by Maxey, Phil
“Not for you, for the cattle! I wanted to feed on one of them! But then I heard your screams and shots, and well… I came back to help!”
She stood silent, shaking her head, as if a conversation was playing out in her mind.
He raised both his hands and stood. “I’m not a threat to you…” He took a step forward. “Are you hurt?”
“No…” She looked unsure, but also didn’t want to move her eyes from the man in front of her. “I don’t know. I think I’m okay.”
Joel looked down at the large beast on the ground next to him. He kneeled next to it, examining its serpentine head and torso that was part fur and part scales.
“What is that thing?” she asked.
Joel shook his head. “I have no idea…” He looked at the thing’s feet which were paw-like but with much larger claws. “I think it might be a mountain lion, or was…” He stood back up. “We should take it back, maybe Anna can figure it out.”
He looked back at the woman who was still holding him hostage. “Shoot me, or help me get this thing in the back.” He knew he would sense her heart rate increase before she pulled the trigger and there was no danger of him being shot, but he wanted this standoff to be over.
“How do I know you won’t eat me?”
“Why didn’t I do it already? I’ve had multiple chances to kill you, and did I?”
“No…”
“You helping?” He looked from her to the absolute black around them. “I don’t want to be out here if there’s more of these things in these hills.”
She lowered the gun, and gingerly walked towards him.
“Good.”
He kneeled and slid his hands under the head and shoulders of the beast. Kelly put her gun back in its holster and grabbed the rear, then they both shuffled to the back, with Joel taking most of the weight, then tossed it in the truck’s bed.
She stood awkwardly, looking at the tears in his blood splattered shirt. “Are you hurt…”
“I was, but not anymore. I heal pretty quick.”
She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand how you’re not like those things, that you’re not—”
“A monster?”
“Yeah.”
He sighed. “That makes two of us. I’m kind of figuring this stuff out as I go along.” He paused. “What are you going to tell the others? Because I would prefer to keep this between us for now.”
She looked away. “I don’t know if I can do that… what if you go nuts again and attack someone? That will be on me.”
“I promise you that won’t happen.” Another lie, but he sold it convincingly.
She briefly sucked in her bottom lip.
“If it helps, I won’t stay at the hotel anymore, I’ll find somewhere else.”
She nodded. “Okay, if you do that, then for now I won’t tell anyone. But the first sign that you have hurt someone, I’m shouting it from the rooftops.”
He nodded. “Deal.”
*****
Joel and Anna looked down at the creature on the autopsy table, lit by the bright florescent light above them. She was dressed in a blue and white surgical gown, mask, and white gloves, whereas he just had the mask.
She tapped a button on her phone. “This is Dr. Anna Faraday. The time is five minutes past midnight, on the nineteenth of September, 2018. I am conducting an autopsy on what appears to be, or originally was, an adult female puma concolor, otherwise known as a mountain line or cougar. Its bone structure and exterior cutaneous layer has seemingly changed. I presume through infection of the scourge virus. Therefore, confirming that some animals are changed, like humans, although I have not seen this amount of transformation in humans… yet.”
Joel looked at the animal on the table, which was also part something else and wondered if the same would eventually happen to him.
She sensed his discomfort despite his emotionless expression. “Everything alright?”
“Yes. Continue.”
She looked closely across the body, eventually stopping near the neck area. She spoke into her phone again. “There are two large puncture holes in its neck, no doubt from another that has been infected by the scourge.”
She then took a scalpel and felt for a patch of skin that wasn’t covered in scales and made a large incision. A strong smell of sulphur poured out of the large wound, making both of them start to feel queasy.
“That’s not normal,” said Anna, gripping the side of the table.
“There’s nothing normal about any of this,” said Joel.
She continued with the cut, branching off into a Y shape, then peeled back the skin and cut into the muscle. Once there was a big enough opening, she started to reach inside.
Her expression changed to one of confusion. “Hmm…”
Joel moved closer. “What?”
“I’m not finding what I should be inside this animal, no liver, kidneys, and what appears to be hardly any stomach.” She pulled her hand out.
“Have you seen anything like this in humans?”
“Not the ones I’ve had in here, they seemed fairly normal inside. Some had facial deformities, but we thought that was just due to the bodies reaction to the virus rather than the virus affecting the genome, but maybe… this virus is a lot more insidious than we first thought.”
She walked to the back of the room, taking some vials from a container, along with some syringes. “I need to take samples and get them under the microscope.” She sighed. “I told Hale we needed to invest in better equipment, but he never listened. ‘I’ve been the chief medical examiner in Bellweather for forty years and I never needed any of that fancy big city machinery!’” She changed her voice for the repetition of her former boss’s words.
“What happened to him?”
“Heart attack during the early days of the scourge. He went out to treat someone who had been infected. And the change happened while he was with them. They then did what they all do when they first change, they attacked him, and his heart gave out.”
“How do you know all that?”
She plunged the needle into one of the creature’s arteries. “Because I was there when it happened. First time I saw someone change. Although I had no idea it had happened at the time. The heart stops, then restarts, and boom you got yourself a new vamp. Usually the host doesn’t even know they died. They just feel chest pain for a few seconds, then go about their day. Difference being, now they have an insatiable thirst for human blood.”
“It can be any blood.”
She looked up at him. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve… seen vamp’s feeding on animals.”
She raised her eyebrows and continued taking samples. “Interesting. Maybe that’s how this thing got infected.”
Joel leaned back on the table behind him.
“You should get some rest. This is going to take a while. I’ll let you know if I find anything… more unusual. The blankets are in the storage cupboard along the hall. Make sure to put plenty underneath you, that sofa is not meant for sleeping on.”
He smiled and walked to the door. “Will do.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Marina opened her eyes to a darkened room with only a sliver of daylight making its way inside. She felt a slight pressure on her chest and looked down to see Jessica’s arm across her. She placed her own much larger hand across her daughter’s, enjoying the only tether she had to the world that meant anything. After a few moments, she peeled her daughter’s hand from her chest and placed it down on the space she just left, sitting up.
Jessica moved and opened her sleepy eyes.
Marina placed her hand gently on Jess’s cheek. “Sleep. I’ll bring you up a nice breakfast.” She had no idea if she could do that, but after seeing some of the supplies Bill and Evan had, she hoped there would be something she could whip up in the kitchen.
She put her boots and shirt on and left the room. The upstairs was little better than the ground floor, with books and
magazines everywhere, some tied up in bundles while others balanced precariously. Four other doors beckoned, but she was only interested in the stairs, and made her way down them and into the kitchen. Bill was already awake and on the sofa, surrounded by charts and maps, some of which were definitely not of the United States.
“Planning a trip?” said Marina, looking for a clean glass.
“Ha, if only. Evan could definitely benefit from seeing some of the world! In the right cupboard, above the sink.”
Marina found her glass and poured some water into it. She wandered over to the Bill and the chaos of paper around him. “This err… anything to do with conspiracies?”
He smiled. “Someone’s been talking to the sheriff… I mean, the former sheriff.”
She sat down on a stool, near the counter. “He may have mentioned something about the moon landings being fake.”
Bill laughed. “Well…” He stopped and they both laughed. He then went back to examining printouts of ancient texts and maps of southern Iraq.
“Seriously though, what is all this?”
He looked up at the woman with long flowing hair and sighed. “We have a theory of how the scourge started.”
“Okay, I’m game. How did it start?”
Bill took her through the same pitch that he gave Joel the day before.
She listened intently, but had the same reaction internally that Joel had. The difference being, she had served in just the area where the CEO of Copeland was presumed to have found his hidden tomb.
“I don’t know about the secret to everlasting life stuff, but you would often hear rumors from local elders of the ‘Lost tomb of the Annunaki.’” She got to her feet and walked back to the kitchen. “Do you mind if I cook us up some breakfast?” She looked at the food options around her. “Any eggs?”
“In the fridge, and no, please do. Do you know in roughly what area this lost tomb was meant to be?”
She found the eggs and a pan then kept looking. “Salt?” Bill gestured to the cupboard next to her, which she opened and found the small glass container. “Well, wherever you went there would be people offering you artefacts. Most of it though came from the museums, which we knew to stay clear of. But I was stationed in southern Iraq for some time, and—” Her mind thought back to her deployment and her skin suddenly felt prickly thinking about the intense heat. She also thought about a strange encounter she had with one of the elders. “— There was this old guy. He was the father of one of the translators, and one evening I just happened to be with him for a few hours, and to kill the time he told me about some of the local legends. One of them which might be connected to what you’re looking into, was to do with an ancient city called Eridu?”
Bill’s eyes widened. “Yes, the first city of kings. What about it?”
She started to fry the eggs, adding salt and pepper. “I can’t remember everything he said, but I know he mentioned something about a tomb that’s never been seen by modern man, and Annu—”
“Annunaki?”
“Yeah.” She poured the first of the fried eggs onto a plate, then poured some more water into her glass. “Not sure if any of that helps.”
Bill nodded, lost in thought.
“I’ll just take this up to Jess.” She went to move away but stopped and looked back at Bill.
He looked up at her.
“Just want to say, thank you for letting us stay… Just a few days ago I didn’t really know where we were going, other than west to find my husband. That was the only thing on my mind, but being in this town, and here, has made me feel a bit safe for the first time since we left Denver.”
Bill placed his reading glasses on a heap of paper in front of him. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’s good for Evan to have some younger people around him. We play games, like the ones he played with Jessica, we talk about this stuff, but he needs to spend time with people who are at least within fifty years of his own age!”
“Are there no more young people in the town?” She suddenly realized, apart from Kelly, she hadn’t seen any other people below the age of thirty since she arrived.
Bill’s eyes grew sad. “Some were taken away with their families before the town was sealed off, but others… the young and the old were the first to be preyed upon.”
A chill ran through Marina, but she knew he was talking the truth. She had seen signs of the same thing on her journey to find Russell. “I’ll see if Jess is up.”
She walked carefully between the seemingly forgotten items in the hallway and was soon opening the bedroom door. Jess was awake, halfway across the room, reading through a car magazine from the 1970s. On the cover was a red car with impossibly large rear wheels and an engine sticking out from the hood.
She looked back at her mother, scrambling to her feet. “Breakfast!”
Marina smiled. There was a time when breakfast needed to be something with colorful pieces covered in sugar, now some eggs with a bit of flavoring was appreciated by both of them. She placed the plate down on the bed, handing the extra fork to Jess, and took a few mouthfuls for herself.
She steadied herself for what she was going to say next. She had been rehearsing it since the early hours. She cleared her throat. “Umm… what do you think of it here?”
“You mean in this house?”
“This house, this town?”
She shrugged her shoulders while taking another mouthful. “It’s okay, why?”
“I was thinking that maybe we could stay here longer…”
Her daughter looked confused. “How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what about Dad? Does he know we’re here?”
“Umm… no, but—”
“Then how will he know to find us?”
Marina sighed and reached forward and held her daughter’s hand. “We may never see your father again. You know that, right?”
Jess looked down. “I know… but maybe we will. We don’t know.”
Marina smiled. “You’re right, we don’t. But if we leave this town and keep looking, then we might get taken again, like what happened with those bad men. And all around are the infected. It just takes one cut from those things and we will become like them.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to Dad?”
“I don’t know… maybe. It happened to a lot of people, Jess, and it’s still happening.”
“Okay, maybe it’s better we stay here, but when the scourge is gone, we will look for him?”
Marina smiled. “Yes.”
*****
Joel stood with Flint on the leash, in a patch of dirt and grass behind the medical center. It was a warm start to another late summer day and Flint was circling around before deciding on a spot to do his business.
Vampire dogs still need to take a whizz then.
Joel looked at the surrounding hills and the homes perched on them, and wondered which were empty, and which of them still had life.
The dog finished and trotted back onto the path, and Joel walked him back inside and up to the sofa. Joel was hungry, but it was the good kind of hunger, not the type that ended with people dead.
He looked at the vending machine, it was almost empty except for a packet of cheese chips and a jar of dip. He went to walk to it when Anna appeared, her hair around her shoulders as opposed to being tied in a bun like it usually was.
“Leave that, we got some food in the supply cupboard, just take what you want.”
He nodded.
“So, I’ve been up most of the night analyzing the samples I took from that cougar, or whatever it now is—” She sat on the sofa. Dark areas below her eyes confirmed her lack of sleep. “— And I compared with some samples I took when all of this started.”
“Okay…”
“And, well… This creature you found, its cells were mutated to a greater extent than anything I’ve seen before.”
“Meaning?”
&nbs
p; “Are you sure the CDC said nothing else to you about the nature of this virus? They must have mapped its structure, perhaps even its genome?”
“I wasn’t part of any of that, my team were just tasked with protecting certain individuals that were carrying stuff, I don’t know what it was. But what do you mean to a greater extent?”
She produced a bottle of water from her jacket pocket and took a few gulps. “It means, whatever the virus is doing to people and animals appears to be more accelerated in some.”
“What would cause that?”
“It could just be a natural cycle of the virus, or something else is triggering the virus to mutate. Right now, it’s hard to say. Much of this stuff is beyond me. I’m just a country doctor. I’m learning what I can on the job, but, as you know, there’s no internet anymore.”
Joel wasn’t too sure what the doctor was telling him, but he knew it wasn’t anything good. He then remembered the old man and grandson who seemed to live inside a library. He stood. “You know Bill?”
She nodded. “Of course, why?”
“Well, he’s got a house full of books, and his grandson seems to be up to speed on computers, maybe they have information that could help?”
She nodded in agreement. “That’s a good idea.”
He looked down the hallway. “I’m going to grab something to eat, then I need to get to the hotel for the meeting. Do you want to come?”
She shook her head. “I need to check in on some patients.”
As time was running short, Joel decided to stuff some candy bars in his pockets and was soon on the road, driving the short distance to the center of town. He grabbed the hand radio he had found some weeks earlier, and turned it to the correct frequency, then clicked on the talk button. “Jim, you out there? Over.”
There was no answer. He quickly checked the radio was set to the correct frequency and tried again, but only static came from the small speaker.
He placed the radio down and pulled up outside the hotel, now with wooden boards across its windows. He wondered where everyone’s vehicles were parked as there were only three ahead of him.