by Taja Kartio
RESTRICTED AREA. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
Rey greeted the men and they returned it, opening the door for us to pass. Another lobby but this one looked more like a computer related science fair. The crazy amount of scientist, lab-assistant, vet-looking people walking around were all doing about the same thing; scrolling computers that looked like they had nothing but lines and lines of codes written on them, looking through microscopes, huddled in groups over paperwork. Researching. I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little, my presence was more here for the well-being of these people's investigations, not my own health. I figured I would have been introduced to one of the many in here but again, Rey continued to walk past all the tables piled high with papers, microscopes, blood samples, and other means of equipment. I followed him into a back hallway and into a small checkup room.
"Have a seat if you want, our head man man will be with you shortly."
Then I was left alone, sitting on a cold cushioned chair. This room may have looked more friendly if it had more to it. There was the chair I was currently sitting on, a desk in the corner with another chair slid underneath it, and a cushioned exam chair in the opposite corner. After that, there was really nothing else. There weren't pictures of the body systems framed on the blank walls or even a skeleton model racked up beside the door. I would have called it a holding cell if it had bars.
There was a light knock and the door opened up not a moment later. A man let himself in. Rey followed behind him, shut the door, and leaned his back against the wall.
"Afternoon, sorry to keep you waiting."
The new figure was who I assumed was the Brinston that wanted to see me. He was rather tall, soaring even past Beckett's height perhaps. He had a body build like Alex did; small shoulders, lean. He had a deep set of sunken eyes, bleary and hid the exotic green tint. His lips were thin, they nearly matched the almost porcelain-like skin he had.
"Professor Blair Brinston. You can just call me Brinston," He smiled softly and held his hand out to me. Though cautious of my current situation, I met his fingertips and shaked his hand, "What can I call you?"
Not "What's your name" or "Who are you" but, "What can I call you". It's almost like he was asking what to label his new guinea pig. Either that or I was really overthinking it.
"Dani," My voice came out like a scratched DVD, "Dani Parker."
"Nice to have you, Dani," Brinston pulled the chair out from under the desk, and dropped the folder that had been in his other hand on top, "Now, let's get straight to the point. You're temperature read... significantly higher than an average flu-like sickness, let alone a human's normal body temp. Correct?"
I nodded.
"Do you remember what it was?"
He should have been told this. Right? "One hundred and six point nine degrees."
Brinston nodded slowly. It was a similar motion to what Jaime had earlier, "What was the name of the man who examined you?"
"Uh... Taylor."
"Corporal Taylor. Good man. Good soldier," Brinston opened the folder in front of him. There were several papers, none of the I could read from where I sat, "You remember if he found anything else?"
"Something about my-" I broke into a short fit of coughs, conveniently yacking on the gunk caught in the back of my throat, "-about my spit. I don't really..."
"Understand?" Brinston finished for me. I nodded, "There is a gland, the submandibular gland, that produces about 70 percent of the saliva in a human mouth. But yours is inflamed, uh... a bit swollen, and it's producing more sputum than an ordinary gland should be. I assume it's throbbing a bit in the back of your throat?"
I nodded again, though I just figured it was from the dryness, from all the coughing.
"Right. Salivary gland infections can cause high fevers, but not to the level of which you're currently sitting in right now," Brinston flipped a page in his folder and read a couple sentences before looking back up at me. He eyed my bandages, "According to Corporal Taylor's findings, it's not a bite. Yes?"
"Not a bite," I echoed, lightly rubbing my arm.
"You said it was glass?"
Nod.
"Do you mind telling me how? It's a pretty large gash for some glass."
Ya, it was a pretty large gash, because it was from a pretty large piece of glass. The first day the apocalypse found us, school was let out early. Actually, that's a lie. We weren't let out early, everyone just left in utter hysteria. Students, including one girl in my classroom, were the first Infected we'd all seen with our own eyes and I was lucky enough to escape the chaotic hallways and the even more turbulent parking lot. I made it home in one piece, at least I made it into the driveway. I had started making my way to the front door of my home when one of my neighbors, now an Infected, attacked me. Long story short, our struggle found it's way through my front door, into the living room, and in my scramble to stop its snapping jaws from locking onto my bare skin, I was thrown onto the glass coffee table in the middle of my living room. What was interesting about the entire scenario now that I was recalling the events, is that the Infected wasn't necessarily trying to make me a meal. It had been playing with me. It had thrown me around that living room like a ragdoll, kicked me and beat me like a school bully. It tried to bite me every second but always made time to toy with me. My landing on that coffee table wasn't the reason I had glass shard in my arm, it was the Infected that took advantage of my temporary dizziness from the landing. It picked up a fragment of intact glass the size of both my hands put together and plunged it through my forearm. The Infected then actually began to pull it down, through my skin even deeper like it was just trying to get me to bleed out like a stuck pig. My brothers both came home from whatever they were out doing during this and were the reason I still had warm blood pumping through my system. Beckett clotted the bleeding and wrapped me up and Kale took down the Infected.
My words strung out in sloppy chunks but Brinston was patient with me, he hung onto every word and almost seemed to fall into a trance. Maybe he had just been imagining my story in his head. When I finished he was quiet for a minute. He glanced down at the papers in his folder once again before speaking.
"Was that the only encounter you've had with the, as you call them, Infected?"
I shook my head, "No. We were... run out of our home... by a group of them."
"Tell me about that."
I did so, starting with the night before during the storm to the moment Kale drove the suburban out of the garage and onto the road.
Once again, Brinston was silent. This time he didn't confide with his papers and he instead leaned back in his chair. He sat for some time, not necessarily looking at me but his mind was elsewhere.
"I have to admit that your interactions with the Infected are quite deplorable."
I wasn't quite sure how to take that.
Brinston leaned back forward and flipped through his papers again, "There has to be something missing," He muttered.
"What do you mean?" I croaked.
Brinston either ignored me or failed to hear me. He continued to read the files over and over again. What could possibly be missing? I told him everything that'd happened to me. What more did he expect?
The professor suddenly shut the folder altogether and stood, motioning for me to follow, "Come with me."
Rey opened the door for the both of us and followed as Brinston led me back out into the open area with hustling doctors and scientists. He walked the perimeter to a large table in the back, farthest away from the front doors. He walked straight up to a large computer monitor, the size a nicely sized flat screen TV.
"You know, of course, the epidemic that has strung across the planet. Scientists across the world have weighed in on the subject of a real-world scenario such as this and it truly all comes down to one particular source, rabies," Brinston typed a few words on the keyboard and the screen played videos, the same kind on social media and on the news. Once ordinary people now turned.
"Rabies?" I que
stioned, "But that's-"
"Not entirely unrealistic. When you think of rabies, it's probably an image of Cujo in the back your mind or some other animal with a foaming mouth. I can't blame you, but rabies is the most potent competitor for this level of savagery," Brinston discarded the video on the computer monitor and pulled up two side by side documents. They kind of looked like medical records. One was labeled Gloom, Karla and the other was labeled Z-Virus, Subject 1, "On the left is Karla Gloom, a 42 year old white female who was tested positive with rabies. Symptoms included anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, agitation, fever, hypersalivation, difficulty swallowing, delirium, psychosis. Gloom was bitten by a rabid dog two weeks prior to her symptoms. She was strapped to a hospital bed after attacking three of her neighbors, who described her as hostile and 'bitey', and died a week later due to the disease. On the right is Subject 1, the first known human being to have contracted the zombie virus, a name we've given called the 'Z-Virus’. Symptoms were near exact. Subject 1 had also been bitten by a dog close to two weeks prior and died a week after the previously stated symptoms. Yet, Subject 1 didn't stay dead, and instead came back after only a few short hours with no pulse. Two identical cases with two very different outcomes. A human with rabies can be temporarily reprogrammed, just as Miss Gloom was, and they can be controlled to bite other humans in an effort to spread the disease. What rabies doesn't do however, is keep the host alive. It's extremely rare for someone to survive, let alone come back from the dead, so somehow, in someway, the virus itself must have evolved. The virus must have mutated."
I sent a confused look. I had to admit I wasn't the biggest science junky in school.
"Now mind you, the very idea of a virus mutating isn't really unheard of but everyone... myself, the people in this room, all other doctors and scientists and researchers around the world trying to find an antidote to this madness cannot figure out how to even fight it, let alone find the cause of its mutation. It's resistant to everything. Hot and cold temperatures and climates, it defies any and all antivirals used against it."
He deleted Karla Gloom's record from the screen, kept Subject 1's record on the screen, and added four more records. Z-Virus, Subject R32. Z-Virus, Subject U15. Z-Virus, Subject N65. Z-Virus, Subject D98.
"Subject 1 was the first case of it's kind, and was discovered 127 days ago, a little over four months, in Southern Africa. The spread of it was so fast, no one, not military, scientists, doctors, or the people themselves could keep up with it. Every possible research facility was ordered to drop everything they were currently working on and work together to develop an antivirus, anything that could slow down the spread of the disease and potentially cure it. The best way to do this was to gather a few of those who had been in fact, bitten, but not yet a zombie. All of these subjects experienced the same symptoms and Subject 1 and Karla Gloom, but unlike Subject 1 and Karla Gloom, they only experienced these symptoms for less than two days before death and returned to the living three or four hours later. The virus is continuing to rapidly mutate, like the genetics are reassembling," Brinston inhaled deeply, "I've never seen anything like it."
I found it interesting that Brinston was telling me as much as he was. Some of this, I would think, should have been classified from someone like me, "So what exactly do I have to do with any of this?"
He switched his eyes from the screen to me for a moment. Staring at my sickly figure like he couldn't quite find the right words to describe what he wanted to say. He then turned back to the screen, "All the subjects we've studied in this particular facility had the same symptoms before and after death. You are showing a few symptoms of the before and the after. Something we haven't seen yet. Before, including fever, hyper salivation, trouble swallowing. After, includes the temperature of your fever. The body temperatures of all those after turning are risen to a level a regular human cannot reach and continue to stand on two feet. You however, only look and I assume feel as though you only have a regular feeling fever, yes?"
I nodded but it was far-fetched, "How... is that possible?"
Brinston turned away from the monitor again and returned heavy eyes on me, "By what you've told me and by what Taylor examined on your arm there, you haven't been bitten. By our records, the only transmission of contact is through the zombie's saliva. How can you be alive right now, exhibiting the temperature level you have and without a bite? That is what I'm trying to figure out. You are the first person that we've encountered to be in this situation."
My body temperature was the same as an Infected. I wasn't sure what that meant, and clearly Brinston didn't either. I was obviously far from healthy, but I wasn't entirely one of those creatures out there either. I was stuck in a grey area and nobody knew what it was, "So... what now?"
Brinston rolled his head along his shoulders, arms crossed. I was sure I already knew the answer to my question but it wasn't my ideal sanctuary in the quarantine zone, "For the sake of research, I'm going to have to ask you to stay here and let us work with you. We need to figure out how your body is coping, we need to figure out why. For the sake of all humanity.”
I was sure I didn't get much of a choice. I asked about my brothers but Brinston was already in his head. I was on my own here. I figured the experimentation, testing, or whatever they were going to do with me would start as soon as possible, but I didn't think that as soon as possible meant at that very second.
One moment, I had just learned that I was bearing a quality of an Infected and the next, something sharp was jabbed into my arm. A syringe. My head immediately felt like it weighed a ton and a dreary blackness crept into the corners of my vision.
From there, my entire world went dark.
Seven
A sharp wave of searing pain shot through my body and my eyes snapped opened to a blinding, sweltering light. It was like the sun itself was right above my face. My breaths were short, the back of my throat wouldn't allow hardly any passage. I found myself nearly gasping for air to fill my lungs with, each inhale was more painful than the last. A voice floated in the air but I couldn't catch the words. It was low resolution, like bad sound quality.
My eyelids struggled to stay open, but I didn't have the strength to keep myself from falling back into a walling darkness.
Eight
Another acute dose of pain ran through my body. Again, my eyes opened up to a florid brightness.
"Dani..."
The voice filled my ear but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't. My back was constricted on a hard surface, the same went with my wrists, ankles, and even my head. Panic rose. Why can't I move?
Confusion and uncertainty rose, a throbbing pain swelled in my brain. The bright light that was shined in my face didn't help much either.
"Dani," The voice was much clearer now. It sounded... actually it sounded really annoyed. It was completely monotone. I could almost visualize a set of eyes rolling along with the words, "For the hundredth time, I need you to calm down. You're going to hurt yourself."
Turning my head, a man was standing a couple feet away from me. He wore a white mask over his nose and mouth, his bored eyes were staring into mine. Next to him, another man stood. He wore the same mask but he held something in his hand, it was small... it kind of looked like a... was it a taser?
Did he shock me awake?
"I'm going to hurt myself?" I was grateful my words were solid. Tired venom laced in my low growl. Neither of the men looked guilty.
"You've been in and out for the last two weeks. Brinston is starting to get impatient," The first man said.
"No, you're getting impatient," This time a woman's voice rung in my ears, "Are you two out of your fucking mind? You could have damaged her nervous system! You could have sent her into a cardiac arrest! You-you could have-"
"Jesus, Kate. Calm down. It's on one of the lowest voltage settings. She's fine. We just needed to give her a little jolt to wake her up."
Kate huffed, "That doesn't
make it okay!"
There was a short pause, "Brinston is still getting impatient."
"We all are, but this method of getting her conscious won't make the process any faster."
"She's awake, isn't she?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the one who must have been 'Kate'. She shook her head, "This is just all a big waste of time. We're doing nothing but ripping her body apart and letting her rot on a table."
"Well we've made some progress. You know research, especially for something as big as this, doesn't come quickly."
Kate lifted her head. Her brows raised significantly, like the man's comment was the biggest load of bullshit she'd ever heard, "Yet, you're shocking her with a taser because she wasn't conscious," There was no reply, so Kate continued, "She's been on this table for two fucking weeks, Sam. We're killing her, and all because of Brinston's outrageous theories."
Two weeks?!
"Kate, she threw James across the room. I think leaving her on the table is just fine!"
My eyes felt heavy again. I could feel the lids beginning to shut.
"Uh, you guys do realize she's still awake right now, right? She can hear you,” The man, the one who was still holding the taser, said quickly.
Mason took a step forward, "Not for long. She's already losing consciousness again."
"Don't even think about using that taser again. We don't need any more damage to her bo..."
Nine
My head lolled onto my shoulder the moment the strap across my forehead came loose. My neck was weak twig and my head had the weight of a bowling ball.