I moved to a sink, scrubbed my hands with antibacterial soap, and rinsed them under a stream of cold water. I blotted the dampness while Matt found and donned a plastic lab smock. He slipped a pair of goggles over his impenetrable mass of hair and positioned them over his glasses. He placed a surgical mask over his mouth and nose and slipped its elastic bands over his hears. I admired the efficiency of his work as he began preparing slides. “Harley, can you find something to make some notes with?” he asked.
She moved to the teacher’s desk and found a used notebook and a pen. She pulled up a stool near Matt’s work station and flipped to a clean page in the spiralbound pad. “What do you want me to write?” she asked.
“I’d start by writing the date and time,” Matt suggested. Harley pulled her phone from her pocket and uttered q quiet curse. “My phone’s dead.”
“It’s 8:00 am,” I offered as I looked at my own phone. “Still no signal though.”
We exchanged glances. I could sense we were all thinking the same thing, wondering about our families. Were they still alive?
“Okay, now what?” Harley asked.
I looked down at her fat, girly script, graceful and somehow cheerful on the page. “Maybe we should write a paragraph about the soldiers being attacked last night,” I suggested. “It could be important.”
Jordan agreed. “Yeah, why don’t you two work out what to write about it?”
Harley and I discussed what to record on the page, and I watched her get it down on paper. It was weird reading words like ‘decapitated’ written with such beautiful penmanship. As we worked, Matt continued looking at slivers of flesh from the putrid-looking hand. It still smelled bad, but the stench was not as overpowering as it had been last night. I guessed it might have dried out some. Jordan watched Matt work and retrieved tools and supplies for him as he requested them. I watched, engrossed in the process as Matt applied drops of various dyes and chemicals to different samples from the hand, intermittently emitting expressions of surprise and affirmation.
“Okay, Harley,” Matt said after several minutes. He was looking into a microscope and making adjustments on the side knobs. “Could you make a note that we’re analyzing a fragment of the dismembered right hand of one of the, um…subjects that attacked the soldiers last night? I’m working under the assumption it is the hand of an adult female based on its size and physical characteristics. And Jordan, could one of you snap some photos of the specimen?”
Harley continued scripting out Matt’s work, and Jordan pulled out his camera. “Battery’s about gone anyway, so sure,” Jordan consented. He clicked a few shots of different angles of the hand.
“I need you to take this down, please,” Matt said, still looking into the microscope. “Estimating approximately 48 hours post-mortem, approximately seventy-five percent of all observed cells on slide A were in advanced stages of necrosis at observations beginning at 8:00 am. A proliferation of white blood cells was noted, on slide B, and red blood cells appeared misshapen. Approximately three-fourths of the sample is in advanced necrosis.”
Matt continued looking at additional slides labeled C through F, making similar comments and observations about each one. Harley made notes as he spoke. When he finished with the last slide, he took it off the stage and placed it in order with the others. He walked across the room and retrieved a gallon sized jar and a jug of formaldehyde. He put the jar and jug on the table beside the hand. As he moved past the slides, he abruptly stopped, leaned over, and peered at each one. He went back to the first slide, replaced it on the microscope stage and looked into the eyepiece. “Time?” he asked.
“It’s 8:15 am,” I answered.
Matt removed the slide and put the previous one under the scope. “Are you sure? About the time?”
“Yes,” I answered. It’s 8:15…well sixteen now,” I answered.
Matt began shifting the slides back and forth, his movements now hurried and urgent.”
“Matt?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. “Dude!” Jordan interrupted him. “What’s going on?”
Matt put down the slides. “Harley, take this down please,” his voice was measured and deliberate, a tone I hadn’t heard from him before. What skin I could see beyond his goggles and mask appeared pale. “At 8:15 am, samples A through F appear to have…regenerated. There are no visible signs of cell death. White blood cells have normalized, and red blood cells remain misshapen.”
“What?” I asked. “How is that possible?”
“It’s not,” Matt responded.
“So, what does this mean?” Harley asked. “It sounds like this piece of a hand isn’t really dead.”
“Not just that it’s not dead,” Matt said. “It’s resurrecting itself. In some ways, its cells look perfectly healthy. The only odd thing is that strange shape I noticed in the red blood cells. It’s not normal, and I have no idea what it means. Some diseases are associated with oddly shaped cells, so maybe what we see here is a kind of syndrome. Whether it’s infectious or not, we can’t tell without more advanced testing that we just can’t do here.”
Matt turned back to the slides and began examining them under the scope. He systematically went through the series before turning back to us. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. What time is it?”
“It’s 8:25,” I informed him. “Why?”
“The cells are dying again.”
“Matt, do you think this is going to keep happening? Will this hand just keep regenerating itself and dying over and over again?” I asked.
His eyes blinked several times as he appeared to consider my question. “Possibly so.”
“Weird. So, are you saying that whatever this is might not be able to die?” Jordan asked. “That sounds like rule number one in the zombie diagnostic manual to me.” His dark eyes widened slightly as if that fact sealed the deal for him.
Harley continued writing with furious speed trying to capture everything that was being said.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Matt stated. “There are probably ways to kill it.”
“Now that, I would like to know,” Jordan said. We could set up some experiments and see what happens.”
“Yes, we can, but we’re kind of limited on what we can do here,” Matt said. He moved about the room gathering Petri dishes. “I’m going to place samples in different containers, so we can observe the effect. We can deprive a sample of oxygen, for example. I doubt it will make a difference because we’re only dealing with samples of flesh. I’ll burn one and submerge one in acid.”
“Guys, we can’t stay here much longer. Someone is going to notice we’ve been gone,” Harley said.
“Yeah, she’s right,” I agreed.
“Okay, so I’ll set up the experiments, and we can come back later to make observations. It won’t necessarily take all of us. Two could sneak away while the others make excuses for us if we’re missed.”
“That could work,” Jordan agreed.
Matt continued working and placed two samples in separate Petri dishes. He snapped the tops onto the clear plastic pods and wrapped tape around them, forming a snug seal. “These will be our controls,” he explained as he placed them on the counter. He found a blow torch in a cabinet and placed it beside the samples. He grabbed a utility lighter from a nearby rack and opened the valve on the torch handle, releasing a hiss of gas. A defined, projectile-shaped flame shot forth. Matt picked up a third sample of rotting flesh with a pair of hemostats and held it the flame until it was completely charred. He withdrew it from the fire and set it aside for a few seconds. He waited until it stopped smoking before placing it in a petri dish.
“Damn dude!” Jordan exclaimed, pulling his shirt up over his nose. “Couldn’t you have done that one last?”
“Ugh! That is horrible,” Harley said, choking on her words.
“Well, surprisingly, it’s not as bad as it smelled last night,” I critiqued.
“T
here’s one more thing I’d like to try,” Matt said as he placed the fourth sample into a beaker of acid and placed a cover on it. Jordan, can you and Casey bring the solar generator in here from the hallway? I need you to put the collector panel over there by the windows.”
We stepped into the hallway to get the generator that was on display inside a glass case. We slid the cabinet away from the wall and attempted to open the back door.
“Guess we’re going to have to break it,” Jordan said, turning and walking away. “I’ll see if I can find something…a hammer…a bat…”
I looked at the glass and thought about the time we might waste looking for something we may not find. I made what you might call an executive decision and kicked the cabinet with the full force of my right foot, causing the glass to shatter with a satisfying crash.
The sound caused Jordan to make an abrupt about-face. “What are you doin’ girl?” he asked. “You could a’ cut yo’ leg.”
I stood there smiling at him. “But I didn’t,” I reminded him, stating the obvious. “Now help me out here.” I kicked out the remaining shards and reached in to grab the unit. Jordan took hold of the other side. We carried the generator back into the classroom and placed it on a shelf by the window.
“So, how’s this thing work?” Jordan asked.
“It’s actually easy to set up. You need to unfold the panels on top and use their supports to position them. Try to make sure the sun will catch each panel when it shines through the windows later this morning.” Matt continued working on the samples as we set up the generator. “Open the side panel, and you’ll see sockets where we can plug in that refrigerator.” He pointed toward a small dormitory-sized refrigerator that sat across the room.
“We’ll need to bring that closer to the generator,” I told Jordan.
“I’m on it,” he said. He brought it to the shelf and set it beside the generator. I found the cord, plugged it into the generator, and opened the door to set the temperature. A whiff of stale refrigerator smell hit me in the face. “Well, I suppose it’s clean,” I said, “but it smells gross.”
“Yes, well. I don’t think our girl here is going to mind,” Matt mused.
I smiled despite the seriousness of our situation. Humor helped. I turned the dial on the refrigerator up to a point about halfway between “off” and Antarctica. I heard a click, and the little ice box began to hum. “That’s weird,” I commented. “Hey, Matt. How come the refrigerator came on, but the sun isn’t hitting the solar panels yet?”
“It has several lithium batteries inside it,” he explained. “It sits in the hallway every day, and when the sun shines in, they charge.”
“Dawg, that’s cool!” Jordan said. “So, can we charge our phones with this thing?”
“Sure,” Matt answered. “We can just bring up your cords later when we come back to check on the samples,” he said. Matt had sealed the burned sample in a petri dish and turned the gas valve on the blow torch into the off position. “This final sample will go into the freezer compartment inside the refrigerator,” he explained as he sealed the plastic pod. He placed it in the tiny icebox inside the fridge and closed the door.
“Now, there’s just one more thing,” he said. He lifted the severed hand and placed it inside the gallon sized glass jar. He then poured formaldehyde over it until the hand was completely submerged. After screwing the lid on the jar, he sealed it with tape and then carried it to a corner where he put it on the floor. “Hopefully this will be safe here.”
Matt cleaned off the counter with the same type of medical grade cleaner he’d used last night to spray down the respirators. “I’m just going to leave this here without wiping the counter down to save time. The longer it sits, the more bacteria it will kill. I think we’ve done all we can here for now, and we should get back. He removed his gloves and tossed them into a biohazard waste container. The goggles and face mask followed, and he removed his lab smock, tossing it into the container as well.
◆◆◆
When we’d made it back to the locker room, we took turns going back to the gym, to avoid calling attention to ourselves. One by one, we made it to our corner of the gym, apparently without notice. The facility was filled with the sounds of workers scooting heavy lockers and shelving around. They were using them to block the exterior doors and reinforce barricades. Rolling security barriers, which I recognized were sometimes used to seal off sections of the school building, had been moved to the ticketing booth area. They now formed one long, steel accordion-like fence across the exterior doors. The barriers were secured with everything from climbing rope to what looked like strips cut from the trampoline mat. One group of men and women were taping cardboard to the insides of the ground-level windows. Another group had climbed up the bleachers, where they worked to cover those windows at that level with newspaper.
It appeared that a cart stacked with boxes of emergency food packets had been wheeled into the gym from the cafeteria. The homeless man appeared to deliver a dramatic oration on the stage, and Trey sat nearby, cross-legged on the floor, watching him in rapt attention. A group of children sat around a woman near the middle of the gym. I watched her for a moment as she read to the younger ones gathered around her. Her face and gestures were animated and expressive, and the children appeared mesmerized by her story, except for one who perched at her feet with a finger in his nose. He seemed to find his toes more interesting. A small stack of books laid on the floor beside the woman. I guessed someone had the foresight to visit the library and bring something to entertain the kids. We didn’t have much in the way of children’s books at the high school, but I recalled there may have been a section containing fairy tales and classics. I’d borrowed some low level “high interest” books for Derek once. He’d loved the ones about construction equipment like bulldozers and earth movers. Some of the kids would probably enjoy them as well, I imagined.
Another group of children played jump rope. A woman approached them and appeared to be asking them for the cordage they were using. Another woman seated nearby walked over the scene, and the two adults appeared to argue. The first woman pointed to workers who were securing doors and gestured toward Mr. Woods. The arguing escalated, and both began to cry as they made the children surrender the length of rope and took it to Mr. Woods. The children stood watching the adults. Some called after them. Others looked confused and sad. As I watched their innocence being stripped away, my mind battled feelings of anger, worry, fear, and heartbreak.
Throughout the rest of the morning, Harley, Jordan, Matt, and I made ourselves seen and pitched in with the work everyone was doing, but we kept a low profile. We were careful not to become overly involved so we might be less missed when we returned to the lab to check on our samples and record observations.
Just after lunch, Matt and Harley took our cell phones and chargers and left for the science wing. While they were gone, Jordan volunteered to help collect trash. He and another man took the garbage bags to the custodian’s area near the loading dock. I returned to my exercise pad. I sat down, folded my jacket to form a pillow, and pulled my literature book out of my backpack. I flipped to the dog-eared page that marked my place in Beowulf. As I read, or tried to read, the Old English, I became aware of how tired I felt. It wasn’t unexpected. I was just used to paying no attention to how I felt. I stayed tired most of the time but just ignored it. The fatigue I suppressed over the last two grueling days would no longer accept my denial. Despite the noise and activity around me, my eyelids felt thick and weighty. I struggled to keep them open. The words on the pages before me began to float in my field of vision. At some point, I was distantly aware of the book falling from my grasp, and I didn’t care. I let fatigue overpower me and slid into the merciful oblivion of sleep.
◆◆◆
When I awoke, Matt and Harley had returned, and they sat discussing their findings with Jordan. I scooted closer to join the discussion. Across the courts, some people were organizing food packets on
a table. “Wait, is it dinner time already? What have I missed?” I asked, bolting to an upright position. Beowulf slid off my stomach and onto the floor.
“They were just saying the phones were charging, and there are still no signals,” Jordan answered.
I looked around the facility, and it was noticeably darker than it had been before I went to sleep. The windows were all covered or draped. Some light showed through, but very little. It was difficult to tell how late it was, but my guess would be around six o’clock.
Matt was reading through the notes Harley had taken. “This is what we know so far,” he said. “Our results show that burning and submersion in acid killed Baba’s cells.”
“Baba?” Jordan asked. “You gave that thing a name?”
“Well, yeah,” Matt said. “We may as well have some fun with it. I named her after Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore. According to myth, she was a hideous evil witch who--.”
“Y’all two need a hobby,” Jordan quipped as he interrupted and pointed back and forth between Matt and Harley. “Are you having fun with this? ‘Cause none of us having fun with it.”
Matt cleared his throat and gave Jordan a disapproving teacher-like glare. “Depriving the cells of oxygen had no effect on the necro-regeneration cycle,” he continued.
“Necro-regeneration cycle?” I asked. “Is that a real thing?”
“Now it is,” Harley said, flashing a big grin. “Matt let me come up with a new science term.” She was wearing her ex-boyfriend’s hat. I almost said something about it but thought better of it. If it gave her comfort, who was I to criticize it? The Stetson was a good look for her. She was cute with her magenta hair spilling over her shoulders and the spider bite piercings at the corner of her lower lip. I imagined back in Texas she’d been quite the babe. And now, here we were. I wondered if she would ever see her family again, much less her home state or her ex.
Viral Series (Book 1): Viral Dawn [Extended Edition] Page 12