by M. D. Massey
Terrified that I had been bitten by a bat, adrenalin flooded my system. I felt crazed. Bats are one of the known vectors transmitting Ebola to humans, believed by scientists to possibly have been the original vector.
In the split-second in which these thoughts raced through my mind, my hand automatically tried to fly up to my neck.
That’s all I remember. I passed out.
Next thing I knew, I found myself waking up in bed. I still had a massive headache. Rolling over to view my alarm clock, I discovered that an hour had passed from the time I had experienced the sharp pain in the records room.
I felt as though I were swimming underwater. I decided to swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up, but my body failed to obey my mind. I lay on my back. I stared at the ceiling. I pictured a fat, fuzzy bat landing on my shoulder and sinking razor-sharp teeth into the back of my neck.
Relentlessly, my head pounded. Every muscle in my body ached. Weakness had taken over and owned me. These were all Ebola symptoms. The incubation period for Ebola was anywhere from two to twenty-one days. I was on Day 2.
I knew I had to get to the Staff Clinic.
Vacillating wildly between complete denial that I was symptomatic after being bitten the night before by an Ebola vector and crazed panic that I had begun a quick descent into the hell of Hemorrhagic Fever, I made myself stand up and get dressed.
I threw on dirty shorts, a torn shirt and sneakers. I didn’t care how I looked. I called in sick to work. I forced the words out of my mouth: “I’m sure it’s nothing. I have a headache, but I get those sometimes...Yeah, migraines…They get pretty bad sometimes. I’m going to go to the clinic, get checked out, see if I can get pain meds.”
I headed on over to the Staff Clinic, a gray cement structure located on a paved road set apart from the rest of the other buildings.
I was surprised to find two military policemen with assault weapons guarding the front door. Gruffly and without even a hint of a smile, they demanded my identification.
Thank God, I had thought to bring it with me. I showed them my badge and my Staff ID card.
The shorter of the two men opened the door and told me to go inside.
The waiting room was large but empty. I signed in. Taking a seat against a wall, I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I jumped as a nurse called my name: “Emma Johnson!”
The nurse was friendly. Smiling, she ushered me into an examination room. She said, “The doctors will be with you shortly.” She pointed to the examination table. “Just put on the paper gown over there, open to the back.”
I took off my clothes, dropped them on a chair and struggled into the white paper gown. Trying to feel less vulnerable, I folded and unfolded my arms, crossed and uncrossed my legs. With each movement, the paper gown crunched and crackled and pricked me under the arms with its sharp edges.
A CDC doctor and a WHO doctor entered my exam room, accompanied by a soldier with an assault weapon. I felt a jolt of panic, as swift and terrifying as lightning. My instinct was to jump down from the table and run.
My head became muddled. I fought to breathe. I tried desperately not to pass out.
Why the hell were members of the CDC, the World Health Organization and the U. S. military entering my examination room?
Oh, my God…They must suspect Ebola…
The CDC doctor introduced herself. She was young, early thirties. Intense green eyes, dark curly hair frizzing in the humidity. She introduced herself: Dr. Vivian Parker. Then she introduced the WHO doctor, a tall, lanky guy, blond crew cut, an Adam’s apple that bobbed as he spoke with a French accent: Dr. Luke Laflamme.
The military guy remained unintroduced, nameless. A life-sized action figure, hypervigilant, steely gray eyes focused on my every move.
Dr. Parker spoke to me as a normal doctor would. She pulled over a stool on which to sit down. Crossed her legs. Appeared relaxed. Asked me about my symptoms. Nodded a bunch of times. Said, “Uh-huh…Mmmm-hmmm…” intermittently as I provided information.
She seemed oblivious to the army guy with the massive firepower standing right behind her, the mayhem he could unleash.
I relaxed a bit, although I still felt vulnerable in the flimsy paper gown.
I shared the story of what had happened to me the previous night. Nurses were allowed in the records room, so I said that I had been reading up on new patients there. I never admitted to prying into Akachi’s records. I then reported all my symptoms, which at that point included sweating and chills.
At Dr. Parker’s request, Dr. Laflamme took my temperature. He informed us that I had a temperature of 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Fever! One of the symptoms that got people quarantined!
I asked if I had been bitten by a bat. Both doctors took a look at the spot on the back of my neck where I had felt the sharp prick.
Dr. Parker said, “I don’t see anything. Of course, a bat bite isn’t always visible; but I’m thinking most likely you weren’t bitten by a bat. No one else has reported seeing a bat in the records room. I’m thinking you probably have a good ol’ normal virus…not Ebola. But, as you know, anyone with a fever on our camp grounds is placed in quarantine until we know for sure that they don’t have Ebola.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Laflamme ready a hypodermic needle. He told me, “I’m going to give this to you for your headache pain. We’re also going to get an IV going for you in the room next door. We want to make sure you’re not dehydrated when we move you over to the camp hospital.”
As he pushed the sharp needle through the skin of my arm, I thought how odd that he, Dr. Parker and the soldier weren’t wearing protective gear. They suspected that I might have Ebola and yet they weren’t wearing protective suits or even protective masks, even as Dr. Laflamme punctured my skin with a sharp object.
I watched Dr. Laflamme’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, counted how many times. Reached twelve. Then I slipped into unconsciousness, in the same way one slips under the control of anesthesia before surgery.
Days passed by. Like a drowning swimmer, I fought to stay above water. At times, I was lucid. Needles were plunged into my arm; bottles of intravenous drip solutions were replaced and hung on the pole next to my bed.
At one point, Dr. Tovar stood at my bedside. His presence terrified me. He told me that I had tested positive for Ebola. I tried to grasp onto his words: “We have serums that have shown promise. We’re going to administer one to you. Several people have recovered from Ebola after getting this treatment. You’re very lucky to be approved for this.”
Late one night, the door to my room opened. As I oscillated between consciousness and slipping under waves that plunged my mind to the bottom of an unfathomable ocean of blankness, I saw Dr. Tovar. I noticed other men with guns. A team of doctors in white coats surrounded my bed. Someone grabbed my wrist, as though checking my pulse. Dr. Tovar’s voice commanded: “OK, administer Mutation Z. She’s a perfect candidate.”
Three Weeks Later
It’s now three weeks after I became a test subject for Mutation Z. It was administered to me by hypodermic needle. I had initially assumed it was a variation of a serum designed to fight Ebola, most likely a scientifically developed mutation of a serum that had already cured someone.
The first time I opened my eyes after being administered Mutation Z, I found myself in a hospital bed in what appeared to be a prison cell. I felt a bit better for an hour or so, as though good health would return to me.
As a full moon passed in front of a glass wall directly across from the prison cells, the natural light illuminated two people in a cell down from my own. It was Akachi…and his mother! They were both here! They both looked well. And I was delighted to see them reunited with each other.
Then, without warning, Akachi and his mother began to transform from lovely mother and child into beings whose skin fell off in sheets. Underneath, they were bloody, bony, moving corpses. I watched as a prison guard armed with an assault
weapon threw chunks of raw meat and meaty bones as large as a human’s into their cage.
Akachi and his mother ambled over to the raw muscle and bones. They devoured every bit of meat, groaning and ripping and smacking as they ate.
About to throw up, I raised my hand to cover my mouth. Sheets of skin fell off my own hands and arms and face. I couldn’t stop the progression. My cell floor became littered with droppings of my own skin.
An armed guard approached the bars of my cell. As he tossed raw meat and bones toward me, I watched him like a predator eyes its prey. I wanted him. I experienced the most intense desire to devour him, to rip open his head and plunge my hand deep inside, taking out his brains like a delicacy and swallowing them.
I could not stop thinking about brains as I ripped meat from the human-sized bone the guard had thrown at me.
As the next few nights removed increasingly larger slices from the moon, my skin repaired itself. I noticed the same was true for Akachi, his mother and all the other prisoners within view. My ravenous hunger for brains and raw flesh went away. In fact, the whole idea repulsed me. At that point, the guards served us normal food, with all our meat cooked.
Shortly after I and the other prisoners returned to normal, I noticed how Akachi’s mother cared for him. She spent hours singing African hymns to her little boy, telling him long fantastical tales, rocking him and using her own spit to clean his face. She must have brought him enormous comfort. After a couple of days, Akachi even ventured from her side to play with a pile of dust bunnies in the corner of their cell. As soon as he looked up and saw an older boy watching him from the cell next door, however, he dropped his toys of dust and ran back to hide behind his mother’s legs.
That afternoon, I was startled by the shouts of guards yelling at someone, accompanied by the sounds of scuffling and rattling chains. Within moments, two guards came around the corner, pulling a female prisoner by the elbows. The prisoner’s face was covered by a black hood tied with rope around her neck. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. She moaned every time the guards gave a hard yank to her elbows.
The guards dragged the prisoner directly toward my cell. I panicked. I did not want a cellmate. They passed by my unit, however, and unlocked an empty cell next to mine.
Once inside, they pushed the woman down on the bed. One of the guards shouted at her, “Do not get up from that bed until we leave and lock your cell! Do you hear me? Any funny business when we take off your hood and handcuffs, and you get tasered! You got that?”
The woman answered, “Yes,” through the black cloth hood. There were no eyeholes in the mask. Her voice was muffled.
One of the guards with upper-arm muscles the size of hams untied the rope around the prisoner’s neck. Then he ripped the hood off with a movement so rough, it jerked the prisoner’s neck too far to one side. She screamed in pain. The guard yelled into her face: “Shut the hell up!” He smacked her across the face with the back of his hand. When she stifled any verbal reaction, the other guard unlocked her handcuffs. Then both guards stomped out of the cell and locked it.
Once the guards had moved from in front of the prisoner, I was able to see her face. Her eyes…They were light brown with specks of gold. Every time she turned toward the light, they appeared golden. Dr. Chibueze Koroma. This woman had her same build, her same height.
The words barely found their way from my lips, I was in such shock: “Dr. Koroma? Is that you?”
She shook her head yes. Then Dr. Koroma walked over to the bars dividing our cells. She put her face against the black metal divider and whispered, “I am so glad you’re here. I need to get the word out about something…”
I moved right next to the bars, to better hear what she had to say.
Ripping open a pocket that had been sewn shut on the upper part of the khaki pants she was wearing, Dr. Koroma pulled out a couple of folded papers. She shoved them toward me.
We both glanced around. No guards were in view.
I read through the papers, quickly. I hoped to read them more carefully later.
The pages, wrinkled and stained with coffee and blood, turned out to be the summary of a scientific research report on Mutation Z.
According to the report, Mutation Z, also called Z Serum, is an experimental drug developed by a clandestine pharmaceutical company for a top-secret U. S. military program. Mutation Z changes Ebola victims into Zombies. It was developed as a biological weapon for the U. S. military. Certain characteristics of Ebola made it the easiest way for scientists to create the Zombie disease, something they’d been trying to do for the past decade. Zombie hordes can be sent into enemy territory as weaponized soldiers in order to terrorize the local population. Zombie disease is also contagious, so it will spread as a biological weapon. Genetic code can be written into the disease, so that those infected will die after a certain amount of time, thereby halting the spread of the disease once the enemy has been conquered.
The current form of Mutation Z being tested in our camp has genetic code spliced into it that only activates the Zombie state at the time of a full moon. That can be changed. Future codes will arrange for different activation triggers. The genetic coding for making a human being more susceptible to the full moon was developed by splicing in rat genes that cause rat physiology to be affected by the lunar cycle, specifically their taste sensitivity and the ultrastructure of their pineal gland cells. The full moon trigger was used in our camp because each outbreak of the Zombie disease would be short-lived and would also give the research scientists’ another month to analyze the data and tweak the code if necessary.
And Mutation Z has a second planned use. If Ebola becomes pandemic in Africa, according to the report handed to me, the U. S. military could use Zombies as vulture-like creatures to pick the human carcasses clean and restore Africa to pre-Ebola status. The research scientists have already tested Mutation Z on chimpanzees which had been known to engage in cannibalism to see if they would clean Ebola carcasses, and they did it.
It frightens and seriously creeps me out to realize an additional possibility in regard to Mutation Z. If the Ebola outbreak dies out on its own, Zombie soldiers can only be created by forcibly giving subjects a dose of Ebola Virus Disease before being administered Mutation Z. Surely, our camp is the perfect setting for extensive research into the nature of Ebola itself.
The report states that the pharmaceutical company has developed medicines capable of completely curing the Zombie disease, should that become necessary. I do not believe that once this Pandora’s Box is opened, it can ever be closed. The report mentioned that, like Ebola, Mutation Z is contagious by infected bodily fluids entering broken skin or mucous membranes.
One Month After I Received Mutation Z
The military and the pharmaceutical company believe they can control Mutation Z, but they cannot. How do I know? Half an hour ago, I watched eight fellow patients slip from this building, dressed as medical personnel. The moon is almost risen. They’re in the early stages of transformation from Ebola patient into Zombie—a few patches of dry skin, scabs and ulcers that are barely visible or in a place that can be covered up by clothing. They have escaped, carrying their contagious disease to God knows where. Trust me, the plague is coming. The Zombies will be much more a form of unleashed terrorism than they will ever be a controlled weapon of mass destruction.
Night has fallen. The moon is behind clouds; but it is full tonight, pregnant with the birth of a new race. I am once again ravenously hungry for human flesh and brains.
To hell with scientific reports. My body is consumed with hunger. In the cell next to mine, Dr. Chibueze Koroma has long since tucked away the report she shared with me. She’s become restless. Her golden eyes are flecked with bloodred spots. She paces her cell. In this moment, we are no longer friends or colleagues. We are primal competitors. We are enemies.
A guard ambles down the hallway. He unlocks our cages. We are free to fulfill our role as Experimental Subjects. Tomorrow, we
will be subdued. For now, the night is ours.
You should worry. You should be very, very frightened. You’ve been warned.
-Now enjoy book 2 in this series, Closing the Borders!
Book 2
Closing the Borders
By
Marilyn Peake
http://www.marilynpeake.com
Mutation Z: Closing the Borders
© Copyright, 2015, Marilyn Peake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Cover Art by Mike Tabor: http://miketabor.deviantart.com/ . He can be contacted at [email protected] for book cover artwork.
Chapter 1
Emma Johnson: The Liberia Treatment and Research Camp, West Africa
There was an empty space in my brain for whatever had happened the night Dr. Chibueze Koroma and I were released from our prison cells the first time. Much like the missing block of time one experiences after coming up from anesthesia, I only knew it was the next day because the calendar on the prison wall and the date and time on my digital watch told me so.
Imprisoned once again, I clutched the metal bars dividing my cell from that of Chibueze’s. I studied her. She had been my supervisor, one of the medical residents from Africa working at The Liberia Treatment and Research Camp. She had disappeared after accidentally sticking herself with a hypodermic needle filled with the blood of an Ebola patient. Shortly afterward, I became ill with Ebola and hospitalized. Eventually, we both ended up confined to the same prison on the camp grounds, although we’d been accused of nothing.
