The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  Ellis grimaced. “I’m getting thready readings on Krieger, but the rest seem fine. We sure they’re even infected?”

  Jennifer’s voice broke into the line. “We don’t know anything right now,” she said. “All we know is we have to try and stabilize her. Now do us a favor and find out what’s killing her.” There was no contempt in the voice, but he detected impatience.

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Call us as soon as you know something,” Jennifer said. Ellis didn’t bother replying.

  He rolled his chair to the S.E.M. Ellis reached the cabinet next to the station and brought out the fluids he’d need to fix the slide. Preparing blood for an S.E.M. image wasn’t trivial. If the measurements were off, the image would distort and give false readings. Ellis had done it long enough to have it down and it had been years since he’d mangled a sample.

  In a tiny beaker, he mixed .07M of sodium cacodylate and 1.5% glutaraldehyde. Ellis swirled the beaker slightly. The liquid barely covered the bottom. They were on a clock, and he didn’t think they had a chance of figuring out what was killing the patient before she actually died. Not if the goddamned fixative took an hour to set.

  He glanced at the other, normal microscope. The other team members had already analyzed the sample using conventional methods. If they hadn’t found anything, he wouldn’t either.

  With the fixative ready, he reached to pick up the test tube and stopped. A bubble rose in the blood and popped. Ellis frowned. This has to be contaminated, he thought. His mind immediately burned through a possible list of problems with the needle and syringe that could make blood, well, carbonate like that. Nothing came to mind. He’d never even heard of blood doing that.

  “Ellis to Harrel.”

  “Go.”

  He licked his lips. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt claustrophobic. “Is this blood?”

  Pause. “We honestly don’t—”

  The sound of voices arguing came through the mic. Ellis glanced up at the monitors. The other three patients’ vitals bumped up and down in regular patterns. Marie Krieger, patient zero, had flatlined.

  “Fuck,” Ellis breathed. Forgetting about the test tube, he rolled back to his station and checked the recordings. All the data was streaming as normal.

  He watched his boss run out of the room as Webb, Veronica, and Hurtado crowded around the dead patient.

  “Come on,” he heard Hurtado whispering through his mic.

  Ellis shook his head, fists clenched. They had to do something. There had to be something they could do to keep her alive.

  Hurtado raised the paddles to restart Krieger’s heart. Ellis said a silent prayer. Eyes riveted on the screens, he didn’t notice the bubbles rising in the test tube behind him.

  Chapter 9

  When the EKG flatlined, Jennifer turned toward her patient. Yes, her patient. She’d done her best to stay detached from Krieger; Jennifer hadn’t done more than perform the necessary tests for pupillary reaction, reflexes, and the like. She’d let Mathis and Hurtado do many of the more intimate tests. Why? Because she knew this one was a loser.

  Doctors who dealt with terminal diseases, traumatic injuries, and invasive surgeries had to get used to death. The first few times were soul-crushing. They made you want to crawl under the covers and never come out.

  She’d always remember the first. Jennifer had been told over and over by other trauma surgeons what to expect, tried to make herself used to it by doing rounds in terminal wards, and getting used to the sickly sweet odor of death. But nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared her for the pained look in glazed eyes as the light slowly faded from them. Forever.

  Some doctors claimed they became immune to it. Jennifer knew better—there was no immunity. There was only trampling the feelings into submission, burying them so deep that they were far away pangs of humanity, flavorless postcards from a distant land. Despite how she tried, it was a skill she’d never mastered. Veronica, on the other hand, learned how to turn it on and off like a switch.

  So to keep depression and ennui at bay, she did the exact opposite of what a good healer does—she tried to interact with the terminal cases as little as possible. Empathy wasn’t required if you never talked to them or looked them in the eyes. It wasn’t the right thing to do and she felt shitty about it every time it happened, but it was the only way to stave off collapse.

  She’d known Krieger would die the moment she opened the woman’s eyes and stared into them with a penlight. The bloated and bursting capillaries, the nearly empty eyes, and the endlessly far-away stare were all signs she’d seen before. And now that the EKG was screaming its shrill alert and the tone of death hung in the air like a shroud, all she wanted to do was walk away. Where the fuck is Mathis?

  “Try and get her stable,” Jennifer said into her mic. Hurtado, Veronica, and Webb moved swiftly away from the microscope and to the bedside. Jennifer watched as they dragged the crash cart next to the patient’s bed.

  “Mathis!” she yelled into her mic. “Get your ass back here. We have a code.”

  Mathis didn’t respond. Growling, Jennifer walked into the tunnel. She pushed through the first flap, and pulled a lever attached to the tunnel’s side. The chem shower belched a spray of alcohol. She turned around slowly beneath it, released the lever, and walked through the next set of flaps.

  That asshole better be passing a kidney stone or shitting out a dwarf. He was the best they had for this and he was still in the crapper?

  She left the tunnel and walked into the storm. The wind buffeted against her as she staggered past a cop and through the double doors. Dr. Sharma waited at the nurse’s station, a surprised look on his face.

  “Where did Dr. Mathis go?”

  Sharma pointed to the trauma wing.

  Jennifer rolled her eyes and pulled off her helmet. Air whooshed out as the suit depressurized. She found the men’s room on the way to the trauma wing and knocked on the door.

  When there was no response, she pushed it open. “Mathis? Are you in here?”

  No response. Scowling, she continued down the wing until she came around the corner. Mathis stood next to a large window, helmet in his hands, and nodding to himself. She walked up to him and punched him in the arm.

  “Ow!” he yelled and turned to her.

  “What the hell is your problem?” she asked him.

  He looked up at her. “What?”

  “Did you not hear me over the goddamned coms? Krieger has flatlined!”

  He blinked his eyes and then looked at his helmet. “Oh,” he said. “I, um, forgot.” He pointed through the window. “They’ve got something serious going on in there. Watching them resection the colon. They’re pretty good.”

  “Richard,” she hissed. “Did you not hear me? Krieger flatlined.”

  He nodded. “I expected that.”

  “Of course you did. But I need your ass in there. Now.”

  Mathis sighed. “Sorry, Jen. I don’t like being around the—”

  “I know. But let’s get our asses back in there before—”

  Screams erupted down the hallway. The two doctors turned in confusion. Jennifer put on her helmet, her ears immediately barraged with the sounds of yells, curses, and something that sounded like frying bacon.

  Chapter 10

  This is the absolute worst, Hurtado thought. This was the entire goddamned reason he hadn’t gone into surgery. It was also the reason he’d decided early on to focus on viral and immunological research rather than having to deal with patients. Oh, he’d had to make examinations from time to time. When you dealt with possibly infected human beings, you couldn’t get away from taking temperatures, blood samples, stool samples, aspirations, and the like; those were fast and required little talking to or looking at the patient. But this? This was about as intimate as it got.

  V threw the sheet covering Krieger’s breasts to the floor. Hurtado barely looked at the shrunken adipose tissue. The black ick oozed from her blanched nipple
s. He squirted liquid onto the paddles and then held them over the women.

  The machine beeped. “Charged,” Veronica said from behind him.

  Hurtado placed them on Krieger’s chest. “Clear!” He hit the button and an electric shock buzzed from the paddles. Krieger’s body twitched on the table. His brain, desperate to travel to other places, noticed the body hadn’t moved. Normally the spine arched a little. Instead, Krieger had stayed prone. Not normal, a voice said in his mind.

  The EKG remained in flatline. “Charging!” Veronica said.

  Hurtado took a deep breath. He knew the patient was gone and there was no getting her back. They needed to just quit this bullshit and go back to trying to figure out what she had. They still had a chance to save the two EMTs and that Darren guy. If they were infected, Krieger’s autopsy might tell them something that could help keep the others alive. So why were they—

  “Charged,” Veronica said.

  He instantly refocused on the task at hand. “Clear!” Matt placed the paddles back on the chest and pressed down. The woman’s body twitched beneath his hands. The flesh between her breasts began to part. “What the—”

  The woman’s chest split open into a pool of impossible darkness. With his hands still pressing down, Hurtado lost his balance. His flesh burned and as he watched, disappeared into the black. He screamed. Something shot out of her chest and wrapped around his neck. The pain was bright, exquisite, and then he felt it pull. Screaming and trying to remove the stumps of his arms, Hurtado fell into the void and knew no more.

  *****

  Veronica stood motionless. Hurtado had disappeared into the pool of black liquid welling out of the woman’s split chest. Her mouth wide in an “O” of surprise, V took three steps back. Krieger’s body dissolved before her eyes. The pool overflowed the sides of the gurney leaving gleaming metal in its place. The liquid slid across the floor toward her.

  She shrieked, her ears ringing with the noise in the suit. Faster than she believed possible, the viscous black ooze closed the distance and ran over her feet. Smoke rose and the sound of frying bacon filled the room. Veronica looked down, her throat still locked in a scream. Tendrils of black liquid wound up her legs. Before they reached her calves, she realized she was standing on nothing but disintegrating stumps that had once been her legs. She flailed her arms as she began to lose her balance. Instead of falling backward away from it, her body fell forward. The last second of her life before she face-planted into the black, an eye opened in the center of the pool. It locked its stare with hers. And then she was covered in darkness.

  *****

  The ooze took him by surprise. Webb screamed and fell on his ass. Where his feet had been were two smoking stumps. Even with the unimaginable pain sending him close to unconsciousness, he used his hands to try and crawl away from the oncoming tide of death. He didn’t make it.

  Chapter 11

  Officer Pendleton heard the screams emanating from the other end of the tunnel. He threw his cigar into the wind, drew his weapon and headed in. A figure, shaking and screaming, pelted down the length of the tunnel. He yelled for the man to stop, but he kept coming.

  Before he had a chance to pull the trigger, the man was by him and into the rain beyond. A fresh round of yelling echoed off the tunnel walls. Pendleton was confused. He could either pursue the fleeing man into the rain, or chase down whatever had made the man run. Unfortunately, he chose option B.

  Crouching down and moving as silently as he could in the crinkling tunnel, he proceeded forward. Pendleton saw his partner, Fletcher, standing on the other side of the tunnel. Fletcher’s weapon was in his hands as well. The younger man spoke into the radio attached to his collar.

  The closer Pendleton got to the quarantine room, the quieter it became. The shouts fell silent in cut-off screams. Although he’d been listening to it for some time, he finally realized something crackled and spat up ahead like lard in a fryer. Worse than that, there was a smell like someone roasting meat. Or burning rotten meat.

  Something moved beyond the plastic flaps. Something black. Pendleton’s nerves jangled and his heart thumped loudly in his ears. “Hey!” he yelled at the flaps. “This is the police. Come out with your hands up!” His rapid breathing made it difficult to hear anything from the room beyond. “Hello?”

  The sizzling sound had disappeared, but the smell was stronger. He took a few steps closer to the flap. There was definitely something in there moving, but it was close to the floor, way too close to be a person. A cold chill hit him. Was that blood? No. There weren’t enough people in there to create that much blood.

  “What the hell are you?” he whispered.

  Get out of here! a voice said in his mind.

  Pendleton grimaced. He’d heard the voice before. It usually tried to warn him before he was about to do something stupid. He never listened to it and he sure as hell wasn’t going to listen to it now. Pendleton readjusted his grip on the weapon and walked up to the flap.

  Through the fractured vision provided by the heavy, scratched, and milky plastic, he saw something standing on the other side of the flaps. A strange shape, like two legs without a torso. Then he realized, they had to belong to a person flat on their ass, legs in the air.

  “You. Stay where you are.”

  No response. A slight smile on his lips, he kicked open the heavy plastic covering. As the trailers of plastic rose over his head and hit his back, the room came into full focus. Pendleton tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth.

  What he’d thought were legs were eye stalks rising out of a black pool that nearly covered the room’s floor. The black orbs stared at him. Pendleton tried to say something but the words died in his throat. He pulled the trigger on the Glock. The weapon jumped in his hands again and again. When the mag went empty, he continued pulling the trigger.

  The eye stalks disappeared back into the pool, their ends shot off. The rest of the bullets struck the surface of the black. They didn’t even cause a ripple in the thick fluid.

  For a moment, it just sat there. Moveless. Changeless. With his ears ringing, it was difficult to tell, but he thought he heard a ripping sound. He blinked. The far edge of the pool was…solidifying. The liquid rippled in three places. A fist-sized knot formed in the center of each disturbance, slowly rising into the air. The liquid at the front of the pool seemed to flow backward into itself.

  Pendleton said nothing. His eyes and head raised to follow the progress as the knots transformed into tentacles ending in talons and hooks. The ripping sound intensified and the middle of the pool jerked and twitched. A ragged oval appeared in the pool’s center. His bladder let go. It was an eye. An impossibly black eye.

  “What—”

  He never finished the sentence. The pool rushed forward, the tentacles poised like three scorpion tails. The pool reached a few feet away from him and then the tentacles came down as one like three sledgehammers hitting an orange.

  Blood and gray matter splashed against the walls. The headless body fell forward into the pool and slowly disappeared. The eye blinked and then was gone as well.

  *****

  Fletcher walked along the tunnel until he was up against the wall. Through the translucent plastic, he watched Pendleton push through the final barrier and into the quarantine room.

  Though the sound was muffled, Fletcher heard his partner say something. The tone made him tighten his hold on the weapon, index finger drifting to touch the trigger.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Shots fired. Many. An entire magazine’s worth. Fletcher’s heart bounced in his chest. When the shots stopped, he opened his mouth to ask Pendleton if he was okay, but the sudden ripping and tearing sound emanating from the room chilled his blood. He heard his partner start a sentence and then the horrific squelch of something juicy. A mist of red stained the plastic barrier separating the tunnel from the room.

  Fletcher stared. “Pendleton?”

  Something scratched and skittered in
the room. Pendleton didn’t answer.

  “Don?” Fletcher asked.

  The scratching sound continued, but there was still no response.

  “Officer?”

  Fletcher nearly shit himself. He spun to the side. Doctor Sharma stood there in his blue scrubs, a terrified look on his face. Fletcher glared at him and waved him away. The man didn’t move. “Get the fuck out of here,” Fletcher whispered. Sharma moved around the corner.

  Fletcher touched the radio on his collar. “8Adam13 to dispatch.”

  No response.

  The scratching sound increased in volume. It was even louder now than the blood pounding in his ears. “Dispatch. 8Adam13. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance, Ben Taub ER. Unknown assailants in the building. We lost one patient from the quarantine area. Repeat, one patient is loose from the quarantine area.”

  No response.

  “Shit,” he said to the empty foyer. Fletcher stepped a few feet away from the wall and tried to peer through the spattered plastic barrier. Something was blocking the view. No light came from the room.

  As silently as possible, he pulled the flashlight from his belt with his left hand, his pistol still pointed into the gloomy tunnel. He raised the flashlight and then clicked the button.

  A cone of powerful halogen light scattered the wall of darkness. He heard a slushing sound that made his skin prickle with fear. The ambient room light once again flowed into the tunnel. What the fuck was that?

  He turned off the flashlight and put it back in his belt. “Pendleton? Are you okay?” His voice echoed around the empty ER waiting room. No answer. He stared at the clips holding the tunnel in place over the room’s doorway. This was bad. If he wanted to get in the room, he’d have to go through the tunnel. Or he could try and detach it.

  Something moved in the quarantine room. Fletcher couldn’t tell if it was on the back wall or on the floor at the far end; the translucent plastic was too cloudy for him to see clearly. He stared back toward the ER doors. The tunnel end fluttered in the storm wind. Something cracked behind him. He whirled around and dropped into the weaver stance, nerves sizzling with adrenaline.