The End The Beginning (Humanity's New Dawn Book 1)

by Ryan Horvath

  His appearance was considerably different; and from just thirty minutes ago when he had studied himself in the full length mirror before his shower.

  Art leaned in closer to the vanity mirror. Though he was still a reasonably young man, Art had still developed some small age lines, or crow’s feet around the outside of both eyes. He also had a touch of gray hair at the ends of his sideburns. Both of these characteristics were now gone, the age lines now ironed away and the gray replaced with his original blonde.

  Shocked, he stepped quickly over to the full length mirror and was greeted by more surprises. It appeared, on his abdomen that an additional set of oblique muscles had arisen, giving him a nice looking ten pack. His pectoral muscles, though he could not be sure without measuring looked to have increased an inch or two. His biceps and triceps and thigh muscles had all increased in size, and believe it or not, his penis had also grown.

  With bewildered excitement, he darted back over to the vanity mirror only this time he grabbed the edge of the vanity sink that was attached to the wall with both his hands and the sink tore free from the wall causing Art to lose his balance and fall to the floor. The severed plumbing sprayed water all over Art and the bathroom while he righted and steadied himself. He crawled over to the water shut off valve using his hand as a shield against the stream aiming right at his face. Once the water was shut off, Art examined the spot on the wall where the sink, now cracked and useless on the floor, had once been.

  The sink had been mounted to the wall with four heavy duty large metal screws and additionally secured with what looked like industrial strength adhesive. The screws looked as if they had been broken and the adhesive was solid everywhere except, obviously, the fracture point. Art looked from that spot to the sink on the floor in disbelief. He doubted anything less than a small wrecking ball would have taken the sink off like that.

  “Did I do that just by grabbing it?” Art said to himself in the lonely empty bathroom.

  Then he remembered the chair. Pushing out. Hitting the wall six feet away. Twice.

  He looked at himself again in the vanity mirror.

  “I think I’m getting younger,” he said, and looked at the trashed basin on the floor. One last time, he turned back to the mirror and said to himself with a deadly and vicious grin, “And I’m pretty fucking sure I’m getting stronger.”

  12

  JACK VOIGHT

  About a month after Jack Voight, Ian Turner, and Brian Stevens graduated from The University of Minnesota, Brian packed up his Honda Civic full to the brim and set off for his new career in Florida. Brian had been offered to assist the head of the botany department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Ian had studied physical therapy and found work as a physical therapy assistant at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, while Jack, who’d become a registered nurse, stayed in Minneapolis and found work at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

  Jack hated to see his friends for the last four years go, but he knew it was best for all of their careers and he realized college friends parting ways after graduation probably happened more often than not.

  Over the next month after their separation, Jack deeply missed both of his college buddies but Brian, in particular, especially because of how close they had come to be over their senior year. Sure, Ian was still just as close but he was a ladies’ man and, as near as Jack could tell, Ian was content to sleep with woman after woman or in some cases, Ian had bragged, multiple women at once.

  Ian and Brian kept in regular contact with Jack, usually a weekly email exchange, or through Facebook for the next two months, mostly talking about their careers and coworkers and new friends they were making and of course their cars. Ian and Brian had always loved NASCAR and could go on and on and on about it. Jack didn’t quite get the draw at first but enjoyed watching the crashes and could be easily convinced to have some beers and watch a race with Ian and Brian.

  The next month, Jack was on the night shift at the hospital emergency room. It had been a quiet night: a couple cuts that needed stitching, a drunk driver had crashed at slow speed into a tree and had a mild concussion and was resting comfortably under his bedclothes with a watchful Minneapolis traffic officer nearby, and one woman was in labor but it turned out she was nowhere near dilated enough for delivery so she was able to be moved to a regular room.

  Jack was just finishing up processing the paperwork on the drunk driver when something happened that would turn out to change his life forever.

  Jack received a call from paramedics that they were bringing in a man who appeared to be having a seizure. The paramedics indicated that the man had blood all over the front of his shirt but they indicated they could not discern any wounds on the man. As with every instance of life in peril, Jack took the next few minutes to steel himself for the arrival of the oncoming emergency. It was just a part of the ritual he had to do to be effective at his job. Jack had three rules when it came to working in the ER: Don’t get squeamish, don’t panic, and don’t walk away; and his few minutes between the call and the arrival of the patient were his way of reinforcing those rules.

  Jack looked at the clock and the time was 12:03 AM. Then he scrubbed and sterilized his hands and pulled on his latex gloves just as the gurney arrived, pushed by three paramedics, with the seizing man on top of it. Jack directed the paramedics to push the gurney to the bay in the ER that had been sterilized after one of the cut patients had been stitched and left. The paramedics parked the gurney, lifted the seizing man up and onto the adjacent hospital bed and stepped away, their job now finished. The doctors, two of them, and nurses, three of them including Jack, all sidled up on either side of the bed to begin their examination. Unfortunately, in this instance that was a very bad idea.

  The responding police officers and paramedics had not noticed it when they first encountered this man because his fist was clenched, they assumed, as a result of the seizure. For Jack, this oversight would prove costly.

  The man suddenly jerked up to a sitting position and began slashing with the item that was concealed in his hand. The doctors and nurses jumped back but Jack also put his hand out to shield his face and the item in the man’s hand connected with Jack’s outstretched hand.

  Jack felt the sting of pain in the palm of his hand and quickly yanked his hand away, cradling it in the crook of the elbow of his opposite arm. An instant later, when he realized his hand hadn’t been severed and recognized what type of implement would produce this type of pain he ran to the nearby decontamination sink.

  He yanked the glove off the injured hand and tossed it in the nearby biomedical waste receptacle. He looked at the palm of his hand and confirmed that his suspicion of what he’d been struck with was true and he turned white. It was a syringe, and it had broken his skin. He stared in disbelief for five seconds at the drop on blood that had formed where the tip of the needle had gone into the flesh of his palm and then he thrust his hand over the sink and began to pour the various antiseptics over the injury while, in the background, hospital security worked to disarm and subdue the man with the syringe and the doctors and nurses worked to sedate him.

  While he finished pouring the last type of antiseptic, the Iodine, over his wound Jack again glanced over at the clock, sweat now stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. It was 12:06 and a half. From the seizing man’s arrival until now, less than four minutes had passed. Yet to Jack, it felt like hours.

  The man who had been brought in by the paramedics, who would send Jack’s life into a downward spiral, was closely examined and tested. So was the syringe that he had brought in with him. It turned out the man had been on a combined PCP and heroin high; a bad combination, but in looking for wounds on his body that might have yielded the blood on his clothing the doctors could only find one injection site. So it was assumed that the man, on a PCP high, met up with a heroin junkie and a confrontation ensued resulting in the junkie stabbing the man with one of his or her syringes and leaving it in him while he or she
fled. The quantity of blood on the PCP man’s clothing was not enough to assume a homicide had occurred.

  The PCP man’s blood was checked for all kinds of typical needle diseases but all came up negative.

  The blood on his clothing, however, was laden with HIV, human immunodeficiency virus.

  The syringe that had pierced Jack’s skin was empty with nothing to test. As Jack and his colleagues at the hospital conferred over these test results a few days later, his co- workers looked at him with remorse, sympathy, and pity. Everyone knew that if there had been anything in that syringe when it entered Jack’s palm, its contents stayed in him.

  The next week, Jack was sick, very sick with a persistent fever, muscle aches, and nerve pain, among other symptoms. The week after that Jack’s doctor pronounced him infected with HIV and Jack felt his world crash down around him like the remains of an imploded building.

  The next few months, despite being on excellent medication and having the infection under control, Jack sank deeper and deeper into depression. He withdrew from his local friends, quit going to the gym, dropped out of the photography club he was in, and basically spent his non-work time at home staring blankly at the TV or a book.

  Only twenty-four years old and this is what his life was going to be like. Jack told no one what had happened. His mother and stepfather were dead and he had never known his biological father, and his mother was usually reluctant to talk about the man. And Jack could not tell any of his friends. He couldn’t take the possible repudiation so he ostracized himself. It became maddeningly lonely.

  That winter in Minneapolis was long, icy, and dark, and Jack more than once thought of checking out. For good.

  But he endured. He maintained the e-mail exchanges with Ian and Brian as usual. He didn’t want them to worry and they would know something was up if Jack just stopped talking to them. Plus, Ian was close enough to drop in and check on Jack if he was worried. Ian might have been girl crazy but he was also a loyal friend through and through and Jack definitely did not want one of them dropping in and seeing him like he was.

  Summer rolled around and Jack’s mood improved drastically with the weather. He decided he was not going to let the virus ruin his life. He’d done nothing wrong or foolish to become infected. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and that was no reason to throw his life away. He rejoined his former gym and the photography club. He even took up painting, although he did not think he was any good, and went on a few dates with a man he met at the coffee shop near his townhome.

  July hit Minneapolis and in one of their weekly e-mail exchanges Jack, Ian, and Brian planned their first get together since just after college graduation for late September. They decided they would do their best to make an annual thing of it and alternate the location between each of their home cities.

  Jack was so excited to see his best friends that he could hardly believe just a few months ago he did not think he had anything to live for. Just to hear Ian talk about the latest chick he was banging while belching up a beer in front of a NASCAR race would be music to Jack’s ears.

  And Brian, just seeing the way his eyes light up when he smiles. Jack missed Brian a lot. He’d hated ending their relationship but it had to be. Ian never cared about his two best friends being gay. All he’d said is he’d figured it when initially meeting them, stressed that he was what he called a “pussy wrangler,” scratched his groin and that was that.

  On the Monday afternoon the day after the assassination of Jack Thomas in late September, Jack Voight sat on his deck reading the newspaper. Ian was sleeping on the living room couch, catching up on the sleep he lost pussy wrangling Carmen last night. Brian was inside in the kitchen watching the small TV and shucking corn for the guys to grill with their dinner.

  Jack was reading an uninteresting article about a dermatologist who’d been charged with inappropriate behavior with a patient. Normally such sordid drama would hold his attention but he could hear the sound of a very small, but strong and steady beating, almost like a heartbeat approaching. He was pleasantly agitated about this approaching sound but didn’t know why.

  A moment later, his smart phone next to him began to buzz with an incoming call. Jack checked the caller ID and the call was coming from his doctor’s office. That was strange. He’d been into the doctor last week for his routine HIV blood work but those results were usually posted on the clinic’s website for Jack to access through their secure server. A call from a doctor after having blood work done wasn’t usually a good sign.

  Jack felt his heart sink around him. He picked up his phone and in a small wary voice said, “Hello?”

  His doctor, Dr. Blake, spoke almost immediately. It was clear from his tone that he was extremely excited and flushed. “Jack, this is Dr. Blake.”

  “Yes, Dr. Blake. You’re calling me.” He paused. “Is there a problem with my blood work?” Jack queried feeling dread for the response.

  “Jack, are you sitting down, Jack?” Dr. Blake sounded as if he was going to burst.

  “Yes, Doctor.” Another bad sign when a doctor calls and asks if you are sitting before he delivers the bad news Jack thought to himself.

  “Jesus, Jack, I don’t know what to make of it,” Blake worked out.

  “Doctor, you’re beyond scaring me.” Jack was sitting on the edge of his patio chair.

  “It’s just…it’s just…,” the doctor panted. “I’m sorry, Jack. I ran to the phone to call you and I’m winded.” Dr. Blake was about forty pounds overweight so any running would certainly wind him. “Jack, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “God damn it, doctor. What is it?!” Jack’s heartbeat was now throbbing in his ears.

  The doctor continued to try to catch his breath on the other end of the line and Jack resisted the urge to reach through the phone and wring the man’s neck, or at the very least unleash a foul stream of profanity at him. He did not want Brian to hear him and come out to see him in this frazzled state.

  “Gone, Jack. Just gone. I’ve never seen anything like this. No one has,” Dr. Blake finally spilled.

  Jack was confused. His first thought was that somehow the lab must have lost the vials of blood drawn for his tests but that did not coincide with the doctor’s perplexed excitement. “Dr. Blake, if they somehow lost my blood samples, I can simply come down to your office and give you some new ones.”

  Dr. Blake, finally getting some of his breath back said, “No, Jack. That’s not it. They’re gone. It’s amazing!”

  “Doctor, I am seriously confused,” Jack’s voice was starting to rise as his irritation grew.

  “The virus. It’s gone!” Dr. Blake spat out.

  “Doctor, that doesn’t make any sense. You said that with the medication I am taking that it would be possible for you to not see any of the viral cells but didn’t mean there weren’t still some there.” Jack was utterly befuddled. Why was the doctor so excited that the medicine he’d prescribed for Jack worked as he’d expected?

  “No, Jack, I’m sorry. I don’t mean gone. I can’t say for certain because, as I said, I have never seen anything… anything like this before. We were looking at your blood, we could see the viral cells. I think they are dead, Jack, the viral cells. If fact, all of us here think so. It’s been crazy here for the last half hour. Everyone packed in the lab trying to get a look. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Dr. Blake finally said for the fourth time with awe in his voice.

  Jack felt an undeniable calm wash over his entire being. Both physical and mental. His heartbeat faded from his ears and was replaced with that smaller yet more rapid beat he was hearing before this phone call. It was very close now.

  Jack said quietly but evenly, “Well that’s great, Dr. Blake.”

  Dr. Blake sounded flabbergasted. “Great?! Jack, this is a medical miracle, you understand? You have to come in immediately. Can you please come?”

  Still calm, quiet, and even, “Well sure, Dr. Blake. I’m on my way.” And wit
h that, Jack ended the call. He had no intention of going into Dr. Blake’s office. He knew to his very core that Dr. Blake’s findings were accurate. Somehow, someway, something was wiping the HIV viral cells out of his body and he was certain that was just as things were supposed to be. Besides, he couldn’t go into the doctor’s office because he was pretty sure he was about to make a new acquaintance very shortly. A pleasant smile crept onto Jack’s face and he raised the newspaper back to continue reading the article about the dermatologist. A few moments later he heard:

  “Meow.”

  He lowered his paper and smiled at the tortoiseshell cat sitting on his deck railing.

  “Why, hello there, cat. What brings you here?” Jack Voight said in a tone that indicated he totally expected to see this new presence. “I heard you coming from around the block and recognized a timbre in your heartbeat that told me you were coming to see me.”

  The cat did not feign understanding. The glint in her eye indicated total cognition of what Jack had said and Jack stood up, she jumped from the railing to the floor of the deck and began to wind herself happily around Jack’s legs.

  13

  JACK V AND THE CAT

  “Hello,” the cat said to Jack. Had anyone else been around they would have heard her mew softly.

  Jack looked down at his feet where the cat was still winding her way around his legs and said, “Remarkable.”

  “Indeed. I gather you are able to understand me as well as I have learned to understand your kind. What should I call you, my new pet?” The cat had stopped dancing around Jack’s legs and taken up a seated position on the deck boards in front of him. Her tail was wrapped around her with its tip resting on her forepaws.

  “My name is Jack. And what should I call you?” Jack asked with a smile.