by Scott Sigler
Although they had yet to achieve conscious thought, at a primitive level the organisms inside Perry knew they had been attacked. They instinctively triggered an immediate growth process. The tail began a phase change of its own. Specialized cells grew, ensuring the organisms would remain anchored in their environment long enough to fully develop.
The six remaining organisms grew, rapidly and unimpeded, as the host lay passed out on his bathroom floor.
The linoleum felt nice and cool on Perry’s face. He didn’t really want to try to sit up. As long as he lay still, the pain was only mildly intolerable.
When was the last time he’d been knocked out? Eight years ago? No, it was nine, when his dad had hit him in the back of the head with a full bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey. He’d wound up with nine stitches in his scalp.
Had it hurt this bad after Dad hit him with the bottle? That was so long ago, and it seemed like nothing compared to the dull waves of pain that now washed through his head. He tried to sit up, which only made it worse. It was like a tequila hangover times ten.
He felt sick to his stomach. Every little move toward an upright position shot more thick blasts of pain through his skull. He felt a puke coming on, working its way around his lukewarm, queasy stomach.
He reached up and gingerly touched his abused forehead. At least he wasn’t bleeding. He felt a pronounced bump, a half golf ball embedded in his skull.
He realized his pants were around his ankles, which added to the difficulty of sitting up. This was going to be a wonderful story to tell at parties—just as soon as he remembered what that story was. He slowly rolled to his back and pulled up his jeans. The room looked fuzzy and out of focus.
Perry grabbed the toilet seat. It wobbled weirdly as he used it to pull himself up. The seat was cracked in two at the oval’s front edge. Must have done that with his head.
His stomach churned once, twice, then rebelled. Perry leaned forward and vomited into the toilet, spilling a large quantity of bile into the water, a guttural grunt echoing in the ceramic bowl. His clenched stomach relaxed its grip, allowing him to breathe, but the air froze in his throat as shearing pain cut through his head.
His eyes shut tight. He groaned weakly against the rhythmic pounding of his skull. The pain immobilized him as assuredly as a straitjacket. He couldn’t even get to his feet to find a dozen or so Excedrin.
Somewhere in his head he remembered hearing that people puke when they get a concussion. He wondered how boxers or pro quarterbacks put up with it. This feeling wasn’t worth any amount of money.
Another wave of nausea slammed into his stomach, pushing more bile into the cloudy bowl. The acrid odor of vomit filled the bathroom. The smell made him even more nauseous, which made his head hurt more, which made him feel like puking yet again. It was one of those vicious circles that make even nonreligious people ask God what they had done to deserve such trauma.
“Must have been a child molester in a previous life,” he muttered to himself. “That or Genghis Khan.”
A third wave of nausea hit him. There was nothing left to vomit, but his stomach didn’t care. It clenched with explosion-violent fury that doubled him over, pushing his head almost into the toilet bowl.
His face scrunched as tight as his clamped diaphragm. His stomach refused to relax for a full five seconds, preventing him from drawing a breath. When it finally relaxed and air filled his lungs, he opened his watering eyes just in time for the pain to slam into his head like a seventy-mile-per-hour semi truck squashing a baby raccoon. He saw a few black spots, then his face slid back onto the cool linoleum.
25.
“DELUSIONAL PARASITOSIS”
Morgellons disease.
Margaret stared in disbelief at the CDC report. The disease that wasn’t a disease at all, but believed by the majority of the health-care community to be “delusional parasitosis.”
“Delusional,” Margaret said. “Get a load of that.”
“Seems the vast majority of the cases are,” Amos said. “Symptoms range from feelings of biting or stinging to things crawling under the skin. Some cases have the strange fibers, and most involve some form of mental condition: depression, acute onset of ADHD, bipolar disorder and…take a guess at the last three.”
“Paranoia, psychosis and psychopathy?”
“You’re just racking up the cee-gars these days, Margo.”
Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto waited in the hospital director’s office, a plaque-lined room with warm wood paneling and four well-groomed potted ficus trees. The director had been asked to leave by the persuasive Agent Otto, who apologized for the intrusion while at the same time leaving no possible way for the director to say no. Margaret thought Otto was a born salesman—a guy who could make you do whatever he wanted while making you think it was your idea the whole time. Margaret and Amos sat on a leather couch, both looking at pages of a report spread out on a coffee table. Otto had taken the director’s chair, behind the ornate wooden desk. He spun the chair in slow circles and seemed to relish the implied authority of the spot—smiling like a little kid playing grown-up boss.
Murray was on his way. They would give him their report face-to-face.
“I know I’m the dummy of the bunch,” Otto said. “So pardon me for asking—but you have a CDC report. What you’re saying is the stuff you guys have been studying for the past few days, that turns out to be a known factor?”
Amos shook his head. “No, not even close. This Morgellons thing, people don’t know if it’s real or a kind of group delusion. It took years of pressure from victims’ groups to force the CDC to at least pretend to take it seriously. The CDC created a task force, but so far they don’t even have a clear case definition of what Morgellons is. Most of the cases actually do turn out to be delusional parasitosis. People think they’re infected with something, organisms that can only be observed by the patient. In fact, the term Morgellons has been around for just a few years, and since it started to get publicity, more and more people report the symptoms.”
“Which means it’s spreading,” Margaret said.
“Not necessarily. It could mean that, or it could mean that once unstable people hear about the disease, their minds decide that’s what they have. They invent the symptoms in their own brain—hence the ‘delusional’ part.”
Otto spun in the director’s chair, three full circles as he spoke. “So the more people that claim to have this disease, the more publicity it gets, then more people hear about it, and then more people think they have it.”
“Full circle of nuttiness,” Amos said.
“Goddamn Murray,” Margaret said. “He’s right about keeping this quiet. This is exactly what he said would happen if word got out. And that’s just for this itchy thing, the bugs-under-the-skin thing. Just imagine what the response is going to be like if people see pictures of the triangles.”
“Or get wind of grannies slicing up their kids, then playing all Scar-face with the cops,” Otto said. “Psycho grandmamas would definitely upset Mister and Missus Average American.”
Amos nodded. “Murray does have a point, I suppose. There were a dozen Morgellons cases five years ago, now there are over fifteen hundred, reported in all fifty states and in Europe.”
“So why haven’t we heard more about the triangles?” Margaret asked.
“We know this isn’t delusional. We’ve seen the little buggers, and we’ve seen the chemical imbalances in Brewbaker’s brain. This is real, Amos.”
“Because most of the cases are delusional, but not all. It’s the fibers, Margaret. There are documented cases with blue, red, black and white fibers that are made up of cellulose. There have been three instances where doctors had the fibers analyzed over the past four years, and guess what—they had the exact chemical composition as Brewbaker’s. Exact, as in down to the molecules.”
“Your fizzles.”
Amos smiled. “Yes, the fizzles. We have the triangle cases we’ve seen in the past few weeks. Let�
��s assume those are cases where the organism made it to the larval stage. However, this Morgellons research indicated there have been multiple cases, over several years, where we see the fibers, where we see fizzles. It’s possible there were full-blown larval infections before the last few weeks, sure, but if they existed, no one has heard about them.”
Agent Otto whipped himself in circles. He seemed to be trying to see how many spins he could get off of one push. “So the fibers have been around for a while, but only now are reaching this larval stage? Does that mean they’re evolving?”
Margaret started to speak, a kind of automatic reaction to correct a layman’s guess at science, but stopped. Otto oversimplified it, but his concept was right on the money.
“Amos,” Margaret said, “has this task force been mapping the occurrences of the actual fibers?”
Amos shrugged. “I would imagine so, but I’m not sure. We’d have to talk to them.”
Margaret flipped through the pages. “Doctor Frank Cheng. He’s the project lead. I need to talk to this man. I don’t know if Murray will let me call him.”
“Margaret, may I say something?” Otto asked.
“Sure.”
He spun once in his chair, then gripped the desk with both hands, smiling the whole time. “You seem to let people push you around. You ever notice that?”
She felt her face turning red. Just because she had a problem, and everyone knew she had a problem, didn’t mean Otto had to actually talk about it.
“That’s none of your business,” she said.
“Because it seems to me you’re a lot stronger than you think. We’re dealing with some pretty crazy stuff here, am I right?”
She nodded.
“So if you’ve got something you feel we need to do, maybe you should stop being such a pussy.”
“Excuse me?”
Amos slapped the coffee table. “Preach on, Brother Otto!”
“I said, Margaret, stop being such a pussy.”
“I heard what you said.”
“So stop letting Murray tell you what to do.”
Margaret’s jaw dropped. “Are you completely deranged? He’s the deputy director of the CIA, man! How can I not let him tell me what to do?”
“So he’s the deputy director. Do you know what you are?”
“Tell her!” Amos screamed. He stood and raised his hands to the sky.
“Tell the good sister what she is!”
“Yes, Agent Otto, please tell me what I am.”
Otto spun twice, then spoke. “You are the lead epidemiologist studying a new, unknown disease with horrific implications.”
“Horrific!” Amos echoed.
“You are short-staffed, and you can’t get the experts you should have.”
“It’s a sin!” Amos said.
“Amos,” Margaret said, “just knock it the fuck off.”
Amos smiled, then picked up a magazine off the coffee table and sat down, pretending to read.
“Margaret, he put you in charge of this. What will happen if you insist on talking to this Cheng guy? Do you think Murray is going to bring in someone else to replace you?”
She started to speak, then stopped. No. Murray wouldn’t do that. Not because she was the end-all be-all, but because he wanted to keep this tight as a drum. Murray needed her.
“So,” Otto said as he gave one strong push. He started spinning, speaking one syllable on each revolution, almost as if he’d read her mind.
“Use…what…you…have.”
Her anger faded.
Agent Clarence Otto was right.
26.
THE POISON PILL
The seedlings continuously monitored development, fed by data from the roaming readers. At a certain point, the seedlings’ checklists determined that the readers’ jobs were completed. A chemical signal rolled through the host. The readers went through a phase change. With a simple adjustment, the sawlike jaws dropped off and the balls sealed up tight.
Inside the balls, death started to brew.
They inflated, filling themselves with a new chemical compound. Herders moved the chemical balls throughout the framework, wedging them here, wedging them there.
Where the jaws had been, a crusty cap appeared. The deadly compound ate away at the inside of the cap, but the seedlings flooded the structure with another chemical that added thickness to the cap from the outside. It was a delicate balance, but as long as the seedlings remained “alive,” kept making the chemical, the poison balls would remain sealed.
If the seedlings ceased to function, however, the caps would disintegrate and the vile catalyst inside would spread through the framework, dissolving it, the modified stem cells and all the cells they had created. Cells would blacken, die, then dissolve, the resulting waste material moving on to poison other cells. The ensuing chain reaction would dissolve every soft tissue it reached—framework, muscle, skin, organs…everything.
To stop this from happening, the seedlings had to survive.
But this host had no way of knowing that.
27.
GOOD-BYE
“I’m sorry, Mister Phillips,” the doctor said. “He just slipped away. We thought we had him out of the woods, and then he was just gone.”
Dew stared at the doctor, who looked tired and bedraggled. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault; the man had done everything possible. Dew still couldn’t stop the wave of fury that swept over him, that had him wondering how easy it would be to snap the little doctor’s skinny neck.
“What killed him?”
“It wasn’t one particular thing. I think the whole incident was just too much for his body to handle. To be blunt, he should have died back on Monday, but he was strong enough to fight another sixty hours. Because of that, we thought we might be able to save him, but there was just too much damage. I’m very sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to his wife.”
“No,” Dew snapped. Then, quietly, “No, I’ll do it. I was his partner.”
“As you like, Mister Phillips,” the doctor said. “I’ll be nearby if you need me.”
The doctor strode away. Dew stared at the floor, gathering his courage. It wasn’t the first time he’d lost a partner, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had to break the news to a new widow. It never got easier. It was funny how you could get used to killing, but not to death.
He wearily looked down the hall. Shamika stared at him, her son, Jerome, asleep in her lap. Her eyes filled with tears of denial. She knew. Dew still had to tell her, though; the words had to be said.
He walked toward her. Dew remembered another hospital, a day six years earlier, the day Jerome was born. He remembered sitting in the waiting room with Malcolm, who’d been so nervous he’d thrown up twice. He remembered talking to Shamika just hours after the delivery.
He kept walking toward her. She started shaking her head side to side, clutching Jerome tighter. She mumbled warbling words that couldn’t be understood, yet their meaning rang clear. Dew wished he were anywhere else, anywhere but facing this crying woman, the wife of his friend, his partner…the man he’d failed to protect.
He fought back tears of his own, an empty sorrow rolling in his chest alongside the burning hatred and rage. The only thing that kept him strong was the knowledge he’d find out who was responsible. And when he did, oh daddy, daddy-o, the fun he would have.
28.
THE BATHROOM FLOOR—AGAIN
For a moment, Perry slipped back in time. He was seventeen. His mother crying, as usual, shaking him gently. Perry slowly opening his eyes, feeling the pain roaring through his brain, fingers touching the back of his head, coming away with blood. His dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking steadily from the bottle of Wild Turkey that he’d used as a weapon against his only child.
The bottle wore a small streak of tacky blood, half on the label, half beaded up on the glass.
Jacob Dawsey stared at his son, his cold eyes fixed in their permanently angry stare. �
�How you feelin’, boy?”
Perry slowly sat up, his head throbbing so bad he could barely see.
“Someday, Daddy,” Perry mumbled, “someday I’m going to kill you.”
Jacob Dawsey took another swig, his eyes never leaving his son. He set the blood-streaked bottle on the table, then wiped his mouth with the back of his dirty hand. “You just remember that it’s a violent world, son, and only the strong survive. I’m preparing you is all—someday you’ll thank me. Someday, you’ll understand.”
Perry shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and found himself lying on his own bathroom floor. It wasn’t nine years ago. He wasn’t in Cheboygan. Daddy was dead. That chapter of his life was over, but that didn’t make his head feel any better.
His face felt crusty and squishy on the linoleum. The scent of bile filled his nose. Didn’t take him long to figure out why. His rebellious stomach had apparently found something else to cough up while he was passed out.
A little shiver tickled his soul. It was a good thing he’d been lying facedown, or he could have choked on his own vomit, just like Bon Scott—the original lead singer from the band AC/DC. Bon had passed out in the back of a black Cadillac, so the story went, bombed out of his skull on whiskey and perhaps a few other controlled substances, so blasted he couldn’t wake up; he drowned in his own puke.
Perry wiped his hand across his face, scraping away vomit slime. He had some in his hair as well. His stomach felt tired but otherwise fine; the regurgitation festival was apparently over. Most of the awful smell emanated from the toilet bowl. Perry laboriously sat up and flushed.
How the hell had this happened? Vague, out-of-focus pieces flitted back and forth across his brain like moths circling a streetlight. His left leg ached with a cold-iron throbbing.
