by Keri Lake
Lying on a bed is a grown man, though it’s hard to tell his age from my angle. I can only see the sunspots dotting the top of his bald head. Thick straps hold his body to the bed, upon which he writhes as if in the excruciating kind of pain. Blossoms of blood dot the white sheet covering him, and his wails of agony implore me to open the door for a closer look.
As I take a step inside the room, though, a much louder shout skates down my spine. Freezing in place, I glance over to a figure, who stands at a sink, sliding gloves over his bare hands. I can’t identify him, with his head, body and feet completely covered, and the tube sticking out from his mask looks similar to the one the soldiers wear. With a gloved hand, he points to the door behind me.
“Gloves.” Doctor Falkenrath’s voice is muffled behind the mask, and I breathe a sigh of relief at the recognition. “You never touch anything in here without gloves. Is that clear?”
With a nod, I back myself into the room I stood in moments before. Immediately to the left of me is a shelf carrying stacks of folded suits, about a dozen side-by-side, and below them, two sets of masks with the tubes. Beside those are boxes of gloves, small, medium and large—I opt for the small.
I glance up to the box beside the door that I noticed earlier. A tiny green light still blinks, and when I open the door, it goes solid red.
I quickly slip inside the other room with Doctor Falkenrath, closing the door behind me.
Doctor Falkenrath approaches, and on instinct, I cower, waiting to be struck by him. I’m not even sure why.
“This is a negative pressure room, but you must always consider it contaminated. Never remove objects from this room. All pens, notebooks, everything stays unless I tell you to remove it. You’ll wash your hands whenever you leave, and discard any gloves or gowns inside the room.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s going to be a long afternoon. Let’s get started.” He shuffles back toward the gurney, and lifting a corner of the sheet, he points to the opposite side, motioning me to assist.
Crossing the room, I stand beside the bed, choking back the disgust and fear gurgling in my stomach, while I help him peel back the sheet to reveal a scarred and mutilated torso beneath. Raw, bloody flesh glistens in patches, as though his skin was peeled off.
The man’s mouth is propped open by a metal contraption, revealing two rows of rotting teeth. His eyes have a milky-white layer over jet black pupils that take up the width of his irises. Wounds at his neck and chest ooze a yellowish fluid, tinged with red streaks.
Beneath the straps, his hands flex and snap, flex and snap, as if grabbing for something. The screams mingle with growls, and he sounds more beast than man. I’ve seen Ragers on the occasions they broke through our camp, but they were usually killed before any had the chance to bite. Their eyes are milky and leak blood, and their skin breaks out with blotchy patches of red sores. I knew a boy from my hive, Samuel Dade, who poked at one of the sores on a body that’d been dried out from the sun and got sick. They say he breathed in the Dredge.
“Why don’t I need a suit?”
“You’re a carrier. Many second generation are carriers of the protein. Some just express differently than others.”
“I carry the Dredge?”
“If you didn’t, I’d have been surprised, but your blood confirmed it, yes. One of your parents was infected and they passed it to you.”
“But … my parents were normal. They weren’t Ragers. They weren’t bitten at all.”
“Inhalation of the protein takes a bit of time to incubate. A bite is immediate, concentrated inoculation.”
“What is … inoculation?”
“When the disease takes root inside your body.”
“Won’t I … infect you, if I leave this room?”
“Only if you’re bitten, or the organism has been activated. Otherwise, second generation do not generally transmit the organism airborne. Still, you’ll undergo daily blood tests to affirm that you’re not in a state of active infection. Can you spell decently?” he asks, wheeling a table alongside the bed, upon which a silver tray of instruments is laid out.
Beside the man on the bed is a second table, with a notebook and marker pen already set out. A second object sits beside them, with a red button and the words REC.
I give an emphatic nod, testing the mobility of my fingers inside the gloves, and take a seat at the table, pen at the ready. My mother taught a small group of us from the complex where I lived. Grammar, reading and writing. Although most didn’t bother to show every week, I was expected to complete lessons, regardless.
“Good. Press the red button on the recorder, and be sure to press it again when we’re finished. Let’s begin.” Behind him is a metal contraption, with a switch that he turns to flip.
“Doctor, is that why we’re here? Because we’re carriers?” I press the red button on the recorder in front of me, as he instructed, and wait for what’s next.
“Yes.”
He bends forward, examining a set of dials and numbers on the separate steel box that connects to tubing. Fluids slide down the long clear tubes embedded in the patient’s forearms, and within a minute, the man stops moving. His jaw goes slack, his black pupils suddenly vacant. The growling from before silences in what I think might be his death.
“Subject is a forty-year-old man. Comorbidities include heart disease, type-one diabetes, and Dredge infection. Subject had progressed quickly to stage four infection, with large plaques and significant damage to the frontal lobe. Photographs have been collected, demonstrating bilateral necrotic changes in his skin, dentition and eyes. Doctor Ericsson tells me that he received multiple injections and was subjected to …” He pauses, bracing his hand on the bed while the patient lies still, and clears his throat. “Thermotesting, nerve transplantation, and immunization experiments. Blood and cerebrospinal fluid have been collected. Potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide administered for organ harvesting.”
I don’t know the meaning of most of what he says, but within seconds, I’ve already begun to view the man differently, when only moments ago, I saw him as a monster. After hearing the summary of his illnesses, I come to understand, he was a victim like the rest of us.
For the next two hours, I sit in horror, as Doctor Falkenrath cuts the man open, removing a bloody, gelatinous organ that he hands to me on a tray, instructing me to place it in a jar with some solution. I stare down at the red glob of meat that once served a vital purpose for the man laid out on the gurney. My chest tickles, and I breathe hard through my nose, desperate not to throw up all over the table. Squinting my eyes, I convince myself to hold it together, and nabbing the pen beside me, I label it with the patient’s number and organ type, date and time, as the doctor asks. By the time we’re done, I know the man as 4368756. It’s a number I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
His body is covered with a sheet, while I stare down at various-sized jars and trays that hold parts of his insides, including his brain. I’ve never seen a human brain up close like this. Blood and some kind of mucus cling to the slabs of meat, some of them streaked in black and green, as if rotted.
“I want you to wheel him down to the morgue. You’ll take that elevator.” He nods toward the silver doors across from us. “Push the button on the outside. Then once inside, push the M button. It will open to the morgue, and you will leave him beside the others there. You’ll return by pressing the top button outside the elevator and the number two inside. The samples are to be refrigerated. You’ll find the refrigerators on the west wing. Try not to mix them with Doctor Ericsson’s. Please transcribe the notes we’ve recorded into the journal by day’s end.”
I offer an uncertain nod and clear my throat. “Doctor, some of the words you described … I’m not sure I can spell them right.”
“Do your best,” he says, walking past me toward a barrel set in the corner of the room. There, he discards his suit and mask, pressing a button that makes a suction sound, before exiting. And like a tornado has swept
through the room, I’m left in the aftermath of mutilation.
I stare down at the man, whose eyes are closed. The dead man. One I watched the doctor inject and cut apart.
Swallowing back the urge to upchuck, I stand up from the table and make my way to the bed. With shaky hands, I grip the bars above the patient’s now-empty skull and push him toward the silver doors, as instructed. Within seconds of pressing the button, the doors open, and I haul the bed inside. The box closes in around me, and when the doors shut, sealing me in, a moment of panic steals my breath. I lurch toward the door and pound on the silver panels, but they don’t budge.
“Doctor Falkenrath! Doctor Falkenrath!” The air inside the box thickens, invading my chest with a suffocating fear.
Beside the door is a series of buttons, one labeled M as he said. I press it, and the box jerks, knocking me back into the wall. Hands plastered to the panels at either side of me, I crouch low, my stomach sinking to my knees, until the box finally slows to a stop and the doors open.
Rising slowly, I peer through the opening at the beds propped against the wall. The line extends down the hallway, and I step outside of the silver box to see that it ends before a large door, with big red letters that read INCINERATOR.
Large blue barrels sit in a row beside the door. They’re too far away to read what they hold, but the oversized skull and crossbones, alongside what I’ve come to learn as a biohazard symbol, across the front of each one tells me to stay away.
The sound of grinding gears startles me enough to spin around, and I gasp to see the silver doors have closed. With a frantic push of the button on the wall, they open again, to the man still lying on the bed. I wheel him out and park him beside the others. On the cart in front of his lies a large mound covered in a white sheet. I peel it back, to the mangled face of a boy not much older than me.
My stomach lurches at the sight of him.
His skin is dirty, but shows no signs of sores. Bones protrude from his skin, telling me he starved. A gash across his forehead spills flesh from inside the wound, and I tug the sheet back over him, breathing deeply. I do the same to the man I wheeled down, offering a small bit of dignity.
A thunderous boom echoes from up ahead, jerking my muscles.
The doors at the end of the hall open to two men dressed in dirty white aprons that carry red splotches of what I guess is blood. One holds the door open, as the other wheels in the cart at the front of the line, before they return for the next. The door holder waves at me, but I don’t wave back. I can’t. Behind him are enormous iron fixtures that flicker orange. My attention flits from the room with the huge oven-like structures, to the boy lying on the bed, and suddenly I can’t breathe.
The smell when we arrived.
Ovens.
Smoke.
Burning flesh.
The darker haired one steps around the line of carts, hobbling toward me.
I stumble into a cart behind me, and twist to shuffle back toward the silver doors. Finger hammering the button, I will myself not to panic, but the doors don’t open. Oh, God. I don’t want be stuck down here. I don’t want to talk to these devils. Demons who burn the bodies of innocent people.
I push it again. And again. A half dozen times, until it lights up and the silver doors open. When the man reaches me, I tumble into the box and straighten to a stand, pressing myself flat against the wall.
His face is scarred, and a stretch of skin on his cheek is all puffy and shiny, like a patch has been sewn there.
“Everything all right?” His muffled voice carries a rasp, like a smoker’s.
I nod, watching him through the narrowing crack of the door, until he finally disappears. It’s then that the anxiety washes over me, and I crumple to the floor to cry.
An agonized scream echoes down the hallway, tearing me from the drowsy fall into sleep. There’s an animalistic quality to the sound that carries the unmistakable pitch of true human suffering. My eyes scan the vast darkness that surrounds me, and when I close and open them again, there is no distinction, aside from the flapping of my lashes against the tops of my cheekbones.
Pitch blackness is a frightening thing to begin, but here, it’s worse. A nightmare that doesn’t cease when the eyes are open.
The room I’ve been given is a box with no windows. At night, all of the electricity shuts down in this place, and we’re left adrift in this void. My father once told me that space was a vacuous darkness, silent and cold and devoid of life. At the time, I remember thinking how frightening and lonely such a thing would be.
Yet, here I am.
A second scream joins the first, and I cover my ears, tucking my head closer to my body, as I lay upon the cot. The tremble in my breaths is louder this way, and I focus on the pace of every inhalation, desperate not to think about my brother.
He’s always been afraid of the dark.
After all, darkness is when the monsters come out.
We’d hear them, sometimes, roaming the streets, their moans and the pounding on the doors. My father would keep watch by the window until morning, with his gun lying across his lap. As frightening as the moments were, those were the times I felt most safe. When he sat nearby. Always watching.
I pray my mother is right, that my father still watches me, because I think bad things happen here.
And by the sound of those screams, these nightmares are more terrifying than the monsters.
Chapter 6
Wren
The wall presses into my back, as I sit staring through the pillars of trees all around me. An hour must’ve passed, judging by the new position of the sun in the sky, beating through the tops of the branches. I bend forward and peer through the hole again, taking in the clicking sound of the Ragers teeth and the scuffle of their feet against the dirt.
No sign of Six, though.
In an hour, I’ve climbed the sycamore at least a dozen times, and when I push to climb again, a scream catches my attention, halting me in my tracks. Peering through the hole brings two soldiers into view, where they stand on the lookout towers with their guns aimed downward.
One shoots twice, and the screams die away.
Please don’t let it be Six.
An ache in my chest throbs while I count down the seconds from my last breath. Has he been caught sneaking around? Perhaps they mistook him for an escaped Rager? A thousand different scenarios race through my mind, all at once, while I try to envision the soldier’s target. My mind settles on the singular thought that whoever it was, it wasn’t Six.
It wasn’t. It can’t be, because no one that extraordinary should die in such an ordinary way.
I hardly know this boy, if at all, and yet, the thought of never seeing him again weighs heavy on my heart for some unknown reason.
I don’t dare climb the tree for fear the guards will see me. Instead, I wait, praying that, any moment, I’ll see the profile of a boy blocking my view of the Ragers.
Another hour passes.
A sting hits my arm, drawing my attention toward the scratches I’ve dug into my skin there. What started as a crawling sensation across my bones has become an obsession that I can’t leave alone now—particularly as the skin has dried and inflamed with each scrape of my nails.
The sun is farther along in the sky now, so I push to a stand and head back. On this side of the wall, we don’t have the Ragers to fear at nightfall. And aside from walking in complete blackness when the electricity goes down for the night, it’d be a fairly peaceful hike. But night is when the Mediators roam the streets, keeping watch. They enforce a strict curfew of eight o’clock, and anyone caught on the streets is said to suffer the consequences.
I’ve no idea what those consequences are, as I’ve never broken the rule. Not for their sake, but Papa’s. I’d never disappoint him that way.
There’s still plenty of light to make it home before he gets back, though. And like the day before, I left supper to simmer on the stove. All meals have to be cooked before the sun go
es down. The turbines to generate power at night require gasoline, and most of the natural resources died out years ago, so by day, we prepare the meals, and at night, we settle in for the darkness.
Even though I’m safe here, the night still gives me the creeps. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of my childhood to know why.
It’s nearly dusk when I walk the road toward our homestead. As I pass Mrs. Miller, she gathers up her laundry from her drying line and waves. She and her husband have two kids—both young boys, who frequently dress in black capes and play Legion out in the front yard. Nice people, who mostly keep to themselves, but they’d never survive outside of the walls. Naïve as mice in a snake pit. They don’t farm, or hunt, at all. Pretty much all their food comes from the market—or Papa, when he’s feeling generous.
She’d be the first to go, no doubt. My mind conjures images of those crisp white sheets she pulls from the line spattered in blood, while a Rager feeds on her throat.
Double-blinking the thought away, I wave back to her.
Our house is the farthest out, situated on a cul-de-sac of homes arranged in a pattern that reminds me of the geometry problems in my workbooks. A, B, C, D. All some variation of the Mediterranean Revival architecture, in a palette of pale colors that don’t lend much distinction. Papa could live in the fancy Villa side of the community, if he wanted, but he says he’d be selling his soul if he did, so we stay in Phase Two. The homes are nice, but they’re definitely not the mansions that house the other physicians here.
Two empty lots separate us on either side from the adjacent houses, but the style remains consistent with the others. A red-tiled roof, with two thick pillars, makes up the entrance, accented by tall arches and wrought iron, and teaming with potted medicinal plants. I snap off the tip of an aloe leaf and ooze the clear fluid over the scratches on my arm, instantly soothing the burn.
Sometimes, I visualize baby spiders, or a thousand ants crawling out of tiny holes in my skin, which is why I scratch so obsessively. I credit that to one of Papa’s medical books, in which I happened to stumble upon trypophobia. The images on the page somehow seared themselves into my head, and I’ve been horrifically disturbed by them ever since.