The Complex

by Courtney McPhail

  She wondered if it was already wearing off for the twins when she didn’t hear the familiar sound of clomping feet as the boys got dressed. She climbed the short ladder up to the loft, wondering what they were up to.

  Two twin beds were tucked in either corner beneath the slanted walls of the loft, a large knot rug covering the floor between them. Both of the boys were curled up in their beds, still asleep.

  “Matthew, Mark, time to get up,” she called out.

  She knew they had stayed up late, hearing the giggles from the two of them well past midnight. She hadn’t had the heart to tell them to go to sleep. She liked hearing them laugh.

  Matthew groaned as he rolled over, his eyes opening and then he slung his arm over them. “I’m too tired, Mom.”

  “Me too,” Mark added, his voice hoarse. “I don’t feel good.”

  She climbed up the rest of the ladder, frowning as she went to Mark’s bedside and put a hand on his forehead. It was warmer than normal and his cheeks were flushed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “I just feel tired and sore,” he replied, pulling his sleeping bag up to tuck under his chin. “Cold too.”

  She moved over to Matthew and touched his forehead. Warm. “You too, baby?”

  Matthew nodded. “It’s like when we got strep throat.”

  Last winter both of them had come down with a nasty case of strep and had spent three days in bed.

  “Does your throat hurt?” she asked and he nodded his head. “Open your mouth and go ahh.”

  He did as she asked and she saw his tonsils were pink, no sign of any white spots. She crossed back over to Mark and had him do the same. Just like his brother, no spots.

  They’d spent two days swimming and had likely swallowed a gallon of lake water between the two of them with all their splashing and diving. They’d probably picked up a bug from it.

  “I’m going to get the thermometer and some water for you boys, okay?”

  They nodded and she climbed back down from the loft, Ruthie looking up at her with her bottom lip stuck out.

  “Where are Mattie and Mark?” she asked.

  “They’re feeling a little sick right now,” she said as she crossed to the bathroom and grabbed the thermometer and a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet. “Mama’s gonna give them some medicine. Go play with your dolls while Mama takes care of them, okay?”

  Ruthie went to her room to grab her dolls and Janet filled a thermos with water and climbed back up to the loft. She refilled the glasses on the nightstand and then took their temperatures. 100.1. Warm but not too high.

  She gave them the aspirin, watching carefully as each of them swallowed. She arranged their blankets and pressed a kiss to their foreheads.

  “Now you two go back to sleep and I’ll be right downstairs,” she told them. “If you need anything, just call out.”

  She hated it when the kids were sick. Even a small cold would make her heart ache for her babies.

  “I’m hungry, Mama,” Ruthie said.

  She didn’t want to leave the boys alone for the time it would take her to get Ruthie to the lodge for breakfast. Still, Ruthie had to eat.

  “Let’s go over to Auntie Jenny’s and ask her if she’ll take you for breakfast, okay?” Janet glanced up at the loft, worried about leaving the boys, but Jenny and Lorraine’s cabin was on the other side of the trees, no more than twenty feet away. She wouldn’t be gone for more than a few minutes. They would be okay.

  She took Ruthie’s hand and stepped outside. It was a nice morning, a clear blue sky overhead.

  She started over to the narrow path that had been worn between the trees but then she spotted Claudia coming towards them on the main path. The younger girl waved to them and Ruthie let out an excited squeal.

  “Hi Claudie,” Ruthie called out. “You coming for breakfast?”

  “I am, Miss Ruthie,” she replied. “What do you think we’re gonna have today?”

  “Pancakes!” she clapped her chubby hands together. Ruthie was about the only one who didn’t mind having the same breakfast every day.

  “I bet you’re right,” Claudia said, tapping a finger on Ruthie’s nose and causing the girl to giggle. Claudia glanced around them and then looked at Janet. “Did the twins run on ahead?”

  Janet shook her head. “They’re still in bed. They aren’t feeling great. I was going to take Ruthie over to Jenny’s and ask her to take her to breakfast. I want to stay with the boys.”

  “I can take her,” Claudia offered and Janet let out a sigh of relief. That would make this whole thing a lot easier.

  Ruthie was fine with it, already taking Claudia’s hand and pulling her in the direction of the lodge.

  “You want me to send Quinton up to look at them?” Claudia asked.

  Janet was quick to shake her head. “It’s not that serious. It’s just a cold, nothing to bother him with.”

  “Are you sure?” Claudia asked, her brow furrowing with concern. “I could tell Lorraine, have her come check on them.”

  Annoyance flared up in Janet that Claudia would think she’d put her children’s health at risk just because she wanted to avoid her ex-boyfriend. She wasn’t that weak. She’d make a deal with the Devil himself for her children.

  But she remembered that despite Claudia’s maturity, she was still a teenager with limited experience when it came to motherhood and relationships.

  She kept her voice even as she answered Claudia. “They’ve only got a low grade fever. I think they picked up something while they were swimming. If it gets more serious, I’ll be the first one to call for Quinton.”

  Claudia smiled and nodded. “Okay. Do you want me to bring Ruthie back after breakfast?”

  “Mama, I wanna see the chicks,” Ruthie whined, her bottom lip poking out in a pout.

  “Pull that lip back in right now, Missy,” Janet said firmly. “You ask Auntie Jenny politely if she’ll take you to see the chickens after breakfast. If she says no, you’ll have to come back here. Now, you remember how to ask politely?”

  Ruthie nodded. “You say please and thank you.”

  “That’s right, you ask politely or she won’t take you.”

  “I will, Mama.”

  She waved them off and went back into the cabin, climbing up to the loft to check on the boys. They were both still asleep and she put a hand to their foreheads, reassuring herself that their temperatures hadn’t suddenly spiked. Still warm but not burning up. The aspirin would help.

  She climbed back down and looked around the living room. They didn’t spend a lot of time in the cabin outside of sleeping. The children enjoyed being outside during the daylight and spending their evenings playing games at the lodge. Still, this cabin was their home and she hadn’t done much in way of making it that way. Now she had nothing but time to do that.

  She got to work cleaning the main room, sweeping and scrubbing the floors free of the sand and dirt she hadn’t noticed accumulating in the corners. After checking on the twins and bringing them some saltines when they complained about being hungry, she had stepped outside to gather some of the wildflowers that grew in front of the porch.

  She used an old mason jar she had found in the one of the cupboards as a vase, placing it in the centre of the kitchen table. It was a small touch but it did cheer up the room.

  She went to her room and opened the closet, grabbing her pack off the top shelf. She had unpacked her clothes and toiletries but there were still some belongings inside it.

  She had been worried when she had first come here that they might have to bolt suddenly from this place so she had kept the things she treasured most in her pack to keep them all in one place.

  Gingerly she removed the picture frames from her pack, all of them lovingly wrapped in towels so the glass wouldn’t break. She unwrapped them and smiled as she saw the picture. Her, Eric, the twins and Ruthie, arms around each other, grinning at the camera.

  She hadn’t looked at
it since she had taken it from the wall in their house in Virginia but she was happy to look on it now. When Eric had died, it had been impossible for her to look at pictures of him without crying. Now she could smile as she stared at his handsome face. The good memories outweighed the pain of his death now.

  She unwrapped the other pictures. Snapshots of each one of the children when they were babies. A picture of her and Malcolm with their parents. Eric and herself on their wedding day. She took them out to the main room and carefully arranged them on one of the shelves.

  There, now this place felt more like home.

  A knock on the door took her attention from the photos and she smiled to see Kim standing at the door, a tray in her hands.

  “I heard the boys weren’t feeling well so I thought I’d bring breakfast to you guys.”

  Janet held the screen door open for her and she came inside and set the tray down.

  “Was Ruthie any trouble at breakfast?” she asked as she came over to help Kim take the plates off the tray.

  “No trouble at all,” Kim said. “She’s with Jenny at the coop now and I promised to come take her to the garden after I’m done here.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate you looking after her.”

  “No problem at all,” she said. “Plus, it’s better to keep her away from the boys if they are sick. You don’t want all of them down with a bug.”

  “I think it’s just a summer cold,” Janet said, “But better safe than sorry.”

  “Nothing worse than sick kids.” Kim glanced back up at the loft. “Are you sure Quinton shouldn’t come take a look at them?”

  “They’re fine,” Janet snapped, her voice sharp enough to cause Kim to widen her eyes. Janet knew it was stupid to react so harshly. Of course they would immediately assume she was being stubborn due to her grudge against Quinton. A calm attitude would be best for convincing them they were wrong. “Look, I get that you think I’m letting my issues with Quinton get in my way of taking care of my kids.”

  “Oh no, I didn’t--” Kim said, raising her hands in defense but Janet waved it away.

  “I would never put them at risk,” Janet continued. “I really do think it’s just a summer bug. If they aren’t feeling better by lunchtime, I’ll have Quinton come look at them.”

  Kim nodded. “You’re right. I know you wouldn’t put them at risk. I’m sorry.”

  Janet smiled at her friend, letting her know there were no hard feelings. She reached out and picked up the fork next to her plate and scooped up some pancake.

  “So, anything interesting happen at breakfast?”

  “Well,” Kim began, taking a seat across the table from her, “I think Veronica and Jackson are officially together. They were holding hands when they walked into the lodge this morning.”

  “About time,” Janet remarked. “Who had last night in the pool?”

  “Mendez.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Oh, and I also think there might be something going on with Craig and Lorraine,” Kim continued. “Neither one of them showed up for breakfast.”

  “Both of them sleeping in on the same morning?” Janet hummed loudly. “Bit of a coincidence, no?”

  “Unless they were both up late,” Kim said and took a sip of her coffee, her eyebrows bobbling suggestively above the rim of her cup and Janet laughed.

  She was glad Kim had brought her breakfast. Some food and a good gossip session was just what she needed.

  Subject File #756

  Subject: When the outbreak first started, I considered going to our local hospital to volunteer to help but my father told me not to. He said I’d die. He was right but I can’t shake off the guilt from not going.

  Administrator: It’s natural. You’re a healer. You want to help people but you have to remember you can’t save everyone.

  “I’m not sure where to start next. The latest trial is an unequivocal failure. I need to scrap the whole thing and start over again.”

  Quinton nodded along as Harold began to rattle off a bunch of virology terms that were way beyond his med school knowledge. He was used to it though.

  He’d been bringing Harold his breakfast down in the lab since they had brought back the freak. Harold had decided to sleep down here in the lab on a cot in the corner, determined to monitor the freak closely and not lose it like they had Glen. He’d also been busting his ass at another trial, administering a new vaccine to mice he had caught and then infecting them with the virus.

  Quinton tried his best to ignore the sounds of their tiny claws scratching at the bars of their cages. He didn't want to look at their milky eyes as they tried to get out of their cages to feast on whatever they could sink their teeth into.

  Quinton had to admire Harold’s dedication. With each failure, he seemed even more determined to find an answer.

  “I do however have a new theory based on the deterioration on John Doe,” Harold said. “The test results show severe malnutrition and dehydration. The dehydration is expected given the hydrophobia that many of the infected demonstrate but the malnutrition is interesting. I ran some tests on its metabolism.”

  Harold pulled out a printout of test results and handed it to Quinton, pointing at the results.

  “It’s incredibly high. I also noticed the same results with Glen when he began to deteriorate but I wasn’t positive it meant anything. We now have two cases with the same results.”

  “So we have the beginnings of a pattern,” Quinton said.

  “Exactly,” Harold said. “So with that lead, I started to consider what we know about the behaviour of the infected. They don’t appear to eat anything other than humans and animals. We had thought that the attacks were caused by the influx of adrenaline but what if it is hunger that drives them.”

  Quinton considered the idea. When they had been at the construction site, the behaviour of the freaks that had attacked had been calculated but there had also been a rage behind it. Could he call it hunger? Maybe.

  “It could also explain Glen’s death. If their metabolism continues at these rates, it’s like running a car engine without oil. Eventually it will blow out. The IV fluids couldn’t replace what he was losing and it killed him. Seeing the emaciation on John Doe, I wonder if it’s related to the fact that he was a small man. If he wasn’t strong enough to attack and kill, he wouldn’t eat enough.”

  “That would explain why they’ve started forming packs,” Quinton said. “I had originally thought it was some primal instinct. Primates live in groups. It’s in our DNA. But maybe there is more to it. The strongest are going to be the best fed. The weak are going to follow the strong to feed on their leftovers.”

  “But if I’m right, this is good news,” Harold said, his voice rising with excitement. “If the virus works like I theorize, it means that there is an end to this beyond a vaccine. When they can’t eat enough, they’ll die. In the end, the virus is fatal.”

  As Harold grinned at him, Quinton did his best to conjure up an excited smile. He didn’t want to damper Harold’s excitement, knowing the man needed even just the small win of having a theory supported. Harold didn’t need to know that Quinton wasn’t betting on his theory panning out.

  “If you’re right, we’ll be able to set this world to rights a lot sooner than we thought,” Quinton said, careful with his words.

  Harold didn’t seem to notice his hesitation, his wide grin never wavering. “It would be much easier than running these useless trials.”

  A muffled pounding on the door upstairs saved Quinton from having to respond.

  “I’ll get it,” Quinton said, waving Harold to stay while he headed upstairs and found Lorraine looking frantic on the other side of the door. “What is it?”

  “Craig,” she said. “There’s something wrong with him. He’s in the exam room.”

  Quinton locked the lab door behind him and followed Lorraine to the exam room.

  “He said he woke in the middle of the night and vomited twice. He thought it
was something he ate but when he woke up this morning he had a sore throat and a fever. He came to my cabin for some aspirin and I brought him in here. I’m worried it’s an infection.”

  Quinton frowned as he pushed the door to the exam room open. Craig’s gunshot wound had healed cleanly and it was unlikely after all this time he was harbouring any infection. He certainly would have told them if a freak had infected him.

  Craig was lying on the hospital bed that served as their exam table, pain lining his face as he shivered beneath the thin blue sheet. Quinton grabbed a pair of gloves and pulled them on.

  “Hey Craig, what’s bothering you?” Quinton asked as he moved to the side of the bed and began to palpate his throat.

  “Just feel like ten pounds of shit in a two pound bag,” Craig groaned. “My head’s pounding and my whole body aches and it’s hard to swallow. I also got a rash on my chest.”

  His glands were swollen and before he could turn to ask Lorraine to hand him a tongue depressor, she was already there with one in hand. She handed them over and then put the thermometer in Craig’s ear as Quinton had him open his mouth and say ahh. His tonsils weren’t looking great but it didn’t appear to be strep.

  “Temperature is 102.2,” Lorraine read to him after the thermometer beeped.

  “Alright, well, we’re going to give you something to bring that temperature down,” Quinton said. “Now let me see that rash.”

  Craig pulled his shirt collar to the side and showed Quinton the pink, bumpy skin on his collarbone.

  “Does it itch?” Craig shook his head and winced, a hand going to his temple. “Alright, we’re going to do a throat swab and a blood draw to run some tests. I’ll be right back.”

  Quinton went to the supply room to get the test kits and some ibuprofen, running over possible diagnoses in his head. It could be influenza but that didn’t explain the rash. Unless the rash was just an allergic reaction totally unrelated to the rest of his symptoms.

  “I think there is something really wrong with him.”

  Quinton jumped and spun around, finding Lorraine standing in the doorway, wringing her hands.