhance its chances of infecting a new host. The virus is in the saliva, so the more saliva, the better.”
“Oh. That makes sense. Then why—ouch! What was that for?”
“I needed a strand of hair,” Dorte says, placing the hair she just plucked from Rikke’s head in a ziplock bag. “Supposedly, it hurts less if you aren’t expecting it.”
“Yeah, well, it hurts plenty, thank you very much.”
“Then you’re not going to like this one.”
“There’s more? How many tests are you going to run exactly?”
“Four. The more tests, the more accurate the picture will be. Now, I need you to lean forward and pull up your shirt.”
Rikke does as she’s told. Dorte uses another napkin to clean an area on Rikke’s lower back, then she swabs on the iodine.
“It’ll be over in twenty seconds,” she tells her. “It’s going to hurt a little. Try to hold still.”
Rikke gasps as Dorte pushes in the needle as gently as possible.
“Holy shit, that hurts,” she croaks. “What are you doing to me?”
“Taking a spinal sample. Don’t move, I’m almost done. There.”
Rikke lets out a long, trembling breath. “I’m not doing that again.”
“You won’t have to; I’ve got all I need now. I’ll just check your temperature one last time.” She places the thermometer in Rikke’s mouth as she sits up. “I think you should rest while I run the tests. There’s a couch in the dining area down the hallway; that’s where Peter is.”
“I’d rather stay here with you, then.”
“Come on now. It’ll do you could to get some sleep. And drink a glass of water first. And don’t talk with the thermometer in your mouth.”
Rikke sits quietly for a few seconds, until there’s a beeping.
Dorte takes the thermometer and reads the digits. “Well, you sure have a fever now: 103.2.”
“I can feel it,” Rikke admits, rubbing her cheek. “I feel dizzy.”
“It could be from the lumbar puncture I just did, but still, all the more reason to lie down. You need me to follow you?”
“I think I can manage.” Rikke slips down from the stool and heads for the door. She turns around and looks back. “Dorte? I’m really grateful you’re doing this.”
“Of course,” Dorte says, surprised at the sudden seriousness on Rikke’s face. “What are sisters for?”
“Yeah, well, I must be extremely lucky, having a sister who’s an expert on the very rare disease I just caught.”
Dorte smiles. “I guess it’s fate.”
Rikke shrugs. “I guess so.” She turns and leaves.
Dorte looks at the door as it closes behind her.
The lab suddenly seems awfully quiet. It’s almost like Rikke’s absence has given room for Dorte’s own thoughts to bubble to the surface. While her sister was here, Dorte felt confident. Now, left to herself, the fear comes creeping.
What if this isn’t like rabies? What if it’s unlike anything else medical science has ever come across?
It’s nonsense, of course. Every new pandemic disease in the history of mankind has fallen within the spectrum of an already identified family of viruses; there’s absolutely no reason to suspect this will be different.
Except it seems different.
Very different.
Like the sheer speed of the spread of the infection. Or the terrifying rate at which most infected reach the paralytic stage—they said on the news it could be as little as minutes, if the virus gained direct contact to any major veins.
What if I can’t find a vaccine in time?
Dorte realizes she’s afraid, and she forces herself to breathe deeply a few times. It alleviates some of the constriction in her chest. She needs to get on with it, needs to run the tests as soon as possible. But she’s scared of what they’ll show.
Stop thinking like that. Focus on the task at hand. Get moving. Time is ticking.
She begins working.
FOUR
Peter is awakened with a jerk as the door to the kitchen is opened.
“Whah?” he mutters, looking around in confusion, realizing he was sleeping upright in a chair, the cup of coffee still on the table in front of him.
Dorte is standing in the doorway, still wearing one rubber glove, a grave expression on her face.
“Hon,” he says, getting to his feet. “What time is it?”
Dorte doesn’t answer, so Peter looks to the clock on the wall: 3:15. His brain is almost working again, and he recalls where they are and what they’re doing here.
“Did you find out anything?” he asks, stretching.
“I’ve run all the tests,” Dorte says, her voice toneless. “Where is she?”
He nods towards the door to the dining area. “She’s sleeping on the couch in there.”
“You were supposed to look after her!”
“Sorry, I fell asleep. Is anything wrong? What did the tests show?”
Dorte walks right past him without answering.
“Hey,” he says, taking her arm. “Did you figure out what kind of virus it is?”
“It’s not a virus,” Dorte says, looking at him blankly.
“Okay, so what then—a bacterial infection?”
“Not that, either.”
Peter frowns. “Didn’t you say that was the two only possible—”
“I need to see her,” Dorte says, freeing herself of his grip.
“Dorte, wait.”
But Dorte has already reached the door and opened it.
The lights are low in the dining area, only the soda machine is casting a dim, blue glow, revealing a row of tables and chairs. And in the corner are a couple of couches, one of them taken up by Rikke, sleeping in a fetal position, curled up under a blanket.
Dorte goes over there and kneels down. “Rikke? You need to wake up now.”
Peter joins them. Even in the dim light he can tell Rikke looks considerably worse than the last time he saw her; her face is pale and she’s trembling. She’s also not responding to her sister’s voice.
“Rikke?” Dorte asks a little louder, nudging her gently. “Please wake up.”
Rikke doesn’t wake up.
“Rikke!” Dorte shakes her harder, causing Rikke’s head to bop back and forth. She lets out a moan, but still doesn’t wake up. Dorte feels her cheeks and forehead. “The fever is gone,” she mutters.
“Well, that’s good—isn’t it?”
“No. It means her body is no longer fighting back.”
Dorte gets up and steps back a few paces. She lowers her head, and only now does he realize she’s seconds away from crying. He has only seen her cry once or twice in the four years they’ve been together.
“Honey,” he says, “what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice shaking. “I just don’t know. I ran the tests three times. I … I checked them over and over again. I’ve done it
a million times, I know every pitfall, and I did the tests perfectly. But …” She looks at him, shaking her head. “There was nothing, Peter.”
“Nothing?”
“I’ve run a PCR reaction, I’ve checked for antibodies, I’ve even—”
“What do you mean, nothing? Were the tests—what’s the expression?—inconclusive?”
“They weren’t inconclusive—they were completely clean! I didn’t find anything, not in the blood, not in the spit or the skin, not even in the spinal fluid. It’s like I tested a perfectly healthy person with no infection whatsoever. But look at her! She’s clearly very ill.”
Dorte turns back to Rikke, breathing heavy now.
Peter glances briefly at Rikke, then back at Dorte, struggling to keep up. “Okay, so, we need help. We need someone else to—”
She rounds on him, eyes blazing. “There’s no one else! Don’t you get it? This is what I do every day, and I’m telling you, I couldn’t find a single trace of anything wrong with her!”
“But that’s not possible. The equipment must be broken, then.”
“I’ve checked the equipment—I’ve checked everything!”
“Well, can’t you just give her a vaccine anyway?”
Dorte’s shoulders drop, and she suddenly looks very tired. “I can’t vaccinate for something that isn’t there,” she whispers.
“Okay, so, if it’s not a real, like, testable disease, could it be something psychological then?”
“You mean psychosomatic,” Dorte mutters, “and no, that kind of illness wouldn’t be transferable like this one is.”
“Then what other kinds of diseases are there? Could it, I don’t know, could it be, like, a nerve agent, or something? Did someone release a toxic gas? Or maybe some sort of radiation?”
“Those would show up on at least some of the tests,” Dorte says, sounding defeated. “No matter what is wrong with her, it should show up in the tests.”
“Maybe not if it’s something completely new,” Peter says, not sure if he’s trying to convince Dorte or himself. “Maybe it’s a string of virus that hasn’t been discovered yet.”
“Even if it was, it would still be testable. That’s just how the human body works. There’s no way—”
Dorte suddenly stops talking, as her eyes fall on Rikke.
“She’s stopped shaking now,” Peter notices.
Dorte doesn’t answer. She steps forward and kneels down, examining her sister’s face closely. “Oh, my God! She’s not breathing!”
Peter gasps. “What?”
“Rikke? Rikke!” Dorte slaps her sister’s cheek repeatedly. Then, she checks for a pulse. She snaps her head around, looking at Peter, her eyes wide. “She’s in cardiac arrest! Get the defibrillator from the hallway—now!”
Peter stands there for another second, dumbstruck, and watches in silent awe at how his fiancée reacts in a way he’s never seen before. Her movements are brisk and without the slightest hesitation, as she rolls Rikke onto her back, tips back her head, parts her lips, squeezes shut her nostrils and begins blowing into her mouth.
“Go!” Dorte shouts between breaths, not looking back, but apparently sensing Peter nonetheless. “Get the defibrillator!”
Peter is able to move again, and he turns on his heel and runs back out into the hallway, looking in both directions, his eyes falling on a large, green box on the wall. He runs to it, rips open the glass door and pulls out what looks like a small, red suitcase. He brings it back to the cantina, where Dorte is now pumping away on Rikke’s chest.
“Here!” he says, handing the defibrillator to Dorte. “I don’t know how to use it!”
“You take over here, then,” Dorte says, grabbing the suitcase and moving aside. “Do as I did.”
Peter steps closer to Rikke, looking at her pale, expressionless face for a second, before folding his hands and placing them in the middle of her chest. He presses down tentatively.
“Harder!” Dorte demands, opening the suitcase and pulling out wires. “And faster!”
Peter presses harder and ups the speed, causing Rikke to almost bounce on the couch. He looks away for a brief instance, hoping to see Dorte ready to take over again, but she’s still working to get the defibrillator ready, and when he turns his attention back to Rikke, she’s staring up at him.
Her eyes, which were blue—just like Dorte’s—are now blank and milky white. They clearly belong to a dead person—although Peter has never seen one before, there’s no doubt in his mind—and his first thought is that Rikke’s eyelids somehow opened on their own.
Then, that assertion evaporates, as Rikke’s features change into a snarl, and she opens her mouth wide, revealing her white teeth.
“Holy—”
Peter never gets to finish what he was about to say, because Rikke shoots upright and clamps down on his right bicep, her jaws locking with the force of a baby crocodile, her teeth ripping right through his shirt and drilling into the skin.
Peter screams and pulls back. Rikke doesn’t let go, but is simply pulled along, like a police dog biting down on a criminal. Peter feels his muscles and tendons being ripped apart, and the pain is so intense. He instinctively puts his free hand on Rikke’s forehead, trying to force back her head, and for a second, it seems to work, as the grip on his arm is actually slackened; but that’s only because Rikke now has the perfect opportunity to instead bite down on his hand, and she doesn’t miss the chance.
Peter screams again, feeling the bones in his fingers crunch and the skin being pulled off, as Rikke thrashes her head. Weirdly, this time, there’s no pain, even though there’s plenty of blood; it spurts out of his hand like from holes in a garden hose, painting Rikke’s face in red.
Although things move very fast on the outside, Peter now sees everything happen from within like watching a movie turned down on super slow.
I’m infected now, he thinks with surprising clarity, as Rikke bites off his thumb. I’m already dead.
Then Rikke lunges for his throat, and Peter sees the bloody mouth approaching, before he’s pulled back at the last second. He stumbles to the floor, and someone drags him across the room, away from the couch, where Rikke immediately gets to her feet to take up pursuit. It proves difficult for her to walk, however; she looks like a toddler taking her first steps, and she almost falls down. Then, she seems to find some sort of rhythm and she comes staggering after him, following the bloody trail Peter has left across the floor.
Who’s dragging me? he thinks to himself, craning back his neck and looking up to see Dorte pulling him with both arms. Oh, he thinks, smiling faintly. It’s Dorte. God, I love her.
Dorte’s eyes dart from him to Rikke, and she says something, apparently addressed at him, but the words are nothing more than faint murmurs to Peter.
“I love you,” he tries to say, not sure if it comes out right, and Dorte doesn’t seem to hear him anyway.
She drags him through a doorway, then lets go of him and runs back to the door. Just before she slams it shut, Peter sees Rikke one last time, as she comes waddling towards them, her legs stiff, her arms stretched out eagerly, her top drenched in blood—his blood—and her mouth open in a silent growl.
Then Peter sees no more.
FIVE
Dorte used to suffer from really bad nightmares when she was a little girl—probably brought on by her mother’s sudden death.
It was usually about someone chasing her. Not a person, not even something visible, just an undefinable horror, something which would try to catch up with her and tear her apart limb from limb. In the dreams, Dorte would run for her life, but no matter how fast she ran, the bad thing always gained on her, until she would wake up, sweating, panting and crying. The only solace she could take was that as soon as she did wake up, the nightmare evaporated.
The nightmare she finds herself in now, however, is real.
It won’t evaporate.
She won’t wake up from it.
She runs down the ha
llway and into the utility room, grabbing things from the shelves almost by instinct. Then she runs back to the kitchen.
Peter is lying where she left him, unconscious in a still-growing pool of his own blood. His heart is still somehow pumping out blood through his chewed-up hand and ripped-open arm, but at a much slower rate now.
He’s seconds away from dying of blood loss.
Dorte throws herself down and goes to work, bandaging up his wounds.
From the door to the cantina comes regular bumps and moans, as Rikke is trying to get it open. There is no lock on the door, but luckily, it opens the other way, which means she probably won’t be able to get it open—unless she figures out how to simultaneously push down the handle and pull it backwards.
She was dead, a thought keeps repeating in her mind as she works on Peter. She was dead, I checked her pulse and her breathing. She was dead.
And yet, Rikke is clearly no longer dead. Not unless dead people have suddenly become able to walk.
Dorte has seen the postings on Facebook and Twitter. The ones Rikke also mentioned. But she brushed them all aside as silly teenage nonsense. Of course zombies aren’t real. Of course the situation can’t be compared to those nasty horror movies where corpses reanimate and rise to eat the living. That’s obviously not what’s going on. It’s simply some aggressive and completely explainable disease.
But she was dead.
Dorte finishes up the last bandage and looks at Peter. He still has some color left, and he’s still breathing. It looks like she got it in time.
A new bump from the door. Dorte tries to ignore it. She knows she is supposed to help Rikke. To treat her. That’s her duty as a doctor. But she also needs to not be contaminated herself.
She looks at her hands, all soiled in Peter’s blood, and she goes to wash them in the sink. She rinses them thoroughly with soap.
Then, she goes back to him and checks his pulse. Still there, but weak. His skin is noticeably paler, his forehead beaming with sweat.
He’s already broken a fever. The infection is eating away at him. My God, it’s fast …
Dorte knows there’s nothing she can do. She knows Peter will go the same way as Rikke did, and probably a lot faster. And it breaks her heart. Losing both your little sister and your fiancé at the same time seems like something which shouldn’t even happen to the worst people in the world.
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 3