Before The Cure (Book 1): Before The Cure

by Gould, Deirdre

  Neil glanced up from her arm. “You ready to hit Cody in the head, if the same thing happens to him?”

  “It won’t.”

  “What if it does?”

  “You’ll be with us, right? You can do it yourself if you’re so worried. These people aren’t evil, they’re just sick. I don’t know with what yet, but I’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way to treat them and everything— well. We have to get back to the cafe before we start thinking about all that.”

  Neil gently pulled up the edge of loose skin in the lower wound so that he could work the needle in. “I didn’t think they were evil, just dangerous. Are you really ready to bring him back to the cafe when he could be dangerous too? There are four other people to worry about.”

  “I don’t even know if it’s going to happen to him,” Debbie whispered. “Or how long until it does. Maybe I figure it out— or some other doctor in a hospital that isn’t a madhouse does, before he snaps. Maybe we cure it and what are we going to say to him on the other side? ‘Sorry, we didn’t trust you’? For all I know, the people who are losing it were already a little bit that way anyhow and the illness just pushed them over the edge. Cody’s not. He’s the kindest, gentlest person I—”

  “He smashed your coworker in the head with an oxygen tank.”

  “He didn’t want to hurt him—”

  “I’m just saying, you never know what someone’s capable of.”

  “I don’t know what you’re capable of either. Sick or no. So what’s the solution? Lock ourselves into separate rooms and hope the quarantine ends before we starve to death?”

  “If I didn’t intend on getting out of here, that’s exactly what I’d suggest,” said Neil. “If you want to trust this guy, okay. I’ll be ready if anything happens, but only because we’re leaving in a matter of hours. I was ready to wait a few days for the quarantine to be over. But that was before I knew people were getting sick everywhere. We can’t stay here knowing that it’s already out there. I have family. We all do. We have to warn them. If Cody knows all the doors, we’re going to try them. And after that, whichever windows aren’t sealed shut. In the meantime, tell me those symptoms. I want to know what I’m looking for before he snaps. Or— with anyone else we run across.”

  “Yeah, all right. I guess that’s fair. With some— they just snapped. Came in that way, sedated, strait-jackets, the whole thing. We see it a lot in the ER. I thought it was a rash of overdoses of something. Cathinones, most likely. But that was only in the beginning. Maybe they just came in after the other symptoms had passed. We saw them at— I don’t know if it’s the end stages, but at the stages where they could no longer answer questions and had usually attacked someone. They are completely non-verbal at that point. In the few days since then, I’ve seen several people reach that stage who weren’t sick— or, they didn’t present as sick. They’re a little worn down, first. Just kind of fatigued and lacking concentration. Then they begin losing coordination. Tripping, stumbling, had a few nurses prick themselves on sharps. They start taking longer to complete tasks or have conversations. As if they forget partway through, what they were doing or like they can’t remember a particular word. They slur slightly, too. As if they’ve been drinking or are just waking up suddenly, even when there are no apparent causes.”

  “Slur?” asked Neil quickly. The homeless man had been slurring a little. Evan, too. Even Dante had mentioned it. Dante— “My friend was slurring. I thought it was pain killers for his shoulder.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “One of the bodies I found was in his room. A nurse.”

  She watched him for a second. “He was at the parade with you, right? That balloon accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You said your friend had a shoulder injury?”

  “Big bite, just under his neck. His name is Dante Owens. Room 311.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “Maybe it was the pain killers,” she said again, but Neil could tell she doubted it.

  “Did you move him to a new room? The body—”

  She shook her head.

  “But if he has whatever this is, then I—”

  “Have you been stumbling? Slurring? Daydreaming?”

  “N—no. Not that I remember.”

  “We don’t know what it is yet. Or how it spreads. Don’t— don’t panic.”

  He laughed bitterly. “A couple of days too late for that.”

  “Take a deep breath.”

  He did, watching the doctor’s bloody wrist swim out of focus in front of him. Dante had been his friend since before Randi had been born. He’d been there before Joan. And after. If—

  Debbie’s hand was on his shoulder.

  “Don’t panic,” she told him. “Your friend may have escaped just like you. He might be hiding somewhere, waiting to get you out. As I said, it might have been the pain killers. I prescribed him some pretty heavy-duty stuff, he had some significant nerve damage in his shoulder. The best thing we can do is get back to the cafeteria and start making a safe place for people. Everyone still sane is going to end up there in a day or two, looking for food. We’ll find him.”

  Neil nodded, refocused on her arm. He cleared his throat. “What happens after the slurring?” he asked, trying to blink away some sudden tears.

  “After that, a general sort of irritability. They pick arguments that aren’t there. That’s what happened in the conference room. Lots of them. I thought it was the stress, but I don’t know. I remember more of that before this all started. In the ER. Not generally a relaxed place but some of the conversations with patients were more confusing and upsetting than usual. And finally, something triggers this unbelievable anger. And they just start attacking. I— haven’t really had an opportunity to observe symptoms after that. All I know is that I haven’t seen anyone who has reached that angry stage— it’s almost— almost rabid— I haven’t seen anyone come back to their senses from that. The best we were able to do before they quarantined us and all hell broke loose was to keep people sedated. The upsetting thing is that their bodies seem to be mostly fine. There’s nothing showing up physically beyond a cold or sore throat, seasonal stuff. But their minds…”

  “Anyone not progress to that point?”

  Debbie shook her head. “I don’t know. Not who showed up in the ER, but if you were just fatigued and a little clumsy and cranky, would you come to the hospital? Most of the ones who showed up at the ER showed up for other reasons. Lots of them because they’d been attacked by someone who was already at that stage.” She shuddered. “If this is as widespread as I think, I can’t imagine how bad police holding cells are right now. There must have been dozens of arrests just from the victims I’ve seen alone. They’d just think it was normal assault. Probably just dismissing it as seasonal stresses. Except for the biting.”

  “Is— is that how it spreads?” asked Neil.

  “I’m not even sure what it is. I can’t tell you how it spreads. But Cody was slurring his speech and stumbling before we even went back to the ER and I don’t think he’d been attacked at that point.”

  “You tested me for rabies three days ago. You never told me if I had it. Or whatever else this thing is. Your nurse started giving me antibiotics— am I—”

  “I’m sorry,” said Debbie. “I wish I could reassure you that you aren’t infected, but the truth is, I’m not sure who is and who isn’t. We just have to wait and hope. That’s why they’ve got us quarantined. Look— I don’t want to— endanger our cooperation here, but have you considered what it means to break quarantine? We could be infected or we could become infected. Any of us. Cody, the people you’ve found, you, me— we break quarantine and it could spread. You could infect your family and friends. Or do worse to them. Even if we aren’t, we don’t know what this thing is. We could carry it out on our skin, our clothes—”

  Neil gently snipped the thread and stood up, his back creaking. “I’ll do whatever quarantine they want. They want to stick us in some
old prison somewhere and have a drone deliver our food, that’s fine. As long as we’re separated and safe. And someone cares that we’re there. You locked me in my room for three days and I wasn’t told any of this. In the past day, no one’s come with food, no one answered the phone, the only information I got was from the two television channels that worked and one just showed game show reruns. I have a daughter, she was at the parade with me. She’s with my mom, I haven’t been able to reach them since yesterday. I don’t know if anyone’s told them there’s a quarantine. We don’t even know if the quarantine is working. You said there were reports from all over the world that could be this. It might already be loose. Something out there has gone wrong. You’re the expert, does any of this quarantine seem normal to you?”

  “Not at all,” admitted Debbie. “But they’ll send more security, they’ll have to when they can’t contact their team. We just have to sit tight a few hours until they do. Those other incidents might not even be this. Might be something else. Or they may already have been contained.”

  Neil shook his head. “You said you saw people in what you think are advanced stages. That means there are more people out there walking around not even knowing they’re infected yet. The government’s not going to know either. Randi’s out there with them. My mom and my ex-wife— I’m not staying here with a bunch of rabid people roaming the halls. I need to find out if Randi’s okay, and make sure my mom is somewhere safe with her. The people who ordered the quarantine can’t leave us like this. They must not know how bad it is. They probably think everything’s under control. It’s been hours since the people in the conference room were attacked. And hours since the trouble on my floor. If they were supposed to call their superiors or whatever, it would have happened by now. There’d be more people here. We can’t expect them to realize we’re in this much trouble. We have to tell them what’s happening. Our families must be looking for us. The police— or whoever’s in charge obviously aren’t doing jack shit to help us or to tell us anything. So we’ve got to do it ourselves.” He pulled open the packaged gauze to help her cover the wounds and glanced toward the back of the lab to be certain Cody was not nearby. “In the meantime— you want to keep this guy with you, I can understand that. You’re right, he’s not dangerous until he is. But if we’re still here by nightfall, we keep a watch while we sleep. In pairs. Someone snaps, I want to know before I’m slaughtered in my sleep.”

  Debbie held the gauze in place while Neil fumbled with the tape. “We could knock him out if something happens,” she said.

  “Like he did that guard?”

  “No,” she hissed. “No. There’s a cabinet at the other end of the lab. I don’t have the key and it’s alarmed. Different departments, different keys, that’s how it works. But it’s got sedatives in it. We can break it open. The alarm will draw people. Maybe some sane people, maybe some— infected people, but we’d have another option, at least.”

  Neil hesitated. “No. We’re getting out of here. If he gets worse, we put him somewhere safe. A room or— I dunno, maintenance closet or something. We mess with the sedatives, we might not be able to get back to the cafe. And even if we do, we’d have to risk another bite every time the drugs started wearing off. Best just to separate him. Less chance of hurting him too.” He pulled off the blood-stained gloves and the mask, taking long gulps of cool air. “Until then— we just try not to irritate him. Okay? Nothing to tip him over that edge if we can help it.”

  Debbie pulled open a nearby cabinet and grabbed a pink hospital gown, sliding it over her wounded arm to cover her tattered shirt. “And if we do get out, if we break quarantine, what do we do with him then? We may all be infected but Cody is almost certainly so.”

  Neil shook his head. “I don’t know. He can’t stay here. None of us can stay here. We talk to the police or the army or whoever the hell is out there and we tell them what’s actually happening in here. Why the fuck did they cut off the phone lines in the first place?”

  “They didn’t. The phones are working just fine. I’ve been trying to reach people since they locked us in here.” Debbie pulled her phone from her pants pocket to show him the full signal. “At first, I got a couple friends on the line. A few called me after seeing us on the news. But when I tried again after the situation in the conference rooms got out of hand— nothing. I get answering machines or a busy signal. The police department had a weird hold line that I’ve never heard before. I waited over an hour last night on it and finally gave up. I’ve tried everywhere I could think of. Tried on my cell, too. Nothing. The phones are working just fine, but nobody’s answering. Not HR which is outside quarantine, not the fire department, not the damn local pizza place. No one.”

  “What the hell is going on out there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Debbie, “but it’s got to be better than in here. Let’s clean up your hand.”

  13

  Cody still hadn’t returned. Debbie opened drawers and cabinets, selecting some boxes and rejecting others, making a large pile on the counter beside them.

  “We need to get moving,” she said. “If they send in more help, it’s better if we’re all in one place. Besides, we don’t know how long the way back to the cafeteria is going to stay clear. Find Cody, I’ll grab anything else out here that I think we can use.”

  Neil eyed the growing pile. “Yeah. Not too much, right? We’re getting out of here, no need to get weighed down with stuff we don’t need. We’ll move faster and more quietly without extra.”

  “Just grabbing supplies for the wounds you said your friend had. Anything else, and we’ll have to make some decisions. Find Cody.”

  Neil headed farther into the lab. He passed the phlebotomy chairs and turned the corner to find several large refrigerators and low workstations. No Cody.

  “Cody?” he whispered. No response. No noise at all. A solid wooden door was wedged a few inches open in the corner. A large ring of keys still dangled from it.

  Should take the keys, Neil thought, could be a problem later, if he does freak out. They jingled when he reached for them. He felt an immediate sense of shame and let go. All he had was a stranger’s word about any of this. And she wasn’t even certain about what she’d told him. He had no other reason to think Cody was any closer to becoming violent than Neil was. Nor could he be sure this was even something infectious and not some kind of mass hysteria or toxin— Well, he admitted to himself, someone certainly agrees with Debbie that it’s infectious, or you wouldn’t be locked in this hospital right now. He pushed the door farther open instead. Cody stood in the large closet, staring at an empty space in the shelving. A large vinyl bag was slung over his chest, and another dangled from his hand.

  “Cody?” asked Neil. He glanced at the shelves where the man was looking. He could see nothing special about it. He removed the bag slowly from Cody’s arm. It was heavy and full. “You okay, man?”

  Cody slowly turned his face to him. “Yeah, I— I came in here for something. What did I co’ here for?” He looked around, lost.

  “Whatever it was, I’m sure we can get it in the cafe, right? Debbie’s patched up, we get there, fix up a few other people and then we get out, right?”

  “Sure. Sure.” Cody’s voice trailed off. He was still looking around them. “Think iss toilet paper. Never got enough toilet paper in the cafe. Always running out.”