Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

  Teeny and her team continued to study and make new discoveries as the Spartan Team ran their missions in hot spots around the world. Their abilities were nothing short of superhuman.

  With everything happening around the world with the axola flu, the emphasis on improving the enhancement drugs was the only focus of Bio-Sure. Production of typical drugs other than those used for pain had become fruitless because no one needed them.

  The best thing that happened to the human race was in a pandemic state. Even as CDC officials and other health organizations warned against it, people everywhere were passing the virus from person to person at an unbelievable rate. It covered the United States in mere weeks and the earth before the summer ended. Only those in the most remote areas were not exposed.

  If there were any who were immune to the flu, it was such a small percentage that it was not measurable.

  Soon the price of the blessing was discovered.

  One of the biggest parts of every economy on earth began to feel the effects of the flu. It started with small hospitals and clinics closing because no one had reason to use their services. Soon only the largest hospitals remained open with limited staffing. When the bigger hospitals started closing, small clinics in doctors’ houses and back-alley stores opened to treat only the worst of injuries. No longer could professional health workers name their price for their services. They took bartered items and payments that barely kept their families clothed and fed.

  So many people being out of work caused an economic domino effect. Pharmaceutical, medical supply, and rehabilitation companies disappeared from the financial landscape. With so many people struggling to support themselves, other parts of the economy began to suffer.

  The governments of the world scrambled to enact laws and protections to help slow the crash.

  CRASH

  Rocky opened her eyes from a nearly sleepless night. Her given name was Raquel, but her father changed it to Rocky when she was five years old. She was hit by a car and survived through an induced coma that lasted three days to let brain swelling recede. Her personality grew around the name. She was tough, and no man she had tried to have a relationship with could ever measure up.

  Her landlord had told her that today would be the last day he would accept her rent without a late penalty. She was angry about it, but not at the woman. After all, being the Landlord, she had obligations to the bank to pay her mortgage.

  She needed to get ready for her new job, so she turned and sat up on the edge of her bed, reaching for her phone as she did.

  Being a barista at a gourmet coffee shop was a far cry from being a registered nurse, but she had to make money somehow. In some ways she was lucky to have started looking for a new job when she did. She probably wouldn’t have gotten this one if she had started a week later.

  Looking at her phone, she checked her Facebook. Margot, her friend from the hospital, had posted, “Everyone join us on our DC march to the Capital Building and demand legislation protecting health workers. Get your retirement funds from the hospital conglomerates that you have saved for your entire career and housing and welfare benefits to help you stay at your current economic level.”

  As she showered, she thought of all the people at the hospital where she had once worked. The entire hospital had been closed. Even the doctors were bereft! Hospitals across the entire planet were closing their doors. With the boon flu (now being called the axola flu), people needed little health care. Small clinics were being kept, but they were mainly for rebreaking bones that had set incorrectly and closing internal wounds. Even that had become a dog-eat-dog situation. With all of the clinics that were opened, there was a price war that caused many to immediately go back out of business. She probably made more as a barista than she could make resetting bones.

  When she got out of the shower, she messaged Margot that she would be at the march.

  _______

  Teeny walked out of the shower drying her hair with a towel and sat down on the bed. Reaching for the TV remote, she smacked Tin’s bare ass before she grabbed it. He knocked her hand away and pulled the sheet over himself.

  “You’d think being a military man, you wouldn’t be such a pussy about getting out of bed in the morning!”

  He moaned. “Between you and keeping up appearances at Bio-Sure, I only got about three hours’ sleep in the past forty-eight! So bite me!”

  She turned on the TV and turned to jump on his back, smacking his ass again. “Get up, pussy!”

  He groaned again and then flipped over, rolling on top of her, and ended up with his face two inches from hers. He held her arms down on both sides of her head as she pretended to struggle. He chuckled and she giggled as he moved closer to kiss her. She blew air out between her lips and turned her face away.

  “Holy shit. Go brush your teeth!”

  He laughed and licked the side of her face before rolling off the bed and heading toward the bathroom.

  Teeny propped her head up with a second pillow and turned the TV up with the remote. The Food Channel didn’t interest her, so she started surfing through channels until landing on WNN.

  “This is Katlin Telurite standing in front of Hori Lutheran Hospital in Chicago. There are protesters behind me who have been here every day since the hospital closed four days ago. Among the protesters are doctors, nurses, and administrators out of work and with nowhere to go for jobs. Their livelihoods are being eliminated by what is now being called the axola flu. The virus has swept across the globe, making the entire human race immune to other viruses and even infections. I have here with me Christine Walker and her mother Lisa. Christine was diagnosed four months ago with lymphoblastic leukemia. Her mother made a bold decision and took her out of the hospital to purposely expose her to axola. Today she is cancer free. Christine, how are you feeling?”

  The girl just said, “Good.” Then she buried her face in her mother’s waist.

  Katrina smiled at the camera and turned to the girl’s mother. “How do you feel about the situation, Lisa?”

  “Oh my God, Katrina. We are so blessed to have our daughter safe and healthy. I would sacrifice all the jobs on earth for that blessing! Thank God for the axola flu!”

  Katlin pulled the microphone back. “And why are you here today, Lisa?”

  She pushed the microphone back at the mother, who now had tears in her eyes.

  “All of these people are suffering, Katrina! We need to do something about it! Congress and the president should do something to help them! I’m here to support the people who have been caring for mankind for hundreds of years. Society owes them a debt! We should not abandon them in their hour of need!”

  The camera panned out to the rest of the protesters.

  “The protests today and over the past weeks are actually asking for the federal government to enact a law protecting health workers’ homes and families from banks that are also now feeling the pinch of the crash. The action that a bipartisan group of senators has written, called the Mercy Act, would freeze all pending loans that health workers have on the books. These same health workers could not be forced out of their homes, and it would give low-interest loans to those who need them.

  “The Mercy Act is expected to pass the Senate, and the president has promised to sign it. But there are already rumors coming out of the House that it will die on the vine. Groups of health workers and others who support them across the country are arranging what is being called the Million-Doctor March. It will culminate in the mall in front of the Capital Building next week when the House of Representatives is due to vote on the act.

  “Back to you, Jaff.”

  “Thanks, Katrina. What an amazing story, and what a cute little girl.

  “In a related story, the Dow lost another five hundred points yesterday, bringing it to its lowest point since the housing bubble burst. Speculators insist that this crash has no end i
n sight. Mutual funds that had health-industry components were always considered the safest and most stable investments, and they have now lost 90 percent of their value over the past month of trading. The New York Stock Exchange and other markets around the world have started opening late and closing early to try to slow the exodus of traders dumping their health-industry stocks.

  “Washington, DC, police have requested assistance from the National Guard to help keep order in what is anticipated to be a crowd in excess of one million people in the National Mall. Social media outlets have been reporting that similar marches will be happening at every state capital and major city in the United States, as well as across the globe. WNN will be on site at twenty-two major markets in the United States and in major cities across the planet to cover the protests.

  “Now to the national weather. Kenny, how is the weather going to be in DC for the protest?”

  “Well, Jaff, it looks like we may have problems. We have this low-pressure area moving closer to the—”

  Click. Teeny turned off the TV and looked up to see Tin standing in the bathroom doorway in nothing but a towel.

  “We have to figure out what we need to do about the Abraham and Reed situation,” she said. “It is important that we get our hands on the serum we made from your blood and get it to the CDC to safeguard and synthesize.”

  Tin was looking at the floor and shaking his head. He had taken the bandage off the scratches on his cheeks to take his shower, and she saw they were still angry red. He shook his head again and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Jesus. I have a blasting headache! I need to get to a pharmacy to get some Tylenol.”

  With that he staggered and sat down hard on the bed.

  “Holy crap, Tin. Let me see your eyes.”

  She pulled his lids up, and he pushed her hands away because the light was hurting his eyes. “You definitely have an infection—and possibly may have rabies, Tin.”

  He grabbed his pants and started pulling them on. “If I have it, it must have come from Anderson.”

  Teeny walked to the closet and started pulling her clothes on too. “That does make sense now. Anderson must have contracted rabies. It’s possible that it recombined with Spartan to cause a new strain!”

  Then she got a concerned look on her face. “Did anyone else get injured in the fight with Anderson?”

  Tin nodded. “Everyone but Marty, but he did spray Anderson’s blood all over himself.”

  He thought about it for a second. “So does that mean we’ll end up like Anderson?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think you will, but it’s pretty likely that O’Reilly and Laudner will. We have to get to them before they go apeshit too.”

  She looked back at Tin, and he was staring back at her. “I need to get back in time to mow the lawn.”

  Teeny’s mouth dropped open to say something.

  He shook his head and tried again. “We’ll have to get them off the campus. That won’t be easy.”

  She grabbed the keys to his truck from the table. “We have to get you something for the infection first. Do you think you can maintain for another hour or so?”

  Instead of answering with words that didn’t seem right in his head, he just nodded.

  She pulled out her phone and opened her text conversation with Marty from when she woke in the Dumpster. She looked at Tin, and he shook his head again as if he was clearing it. She replied to his last message. “M, RUT?”

  She waited a few minutes for him to answer. When nothing came back, she recalled that Marty was a late sleeper, so she pulled up the map application on her phone and spoke into it. “Hospital near me.”

  After buffering for about thirty seconds, it showed her Brothers of Mercy fifteen minutes away. She helped Tin finish dressing, as he seemed to be having more trouble with his headache and thinking straight. When she arrived at the hospital, the parking lot was nearly empty. It looked as if protesters were picketing during normal hours. It was just too early for them now.

  She pulled right up to the emergency entrance, ran around the vehicle, guided Tin from the truck into the ER waiting room, and told him to sit.

  No one was there, as if they had just walked out without turning anything off. Then she saw someone walking away from her in a hallway.

  She called out, “Hey, where is the pharmacy?”

  The person turned around and started shambling toward her. He looked just like Raines had before they infused him with blood. Then another person turned the corner and started moving toward her.

  “Shit, something is definitely wrong here!”

  She looked up then and saw the directory on the wall. Running her finger down it, she came across Pharmacy. Luckily it was away from where the two were still moving toward her.

  She ran down the hall toward the pharmacy and found the door locked. There was a service window just down from it, though. She picked up a lamp off a table across from the window and tossed it at the window. It made a crack but didn’t break it. There was a moan to her right then. A third shambler was moving toward her. This one was completely naked. She realized it must be from the morgue because there was a toe tag making a scraping noise every time he dragged his right foot. A spike of realization hit her then. Raines was not unique! People who had recovered from axola not only had bulletproof immune systems, they didn’t die! If they were anything like Raines, they would crave the blood of the living to help them temporarily recover from the degradation and stiffness of the limbo where they existed without it.

  She snapped out of it then and picked up the lamp again just as the other two came around the corner from behind her. She threw the lamp with all of her might, and the window shattered. She grabbed the shards still in the frame and threw them to the floor and then hopped up and flipped over the window frame into the room just ahead of the groping hands of the naked man. She hit the floor and rolled away into the room. Naked guy leaned in and moaned as he flailed his arms, not understanding how to climb in. The other two showed up then and started trying to reach over the top of him.

  She backed away and looked around for the door to where the drugs were stored. Using the same lamp, she bashed the skinny window and reached in to unlock the door. Going through the cabinets, she found pain medication and grabbed a case of vials labeled RabAvert and syringes to administer it. She threw them all in a backpack she found, rolled it over her shoulder, and turned to try to look for a way out. When she went back into the other room, two of the creatures were still trying to get through the window. She couldn’t see the third. Moving to the door that led out to the hallway, she peeked out the skinny window to try to locate number three.

  When she couldn’t see him, she suddenly thought about Tin. She had left him dazed and confused in the ER waiting room. What if the other shambler was headed his way? She decided to just go for it. Throwing the door open, she entered the hallway sprinting toward the ER. She turned the first corner and ran straight into the third shambler’s chest. He grunted and wrapped his arms around her. His fowl breath filled her lungs as she gasped in horror. She managed to get her hand under his chin and pushed upward as hard as she could. She could hear his teeth clacking as he tried to bite her hand. He was strong and squeezed tighter and pulled her closer as her hand slid up his drool-and-blood-covered chin. Just before her fingers slipped into his mouth, she snatched her hand away. His clacking teeth then moved toward her neck and shoulder.

  Then she heard a thud and felt a vibration. The arms that were squeezing the life out of her suddenly went slack as the thing dropped to the ground. As relieved as she was to see Tin standing there as number three fell, he had a feral look on his face that scared the hell out of her. He wrenched the ax he had buried in number three’s head out and pulled it up to swing again. She ducked and rolled to the right as she heard another thud and crack that came from naked guy’s head. Tin p
ulled the ax back a third time and made his best home-run swing at the remaining creature, hitting him in the ear and slamming his head into the wall.

  He pulled the ax free and knelt to check on Teeny. With tears in her eyes, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. After a few seconds, he gathered his wits and hugged her back. After a nice long hug, she pushed him away and threw the backpack on the floor to pull out one of the vials of RabAvert and a syringe. “Bend over and show me your butt cheek, soldier.”

  He did as she said, and she stabbed him with his first dose of RabAvert.

  _______

  Michael listened to Marty’s light snoring as he stared at the ceiling and daydreamed about having enough money to buy a huge yacht, or even an island. As he smiled at these thoughts, he heard a phone vibrate on the nightstand. He reached for it and realized it was Marty’s. Typing in the passcode he had gotten through Reed’s clandestine connections, he saw a text that caused a cold rush of ice water through his veins.

  Teeny.

  “M, RUT?”

  After fighting the urge to wake him and ask him, he scrolled up to see the other messages that he had sent to her.

  “Fuck, Marty. What have you done?”

  He deleted the conversation and set the phone down as Marty started to stir.

  He leaned over and kissed him. “I have to go, sweetheart. I have some things I need to take care this morning.”

  Marty wrapped his arms around his neck. “What’s more important than me?”

  He kissed him again. “Nothing, Marty, but I do need to get out of here.”

  Marty wrapped his legs too. “You’re not going anywhere!”