The Amoeba From The Ash

by Prunty, Mercedes

  “Nantucket Island”.

  “Where?” Glenn said feeling confused.

  “Nantucket Island, an island just off the coast of Rhode Island”.

  “America?”

  “Yes man America”, the man vanished into the kitchen area, “You want a coffee?”

  “Yeah”, he replied, “Please”. He then turned to look at Alicia who was flat out on another sofa, her chest moving up and down in fluid movements. At least she was breathing.

  “Here”, the man said a few moments later, “Take this”, and he handed him a warm coffee”.

  “Thanks”.

  “What happened? To you two?” he asked Glenn.

  Glenn took a sip and sighed, “Is she going to be ok?”

  “My girlfriends coming back home, she’s the local nurse in these parts. She’ll be able to help her”.

  Glenn nodded, “Thank you”.

  “My names Joel”, the man told him putting out his hand.

  “Glenn”, he replied and shook it.

  “And the girl?”

  “Alicia”.

  “You two look like you’ve been through a lot?” he asked, “And you’re not from round here right?”

  “No we came from the UK”.

  “The UK as in the dead Island?” Joel asked him.

  “The Dead Island?”

  “That’s what the local news are calling it”, he said nervously.

  “I see”, Glenn sniffed, “Yes we came from the Dead Island… But to be honest the whole of Europe is Dead! The volcanic ash cloud has killed and infected everyone”.

  “How?” He asked Glenn.

  So he explained it all to him, the space rock, the amoeba that had mutated, their journey, the others…all of them now gone. Only him and Alicia left.

  “Does she know?” Joel said, “That her family are all gone?”

  Glenn shook his head, “I don’t think so”.

  “Oh man, she’s gonna be heartbroken”.

  Glenn nodded, “She is… And I have to be strong for her, somehow”.

  Just then the door opened and in walked a woman, she had short brown bobbed hair that was slightly wavy. She wore a clean, crisp white blouse and black trousers. A pin on her top read Maria. When she opened her mouth she had a very country twang to her accent.

  “So where’s the patient”, she smiled as she said it trying to break the tension of fear and the unknown.

  Joel spoke and pointed to the other sofa, “That’s Alicia, been in the water a while. No need for CPR as she is breathing and alive but unconscious”.

  “Ok”, she smiled again and leant down to examine Alicia. She checked her pulse rate, pupils, and examined her chest and tummy area, “Well I don’t think she inhaled too much water or swallowed too much, I think it’s exhaustion and shock and she has a nasty bump to her head. She should come around soon enough”.

  “Thank you”, Glenn said.

  “No worries. Now I’m starved, Joel whip up some orange juice, fried toast and poached eggs whilst I go get changed. I’m done for the day”.

  “No more patients?”

  “Nah, most are staying in. Too scared to go out for when the ash storm hits”.

  “Ash storm?” Glenn asked.

  She nodded, “Yup news just in, the ash cloud has collided with a storm coming up from the south. When it hits its gonna hit bad”.

  “Do you have masks?”

  “Masks?”

  “Yes. You cannot breathe in the ash, it’s what killed everyone back home”, Glenn told her.

  She vanished into the bedroom and came out with an emergency bag, “I always have one of these handy in my closet for emergencies”, she grinned and pulled out a twenty pack of face masks that covered the nose and mouth only, “Never know if anything like 9/11 might hit again or some sort of terrorist attack”.

  “What else you got in there?” Glenn said peering over.

  “Some tins of food and some weird air tight packs of food that lasts for years, bottles of water, painkillers, a torch… You know…Emergency stuff”, she done the zip up and passed the masks around leaving one out for Alicia, “Don’t you guys back home pack emergency bags?”

  He shook his head, “Nope, we just leave everything to chance”.

  “Well you are British I suppose”, she laughed, “My daddy always said the British were clueless”. Her smile faded, “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend”.

  He shrugged, “It’s ok”.

  “Glenn?” A sleepy weary voice said from the sofa.

  “Alicia”, he cried and ran to her side, “You’re ok? How you feeling?”

  “Tired, my head hurts and…and where’s Daniel?”

  He lowered his head, “I couldn’t find him Alicia, the sea was so dark and the helicopter was sinking. I grabbed you and pulled you out but… I couldn’t see him”.

  “No…” she whispered, “I failed him, again”.

  “You didn’t fail him, life failed him and life failed us”.

  “Where are we?” she asked wiping away fresh tears and looking around the apartment and at the two new faces.

  “Nantucket, near Rhode Island America”, Glenn answered, “This is Joel he helped me bring you back here and this is Maria, a nurse”.

  “Hey sweetie, you said your head hurts?”

  Alicia nodded, “Here”.

  Maria leant her forward and checked it, “Big bump, must have knocked you out… From the crash maybe?”

  “Maybe”, Alicia said and looked out the window. She looked lost in thought and Glenn left her be, he knew there was something she needed to say but not wanting to push her too much he went to help Joel in the kitchen.

  “What are you gonna do now mate?” Joel asked boiling some water and placing some eggs to poach.

  Glenn looked back over at Alicia, “If we survive the new ash cloud coming, then… Then we will have to make a new life somewhere”.

  “You can stay here a while, till you get everything sorted. We have our local town hall and police station which you should probably visit”.

  “Won’t they just see us as illegal immigrants?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Your circumstances are different to normal. Maybe they will go easy on you”.

  Glenn felt worry inside, what if they wouldn’t let them stay? What if they decided to kick them out? What if they were sent back?

  “GLENN!” Alicia called out grabbing his attention, “You need to see this! She has Daniel…That cow has Daniel”.

  Glenn rushed into the front room where Alicia was engrossed looking at the television. A news report had just come on, Rosetta was standing outside a large glass sided building on some steps that led up from the street, almost giving her a stage to stand on. She with some people from the CDC… She had Daniel in a wheelchair, he looked awful, he looked ill.

  “That cow has my brother”, she sobbed.

  “Then we will go and get him”, Glenn told her cupping her face in his hands, “But Alicia, why is she so bad? Why don’t you trust her now? She… She helped him remember, maybe she saved him from the crash?”

  “She lied, she lied to us all”.

  Alicia’s Memory

  The helicopter hit the water with a thud that forced everyone forward, Alicia watched as Glenn was thrown out of the door which hadn’t closed properly when they had thrown out her mother just moments before and had now flown off in the impact. The water rushed into the small seating area and she pounced for Daniel grabbing his hand in hers.

  “We need to get out to the surface”, she called out to him and Rosetta who was ducking back under the water to grab her case and bag. As she did Alicia noticed the paperwork hanging out of her pocket. Letting go of Daniel’s hand for a split second she moved taking the paperwork out and opening it, as she did she re-took Daniel’s hand again and quickly looked over it scanning it in the mere milliseconds they had until the helicopter was submerged. “The vaccine doesn’t work?” she felt her insides implode at the words, that m
eant Daniel was still infected, her mother never had a chance and Rosetta knew it and hadn’t told them. “You knew and you didn’t tell us, why?”

  “Not now Alicia the helicopter is sinking”, Rosetta gurgled as the helicopter became fully immersed.

  “Fine but when we’re out and safe I want answers”.

  “Of course”, Rosetta answered swimming for the exit.

  Pushing Daniel in front of her she pushed him out of the helicopter and propelled him forward towards the surface, kicking her legs wildly.

  Reaching the surface she spluttered for air, clinging to Daniel she grabbed hold of a floating piece of the broken machine heaving him up to sit him on and balance on it. Rosetta emerged from the water seconds later.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Alicia demanded.

  “Jesus Alicia give me a break we’ve just surfaced”.

  “Tell me”, Alicia grabbed Rosetta by the collar, both of them losing the buoyancy and ducking under the water. When they surfaced Rosetta shoved Alicia back.

  “Would it have made any difference if you had known?”

  “Of course it would, you gave us false hope, you brought us here with lies”.

  “No I didn’t lie, we needed to come here to have a chance at surviving. Staying back in England would have been certain death for us all. America is a new hope”.

  “But what about Daniel? I thought it worked, he showed no signs”, she cried.

  “True he didn’t, and for a while I thought he was cured but… something changed”.

  “What changed Rosetta?”

  “Look once there I can engineer a new vaccine, one that will work and cure him fully. But I need him to use it on, to work out the kinks”, she avoided Alicia’s question.

  “My brother is no guinea pig Rosetta!”

  “No he isn’t but I still need him”, She coughed as some water entered her mouth, “For us to gain access into America we will most likely need to prove our worth and that will mean showing we can help save them, he is the key, an infected whose infection has been slowed down by the current vaccine but could be cured with a modified one but I need him Alicia, I need him to know it works. And you need me to do it too”.

  “What?”

  “You want your brother to recover and live until his rightful time to go?”

  Alicia nodded.

  “Then let me take him with me, let me cure him”.

  “With you? Hang on we’re all going”, she told her, looking around to see if Glenn was around. As she did Rosetta shoved her hard forcing her head under the water, the doctor’s arms struggling to keep her under, trying to drown her. Alicia kicked and thrashed hitting Rosetta in the throat.

  Spluttering as she resurfaced Alicia turned to her in shock, “You just tried to kill me?”

  “Alicia I’m scared”, Daniel cried.

  “It’s ok”, she panted trying to catch her breath.

  “Is it ok Alicia?” Rosetta smiled, “I can’t have you ruin this for me”.

  “Ruin what?”

  “My chance at being a highly acclaimed doctor, the woman who cured the mutated Brain-eating Amoeba!!! If you blab your mouth off about it not working you could ruin it for me”.

  “But it doesn’t work, not properly. You said yourself you will need to revamp it”.

  “Yes but I will tell them, I will tell the American’s not you. You tell them and I’m ruined”.

  “I don’t understand, if you’re helping how will that ruin you?”

  “Because another doctor could take over and engineer the true vaccine, then they would be the ones who are acclaimed and forever remembered in the history books”, she told her, “If you want me to keep you alive then you say nothing to no one”.

  Alicia nodded slowly and carefully. She was treading very thin water with the now fully deranged doctor but she had to play her game to stay with Daniel, to keep him safe, “Ok, whatever you say”.

  Rosetta nodded, “Good now we have that cleared up I have just one last thing”.

  “What’s that?” Alicia asked.

  “This”, Rosetta threw a punch hitting Alicia square on the temple, her head snapped back and collided with the floating raft as Daniel sat screaming her name on. Stars blinded her vision as the night took over her brain and she sank under the water.

  “ALICIA!” She could hear Daniel’s screams inside her soul as she sank lower down into the darkness, until strong, loving arms pulled her up and out into the quiet waters, Daniel was gone and so was Rosetta.

  9.00am CDC Head Quarters New York

  Rosetta pushed the wheelchair with the young boy strapped down, she knew she had to be quick and get him back down into the lab the CDC had loaned to her. She had been surprised to find Daniel on the ship with Sargent Tesla, he had kept the fact he was alive a secret, to see what she was really all about. She had lied and said Daniel was her nephew and that she needed him with her at all times and the poor boy was so frightened after seeing what she done to his sister he played along. Once at the CDC she had noticed how poorly Daniel was looking and told them it was concussion and shock but that she needed somewhere to work and try and do more tests on the vaccine, to perfect it. With the help of more CDC doctors she had her grasp on the vaccine and was initiating a programme to enhance it, to make it better but it was going to take time, time she didn’t have, the ash cloud was moving this way faster than she anticipated with the help of a tropical storm. So she injected the first batch of mutated vaccine into Daniel which the CDC had stock piled on her arrival and watched as his symptoms got better again. But now on stage she could see he was falling this time, quicker than before, the vaccine was wearing off, faster than she wanted and faster than she needed… Inside she was screaming, she didn’t need this, she needed it to work and now.

  She racked her brains as to why it wasn’t working, maybe the boy’s immune system was attacking the vaccine not the amoeba itself? Maybe his small, tired and young body had become too used to the vaccine now and it was useless and had almost no effect? Maybe it was like Antibiotics where they just stop working, the bacteria becoming immune to their effects, maybe it was the same for the amoeba? Maybe she was out of time.

  She arrived onto the main steps of the CDC HQ along with Doctor Romaine, a man with dark skin and a slim physique, followed by a television crew and Sargent Tesla at the main doors with his men keeping an eye on her and Daniel. She could see he didn’t trust her but he had to obey orders from the head honcho at the CDC and the orders were to keep both herself and Daniel safe and alive.

  “Remember what we said Doctor Lawson”, he told her, “Tell them what they need to know, tell them what is coming and how to prevent infection and about the vaccine”.

  She nodded, “I’m ready”.

  The camera man counted them down from ten, “5,4,3,2,1, and go”.

  A woman news reporter began talking, “Eliza Grey here outside of the headquarters for the centres of disease control, we have more news on the illness that had struck most of the Eastern Hemisphere along with the United Kingdom and is heading our way. Here is Doctor Romaine head of the CDC and Doctor Rosetta Lawson, a Doctor who worked for the English Public Health Organisation and knows a lot about the illness due to being at the ground zero site where this all started. Rosetta please tell us more”.

  Rosetta took a deep breath and spoke, feeling the limelight wash over her, “The illness that has wiped out Britain and most of the Eastern Hemisphere is part of the Amoeba family, it is a Brain-eating Amoeba which is normally very rare to happen across or be infected with but it has mutated with a meteorite that collided into the volcanic lake situated in Germany. I went there with my research team and found that NASA had already been there and had found the space rock, studies show it is an alien form of bacteria which has mutated the Amoeba and causing it to become highly contagious and turn normal people into zombie like states. BUT…” she paused taking in the crowd that had gathered before her, “There are ways to prevent and
stop it”.

  “Like what?” Someone shouted from the crowd.

  “Face masks, or anything you can find to cover your mouth and nose so you don’t breathe in the ash. Stay inside, keep all windows and doors locked. Stay vigilant, if you see anyone without a mask on or who looks ill report it to your local police station. We have a vaccine that works and can help those who do become infected but we only have small quantities, the less people who become infected with the preventions I spoke of the better”.

  “Any questions?” Doctor Romaine asked the crowd.

  “How do you know it works? Why is the UK gone if the vaccine works?”

  “The UK didn’t have a supply of the Amoeba medication seen as most cases are reported in America. Saying that I managed to source some from a hospital that had some flown in last year when there was one case and I trialled it”.

  “On whom?”

  “Daniel. My nephew”, she lied as gasps sounded all around the crowd. “He was bitten yesterday afternoon and should have turned within hours but the vaccine has stopped it”.

  “Why doesn’t he look well?” A woman asked from the front.

  “He is concussed from a crash and is in shock after losing the other members of our family. But I assure you the vaccine works”.

  A thrum of voices sounded but Doctor Romaine told them the interview was over. The interviewer Aliza carried on talking to the screen, reassuring the people of America that all would be ok.

  Rosetta hoped so as she wheeled a poorly Daniel back into the building. She knew deep inside she wasn’t a bad person, she did truly want to help and save people and that’s what she was doing. But as the hours passed on from the crash her conscience began to waiver, she had killed, she had murdered Alicia in cold blood, because she had wanted some form of fame from being the doctor to cure it all.

  She was snapped out of her train of thought by Doctor Romaine who said, “You done great, I think at least now our people will know how to help themselves but”, he paused momentarily. “I do have a question”.

  “What’s that?” She asked in a sing song voice, trying to sound so much like the optimistic doctor.