People were caterwauling like they were being attacked in all sorts of dreadful ways. John drew the covers up to his chin and shivered like a child as his mind conjured up images of a thousand tortures he was sure the other patients were being subjected to.
During this there were fistfights. He’d lived what he would call a “hardy” life and knew a fight when he heard one. These battles occurred sporadically; one minute there would be only the crazy shouting and then in the next, there’d be crashes and thumps and the sound of running feet.
Get his leg!
Tie him down.
Fuck! He bit me!
During a lull in the commotion, John decided he’d had enough. If there was a cure, something he was beginning to doubt, he didn’t think it was worth all of this. On tiptoes he went to the door and peeked out only to see a team of nurses and security men heading his way. Quick as he could, he jumped back in bed and pretended to watch the TV.
“Hello Mr. Burke,” Lacy Freeman greeted him. Behind her biomask, her eyes crinkled at the edges, perhaps in a smile, perhaps in a grimace. “We need to add a medicine to your IV. It’s for the trial.”
If it’s jes medicine, then why do y’all need two other nurses and two goons to help? John thought to himself. The men took positions on either side of his bed. They were burly, while John was feeling weak as a rat. He didn’t resist.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, just more medicine,” Lacy assured. “It’ll help you sleep.”
John didn’t want to sleep. It was the friggin’ middle of the day. He watched the medicine drip into his arm and within a minute, the idea of a nap sounded very appealing. He started to close his eyes and that was when the men came at him.
They grabbed him by his flailing wrists and strapped him to the bed. The straps were padded and secured with Velcro. He strained against them but in vain. “What y’all gonna to do to me?”
“Nothing, Mr. Burke,” Lacy said. “The restraints are for our protection as well as yours.”
“What do y'all mean your protection? I won’t hurt any of y'alls, I swear to Christ I won’t.”
“Just try to sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
There was no need to try to sleep, it was trying not to sleep that was the issue. The Diazepam made him groggy and his eyelids kept trying to drop over his eyes like a window shade that wouldn’t stay up. At one point he blinked so slowly that by the time he forced his eyes back open, the room was empty.
“I cain’t do this,” he said, his voice sounding like some sort of cartoon creature speaking from beneath a lake or a pond or some such. He tried to focus on the IV. It had to come out. He tried twice to get at it before he realized that his hands were tied down. His feet weren’t, however.
With a groan he tried to swing his knees up to his chest—they flopped back down. A second attempt was just as useless. He lay back, hearing the phlegm rattle in his chest with each wheezy breath. Before he knew it his eyes began to droop again.
"No," he whispered. He couldn't allow himself to rest. With barely focused eyes he looked at the IV sticking out of the crook of his arm. Was it really just Diazepam trickling into his veins, or was something more nefarious mixed in as well? Something that would turn him crazy or rabid like the others? "That ain't gonna be me. Fuck that."
He bent his left leg at the knee, put his right foot across it, and then heaved his lower body up, resting his weight on his shoulders and the back of his neck. In this position he could just reach the IV tubing as it came out of his arm with his toes. It took two tries to rip the catheter out of his skin.
He didn't feel any pain.
Even before his legs flopped back down, he had slipped into unconsciousness. It was an hour before he came too, blinking slowly up at the ceiling and wondering where he was. It was only when he tried sitting up that he remembered how he'd been bound and drugged. "Oh right," he mumbled.
For a few seconds he laid there collecting his wits, listening to the rest of the hospital, expecting to hear fresh screams cracking the air, however the second floor was eerily quiet. He knew it wasn't because everyone had suddenly gotten better. "They's jes drugged outta they minds."
Without the Diazepam clogging his thinking, John's fear grew into something close on paranoia. There was only one reason he knew of why a large group of people would be drugged like that and tied to their beds: they were being experimented on.
"Not me," he whispered. "I'm not gonna be anyone's fuck-all guinea-pig."
Again he laid his right foot across his left knee. This time he didn't even have to heave himself up to get at the velcro straps around his wrists--he simply had to torque his torso as far as he could to the left. His back cracked and he felt something pull in his abdomen, but he got his toes on the velcro. After six tries he was just able to grip the velcro, monkey-style, and pull it up.
One hand freed the other and in seconds he was out of bed and changing into his street clothes. When he was dressed he went to the door and cracked it, just in time to see a group of nurses enter a room two doors down. Opening the door further, he peeked out and saw one of the guards who had tied him down. He was leaning over a counter at the nurse's station chatting with someone John couldn't see.
John leaned back into his room and examined his choices. Stay and get poked, prodded, and in all likelihood, probed, or run away, and gamble on getting caught. Running was a bad bet. The guard was barely thirty feet away; surely he would see John out of the corner of his eye. And yet staying put was just plain dumb as hell.
He put his eye back to the crack of the door--the coast was clear. Without looking back, he left his room and fast-walked toward the exit at the near end of the hall. He just knew that at any moment the guard would spot him and there'd be a chase, which his weak lungs wouldn't be able to endure. He'd be dragged kicking and screaming back into his bed where they'd tie him down tighter than before in order to do their thing, whatever it was, on him.
The thought made him walk funny like he was on the verge of crapping himself.
He made it to the stairwell door and went through without being seen. From there his movements weren't slowed by hesitation. He raced down the stairs only to be brought up short at the bottom. The exit had a bar across it with the warning: Emergency exit only. Alarm will sound.
John was back to being trapped.
3
Thuy rubbed her eyes and dropped the last printout onto the stack with all the rest. "There's nothing in their blood," she whispered. They had checked for practically every toxin and poison known to man: Anthrax, E-coli, Ebola, Marburg, rattlesnake venom, botulinum, cyanotoxins, hemotoxins...the list was very long. "I don't see how it's possible that nothing is showing up."
"Then it's the Fusarium," Riggs stated. "The Com-cells are the only thing that keeps coming up, the only thing they all have in common. Thuy, it's time to start treating with antifungals."
"No," she grunted, before running her hands into the silk of her hair and grabbing the roots like she wanted to yank them out. "Kip won't allow it."
"Rothchild might."
"I doubt it. Stopping the treatment is a guarantee his daughter will be dead in a month. It's true for all of them."
Riggs was undeterred. "You know if someone dies, we might be looking at prison time."
"Again, I doubt it. We have their permission in writing to treat them and we have followed every rule and procedure. They knew there'd be risks going in."
"Yeah well that all sounded ok back when we weren't killing them, now I'm starting to think it's not good enough. We may not be 'real' doctors but we're still human. Suffering has to come into our calculations at some point. I think it's our duty to end the trial."
"No!" Thuy snapped. Fifteen scientists looked up from their work to watch the spectacle. Thuy didn't care. "First they aren't suffering. They're sedated, remember? And second they are doomed no matter what. If they die, maybe we can learn something from their deaths."
Ri
ggs sneered, "That's cold. And if that's where we're at then I wash my hands of all of this." Next to him the phone began to ring. He shook his head at it. "You can get your own calls."
Thuy reached out a shaking hand and slowly brought the phone to her ear, dreading what she was going to hear next. "Yes?"
"It's Wilson down on two. I'm afraid there's an issue. Lorry is sick, very likely infected with whatever disease the patients have. He was spat on by one of the prisoners about an hour ago. He's been complaining of a headache but now it's gone over to a migraine. We started him on antifungals but it's done nothing to slow the progression of the disease."
"Disease? This isn't a disease," Thuy said. "Fusarium is a mycotoxin; it's a byproduct of a fungi, not a fungus itself. It can't replicate on its own. He must have been exposed to the Com-cells in another manner."
"No. I've been with him all day and he hasn't broken protocol once. His blood work should show us something. If you'll send someone down here in full gear..."
Three lines etched across Thuy's brow. "Why can't you send it up? What's wrong?" The real question was: what else is wrong? Thuy almost didn't want to know.
"Oh, sorry, we have a lot going on down here. The CDC regulations state we have to quarantine in these situations."
Thuy lowered her voice and put her hand over the phone so no one but Riggs could hear her conversation. "Dr. Wilson, please. We need to keep the CDC out of this. You're only guessing that Lorry was infected through the transfer of bodily fluids. Right now we don't have enough information to go to them with."
"The fact that we don't have information is exactly the reason I called the CDC five minutes ago." Wilson paused as Thuy began to sputter. When she went on too long without gaining any coherence he spoke over her, "Look, either the patients are contagious in some manner or the Com-cells are far more persistent than we've thought possible, either way we have to close this ward off. The entire hospital is on a seventy-two hour lock down. We also have to quarantine the Rothchild's home."
Thuy's grip on the phone grew so tight it began to shake. The CDC cared nothing about cancer or cures. They would trample all over the trial trying to contain a threat that really hadn't showed itself yet. Lorry could've been infected any number of ways and even if he had gotten it from the prisoner's spit, that didn't mean anyone else was in danger--as long as they took better precautions. "We're going to be hamstrung now, Wilson. You know that, right? You just made everything ten times harder. How are we supposed to send someone down to get the blood work when we're quarantined? You know each floor is supposed to be self-contained."
"I don't know. Maybe we can decontaminate the elevator and use it like a dumb waiter."
"No, that would break all sorts of CDC rules." They had so many rules it hurt her head to even think about them all. "The elevator has to be parked down on one. We're going to have to use the stairs. My team will use the south stairs, you can use the central. It'll keep us as separated as possible and still allow us to transfer samples. What else did the CDC demand?" she asked.
"That we are to begin treating the patients with antifungals and wide spectrum antibiotics. And of course the staff is to begin a prophylactic regimen as well. That's it. I'm sure it won't be that bad. We sit tight for a day or two, prove that we're maintaining a secure quarantine and they'll leave us alone. Speaking of which, where’s Deckard? He has to be brought up to speed. If there are any leaks in the quarantine I’m sure the CDC will make our lives hell..."
As if on cue an alarm started braying from deep in the building. Thuy knew exactly what the sound was. Back when the idea of a CDC quarantine had been an academic matter, she had tested the door alarms as part of her inspection checklist.
"Someone just left the building!" she yelled into the phone. "Get a head count and call me back." She slammed the phone down and then swept her gaze across the glass walled labs: fifteen nervous scientists stared back. "No one leave!" she yelled, before running down the main hall to the BSL-4 labs. In one Stephanie Glowitz sat holding Chuck Singleton's hand. In the other Deck and his second in command stood like statues listening to the alarm. Between them, Anna was puffy-eyed and teary.
Thuy rammed open the door with her shoulder. "Deck, we're under quarantine. No one can leave, but...but someone just did. That alarm means one of the emergency exits just opened."
The word quarantine blindsided him and he was slower to respond that usual. "Quarantine? Why on earth..." as her brows came down, he stopped. "I'll call the perimeter guards. We'll secure the fence line."
Just as he began dialing his cell, another phone began ringing up front. There was a stunned silence reigning over the fourth floor and the sound of the phone jangled the nerves of everyone within earshot. It rang twice, just long enough for the scientists to hold their breaths.
"Thuy!" Riggs yelled from the front. "It was a patient named Burke who escaped."
She paused, half in the corridor and half out, her mind bringing up an image of John Burke: southern white trash, a bare step up from a hillbilly caricature. She remembered his willingness to give up the cure to make sure his daughter would be properly looked after. She stuck her head back into the lab.
"Deck, have someone go up to the Rothchild's. Our escapee is John Burke. His daughter is staying up at the big house."
He began barking orders into his phone, after which came a tense thirty minutes as every guard, on duty and off, searched the grounds.
John Burke was nowhere to be found--the quarantine had failed already.
4
The last drip of his Diazepam had leaked into Von Braun's veins twenty minutes before, and now, in a haze of fading drugs and building rage, he climbed his way back into the highest form of consciousness he could manage.
He stared around the room. It was day and the lights of the room burned brightly, however Von Braun could barely make out the far wall. For him the world was filled with shadows. It took him seconds to focus on any one thing.
He saw the prisoner next to him sleeping under the effects of a full Diazepam drip. In the next bed over Herman was gnashing his teeth and growling. The portly, hairy little man had transformed into a beast: his eyes were black and his skin was mottled and blotched with something inky. Herman's IV was empty and had been for some time. Very dark blood had started backing into the line.
Von Braun saw and understood. Too much drugs in his system and he would sleep. Not enough drugs and he would be a monster. Just the right amount of drugs and he could think--sort of. His mind was filled with a deadly combination of hate and paranoia. He concluded that this wasn't a drug trial at all. They were doing things to him and the other prisoners--experiments his mind whispered. Yes, that was it! They were conducting tests like he was a lab rat.
With a snarl he yanked as hard as he could on his manacles, accomplishing nothing but causing the steel to bite harder into his wrists. "Son of a bitch! Let me out of here! You can't do this to me!" He ranted until a nurse came in with a fresh IV bag. Just the sight of it sent shivers down his back.
"Give it to him," Von Braun said, jerking his head toward Herman. "He needs it more than I do."
The nurse was different, or rather her garb had changed. When they had begun the first treatment the nurses were dressed like they were getting ready to operate with gowns and gloves and masks. This nurse wore a boxy hood with a plastic shield across the face and her gown was taped at the wrists above her gloves and at the ankles above her boots.
"What's wrong?" he asked. He had trouble understanding the outfit except that he knew it meant trouble or danger.
"Nothing," she said as she went to Herman's bed. "Just a precaution."
A precaution against what? His mind filled in the sinister answer: Germs! That was what the experiments were all about. They were being fed germs through the tubes; germs that would turn them into monsters.
When she was done hooking up the new bag, the nurse assured Von Braun: "I'll be right back with your medicine," before swe
eping out of the room. He tried to fake a smile until the door shut and then he pulled as hard as he could on his cuffs once again. It was metal on metal and they didn't budge. The only way out was to get a hold of a key and the only way to get the key was for someone to get it for him.
A plan wormed its way through his haze-filled brain, however the nurse was gone for so long that his rage nearly put a halt to the plan before it began. Every minute that passed seemed to fuel his desire to kill and it was by the barest margins that he forced himself not to snarl at her as she came in. Instead he held himself so rigid that his manacles clinked against the rail.
She either couldn’t hear the clinking or ignored it as she hooked up his IV. When she was finished he said, "The rail feels loose. Like I can break it."
In order to see through the little plastic window of her hood, the nurse had to make exaggerated motions. When she looked down at the rail, she bent her neck far over and thus did not see Von Braun's foot as he lashed out in a hard kick. His shinbone struck her on the back of the head, making a sound like two hunks of wood being knocked together. Her knees buckled and she fell into the side of the bed before slipping to the floor.
Von Braun grinned. The nurse's mask was in his left hand. His manacles were far sturdier than any hospital restraint, however they also allowed for a lot more freedom of movement. He had snagged the mask from her face as she slid down.
"Now, to make you become like me," he whispered before hocking up a nasty, black hunk of snot. He spat it on her face and then sat back, feeling the drug begin to mellow out his rage.
A few minutes later, the nurse slowly came awake, blinking her eyes, grimacing and touching the back of her head. It was some seconds before she remembered the plastic hood that should have been over her head. "Oh my God," she cried.
"Looking for this?" Von Braun asked. She stood, using the wall for support, but she didn't reach for the hood. "You a gambling kind of lady? I ask because while you were sleeping I spat in your face."
War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) Page 13