Harley remained tethered to the hospital bed, watching Smith and White at their work. She had no idea what they were doing, but it was clear it had little or nothing to do with helping her or curing her condition. The girl could only wait while they continued their insane inquiry. The ever-worsening agony was impossible to ignore. Her blood burned as it slogged through her veins. It seemed impossible, but her circulation felt thick and chunky, and she was aware of it, forcing its way through every artery, vessel, and capillary. A profuse sweat had formed on her skin, mixing with oozing pus from the ever-spreading sores. It was the kind of misery that threatened her sanity, and if she hadn’t been chained to the bed, she would be fighting anyone who stood between her and relief. She didn’t care what she had to do to feel better, no matter what it might take, even if that meant dying. She just wanted it to be over.
The raw, weeping lesions that had begun erupting on her arms and legs, within minutes after she was bitten, stung like thousands of biting insects chewing their way out from the inside. Just as tormenting, was the unbearable hunger growing in her stomach. Her entrails groaned with ravenous fury, and she couldn’t get her mind off food. She noticed the aroma of rotisserie chicken drifting into her awareness, and she thought she must be hallucinating from starvation. She was becoming hypersensitive to the real smells around her, as well, and it was unbearable.
It seemed impossible that the sense of smell could drive someone insane, but it was so overwhelming, she feared losing her mind. She could detect everything. White apparently had gas, and she suspected Smith had a baby. Harley pitied the poor child. Here in the virally impaired unit, the scent of decomposition was becoming palpable. For the first time, she fully started to realize there were many others like her within these walls and possibly beyond. Her olfactory senses were collecting the odors of every single one of them. The smell of death was terrible. The smell of un-death was worse.
Dr. White came to her bedside, carrying his clipboard with him. He was taller than Harley had realized, and his wiry blonde hair stuck out at odd angles. His lab coat reeked of chemicals, and the Oxford shirt the doctor wore beneath his jacket smelled like fabric softener. White scribbled on the clipboard with a pen as he stepped toward her. The stench of oily sweat floated from his hand, from the pressure of his fingers grasping the pen. There was an off-putting fishy scent about him, and Harley caught a whiff of alcohol as well.
“You smell like sushi,” she told him. “Fish and sake.”
He nodded with an unsurprised look on his face. He clutched his bottom lip between his thumb and index finger as he appeared to think for a few seconds and then laughed. “I had some a few days ago with a colleague from Japan who makes a mean sashimi,” he said, jabbing an index finger into the air. “His norimaki is excellent. Nothing like good sushi.” He scribbled more notes. “Just ‘cause we’re in the apocalypse doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy some refined dining, right?”
“Did he drive a new car?” Harley inquired, not really caring.
The doctor scribbled a note before removing his wire-rimmed glasses. “Yes, in fact. He hasn’t had it long. That’s impressive.”
“Yeah, well. It’s kind of a pain,” she snapped.
“How did you know it was a male friend?”
“I don’t know.” She considered how much she seemed to know already, from just the sample smells in her vicinity. The difference between Smith and White seemed self-evident, somehow. “Men just smell different. Muskier, maybe.”
“I see,” White said, jotting down more comments on his clipboard. He stopped and chewed on the end of his glasses’ temple piece as he stared at her, as if planning something. “You can’t smell where I was a week ago, can you?”
Harley inhaled and analyzed the vapors spreading through her nostrils and throat. “No, why?” she asked.
“Cause if you did, then I’d have to kill you.” He chuckled and jostled Harley’s arm like she was a drinking buddy, and he was telling a joke. “Seriously though,” he said with a snort, “this is just the way the virus works on the olfactory system. It affects some people more than others. We had a guy once who was like a damned GPS system. That man could have found any place he’d ever been in his life, blindfolded. Better than a bloodhound!”
“You talk too much!” Smith’s voice was angry. “You implant too much in cell memory,” she snarled.
Okay, that weirded Harley out a little. “Doctor, can you just hurry up and get me some medication? I really need something for my pain. My head is killing me, and I feel like my blood is on fire. And can you do something about this appetite thing? I’m starving.” Harley’s voice quivered, despite her efforts to keep it steady. Even as her body shuddered in agony, she couldn’t shake the awareness of how hungry she was, and that White’s head smelled better than a roasted chicken. She eyed his hairline and wondered how difficult it would be to crack his skull and get to the tender morsels she just knew were waiting inside. The thought caused her to gag and crave at the same time. “Look, I get that you people don’t know what this disease feels like, but I promise I’m not over-reacting. I’ve never felt anything like this, and I can’t stand it. I’m afraid I can’t control myself.”
He cackled in a volume too loud for the room. “Now, see, that’s why they have you guys restrained when you come in here. Can’t have you going after people’s brains. Nope, we need those here for our research.” He moved to the other doctor’s side. He nudged Smith with his elbow. “You know, Smith, they tell me the hippocampus tastes like chicken.” He snorted. “Guess they should call it the chick-o-campus.”
“Seriously?” Harley’s eyes wanted to roll of their own accord, but one of them felt stuck. Her vision distorted, and for a second, she saw two Dr. Whites gawking at her with maniacal smiles on their faces. She strained to get her visual field back into alignment. Nothing about her body seemed to work the way it should. “It’s painful!” she cried. “What’s wrong with you?” More unnerving than the physical sensations was the fact that she was beginning to fantasize in greater detail about ripping into Dr. White’s skull. She’d have him first, and then Smith for dessert. “Don’t you understand I can’t take this anymore? I need medication,” she yelled at him.
“Don’t worry, we see this all the time,” he said. “That, and all of your other odd symptoms, will eventually go away,” he assured Harley. “You’ll be one of the first to get the new antiviral serum we’ve developed. We think you have at least a ten percent chance of a cure. You’ll get to sleep through the worst part and will wake up, maybe completely rid of the virus…unless you’re into that whole zombie lifestyle and want to stay as you are. And let me tell you, I wouldn’t judge if you did. Those virally-impaired specimens sure know how to rave.” He laughed with an edge that was too close to crazy for the teenager’s comfort, and his eyes had an unsettling deranged look about them as he held his hands up in claw-like gestures and did a few steps of the Thriller dance. “But, in all seriousness,” he continued, as if he could be taken seriously at this point, “if the injection works, you’ll be immune like Dr. Smith and me. You do want to be cured, right?” he asked.
Yeah, Harley did want to be cured, and almost as much as that, she wanted to be away from him, away from this place. There was something wrong with this so-called doctor, and he gave her the creeps. Maybe it was his deranged bedside manner, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how he seemed to be enjoying her suffering.
“Of course, you could also die,” he continued. “If that happens, though, it won’t matter. You won’t know, and this will all be over.”
White moved to a supply cabinet and returned with an IV bag full of a greenish-hued fluid. He looped it onto the pole beside Harley’s bed, disconnected the existing supply, and switched the plastic couplings, allowing the new medication to drip into the current line. The green fluid snaked its way down the clear tubing as he adjusted a tension wheel on the connector. Within seconds, the medication raced to the back of her han
d. Its chill meandered up her arm, making her shiver even more violently than she already did. She watched with confusion as the bag on the pole appeared to shrink before her eyes. A slurping sound filled the air. That couldn’t be normal.
“My! You are hungry, aren’t you?” The doctor folded his arms and drummed his fingers against his sleeve as he watched the last of the medication drip. “Now, all you have to do is lie there and enjoy,” he said.
“Smith?” a deep voice sounded from the entrance.
Harley shifted her gaze and saw that a pot-bellied man in a business suit had parted the doors with his forearm. Her mind began to swim as she watched.
“I need to see you about those value-added products.” The man’s fat bottom lip glistened as it bobbed from beneath his walrus-like mustache. He glanced at Harley. “More procurements, I see?”
Dr. Smith turned to him, and her lips curved into a smug smile. Her eyes brightened. “Yes, of course, Mr. Rhodes. We’ll have what you need by noon tomorrow.” Her Asian accent had taken on a sappy sweet resonance. Apparently, the suck-up tone was the same, regardless of one’s country of origin.
“Jackson!” Dr. White exclaimed toward the man in the doorway. “Good to see you! We’re working on your orders as we speak.”
The room around Harley became distorted in her vision. The lab equipment appeared rippled and wavy, like a mirage forming from heat rising from a highway on the horizon on a sunny day. She glanced at walrus-stache, and the man seemed to glare at White. Smith closed her laptop and slipped it under her arm. She walked to the door and grasped the man’s hand with a firm shake.
“We’re especially interested in newly-infecteds in our research at the depot,” the man explained to Smith. “We need as many as we can get.” The two stepped through the door, and their voices trailed away. White stood staring after them, at the empty entryway, with his mouth agape.
Harley’s eyelids grew weighty and thick, and she became aware of a nasty metallic taste in her mouth that made her, if possible, even sicker. Her stomach heaved an involuntary retch.
Dr. White turned his attention back to her. “Hey, don’t turn up your nose at this.” His index finger wagged toward the IV bag.
The room began to spin.
White’s voice mimicked a disapproving parent. “Show some appreciation, will you? People on the street would pay good money for this stuff,” he chuckled. “You won’t feel a thing, and when this is over, you either won’t remember any of it, or you’ll be dead. Either way, it’s all good.”
***
Sometime later, Harley felt her brain fighting its way to consciousness, as if awakening from a deep slumber. In her dream-like state, she struggled to open her eyes, but they didn’t respond to her mental commands. Rhythmic beeps and the swoosh of systematic compression of air sounded in the background.
I was sick, wasn’t I?
Yes, there’d been pain and nausea before. How long had she been here? The torment of her illness seemed to have lessened, but it wasn’t entirely gone. Something had roused her from her sleep. A distant voice carried on the air. Casey’s voice. It wavered, muffled and remote.
Harley wanted to call out, but her mouth was filled with the taste of plastic, and a pungent chemical odor stung her nostrils. Her mouth and throat were obstructed by something. Some kind of tube? Her lips and tongue were frozen, and her voice could only remain trapped inside her brain. Her head wouldn’t move. What was going on? Was she paralyzed? Was she dead? Where was she? In her stupor, bits and pieces of information floated through her brain. Blood, pain, and flashes of a room drifted through her awareness. There’d been a doctor. No, there were two doctors. The realization that something strange had been going on crept into her consciousness.
Harley remembered being afraid, but that didn’t make sense, or did it? Maybe this was a coma. She recalled someone once saying people in that state could sometimes hear what went on around them. Had there been an accident? It seemed like she remembered a hospital.
Casey’s voice echoed again in the hallways of her mind. There were other voices, too. It sounded like the school nurse, and a guy she seemed to remember. She couldn’t recall his name. She strained in another fruitless effort to open her eyes. Her brain grasped at strands of frayed thoughts, trying to piece them together. Kyle. That was the guy’s name. Yes, it was coming back to her now.
Bits and pieces of events floated in and out of her consciousness. There’d been a medication that dulled her senses. She saw the two doctors’ faces in her mind’s eye and remembered some of their words; their insane questions. Involuntary electrical sensations crawled up her spine as the recollection hit her that she was, in fact, in great danger. She needed help.
If only she could scream and let Casey know she was here, but Harley was powerless to lift even her eyelids. Whether she’d been here for hours or days, the girl couldn’t tell. Was this even real?
Harley thought she heard her friend Jordan, too. Maybe they really were nearby, and this wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her. As quickly as the voices floated into her awareness, the sound dissipated, like fog burning away in the rays of the morning sun. Maybe they never were really there.
She was so tired.
Again, a noise disrupted her drug-induced slumber. Her brain snapped to attention. Casey’s voice seemed to drift around her. This time it was louder, and more distinct, like it was right beside her. Harley breathed in the smell of Casey. Germicidal soap, barbeque, a greasy diner, and motor oil were just a few of the strange scents wafting from her body as it told Harley a story of where her friend had been. All Harley wanted to do was jump up and hold her. If only she could see Casey’s face again, she knew she could begin to feel normal once more. All she could sense of her dearest friend was the different cocktail of odors she emitted. Strangely, another scent; the aroma of roasted chicken snaked its way into her nostrils. Where was that coming from?
The smell triggered something in the depths of her stomach. A primal need overtook her thoughts, pushing awareness of everything else from her mind. Hunger. Instinctively, she knew the smell she detected was coming from Casey’s skull. More delicious aromas came; her other friends’ brains. Fear, unlike anything she’d ever known, gripped her heart as she realized she longed to consume her friends’ internal organs.
As quickly as that awareness came, a switch flipped inside her head. Humans. There were humans around her bed. Harley’s hunger raged. Four distinct scents of roasted, savory meat entered her awareness. Moisture coated her mouth as she salivated around the plastic tubing that filled her mouth and throat. It was the first signal her body was ready to feed.
“Casey! Don’t touch her!” A human woman’s voice called out. It was familiar, somehow. It seemed to have meaning. Yes, the sound was a harsh warning tone. “Look at her arms,” it said.
Harley could feel the burn of their gaze on her flesh, and for a fleeting moment, she understood it had been Nurse Hoffstedder warning Casey to stay away. The sensation of hunger began to abate. Images of Harley’s disease-riddled arms flashed in her thoughts as she remembered how she’d looked after she was bitten. The blisters and boils had formed up so fast. She could only imagine how she must look now. What was happening to her? She felt herself sliding into the hopeless abyss of this disease, and yet her heart and soul were trying to fight it. Whatever was left of her, humanity wanted to survive and was struggling to overcome the virus.
Again, the switch flipped. Need. Scent. Feeding. So close. Harley lunged, or so she thought. She couldn’t move. The taste of human spore in the air filled her nasal cavities as it seeped in from around the gaps between the plastic oxygen tubing and her nostrils. Harley heard a sniffle. The receptor cells in her sensory system interpreted a new saline-like scent. Tears. A gentle moan from beside Harley’s bed roused her, understanding her prey was crying. Her drive to feed lessened, and she remembered the creature wasn’t only her meal. It was Casey. With gut-wrenching horror, she realized if she coul
d ever move freely again, she couldn’t be with her friends, unless there was a successful treatment. The chances of cure, she remembered, were very slim.
She would kill her beloved friends, given the opportunity. It would be murder, without compassion or remorse. Their brains would taste good. She would do it with pleasure. If this switch flipped forever, she would no longer think of them as friends. Maybe she wouldn’t think at all. It would be only her hunger and her prey. Amid her own worries, Harley felt pain for Casey. She’d faced so much loss.
Harley heard the flitting of rustling papers, followed by Jordan’s voice. “What can we do?” He sounded weak and vulnerable, as if he, too, had been crying. It was unlike him.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Mrs. Hoffstedder said. The sadness in her tone was evident. “They’ve scheduled Harley for dissection tomorrow morning.”
“WHAT?” Inside her brain, Harley screamed. That couldn’t be right. She thought about Dr. White and his crazed behavior. She knew she hadn’t felt safe with him and that he acted as if he was insane. But were they really planning to cut her apart like some lab rat? Her brain retrieved a flashback from biology class, where they’d done procedures on preserved fetal pigs. Would Smith and White really do that to her?
Harley remembered the walrus-mustached man in the doorway mentioning something about procurements. Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart pounded as she made the harrowing connection. They hadn’t brought her here to fight a horrible, disfiguring disease. They were going to study her, or use her in some twisted, heinous experiment. Why, Harley couldn’t begin to guess, but she realized now, beyond a doubt, that it was evil and had something to do with that man and his value-added product scheme. Was she some kind of undead commodity to them?
More papers rustled. “Their vaccine isn’t working,” Casey spoke in a quiet, broken tone.
Casey’s words sent shockwaves of panic through Harley’s mind. She surmised her friend must be looking at the doctor’s notes. “Casey, please! You can’t let them do that to me. Get me out of here,” Harley begged from inside the prison the doctors had fashioned from her own body.
The Viral Series (Book 2): Viral Storm Page 3