The Apocalypse Strain

by Jason Parent

  Dante winced and closed his eyes for a moment when the realization hit him. The maintenance employee crashed down onto his stomach and, though he bounced once, barely slid anywhere. But he had more time than Dante had calculated. He still had a chance.

  Grimacing in pain, the boy military crawl-scrambled beneath the knee-high shutter. Once on the other side, he rolled onto his back and propped himself up on his forearms, watching the gate drop.

  What are you doing? Dante ran a hand down his face. Keep moving! Get out of there!

  “Get back!” Belgrade shouted into the mic, to Dante’s gratification. But the boy didn’t move; he just stared with his mouth hung open and lips quivering. He lounged back on his elbows, letting the shutter determine if he lived or died.

  One of the creatures tried to follow the boy under the shutter but collided with the unyielding metal with a sound resembling an aluminum garbage can being crushed. The shutter, though, seemed unaffected. The toxic newt’s head smashed inward and reeled back, bringing the creature with it. It flipped over backward and flopped on the floor in an almost cartoonish display of slapstick no one found humorous. The shutter rattled on its rollers, stopped descending briefly, then resumed.

  A second toxic newt monster slid head first toward the narrowing gap. Dante saw the boy gasp in fear, scuttling back on his buttocks, then smile as the creature’s bulbous fat head wedged itself between shutter and linoleum. It ripped its head free a second later, so fiercely that it scalped itself. A clump of flabby meat, like the contents of a biohazardous waste bag at a liposuction clinic, plopped wetly onto the floor. It looked like a beached jellyfish.

  The boy sat up, still grinning with defiance. The creature’s head had been too enormous to fit through the remaining crevice. Its tongue had not.

  The slimy-sticky muscle lashed forward with such speed that it was nearly undetectable. It wrapped around the boy’s bent knees and jerked him toward the mutant newt’s black-hole maw. All that stood between the creature and its dinner was the steel shutter. The shutter dropped shut.

  The final eight inches of the shutter’s descent was a free fall of floor-shattering tonnage. It rolled free from its brakes, perhaps damaged by the collision, and slammed into the floor, not letting anything stand between it and its final resting place.

  Not even the creature’s tongue…or the boy’s legs. His shins were crushed, his legs severed below the knee. His feet and ankles disappeared into the scalped newt’s mouth. Anju gasped. No one else made a sound as the rest of the boy wallowed in quiet agony.

  At least quiet for Dante, who watched a soundless screen, but heard faintly the boy’s frantic and tortured cries somewhere out in the hallways. The severed portion of the newt’s whip tongue writhed with the boy on the less-infected side of the shutter. The tongue appeared to be forming spindly appendages up and down its length, becoming like some prehistoric centipede.

  The boy curled up into a ball, trying only once to put pressure on his wounds before apparently finding it too difficult a task to bear. He stared up, as if instinctively, toward the camera, with great big eyes as blood poured between his fingers and emptied from his cheeks. Cognition set in long enough for the boy to reach out a blood-soaked hand to the camera, pleading for help that hadn’t budged.

  The camera went dark with interspersed speckles of light. A black cloud appeared farther away, and Dante realized the cloud had passed in front of the camera. The cloud spiraled like a tornado, ever moving closer and closer to the boy.

  Dante couldn’t hear it beyond a dull echo, but he knew what screaming looked like. The maintenance employee was screaming well before the black swarm descended upon him, but he was screaming even louder after it did, the echo in the hallway sounding nearer.

  When the swarm lifted, the boy was gone. Whatever biting and gnawing things had attacked him seemed to double in number.

  Belgrade raised his pistol to his temple and set his jaw. “I won’t go out like that.”

  “Now, just you wait a second,” Dr. Werniewski said, throwing his hands up. “We need you here. You guards are our best chance of getting out of here alive.”

  The others murmured. Anju put her hand delicately on Belgrade’s raised forearm but didn’t try to move it. “Hey,” she said softly then nothing more.

  “Look!” Dr. Werniewski shouted. “There!”

  He pointed at other survivors, a man and a woman, trapped inside the front office of a radiology lab. They were waving at the camera.

  “Is that Dr. St. Pierre?” he asked.

  Chapter Twenty

  Clara watched, helpless, while Alfonse barricaded the door. He knocked over a filing cabinet in front of it, pushed a desk behind the cabinet, then piled every heavy transportable object he could find on top of the desk and around its legs. The door was secure. At least nothing big was getting in.

  And they weren’t getting out.

  Alfonse, God bless him, wouldn’t give up. Just watching him was making Clara tired. After scouring the square office and waiting area meter by meter for windows, vents, doors, gates, magical modes of ingress and egress – Clara didn’t know what exactly he was looking for – he moved on to the adjoining room, where the DR machine, CT scanners, ultrasound machine, and other equipment were housed. The radiology lab hadn’t been designed for her team’s use, but Clara and Doctors Werniewski and Thomas, among others, had use of the room as a backup facility for examining symptoms of microbiological infection.

  She sat in a plastic chair bolted into the floor as though its owners had been terrified someone might actually steal the uncomfortable piece of crap, maybe taking off with the nasty shit-brown carpet, too. This is not where I envisioned my life would end. Her depression and the fact that she really was trapped in a box, surrounded by things that wanted to kill or absorb her, was dampening her spirits.

  Alfonse had only been in the back room for a minute or so before he returned, frowning, looking as frustrated as she felt. “Most of that junk is bolted down,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. He began pressing his palms against the walls, testing their solidity in several areas. Clara watched him with mild curiosity, presuming he was looking for structural weaknesses, but for what purpose, she couldn’t guess. The thought of him trying to bash his way through the wall, like a cartoon barbarian, might have made her chuckle at any other time, but right then, she just found it sad.

  “It’s no use,” she said.

  Alfonse turned to face her, stubborn anger flaring in his eyes. “We’re alive, aren’t we? If we’re alive, then there’s still hope.”

  That made Clara laugh. “That was corny.”

  “What?” Alfonse’s shoulders heaved. “Look,” he snapped, “just because you’ve given up, doesn’t mean I will. A good friend of mine died trying to save your ungrateful life. I won’t honor him by lying down like a wounded horse, waiting for death.”

  “I didn’t ask him for help,” Clara shot back and instantly regretted it. Her cheeks flushed with guilt and embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Does it matter?” Alfonse’s eyes were puffy, raw, and red. His cheeks were blotchy. Though he looked as though he would cry at any moment – her words certain to have stung him – he held back his tears. “Does anything matter right now besides surviving? He helped you because that’s the kind of guy Sebastian was, all cantankerous on the outside but a heart of gold on the inside. And now he’s gone, and you and I are stuck with each other.”

  “I’m sorry.” Clara dropped her gaze and picked at a loose string hanging from a button on her lab coat.

  The door banged more loudly as if in response to her voice, but whatever was outside couldn’t get in, not in its current form. They seemed safe, for the time being. Relative safety didn’t make the banging any less terrifying.

  Alfonse walked over to Clara and dropped into the chair beside her. He sighed then tr
ied on a smile. “We’re in this mess together, you and me, like it or not. We might as well be friends. My name is Alfonse, as you know. Alfonse DiGregorio. I’m one of the seven-member international team of astronauts, cosmonauts, and astrobiologists assigned to this frozen wasteland as we prepare for a mission to Mars that none of us truly believes will occur in our lifetimes. All that ice and rock-hard earth outside is supposed to replicate conditions for Mars excavation and subterranean exploration. If you ask me, all we’re succeeding in doing is getting our fingers and toes frostbitten and our asses chapped.” He tried to laugh at his own joke but lacked the heart. “Sebastian,” he said, his eyes going distant. He choked up.

  Clara stared at her hands while he regained his composure.

  “Sebastian,” he said again. “He was on my team.”

  Instantly, Clara filled with a bitterness she tasted on her tongue. She scowled and pursed her lips as she thought of the astrobiologist who was responsible for everything that had gone wrong that day, the same individual who’d tried to squeeze the life from her neck. “I know your team,” she said, letting emotion take over. “The acclaimed team that unearthed the ancient squirrel’s nest and, in doing so, unleashed this goddamn plague upon us all.” She clapped. “Well done. Bravo.”

  Alfonse scowled back, but his face softened before he spoke. When he did, his tone was weak and low. “Something tells me you have no right to judge.”

  Clara sighed. A tear fell before she could harden herself against it. “You’re right. I don’t, and what I said was completely uncalled for. I’m sorry. I really don’t know what’s gotten into me. I seem to be feeling everything more today. And…and Sebastian. I am grateful for his sacrifice and terribly sorry for your loss.”

  She sat up straighter and smoothed out the wrinkles on her pants. “I am Dr. Clara St. Pierre, professor of microbiology and genetics at University Paris Descartes and lead researcher on all projects involving the study, categorization, and examination of the pandoraviruses your team found in that nest. I was here working on the very sample responsible for this crisis when Sergei Kobozev entered my clean room and – I still can’t believe I’m saying this – ingested the sample and growth medium containing Mollivirus sibericum, the fourth of the giant viruses discovered. The sample would not have been vulnerable had I not taken it from cold storage and left it exposed on the laboratory station at which I’d been working. So, in a way…maybe in the worst way…I am responsible for your friend’s death.”

  “No,” Alfonse said shakily. Then he repeated more firmly, “No, you’re not.” He paused and combed his hair back with his hands, watching the door as the pounding continued. Clara tried not to look that way, pretending not to notice. She thought Alfonse was trying to do the same.

  “So you were studying this thing? Any idea how we might be able to stop its spread or, better yet, kill it?”

  Clara shook her head slowly.

  “Fuck.”

  “Oui.”

  The fire alarm cut out, and the red lights in the hall stopped flashing. The pounding in Clara’s temples began to lessen almost immediately. Thank God for minor miracles.

  The banging at the door could no longer be ignored. In fact, it grew louder, more insistent, as if the creatures outside were also more clear minded and intent on getting inside since the alarm had been cut. Maybe they are sensitive to sound? Clara doubted she would live long enough to test that hypothesis.

  Another loud thud, accompanied by splintering wood, made Clara jump. The next whack against the door rattled through the file cabinet and into the desk so hard that a lamp slid off it and smashed against the ground.

  “Well,” Alfonse said, “if you can think of anything, now’s the time.”

  “What happened to the alarm?”

  “No idea. Maybe it tired itself out. Can’t say I’m complaining.”

  “You, in the maintenance uniform,” a male voice echoed through an intercom. “We have you on video. Keep running.”

  “What was that?” Alfonse asked.

  Clara gave Alfonse a once-over. His striped button-down shirt and blue jeans hardly passed for a maintenance uniform, and he wasn’t running. She placed a finger over her lips and looked up at the ceiling. Alfonse’s eyes followed. They froze and listened.

  For a moment, Clara heard nothing but the successive, rhythmic banging against the door, now accompanied by more splintering and cracking. Then the voice came again.

  “Take a right at your next intersection…. Your other right!”

  “Someone must be watching through the security cameras!” The thought filled Clara with energy. She rose in her seat and may have smiled, if only for a moment. “They’re trying to help someone. Maybe they can help us!”

  “We’ll need to get their attention—”

  “Exactly!” Clara patted his knee. “Help me find a security camera.”

  Clara didn’t need help, immediately finding what she was looking for. The camera was propped in a corner, affixed to the ceiling on a swivel mount, exactly where she’d expected it to be.

  “There!” she shouted, as if the small victory was enough to win the war. As she threw out her hand, index finger extended in the direction of the camera, her body followed her hand’s momentum, and she spilled out of her seat. “Merde.”

  She fell forward. Her foot jerked forward, too. It caught her fall.

  “I….” Clara glanced timidly down at her foot. It was firmly beneath her, supporting her weight, her torso resting on her thigh as if she were stretching before a race. Clara hadn’t gone for a run since her college days.

  With a conscious effort, no longer used to her legs being under her mind’s control, she dragged her shaking back leg forward. She pulled herself into a crouch, and, with her only discomfort caused by her attempts to rise with caution, straining for balance and control, she stood.

  Alfonse’s expression resembled that of a scolded puppy: all big eyed and pouty lipped. He raised an eyebrow as deep grooves marred his olive-skinned forehead. “You can stand?”

  Clara was conscious of her big, fat smile and how out of place it must have seemed to poor Alfonse. Still, she couldn’t wipe that smile from her face no matter how hard she tried, even in spite of the death banging at their door, soon to gain entry. An overwhelming feeling of joy rose within her, a feeling of being whole for the first time since the lesions had appeared on her spinal cord. “I’m standing!”

  She couldn’t believe it, yet there she was, standing the same way she did in her dreams. She could feel her legs under her, holding her up, unwavering. That feeling was amazing. Even with all the death and chaos she’d witnessed so far that day, even with her own death imminent, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been happier.

  How selfish that must seem. How sick does that make me?

  “You are.” Alfonse stared at her through squinting, suspicious eyes.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just….” Clara couldn’t help but giggle. She took in a breath. “I haven’t stood on my own for two years. And….” She lifted her right foot, held it in the air, then set it down again in front of her. “Unbelievable.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “I can walk…Alfonse, I can walk!” Before she knew what she was doing, Clara was doing more than walking. She ran into his arms, throwing her own around his neck and pressing his firm body against hers.

  He smiled awkwardly and blushed as she peppered his cheeks with kisses. “Um, would you mind telling me what’s going on? And, is it really the right time for…whatever this is?”

  “I’m infected!” Clara blurted as if it were the best news in the world. The man on the intercom continued his instructions, but she hardly noticed a thing he said.

  “That probably isn’t the best thing to tell a guy while you’re kissing him.” Alfonse grabbed her by the arms and pushed her away gently. “You�
��ll have to explain that if we somehow get the hell out of here, but for now, assuming I’m not infected and you’re not going to turn into one of them, we should really concentrate on how we’re going to get out of this room alive.”

  He turned back to the security camera and waved his arms frantically. “Help!” he shouted, doing everything in his power to get the attention of the man on the intercom.

  Clara joined in. She hopped up and down, shouting and waving and smiling and worrying, thinking her legs would remember what atrophy felt like, still in awe of the fact that she was hopping up and down, shouting and waving, free of frailty. She was experiencing no discomfort in her legs.

  “Oh my God!” a new voice crackled over the intercom, still male but higher pitched and with an American accent. “Clara, is that you? It’s Jordan. I’m so sorry, Clara. So sorry for leaving you back there. I was scared and…. Are you standing?”

  “Give me that,” the original voice said. “You two, you can stop jumping. We see you just fine, but we can’t hear you. So stop shouting. You’ll only draw more unwanted attention to yourselves.”

  Clara stopped jumping, but she didn’t stop standing or smiling. She had reason to smile and reason to live. Help seemed a voice box away. Briefly, Jordan’s betrayal had hit a sore spot, but she was already past it, too happy to give a damn and smart enough to know that whatever spark she’d been carrying for him had been extinguished. She knew why Jordan had left her. Fear made people selfish. She could forgive him for that, but she couldn’t forget it. Still, she was happy to know he was alive.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, the direness of their predicament stifled her excitement. But only a little. She had enough sense left in her to point at the door. The camera swiveled toward it. The door rattled, along with the barricade, with every hit from whatever demon spawn remained outside.