Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  Thad opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a rubber-encased palm.

  "And don't give me some bullshit about corporate privacy or confidentiality agreements. The time for me to threaten you with a warrant is passed."

  "I was going to say that there is nothing in the works that I know of. And even if there were," he held up the microscope photo, "it wouldn't even make a dent. A Klebsiella strain of this magnitude isn't even on our radar. I doubt it's on anyone's. And even if some drug company with a fortune teller on its payroll were researching a drug to pierce four membranes," he emphasized the last two words, "where could they possibly be in regards to human trials?"

  "We're not exactly running everything through the FDA with this one."

  "That desperate, huh?"

  Jennifer gathered in the charts from Thad and hung them back at the end of the patient's bed.

  "Come on. Let's continue the tour, and you'll see why."

  They left the room and continued down the corridor. Nurses in biohazard gear moved between rooms pushing drug carts and bringing in fresh linens and IV bags.

  Thad spoke up. "By the way, if the director is calling all the drug companies, then why am I here, if he could have just phoned it in?"

  Jennifer considered the question carefully, then finally conceded. "Because you're the best damn microbiologist I know. And I'm in way over my head."

  * * * * *

  They walked the first floor methodically and Jennifer allowed him to inspect the patients at random. Each time he did, he searched for bites and scratches from the attacks on Coney Island and Shoreline Hook beach. He never found any. Finally, his curiosity reached its limit. They stopped in the hallway and leaned against a nurses' station.

  "So these aren't victims of the attack?"

  "They were there when the attack started, but most of them had absolutely no contact with the assailants. We had some who were bitten. They were admitted straight to the third and fourth floors. Their levels of infection were more advanced, septicity of the blood already set in."

  "Had?"

  "They died within 24 hours. They are on the fifth floor now"

  "My God." Thad turned over what he'd learned so far. Jennifer waited, not wanting to press him.

  "Was everyone on the beach infected?" he asked finally.

  "No. Our best estimate, roughly fifty-three percent of the people who were in the general vicinity of where the attacks took place are showing or will show signs of the infection."

  "But how? How's it being spread?"

  Jennifer stared at him blankly as an answer.

  "Okay. Well, have you identified patient zero?"

  "We've got a cruise ship passenger manifest with more than 2,000 names on it. Ninety-five percent of those are still at the bottom of the Atlantic. Take your pick."

  "Christ, what is this?" Thad put his head in his hands and tried to rub his eyes. Impossible in the rubber suit. He glanced over at a tray of blood samples arranged in test tubes, each labeled with a last name, number, and room. He took out one of them and held it up to the light.

  "Wait a minute. Fifty-three percent infection rate? That's pretty exact. You couldn't have possibly identified every single person who was present on Coney Island and at Shoreline Hook when the attacks happened."

  Jennifer had a sudden look of dejectedness. She exhaled and looked towards a pair of double doors at the end of the hall.

  "Let me show you one more area of the first floor, and I'll introduce you to Dr. Amata, who we've placed in charge of the primary care down here. Then we'll head upstairs."

  Thad followed her towards the end of the hall. As they went, nurses pushed a bed from a room towards the elevators. Someone had worsened enough to warrant a move to a higher level.

  They passed through the double glass doors and Thad immediately sensed something. The air was more solemn here. More profound and sincere. An aura of pensive reverence, marked with an almost formal grief. The nurses in the other parts of the first floor were doing their jobs because it was what was expected of them. But the staff here worked as if they were paying their respects.

  "Who's on this wing?" Thad asked.

  Jennifer looked down the hall, watching the nurses move about. "This is where we keep the staff who've succumbed to infection."

  Thad's mouth gaped. "How many are here?"

  Jennifer stared into his eyes. "Fifty-three percent of what we started with."

  His face became chiseled anger. "What! Were you not utilizing proper protocols for quarantining in the beginning? How on Earth could you allow—"

  "Of course we used proper protocols, you jackass! Don't you dare point the finger at me! Every CDC regulation was put in place the moment we walked into this hospital."

  "Then who? The nurses? Doctors? Hospital staff from before the CDC arrived?"

  "No. CDC personnel have been infected, too."

  "But how? With the suits?"

  "I don't know…"

  "With regulations and procedures for sterilization—"

  "I don't know, goddammit! Okay? I don't know!" The nurses stopped and turned towards them. Regarded them briefly, and then returned to their duties.

  Jennifer walked away, stood facing the corner. As if she were told to do so by an angry parent for some childhood infraction. Thad decided to let it go.

  "Okay. Okay. Who's here? Who's infected?" Thad asked quietly, moving closer to her. As she answered, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her slowly.

  "Webster. Emory. McMillan. Laurence and Daniels. Blackstone." As she spoke each name she shuttered. When she faced him completely, he could see she was crying. "Paulson. Cox. More who've come in since you left the Center. You don't know them."

  He pulled her close and she put her head on his chest as best she could through the biohazard suit.

  Finally, she pulled away. She motioned with her hands as if she might wipe her eyes, but then realized it was impossible. She laughed at herself, looking down her body.

  "You know, not everyone wears the suits now. They don't seem to be doing any good. Some of us have just shirked them altogether. The higher the floor we visit, the fewer suits we'll see."

  He'd noticed how awkward she seemed in the suit despite having had time to get used to it. She was obviously one of those who didn't usually wear the suit. She was wearing it for him.

  He also realized something else. If the biohazard suits were useless, then there was roughly a fifty-three percent chance calling him here amounted to a death sentence. She was desperate enough to risk his life.

  "I want to introduce you to Dr. Amata real quick. I think you'll like him."

  She'd subjected him to peril just by allowing him to walk through the front doors. But it would do no good to have that argument now. Thad took a deep breath.

  "Lead away," he said

  They walked back to the nurses' station where a nurse was updating a chart.

  "Nurse Brown, do you know if Dr. Amata is in his office? I'd like him to meet someone." Jennifer poked a thumb in Thad's direction.

  "Actually," Nurse Brown responded, looking up from her work and down the corridor, "I think he's in x-ray. He wanted to run one more MRI on Dr. Emory before bringing him upstairs."

  "Emory's gotten that bad?"

  "Sepsis set in last night. Dr. Amata delayed moving him till this morning. You know. Out of respect. But he could go at any time." The nurse looked at her feet.

  Jennifer said nothing, but rather placed a hand on the nurse's arm in consolation.

  Looking down the corridor where arrows on the walls pointed in the general direction of the x-ray department, Jennifer and Thad moved along. As they walked, she explained to him that Dr. Amata was the first to take off the biohazard suit, believing them to be useless. Because of that, in the beginning, he'd had to quarantine himself along with the patients. But eventually, as more and more workers got sick, it became evident he was right. More and more staff stopped wearing them.

&nb
sp; The signs, sometimes on the wall and sometimes over passageways, turned them left once and then right twice before leading them to a door that warned them of radiation contamination and to take precautions before entering.

  They found Dr. Amata in the MRI chamber, bent over his patient, apparently strapping Dr. Emory onto the MRI bed, his back to Thad and Jennifer. Amata was a wide-framed, obese man and his slight jiggling movements were almost comical. Between them stretched the empty hospital bed from which Emory had been transferred.

  "Dr. Amata? When you have a minute, there's someone I'd like you to meet," Jennifer called out to the doctor from just inside the doorway. Thad stood beside her, his eyes casing the room as best he could through the plastic face shield without turning his body.

  Dr. Amata didn't turn around, nor did he speak or acknowledge them in any way. Instead, his body remained slumped over the patient, jerking occasionally, seemingly from his work.

  When Dr. Amata didn't answer, Thad fixed his eyes on the doctor. Something seemed off. "Why is he strapping down an unconscious patient? Was Dr. Emory spasming?"

  Jennifer didn't answer, but looked from Thad back to Dr. Amata. "Dr. Amata, can I help you with that?" Jennifer took a step towards the doctor. As she did, Thad leaned down instinctively and peered under the hospital bed—and saw a large puddle of blood spreading slowly beneath the MRI slab.

  "Jenny! Wait!" He ran forward and grabbed her shoulder. At the sound of his voice, Dr. Emory—what had been Dr. Emory—lifted his head and peeked past Amata's shoulder at Thad and Jennifer. Emory released Amata, and Amata slid to the floor with a heavy thud. Emory leaned up and reached for them, his right arm and head unrestrained. His left arm and both legs were secured to the bed.

  Jennifer ran around the hospital bed and slid down next to Amata. Blood pulsed from a large hole in his neck. The doctor's eyes were wide, staring at her. Thad sprinted to the other side of the MRI bed. Emory was trying to reach Jennifer's hair. Thad grabbed Emory's shoulder and slammed him back down.

  "Don't let him bite you!" Jennifer screamed. Emory snapped at Thad's hand, who moved it away just in time. Thad remembered Emory from the CDC. But this crazy-eyed, gray-skinned psychopath was not the God-fearing family man Thad remembered. Emory waved his arm, grasping for Thad. Thad grabbed him by the wrist and tried to wrestle his arm to the side of the bed and into the awaiting straps. As he fought with Emory, Thad looked down at Jennifer as she snagged the pillow from the gurney, swept it out of the pillow case, and attempted to apply the pillow case as a compress to Amata's mangled neck.

  "Jennifer, you need to get to a phone and get us some help in here."

  "I've got to try and stop the bleeding."

  Thad looked at Amata. He'd slipped from consciousness.

  "We've got to get that man into surgery now! Now go!"

  Jennifer stood and ran to the MRI control room, her yellow biohazard suit streaked with blood. As she did, Thad finally managed to hold down Emory's arm long enough, while dodging the patient's biting teeth, to tighten a strap loosely around his wrist. Thad looked up to see Jennifer on the phone, pacing the small control room. He grabbed up a steel mesh mask that had been sitting on a small, stainless-steel table next to the MRI machine and attempted to harness Emory's head with it, attacking the weaving, biting jaws from various angles. As he did so, he heard an announcement over the loudspeaker outside, Jennifer's voice, paging emergency personnel to x-ray and requesting an OR be prepped stat.

  In his peripheral vision, Thad noticed Dr. Amata stand up and looked over at him. But perhaps because he was having such a hard time holding down Emory's head, even with all his medical expertise and training, he failed to notice that blood no longer pulsed from Amata's gaping neck wound.

  "Dr. Amata, my name is Dr. Palmer, and you shouldn't be standing up. But since you are," Thad finally had Emory's head flat on the MRI slab and had to lean all his weight against the iron mesh mask to hold it down while he attempted to secure one of the four latches, "try to climb onto the hospital bed. Help is on the way."

  From the control room, Jennifer heard Thad talking and looked up from the phone. Through the glass partition, she saw Dr. Amata. She dropped the phone.

  "Thad!" she whispered loudly.

  Thad heard her, barely, and looked past Dr. Amata and made eye contact with her. She had a bloody hand pressed to the glass, streaking it with gore. Obviously and acutely disturbed, she shook her head. Thad looked back slowly to Amata, Emory bucking beneath the wire mask.

  "Dr. Amata?"

  Without warning Amata hissed and barreled towards Thad, arms extended, teeth exposed. Thad fell backward, releasing Emory who sprang up, snapping at Thad as he fell. Amata slammed into the MRI bed, toppling over Emory. Thad scuttled out of the way just in time, Amata hitting the floor where he had been.

  Thad stood and bolted behind and around the MRI machine as Amata regained his feet, but Thad tumbled again when he rolled his ankle on a bundle of power cords. He screamed in pain and hit the floor hard. He scrambled beneath the hospital bed just as Amata shot around the corner of the MRI machine and dove under the gurney after him. Thad kicked Amata's head. In spite of the bulky suit, Thad maneuvered quickly to the other end of the bed. He emerged out the other side and popped onto his feet, forgetting his damaged ankle, and nearly collapsed again from the pain.

  He hobbled towards the control room, and Amata swiped at his legs from under the bed, nearly knocking him down again. Thad reached the control room door just as Amata slid out from under the bed. Amata raced full speed towards the door, reaching it as Thad slammed it shut. The tall but thin window on the door shattered inward and Amata's head and right arm extended through it, his skull somewhat misshapen from having been forced through the six-inch wide opening. Amata hissed and groaned, staring intently as Thad and Jennifer huddled together and pressed against the far wall of the small room, his fingers less than a foot away, stretching to reach them.

  And he was still coming.

  His clavicle snapped and his ribs splintered as Amata pressed himself slowly through the narrow passage.

  Thad held onto Jennifer and scanned the small room for something, anything, to use as a weapon. His eyes lighted on a keyboard and he snagged it up, ripping it away from its wiring. Just as he raised it to bat at the bloody hand, light filtered through the glass from behind them, and Thad turned to see a soldier, halfway into the x-ray room door, pointing a pistol through the glass towards Amata.

  "No, wait!" Thad yelled at the soldier. He nearly threw himself between Amata and the gun when three shots ripped through the glass partition, raining sparkling shards down on Thad and Jennifer as they cowered.

  When it was over Thad looked at Amata. His head was littered with bullet holes. His arm slopped against the floor. His torso slid slowly down the opening, glass from the window's sides ripping new gashes as he did.

  Thad turned to the soldier, filled with rage. "You idiot! You didn't have to kill him! We could have saved him! He just needed to be restrained!"

  Jennifer grabbed the head of Thad's bio-suit, found his face, and forced him to look her in the eyes. "No, Thad. No, we couldn't have saved him."

  "But he—" He tried to turn back to the soldier, pointing. Jennifer wouldn't let his head move. Wouldn't let his eyes leave hers.

  "There's nothing else we could have done."

  "But why?" he asked, focused completely on her now.

  "Because," she let go of his face and wanted to run a hand through his hair, as she knew Thad was known to do to his daughter when she was upset, "he was already dead."

  Thad looked down at Amata again, not as shocked as he'd expected, but still not believing, then melted into a roll-away office chair.

  He thought of the cruise ship passengers. Walking out of the ocean after spending days underwater. Their faces and hands bloated.

  He remembered something. Something that sounded like it was out of some morbid, bizarro Dr. Seuss book.

  Vengefu
l ghosts of the Liberty Coast.

  Thad's heart was pounding. His breathing erratic. His ankle throbbed.

  There was so much going on here he didn't know. That he'd never seen. Jennifer still had so much to show him.

  They were only on the first floor, the tour barely begun.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 5

  F ROM THE DIARY OF Lizzy Glasgow:

  Dear Diary,

  I don't know the date. We've lost track. It's been more than two weeks since my last journal entry, I think. More than five months since we left the basement, or something like that. It's taken me that long to talk about exactly how we got out. I don't know why. It's stupid, I know. Maybe some kind of reaction to knowing Brandon was the last one to see our parents and not me. That makes it sound like jealousy, but I honestly had (have) no desire to see them again as those things, so that can't be it.

  Maybe some fear of revisiting those moments when I didn't know what was going on, after Brandon climbed through the hole in the floor. When I didn't know if Brandon was okay. And then what is the fear about? His safety? Hoping he was okay? Or is the fear more personal? Selfish even? It could be that in those moments I was scared of being alone. Scared of losing him, but not for his sake. But because I don't know if I could even do this alone. Or even worse, scared of being trapped in that basement, waiting to die of thirst. Waiting to become one of those things, too. To join the rest of the family.

  Who knows? A psychiatrist would probably have a field day.

  But anyway, I can write about it now. I'm going to try to, at least.

  It's hard to describe how I felt when the door opened at the top of the basement steps. I was pretty sure it couldn't have been one of my parents turning the doorknob. After all, we'd kind of agreed they couldn't turn door knobs. Surely they'd have done so by then if they could.