Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel

by Iain Rob Wright

  “You…you weren’t involved with that cruise liner, were you?”

  Houser nodded. “Yeah, we were one of the boats involved in the rescue attempts. There was no one to be saved, though. We spent a day running nets and picking up debris, but eventually we were ordered back to the mainland. It was all a bit strange, if you ask me.”

  Dr Clark was shaking her head and pursing her lips. “It’s terrible what happened there. More than a thousand dead, I heard.”

  Houser nodded. “Nobody has any idea what happened. They’re saying it could have been a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber in the engine compartment or something.”

  “I don’t understand this world sometimes,” said the doctor. Then she seemed to refocus on what she was doing. “So, you say you and your colleagues started feeling ill back on the boat, in the Mediterranean Sea? Were you docked anywhere prior to that?”

  Houser shook his head. “We made a drop off in Civitavecchia the day before, but no one left the boat. We just dropped off some shipping containers with the crane and then set off again. I suppose one of the officers could have stepped off briefly to fill out some paperwork.”

  Dr Clark nodded her head and seemed to run a few things through her mind. “Well, there hasn’t been any health warnings. It’s probably safe to assume that you just have a nasty case of flu. Not a lot I can do for you, unfortunately. I’ll give you something to help the headaches, but you just need to get a lot of rest. You’ll feel better in a day or two.”

  Houser nodded weakly. “I really hope so. I can’t take much more of this.”

  The doctor patted him on the back. “Just get some sleep and try your best to battle through it. I’ll be back in a minute with your prescription.”

  “Thank you, Dr Clark.”

  Houser waited on the table while the doctor headed out of the room. He was relieved to hear he just had the flu. He’d suspected as much, but had also been supressing a gloomy concern that it could be something worse. He knew flu was bad, but he didn’t know it could be this bad.

  Feels like my whole body is turning to lead.

  Houser felt his nose run for the hundredth time that day and wiped at it with back of his hand. He blinked his eyes a couple of times as they began to itch.

  Dr Clark re-entered the room with a prescription in her hand.

  “Take this to the pharmacy on the ground floor and-” Her words trailed off. She gawped at him.

  “What?” Houser said. “What is it?”

  “Your nose!” She hurried over to the corner desk and pulled some tissues from a box in the drawer. She handed several to him in a clump.

  Houser took the tissues from her and noticed the blood which covered the back of his hand. It was almost black it was so dark. “Wh-what the hell?”

  A wracking cough exploded in his chest and blood spurted from his mouth, covering Dr Clark from her face all the way down the front of her jacket. She seemed shocked by it, but wasted no time in leaning him forward and placing the stethoscope against his back.

  Houser continued to hack and splutter and more blood leaked from his mouth and nose. Through the sounds of his own agonised heaving, he heard the doctor’s panicked voice.

  “You’re lungs are filling with blood,” she said frantically. “We need to get you into surgery.”

  Houser tried to catch his breath and make sense of the situation, but his mind was a raging blur. Surgery? But I just have the flu.

  Then he collapsed off the table and landed on the floor.

  DOCTORS AND NURSES

  Dr Clark sat in her office and examined the patient’s preliminary test results. Daniel Houser was currently in surgery where efforts were being made to control his internal bleeding. She couldn’t deny that she was worried. The blood coming from the patient’s mouth had been thick and arterial. Most of it still stained her coat.

  From some sort of internal injury or…

  I don’t know. Something crazy, like Ebola or Lassa?

  That’s insane. If the patient had just gotten back from third-world Africa, perhaps there could be the remotest chance of him having haemorrhagic fever, but he said he’d just gotten back from the Mediterranean. The worst he should have been exposed to there is sunstroke and dysentery.

  She had a growing desire to contact the disease control unit which covered her district, but she forced herself to hold off until the blood results came back. Medicine had to be practised on a factual basis. She wasn’t about to make assumptions with so little information at her fingertips.

  He could be a nut, for all I know. Swallowed a bunch of nails as a way to kill himself. God knows it’s more likely than someone bringing Ebola into the hospital.

  There was a knock at the door and she immediately said, “Come in.”

  It was one of the nurses from diagnostics. She was carrying a folder.

  “Do you have the haematology reports?” Dr Clark asked the woman.

  The nurse handed over the folder. “Just partial results so far. The blood tests seemed to be contaminated by a foreign substance. We’ve compared the markers we could find against the database of diseases, but nothing came up. Dr Besser is getting more samples now and will be working on them as a priority.”

  Dr Clark looked over the blood report that was inside the folder. She scanned the page quickly and located what she was looking for. “It’s not Ebola.”

  “No,” said the nurse. “Nor Lassa, or anything similar.”

  Dr Clark sighed. “Then, if not for this foreign body you mentioned, I would assume internal injuries. Maybe the first blood sample was compromised. Maybe Dr Besser will find the new tests to be normal.”

  “Maybe so,” said the nurse. “I will let you know if anything changes, Doctor.”

  “Thank you, nurse.”

  The nurse departed. Dr Clark continued looking through the blood reports.

  Foreign substance? What on earth could that be? Did he poison himself with something?

  She let her eyes scan the numerous lines of data, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed to jump out at her, until…

  Silicon?

  Why on Earth would there be silicon in Houser’s blood?

  She examined the rest of the results and located several unknown proteins. There was a chance that those proteins belonged to some kind of virus. She wouldn’t know for sure until Besser did a full workup.

  But the silicon…

  Silicon was a substance used mainly in electronics, and also for some cosmetic procedures. Daniel Houser did not seem like the type to get breast implants.

  So what? He has computer chips running through his blood stream?

  Dr Clark knew experiments were being done that would produce machines and computers made from silicon that would be small enough to exist on a cellular level, but the technology was still in its infancy. Even getting something down to the size of a pinhead was a vast challenge to most of the scientific community. Nanotechnology was still closer to a pipedream than a reality, but for some reason it was the thing she was thinking of now.

  Aren’t they looking at ways of bonding silicon-based machines with bacteria? Trying to find a way to combine biology with technology to make self-replicating, self-sustaining robots that can fight cancer cells and seek out infection?

  Science fiction.

  But Daniel Houser had silicon in his veins.

  Dr Clark scratched her chin. She wasn’t about to believe in nanotechnology just yet, but the presence of silicon in her patient’s bloodstream, along with the unknown proteins, made her wonder if it was something manmade that had caused his condition. The patient had mentioned a possible terrorist attack, after all. It might be time to get someone else involved. She picked up the phone on her desk and dialled in the number for Disease Control.

  Someone on the other end answered immediately.

  “Oh, hello,” said Dr Clark. “My name is Dr Clark. I am calling from Southampton General Hospital. I have a patient that was compla
ining of flu-like symptoms about ninety minutes ago, but his condition has suddenly progressed to internal haemorrhaging.”

  “Did you run blood tests?”

  “Yes. Negative for Ebola and other conditions that would present similar symptoms.”

  “Then what is your primary concern?”

  “I found silicon in his blood.”

  “Silicon?”

  “And some unknown proteins.”

  The voice on the other end of the line suddenly seemed more interested. “Has the patient been exposed to anything?”

  Dr Clark thought about things and then nodded into the phone as she replied. “The patient is a merchant sailor. He was involved with the rescue operation for that cruise ship which sunk in the Mediterranean last week. He also said that some of his colleagues-”

  “Isolate the patient and anybody who has been in contact with them.”

  Dr Clark rocked back in her chair as if the person on the other end of the phone had punched her. “What?”

  “We’ll have a team on site within the hour. You must enforce emergency protocols immediately.”

  “What is going on? Who is this man? What does he have?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then… “Dr Clark, there have been dozens of cases in the last few hours of people who were involved in the Mediterranean clean up operation becoming very sick. We have quarantined several ships already and the French Navy have currently closed all shipping lanes in the area. Your patient must have fallen under the radar somehow.”

  Dr Clark felt the blood leaving her cheeks and making her face pale. “What does he have?”

  “We…don’t know. The attack on the cruise ship may have been down to terrorists. They may have released something.”

  Dr Clark’s mouth fell open. “I…”

  “Just isolate that patient, Doctor, and stand by for our arrival.”

  The line went dead. Dr Clark just sat there, holding the phone against her ear in stunned silence.

  Then she leapt to her feet and raced for the door. She had to get the situation contained. God only knew what Daniel Houser had brought into the hospital, but she had a duty to contain it. She quickly headed towards the emergency department and made her way to the operating theatre.

  We need to quarantine the patient.

  Oh God, oh God. What does he have? His blood is all over me.

  Houser was still in surgery. Dr Clark pushed through the heavy double doors and entered the theatre. The attending surgeon, Dr Bryce, looked up at her from behind his mask. Both of his gloved hands were covered in blood.

  He looked at her over the top of his surgical mask. “Dr Clark? Can I help you?”

  She nodded. “I just got off the phone to Disease Control. We need to isolate this patient immediately.”

  Dr Bryce and his two attending nurses all shook their heads simultaneously and sighed. It seemed like something they had been prepared to hear. “Great,” said Bryce. “What are we exposed to?”

  “I don’t know. They just said to isolate him and ourselves until a team arrives.”

  Bryce wiped some sweat from his wrinkled forehead with the back of his arm. “Okay,” he said. “Let me get him sown up. He should remain stable for now, but I don’t see him recovering from whatever has gotten inside him.”

  Dr Clark frowned. “What did you find?”

  “His organs have liquefied. I knew there would be a story with this man. Let’s just hope we don’t end up in the same condition.”

  “I’m sure we won’t,” Dr Clark said hopefully. “He might have been the victim of a terrorist attack. He may not even be contagious.”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” said Dr Bryce. “I’ll let you know when I’m done here. You’ll be in your office?”

  She nodded. “I’ll stay there until you’re ready to enact quarantine procedures.”

  Dr Bryce nodded and got back to work.

  Dr Clark headed out of the operating room and back towards her office. Along the way she bumped into Brad, the floor’s security officer.

  “Brad,” she said. “We need to lock down this floor. Can you secure all the exits?”

  Brad raised an eyebrow. “Sure I can, but why?”

  “No time to explain. There may be an infectious disease in the hospital. Disease Control are on their way.”

  Brad seemed worried. His lower lip was quivering. “Infectious? How infectious?”

  Dr Clark sneezed.

  She blinked tears from her eyes and then sneezed again. Brad’s face was drenched with her mucus. She tried to stay calm as she spoke to him, but was already losing herself to panic. “I think it’s pretty damn contagious,” she said. Then sneezed again. “We have to get this place locked up now.”

  She ran off to lock all the doors herself.

  Brad, however, snuck out quietly while nobody was looking. He was still wiping the doctor’s mucus from his face as he headed across the car park.

  FAMILY MAN

  Brad hurried across the hospital car park while trying not to cause suspicion. His instinct was to run as fast as he could, but he didn’t know if people would be looking for him.

  There’s no way I’m staying in that cess pit with a disease on the loose. They don’t pay me enough for that.

  Brad knew he would probably lose his job, but when he’d heard that there was something loose in the hospital, a primal instinct had demanded he flee. His stomach ached, even now, at the thought of Dr Clark sneezing all over him.

  Dirty bitch.

  Brad wanted to go straight home, see his wife, but he didn’t know if the hospital would try to contact him there. He also needed to work out a way to tell his wife that he had just walked out on his job.

  He had a better idea and headed for the bus stop, hopped onto the 26 as soon as it pulled up. It was packed full of people and he was forced to stand up and hold onto an overhead rail. Luckily it would only be a short trip.

  While he was waiting, he smiled at a little girl with pigtails and bright orange bows. She smiled back at him for a while but then turned to talk to her mommy.

  Cute kid.

  Sometimes Brad wished he’d had a child, but he’d never earned much money and the thought of having to spend the little he did have on another mouth to feed was too much for him to consider. Deep down, though, it was probably because he knew he would make a lousy father. He didn’t want to ruin a kid like his father had him.

  The bus came to Brad’s stop and he leapt out onto the pavement. He was in a rough part of town; a housing estate full of low income housing and a dilapidated shopping centre. It would be frightening to most people, but not to Brad. He visited the area frequently.

  He headed into a small corner shop and nodded to the owner, who nodded right back at him, giving him the permission he sought. At the back of the store was a door. Behind it was a flight of stairs. Brad headed up and went through the door at the top.

  A familiar musky scent filled the air.

  Sandy was behind the desk as always. She seemed to work all hours. Brad headed up to her and smiled.

  “Mr Brad,” she said in her Nigerian twang. “What would you like today?”

  Brad took out his wallet and paid her £150 for the full works. He needed to de-stress in a big way. “Everything, please.”

  Sandy took the money and nodded subserviently. “You want Michelle?”

  Brad chuckled. “Of course.”

  “Second door on left.”

  Brad headed into Michelle’s room and was instantly aroused to find her lying on the bed in a black and red negligee. Her petit Chinese figure was as alluring as ever. The thought of penetrating her orifices was enough to make Brad forget all of his worries.

  “Hello, Brad,” she said seductively. “It has been a long time. More than a week, no?”

  “I’ve been busy, sweetheart. Never stopped thinking about you for a minute, though.”

  Michelle slunk down the bed towards him on her hands and k
nees. “You want my ass?”

  Brad laughed. “Let’s just start with a blowjob.”

  Michelle got to work. By the time Brad came, his semen was already infected.

  WET WORK

  Michelle had slept with seven men by the time her twelve hour shift had ended. She hurt all over.

  At least now her shift was finished. She intended never to have another one.

  I’ve finally taken as much as I can. No more sweaty men and their limp dicks.

  Michelle had been brought to England against her will and made to do terrible things. She had spent the last six years being treated like a possession, leant out for money like a power tool or lawnmower. She could take no more.

  At first she had resisted her situation, bit and clawed at the men until they beat her unconscious. But eventually she had broken, succumbed to their demands. The last couple of years she had behaved well enough that she had been allowed to live alone in a flat and go about her own business in the rare hours she was not working. That was why she would be able to do what she was planning to do. Nobody would know she was missing until tomorrow.

  And by then it would be too late to stop her.

  She went into the small kitchenette of her flat and switched on the kettle. A mug of black tea would help calm her nerves whilst she waited for what was to come. It might also get rid of her splitting headache and clear her blocked sinuses.

  Any minute now, I’ll take that last step and there’ll be no going back. It will all be over.

  There was a knock at the door. Michelle gripped the edge of the kitchen counter and took a deep breath.

  Here goes.

  She went and opened the door and let the man inside. He was tall and dark. Not what she had imagined. He was also wearing a suit, which she also had not expected.

  “Michelle Lin?”

  Michelle nodded. “Yes, please take a seat, Detective.”

  The tall man did as he was asked and took a seat on the worn, leather sofa in the centre of the room. Michelle went back into the kitchen again and made a second cup of tea. She brought it, along with her own, over to the coffee table.

  Her guest smelt strongly of aftershave.