Danny sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. It had been a long, tiring day. As the first gentle caress of sleep greeted him, the image of the “caveman”, with his straggly long hair and bone thin grey body, splashed itself violently into the calm pool of his mind. He jolted himself forward and threw open his eyes, half fearing what he’d see. Coming in quick, shallow gasps, his breathing surprised even him. He looked around and nothing had changed except Jules. She was staring at him as if she had expected his abrupt waking.
“You saw him didn’t you?”
His brow wrinkled and he searched for a response, but his tongue was too dry to form speech. For lack of words and through his still sharp breathing, Danny only nodded. He looked around for a distraction...anything. There was nothing. There was only Martin’s delirium and drifts between stupor and semi-consciousness. His face was rapidly fading of any color, leaving a translucent layer of skin that didn’t quite hide the pulsing blue veins just below the surface. The only color remaining in his face were two dark grey crescents forming under his swollen eyes. His pallid face glistened with sweat, though his temperature never rose above normal.
Ginny, sitting in the front seat of the rented Chevy Venture minivan, kept leaning back to the first bench seat where Martin was languishing. She was crying and quite obviously terrified. It was killing her to see her little boy suffering so much and to not be able to do anything to alleviate the pain or make him better. She wrung her hands incessantly, not knowing for sure what to do or even what she could do.
Mr. Houser didn’t speak much, choosing instead to focus on the road in front of him. He darted in and out of cars, sometimes skirting the right-hand shoulder to get around the lumbering motor homes that dominated and were usually the cause of the long rows of traffic that choked the winding Seward Highway. Despite the traffic and the dark, Mr. Houser was doing his best to cut the drive time in any way he was able. He was desperate, as much for Ginny as for little Martin, to get his son to the hospital in Anchorage.
Jules and Danny were sitting in the bench seat furthest back in the van. Jules was crying quietly as she watched first her stricken brother, then her weeping mother, and then her intensely concentrating father. No one in their family had ever been this sick before and it scared her terribly. She leaned into Danny on more than one occasion for some comfort. She had always liked Danny, especially since he readily agreed to let her come along with Marty and him. In fact, she was pretty sure that it was Danny who convinced her brother to let her come along at all. She didn’t know that for sure, but she did know that before Danny came along she had always been too young to play with Marty or tag along on any of his adventures with his other friends. Danny accepted her along and, as a result, so had Marty.
Now though, she wondered if it wouldn’t just have been better had she not been along in the first place. If she weren’t there with her camera, then maybe Marty wouldn’t have gotten so close to the caveman and wouldn’t have been bitten in the first place. Maybe it was all her fault that this was happening.
She started to cry more loudly and said, “Momma, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault that Marty is sick. It’s all my fault...” Her tears and sobbing mixed with her words in a confusing mess that was nearly unintelligible. Getting a concerned look from Ginny, Danny wrapped his arm around Jules and hugged her to him tightly. She kept crying into his shoulder and all that Danny could understand was the word, “camera.”
Chapter 3
They got to the hospital, Providence Medical Center, and Mr. Houser scooped Martin from the back seat and carried him directly into the Emergency Room. It was busy but not overwhelmingly so. It was very late Sunday evening by the time they arrived, and apparently injuries and sicknesses for everyone else in Anchorage had gone to bed early that night.
There was a couple with an obviously sick infant. The mother was rocking gently back and forth, humming a tune that Danny recognized but couldn’t identify. There was another woman there with her son who had a fishhook stuck all the way through his thumb. The boy was crying but it appeared that his pain was gradually losing ground to his fatigue as his eyes opened more slowly with each blink. There was a man with his foot propped up on a pile of towels stacked atop the back of one of the black synthetic leather chairs. He was reading a magazine and didn’t seem to be in any undue distress. There were nurses wearing scrubs and doctors and lab technicians with all-too-familiar white lab coats walking here and there. There was activity, but nowhere near the level that Danny had associated with a typical Emergency Room. His one trip to the hospital back home was over a very busy Fourth of July weekend last summer. That was utter chaos, but nothing like the Providence Emergency Room.
Danny and Jules sat in the chairs while Ginny and Mr. Houser stood at the Nurse’s Station explaining that Martin had been bitten by some wild animal and needed to be seen immediately. Seeing the wad of blood soaked towels and rags wrapped around the youngster’s hand, the nurse behind the counter scribbled notes down on a piece of paper and hurried them through a pair of doors, behind which they disappeared for several minutes before Ginny reappeared to beckon Danny to bring Jules and follow her.
Most children do not feel comfortable in hospitals and Danny was no exception. The antiseptic smells, the oppressive white on the walls, beds, clothes, and even floor, and the presence of sickness all mixed to make a hospital as inhospitable a place as Danny could imagine. The three of them boarded an elevator that boasted a large letter E next to it and took it to another floor, and then made their way through a series of hallways until they came to another nurse’s station. They were in the Intensive Care Unit where Martin was receiving emergency and very aggressive treatment by specialists who hadn’t yet been able to determine what was afflicting him.
Danny heard a couple of nurses talking to one another about Martin. They couldn’t seem to figure out why he was so sick from such a small bite. At least that was what Danny understood them to be saying. He wasn’t able to follow all of their words but he could certainly read their demeanor. Standing there more or less next to and sometimes in the Nurses’ Station, he was starting to feel very uncomfortable.
Danny and Jules were shown to another set of black chairs and told to wait, and then Ginny scurried off down the hall and disappeared again. By that time, even the legendary midnight sun of Alaska had waned and night was fast upon the city. Jules was very quickly asleep, snoring small kazoo-like sounds from her nose. Danny stood up and stretched and realized that he was about as alone as he could get. His only company was a sleeping eight-year-old girl and his thoughts. He too was exhausted but was afraid to sleep. It was just something about hospitals.
Chapter 4
Down the hall and in one of the many rooms set aside for those patients requiring special care and attention, Ginny and Mr. Houser were talking to a doctor.
“What kind of an animal was it?”
Mr. Houser, starting to get frustrated with answering the same question over and over again, said through an aggravated sigh, “I don’t know. For the thousandth time, I don’t know. Marty, his sister, and his friend all wandered down to the glacier while we got ourselves situated in the cabin. While they were there, something attacked my son.”
“Are the other two children here in the hospital? Maybe I could get an idea of any potential toxicity from them.”
“Yeah, they’re down the hall. Ginny, you stay here while I take the Doc to talk to Danny and Jules.” Mr. Houser’s expression suddenly soured as he asked, “Oh Jesus. What about Alec?”
“Alec?” the physician repeated.
Attempting futilely to bury his hands in his short, thinning hair, Mr. Houser said softly, his eyes glancing over at his poor, tortured wife, “Our older son. He’s still down at the cabin. All alone.” He looked beyond his wife this time, trying to see past the scores of miles that separated him from his oldest boy.
Alec was smart but he was a teenager. Mr. Houser was fully aware of the decision-making capab
ilities of a teenage brain succumbing to the potent mix of raging hormones and newly emerging ego.
Mr. Hauser’s worry for his son was evident to the doctor, who sympathized with the man’s concern. He said hopefully, “Does Alec have a cell phone?”
The worried father nodded but said dejectedly, “Yes, but they don’t work up here we discovered.”
Ginny, rising from her plastic chair with surprising agility, pleaded, “Please…” but her words were smothered by her sorrow that stole away her voice and her breath all at once. She fanned her face with her thick, soft hand and tried to no avail to fight back her tears, which streaked down her fiery red cheeks.
Mr. Houser, as small as he may have been compared to his wife, wrapped her tightly in his arms and kissed her gently on the forehead. He held her against him for a time without saying a word. Then he said, “You take care of our boy and I’ll be right back. Everything’s gonna be fine. Okay?”
Ginny nodded through her tears and sat back down in the chair next to the bed. Martin was breathing in quick, shallow breaths. He hadn’t opened his eyes in quite some time and hadn’t said a word for an even longer time. The top of the sheet nearest to his face and neck was damp with sweat, as was his hair. The half-moons under his eyes had grown darker, giving the impression that his eyes were sinking deeper into their sockets.
And then Martin Houser was struggling to take in a breath. He started to shake horribly. Ginny grabbed his hand and started pleading, “Breathe, Marty. Breathe. Listen to your momma. Breathe honey, please.”
Unable to take her eyes away from the single bar of light that crawled across the life monitoring machinery, she shouted to the closed door, “Oh God, somebody come help me! Help my boy! Please God no! Somebody help me!” She held her son’s limp hand and refused to let it go.
A nurse ran into the room and immediately checked Martin, checked the machines to which he was attached, and then checked Martin again. “Mrs. Houser, I’m going to need you to step outside for a moment, please.”
Sounding almost sick, Ginny countered, “I’m staying with my boy. He needs me. My boy needs his momma. Marty, momma’s here honey. Please wake up honey. Please! Oh God, please!”
Another person and then another came in, but Ginny didn’t even really notice anymore. They tried everything they could to revive little Martin. But try as they might, nothing they did seemed to work. He was absolutely unresponsive to any and all life saving procedures they attempted. His little body was just too ravaged by whatever it was that was attacking it. Luckily, it wasn’t a long battle. His body merely quit and nothing seemed to matter.
Ginny, still holding Martin’s rapidly cooling hand, fell onto the floor and sat there weeping. The terrible, dull, cold pain that filled her chest and fouled her stomach was like nothing she had ever known and something that she could have gone her entire life without knowing. The day and all that had happened seemed but a blur of images and then only agony. Had it only been one day? She wasn’t remotely certain anymore. The one thing that she was sure of though was that her little boy was gone...forever.
One of the nurses, the first to have arrived in the room, leaned closer to Ginny and whispered, “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Houser.” It was then that the grief finally grabbed hold of her. Her weeping became loud sobbing. Attempts to lift her from the floor were swiped away with her moist, meaty hands. “Just leave me alone. Leave me be. Let me have a few minutes with my little boy. I only want a few more minutes with my boy.”
Realizing that it would be just as well to let her calm down in the room rather than out in the hallway and risk disturbing other patients, the collection of white and blue clad medical staff all decided to leave her where she sat. Once alone, Ginny hoisted herself up and into one of the chairs in the room. She sat there quietly for several minutes while she tried to digest what had just happened. Could her little Martin be gone? Her face was hot with sorrow and tears and her head pounded painfully.
She sat there, staring blankly at the wall. When the sheet covering her now motionless Martin moved, she was startled and a little excited. Had they made a mistake? She stood up and got closer to the bed as he sat up.
“Marty? Are you okay honey?” Standing next to his bed, Ginny leaned in and took the child in her arms. She held him tight against her, resting his head on her shoulder. She couldn’t have been happier. Her boy was all right.
She neither saw him open his eyes, nor did she see the burning hunger that colored his blackened irises. She felt him move but didn’t see his mouth open wide just before he dug his teeth into her throat. In terror, she tried to scream but was unable to as his jaw crushed her windpipe while he ripped huge chunks of soft white tissue from her neck. She fell backward with a look of profound astonishment across her face. Marty leapt from the bed and followed her down to the floor.
Chapter 5
Mr. Houser and Dr. Caldwell had, meanwhile, been talking to Danny about the attack and the animal that bit young Martin. Neither of the men accepted that it was a caveman of sorts that had been responsible. They asked Danny again and again in every way they could imagine to describe to them what had happened and what had done it. Nearly to tears, Danny couldn’t seem to impress upon them how serious he was, nor how sure he was of whom or what had bitten poor Martin.
It was Jules who came to the rescue with, “Danny’s right. He’s telling the truth. He’s on my camera.”
Mr. Houser asked, “What?”
“Go ahead. Look.”
“What’s on there honey?”
“He is, I think. He was too scary to look at so I just turned my camera off, but he’s still on there. Go ahead, look.”
Mr. Houser grabbed the camera abruptly from his daughter. He pressed the power button and the idling camera turned off and beeped: dead battery.
“Jules honey, did you actually turn the camera off?”
“Uh, I thought I did.”
“Goddamnit! D’you have the power cord?”
“Uh huh,” she said and produced the black cord from her bag.
The doctor grabbed the first hospital staffer he saw, a young Certified Nursing Assistant named Jerry. He didn’t know Jerry that well, but he did know that Jerry was young, likely electronically inclined, and could more than likely make this camera work again.
“Take this camera and the three of them to the nearest outlet and make this thing work. As soon as you get it going, come find me. Drop everything else that you’re doing and get this done now. Got it?”
The doctor didn’t bother to wait for a response. He turned and was about to speak with Mr. Houser again when a scream from down the hall drew both of their attentions. It was coming from the direction of Martin’s room. The two of them ran down the hall, Mr. Houser shouting to Danny, “Take care of Jules!”
Danny nodded, though Mr. Houser was no longer facing him, and followed the new guy that was taking them to an office only two doors from where they were. Jerry fumbled with a key chain that, in Danny’s estimation, probably held keys for every door in the hospital, as well as Jerry’s house, his car, and the doors of all of his neighbors. They rattled and jingled a song while he sought the proper key. He finally got the door open, and on the other side of the door was a small office cluttered with file boxes in one corner, a computer monitor and CPU on and under the corner of a desk of sorts, and a pair of chairs that just barely fit into the small space. Jerry moved a picture frame of several someones, none of which were Jerry, and exposed a black power outlet that amazingly wasn’t being used.
They all sat down, Jerry in the bigger, more plush office chair, and Danny and Jules sharing the other chair. They watched the little light on the side of the camera go from red to green in a matter of seconds.
Jerry, a nineteen year old who had just earned his GED and Nursing Assistant certification a few months ago, had been working for Providence Health Systems for about six months but had just moved to the hospital from one of its long term care annexes from around t
he city. He was glad to have made the change. He liked what he did, even the nitty gritty of helping elderly folks dress, bathe, and care for themselves. He found it difficult, however, to work in a setting in which he constantly saw those for whom he had cared and grown accustomed to seeing die. He realized that was the nature of such a facility, but it was still hard for him to get close with some of these folks. only to arrive some mornings to find that Mrs. Gillum died last night or that Mr. Fredericson had elected to go home to spend his last hours with family. He wasn’t prepared to be reminded of his mortality in such aggressive ways so early on in his medical career. He wanted to work somewhere that he might be able to save lives and not just to...well, not just to watch people die. It had become very depressing, and he was all set to go back to work as a cashier at Fred Meyer when he was presented with the opportunity to move over to the hospital and work as a Floater, moving between departments.
He knew that helping doctors directly and getting them to know your name was one way that he might meet the right person who could help steer him toward the best opportunity to advance his career. He wanted to get a degree in the health industry, but was unsure of whether he wanted to complete a degree in Nursing or to get a series of certifications that would allow him to really diversify his worth to any hospital or medical group. He knew that he wanted to be in the medical field, he just wasn’t sure in what capacity that might be. Before he started his vocational training classes, he never would have thought it possible that he would be thinking in such long term possibilities and now that was all that he could do. He finally could feel his future opening up to him and for once he was excited about something beyond next weekend.
Infection: Alaskan Undead Apocalypse Page 2