The Aging: A Novel

by Jack Hunt

  “Can I help you?” a voice bellowed from behind them. Ryan turned to see a fair-haired female in bright colorful scrubs. She was middle-aged, tall, but most importantly, healthy-looking. She was a good hundred yards away from them and must have come out of a room they’d passed or one of the many corridors. Josh immediately lifted the gun at her.

  “Whoa, whoa, put that down,” she said.

  “You a doctor? A nurse?” Josh asked.

  “A nurse.”

  “Yeah, then where are the others?”

  “A group of us are running a skeleton crew here.”

  “Why are you still here?” Ryan asked.

  She shrugged. “Someone has to be.”

  He nodded. It made sense. Not everyone would run for the hills though most had.

  “I need some help. My daughter has been bitten by a copperhead.”

  “Bring her this way.”

  She turned to lead them and Ryan began to follow when Josh placed a hand on him, stopping him. “How can we trust her?”

  He nodded. “Hey. Lady.”

  She turned.

  “You wearing any ID?”

  “Oh, sure.” She took off her photo ID and slid it across the floor. Ryan stamped his boot on top of it and Josh shone a flashlight beam on it. They looked back at her. “What’s your name?”

  “Ella.” She reeled off her birth date and told them her age.

  The woman in the photo looked the same age. The details matched. Still, it didn’t mean that she hadn’t just been infected. The first week would barely register for someone her age. A wrinkle here, a gray hair there, the real damage came later.

  “How come there is no one else here?”

  “We’re over on the east wing of the hospital. I came over to collect some supplies. We’ve had to barricade ourselves in.”

  “Is that right,” Ryan replied skeptically.

  She nodded.

  “How can we trust you?”

  “You ever had any woman tell you their real age?”

  “Many, since this started.”

  A smile tugged at her lips. Ryan kicked her ID back to her. It slid across the polished floor and she picked it up and put it back on again.

  “You want our IDs?” he asked.

  “In a minute. You’ve got a young girl in a lot of pain. How about we deal with her first?”

  Ryan followed and Josh kept close. He was right to have a healthy skepticism. People could turn at the drop of a hat, act as if they were your friend, pretend as if they didn’t have the pathogen only to pass it on.

  “You seem very trusting,” Ryan said.

  They kept their distance. She replied over her shoulder. “If you wanted to infect me, you would have done it by now. After all, people don’t shoot the breeze. They act first and justify it after the fact.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “I was here when all hell broke loose. If it wasn’t for some of the locked areas, and some fast-acting security guards, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.” She led them along a hall, through multiple doors that she unlocked with a scan of her card.

  “Are you treating the infected?”

  “No. Only those who have been injured.”

  “How do you know they’re not infected?”

  “As I said, we’ve been at this a while now. There are ways to check. We follow protocol.” They reached another set of doors. Ella looked up at the camera. “Three for quarantine.”

  “Oh, hey lady, we are not quarantining.”

  “It’s just temporarily. You want your daughter treated, right?”

  Ryan glanced at Lily who was still writhing in pain. She came first and neither Josh nor he was going to let her out of their sight. Ella placed her hand on a biometric scanner. A second later the doors hissed open and they entered a secure area where nearly everyone inside was wearing similar outfits to her. Through a long window, they could see another area. Medical experts clothed in hazmat suits were treating patients.

  “How many here?”

  “Twenty-eight people.”

  “Who’s running the place?”

  “Local health officials and the military.”

  She hit a button on the wall and the doors hissed open and she gestured for them to enter.

  Inside they noticed one soldier talking to a nurse.

  “National Guard. Not as many here now though.”

  Ryan was hesitant to enter at first.

  “You can take your daughter in with you. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll get a doctor and be back in a moment.”

  They entered and the doors closed behind them. Through the glass window, they watched her stroll down a corridor out of view. Ryan laid Lily on a bed. Josh stood by the window, watching the activity. Most were covered from head to toe with overalls, and face shields.

  “You trust her?” Josh asked.

  “Right now I don’t think we have any other choice.”

  “But the military…”

  “I imagine they’re doing whatever they can to help.”

  “Yeah, like killing anyone infected. You saw those videos online.”

  “That was in the larger cities and they were being threatened.”

  “Still doesn’t make it right.”

  Ryan turned to Lily who was grimacing in pain. “You’re a strong girl. Just like your mother.” She gripped his hand tight. Ten years. Never seeing her birth. Not watching her grow up. All those birthdays, Christmases, special moments at school.

  The doors hissed open and a female Indian doctor and Ella entered.

  The doc kept her distance but was wearing a BSL 4 suit

  “Hello there. My name is Doctor Ravish. And who might you be?”

  “Lily.”

  “Lily. That’s a pretty name.”

  “And you would be…?”

  “Her father. Ryan Davenport.”

  “Okay, well, Lily, let’s take a look at that bite and give you something for the pain.”

  Ryan turned away while she was unclothed and they began to examine the area. The doctor stepped away for a moment and then returned and explained she would administer an antivenom. From there she approached Ryan.

  “So? Will she be okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, while nasty and painful it’s rarely fatal. Nearly all patients with snakebite experience pain and swelling. While it varies depending on the bite, in most cases, children can completely recover and resume activities within one to two weeks, though it can be longer in some cases. I would like to keep her here for at least twenty-four hours, so we can monitor her blood pressure. If her blood pressure drops we may need to give her some IV fluids but besides that, it’s mostly monitoring her. Hopefully tomorrow you should be able to go on your way.”

  “Hopefully? Twenty-four hours?” Josh said. He looked at his watch. “But we’ve got to get moving.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be moving anywhere fast if she doesn’t rest.” She looked back at Lily. “That’s a very brave young girl. Fortunate to have you, dad.”

  Ryan replied, “Thank you, doctor.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh. We would like to run a few precautionary tests on you. Just to be safe.”

  “We’re not infected.”

  “That’s what an infected person would say.” She smiled.

  “We’re not.”

  “I understand but there are those who are asymptomatic. They’re not showing symptoms. It’s precautionary, I’m sure you understand. It’s for the others. We accept people in for treatment but that is the one condition we have. Your call.”

  Assessing the situation, Ryan knew they weren’t getting out of there any time soon, at least not until the morning. And if this place was under the military, he didn’t want to lock heads with anyone and find himself staring down a gun barrel. Not that it would happen, but the news had shaken them up. “Sure. Okay, whatever you need.”

  “Very good. I’ll have Ella take some blood and we’ll run thos
e tests.”

  The doctor walked out while Ella finished up with Lily. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

  “I don’t like needles.”

  She was calmer, in a better state of mind. Not only had she received the antivenom but she’d received something to help with the pain.

  “I’ll tell you a secret. Neither do I.” She smiled and gave Lily a happy face sticker from her pocket. She told them she’d return in five minutes to take their blood. As she went to walk out, Ryan made his way over to her, making sure he was out of earshot.

  “Ella. Do you think you might be able to get me a refill on these?”

  Josh looked his way. He knew his son was curious but he wasn’t about to tell him what they were for. Ella looked at the label on the almost empty bottle. She glanced at Lily then back at him. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  July 7

  Ryan had been sleeping for close to two hours. He awoke to the sound of something hitting the ground. His eyes fluttered open, and he jerked forward to find Ella picking up a bottle of pills. “Sorry. My fault. I tried to be quiet and place them on the table. It’s the meds you requested.”

  Out of breath, he replied, “Oh. Right. Thanks.”

  He looked over and saw Josh staring. He was on one side of the bed, Ryan was on the other sitting in a chair. He didn’t mean to fall asleep but he hadn’t slept well the night before. Lily was still asleep. Ryan pocketed the pills.

  “You think I could speak with you for a moment?” Ella said.

  “Sure.”

  “Alone.”

  Josh’s gaze bounced between them. “Yeah, yeah, sure. Josh. You’ll be okay?”

  “Of course,” Josh replied.

  Ryan got up and walked out of the room into the hallway. The soldier he’d seen earlier was standing by the main doors, looking out the thick, protected glass in the door. Unlike before, he looked more vigilant. “How long has the military been here?”

  They walked off down the hallway.

  “A couple of weeks. A unit from the National Guard was passing through on their way to Lake Charles. If any hospital is still operating, they leave a couple of soldiers to offer some additional protection. We have three here.”

  “Has it worked?”

  “So far.”

  Ella led him into a room and closed the door behind him. “We got the results back from your bloodwork. I know it’s none of my business, but do your children know?”

  “No. I plan to keep it that way.”

  “You know things are going to get rough.”

  “The story of my life,” he said, making his way to the window. It was dark outside. The clock on the wall said it was just after two in the morning.

  “Is your wife dead?”

  “Ex,” he said. “And yes.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Not as sorry as I was to hear how she died.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “She took her own life.” He shook his head.

  “Do you blame her?”

  “It’s hard not to. You know, leaving them without a mother. Involving Josh in her suicide. I mean that kind of thing stays with you. I mean who asks a sixteen-year-old boy to place a gun outside their room?”

  He took a deep breath.

  Ella leaned against a table. She looked different from his wife and yet similar in that he remembered Elizabeth coming back from work in the early days of marriage wearing blue scrubs. Back then things were different. There was an urgency to spend time with each other. How quickly that changed. “She was a nurse like you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Community based for a while and then she went to work in the hospital.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Houston originally but I was living in Jasper.”

  “And the kids?”

  “Vidor with their mother.”

  “That’s quite a ways south. What are you doing in Louisiana this far north?”

  Ryan perched himself on a table and ran his hands over his tired face. “They came up to me.” He yawned. “I haven’t seen Josh in ten years. Lily, I didn’t even know she was mine.”

  Ella shifted from one foot to the next. “On top of everything that’s happened and what’s going on in you, that’s a lot to take in.”

  He smiled. “I guess. What about yourself?”

  “Born and raised in DeRidder. No kids. Married but that’s…”

  Ella looked away and ran her hand over her ring finger. She quickly shifted the topic back to him. “It’s quite common, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “What your wife did. The end-stage of this is horrific to witness even worse to endure. It’s not like regular aging. The body wasn’t made to age this quickly. It can’t adapt. That’s why you see rashes, frequent nosebleeds. It progressively gets worse from there. They experience a lot of pain. You see, the body is under an extreme amount of stress.” She got up and walked over to a wall and pressed a button. A light lit up a separate room. All that divided them was thick glass. On the other side was a body laid out on a table with straps over the wrists and ankles. The skin on the face looked almost mummified, dry, and wrinkled beyond comprehension.

  “Originally a thirty-nine-year-old male. By the time he died he was in his late eighties but to look at him you would think he was over a hundred and twenty. In the final stages of death, they can’t stop the bleeding. The capillaries burst. It ends up coming out of the eyes, and other orifices. The pain they go through is unbearable.”

  Ryan gestured to the dead man. “Didn’t you give him morphine or something?”

  “Wouldn’t be much use.”

  “So who is he?”

  “This was a doctor who worked here. After contracting the virus, he wanted us to document his experience of death, study him so we knew what we were dealing with.”

  “And do you?” He asked.

  “Somewhat.”

  She reached down and pulled up a table and tapped the screen, used the biometric thumb lock to gain access to it, and then pressed play. It was a time-lapse of the days leading up to his death. In excruciating detail Ryan listened to the sound of the man groaning in pain, begging to be put out of his misery.

  “They wouldn’t intervene?”

  “No. He gave strict instructions that no matter what to keep filming. Eventually, a soldier was sent in to end his life but before he had a chance to squeeze the trigger the man died.” She turned off the video, not showing it completely. Ryan could see it affected her deeply. As she turned away, Ella said. “That was my husband.”

  Silence stretched between them and in that moment he realized that he’d been hasty in his judgment of Elizabeth. As anyone with a background in medicine, she knew what was coming. She’d done her homework, no doubt witnessed a similar video, and had concluded that she wanted to go out on her terms rather than suffer. Could she have retrieved the gun herself instead of asking Josh to put it outside the room? Maybe. But she didn’t. Was she too weak or trying to make him stronger? Make him ready to do whatever was necessary to survive?

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “Is that how it ends for everyone?”

  “No, some don’t reach this stage. Their hearts give out on them. Like anyone who dies of old age, not everyone goes out the same but many suffer as my husband did.”

  “Were there many others here like him?”

  “Many.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “If there is, we haven’t discovered it yet,” she said, glancing at him. “I mean, of course spreading the pathogen to a host that doesn’t have it will help the infected but that is still…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Uncharted territory.”

  Ryan nodded. It raised all kinds of moral and ethical issues.

  “Do they know what it is? I mean, it doesn’t act like a typical virus.”

  “That’s because it isn’t. From what we can gather it was created in a lab. Where? Who knows. We�
�ve analyzed the infected blood under a microscope and it appears to be using some form of nanobot technology. Like the kind used to fight cancer. Except it’s doing the reverse of its true purpose.”

  “To prevent aging?” He asked.

  “Something like that.”

  She lifted her face and clenched her eyes closed. “Come, let me show you something.” Ryan glanced one last time at the man on the table and grimaced.

  Ella led him out and down to the stairwell, where they went up several floors until they reached the roof. As they exited, a soldier having a cigarette tossed it down and lifted his rifle.

  “It’s just me, Heath.”

  “Ma’am.” The soldier gave a nod. Ella led Ryan over to the other side of the building, past large air vents and snaking wires. “We isolated everyone who came in. The first casualties were staff unaware of what was happening. Within a matter of days, as news reports flooded the airwaves, the rest of us took precautions. I wasn’t on shift at the time. I had the week off. After learning about my husband contracting it, I decided to head into the hospital and offer my services.”

  “But you could have stayed home.”

  “You’re right, but, it’s what my husband would have done. It’s what he wanted.”

  “So you spoke with him before he died?”

  “Through a pane of glass. Yes.”

  She gave a strained smile.

  They made it to the far side of the building. “We stored the dead in those until they were filled.” Down below were large 18-wheeler trailers that were often called reefers, refrigerated trucks that had been brought in. “After that, they were piled over there,” she said, pointing across the lot to a large, tangled mass of bodies. “A tractor was used to open the ground up and roll bodies in but it became too many.”

  “Dear God,” Ryan said as the weight of loss hit him hard. It was a unique virus that spread fast, killed quickly, and offered zero mercy. Young, middle-aged, old. It didn’t matter. They were all down there. A mass grave of the infected.

  “It’s quite a sight and that’s just this small town. I can only imagine what it’s like in the major cities of this country. And that’s not the worst of it.” Ryan shot her a sideways glance as she continued. “The threat isn’t just from those choosing to spread it, or unknowingly spreading it, it’s from those fearful of being infected. Unless someone makes it known that they have the virus, unless they show a rash, or are bleeding from the nose, it’s hard to tell who has it. Our world is surrounded by people of every age. Is that sixteen-year-old over there, ten? Is that thirty-year-old, twenty? Is that sixty-year-old really forty? It’s a guessing game and one that some aren’t leaving to chance. If in any way they feel threatened—”