by Wick Welker
“You’re the director of the CIA. You get paid to figure that out, remember?” Rambert scowled.
Mayberry let the comment roll off. “Is our new defense secretary going to join us soon?”
“Yes, I thought he was going to be here before we arrived. I can’t possibly imagine why he’d be late to this meeting.” He took his phone out of his jacket pocket and dialed a number. “Jack? Can you hear me?” He paused. “Well, where the hell is the— wait, what?” Rambert looked over at Mayberry. “I’m leaving right now.”
“What’s going on?” Mayberry sat back down.
“Two cargo planes have been shot down in the D.C. area.” Rambert got to his feet.
“Were they dumping bodies?”
“What do you think?” Rambert grabbed his coat off the chair and ran out with Mayberry following, leaving his coffee behind.
Chapter Seven: Bethesda, Maryland
Dr. Stark set his glasses on the lab bench and buried his face in his hands. Yawning, he rubbed his eyes vigorously, until he could see bright dots in his vision. The dots turned into an intricate lattice of running diamonds against his eyelids, leaving purple trails. He felt surprisingly indifferent in light of the conversation over the phone that he had just ended with Rambert. His yelling had become a blurred mess of desperate syllables and throat noises that Stark couldn’t even understand by the end of the phone call. He’ll be happier in the end that I’m gone, he thought.
He lifted his face from his hands and looked out through a thick glass pane that housed the former Secretary of Defense, Colonel Houser. He was still dressed in his military jacket, with a colorful chest, and dangling tassels from each shoulder. Somewhere along the way, the man had lost his pants. He was free to move around the fairly wide enclosure and had erratically been pacing from one corner to the next. He investigated each corner with his fingers and moved on to the next corner as if he had never been there before. He had only recently given up on the endeavor and was currently standing to the side of the one-way mirror, pawing at his own reflection.
The skin of the man’s face had entirely slid off the bone, exposing a sinewy skull, with dried blood vessels threading in and out of orifices. His facial sinuses had been broken inward on both cheek surfaces, showing small caverns that wept with mucous and blood. His nasal septum was still intact, but without the actual skin and cartilage of the nose, leaving two deep rivets in the middle of his face. The man’s jaw was still bound tightly to the face, and moved with rhythmic force, as he perched his head forward to investigate a new space. The eyes held firmly in their sockets and moved in quick synchrony around the room, never tiring of the search for movement.
“Good to see you again,” Stark said at the glass, and waved.
Houser’s eyes continued to dart back and forth spontaneously.
Dr. Louis walked into the room from behind. “Dr. Stark, we are ready to begin.”
“I’m ready, too, and I know Secretary Houser is ready.” He chuckled with excitement. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve done any of this? I’ve been dying for this opportunity.”
Dr. Louis glanced at him for a moment and squinted his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just, I’ve been wrapped up in so much political nonsense I feel like I haven’t used my brain once in the last two years. And it’s been over a year since we’ve been able to actually work with the virus again.”
“I’m glad to have you here, too, but I wish it were under better circumstances, you know?” He scratched his chin. “I mean, we just got attacked, and we have a major government official who is… well just look at him.” Louis pointed to Houser, who was now digging a finger into a bullet hole in his thigh.
Stark slightly bowed his head. “Oh, of course, of course. It’s… awful.” He paused and smiled. “Should we start?”
“I guess. You’re running the show,” Louis said.
Stark looked down through the window and saw that Houser was still standing in the same place, continually confused by his own reflection. Several men at monitors typed on keyboards and adjusted control knobs.
“Okay guys,” Stark said as he sat at a computer. “I was thinking that we would start it right up at about seven Teslas. We should really get that room cranking high before we go in there to get a sample from him.”
“You don’t think that’s too high to damage any tissue?” Louis asked.
“No, no, I mean it’s not really the tissue that we’re worried about anyway, right? The guy is halfway rotted to hell already. No, we know that the nanovirus can withstand some pretty serious magnetic force without being torn apart. Back when we actually had infected bodies from the D.C. outbreak, we could max the magnetic field out at around fourteen Teslas without a problem.”
“I still can’t believe we ran out of samples of the virus,” Louis said.
“I know. We could’ve probably figured a lot out by now. Maybe we even could’ve put the virus to good use,” Stark said.
“Now you’re just starting to sound like the bastard who invented the virus.”
“Beckfield?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I mean, it is an amazing technology, it’s just a shame that it all went so haywire. The possibilities of using a nanovirus in the human body are endless. It can be used to target cancer, bacteria, viruses… so many other things that I can’t even imagine. I think it’s a little silly the FDA slapped a ban on even doing research on it. Just a bunch of paranoia.”
Louis looked over his shoulder at Stark. “Dr. Stark, why don’t we just get started?”
“Uh, yes, you’re right.” Stark moved the mouse as his computer. “All right, this guy’s in for a ride. Everyone ready?”
Everyone in the room confirmed that their stations were ready, and Stark clicked the mouse at his monitor. A low hum emanated from the walls that climbed in frequency and pitch. Almost in unison, every person in the control room stood to get a better view of Houser down below them in the chamber. The vibration continued throughout the control room while Houser remained in the same position, his shoulder tassels slightly swaying with the jerking movements of his head.
“All right, here we go now. Just a little more juice.” Stark reached over to the computer and typed in a modification to the magnetic field in the room below. “One of the world’s strongest magnetic resonators at work,” he boasted, eliciting no response from the room.
As the field in the chamber below increased in strength, Houser briskly shrugged his shoulders with his arms suddenly seizing by his sides. He extended his neck back toward his shoulders, with his chin in the air. His legs suddenly straightened out, making him fall flat on his back.
“Oh shit.” Stark gave a small laugh and crossed his arms, continuing to watch the infected man.
Stunned for a moment, Houser’s head writhed from side to side as he attempted to prop himself up on his elbows. Bending his legs, he was able to mostly sit up with his arms extending behind him.
“All right, I’m now going to apply the orthogonal field, and then we’re really going to see a show.” Stark shuffled over to the monitor and typed in a few more parameters. At the moment he hit the final stroke on the keyboard, he looked down and watched Houser’s body rise effortlessly into the air. Houser simply rose up with his arms and legs outstretched, as if suspended in air by an invisible wire.
“Holy shit!” a technician shouted.
“Ha! Clearly, you’re new here,” Stark said. “If there was any question if this was the nanovirus, I think we know now. The nanovirus is definitely responding to the applied magnetic field, just as it has with other infected bodies. It’s the nanovirus running through his blood that makes us able to manipulate his body with magnetic field lines. We wouldn’t be able to suspend the body in the magnetic field if he weren’t at least seventy percent saturated with the nanovirus.”
Dr. Louis spoke up without taking his gaze off of Houser below. “How many Teslas are we at?”
“I just brought it up to twelve, and I think we’ll leave it there for now,” Stark said, moving away from the computer. “Why don’t we head down there?” he added with enthusiasm.
“You think it’s safe right now?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, why not? We’ve done this hundreds of times with the previous subjects. I don’t see why it would be any different.” Stark considered for a moment his words and wondered if he sounded stupid.
Louis exhaled loudly. “We’ll follow you down there, Dr. Stark.”
Stark turned around and left the room with the entire team following. He led them down the hallway to a narrow door with a square window. Behind the window was a small room with several isolation suits lined up along the walls, along with half a dozen trays full of sterilized surgical equipment. Putting his hand into a semicircular slot in the wall, he turned a valve, which released pressurized gas from the room, followed by an electronic lock unclasping from a mechanism within the door.
“Move into the anteroom and suit up,” Stark instructed them as they found their sterilization suits. Stark wondered about this research team that he had been working with for the last year. A small itching in the back of his mind worried him that he had become too well respected and that no one doubted him anymore. Smiling to himself, he remembered his small office in Chicago years ago, in a humble medical school where he had faded away from a successful career. Now I’m afraid of being around too many yes-men, he thought.
The team had finished changing their clothing and zipped themselves up into one-piece rubber suits with a continuous helmet and Plexiglas face shield. Stark approached the door that led into Houser’s isolation room, and turned toward the group, who were lined up along both sides of the narrow room. One of the techs in the back had closed the airlock door from behind.
“With our suits on, I guess we’re all ready to go the moon, too,” Stark joked with a small return of courteous laughs. Either they hate me or they’re afraid of me, he thought. “All right, I’m going to open the pressure lock. Only aluminum instruments, correct?”
The team nodded in unison.
“I know it’s been awhile since we’ve done this, but has everyone demagnetized their persons?”
They nodded again.
“Okay, excellent.” Bending over, he lifted a bulky, aluminum briefcase by its handle, and put his hand on the pressure lock. “Here we go.”
An instantaneous exchange of pressure and gas crossed the threshold of the room, as Stark pushed the thick door outward into Houser’s room. Several overhead lights flickered on as he stepped in and pulled the door open for the rest of the team.
In the center of the room, Houser’s limbs were stretched far apart, with his body suspended in air with just the tips of his feet pointing downward, touching the floor. His eyeballs were forced down, looking at the group as they assembled different trays of instruments around him. His throat gurgled in frustration at the continuous movement. He tried jerking his head down and to his right, toward Stark, but as soon as he was able to stretch it forward even a little, it was snapped backward in line with the magnetic field that ran through his body, constricting the nanovirus within him.
Stark backed away as the team surrounded Houser. They brought out numerous instruments amongst the trays that they had wheeled into the chamber. Louis brought out an electric bone saw and plugged it into an overhanging power outlet. He set the saw on a tray while the other techs placed various cutting instruments and rubber mallets on a long table that they wheeled into the center of the room. Stark looked up at Houser, whose jaw grimaced with his unceasing attempts to kick out his legs and flex his arms. He saw the exposed muscles around the angle of his jaw quiver with tension.
As the team finished assembling the equipment in a semicircular pattern around Houser, Stark picked up a large bore syringe, half a centimeter across, and tested the plunger. “Okay, right off the bat, I think we should attempt six fluid samples. One from each limb, one from a carotid, and we’ll try to do a peritoneal sample from the abdomen as well.”
He handed the syringe to a lab technician who timidly approached Houser and bent down by his leg, thrusting the needle into his exposed thigh. Drawing back on the large plunger of the syringe, a black fluid oozed into the chamber as the tech pulled harder to extract the sample. “I’m getting a ton of resistance,” he called out.
“I would expect as much. I’m sure his body fluids are totally heterogeneous right now, with blood coagulating in certain areas, while pus and other fluids collect in different pockets of soft tissue. It’s just a guessing game where we can get samples. Keep drawing, it looks like you’re getting something there,” Stark said, pointing to the syringe.
The lab technician continued drawing on the syringe as another large bore needle was placed in Houser’s other thigh, making him squirm within the magnetic field, rattling the technician’s hands as he drew fluid samples.
As soon as several samples were drawn, Stark picked up the bone saw off the table. “All right, I’m going to proceed with an amputation.” Stark sat down on a stool in front of Houser and grasped the infected man’s right knee in his hand. He felt the tendons behind the knee tense and relax in a spasmodic rhythm, trying to kick out at Stark. “Oh yeah, he’s really fighting the field.” Flipping the switch on the saw, the fan-shaped plate of teeth buzzed into action as he brought it close to Houser’s exposed shin bone. “Most of the skin has been scraped clean from the front of the shin—a place that usually receives a lot of blunt trauma once a person becomes infected. They really start to kick a lot once they turn, and that thin skin there just gets completely de-gloved,” Stark yelled out as he pressed the saw to the bone. Bone dust sputtered from the edges of the saw blade as he advanced it farther into the bone. Soon, black fluid showered his face shield, as the blade was now deep into the marrow.
“Dr. Stark!” Louis yelled out from behind.
Stark continued cutting without turning around.
Louis put his hand on Stark’s shoulder.
Stark looked over his shoulder and turned off the saw. “What is it?” he asked, clearly annoyed.
“Don’t we usually do an autopsy like this once the body is no longer… animated?”
“What?” Stark squinted up at him through the face shield. “Let’s not forget what we’re dealing with here, Dr. Louis.” He quickly turned back toward the knee and flipped the saw back on. He thrust the blade into the deep rivet he had carved into the bone and punched through the back edge, causing the lower half of the leg to loosely hang by only its flesh. After setting the saw down on a tray, he picked up a scalpel, and cut the connecting flesh—freeing the lower half of the leg. Standing, he handed the leg to Louis, and said, “We absolutely need to do live dissections or else the nanovirus can break down when it’s not in living tissue. Please take this specimen to the lab and prepare it for both gross dissection and histology. Do electron microscopy on the blood immediately.”
“Fine.” Louis grabbed the leg from Stark and placed it into a bag. “But this isn’t protocol.”
“I made up the protocol,” Stark replied and turned toward the team. “Can someone please collect that fluid that’s draining from the amputation site?”
A technician sat down on the same lab stool where Stark was seated and opened up a red plastic bag beneath the leg. Strings of viscous blood and pus rained down into it. Stark watched as Houser’s body stopped struggling and became still in its suspended position.
“Hmm, I wonder if we’re draining him of fluid too quickly…” Stark said.
Suddenly, Houser’s intact leg kicked straight out at the hip, hitting a lab technician in the face shield, making him step back.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Stark said, moving toward the technician who was still seated just below Houser. He was about to roll him away when Houser’s body suddenly dropped free of the magnetic field and landed on top of the technician, knocking him onto his stomach.
Houser kneeled o
n the man’s back, resting his elbows on his shoulders. The team momentarily backed away as Houser lifted his head and brought it down briskly into the back of the technician’s skull.
“Get it off him!” Stark yelled as they surrounded Houser. He pulled at Houser’s foot, yanking him from off all fours, so that he was now lying on top of the technician. Houser reached out both arms, wrapped them around the technician’s shoulders, and tightly grabbed onto the front of his chest, while at the same time kicking out his leg and flailing his stump, which whipped up and down with fluid. Stark and another technician grabbed onto Houser’s leg, while Louis went to a tray close by, and picked up a rubber mallet. Pulling in unison, they lifted the back end of Houser up while he clung tighter to the technician’s torso on the ground, and extended his neck out to bite down on the blue rubber of his sterilization suit.
“Fuck! Get it off of me!” the struggling technician yelled out, bringing his arms around his back, to beat on Houser with his balled fists.
Houser gnawed on the rubber at the man’s neck and punctured a hole in the suit, tearing away a strip of rubber.
Louis positioned himself directly at the head of the struggle and brought down the mallet directly on top of Houser’s head, making him slump downward into the technician’s shoulder blades.
Stark yanked again at his leg, but Houser held tight to the man’s chest, and moved his jaw closer to the hole in the suit.
“Hit him again!” Stark yelled as Louis lifted the mallet over his head again.
Stretching his arms toward the ceiling, Louis then thrust it down at Houser’s head once more. Houser incidentally moved to his right, exposing the technician’s head beneath to take the full blow of the hammer.
“Son of bitch!” Stark yelled.
Louis stumbled back with the hammer, accidentally dropping it by his side, as Stark and another lab technician gave Houser one more pull.