by Paul Hetzer
“I will need your help, Dr. McQuinn.” He grabbed my gloved hand and placed it over the soaked towel. “Keep pressure on while I get the instruments that I need.”
He rummaged around in a drawer and came back with an arterial clamp, scalpel and several dispensing bottles of saline wash.
Sweat was dripping down his face on the inside of his shield. Our positive pressure suits were supplied with a steady flow of cooled, filtered air from our umbilicals or from the portable packs when we were moving from room to room. The air circulating in the spacesuits could usually keep us cool in the warmest of regions. For some reason, Sung, through either fear or exertion was overwhelming the cooling capabilities of the suit.
“Are you okay, Sung?” I asked.
“It’s hot,” he replied cautiously. “I may have some shock setting in.”
He looked at LTC Hanson, who was lying with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly, a thin film of sweat covering her face under her helmet.
“Lieutenant Colonel Hanson?” he asked softly, “Can you hear me?” She didn’t reply or open her eyes.
“That is okay,” Sung said to me. “This will be painful, and easier with her unconscious.”
He grabbed the surgical scissors that he had used to remove the spacesuit sleeve for the saline drip and started cutting away the other sleeve.
“When I tell you, remove the cloth. It will start bleeding heavy again when any clotting on the wound’s surface is torn away. I will cut the material from around the wound and I need you to keep rinsing the wound with saline as I work.” He gestured to the different areas as he instructed me. “I will probably have to cut some of the tissue back to expose enough of the artery for me to get the clamp on.” Sung continued cutting. “Remove it now, Dr. McQuinn.”
I pulled off the towel and fresh blood squirted up from the wound and ran down the inside of LTC Hanson’s suit. Sung removed a large portion of the spacesuit around her shoulder.
“If it is too withdrawn I will have to insert a figure eight suture around it and hope that stops the bleeding.”
“How do you know how to do this, Sung?” I asked while squirting saline into the ugly bite mark, rinsing blood off of the shattered clavicle that looked starkly white among the pulpous pink flesh.
“I’m an Army Combat Field Medic, two tours in Afghanistan,” he answered bluntly. “Damn he bit deep,” he muttered to himself as he tried to locate the torn artery. Blood was pooling in the wound from the pulsing artery and mixing with the saline and then overflowing onto the bed, soaking the sheets bright red.
“Okay, I see it. Damn, it’s getting hot. The sweat is getting in my eyes.”
A sound behind us caused us both to look up and back. One of the girls was awake and looking at us, a scowling expression on her face. Blood speckled spittle flew from her mouth and she growled and hissed at us, her bloodshot eyes nearly lost in her brown face. She yanked violently at the restraints, but they held.
We looked back at each other and then to Jennifer and the job at hand, trying to ignore the animal sounds coming from the other side of the room.
Sung cut back tissue until he had enough of the artery protruding to slip the clamp over it and pressed the handles together until they locked.
“Got it!” he exclaimed. The blood stopped pulsing from the torn end of the artery immediately. All through the procedure LTC Hanson did not so much as flinch in her sleep. Sung taped the clamp to her shoulder so it wouldn’t pull loose, then took the rinse bottle from me and thoroughly cleaned out the bite. He stuffed it with clean gauze and bandaged it.
“That will have to do,” he said. He walked over to a stool and sat down. “I’ve got to get out of this suit, I’m suffocating in it.” He released the seals on his wrists and pulled his gloves off, removed his umbilical from his helmet, and then took off his helmet, revealing his boyish round face and closely-cropped raven black hair.
“Wait!” I warned. “We need to get you out of here and through decon first.”
He laughed dryly. “Dr. McQuinn, I am already contaminated.” He pulled his arm out of his suit and held it up, pulling back the pressure dressing. The bite looked inflamed – angry.
“You don’t know that,” I argued. “He may have been past the infectious stage.”
“Doctor, I am already running a fever. I am definitely infected.” He continued to strip out of his suit.
The diseased black girl was gnashing her teeth, making clacking noises as she bit at the air. We both tried to ignore her.
Sung walked over to Jennifer with the spacesuit around his waist and removed one of her gloves. He placed the temperature monitor cuff over her finger. In seconds the reading was showing 101.2 Fahrenheit.
“LTC Hanson is infected too. In time we will both be like that.” He gestured toward the girl who was viscously straining at her bindings while never taking her eyes from us, like some rabid starving animal.
“We don’t know that yet, Sung. It could be a temporary condition or only a symptom in a subset of infected people.” I threw up my red-suited arms in exasperation. Any other time the display would have probably looked comical. “Hell, we don’t even know if this disease is contagious, especially through a bite. You could just be experiencing shock!”
Sung smiled at me with a patronizing expression. “Maybe, Doctor. Maybe.”
I was at a loss for any more words or actions. The situation was overwhelming. What was happening to us? How could a disease spread in a worldwide pandemic nearly simultaneously? What was it doing to these people? How could I stop it?
Sung was wobbling on his feet. “I need to lie down, Dr. McQuinn. Can you set up the last bed for me then help me in it?”
I backed toward the far corner of the room where the last of the four patient beds sat, being careful to not get within reach of the creature that had once been an ordinary young woman. She made grunting and growling noises, snapping her teeth at me when I went by her. Despite the cool air being pumped into my suit, I too was sweating. I hoped it was just from fear.
I got sheets and a pillow on the bed then helped Sung hobble over and he slumped onto it in exhaustion. He seemed to be fading fast. It was looking like the secondary infection had an almost non-existent incubation period before the prodromal stage set in, much quicker than the primary infection. We were only in our first hour since they had been bitten.
“You’ll need to secure me and the Lieutenant Colonel,” Sung told me in a strained, weak voice. “You don’t want to take any chances. Those things are strong.”
I didn’t know what words of comfort to offer him. He relaxed back into the mattress and closed his eyes with a look of resignation. I strapped his wrists and ankles down securely and then went over to LTC Hanson and repeated the procedure for her. I removed her spacesuit helmet and hooked her up with supplemental oxygen. I didn’t know what else to do, I was out of my league on medical issues. Holly would have known what to do, except, of course she wasn’t here.
When I went back to check on Sung he was no longer responding to me. His eyes were open and unfocused, and capillaries had ruptured, turning the whites red. His respiratory rate increased and he became combative, pulling sharply on the bindings. I pulled the sheet up over him and watched his sweat soak through it.
I felt very alone.
I walked over to the conscious girl. She had been quietly watching me with her baleful eyes for the past fifteen minutes or so but started with a deep throated snarl, almost a wail, as I moved closer. Her pink tinged drool spilled down her cheeks in rivulets, staining her pillow a rosy pink color. Her bloodshot eyes never left me. The girl in the other bed was still comatose.
There was a feral look in her eyes. “Can you understand me?” I asked her. She strained her neck to bite at me. She yanked violently at her straps and I was fearful that they would break, but thankfully they held. Her black face looked even darker as it perfused with blood from her straining. She continued gnashing her teeth at me, her bloody
spittle coating the front of my suit in a fine mist.
I had to get a handle on my emotions. I needed to determine what my next steps would be. I had to continue my work. I had to identify this pathogen.
I took blood and saliva samples from each of the four and placed them in a vacuum cooler for transport to my lab, then exited through the airlock. After dropping the samples off in my lab and checking on several viral growth assays I had running, I left the BSL-4 lab complex and proceeded to my office to call my wife.
When the line connected and we hurriedly exchanged our opening pleasantries, she rushed to tell me that the power had flickered a few times but was still on. Smoke was lying more heavily in the air to her southwest, and she noticed people out walking around now, although they weren’t acting right. They still looked ill, but there was something animal-like in their movements. She saw two who lashed out at each other when they passed by and then continued on like nothing had happened. Every once in a while one would pause to sniff the air or listen for some unheard sound. She couldn’t get a close look at them, but she thought that they had bloody drool dripping from their mouths.
I was horrified by her report. I had to remind myself that this shit was happening everywhere, not just here! I was so frightened for her and my son. I wanted so badly to be there.
I told her to gather her short-barreled Colt, a shotgun, and her 9mm handgun from the safe along with Jeremy’s .223 caliber pistol and as many loaded mags for each as she and Jeremy could carry down into the basement. I advised her to stay as quiet as possible and keep armed at all times. I let her know that those people were infected and highly contagious. The disease had done something to their minds and that they would attack and kill on sight.
There was only one way down into the basement from the main floor and no windows from which anyone could gain entry. The pantry was down there, along with a bathroom, bedroom and family room. It could be easily defended from anyone trying to open the basement door and rush down the stairs— the fatal-funnel as police refer to it. All of our food storage was down there and plenty of bottled water, along with all of our ammo.
In our camping gear was a Coleman stove that they could use for cooking and a lantern for light in case power was lost. She could hole up down there safely for however many days it took me to get home. I thanked God she had just come off a three day shift and was home today. My family was mostly together and as safe as they could possibly be for now.
She asked me how much longer I would be. I told her to give me three days, after that I would leave to come home no matter what. She understood what I was doing, although she was also understandably very frightened. She was holding together well. I told her I would call three times a day as long as the landlines held out and if we were to lose contact to stay put and I would get home.
Jeremy wanted to hear my reassurances so she put him on for a few minutes. Hearing his frightened voice sounding so close while being so far away nearly broke my resolve. I told him to be strong and take care of his mom until I got home.
I hung up after telling him and Holly that I loved them. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach again.
When I entered my lab, I removed the samples I had collected from the portable vacuum cooler and began the continuing work of isolating the pathogens. Along with the samples from this morning, it would paint a horrifying picture of what we were up against.
I was shocked when I looked at the monitor from the isolation ward and found Sung growling and spitting, trying to get free from his bonds, his muscles straining mightily at the wide straps. It had only been an hour and a half since he was infected. The second generation of the disease seemed to devastate its new hosts’ system incredibly quickly. Sung had skipped the comatose phase.
Dr. Hanson still lay in a comatose state, most likely due to the shock of blood loss. Pink drool spilled down her cheek. I had no doubt she was now one of them.
At two hours forty minutes since Dr. Rafik had woken to his murderous rampage, the other comatose girl awoke, displaying the now familiar symptoms. I panned the camera over to her when I heard the added chorus of her growls.
I watched in morbid fascination while she struggled violently to get free from the bonds and then like a trapped animal began gnawing at her bicep, as if releasing her arm would free her entire body. My stomach turned queasy at the sight of her tearing chunks of her own flesh free from her arm. She screamed in agony then bent her head down and continued to tear more bloody flesh loose in savage bites.
She was making a cooing noise from the pain, pausing briefly like she wasn’t sure what was causing the intense self-inflicted misery, then she would continue gnawing at herself.
Blood pulsed in spurts from an artery when her teeth tore through it, covering her face in a red, dripping mask. Her teeth could reach no further and she pulled savagely at the bound arm. I could actually see the flesh starting to tear. After a while her struggles became less violent and soon ceased altogether and the pulsing blood slowed to a trickle.
I had now witnessed two people dying violently, and both would probably remain where they lay for eternity, with no one to ever mourn them. I knew this was probably just a drop in the bucket of what was happening across the planet.
I talked to my wife and son one last time before I called it a night. I prayed that this was a nightmare that I would wake up from come morning, knowing that if it wasn’t, it was going to be apocalyptic for our species. Even though I slept fitfully that night in the lounge, I was thankful for the respite from the horrors of the day.
CHAPTER 4
At first I could only make assumptions as to what was happening. I was pretty sure it was viral, or maybe even a prion which is basically a self-reproducing protein structure that can be quite infectious.
Either one could have caused the symptoms I was seeing. I immediately ruled out a bacterial source due to the systemic nature of the disease. It was an equal opportunity infector, it neither spared the young nor the old, the prince nor the pauper, the politician nor the laborer.
My mind worked feverishly trying to deduce the cause of this pandemic while the equipment worked its magic on the specimens. Hypotheses that Jennifer, Sung and I had tossed around earlier were being supported by the data I was generating.
I had come to believe that the organic molecules released from those small, burning particles of comet were the harbingers of our doom. Then again, it wasn’t the true start of the madness was it? No, this was only the next stage in the long history of something that can truly be called the living dead… a virus.
A virus is not a living organism, but straddles the line between the definition of a viable living creature and a complex molecule. Without a host’s cell, a virus is just an inanimate package of nucleic acids that can never reproduce or grow on its own. They are by far the most abundant type of biological entity on Earth and can infect every type of living organism from the simplest to the most complex. They are tiny particles averaging one one-hundredth the size of a typical bacterium and can replicate in their limited range of hosts’ cells at a breathtaking rate. Some viruses are even able to mask their presence from the host’s immune system so that the body can never mount a defense against the invasion, resulting in a chronic infection of that host. All of this taken together makes it very difficult to isolate and identify a new invading virus, let alone develop an antibody to combat it.
So when did it really start? I didn’t know, probably no one ever would. I could guess that it was a long time ago, millions of years most likely. Maybe at a time when our distant ancestors were first crawling their way out of the thick muck at the edge of some ancient primordial sea.
No one ever suspected that an attack would come from within our own bodies, or that we would become factories of our own destruction.
It was always assumed that any mass epidemiological event would be from some external natural reservoir, except it wasn’t. We ended up being the vault and fate held the c
ombination.
Many believed that some alien organism had been released from the comet and was causing this disease. That was not the case. No deadly virus or bacteria had rained down upon our heads like the sprinklings of dust from some demented fairy. Oh, the actual disease was viral, no doubt about that, as I had isolated these tiny packages of nucleic acid that causes the disease and was present in most of the bodily fluids of the infected, from saliva to plasma. However, the virus didn’t come from the comet. It came from our own genome.
Somewhere back in our ancient ancestry we were infected by a virus. The RNA that this tiny molecule inserted into our DNA must have evolved with us over millions of years. We call these ancient strips of nucleic acid ‘fossil viruses’. All of us have these remnants hidden within our DNA, probably left over from long ago infections of our ancient primogenitors.
Who knows what this little monster did to our ancestors? Maybe nothing, maybe something like the horror it is causing to our species post-Hosteller’s. That was something we would never know. It didn’t matter. Somewhere in our past the virus inserted itself into a cell that was predestined to become an egg or sperm without turning it into a virus factory. This DNA with the new strand of viral RNA incorporated into it was passed down into the creatures’ offspring on and on until it ended up in present day humans, where it had sat unnoticed, quietly waiting.
Most fossil virus DNA that we carry will never pose a problem. As generations pass it is corrupted by mutations and will never again code for the original design. Somehow this one remained in a large percentage of the population unchanged, or what mutations occurred were not enough to destroy its self-replicating ability. Something kept it in check in our bodies, imprisoned by some organic Pandora’s Box whose key had been lost in time.
That was until now.
The organic molecules that blanketed our planet from Hosteller’s Comet had not graced our presence for at least the past ninety thousand years. They must have held the key to the box, an antigen that caused our cells to transcribe this section of RNA and begin the replication process, which unleashed on humanity this monster.