“Brain swelling?” Andy asked, alarmed.
“Yes, it can be an early symptom of infection, which is alarming given the circumstances. As a precautionary measure, I’d like to place you in a medically induced coma for a couple of days until the rest of the test results get back. It will slow the progression and slow the swelling. Do you know what a medically induced coma is? It’s perfectly safe. It will only be for three days, maximum, until we figure out what’s going on with you.”
“No,” Andy said, adamantly shaking his head. “I don’t want to be put under again.”
Dr. Gladstone injected the propofol into the IV injection port anyway, despite the objection.
“Three days, maximum,” Dr. Gladstone assured as the drug flowed into Andy’s veins and coursed throughout his system.
Within seconds, Andy drifted off again.
He had horrible nightmares about Richard.
Day 7
Day 103
44
The overhead lights were dark when Andy jolted awake and his eyes shot open. A wall-mounted emergency lamp illuminated a sick yellow glow in the corner of the room. The scent of smoke hung in the sour air and had overpowered the hospital scent. He groaned, rubbed his aching head, and tried to sit up.
The nylon straps held him down against the bed.
Andy panicked and glanced around the room. His IVs were dry and their plastic sacks hung flat. The television showed nothing but static.
Outside, it looked like another beautiful day in Atlanta. The sun was shining bright, the sky was clear, and the streets below were busy with the typical hustle and bustle of the commuters.
Muffled in the distance, he thought that he heard somebody moving outside in the hallway.
Andy tried to scream for someone, but found that he had no voice to scream with.
Andy violently twisted and contorted his entire body, struggling to free himself from the nylon straps holding him down.
The strap around his left wrist loosened and had some slack; he had lost a lot of weight.
Andy slid his arm free and methodically released the strap’s metallic clasps.
The straps fell against the floor one by one and he was free.
Groaning, he swung his feet to the floor and stood, keeping a hand on his bed to support his emancipated and atrophied muscles.
The bed rolled away from him and his head spun with vertigo.
Hunger consumed him to the core.
He staggered against his IV pole and sent it chattering against the floor. The IV’s needle ripped out of his arm but didn’t draw any blood.
He steadied himself.
Andy hoarsely yelled, trying to find his voice. He waved frantically at the camera mounted in the ceiling.
There was no response.
He staggered over to the door.
The door was pressurized locked in place by hydraulic mechanisms on all four corners.
Andy pushed against it, groaning, but it didn’t budge an inch. He pulled on the handle, but it refused to give.
He stumbled over to the wall mounted television and flipped through the channels. Most of the channels were static. Only one channel came through and it was broadcasting a foreign news network.
The grainy video footage showed protestors clashing with riot police in the middle of a wide cobblestone street. The caption at the bottom of the screen read: Grippe Se Propage!
He limped away from the television and went to the window.
Even though he was multiple stories high, the narrow ledge outside the window would have to be his only escape. Below, he saw that the streets were full of pedestrians. Perhaps, if he was lucky, one of them would spot him on standing on the ledge of the hospital and call for help.
He picked up the IV pole and smashed it against the window as hard as he could.
The video screen shattered and bathed the room in a shower of sparks. The image of Atlanta instantly disappeared and the shattered video screen filled the room with murky smoke that reeked of burnt plastic.
Andy, stunned, dropped the IV pole and slowly reached a shaky hand out towards the shattered screen, trembling.
The screen flashed again and threw out another shower of sparks into the room, making Andy cover his face and stumble backwards.
The air stopped circulating out of the overhead vents and the hydraulic door locks disengaged. The overhead emergency lights powered on and bathed the room in red light.
“Priority alert,” a monotonic female voice announced overhead, “a critical containment system malfunction has occurred. Biological specimen containment has been compromised. Automated fail-safe programing has been activated. Facility will self-sanitize in five minutes. All personnel must evacuate immediately. This is not a drill.”
He quickly trudged towards the door and pushed against it.
The heavy door swung open.
The door was labeled ‘Specimen Room 1’.
He cautiously stepped out into the metallic corridor and stared in disbelief.
“Priority alert,” the female voice announced, “Specimen Room One’s door has been opened without clearing biometric safeguards. Security breach, security breach... Sanitizing Specimen Room One.”
Andy turned and stared into his hospital room.
A fine mist started to spray down from the sprinkler heads in the room. It smelt like rubbing alcohol or some similar type of accelerant.
Andy slammed the heavy door shut and pressed his body weight up against it.
The room erupted in a giant fireball and a ball of flames flung the door open and threw Andy against the opposite wall.
The fire extinguished and black smoke churned out from the room like a furnace.
“Specimen Room One has been sanitized. Facility-wide sanitization will commence in four minutes and counting. All personnel must evacuate,” the voice announced overhead.
Andy quickly got back on his feet and hobbled towards the elevator at the far end of desolated corridor.
The corridor was is dismal condition. Most of the overhead lights were off and the other specimen rooms were sealed shut. He passed a window looking into a laboratory on his right. The lab was abandoned and looked ransacked.
Andy focused his attention towards the elevator, hobbling towards it as quickly as he could.
“Sanitization will commence in three minutes and counting,” the voice announced overhead.
Andy reached the end of the corridor and frantically pushed the elevator button.
The elevator hummed to life.
He looked over at the window next to the elevator into the security station. Two decomposing corpses wearing combat fatigues sat slouched at their static-speckled computer terminals. Their eyes had sunken deep into their skulls and maggots were snaking their way underneath the corpse’s leathery skin.
Andy looked away from the grotesque sight.
The elevator arrived and the lift’s heavy blast doors slid open.
A decomposed soldier sat slouched in the corner of the elevator, weapon beside him. His mummified-looking corpse sat amidst a swarm of ants and flies.
The stench was overpowering and beyond description.
Andy nearly vomited in revulsion.
“Sanitization will commence in two minutes and counting.”
An alarm blared as the system commenced the final sequence.
Andy held his hand over his mouth and entered the elevator. He stared at the buttons and mashed the one at the top labeled ‘Surface Level’.
The elevator doors slid shut as it started its rapid ascent.
Andy stared at the corpse of the soldier’s corpse, uneasy.
The corpse didn’t move, and, judging by the state of decomposition, hadn’t in some time.
“Sanitization will commence in one minute.”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open.
Unrelentingly bright sunlight poured into the elevator and blinded Andy, disorientating him.
Slowly, he op
ened his eyes and stared in disbelief. Saguaro cacti covered the flat desert landscape as far as he could see. The sky was clear the sun was bright, and the heat was intolerable.
Clearly, he was not in Atlanta or anywhere else even remotely near Georgia.
Andy stepped out of the elevator and looked around…
A small indiscreet chain-link fence surrounded the minuscule elevator shaft. Outside of the gated perimeter, there was an abandoned small landing strip and empty helicopter landing pad; both of them looked unused for quite a while. In addition, there were twelve rows of solar energy collection cells, all of which appeared very dirty.
The small building that the elevator led out of was topped with a few decorative weather monitoring devices and satellite dishes. The aged tin sign on the building read ‘US Army Meteorology Monitoring Station Number 5’.
“Sanitization commencing,” the female voice said from inside the open elevator.
The ground shook violently and knocked Andy down onto his hands and knees. The elevator car broke in half and tumbled down the elevator shaft and a pillar of flames shot up immediately afterwards. The small building collapsed in on itself and crumbled down into the earth.
The resulting hole was almost perfectly symmetrical.
After the ground stopped shaking, Andy got up, dusted himself off, and staggered over towards the hole to look down inside.
Something under his feet rumbled to life.
Two heavy blast shutters rolled out from the earth near the top of the hole and sealed it shut forever.
As soon as the shutters sealed shut, the rumbling stopped. The solar cells powered down and the facility was dead forever.
Andy limped away from the sealed hole and pushed open the chain-link gate.
The rusted gate fell off of its hinges and landed on the desert floor. It had a tattered sign on it that read ‘US Govt. Property – No Trespassing’.
He started to stagger forward into the desert, unsure of where to go, unsure of where he had been.
As he walked under the daunting desert sun, his thoughts inevitably turned to Richard.
43
He walked for what seemed like ages but strangely he was not tired. His exposed skin was red and blistering, but he felt neither pain nor thirst.
All he felt was hunger.
Ahead, after countless miles of walking, he saw an interstate cutting across the desert.
He staggered up towards the two-lane highway and stared out at the endless stretch of cars that clogged up the eastbound-lane. The westbound-lane was clear.
Walking slowly, he made his way to a four door sedan that had its roof loaded with luggage. The car’s windows were rolled down. The badly decomposed driver and passenger sat slumped in their seats. Both of their bodies were festering with maggots and the car’s cabin was ripe with the stench of death.
He backed away from the car.
Looking down the road, he saw that most of the cars had their doors open and windshields smashed. The cars were with dirt and grime. Mummified corpses were strewn on the pavement, wasting away.
Something slapped against the rear passenger window of the sedan near him, startling him.
He peered through the streaked glass and saw the sunken face of a young girl no older than six or seven.
The girl stared at him disinterestedly, opening and closing her rotting jaw as she continued to weakly bat against the glass. She made a pitiful moan, staring at him with dead, sunken eyes.
He looked down the road and saw a few of the other mummified corpses were moving, but none of them had the strength to stand; not any longer.
He looked down the highway towards the setting sun, the direction all of the traffic was traveling away from. He saw countless smoke plumes in that direction rising up from a fractured metropolitan skyline.
He saw something in his peripheral vision.
He turned and startled at the sight of a gangly infected man standing next to him.
Slowly, he realized that his eyes were playing tricks on him; it was just his reflection caught in a tinted car window.
Moving as fast as molasses, he moaned and turned back towards the horizon. He focused on a green highway sign far in the distance, towards the direction of the rising smoke plumes and the direction where the traffic was headed from.
The highway sign read:
‘Chandler – 7 MI’
‘Phoenix – 10 MI’
A white sign had been sloppily mounted below the green one. It swayed with the hot desert breeze. It read:
‘FEMA Safe Haven – 18 MI’
He stared at the fractured skyline in the distance and the endless line of desolate vehicles.
Something was very wrong.
He had to get to the east coast.
He had to save his brother.
He ignored the hunger that consumed him and focused all of his attention saving the only person in the world who mattered to him.
Richard turned east and lurched along the interstate towards North Carolina with the sun on his back.
Degeneration Page 35
