Chapter Six
Mood: Pissed Off!Listening to: Slipknot, Wait and Bleed
yo ‘sup, we’re still here cause the road south is closed and brian thinks its no good in Canada, either, he’s so fucking smart, he thinks excep then wheres his girlfriend?…I would have protected my woman, true dat, I would lay down all I had for her I dunno. We got three big water jugs, and I filled up the tub last night, its not clean I guess, maybe well leve before it comes to that, if brian gets off his stupid ass.
[Livejournal update for user PiramidHed, 4/9/05]
The infected man on the gurney had been cut down to an obscene minimum of humanity. His face had been carved off, as well as the front of his skull. His brain sat like a shriveled piece of fruit in a bone bowl. Much of his chest had been removed—skin, sternum, musculature—to reveal his heart and lungs. Neither of them moved. Yet his fingers twitched and clenched, his toes writhed as the First Lieutenant prodded a long white curve of nerve tissue with a pair of forceps.
“They aren’t using most of their organs. Their blood is dried up in their veins. They digest their food… somehow, and they excrete wastes. Noxious waste. What you’re looking at, though—it isn’t human. It’s a nervous system that has failed to die.”
Desiree Sanchez had doffed her level four biosafety suit. Inside the Bag she wore an apron and a pair of heavy work gloves over her uniform. She had a pair of plastic goggles for eye protection but they were pushed up on her forehead. Splatters of human tissue and clotted blood covered her from head to toe but she wasn’t even wearing a filter mask.
“Lieutenant, I believe we spoke before about the patient’s hypothetical morbidity.” Clark held onto the intercom box, ready to interrupt her if necessary.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Sanchez said, and blew a stray hair out of her eyes. “I just don’t know how this man could live through what I’ve done to him. I mean, this isn’t an alternative lifestyle. This is a complete physiological change.” She dropped the forceps into a bloody instrument tray. Clark heard the clatter even through the multiple layers of thick plastic curtain between them. She leaned on the gurney and closed her eyes for a moment before going on. “I’m at the end here, there’s nothing I can do short of torturing this man pointlessly in the name of science. There’s another avenue of research I've been pursuing, though—the epidemiology of this thing. I think… that… that…”
Sanchez’ face went blank and a pained croak belched out of her mouth. Alarmed, Clark reached for his firearm even before he knew what was happening to the woman. It wasn’t there—he’d put the Baretta in his desk drawer and forgotten about it.
“Get—get off,” Sanchez mewled. Clark looked down and saw that the infected man had wrapped grey fingers around her wrist. “Get off me,” she shouted, and grabbed with her free hand for the instrument tray. It was just out of her reach. Her eyes sought his through the plastic.
Clark lacked so much as a pocket knife. He couldn’t get through the safety plastic with his fingers—he would have to go around. “Hold on, Lieutenant,” he said through the intercom box, then dashed out of the room. He whipped out his cell phone and called for help—for anyone.
Outside the Conex trailer the sun was very, very bright. Clark hurried around the side of the shipping container and pushed in the other end through a zippered wall, then through a decontamination station. An automatic shower pelted him with scalding hot water and he threw his arms up around his face, his eyes burning with antiseptic. Behind him he heard boots crunching gravel—too far away, he was the only one close enough to respond. He pushed through the inner air lock, heedless of the whooping alarms that told him he’d failed to close the outer door.
Inside in air that smelled of decay and horror he wiped soapy water out of his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He found himself standing next to the gurney, on the far side from Sanchez. The infected man had torn loose the restraints on his wrists—he sat upright on the table, both of his hands clutching at the squirming biowarfare expert. The exposed brain slouched forward across the decimated face, dangling on its spinal cord. My God, Clark thought, how is that possible? He grabbed for the instrument tray, looking for anything that might be a weapon. He came up with a gore-caked scalpel and tried to stab at the infected man’s wrists but Sanchez kept writhing around, trying to break the iron grip. There was no way to guarantee that he wouldn’t stab her instead.
“It’s—it’s alright,” she said to him, “I’m sorry I scared you. He can’t hurt me—he doesn’t have a mouth, so how can he bite me? Really, Captain, I—”
The infected man released her wrist and plunged his fingers into her throat, the thick, jagged nails sinking deep into her flesh. Clark jabbed at the specimen’s wrist, trying to cut the tendons there but even as he connected hot, red blood sluiced down his forearm. Sanchez's blood. The infected man had found her jugular vein.
Clark dropped the scalpel and rushed around the side of the gurney, intent on getting his own hands around Sanchez’ neck to stop the bleeding, knowing it was too late. He caught his hip on the metal edge of the table and felt pain blossom through his thigh. The infected man let go of Sanchez and she staggered backwards, blood pouring from her throat like wine from a bottle.
She didn’t look so much frightened or pained as curious. Clark wondered—was she a good scientist right up until the end? Was she approaching her own death with a burning desire to know what it felt like, to see what happened next? She didn’t so much fall to the metal floor of the Conex as collide with it.
Something in Clark’s body contracted as if he were having a heart attack or a stroke. No—it wasn’t him at all. The infected man had grabbed him in both hands and was trying to pull him close. He whirled to face Sanchez’ killer and saw two MPs come rushing into the room. They raised their pistols to shoot at the specimen. “No, no!” Clark ordered. “There’s bottled oxygen in this room!” The firearms dropped at once.
The infected man tightened his grasp, his fingers cold against Clark’s arm and stomach. The determination in his arms was nothing short of extraordinary. Clark stared into the gray folds of his brain and wondered where he got that resolve. He reached out with his own hands and took hold of the man’s frontal cortex. It was softer, much softer than he’d expected it to be and far less slimy. He shredded it like a head of lettuce.
The fingers weakened where they touched him and then they stopped moving altogether. The cut-down man fell backwards, what was left of his skull colliding noisily with the metal edge of the gurney.
The MPs came closer and Clark waved them away. They huddled over Sanchez, probably trying to determine if she was actually dead. Clark staggered toward the airlock, intent on getting some fresh air. He could barely believe what had just happened. Florence ADX was supposed to be a fortress, an impregnable stronghold in this new and horrible war. If death could come for them even inside of its barbed-wire fences and dog-patrolled perimeter, then where was safe? Did such a thing as safety exist any more?
Before he could switch off the automatic shower in the airlock—he was already drenched with soap, suds filling his mouth and nose—he heard one of the MPs grunt from just behind him and the other one took his arm. What was happening?
“Beg pardon, sir,” one said. His eyes were very, very blue. Clark blinked. Why were they holding him up? “You looked like you were about to fall.”
Legs—Clark’s legs—stretched out before him, connected to him only in the most metaphysical sense. His body reeled, his head was wrapped in felt. He had hit the wall. There was only so much fear and exhaustion a man in his sixties could handle. Fighting himself he regained control. He was more afraid of further humiliation than he was of exhaustive collapse.
“Yes, soldier, I see that… I’m fine now, though, so—”
Metal clashed to the floor behind them, a bright, jangling, piercing sound. Clark turned his head and saw Desiree Sanchez standing up. Her neck had ragged holes in it. She had knocked over the instrument tray: one scalpel had fallen into her foot and stood there quivering, sticking out of her uniform shoe. The goggles had gotten themselves wrapped around her ears in such a way that they occluded one of her eyes. The other one was blank. Her mouth opened, showing teeth stained with blood.
Clark reached down and grabbed at the belt of the blue-eyed MP. Ignoring his own order he came up with the soldier’s weapon and fired one shot right through the middle of Sanchez’ head. For the second time in as many minutes she fell to the ground, lifeless.
“I’m going to retire to my room now,” he told the younger men standing with him. “I think I need to get some sleep.”
