by Kirk Withrow
As the leader of the security team, Eddie debriefed first. He was in no mood for conversation, and quite frankly, felt as though he had one foot squarely in the grave with the other not far behind. The well-composed man noticed as much and asked, “Feeling okay, Mr. Romero?”
The man yawned quietly as he waited for the mercenary’s response. Just as Eddie was about to tell him that he was, in fact, feeling a little under the weather, he was struck by the uncontrollable urge to cough. A small hack escaped his lungs before he could bring his hands up to cover his mouth. Propelled by the high-velocity expulsion of air, thousands of invisible droplets of sputum sprayed into the cramped confines of the small utility building.
“Sorry about that, I think I’ve come down with a bit of a cold, Mr…?” Eddie said, as he brought one hand up to his mouth and held the other out in a placating gesture.
“My name is not important, Mr. Romero,” the man replied in an icy tone. “Is there anything else of significance that you have not previously communicated in your reports?”
Eddie shook his head. He dared not speak for fear of inciting another coughing spell. Something about the way the man eyed him was unnerving, and Eddie wanted to get out of the little room as soon as possible. The man fixed him with hard, unreadable eyes that made him want to look away, but he did not. So intense was his gaze that Eddie felt as though the man were somehow reading his mind.
After a few seconds that seemed to drag on for an eternity, the man said, “Very well, Mr. Romero. You’re free to leave if you have no further questions or comments. I suggest you get some rest…and maybe see a doctor.”
Despite the fact that Eddie felt like shit, he had many burning questions roiling around inside him. While in the field, he had thought about how he would ask them all upon his return. Realizing this was likely his one and only opportunity, Eddie said, “I do have a few questions, actually.”
The intense man maintained his cold stare as Eddie continued, “You’ve mentioned your father several times now. Who was he? And what is United Lumber Corporation really up to?”
Something dark flickered in the man’s eyes for the briefest of moments before he replied. “I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. Romero. The mission statement written by my father, Mr. Handler, was included with your original contract. Like everyone else, we are trying to rebuild, and we see the opportunity to help shape the world into something better than it was.”
Although the man’s answer failed to move Eddie any closer to the truth behind his mission in Brazil, he felt far too ill to press the issue any further. He imagined the company man could likely duck and dodge questions like these for hours on end. The chills beginning the rack his body made him certain he was coming down with a high fever. He ached all over, and the need to cough full and deep was becoming a constant, immitigable force.
When Eddie didn’t comment, the man asked, “Anything else, Mr. Romero?”
Eddie shook his head once again before standing and heading for the door. He was relieved when he stepped into the cool night air. Although it was far from cold, a chill rippled through his body, causing his teeth to chatter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sick, and he cursed the godforsaken jungle and all the maladies it contained.
Right on time, Rebecca pulled up to the curb. Eddie tossed his gear into the trunk and climbed into the car. He turned and put on the most reassuring smile he could muster, which he hoped looked a hell of a lot better than he felt.
“Hey, babe. It’s so good to see you,” he said before giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“After three months, that’s all I get,” Rebecca asked incredulously. “You don’t look so hot, Eddie. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. It was just a rough flight, that’s all; you know how that goes. I’m sure it’ll pass in an hour or so. We should get going if we want to make it to the show on time,” Eddie said, trying to keep his face in the shadows in hopes of convincing Rebecca he was in better shape than he was. They had planned to go this concert long before he signed the security contract, and the last thing he wanted was for his job to get in the way of that now.
After a pause, she said, “Okay, but promise me that if you’re not feeling better in the morning, you’ll go see the doctor. I’m worried about you, Eddie.”
“I will, sweetie. I promise. I’ll be fine, you’ll see. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just go have a good time,” Eddie said.
Although Rebecca still looked concerned, she put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. As expected, the venue was packed when they arrived. Despite feeling as though he had been eaten by a bear and shit off a cliff, Eddie pushed through the throng of people before disappearing into the crowd with Rebecca. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he thought he saw quite a few concerned looks directed toward him as he did.
In defiance of his prediction, Eddie’s symptoms progressed relentlessly throughout the evening. As it was, the wail of electric guitars and the thumping of the drums masked his near constant coughing. By the end of the show, everyone in attendance was tired and sweating, making them virtually indistinguishable from Eddie. Unlike the other concertgoers, however, Eddie’s perspiration was not due to hours of dancing to the music.
Rebecca was not overly concerned when Eddie slept in the following morning. The night before had been exhausting for her, so she could only imagine how he felt. On top of that, she couldn’t fathom the toll the last three months had taken on him. When she checked on him just after noon, she found him wrapped in a soaking wet sheet. His temperature soared, and beads of sweat streamed down his face in thick, rivulets. Despite shaking him vigorously, he barely roused. Panicked, she called the paramedics, and he was rushed to the emergency room.
Although she had no frame of reference for it, Rebecca thought the waiting room seemed quite crowded. Given Eddie’s condition, it didn’t take long for him to be whisked off to one of the emergency department’s many treatment rooms. The room held two other people due to the unusually high patient volume, so the nurse politely requested that Rebecca remain in the waiting room. Reluctantly, she did as she was asked.
Wringing her hands in worry, Rebecca waited anxiously for an update on Eddie’s condition. Despite her efforts to get the attention of one of the many doctors and nurses racing around the emergency room, no one so much as looked in her direction. Although she didn’t know why, everyone seemed pushed to the point of panic. The situation had steadily deteriorated since their arrival nearly three hours ago, with sick people now occupying nearly every conceivable surface. Some were even laid out on the floor. Pale, bleary-eyed, and sweating, every one of them looked nearly as bad as Eddie had when she’d last seen him. The endless coughing of so many people in such close quarters overlapped to form a single continuous sound that drowned out nearly everything else.
What the hell is happening? I have to check on Eddie.
When there was nowhere left to stand in the waiting room and Rebecca’s nerves had endured as much as they could, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Trailing behind a pair of haggard paramedics pushing another coughing patient on a stretcher, she slipped into the emergency department’s treatment area. Inside was a beehive of activity. Everywhere she looked, people raced from place to place. Rebecca called to a nurse as she sped past.
“Excuse me. I’m trying to locate a patient; can you help me?” she asked.
When the nurse gave her a confused look, she added, “Is this place always so chaotic?”
The nurse huffed and said, “Chaotic, yes, but not like this. This is worse than the height of flu season!”
The woman was gone before Rebecca could repeat her request for help. Rebecca wandered through the labyrinth of halls, which were crammed so full of patients that she thought she might not make it through in some spots. When she reached the room she thought was Eddie’s, she found only two female patients, both gravely ill. She turned in a slow rotation, noting that every hall and room looked vir
tually identical. The overwhelming sights and sounds swept over her like a wave, and she felt as though the walls were caving in upon her.
“CODE BLUE, RADIOLOGY BAY ONE. CODE BLUE, RADIOLOGY BAY ONE,” an authoritative voice boomed over the hospital’s PA system.
“Excuse me, miss! Coming through!” a doctor yelled as he shoved past her brusquely.
Rebecca’s gaze followed the doctor as he disappeared behind a mass of people gathered around a large-screen television. The female reporter on the broadcast looked worried, as did the burgeoning crowd that stood gaping at the display. Still in a daze, she moved toward them. When she came within earshot of the television, she began to hear snippets of the news report.
A flu-like illness. Multiple cases. Unknown origin. Highly contagious.
These were but a few of the phrases she heard.
Before Rebecca could process the information, she caught sight of the doctor that had rushed past her. He was amidst another crowd, this one made up of doctors and nurses all hunched over a gurney near the end of the hall. She couldn’t see what had the medical personnel working at such a harried pace until everyone took a step back simultaneously.
“CLEAR!” the doctor said loudly.
Thoomp.
Two hundred pounds of dead weight bucked grotesquely under the paddles. The continuous beeping sound faltered, giving way to several staccato chirps that quickly morphed into a single high-pitched tone once again. Feeling no pulse, the doctors resumed their resuscitative efforts.
“Charging. Pause CPR,” the doctor said authoritatively. “Any pulse?”
The nurse with two fingers pressed against the patient’s carotid artery shook her head gravely.
“Step back. Get ready for the second shock,” the doctor added.
“Wait! I think he’s moving,” an orderly said.
The nurse adjusted her hand to ensure that her fingers weren’t lying to her. Still, she felt nothing to convince her that any blood was coursing through the man’s circulatory system. This time, however, the muscles on the side of his neck quivered unnaturally, as though awakened from a long nap before they were quite ready to work again. The nurse, along with the other medical personnel, stared in confusion, wondering if the man might be having a seizure.
Despite the din of the increasingly agitated crowd, Rebecca’s shrill cry seemed capable of shattering every window within earshot. Ten yards away, the man she’d hoped to marry was engaged in the fiercest battle of his life. Ten yards away was Eddie Romero.
* * *
The man stared blankly at the news reporter who was saying the same thing for what seemed like the hundredth time. At least, he thought it was the same thing; it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus as the day progressed. A chirp sounded somewhere in the vicinity, like a pesky insect refusing to stop buzzing in his ear. Slowly, recognition spread across his face, and he reached for his cell phone.
“Uh, hello,” the man said with a shaky voice that was wholly uncharacteristic. When he spoke, it was always with an air of authority that left no doubt as to who was in charge.
“Sir, I have the information you requested,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
The man hadn’t been out of his lavish home in the last twenty-four hours; he simply felt too bad. It had begun with aches and chills that were soon joined by a fever and an unrelenting cough. He had been following the news about an outbreak of a flu-like disease in the area with keen interest. According to the broadcasts, local hospitals and medical services were being overwhelmed, and the number of cases was continuing to increase at an alarming rate. When he thought about how he could have contracted such an infection, only one thing came to mind. A wave of apprehension swept over him as he recalled several members of the security team he debriefed two days ago being a little “under the weather.”
When the first deaths due to the strange sickness were reported, the man’s apprehension edged toward outright trepidation. He wasn’t getting better, so he made a few calls in hopes of getting the inside scoop on the situation. Now, he sat wide-eyed listening to the person on the other end of the line. As he did, his face went instantly pale.
In a ghostly voice that rattled thickly with the phlegm of his infection, he said, “Romero.”
Like a key lining up all the pins of a lock, that one word seemed to click everything into place. A vague understanding punched through the fog that had settled over his mind. Still, he felt as though he was missing some vital piece of information that might lead to a cohesive picture of the situation. Someone had not told him everything. As he struggled to make sense of the problem, his addled brain ended up at the same place every time: Romero.
The man let the phone fall from his hand as he collapsed into the leather chair. He trembled uncontrollably, but whether this was due to the infection racking his body or the understanding that he had essentially signed his own death certificate, he was not sure. Either way, it seemed crystal clear that his lust for power, like that of his father’s, had backfired.
Despite his physical condition, the man cursed in vain at the reporter on the television, the man who had phoned him, and anyone else who might be able to hear. He did not bother calling God into the situation, for he knew he was far past the point at which God would have listened to him. Consumed by his sudden rage, he staggered to his bedroom with the entirety of his faltering brain focused on one thing. He pulled his pistol from his nightstand and made his way toward the room at the end of the hall. After several attempts, he punched in the correct code on the small keypad located adjacent to the heavy door. The low hiss told him that the door lock had disengaged, and the horrid smell of evil death reminded him of why it was locked in the first place. Having been subjected to the putrid smell of rot for so long, he was hardly bothered by it any more.
Without wasting a moment, the man staggered into the small room with pistol in hand. Delirious with fever, his glassy eyes danced with the insanity of his sickness as he stared in disgust at the source of the repugnant scent. The pathetic ghoul strained weakly against the restraints on its neck and arms when it saw him. The man hated what the thing had made him, and he struggled to wrap his mind around all the harm the vile thing in front of him was responsible for. How could one person cause so much pain? Advancing on the thing, he chuckled as he realized that the only thing that made him any different from the monster before him was the chains.
“Why did you do it?” he asked calmly, as the first tears spilled over the rims of his eyelids. “What was so valuable that it was worth so much pain and death?”
The man received no reply, save for the low gurgling groan that escaped the monster’s compressed throat. Without warning, he leapt forward and kicked the thing’s legs out from under it. There was a sickening crunch as the brittle bones of its legs snapped under the force of the blow.
Smiling sadistically, he yelled, “Get up, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Although it had nothing to do with the man’s command, the thing was already trying to clamber back to its feet before the last word had even left his captor’s mouth. Another kick connected squarely with the thing’s jaw, and it flopped clumsily onto its back. This time, the man pounced on the monster before it started to rise. He straddled its chest, pinning it to the ground. The feel of its cold and slimy flesh—almost reptilian—made him want to jump back reflexively. He did not move back, however.
“Look at me, you piece of shit!” he screamed, as the monster craned its neck in his direction. “Look at what you’ve done to me! Look at what you’ve created, you rotten bastard!”
Enraged by the sight of the thing’s clouded, lifeless eyes that seemed capable of seeing nothing at all, he began pistol-whipping it repeatedly. Its frail jaw snapped and cracked as though it were made of balsa wood. Despite the trauma, it continued opening and closing its useless jaw, as though controlled by some primitive reflex. The man’s mind was so far gone that he hardly noticed the grotesque bone fragments moving unna
turally under the taut, gray skin of its fetid mouth.
“I’m not like you! You hear me? You corrupted me! I’m not like you!” he screamed.
Deranged as he was, it was difficult to tell which of them the man was trying to convince. His words soon became little more than an incoherent mix of mucous-laden blubbering and unintelligible mumbling. Whether due to the tears obscuring his vision or the inflammation altering his brain, he saw the thing lying beneath him not as the monster that it was, but as the father it had once been. He collapsed forward, not even noticing the thing’s twitching jaw and writhing tongue as they brushed impotently against his neck.
After a minute, the man’s sobbing lessened and he raised his head to regard the monster pinned beneath him. The thing continued to thrash its head in an effort to get at the man that was his son. The man knew he was looking into the eyes of pure evil incarnate, and he expected a chill to surge through his very heart and soul. Instead, he felt nothing. Shifting his attention away from the ghoul below him, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the room’s sole window. Although not quite as gray and mottled, the thing staring back at him from the window was otherwise virtually indistinguishable from the thing beneath him—a dead ringer.
Reaching out with his left hand, the man grabbed the monster’s throat to hold its thrashing head steady. Calmly, he placed the barrel of the pistol in its mangled, snapping maw. The thing that had once wielded more power than any one man should ever possess gnawed at the metal with all the futility of a toothless person gumming an ear of corn. It seemed to welcome its presence.
“Time to pay the Devil his due. I would ask that God have mercy on your soul, but you don’t deserve it,” he said as he applied slow, steady pressure to the gun’s trigger.
The man didn’t flinch when the shot broke, and the thing’s head rebounded against his hand as the bullet punched through its brittle skull. The projectile blazed a two-inch path through its diseased brain and tore away a chunk of bone the size of a saucer as it exploded out of the top of its head.