The Wilds

by Julia Elliott

  Each patient was between the ages of twelve and fourteen, and therefore in the early stages of puberty. Sixty percent of them kept pet cats. According to family members, their comatose states had been preceded by an increasing obsession with video games, Internet pornography, or social-networking sites—screen-addicted behaviors not uncommon among their demographic. This was accompanied by social withdrawal and changing feeding habits, an intensifying distaste for sunlight and fresh foods, and a voracious appetite for junk food high in chemical additives—“chips, candies, and other knickknacks,” as one distressed mother had put it.

  The parents of infected patients had been difficult for Beth to deal with, hailing, as they mostly did, from small Southern towns and reminding her of her own parents with their bad diets, paranoid religious ideation, and right-wing political affiliation. In an hour she would talk to the ID specialist. Over coffee in the hospital cafeteria, they would discuss strategies for persuading parents to let them conduct MRI scans that, while helping them understand more about the organism, would not necessarily lead to any breakthrough treatments. What Beth really needed was not a cartoon brain pulsing on a computer screen, its amygdalae lit up with fluorescent red cysts. She itched to perform craniotomy biopsies, to suck tissue from the cysts and observe the mysterious bradyzoites under an atomic-force microscope.

  When a GEICO commercial came on, the one with the talking lizard, she shuddered, for she’d hated lizards ever since she’d stepped on one as a child. Feeling the crunch of its frail skeleton under her bare foot, she’d screamed as though burned. Now she punched the remote until she landed on the Weather Channel. She lay in bed for another minute, watching a Doppler radar image of Hurricane Anastasia sweep toward the Gulf Coast.

  Jenny stared out at a green wall of rain. The only sheltered place to smoke outside was the carport, and she felt exposed before the double-pane eyes of neighboring ranch homes. No health-conscious middle-aged woman in her right mind would smoke cancer sticks. But her husband was 7,337 miles away, and there she was, sucking another one down as Anastasia’s rain shields enveloped South Carolina in a sultry monsoon. Whenever hurricane season hit, there was a sense of foreboding on the Internet. Many sibyl.com seekers inquired about global warming, wondering if Homo sapiens’ unchecked ecological plundering was finally building up to a karmic bite in the ass. In the hinterlands of the Internet, on poorly designed websites with flashy fonts and bad grammar, the more hysterical demographics chattered about the Rapture and the reptilian elite.

  Unable to sleep the previous night and clocking in on Sibyl to earn a few extra bucks, Jenny had noticed, as she always did when working during the wee hours, a delirious urgency in the questioning:

  Do rh negative people have reptile blood or do they descend from the nephilim?

  I have twelve fibroids in my uterus and wander can I get pregnant?

  My boy got an Aztec sun god tattoo is he mixed up with the Mexican Mafia?

  So when she encountered her first question about T. hermeticus early the next morning, she assumed it was another phantom from the shadowlands of insomnia.

  A girl I know said there was a bug that can get in your head and make you hooked to your computer screen. What is this thing?

  Google searches yielded low-budget sci-fi movies and clusters of conspiracy sites, but then, nestled within the wing-nut comment boards and glib blogs of camp-cinema enthusiasts was a PDF file on the Stanley Medical Research Institute site, an article describing the species variation and its relevance to T. gondii schizophrenia research. At the time of publication, only two cases of toxoplasmosis via T. hermeticus had been documented, but the behavior of the two hospitalized teen hosts was similar: withdrawal from physical reality, computer- and television-screen addiction, the unbridled consumption of junk food. And both teens had suffered comas resulting from toxic-metabolic encephalopathy.

  Jenny’s stomach flipped. Her heart beat faster. She did not run to the den, where her son was camped with a pile of Xbox discs he’d swapped with friends. She walked purposefully and slowly, like a killer in a horror film, into the kitchen and down the steps. This time she didn’t knock first. She pushed the door open and stepped into the atmosphere. But her son was not there.

  A screenshot from his paused video game showed his Dose avatar frozen in midfrenzy, clutching a pill bottle and spilling capsules as he struggled to get the right drug into his system. The game was sinister and funny at once. The main character, suffering from a variety of behavioral, psychological, and physical issues, was constantly in danger of malfunctioning. He had to be kept on track with the right pharmaceuticals. The player could consult the electronic pharmacopoeia built into the game, but the character quickly melted down, sank into unconsciousness, or became otherwise unstable, so a good working knowledge of contemporary medical drugs was required to play the game well. In this particular shot the character was very thin, with bulging eyes and a comic goiter.

  “Adam,” Jenny called, thinking he might be in the half bath.

  No answer, but at least he wasn’t huddled close to the media screen. She did notice an obscene amount of discarded junk-food packaging littering the floor: chip bags and plastic cookie trays, flattened cartons and half-crushed cans. Walking deeper into the atmosphere, she felt heart palpitations and a shortening of breath. She picked up a Doritos bag and read the ingredients: MSG, at least three artificial colors, and a lengthy list of unwholesome compounds, such as disodium inosinate.

  “What are you doing?” The voice was mocking, croaky from its recent change.

  Her son stood just inside the open sliding glass door, the insulated drapery jerked open, rain falling in the blurred green depths of the backyard. She wondered if he’d been out there smoking something, huffing something, popping some newfangled multiple-use product of the medical-industrial complex.

  “Shut the door,” she said. “The air conditioner’s on.”

  As he lurched toward her, she worried about his posture (was he developing curvature of the spine?), his teeth (would failure to provide braces lead to social ostracism and poor employment opportunities?), his sexuality (would he catch an STD?), and his attention span (when was the last time he read a book?). The Internet was crawling with sexual predators. Teens were gobbling salvia, guzzling Robitussin, snorting Adderall. A gonorrhea superbug was developing resistance to antibiotics.

  “You need to pick up after yourself,” she said.

  A fresh crop of pustules had erupted on his nose, which had recently grown too big for his face, though he had the elfin features of boyhood. She could almost see him wrapping his arms around her legs. Could still picture him riding on his father’s shoulders. He was too big for these things now, of course. His unwashed hair was brushed absurdly forward, almost obscuring his eyes, which looked unnaturally shiny.

  “Right,” he said. She couldn’t tell if the word seethed with sarcasm or if it was a simple acknowledgment of the truth of her statement.

  “You need to eat a decent breakfast. Some fruit. Some whole-grain cereal.”

  He rolled his eyes and grinned like a gargoyle. Yes, she thought, he had to have braces, which would cost at least $5,000.

  “I already ate,” he said.

  “What did you have?”

  “What is this Guantanamo Bay shit?”

  She felt somewhat relieved. He was still capable of creating analogies.

  “Watch the language and answer me.”

  “Pop-Tarts and orange juice.” He dropped to the floor, rolled onto his belly, and took up his deluxe controller.

  Good. Orange juice. She bought the USDA organic calcium + vitamin D stuff from Publix. It contained no preservatives, colorants, or corn syrup. Adam had just had some, which meant that he had not developed intolerance to fruits and vegetables. And he was lolling at least three feet from the media screen, so he was probably safe—for now.

  Miles Escrow could never tell if the world was turning to shit or if the drunks at Lizard Man
tended to natter on about the darker elements of life. Now they were discussing accidents on Lake Wateree: Jet Ski collisions and capsizing pontoons, drownings and disastrously executed water-ski stunts, exploding gas grills and feral campfires and murderous clouds of wasps. A renegade fishhook had gotten stuck in Wanda Bonnet’s uncle’s cheek and ripped a big gash. Marty Bouknight’s cousin had lost three fingers pulling a hydrilla clump from the blades of his outboard motor. Kim Dewlap’s preacher’s stepbrother had snorkeled into a nest of water moccasins. And then there were the brain-eating amoebas, floating in stagnant water, waiting to be sucked up into the nasal passages of hapless swimmers. But that was old news. There was still just the one local case—the teen who’d died last month.

  Miles Escrow had come up with three possible explanations for the shit ton of recent lake-connected disasters: (1) the patrons were exaggerating; (2) get any group together and it could generate an impressive list of mishaps associated with any random location; and (3) that flooded reservoir Lake Wateree was the site of an ancient Indian burial ground, and hence was cursed. Miles Escrow preferred the drama of option three. After drinking another Miller, he shared his proposition with his companions.

  “I think I saw a movie about that,” said Tammy Horton. “There was a monster in the lake, an angry spirit or whatnot.”

  “Every body of water has its cryptid,” said Stein.

  “What the hell’s that?” said Carla Marlin.

  “An imaginary creature that lives there, like the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp.”

  “My uncle saw the Lizard Man rooting through his garbage,” said Brandy Wellington.

  Hereupon commenced a conversation that Miles Escrow had heard a thousand times in this particular bar. Everybody knew at least one person who had seen the Lizard Man, but none of the patrons, it seemed, had spotted a glimmer of the fabled creature with their own eyes. It had been raining for a week and Miles had been arguing with Tina Flame, the same arguments they’d been slogging through for ten years: spats about his drinking, tiffs about her Internet shopping, and, even though they were almost forty, rows about whether or not they ought to have children. Fed by the weather, the arguments grew lush and green. Before Miles and Tina knew it, a thousand insults bloomed. Miles had to get out of the house for a few hours. Tonight, however, Lizard Man was boring him.

  But then the crowd turned to the topic of Winger’s cousin’s grandchild Kayla, who was still out cold at Palmetto Baptist. Carla Marlin said she lived beside a phlebotomist who worked at the hospital, and she had some top-secret information she really ought not to share. Looking solemn, she made everybody promise to keep this material hush-hush. And then, after ordering another daiquiri, rooting through her faux-snakeskin purse, and retrieving her Droid to check a text message, Carla cleared her throat and revealed that three teens were now laid up in comas at Palmetto Baptist. Not only that, but each patient had demonstrated the same peculiar symptoms as Winger’s cousin’s grandchild. Before losing consciousness, their obsession with digital media had gotten way out of hand. They’d also eaten so much junk food that one of the first hypotheses as to the cause of their illness was food poisoning. But the doctors ruled that out, along with electric shock via media gadget.

  “What do they think it is then?” asked Titus Redmond.

  “My neighbor wouldn’t say, but, judging by the look in his eye, it ain’t pretty.”

  Although Beth had been communicating with big shots on the cutting edge of T. gondii research for months—mostly male evolutionary biologists, parasitologists, and neurobiologists—the word was just getting around about T. hermeticus, and she feared she’d be muscled out of the game. As she awaited the arrival of a certain eminent neurovirologist from Johns Hopkins, she demonstrated behaviors that psychologists had placed on the lower end of the obsessive-compulsive-disorder spectrum: nail biting, cuticle picking, napkin tearing. In the air-conditioned depths of Bombay Palace, she sipped iced water and studied her laptop screen. An MRI scan of an infected teen brain glowed before her. The fluorescent red cysts conglomerated mostly in the pleasure and fear centers. Just like schizophrenics suffering from T. gondii toxoplasmosis, infected patients were producing elevated levels of dopamine.

  Beth had a theory that made her heart race. Like T. gondii, the hermeticus species had genes that allowed it not only to jack up dopamine production but also to create optimal survival conditions that depended on an intricate blend of its host’s onset-puberty hormones, specific chemical food additives in the blood, and the heady neurochemical combinations produced by video-game play, intense social networking, and Internet porn use. She didn’t know if this brain cocktail improved conditions for the dormant bradyzoites or if the tweaked behavior of the teens was a form of parasite-induced “mind control” recently perfected to land the protozoan’s intended rodent host in the jaws of a cat.

  Once again, she navigated the twists and turns of her theory, puzzling out the evolutionary logic of the adaptation, but became flustered when she noticed Dr. Bloom hovering over her with a bemused expression on his long, thin face. He was somewhat handsome, early forties, with an ectomorphic body that had probably pushed him into nerdy seclusion as an adolescent, forming the foundation of his brilliant career in the hard sciences. His hazel eyes were almost obscenely beautiful.

  “Dr. Irving, I presume.” He lifted a sparse eyebrow.

  Beth knew that she looked young for her age. Torn between revealing her true age to enhance her authority and concealing it to enhance her sexual attraction, she chose the latter.

  “Dr. Bloom. Sorry we’re having supper in a strip mall, but this is the best I could do in this savage land.”

  “Supper,” he said. “You must be Southern.”

  “I grew up in Argyle, Georgia.”

  “So you immersed yourself in academia to escape a life of drudgery at the sock factory there?”

  Beth tittered. Dr. Bloom sat down. They ordered Maharaja beers.

  As a joke they continued to call each other by their professional titles, even when swept into a passionate discussion about parasitic mind control. Dr. Bloom asked her if she had tested her male patients’ responses to cat urine, and she tactfully reminded him that the teens were in comatose states, surrounded by bereaved relatives. Drawing a lock of hair to her mouth and taking a compulsive nibble, she asked him if it was true that males infected with T. gondii had higher testosterone levels and were hence more attractive to women.

  “What do you think?” He flexed his right bicep and smirked.

  “What?” Beth smiled. “Did you test positive?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I don’t know. I’ve never been tested. Have you?”

  “No. Maybe I should be.”

  She examined his clothing: a plaid shirt, rumpled, but not demonstrating a lack of concern with personal grooming. His gray-streaked hair was tousled but clean. Beth blushed and changed the subject to another organism.

  “I heard you did a postdoc with Polysphincta gutfreundi.”

  Gesticulating expressively, opening his mouth to reveal half-masticated meat, Dr. Bloom held forth on the parasitic wasp larva that, after hatching in the body of the orb spider, released chemicals that made its host weave a custom cocoon for it. The spider essentially became a zombie that did the worm’s bidding.

  Lit from within by his third beer and his zeal for parasitic organisms, Dr. Bloom began to look strangely attractive. Beth remembered an article she’d read about the flu virus that argued that infected humans became more social than usual, optimizing the virus’s chance of spreading. She thought of her boyfriend, a beautiful, frivolous creature, knowing that she’d allow their relationship to grow like an extravagant mushroom that would, one hot summer day, suddenly lapse into slime.

  Whenever Jenny found herself in front of her computer screen, she could not stop searching for more information on T. hermeticus, which flared occasionally in the outer reaches of cyberspace like gamma-ray bursts. Her talent for ob
scure searches had led to the discovery that at least two dozen teens had been infected nationally, six of whom were now in comatose states at Palmetto Baptist. She’d ferreted this last bit out on a local church prayer board:

  Please pray for Sheila Freeman’s son who is in a coma and the other five teens who struggle in darkness with him. In Jesus name.

  Although the poster did not mention T. hermeticus or even verify the hospital, Jenny felt sure that the prayer giver was referring to the new freak parasite. The local infection had also made an appearance on her son’s Facebook stream. That morning, he’d left his iPhone on the kitchen table, and though she felt guilty typing in his silly password and examining his page, she rationalized that her snooping was for his own good. A girl named Kaitlin Moore had posted the following status update two days ago at 1:36 AM:

  Please send good vibes to my cousin Ashley who is in a coma at the hospital her mom found her passed out in front of the TV. So weird.

  In the ninety-two comments that followed, condolences and positive energy flows abounded, but halfway through, rumors and speculation took over. Jenny learned of three similar cases (friends of friends of posters), in which the hapless hosts had fallen into unconsciousness after especially intense gaming bouts, Twitter marathons, or Internet-porn odysseys. When a boy named Brandon Booth opined that the sufferers were victims of a virus originating from alien life-forms, several teens pounced on him, telling him to “get a grasp, dork” because this was “not a sci-fi flick but the real fucking world.”

  Brandon was not the only one who suspected alien shenanigans. Out in cyber la-la land, wild theories flourished. People with usernames like Phoenix66, upon hearing about the parasite, conjectured that the original space colonists had returned to Earth to help humans evolve to the next level. Later that day, Jenny stumbled upon an antigovernment site attesting that T. hermeticus had been designed by the US military in conjunction with Middle Eastern elites to terrorize the US population into docile sheep. Though she chuckled to herself at these paranoid assertions, she often emerged from her Web-surfing stupor with a sense of wonder. What if? she’d think as she enjoyed a cigarette, staring out at the riotous jungle that was overtaking their backyard. But the mystique would fade in the fluorescent light of the kitchen as she opened a can of tuna.