I gave the slightest nod in response, now wary of anything I might unintentionally do that could make things worse for us.
Our guide gestured us into one of the cells. “The cells are for your own protection while you’re here. We have many different individuals, in different stages of infection, so we have to segregate everyone.”
The small room, constructed of cinder blocks, had an outward-facing wall of bars with a door that looked exactly like the ones in jails in old western films. We stepped inside as directed, and the guide closed the door, securing it with a large key.
Things are never so bad they can’t get worse. My parents’ old familiar saying continued to haunt me every day in this nightmare. Things were most definitely getting worse.
We were now locked inside the equivalent of a jail, inside a highly secured building, inside an even more highly secured chemical weapons facility. I took in the “features” of our cell. Two heavy metal shelf beds were bolted to the concrete block walls. A stainless-steel sink stood in the corner beside a matching metal toilet. Great.
“Excuse me!” I called after the guide as he readied to leave the room, “what’s going to happen next? Are we going to get a meal?”
“When will we see a doctor?” a man in another cell yelled.
The guide turned and looked at us, and I thought I caught a brief look of sadness crossing his face. “Dinner will be served tonight, and you’ll see a doctor in the morning.” As he stepped out of the pod and secured the lock behind him and headed out of the unit, a chorus of cries echoed through the facility.
The guide may have said we were here for our own safety but, like me, judging from their cries, no one else in the other cells seemed to believe it either.
That evening, as promised, a meal of sorts was served. A room-temperature chunk of meatloaf, or something approximating it, was served, along with steamed cubes of squash and zucchini, a brownie, and a bottle of water. The fact they hadn’t included utensils wasn’t lost on me. They provided pads of hard, thick composite type rubber to place on our “beds” for a small measure of comfort, and an equally dense block of foam for use as a pillow. “How odd,” I said to the woman handing out the amenities. “These sort of look like something you’d use in a barn.” I squeezed the “pillow” and found it hard and stiff. I could barely put a dent in it using all my strength.
“We have to use these because they’re easier to sanitize and are more durable than mattresses and other bedding. They also insulate your body from the coldness of the metal base.”
“Durable?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’ve housed a lot of patients,” she explained. “These can’t be torn.”
“Torn? People try to tear these up?” I asked.
“Suicide prevention,” she shrugged. “Pleasant dreams.” She offered a pained smile.
***
I awoke the next morning to the sound of metal doors clanging and movement throughout the pod. My back ached with stiffness. I reached to rub my eyes, my arm feeling weighty and difficult to move, as if it were made of lead. I could barely lift it without worsening the pain that had become the ever-present consequence of my illness. I stifled a groan.
Kyle sat up, stood, and came to my side. “You okay?” he asked, his expression saying clearly that I didn’t look all right.
“I feel worse,” I admitted before gagging at the stench in the facility. “What is that horrible odor?”
“What odor?”
I turned and stared at him. “You don’t smell that?”
He shook his head.
“Geez, this place smells like a cross between a slaughterhouse and a locker room that hasn’t been cleaned in years.”
“Slaughterhouse?” Kyle’s voice inflected. “When were you—?”
“Okay, maybe a restaurant dumpster that hasn’t been emptied for a long time and festered in the hot sun after a heavy rain. Like there’s something dead and rotting nearby.” I peered out the front door bars. Workers in scrubs were taking patients from their cells and leading them out of the pods. They all carried clipboards and wore stethoscopes around their necks. One worker, a woman, was walking in our direction. Although she was dressed like the others, from a distance it appeared she was wearing some kind of head covering that no one else had. “I think they’re coming for us next. Remember to keep using our fake names,” I told Kyle, under my breath.
The worker reached our door. Up close, I could see that she wasn’t wearing a hat at all. Her head was wrapped in a bandage that covered her forehead and one eye. What I could see of her face looked puffy, pale, and swollen.
“Harley Evans and Trey Bronson? Come with me,” she directed. I hadn’t recognized at first who she was, but her voice was familiar. Kyle and I stared at her and turned to each other with questioning eyes.
“Is that you, Huai Li?” I asked. “What happened to your head?”
The records technician looked to her left and right and peered into several other cells before answering. “Explain later,” she said, her voice a quiet whisper.
We followed Huai Li into a medical examination room, and she locked the door behind her as she followed us inside. “Less you know, the better,” she said. “I crossed the line. Do what they say, and maybe they hurt you, not as much.”
“Wait, you mean this wasn’t some kind of accident?” Kyle asked. “But you work for these people, right?”
Huai Li only nodded.
Kyle seemed shocked someone in charge here would do this to one of their own. It didn’t surprise me at all. We’d seen too much out of them to think they had any kind of humanity about them, even when it came to dealing with one of their own people. Perhaps it was their way of keeping them in “line,” as Huai Li put it.
I chewed nervously on my lip as I considered whether we could trust her and, if so, how far. “Whatever they did to you, it looks bad. Real bad,” I said.
“It does,” Kyle agreed. “What, exactly, did they do?” He squinted at the bandage, eyebrows furrowed with suspicion. A slight tan-colored discoloration had formed on the top layer of gauze, above the technician’s covered eye.
Huai Li gave a sharp inhale. “Tell no one. They took samples of my brain.”
Whatever I’d imagined, it hadn’t been that. “Wh—what?” I stammered. “You mean they cut out a piece of your brain because you did something that they didn’t want you to do?”
Huai Li frowned. “I disobeyed. I’m sorry, but I can’t say more. It’s a risk telling you this much.” Her one visible eye widened. “Sit down, both of you.”
Huai Li took my blood pressure, temperature, and pulse, and then jotted some notes in a folder. “Tell me about your symptoms,” she urged.
I told her about the unrelenting pain and burning in my veins, the strange smells, and words that drifted into my mind. “I wonder if I’m having seizures of some kind.”
Her head bobbed up and down in understanding as she scribbled out the details I provided. I couldn’t stop looking at the spot of dried fluid on her bandage and wondered if she might level with me and tell me what’s really going on with the treatment here. I needed to know if what Alice and Wes told me was true. “Is there any possibility I could get the treatment soon?” I asked, watching her for a reaction.
“Just by looking at the two of you, it seems like your infection is advancing faster than Trey’s.” A thoughtful expression crossed her face. “Have you ever been in the military, or worked in a patient care setting in the last year, Trey?”
“No,” Kyle shook his head. “Why?”
“Maybe no reason. Researchers want to know. They’re trying to pin down why the disease progresses slower for some than others. Nurses and soldiers seem to take longer,” she explained.
“Yeah, we have no idea why, but there’s no military or medical background. Back to that vaccine, when will we get it?”
Huai Li gestured toward Kyle. “I’ll take your vitals now,” she informed him, before turning away from me.
She was avoiding my question, and I hated it when adults did that. Couldn’t she see these were our lives we were dealing with here? “Wait,” I commanded, my tone harsh with frustration. “Why aren’t you answering me? I want to know when we will get our vaccines.”
Huai Li shrugged. “Okay, the truth is, the vaccine only helped a few people. For some, it made things worse. They’re doing more research on it now. Hopefully, they’ll get more information from your saliva samples, and you might be one of the lucky ones. For now, I’m sorry, but the only thing they can do for you here, for now, is to treat your symptoms if they become unbearable. Our supplies of pain killers are running low.”
“So, the rumor we heard was true,” Kyle concluded. “We also heard nobody is allowed to leave here. Is that right?”
“That is…I’m sorry, but also true. No one can leave, not even staff. Everyone is being kept here for research, or to conduct the work. It’s necessary to keep confidentiality. That is another reason why they took tissue from my brain. It will be studied.”
Her words hit me like a kick to the stomach. My worst fears were now confirmed. My pulse pounded like rapid fire in my temples, and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. “I can’t stay in this place, Hui Li!” I sobbed. “I just want out, to die in peace. Look, I don’t want to be here and be part of some experiment,” I said. “That’s not a life.”
Understanding passed between Kyle and me. We were both doomed if we stayed here, and I had nothing to lose by telling her how I felt. I decided to go for broke. “Have you ever considered getting away from here? Like, leaving and never coming back?”
Huai Li looked at me and shook her head. “You mean escape?” A curious expression crossed her brow as she appeared to consider the question. “No.”
“After what these people did to you, I would understand if you had. They shouldn’t be doing things like this, no matter what the reasons are.”
Standing by Kyle’s side, Huai Li was reading the blood pressure cuff as I spoke. She stopped working and stood in silence for a moment. “You want out of here,” she said. “Why? What is so important that you want to get out? No matter where you go, you’ll still be sick.”
I looked at Kyle, conveying with my eyes the question I couldn’t speak out loud. Should I tell her? Kyle’s face was more serious than I’d ever seen it before. There wasn’t even a glimpse of the fun-loving, boyish charm I saw in him the day we met. He looked hollow inside. His lips tightened, and he nodded.
“We want to stop this if we can,” I said. “We know what’s going on with this so-called research, and we want to share the evidence we have with the world. And after that, if there’s really no cure, no hope, Kyle and I are going to kill ourselves. We can’t live this way,” I said. I realized I was trembling with fear, even as I showed our hands. Every card we possessed in this horrible game was now laid bare.
“Where is this evidence?” Huai Li asked.
“The truth is, we don’t know exactly. It’s with our friends, but we have to get out of here. Can you help us with that? You can come with us if you want to, and I cannot imagine why you wouldn’t want to. Or do you want to stay here and let them destroy you, too, one piece at a time?”
Huai Li looked at us both in turn, a doubtful furl on her one visible brow. I held my breath, waiting for her response.
“Okay,” she said, swallowing hard. “I’ll help. I’ll come for you tonight. For now, though, you rest.”
***
Back in our cell, Kyle and I spent the rest of the day alternating between quiet conversation and fitful naps, punctuated with meals consisting of finger foods served on rigid foam plates with napkins barely big enough to wipe our hands. Even the toilet paper was chintzy and thin, and the dispenser would only release three squares at a time. It struck me that the cell design and furnishings were all intentionally planned, perhaps in anticipation that whoever was housed here might want out as badly as we did. And, like us, they might want out bad enough to end it all.
The fact that a jail existed at all inside this facility implied forethought and planning, to some degree. But by whom, and for what purpose? Was it all related to the research, or was it a coincidence being taken advantage of by opportunistic people?
In my mind, the possible outcomes played over and over. It seemed clear that any kind of cure was out of the question, so our best hope would be to try to reconnect with Verna and Jordan to help them get the documents into the hands of people who could stop this insanity. I didn’t know how long I had before the virus made it impossible for me to help them, and perhaps we wouldn’t even have a chance to do so. I just knew, in my heart, that we had to try. We had to do this for them and everyone else suffering under this horrible, faceless regime that had invaded our homeland by stealth under our very noses and unleashed this viral storm upon us. I wanted to do it for Derek, too. My common sense told me he was dead. Of course, he was, but as long as I could cling to the sliver of hope that he might be out there, it gave me the strength to move forward. Making a difference for him mattered, even if only in a symbolic way. I suspected it was wrong on some level that I didn’t think about my mother, but I somehow couldn’t make myself care. Sure, I wanted her to be okay, just like I wanted everyone to be okay, but I realized it was more out of concern for humanity than for any relationship we had.
As the hours ticked by, my awareness of odors seemed to increase. The intensity was nearly overwhelming, and it reminded me of an incident with a former neighbor back in Ft. Wayne, who was pregnant with twins. She once joked that she could smell ants farting in the grass from all the hormone fluctuations she had. I wondered if the virus could be affecting my hormones, and whether that might explain it. God, I needed a shower, and from the stench of things, so did everyone else in here.
***
It felt late when I awoke to Kyle gently tapping my shoulder. I sat up and focused my gaze in the darkness. Huai Li had opened the cell door for us. She held a clipboard in her hand and wore the same scrubs she had earlier in the day, around her neck, she wore a stethoscope. My stomach turned, and suspicious thoughts ran through my mind. Oddly, I felt disconnected from the ideas, almost as if they came from the air around me rather than from inside my own brain. Something felt off.
“I thought we were leaving,” I mouthed to her as I looked her up and down.
“This in case we get caught. I can say we’re going to the examination room again.”
I shrugged. It made sense, but the feeling of foreboding remained thick in the air around me. Maybe it was just another symptom of the illness. Perhaps it was just the culmination of fearful emotions that had built up inside me ever since our world changed. Either way, it made me very uncomfortable and kept me on edge.
Huai Li led us out of the pod and down the same hallway she’d used earlier in the day to take us to the examination room. This time, however, she bypassed that room, opting instead to lead us down four flights of stairs and into a room containing nothing but a vault door on one wall.
Kyle and I exchanged uncertain glances. “What do we do now?” I asked. “We can’t get past that.”
Huai Li shushed me, reached into her pocket, withdrew a small, puffy plastic pouch resembling an insulated sandwich container. Inside was a smaller sized box. Opening it, she took out a fleshy-looking white object, which she held up to a scanner mounted on the steel jamb beside the vault. The unit emitted a beep. From within the door mechanisms, an electrical hum sounded out, followed by a series of clicks. Huai Li slipped the object back into its box and pouch and returned it to her pocket.
Huai Li pulled on the wheel on the front of the door, but it didn’t budge. “Trey, I need your help,” she said.
For a second, Kyle just stood there, and I ribbed him. “Didn’t you hear her, Trey?” I asked, inflecting my voice with the slightest audible warning. It was going to be more difficult to cover for him now that Huai Li was with us. He needed to stop slipping up.
Kyle amb
led to the technician’s side and pulled on the wheel. It turned and, together, they forced it open. Metal grated against metal, and the noise reverberated up the stairwell. Huai Li gasped, and we all held our breath, waiting for any sound that might signal we’d been heard.
When nothing happened, Huai Li beckoned us to follow her. We entered a dimly lit concrete structure containing a series of ramps leading downward.
“Where does this lead?” Kyle asked.
“We go under the depot grounds, past the missile silos and weapons stores. There are exits beyond the gates where we can get out.”
“Can it really be that simple?” I asked, doubt filling my mind. “I mean, this doesn’t seem very secure to me. Not for a chemical weapons facility, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Huai Li responded. “This place was constructed a long time ago. I think they built hidden exits in case there was a need to evacuate. And, I never said getting out would be easy.”
“Have you ever been down there before?” Leaning over a side railing, I peered into the cavernous depths. I couldn’t see how far down we would be going.
“It was years ago, but yes. When I first started working here, we were all given an orientation and had evacuation drills. Come on, we don’t have all night.”
Huai Li headed down the ramp.
“Back there,” Kyle whispered to me, “was that what I think it was in that box she’s carrying?”
I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
“It looked like an eyeball.”
“Are you coming or not?” Huai Li’s voice drifted up the walls.
I grabbed Kyle’s arm and pulled him after me. “Doesn’t matter now. Got a better plan? Let’s get out of here.”
As we descended the sloping concrete pathways, a steady flow of dank, musty air blew against our faces, and the temperature dropped the further down we went.
When we reached the bottom level, the space before us opened up to reveal a massive underground warehouse. All around us were rows of racks holding metal cylinders. A bay of forklifts, jeeps, and flatbed trailers stood off to one side.
The Viral Series (Book 2): Viral Storm Page 15