by H. R. Romero
The end-of-the-world presented itself in a whole different kind of package than the one she had expected. No split-second flash of light. It was supposed to come faster than the blink of an eye, quicker than a thief in the night. There was no legion of mighty angels. No flapping wings of holy hosts. No throne floating down with Christ Almighty to judge and rule, tossing demons and evil-doers into the bottomless sin-encrusted pit, smoking with brimstone, and searing sinners in the heat of everlasting torment.
Instead, it came with all the pomp and circumstance of stepping in a wet pile of cat vomit.
The fire and brimstone portion of the end-of-the-world, and the releasing of every evil thing from the depths of Hades came a short time after. The end is tangible, and the Turned are its ambassadors.
The base, while not entirely deserted, feels as if it were, especially at this late hour. Dr. Valentine’s rounds still need to be completed, but the wooziness and nausea brought on by too much-concentrated caffeine, gulped down much too quickly, causes her to consider skipping them altogether; just for the time being. But still, she needs some exercise to reduce the effects of what may be a moderate caffeine overdose, so she walks to the hospital wing. It’s 0130 hours.
All the lights are out. The generator is shut down promptly at 2100 hours every night. After that, the fuel is only used to power essential areas of the base, like the fence parameter and the guard houses. There are times that Major Connors will let his soldiers light up the rec hall, but not often, and only if it’s a good reason; to boost morale. To get people laid, and to get people drunk on homemade beer and wine. This measure helps to conserve fuel and increase productivity.
Dr. Valentine pulls a cheap chrome-plated flashlight from her lab coat pocket. She slides the flimsy narrow switch upward towards the bulb-end, and it comes on, shining dimly, but it’s better than a candle dripping wax all over her hand, or burning her hair on the flame. Tomorrow, perhaps, she can sweet talk Private Waters, the supply clerk, into giving her some fresher batteries. She may have to flirt again.
She places the flashlight upon her shoulder and holds steady by tilting her head, pinning it between her high cheekbone and her shoulder. The slight tilt of her head causes the vein-trolling, caffeine-induced dizziness to increase in intensity. She pushes through it.
She holds a clipboard in her hand as she uncaps an ink pen with her teeth. Thin lips closing around the cap, her tongue plays with the tip. Dr. Valentine likes the sensation, as the sharp tip scrapes across her taste buds. She sucks at the saliva gathering around the cap.
There’s no need to round on, R – Zero – One – E, tonight. She was taken to the operating room shortly after returning from this afternoon’s assessment session. So, she moves on to, R – Zero – Two – E, subject: Aster, and takes note of the observation which can only be made through the narrow window in the door.
Child: Aster, adolescent female age 10.
New behavior noted: Aster is in her room and standing at the window. The window is secure, boards are in place. The child doesn’t appear to be trying to escape. The child is motionless with face pressed against bars, reaching through to touch boards which are covering windows. The child’s not moving except for slight swaying from side to side. She doesn’t appear to be aware of my presence. Unusual. Aster typically notices my presence immediately. No further observation or interactions to note during rounding on child: Aster. --------------- Dr. Merna J. Valentine Ph.D.
She crosses the hall. When she peers into the room labeled, R – Zero – Seven – E, belonging to the subject named Ash, she is perplexed by her initial observation, but goes on to documents her findings.
Tuesday, May 26th, 1950, 0142 hours.
Child: Ash, preteen male age 8.
New behavior noted: Ash, standing in his room in front of the window. The window is secure, boards in place, he does not appear to be trying to escape. He is standing motionless with his face pressed against bars and reaching through them to touch the boards covering windows. Child not moving. Does not appear to be aware of my presence as he usually does. On previous visits, he has never failed to acknowledge my presence. No further observations or interactions to note during rounding on child: Ash. --------------- Dr. Merna J. Valentine Ph.D.
Coincidentally it’s nearly the same as the entry she made for Aster, word for word.
Major Connors will think she skipped the rounds and fudged the charts, but it can’t be helped. She turns back to cross the corridor to where Cane’s room is located.
Cane is engaged in the same behavior as Aster and Ash.
Improbable. This can’t be a coincidence.
She’s slightly unnerved by the uncanny similarity.
They can’t even see each other. There’re no visual cues to lead them to mimic the behavior of the other.
Her observations are consistent with each of the children. Every child exhibits the same collective response, though no child can see another.
The thunder booms outside. Dr. Valentine, startled by the suddenness of the noise, jumps. The fear settles into her legs. She temporarily loses the feeling in them.
Sliding over to Hawthorne’s room, she observes the same behavior before crossing the hall to another occupied room, again the same reaction, and another room… the same…. The findings are consistent.
She walks eagerly to Rose’s room anticipating a similar encounter. And there it is, she notes the same activity with Rose. The girl doesn’t even attempt to engage her in polite conversation as she usually does when she makes her rounds. Rose’s way of conversing is unique. It’s not cookie-cutter like that of the other children.
Dr. Valentine calls softly to the young girl, but her voice is lost over the short distance and drowned further by the drumming of the rain on the board over the window.
Three times she calls out and each time she increases the volume of her voice, but doing so elicits no reaction.
This is not imitation, it’s something much more. More critical, yes, but what does it mean? She jumps again, shaking, startled by the storm erupting to full force outside, and draws in a sharp intake of breath. she’s always hated storms ever since she was little.
It’s the rain. They’re reacting to the storm. She remembers that it was raining on the night it happened, too.
It was cold on the night of February 24th. 1942. Rain fell from the charcoal-painted sky, landing on the tin guttering, a tinkling rivulet of cold water chimed on its way in the downspouts before spreading out on the frozen ground below.
The flowerbed outside her daughter’s window stood bare, cleared of the dead and overgrown boxwoods, which have built up there, unkempt and tangled, over years of disregard of the house’s previous inhabitants.
The beds would have to wait until spring to be planted with flowers. Any yellow flowers would do. Savannah, Merna’s daughter, loved yellow more than any other color in the world, and yellow flowers, to Savannah, smelled sweeter and looked prettier any other flower in the whole world.
There were bright flashes of light, one following the other. At first, Merna thought the flashes were lightning lighting up the hand-poured glass window panes of her home, but when she parted the heavy drapes to look out, she realized it was the beams from massive searchlights positioned around the military base on the coast.
She could hear air raid sirens building up to an eardrum-bursting level. She placed her hands over her ears, protecting them from the roaring noise growing ever louder.
A small voice called for her, floating down a long hallway from the small bedroom. She ran to her little girl who was calling for her.
Savannah shrank into the comfort of a simple bed, adorned with a brass headboard. Crayons snapped beneath Merna’s bare feet as she moved through an obstacle course of toys to reach the little girl. She lifted her into her arms. The seven-year-old seemed to weigh no more than a big goose-down pillow.
Savannah covered her eyes with the backs of her tiny hands. Merna twisted at the waist
from right to left and back again, rocking her from side-to-side attempting to ease her fear.
The entire house was lit unnaturally from the pallid glow of the searchlights, which crisscrossed, digging into the sky for something… something.
The rain outside slowed from a downpour to a fine mist, and everything except for the panting of the child grew silent.
Carrying Savannah to the back door, Merna gripped the knob frosted with the cold from the wintery weather on the other side of the solid slab of Beau D’arc. It felt like a hailstone in her hand as she twisted it. It was stubborn, but it turned, and the door swung open toward her.
The bottom of the weighty door scraped against the top of her big toe taking layers of skin with it. She whined, ground her teeth together, and chewed hard at her lip to help her swallow down the pain, and then she stepped onto the back porch.
The searchlights swung in the air, doing their jobs until they all gradually zeroed in on the same point in the heavens. And as they converged onto the single spot, the horizon blew apart like a firework show on the Fourth of July.
Shells exploded overhead, some falling into the neighborhoods far below and they burst open in great fireballs of reds, and oranges, and yellows, and blues, every shade in between.
Merna ducked and covered Savannah with her arms. Hugging her delicate, bony frame to her warm body even as percussive shockwaves rippled through her so that she could feel the vibration in her lungs.
Neighbors poured from their houses like Carpenter Ants from wooden hives. Like blood from open wounds, clotting in the yards, and gardens, and streets wearing pajamas, and nightgowns of pastel colors and cotton lacing.
Women had their hair up in curlers, some had cold cream on their faces making themselves look like mimes standing there to interpret the falling destruction raining down upon them all.
And the men were pulling their robes together, some stumbling over bicycles or other toys children left absent-mindedly in the front yards, trusting they’d still be where they left them tomorrow.
Men, women, and children stood in front of their homes and looked upward and pointed in confusion to what they were witnessing.
Pointing to the sky, over the city of Los Angeles, California. Something, floated there, dangling from an invisible string.
It reminded Merna of the hanging Chinese paper lanterns that she had seen at a bad Chinese restaurant.
Shells fell all around and throughout the neighborhood, rocking the earth beneath the feet of the bewildered populace. Savannah screamed in terror, directly into her mother’s ears. They cried with tinnitus. The high-pitched ringing unrelenting.
A nearby explosion and the corresponding starburst of blinding heat ripped Merna’s eyesight away from her. She stumbled, taking herself and Savannah to the ground in a heap. She blinked away the white spots dancing before her eyes as best she could.
Looking up into the black, smoke-filled sky, she could make out a small fissure which had opened in the underside of the object.
The area below of the hanging lantern ignited in a spout of sparks and flame, brilliantly illuminating the bottom portion of it, before flickering and fading.
Only a few short days after the incident the area beneath where the lantern had hovered had begun to transform people: her neighbors, good friends that Merna had known for years, both old and young were falling ill.
Some folks, unprovoked, began attacking others in the streets, for no good reason. Murdering, looting, and committing unspeakable and ungodly acts upon each other; everything about her happy life had come to an end as she had known it.
Her home, along with many others, as well as a large part of the city, had been destroyed by falling U.S. Army ammunition. The casualties of friendly fire lay in the skeletons of gutted house frames. And the bodies, too many to collect to bury, rotted in pools of clotted ichor where they fell.
Savannah, like many others, grew desperately ill right after the event. The hospital, or rather what was left of it, as some of it had fallen when the bombs fell, was overrun with injured and dying citizens.
Merna fought to get Savannah inside for treatment, even if it were for nothing more than palliative care.
She pleaded with anyone she could find, offering money, offering everything she had left, which wasn’t much. She told them she was a doctor with the Los Angeles Psychiatric Services Department, hoping the word ‘doctor’ would get her the help she needed, but she was turned away, out of hand.
The staff at Mount Sinai hospital were doing everything they could to provide care to the hundreds of people filling its emergency departments to capacity. Finding no help, she tried some of the smaller physician offices, but they too were clogged with scores of people needing care.
Wandering aimlessly from place to place, Merna lay sobbing in a trash-filled culvert, her daughter, clutched in her arms, wrapped in a thin blanket she pulled from a trash bin.
They were both half-frozen from the cold. Merna’s shoulders bounced feebly with each ragged breath she took. Her wails were carried away on the thin winter winds, unheard on in the lonely watches of the small hours of the night.
She caressed Savannah’s severely dehydrated and comatose body in her arms. Her last act as a mother wasn’t to tuck her child into a soft bed, safe from the evils of the world or to tell her a bedtime story about princesses, living in stone castles, surrounded by drawbridges and living happily ever after with their gallant princes.
Nor was it to put her child’s long blonde hair up in yellow ribbons and curls. No, her last act was merciful. Merciful, but terrible.
Merna placed her frozen, mud-covered hands over Savannah’s nose and mouth, clamping them tightly to her small face, and suffocated what frail spark of life was left inside the dying girl. The child passed away in her arms to meet up with other little angels in heaven.
Tears flooded and pooled in Merna’s eyes. They fell in large drops, one after another, onto her blouse dampening it, darkening the material in places. Merna did what she felt she must. No matter how horrible.
The vision of those days from not-so-long-ago faded. Dr. Merna Valentine pulled herself away from the thoughts of her tragic past and forced herself to return to the present, where she finds herself standing once again in the darkened corridor, lit only by random flashes of lightning. She continues to sob softly as a clap of thunder rumbles outside.
Tomorrow, she would have to pay a visit to Dr. Shaw. As much as she couldn’t stand the man, this had to be reported… but… tomorrow.
Every discovery of new behaviors could bring them one step closer to saving the affected children and bringing closure to her and peace to Savannah, no matter how slight the chance of it might be.
Chapter Six
“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
The rolling stool, in the dead center of the operating room, squeaks beneath Dr. Shaw, as he turns it from side to side, only inches, back and forth, over and over again.
The overhead light isn’t quite yet in the optimal position. Shaw adjusts it accordingly to minimize the casting of his shadow. His gloved hand grips the center handle and firmly guides it to just the right place, then he says, “There, that’s better,” aloud and to himself because the anesthesiologist isn’t needed for this procedure.
Lily is quite dead now. Several hours have passed since R – Zero – One – E was first wheeled into the room. Her body cools rapidly beneath the skilled fingers of the doctor.
He’s taken multiple specimens tonight: skin, muscle, bone, and samples from her red-colored eyes. Red, like all the others, except for Rose’s, which are an absurd radiant violet-color.
Her eyes glimmered like an amethyst in the operating room lights. And what she did earlier in the research room was remarkable.
He forces himself to deal with the issue at hand, and for now, that’s working on Lily’s body. There will be time enough, and very soon,
to get access to Rose. He’ll have to get permission from Connors though. If nothing more than to put an end to Valentine’s constant interference.
Tonight, along with the few samples he’s already collected, he’ll also take Lily’s brain. It will be the first brain he’s been able to study since all this happened.
He is anxious and excited to discover how the affliction has compromised the organ. If the affliction, or infection, or whatever this is that he’s dealing with has managed to cross the blood-brain barrier. He presumes it has. One way or another, the findings should prove rather interesting.
The bone saws have been appropriately sterilized and are waiting on a nearby mayo stand. He hopes tonight he will be one step closer to ending the nightmare that began in Los Angeles. He wasn’t there when it happened. He’d been assigned to Camp Able as the Chief Surgeon, four years before the whole nasty affair began, way the hell off in Cali, before Major Connors and Dr. Valentine showed up knocking on the fence post looking for shelter. And besides the anesthesiologist and a few of the soldiers, the whole lot of the rest of them are transplants from ground zero.
He keeps the faith that he will find a weakness in the what some are now calling the Turned. By studying the so-called ‘children,’ he should be able to find some way of destroying the things in mass numbers.
Once he finds a way to disrupting the homeostasis of the monsters, then he will use it to destroy the research subjects as well. He chuckles to himself. He thinks the term, ‘children’ is nothing more than a joke. That was a thorn-in-his-side. It was Dr. Valentine who started calling them ‘children’ the day she set foot on Camp Able’s soil and found that they were being kept for research purposes. He cringed then, when he heard her say it, and it still makes him feel disgusted. It’s like letting a child name a chicken or duck, knowing how difficult it will be to slaughter the animal when the time comes to eat it.