Alien Infection

by Darrell Bain

  As soon as the slide was ready, I placed it on the microscope stage, gave it a drop of immersion oil and focused in with the high power lens. I had to blink and look again to be sure I was seeing what I thought I was. Every one of the red blood cells had two nuclei! Or were they nuclei? No, after examining a range of them I decided all the cells must contain a parasite of some sort like malaria. But if that were the case, it was like no parasite I had ever seen. Besides, red blood cells don't ordinarily show a nucleus in peripheral blood. They are manufactured in the marrow and by the time they begin circulating in the blood stream, the nucleus is gone. They are the one cell in the body that loses its nucleus as it matures and still functions as it is supposed to, carrying oxygen with its hemoglobin molecules. But here…all of the red cell stared back at me with two little eyes. Well, not really eyes, but they contained two little purple circles with a bright red dot in the middle, like a carnivorous animal's eye staring from the dark, red as fire.

  I couldn't make out exactly what they were and it really didn't matter because then I saw something else: All of the white blood cells contained those two little spots too, although they were a bit harder to detect because of similar staining characteristics of some other parts of the white cells. The spots were offset from the nuclei of the white cells and stared back at me with their little red dots, just like the ones in the red cells. Now that was unusual! I had never heard or read of a parasite that invaded both red and white blood cells, every single one of them, and not only the white cells but every one of the five general types of white cells!

  I got up and walked around, trying to make sense of the matter. I knew for certain that this was like nothing I had ever seen or studied or even heard about. It was new, as new as a freshly minted coin. But what did it mean? Not only for that patient, but for me? I wondered…and couldn't stand not knowing. Before I did anything else, I stuck my finger and made a slide of my own blood.

  I think I already knew what I would see before I even looked. I was just as infected as that patient had been. All my blood cells had those two spots of new material in them. I think I had known, but seeing the evidence with my own eyes made my heart begin to beat faster. What was it? Was I going to die? Should I report it? Images of those two government agents snapped into my mind and I decided right then that whatever other action I might take, I wasn't going to tell anyone about this. Not unless I started feeling worse than I had before the infection. And right now, I felt great physically. Mentally was a different story. What I had seen meant that every cell in my body might be infected with the same little organism as my blood cells, a phenomena so far removed from the possible as to be out there in the realm of science fiction. Parasites just can't do something like that, nor can poisons, nor anything else I could think of. For all I knew I could be dying and just not feel it yet.

  I discarded the slide, then on second thought fished it out of the disposal box. I might want to look at it again later, or maybe show it to someone else. I took it and the spare slide I always routinely made and stuck them, along with the tube of blood, into my inside shirt pocket. Just then the phone rang for my first callout of the night. It was the emergency room of course.

  "Hi Tanni,” I said to the charge nurse when I bumped my way past the swinging doors to the ER. “What are you doing here?” I was surprised to see her. Usually she worked surgery and we met only occasionally.

  "Filling in until they get a replacement. Or haven't you heard?"

  "Heard what?"

  "Oh, my. It's the best gossip we've had in years.” She told me about it while I was drawing blood from a very pregnant woman who wasn't paying attention to anything but her labor pains and asking how much longer it was going to be.

  "Margie and the new contract doc, the one that was on duty your last night here, have run away together."

  "Huh? Are you sure?"

  "Well, the newspapers are saying they both left notes behind. I guess that's about as sure as you can get. It made the news because neither of them showed up or even called on the night they were supposed to be work. We had some bad cases that we had trouble handling and a reporter got hold of it. Boy, that must have been a real quick romance unless they were seeing each other before he came to work here."

  I felt my blood run cold-if what I had circulating in my veins could still be called blood in the conventional sense of the word. Quick romance, my fanny. I remembered seeing blood on both the doc and the nurse and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Homeland Security agents almost certainly thought there was a high probability that they had been infected-or maybe they simply weren't taking chances. They had been grabbed and put in isolation somewhere; that was the way I saw it. Then I remembered how panicky those agents had been. Maybe the doc and nurse weren't in isolation; maybe they were dead. And of course Tanni didn't know what I knew. The problem now was deciding whether they would think the same thing about me. Should I take a chance that they wouldn't-or run now and confirm their fears, but at least not be around for an “accident"?

  "What's wrong Mike?” Tanni asked as I picked up my tray and headed slowly toward the exit, my mind whirling with possibilities and fears. Was I being paranoid or were they really out to get me?

  I stopped and looked at Tanni. Her dark face showed concern. “Sorry, what did you say?"

  "I asked what was wrong. Did you know either of them real well?"

  "No, it's just a shock,” I said. “Who would have thought they would be up to something like that?"

  "Yeah, you never know, do you?"

  "No,” I said. “I guess I haven't been keeping up with the news lately. What else has happened?"

  She shrugged. “Isn't that enough? And you know, I never heard a thing about whether they recaptured that terrorist who got away while they were up in your place recovering the blood you drew. What a bunch of clowns!"

  I left it at that, letting her think whatever she pleased. But I didn't believe for a minute that those men were clowns. They had simply gotten too excited and carelessly left their prisoner unguarded, thinking he couldn't go anywhere. Of course if I had been in their place, I wouldn't have thought he could go anywhere either, not with his injuries. I wondered how he had managed it. However he did, it must have been very painful. And he must have been goddamned determined to run, what with those injuries I had seen. Which brought on another thought. What kind of accident had he been in? Or did anyone know? I decided not to ask.

  Cross matching two units of blood to have ready for the pregnant lady in case they ran into problems with her C-section was such a routine procedure that I didn't have to spend any mental effort on it. Instead I tried to decide on a course of action that wouldn't make Homeland Security suspect I was infected. I sure didn't want to die in an “accident", or be stuck away in some isolation ward for no telling how long. Especially since I felt fine.

  By the time my shift was over, I thought the best course of action would be to go ahead and retire just as I had planned. That might cast some suspicion on me, but just cutting and running would be worse. And I had already given my notice. I could just stay on of course, but I doubted that would work for long. While I was shaving before coming to work that morning I had suddenly noticed that I looked better than usual-that there were fewer lines in my face. The skin on my face seemed to have tightened up, and appeared healthier. And my morning erections were appearing oftener and becoming firmer and longer lasting, like I had been given a shot of testosterone. Shucks, until this happened, I had hardly noticed them even when it did happen. If I stayed around, sooner or later someone was bound to notice that I not only looked a bit younger, but that I was acting younger as well, though I doubted anyone but me noticed as yet. That thought brought it all home to me.

  Whatever it was that I had caught appeared to be doing some minor (or perhaps not so minor) repairs on my old body. And occasionally I was having fuzzy images coming to me from people I was very near, similar to what had happened with
the blond in the bar. Already this particular night a couple of disconcerting incidents had happened. Once I had caught a fuzzy sexual image from a nurse while we were taking a break together during a quiet time and spilled coffee in my lap. The image wasn't even about me, but it was so startling that I tried to bring my hand up to my head to shut it out-while holding my coffee in the same hand. She gave me a very peculiar look but I laughed and did my best to make her think I had just intended to rub some sleep out of my eyes and forgotten that I had a cup of coffee in my hand. A little later I told one of the nurses in intensive care that I hoped her baby got better before I realized she hadn't told me her daughter was sick; she had simply been thinking about her and worrying herself into a state about her child's illness and I had gotten a vague sense of that worry. Fortunately, we were both busy working on a terminally ill patient at the time and I suspect that she imagined she had spoken her thoughts out loud without realizing it.

  It's hard to convey just what it was that I was experiencing. I certainly wasn't reading minds, like the science fiction telepaths. In fact, I wasn't even certain I was doing anything out of the ordinary. I might be imagining it all, courtesy of those little whatevers running around in my blood. That made me wonder some more about them, an almost continuous process at first. Were they parasites (if that's what they were) just in my blood cells or in other cells of my body? I decided to see. The easiest way was through a cheek swab, though that wouldn't necessarily prove anything. Skin cells (and the lining inside our mouth is simply a specialized form of skin cell) function by dividing in the basal cell layer and new cells work their way to the surface as the outer ones age and are sloughed off.

  The next break I had I took a quick swab and stained it. The proper stain for those type of cells wasn't around in the main lab, but if you've looked at as many epithelial cells as I have, most any kind of stain will do. All you need to see is a contrast. I made a slide and stained it. The organism was there in a few cells, but not many. Nevertheless, that told me something. Most of the cells you get from a cheek swab are already dead-and why would a parasite invade dead cells? I probably hadn't dug deep enough with the swab to get more than a few live cells but they were there, all right. Still, I felt fine. I decided to ride with whatever was happening for a while, and rested easier after that. Until I got home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maybe I'm cynical by nature. After having my usual getting off drink, I didn't stop to eat but went to my hiding place and took half my gold and half the cash out of the cubbyhole I had cut into the wall then repaired and painted over. I took half of it out and went down and locked it in the trunk of my car, in a space behind some loose upholstery.

  Crazy? Sure, but every time I thought of those government goons pointing a gun at me I got antsy. The car could have been stolen and I would be out several thousand bucks, but on the other hand, I had a good alarm system on the car and our apartment complex kept a security guard on duty so it wasn't really likely. Whatever, it made me feel better. I slept well that day and woke in the evening as ready for work as I had been for years. Physically, I was still feeling great. Mentally, the thought of being infected with an unknown bug, and one that the government obviously was determined to control by any means up to and including murder was a constant drain on my emotions, like a loved one being tried for a murder you knew they couldn't have committed.

  I was just pulling out of the parking lot when three cars in a row drove in, each of them occupied by a couple. Ordinarily that wouldn't have been cause for worry, except that the first vehicle had someone in the driver's seat I was very familiar with. You're not likely to forget a face that you've seen behind the barrel of a gun pointing at you. It was my old friends from that remarkable night when a patient with two mangled legs managed to somehow get up and remove himself from a gurney while they were confiscating the blood I had drawn from him. Most likely his partner was riding shotgun, but I didn't get a clear view of the other occupant. Luckily, they both had their eyes on where they were going rather than on me, and I wasn't close enough to draw a glance from them anyway.

  It was stupid of me. I shouldn't have even taken the chance, but I had to see what happened. My apartment was barely visible from the edge of the parking area. I nudged the car back and got farther away, but found a better vantage point where I could see exactly what was going on, even from a distance.

  It appeared as if they rang, then knocked and when that got no response the one pounding on the door was shoved aside by another. He pulled out some sort of gadget and began poking around at the lock. In two minutes flat, he had somehow bypassed the dead bolt and the door swung open. I could see the drawn guns as three men and a woman charged inside. That was enough for me. I got out of there while I still could.

  Again, it was sloppy work on the part of the government agents that let me escape. If they had bothered to check my schedule at the hospital, they would have arrived an hour earlier and been certain to have captured me. As it was, I made a clean getaway. The only problem was, I didn't have any idea of where to go or what to do next.

  * * * *

  I was as badly in need of a drink as I was of my usual caffeine fix that time of night. I took care of both pressing needs at the same time by stopping at a combination bar and grill. I noticed the Houston Chronicle news rack outside and felt in my pocket for change while checking to be sure it was the latest edition. It was. I took my paper inside and ordered a cup of coffee with a shot of brandy added to it, declining the offer of whipped cream topping. When I want a café royal, it's the kick I'm after, not the embellishments.

  The story featured on the inside of the front page caught my interest immediately.

  RUNAWAY LOVERS IN FATAL ACCIDENT.

  A physician and nurse from the Lamont Memorial

  Hospital in Lufkin who disappeared together, leaving their families behind, were both killed when the car they were driving failed to navigate an exit on I-35 north of Dallas.

  Doctor—

  The article went on to give some of the lurid details of their “Clandestine love affair” and segued on to reactions of their families to their deaths. The imaginary “details” almost certainly had been planted, as it cited an “unnamed source", but the “accident” was certainly not imaginary. Nor were those agents I had seen bursting into my apartment with drawn guns accidental. I noticed that my hands were trembling and clinched both of them into tight fists several times until the shaking stopped. But that still left me with no good ideas about what to do with myself. All I knew was that if I wanted to remain a free man-or even stay alive-I had better find a hole to crawl into.

  By the time I finished my drink I felt better and made up my mind. I didn't know yet how hard the search for me would be pushed, but judging from events so far, they damn sure weren't going to just shrug their shoulders and tell their boss I had gotten away.

  Dallas was a bit over three hours north. I couldn't do anything about the license plates on my car except maybe daub it with some dirt, enough to make it harder to read but not enough to get me pulled over by a state trooper looking to make his ticket quota for the month. I took care of that as soon as I got to the car, being careful to smear the mud while no one was observing. After washing my hands in a puddle, I hit the road, very carefully driving just at the speed limit. First though, I took the little automatic out of the glove compartment and shoved it into the side pocket of my jean jacket. I had been careless lately about not carrying it on my person but that was going to change quickly. Whether or not I could use it against an agent who was simply doing his duty was another matter. I had killed in one of the two wars I attended while in the army, but those were the enemy, fanatical Islamic terrorists trying to bring down America. I had no bad memories at all about them. The possibility of killing a government agent was a different matter altogether. I didn't like to think about it.

  I took Highway 69 northeast from Lufkin, the easiest route to I-45 North and thence on to Dallas. I cho
se Dallas because I knew my way around that city even better than I did Lufkin. I had worked in a hospital there for ten years before moving to Lufkin after my last divorce. Not that I would look up any old friends. In the first place, I didn't have any close friends; I've always been pretty much a loner. And in the second place, I wouldn't trust them if I did, not on something like this, and even if I did I wouldn't drag anyone I cared for into this mess. I had a brother still living in Dallas that I would trust utterly, but I didn't give any thought at all to contacting him. I had read enough mystery and detective novels in my life to know a lot about police procedure. They would be watching my family, such as I had left.

  All the way to Dallas, my thoughts ranged out ahead as I thought about what I could do to hide myself from the feds. That brought back memories of a very interesting patient I had met at Charleston Hospital there. He was an ex-con, just recently free on parole from a five year sentence and unfortunately, had forgotten a lot about operating a motor vehicle, especially someplace like Dallas. He had a wreck the second day after getting a car. It broke a lot of bones and damn near broke his head, but he survived. While he was recuperating, I drew blood from him every other day or so. Most patients are eminently forgettable, but Manny struck a chord with me and apparently I with him. I have always been fascinated with atypical criminals, the ones like Manny who could have made it without turning to crime any time they cared to. In return, he was interested in what the military and the wars I had been in were like. We talked a lot.

  He had operated scams involving Identity Theft, and now that he intended to go straight (or so he said), he told me all sorts of stories about how easy it was to forge new identities and steal old ones and sometimes merge the two. He even kidded me about changing my identity because of the impending divorce and gave me some clues on how to go about finding the real artists in that specialty. I intended now to see if he knew what he was talking about. And after that, I needed to dispose of my car without having the transaction traced, but I had already figured out how to do that.