Dahmer Flu

by Christopher Cox

  I had only heard of these small communities, and knew enough only to stay away from them. A group of men, most of them armed, gathered around the gate as someone threw the latch and pulled it open. The humvee eased through the crowd, which parted like the red sea before Moses, before stopping under a canopy. The driver exited while those left in the vehicle began collecting their belongings and clearing the rounds from their loaded weapon.

  I heard the conversation from the crowd with the driver; snippets from the wall of questions, the voices collapsing over each other into a dull roar. “Food?”, “Any Gas or”, “Kill the fuckers”, “Trouble”.

  The vehicle rocked as the rear hatch was opened. The crowd hushed to hear the driver speak, as though this were a sacred ritual. He spoke to the group, “We had to go a little further than usual, but it paid off. Lotta cars on the highway still have some fuel in the tanks, so we pulled that out. Found a little bit of food, mostly some canned shit, but it’s better than nothing. Some clothes, most of ‘em without bloodstains,” Chuckles from the crowd. “And a new set of tools, seems to be in pretty good shape.” That brought a single ‘Yeah!’ from the audience. He didn’t mention the horde that we had seen. “Also found this.” The door opened on Madi and me, thrusting harsh light into our eyes. The dark mass of the backlit crowd eventually formed shapes, then faces as our eyes adjusted to the sun. No one spoke. We looked at the crowd; the crowd looked at us. Madi gripped me tighter than she was before.

  A man spoke. “The Colonel’s gonna want to speak to her.”

  The driver nodded. “Now help me unload all this crap. Nichols, you take those tools and get the hummer into the garage.” He turned towards us and called into the interior, “Nurse Foster!” The woman leaned across the seat to look in his direction as he continued. “Take our guests to your station, make sure they check out. Got it?”

  “Yes,” She answered simply. To me, “Come with me.” She scrambled out the door, pulling a small black bag with her, before circling to our side. “This way,” she said, but otherwise kept silent as we cut our way through the crowd, except only to lean close to me briefly. “Hold her close; you’re lucky I came along this time,” she hissed, but the men around us were too busy unloading the humvee to notice.

  She visibly relaxed when we turned a corner and reached a side door, even more so once she closed it behind us again. I heard the sound of a generator nearby, and then we passed through another set of doors to reach a small nurse’s station, which adjoined what used to be administrative offices. It looked to have been some time since students had been here, and all of the available space was taken up with hospital beds or boxes of supplies. The school-era posters were still on the walls, screaming large-print warnings like, “Marijuana Kills!” and “Abstinence: The only SAFE choice!” Another woman in light blue scrubs stared curiously from the doorway, her graying hair pulled into a tight bun and a permanent frown etched into her creased face.

  I spoke, breaking the silence. “You’re a nurse?” If it were true, I felt comforted to be with her, much more so than the men outside.

  “I am now.” She smiled enigmatically. “Before all this crap started, I was a doctor- Oncology, specifically. Things are different now; I still do the same type of work, but now I answer to ‘nurse’ instead. It is what it is. My name’s Lisa.” She extended her hand for a handshake, first to me, then to Madi. Madi smiled as she shook her hand sincerely.

  “Nice to meet you, Lisa,” Madi said. Lisa smiled. She was a refreshing breath of genuine humanity. Madi continued, “I’m Madi and this is my dad. You can call him Brad. I’m eight, and my dad is…” She paused, “how old are you, Daddy?”

  I laughed at the way Madi had immediately warmed to this stranger. “Old enough,” I answered.

  Lisa laughed at my answer. “Let’s get you two checked out. Madi, why don’t you go with Nurse Ally here, and I’ll stay with your daddy, okay?” The other woman had come closer and extended her hand with a warm smile.

  Madi moved closer to me, putting her arms around my own. “Can we stay together?”

  Lisa looked from Madi to me, “Is that okay with you, Dad?”

  Madi’s eyes were pleading. “Sure,” I answered Lisa, then to Madi, “But I still expect a little bit of privacy,” I smiled.

  With Madi and I separated by a thin curtain, but still in the same room, Lisa and Ally gave us brief but thorough examinations. The careful and understandable search for bites or scratches showed nothing, and was followed by a basic medical checkup; reflexes, heartbeat, temperature- the usual affair.

  “You both seem fine,” Lisa said cheerily as she pulled the curtain back. A little underweight, perhaps, but that can be expected, given the circumstances. But other than that, not too shabby.”

  “Glad we check out. I don’t have my insurance card…” I said.

  Lisa rolled her eyes, “First time I heard that one,” she said with a slight trace of sarcasm, but then smiled her forgiveness of my lousy joke.

  Lisa kneeled next to Madi. “I’d like to talk to your daddy for a minute, but I know you want to stay with him.” Madi nodded. “So I’d like to tell you a secret. Can you keep a secret for me?”

  “Yes, I’m good with secrets,” Madi answered with a stoic sincerity.

  “Great!” Answered Lisa. “It just so happens that I have a portable DVD player and a few movies. We’re not supposed to use the generator power for things like that, but I like to keep it charged just in case I get a little girl in here that likes cartoons. Do you like cartoons?”

  “Yes!” Madi squealed.

  “Me, too!” Said Lisa. She opened up a low cabinet and pushed small boxes of supplies aside, retrieving the black player. In a moment, some cartoon movie, something about a rat, was playing on the screen, and Madi was lost in the show, the earphones capturing all of the noise.

  Lisa and I sat behind her. “What happened to her?” She asked, directly.

  “I thought you said she was fine; is there something wrong?” I asked, concerned.

  “Physically, she’s fine. I mean emotionally. She lost someone, didn’t she?”

  I paused. “You’re good,” I conceded. “Yeah, she just lost her mother and her brother. It was… pretty terrible.” I closed my eyes sadly, and opened them when I felt her hand rest reassuringly on mine. The sympathy, the friendly gesture, meant a lot after what we’d been through.

  “Brad, I’m sorry for your loss. I know it hurts now; it’ll get easier, but it won’t go away.” She leaned close and whispered, “I killed my husband.” She looked into my eyes, looking for either judgment or understanding. I had neither. She continued, “He was bit, God, almost a year ago now. He tried to hide it, but I knew. I knew, but I didn’t say anything. He said he felt fine, that it didn’t break the skin, and, damn it, I wanted to believe it.”

  She continued, “We have a rule here, that if someone’s bit or scratched, and we know it’s from one of those things, we kill ‘em right away before they can turn. They get time to say goodbye to their families, but it’s done really quick. Sometimes, though, they get themselves scratched or tore up when the adrenaline’s going, and they don’t know how they got hurt. That happens, we keep ‘em in the cells we got for a little while until we’re sure they’re not going to turn. It’s my job to check people out when they get back, like I did you two, so it was hard to do it, but I had him put in one of the cells for the night. His eyes, I still remember when I looked at me, like I betrayed him somehow. But in the morning he was fine, so I let him out. Most people turn pretty quick, but for some it takes longer, maybe even a couple of days. I just didn’t want to believe it. That night I woke up to his weight on me. His eyes were glazed and he was sweating, his jaws were clenching in his mouth. I knew the signs, but I’d never really seen anyone turn before, not up real close like that. I pushed him, hard, but before I could scream, I heard his voice. Not altogether his, but his close enough. ‘run, please’ was all he could make out, before he starte
d gnashing his teeth like some animal. Maybe I should have run, like he said, but then someone else would have come in to… to take care of him. He deserved me to be the one, someone that loved him. The gun was under my pillow… I shot him in the face.”

  She sighed, then returned from the thought. “I’m not sure why I told you all that. I’m sorry.” She looked embarrassed for it.

  “Don’t be,” I answered, this time it was me giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m glad you did.” I told her my and Madi’s story in as much detail as I could. She listened quietly. It was easier, and infinitely more healing, to tell the story this time. I told her things that I hadn’t even told the preacher- I confided that, on a very real level, I felt safer travelling without Aimee and Jacob. I felt horrible for thinking it, let alone saying it, but I knew that we had a better chance for survival, even though I already felt that I had failed as a husband and father for letting them die.

  “Me and her, we should have that conversation sometime, too,” she said when I finished. “I’m not a shrink, but listening’s part of my job anyways. How about we let her finish the cartoon, then we get you two a place to sleep? That sound good?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “I’m going to keep you in here tonight. It’s quiet, and no one will bother you. This really isn’t a bad place; it’s safe at least.”

  “Thank you, Lisa, you have no idea…”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. The movie’s over, let’s get you two to bed.”

  I remembered going into the room, I remembered helping Lisa push two hospital beds next to each other. I remember Madi and I saying goodnight; I didn’t remember falling asleep, or anything else of the night, until I woke up in the morning.

  I was disoriented. Where’s Madi? There. Hospital? Lights? Yelling?

  The thoughts raced in my mind they tried to catch up to the events of the previous day. One of the voices was Lisa’s, I recognized her. The other, the one yelling, was vaguely familiar, but less so.

  The driver from the Humvee. I recognized it then.

  Surprisingly, he had the decency to knock, and further to wait for a reply before he entered the small room. Lisa stayed behind when he entered. He man spoke to me, barely glancing at Madi. His manner was professional, just short of pleasant, but faintly detached. Madi, always an excellent judge, didn’t open to him like she did with Lisa; I trusted her instinct. He recited the brief pitch, how they came to be here, where he was from, who was in charge- he seemed to carefully avoid giving anything of value. The man was physically imposing, tattoos crawled up thick arms. His head was shaved, but his beard hung at the middle of his chest.

  “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself” he interrupted himself in mid-sentence, “Name’s Jim; Jim Gillhorn. Welcome to Washington City. Nurse Lisa here will get you some clothes, then I’ll show you around.” He turned and walked out without waiting for a reply, and Lisa took his place in the room, a small bundle of clothing in her arms; she placed it gently on the counter and walked out. Her clear discomfort was palpable and unnerving.

  Madi and I dressed quietly, each in our own thoughts, and left the room. Jim was waiting, watching, and rose as we came into the nurse’s station.

  “Ah, that’s better now, isn’t it?” He exclaimed. “Now, let’s git.”

  Lisa chimed in. “Could the girl stay with me? I could use some help unloading these supplies.” She gestured towards the few boxes that arrived when we had.

  Jim glared at her then looked at Madi. “All right, the girl can stay here.” Madi looked to me and I nodded, then she gratefully trotted to stand next to Lisa. Jim turned to me, “Come on.”

  The tinfoil on the windows had kept the room artificially dark, which I assume was to allow for light in the critical medical center if needed at night. Walking through the door left me squinting and momentarily distracted as I kept up with the man.

  He was already speaking as I caught up with him. “…might be wondering why we chose to settle down at a High School. Think about it, Brad, this school was built in the seventies; it was built for riots, built to be secure. There’s agricultural classrooms and greenhouses, an auto and welding shop, decent cafeteria; sign of the damn times, too, this place had an actual childcare center, can you believe that?”

  Again he didn’t wait for an answer, but continued. “Most important, Washington’s far ‘nuff out of the way that we don’t have to worry about trouble all too much.” He stopped and turned to me, “Course, once in a while we pick up a stray or two, and I don’t ever know if they’ll be any trouble or not. Are you trouble, Brad?”

  Our eyes locked; his were cold and deadly serious. “Me?” I answered, with a disarming grin, “hell no. We’re just a couple of folks passing through. We’re no threat to you or yours.”

  Jim held the gaze for a moment more, and then broke with a genuinely wide smile. “Good. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Washington High-School-turned-City had an impressive science building, and it was buzzing with activity. “The Colonel, he’s big on science. His plan is to find a cure or inoculation or something, rebuild society starting right here at Washington City. And I’m damn sure he could do it, too, the man’s a genius.”

  “Who’s the Colonel?” I asked. I’ve heard him mentioned too many times to fail to pick up on the significance.

  “You’ll meet him ‘fore too long. Let me show you the research.”

  He led me into the building and through several twists and turns in the clean hallways. At last, we came to a door, heavy and held fast by solid welded metal throws. Above the door was a wooden sign: ‘hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae’. Jim translated, “It’s Latin. This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live.”

  A young man, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, if that, stood guard, a rifle slung across his shoulder. Hastily he threw the bolts and pulled the door open, then closed it again after we passed. I heard the bolts fix into place immediately.

  After going down a flight of stairs we were, I supposed, in a sublevel, perhaps a basement, of the building. The familiar smell of rot hung in the air.

  “What is this?” I asked Jim.

  He had a perverse glee in his eyes, like a child showing his favorite toy. “This is the lab. Look.” He pulled me to a window which had been reinforced with thick steel bars. “We don’t take any chances here, we learned some hard lessons before. But that’s why any breakouts, they don’t end up too bad for us. Take a good look inside.”

  Inside the room, a group of men stood around a table. They were dressed as though they were surgeons in an operating room. Instruments of various sizes and purposes sat neatly on tables and trays, and a bright surgery spotlight supplemented the florescent lights above them. I couldn’t see, however, who or what was on the table because my view blocked by the men. Annoyed, Jim rapped at the window and gestured for the men to move. Obligingly, they shifted, and I could see what it was. A creature was strapped securely to the table, bound at the hands, legs and torso. The head was fitted with a complicated contraption that seemed to be created for the purpose, and effectively held the head still by the jaw, neck and forehead. A muzzle, of sorts, was fitted over the creature’s mouth. Its eyes, though, were wild and frantic, darting from man to man; it didn’t seem afraid, or even aware- its eyes just looked… hungry.

  “We call ‘em brainstalkers,” Jim explained. “That’s ‘cause they’ll follow you jus’ like they you’re biggest fan, and they don’t got too much goin’ on up there, you know what I mean? Not much more than just what’s working in the base of the brain. But once they know to be looking for you, they don’t give up for nothing.”

  One of the men looked to the window, where Jim nodded his approval to continue. With delicate precision, he cut into the necrotic flesh, opening a bloodless ‘y’ shape from shoulder to shoulder to stomach. As the man made his cuts, then began to saw through the ribcage, the creature c
ontinued to writhe; not in pain, as my mind tried to conceive, but was instead struggling to reach the living flesh. Under the muzzle, I could see its jaw clenching and relaxing, instinctively anticipating a meal.

  Another of the men began pulling viscera from the opened cavity, reaching and removing the stomach. The stomach, a blackened, quivering mass, was swollen and splitting, leaking discolored meat from the tears. From one of the tears, a pink human finger fell to the floor. The man picked it up and carefully set it aside next to the stomach itself.

  “They’ll be a while, here,” Jim said. The suddenness of his voice made me jump, which I hoped didn’t show. “There’s something else I want to show you, you’ll like this.”

  I followed Jim further towards the back of the room. Either side of the walkway was lined with more of the same rooms; most empty, but some were some occupied. I chose not to look as we passed, but the edges of my vision saw small collections of creatures drifting in several.

  Jim stopped at one of the windows. “This,” he said simply, pride in his voice.

  Inside, a woman, “Once a woman”, I realized, stood at the far end of the room. Her back was to the window and she swayed uneasily, left to right and back again. Her blonde hair was matted with old blood, and had parted and dried in place over her neck; the yellow-stained angular spinal frame pushed through a jagged opening in the soft, pale flesh. She hadn’t been dead long, it seemed. She wore a hospital gown, the opening revealing her feminine frame.

  Her room, though, wasn’t like the others here. It was darker and was furnished, although to a very sparse degree. She had cot with a pillow and a small wooden chair. The small table had been overturned, spilling a book and ceramic mug to the floor.