Guinea Pig

by Curtis, Greg

  Cursing his rotten luck Will crouched down and unscrewed the shower trap, something that wasn't easy when he was still taped and bandaged up. He didn't want to be, as his injuries felt like they had almost entirely healed. It was something he still didn’t understand given how bad they had seemed originally. Still, in the hospital he had been told to keep it all on for at least four days, or until he saw his doctor. He didn't want to spend the money to see his doctor if he didn't have to. So he'd kept them on. Today though was day five and so it was probably time to take them off.

  Will hoped that it would be something simple and they wouldn't need a plumber. The last time they'd needed one, the landlord had hired cheap and they'd ended up without showers for three days. Hopefully the clog was only in the metal trap and not in the pipes as it had been before. After all, that was why the drain trap had been installed in the first place. To catch things before they blocked the pipes. Before they needed to start plunging or calling the plumbers and their snakes.

  Soon he had the trap in his hands and was busy unscrewing the top. But he could already see that it was full. There was some sort of black fibrous material poking out through the holes, hair in all likelihood. Which was good because it meant it would be an easy fix. He simply needed to clean out the trap and screw it back into the drain. Then when he finally got the trap apart he discovered that the blockage wasn't quite what he'd expected.

  “What the hell!”

  The clog in the shower trap was hair as he'd thought. But it was dark hair like his. And when he looked closer to check just in case it was his he realised it was short. Very short. Not like the hair that he or his flatmates had had on their heads. Instead it was more like the hair he had on his arms. Except that when he finally thought to check he discovered that he didn't have any hair on his arms any longer. Or on his chest or legs or anywhere else on his body not covered in bandages when he suddenly thought to check. He didn't even have body hair where everyone was supposed to have body hair. All of it was sitting in the disassembled metal trap he was holding in his hands.

  A brief spurt of alarm ran through him as Will realised something was wrong – with him. He'd adapted to the idea of recovering so quickly after being injured. Or at least feeling so much better. That wasn't after all a sign of something wrong. It was a good thing. Even if it had seemed a bit strange. And it could be that he hadn't been injured as badly as he thought. A few decent night's sleep could have been all that he'd really needed. But this was different. Very different. In fact there was nothing good about it at all. He quite liked his body hair. It was part of him.

  Standing there, holding the drain in his hand and staring at the hair clog, he suddenly understood that there could only be one reason for it. Not only was he healing too quickly but he was also losing his body hair. It had to be the experiment. Somehow, something they'd done had caused him to lose all his body hair.

  The bungling idiots! Will silently cursed them all, but most especially the doctor. For whatever stupid mistake he'd made he deserved to be cursed. He also cursed himself for being stupid enough to believe the doctor when he'd promised that everything would be fine. That it was safe. His greed had overcome his common sense.

  It wasn't as if it was even his only warning sign that something had gone wrong. The dreams were still with him, and while at first he had assumed that they were simply because of the disaster he'd been in, he was no longer so sure. That was five days ago. Fear decreased with time, and he was no longer living every minute of the day with those memories in the forefront of his mind. The dreams should have faded. But they hadn't, and he wasn't sure that they would. There was something about them that spoke to him not of bad memories, but of things coming. He couldn't have explained it, but somehow he was certain the dreams were a warning. A warning that things were happening within him. Things like he was being transformed into a hairless freak.

  No wonder they'd been willing to pay him ten thousand bucks! Except that they hadn't even done that yet. In the wake of the disaster he wasn't even sure that they were going to. He didn't even know if Doctor Millen had survived. Or for that matter if there were any records of the drug trial remaining. And that would be the ultimate tragedy. Side effects and no money to show for it! That was simply unfair. But he did understand that the money was no longer his biggest worry.

  If his body hair was falling out then his body was changing in some way. And if it was changing in one way it could be changing in others. What else was coming? Was he going to go bald? Were his teeth going to fall out? What else was he going to lose? And could it be stopped? That was the important thing. Could it be stopped before he lost something he really didn't want to live without?

  It was time to track down Doctor Millen he realised. Time to find out just what had gone wrong with the experiment. And to get it fixed. If it could be fixed. The doctor had said the changes were permanent. That they couldn't be reversed. They would be a part of him for life. But then he'd also said they were safe. And he hadn't said anything about hair loss. If he'd been wrong about one thing could he be wrong about the other?

  Still, maybe before that he should go and see his own doctor at the student health service. He should have gone to see him before, he knew. The people at the hospital had told him as much. But he'd felt good enough that he hadn't bothered. He didn't want to spend the money. He'd just taken the meds he'd been given and went about restoring his life. Most of which amounted to claiming his insurance and shopping for a new laptop and some clothes. But what could his doctors do about body hair falling out? What would they do? After all, many people paid a lot of money to get rid of their body hair.

  Worried, Will cleaned out the trap, reassembled it and screwed it back into the shower floor before getting out and drying himself off. After that it was a quick rush to his bedroom and an almost frantic sprint to dress himself and then find his car keys. He had to go back to the crater.

  He didn't want to go. He didn't want to have to see that thing ever again. He didn't even like seeing it on the news. But it was there that the FEMA people had set up their emergency command post, and they were the ones who could tell him if Doctor Millen was alive and where he could be found. They were probably the only ones who could since the clinic itself was gone.

  But even as he was pulling on his shoes, events conspired to stop him.

  The first he knew of it was when he heard a rumbling sound coming from outside his bedroom. He looked out but of course could see nothing. His window had a perfect view of the side wall of the flat next door a whole ten feet away. And as he pulled on his other shoe he couldn't help but notice that the rumbling was getting louder. Like a heavy truck driving toward him.

  Earthquake? The thought made him panic. But it didn't feel like an earthquake. Or at least not the one he'd just been in. Whatever this was it seemed to be more noise and less shaking.

  Thunder? It sounded like thunder but it wasn't coming and going as it should after each lightning strike. It was continuous. Like a man on a giant drum beating it with all the speed and power he had. And it was in the ground as well, though luckily not like the violent shaking of four or five days before. The ground wasn't moving. It was trembling as if in fear. The whole flat was trembling.

  Alarms had started going off as well. Car alarms, burglar alarms. And just like the thunder they seemed to be coming closer as well. Will knew that whatever was happening outside had to be big. For so many different alarms to be sounding at once, it had to be very big.

  Suddenly there was a huge bang, like a cannon firing and he almost jumped out of his skin in fright. The more so when he realised that as well as the original detonation there had been the sound of splintering wood. He knew even as he landed back on his feet that something had happened to the flat. Something bad. Something that made him want to get outside – fast. He'd already been in one collapsing building and barely escaped with his life. He didn't want the ground to have another chance to swallow him whole.

&nbs
p; So Will ran for the front door, not even looking behind him to find out what had exploded. If there was one thing he had learnt from the clinic it was that you didn't waste time looking back when something bad happened behind you. You ran. You ran or you died.

  “Oh shit!”

  When he reached the front door however and looked out to the street it was to discover that it wasn't an earthquake. It was far worse than that. And he also discovered at that moment that he couldn't flee. Whatever was behind him couldn't be as bad as what was in front of him. To go outside was to die. The insanity of the last few days had returned – crazier than before.

  It was hailing. In California! And it wasn't hailing little hail stones like it did back in England. It wasn't even hailing golf ball sized chunks of ice such as you occasionally saw on the news. Instead what were falling down out of the sky were blocks of ice the size of basket balls. And where they hit the ground they smashed into it like missiles, exploding and leaving craters. Impact craters in the roads and the side walks. In the front yard. That was the thunder he could hear. Thousands upon thousands of these things were smashing into the ground and exploding across the entire city.

  Standing there watching it, his face slack with disbelief, Will could almost imagine that he was watching a big budget Hollywood disaster movie. One complete with wall to wall sound and a massive base speaker to shake the ground. But he knew it wasn't a movie. It was real. And it was a catastrophe. Another one.

  All around in the distance Will could see people running and screaming in blind panic. Trying desperately to get away from the death in the sky descending on them. Not all of them could.

  So Will watched helplessly again as more people died. There were bodies in the street and the front yards of homes, those who hadn't managed to get out of the way in time. And while some of them were moving too many of them would never get up again. He knew that from the blood he could see running down the street. And from the cartoon like shapes many of them were laying in. Shapes that no living human being could ever make. Not if they had bones. But their bones had been shattered and their flesh had been torn asunder by the crushing impacts, and what was left behind was no longer alive.

  Cars were being destroyed by the falling ice missiles as well. Their thin metal roofs and bonnets had never been designed to take these sorts of impacts, and the hail stones were tearing right through them, ripping them apart. Will guessed that inside some of those cars would be more dead people. Especially inside the ones that had crashed and looking down the street he could see several pile ups.

  “Take cover!” Will screamed it at everyone he could see, but knew it wasn't enough. There was really nothing he could do for them. They were too far away and he was trapped. He couldn't go to them. Something that became abundantly clear when one block of ice crashed down on the concrete steps just in front of his flat and promptly shattered. Ice and concrete both went flying, covering him, and he knew that to go outside was to die. He was pinned down.

  Fairly soon it didn't matter though. Those who could had made it inside their homes or under whatever other shelter they could find. Those who couldn't were dead or dying. The ferocity of the ice storm meant that no one could survive outside for long.

  His car had been hit he noticed. He could see it barely thirty yards in front of him parked on the side of the street with all its lights flashing and its siren sounding. He could just hear it over the sound of thunder. Apparently the battery was working though he doubted anything else would be. There were holes in the roof and the bonnet from where huge chunks of ice had simply punched their way through the steel. The windows had all been blown out by the exploding ice. And worst of all he could see the way the car's chassis was pushed down in the middle almost to the road. The ice had hit with enough force to actually buckle the car. Seeing it he knew that the damage was too great to repair. The poor old Nissan would never run again.

  Houses weren't faring that much better. Looking up and down the street and across the way he could see them taking terrible damage. The hail stones were simply punching straight through their roofs, leaving holes in them the size of small cars. It didn't matter whether the roofs were tin or tile, they were no match for the ice missiles. And once inside the houses the missiles were practically exploding like bombs. Here and there he could see fallen chimneys and smashed walls and windows, and every so often a roof that had completely collapsed under the icy assault. Seeing the damage to the other houses at least he knew what had happened to his flat. It'd been hit too.

  Strangely, though they were being hit with ice, some of the houses had caught fire. Gas and electricity had started mixing at a guess. And there were dozens of columns of black smoke rising into the air in the distance. Further afield in the heart of the city itself, even some of the tall buildings were looking the worse for wear.

  Yet against all of that destruction there was one thing that stood out. That made even less sense to him than everything else. The sky was blue. A perfect blue, for once unaffected by the early morning haze that characterised California at this time of year. How could that be? Where were these ice bombs coming from if there were no clouds? And how did it hail in California in the summer?

  For the longest time he stood there in the doorway staring in disbelief and shock, wondering if he was going to die this time, and occasionally wondering what he was supposed to do. Until he finally realised he was actually doing it. He was taking shelter. The doorway was one of the strongest parts of a house. There was a huge lintel above his head. Something that was hopefully strong enough to withstand the impact of an ice missile. It had to be. Because when he heard another block of ice smash through the roof and tear down through the flat somewhere behind him, he knew that there was no other protection.

  The mail box suddenly exploded in front of him in a shower of ice causing him to jump again. One second it had been there, the next there was just a crater in the foot path and chunks of ice flying everywhere. It was so fast. And then a couple more ice missiles tore their way through the flat's roof behind him, and he knew that the damage would be severe. Things were banging and crashing back in the house. Wood was splintering from the sounds. Metal objects were hitting things and falling to the floor. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing except stand there and hope as he realised that many others, probably many people that he knew, were in danger.

  Will didn't know where his flatmates were. They weren't home. Mark was probably at his lectures – he had a very full schedule. Richard could be anywhere. He never took his studies seriously; just went out and had a good time. Which was why it always annoyed Will when he got straight “A's”. But both of them were somewhere out there, potentially being hit by these ice bombs. His friends were somewhere out there too. He had a lot of friends and just then he had no idea how many of them might be hurt or dying. How many might already be dead. His ex-girlfriend was in peril as well. It surprised him to think of her. It seemed wrong somehow that he should. They'd only split a few weeks before and she had ripped his heart out with her betrayal, but he still didn't want Laurel hurt.

  Everyone he knew was out there in danger. Some of them could even be dead. And there was nothing he could do except stand there like a statue and take cover under the lintel. Will had never felt so helpless in his entire life.

  The only ones that he knew were safe were his family. Because they were back in England, and unless this disaster was global, they couldn't possibly be being bombarded. At least that was something to be grateful for. Especially when he knew that as the city in front of him was slowly being bombed out of existence by the ice storm, too many others weren't going to be so lucky.

  What the hell was happening to the world? The question just kept running through his mind as he stood and watched and prayed for it to end. First gigantic sink holes were opening up and swallowing buildings. Now the sky was raining missiles of ice. It made no sense. Not much made a lot of sense any more.

  Only one thing did make
sense, and that was the need to get out of this cursed city. And this city had to be cursed. How else could he explain what was happening to it? It was obvious that someone up there had it in for the place. Los Angeles might not be sin city or Soddom, but it did have plenty of corruption and vice. Plenty of reasons for God to get pissed off with it. And the word “biblical” swam through his shocked brain as he watched the disaster unfolding in front of him. Soon he feared trumpets would be blowing and walls would be falling down. People would be turning to pillars of salt.

  Or maybe God actually had it in for him, since he had been unlucky enough to be in the target area twice. Did God do such things? Had he simply decided to hit the smite button on him? To go Old Testament on him? But if he had why hadn't He just hit him with a lightning bolt? It would have been quick and clean and there would have been no one else killed.

  In time another thought began running through his brain. A question. What else was coming? Because the one thing Will was suddenly sure of was that even when this ended – assuming it did – it wasn't over.