Immunity: Apocalypse Weird

by E. E. Giorgi

  “Thank you.” Two words that weren’t going to fix anything right now. She couldn’t help it. She pretended not to be bothered by his disappointment and scuttled off.

  Down the hallway she bumped into an officer in a hazmat suit and diverted his attention asking for the makeshift gym. He gave her directions and reminded she couldn’t leave the building.

  “Of course. Thank you, officer.”

  Of course my foot.

  She took the stairs two flights down, then turned the opposite direction the officer had told her, and followed the EXIT signs. One of the back doors on the ground floor was clear. She opened it slowly and spotted two guards sharing a smoke a few yards down the street. They were looking away, their stance relaxed, almost bored.

  They trust scientists would never infringe any military imposition.

  Think again.

  She snuck out and dashed around the block, away from their spying eyes.

  It felt refreshing to be out in the open again, especially after the much awaited rain. The air still smelled fresh and delicious. The recent downpour had washed mud and debris down the sidewalk and into the roads. The street was deserted—something she’d gotten used to, since the evacuation, but the sudden lack of military vehicles and patrols made the place look even more surreal. She wondered about the mysterious visitor who’d arrived with the Koala helicopter, how important he had to be to converge all military force to one building and leave the rest unattended.

  The unmanned MQ-1 planes were still patrolling the skies. She heard one approach in the distance and flattened herself against a wall, holding her breath. She wasn’t sure they could be as sophisticated as to spot a quarantined scientist who was supposed to be off the streets, but she wasn’t going to take chances.

  The genomic building was only one block down the street. Getting there wasn’t the issue. Getting inside was.

  The main entrance to the building had been locked and taped off with warning signs declaring the whole area contaminated. The windows were high and inaccessible from ground level. Her only hope was the egress door down in the basement.

  The structure rose on an incline that gently tapered down the canyon, with small junipers and pine trees growing around it. She followed the drainage swale landscaped along the side, the rocks still wet and slippery under her feet. The basement had openings only on the canyon side of the building, and the door she remembered was at the bottom of a set of steps carved between retaining walls. She knew the officers would have taken extra care in locking and taping all the doors, but this particular exit had been in disuse ever since a storm a few years earlier had knocked down a tree across the retaining walls.

  The tree was still there, blocking the steps, its dead branches broken and snapped off. She leaned across the stump to take a peek at the door at the bottom of the stairs. No tape, a good sign. The tree was too heavy for her to move, though.

  She snapped off smaller branches until there was enough room for her to squeeze between the tree and the retaining wall. She yelped as her hair got caught in one of the branches. Hands scraped and jeans torn, she finally made it under the tree and down to the door.

  Now the tricky part.

  Anu brushed her tousled hair off her face and stared at the call box next to the door. Access to any building in the lab was granted through badge swipe. Rumors had it that every badge swipe was recorded into the system, but she never believed it. I guess it’s time to find out.

  Anu unclipped her badge from her shirt lapel and swiped it on the side of the call box. Nothing happened. She swiped it once more. The door clicked open. She exhaled a sigh of relief, grabbed the handle, and stepped inside.

  * * *

  The samples were still in the fridge, untouched. As soon as she saw them, Anu got excited all over again. There were plasma vials from thirty patients. Thirty! Given the global crisis the virus had thrown the country in, 30 was an incredible richness of data.

  She quickly set to work. She wore gloves, facemask, hood and gown, logged on to one of the terminals and retrieved the libraries needed to sequence the new strains of H7N7. Between sample preparation and PCR, she was going to need several hours of work. She hoped that the Very Important Visitor who’d just arrived at the Lab was going to keep both military and lab management busy enough not to notice her absence from the quarantined area.

  David might notice.

  Damn, Anu, you should’ve told him what you were up to.

  Why can’t you learn to trust someone for once?

  She brushed the thought away and set to work. The first assay took her over two hours. By the second and third she’d gotten into a routine and managed to use her time more efficiently. She checked her watch. It was past five in the afternoon and the lights were starting to dim. That was weird, the sun wasn’t setting until past seven this late in the summer. She strained her eyes until, frustrated, she walked to the light switches and flipped them on. No change. She blinked. For a moment, the sight of the laboratory, silent and empty, gave her a shiver. The place was still messy with the chaos following the evacuation the day before. There were open boxes everywhere, the packaging strewn across the floor. The workbenches were cluttered with reagents and jobs started and never finished. And in the midst of all that, the sudden thought that somebody was watching her gripped her.

  Irrational, yet so real.

  “Hello?” she mumbled, and then laughed at herself.

  Don’t be stupid.

  She set back to work. Even with the lights on, she was still straining her eyes to see well. She had to guide the robotic arm of the pipetting machine into the wells and yet she couldn’t focus her eyes, her vision grainy, as if a mysterious fog had crawled into the lab and slowly wrapped everything, the shelves, the fridges, the terminals.

  How is this possible?

  Was she just imagining it? She decided it was just stress and pushed to work through it. By the third assay her vision was so bad she had to stop working. She clutched the edge of the workbench and worked her way to the window, the light spotty on her retinas.

  Shit.

  Taking little steps she walked all the way to the window and flattened her face against it. The glass panes felt warm against her skin.

  Sun. The sun’s outside and yet I can’t see a thing.

  The realization was frightening.

  Outside, the sun was definitely shining, yet all she could see was pitch dark, as though night had fallen over the world, sudden and unannounced. Panic started gripping her, cold sweat melting down her back. She stripped off the gown, facemask, hood and gloves.

  Is this happening for real?

  No, it can’t be real.

  Maybe I got it. The virus. I got it and I’m already going crazy.

  She curled into a ball, her heart wildly thumping against her chest. Her thoughts were reeling. She had thirty plasma samples she wanted so badly she’d give her soul to process and sequence them. And now this had to happen.

  She moved her hands up to her eyes. She could feel her hands, move them. She’d pinch them and feel the pain. But she couldn’t see them. She could touch her face, her nose, cheeks, her hair. Thank goodness every bit of her was still there. And yet, she could blink a thousand times and nothing would change. All she could see was deep, even blackness.

  Her first thought was to just wait until it passed. Because eventually this would pass. It was so absurd and unreal that it had to. As time went by and nothing changed, panic started to infiltrate her thoughts. Eventually they would find her. Yes, David by now would’ve noticed that she was missing and raised the alarm. Surely they were coming to find her and rescue her. Maybe if she could send some sort of signal as to where she was.

  Maybe…

  A deep sense of exhaustion took over her whole body. She lay down on the floor, her head feeling heavy, so heavy she couldn’t keep it up. Somewhere in the distance she heard the boom of an explosion. Or maybe she just imagined it. She thought the window panes had shak
en and rattled, but it could’ve been a dream. A thick, dense, blurry dream.

  I have to get out of here. I have to…

  …

  A sudden noise awakened her.

  Like rasping of nails against the wall. She sat up. The world was still black. Deep black, even worse than when she’d fallen asleep.

  What time is it?

  There was no way to tell. Her body felt stiff, her legs numb. She tried to move them and felt pins everywhere, sharp pain shooting up her calves. Her mouth was dry, her stomach growled with hunger. She must’ve slept several hours.

  She thought of her beloved samples, how close she’d been to getting the sequences she longed for and yet how helpless she was now.

  I have to get out of here. I have to get help.

  Anu made a mental map of what the floor looked like as best as she could remember it, cluttered with boxes and packaging material. Walking was too risky, she could trip and fall. She started crawling along the wall toward the door, her hands groping on the floor. She brushed her fingers along the wall until she found the metallic cold of the fire door, got to her feet, and pushed through.

  She stood in the hallway, trying to form a mental image of her surroundings. She heard the rasping again, closer, this time. Like a soft whisper, maybe somebody breathing quickly, slightly short of breath. Was she not alone? The idea was both frightening and comforting at the same time.

  “Hello? Is somebody there?”

  No answer, just the rasping, getting closer…

  An animal, maybe?

  Anu kept a hand on the wall and moved one step forward. Funny how she’d taken steps for granted when she could see everything, yet now she counted every single step, her groping hands the only key to the space around her.

  “Hello?” she called again. “I need help, please. I don’t know why, but I can’t see. I need help.”

  “You can’t see…”

  The voice was so close it made her jump. She flattened against the wall, blood drumming in her throat. “Who—who are you?”

  The rustling came closer, whispering of hands against the wall, four, maybe three feet away from her.

  “I was looking for you…”

  That voice. “C—Christine? Is that you? How—I thought they’d taken you away. How can you be here?”

  The blow came straight to her face, hard, smacking her head against the wall. She screamed and instinctively crouched on all fours. She knocked against something hard, a knee, her hands told her. She wrapped her arms around it and pulled. Christine—or whoever it was—fell backwards. She heard the heavy thump of her body against the floor, then groans.

  “No!” Christine yelled. “No, you won’t have me. I’ll kill you first. I’ll—”

  Anu shifted backwards, away from Christine’s scrabbling feet.

  “Christine. You’re not thinking straight. You’re sick.”

  The minute she spoke, Christine came back at her, thrusting her hands at Anu’s throat. Anu grabbed her wrists and flayed her legs, blindly kicking as Christine thrashed. She heard her teeth gnashing, her throat making raw, guttural sounds as her fingers clawed around Anu’s throat.

  “You won’t have me. I swear you won’t, you lurid monster.”

  “P—please… Christine…”

  A strength of no equal possessed Christine, unfaltering no matter how hard Anu pounded her fists in her back and stomach. Anu levered onto her feet and rolled over, pushing Christine away from her and into the wall. A groan escaped Christine’s mouth, her body suddenly limp.

  Oh God. “Christine, are you—”

  “AAAARGHHH!”

  She came back at her, fiercer and more violent. Anu reacted on pure instinct. She heard the raw sounds from Christine’s throat and ducked away from them. The smack she heard next told her Christine had slammed full force against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway.

  She can’t see. Christine can’t see either…

  She was almost tempted to ask her but then realized that the minute she opened her mouth she’d give away her position. She slid backwards toward the laboratory door. A hand came flying at her. It brushed against her face as Anu fled away, but managed to grasp a chunk of hair and pull her back.

  Anu shrieked and kicked, flailing her fists back at Christine as the woman wrapped an arm around her throat and sunk her teeth into her shoulder.

  Pain exploded inside Anu’s flesh. She choked and spat, digging her nails into Christine’s arm. She worked through the pain and pulled herself up, forcing Christine to release her shoulder, yet her arms remained still tightly clasped around Anu’s throat. Anu staggered backwards, slamming Christine against the wall. Grunting, Christine let go of her and in that one moment Anu managed to free herself and run. Adrenaline fueled her legs. She slammed her face against the door at the end of the hallway, groped for the release bar, and shouldered through. Her nose burned as blood wept down her nostrils and into her mouth. Her shoulder where Christine had bitten her throbbed. Yet she kept running, one hand brushing against the wall and the other one stretched ahead of her, hoping not to trip, hoping to get away from the darkness, the blindness, the whatever it was that kept her from seeing.

  “Stop! Come back!” Christine yelled.

  Judging from the voice, Anu had put a good fifty or a hundred feet between them. She slowed down to a jog for fear of slamming against the next door. She needed to get to the elevator and back into the basement. The stairs were out of the question, there was no way she could handle them without being able to use her eyes.

  She got to the end of the hallway earlier than she’d expected, but this time she was ready, her hands absorbing the impact before her nose did. Left to the elevator, she remembered. The row of windows along the wall she felt with her left hand told her she was in the right place. Christine slammed against the wall at the end of the hallway a few minutes later, her pained groans echoing in the emptiness of the building.

  The glass panes alternated with the wall, Anu’s fingers dutifully recording every one of them, counting.

  Christine’s heavy steps resonated behind her.

  Anu reached the elevator, her hands desperately groping for the call button. When she found it, she slammed her fist against. “Come on,” she muttered under hear breath, and then soon regretting it, knowing every noise she made would give her away. The elevator whirred, the cables started moving.

  Please be quick.

  Christine must’ve suffered an injury from the last blow because her steps sounded unsteady, her body swinging from side to side, or at least that’s how Anu perceived her movements, judging from the thuds she could hear along the walls.

  The elevator chimed.

  Finally!

  Anu dove inside and crouched to the corner on the right, carefully groping for the last row of buttons, trying to remember which one closed the doors faster.

  The chime seemed to awaken Christine. She growled and lunged forward, her steps fast now, thumping closer and closer. Anu quit being careful with the buttons and punched them all at once. She felt the jolt in the doors as they started closing, and then jolted again and reopened.

  “No!”

  “You can’t get away from me!” Christine yelled tumbling inside the elevator. Anu followed her voice, shoved her arms into Christine’s face and pushed her out again. She dropped back against the control panel, slapping the buttons, frantic, panicking, the doors coming together again right as Christine lunged between them, her hands groping and hammering against the closing doors.

  Anu clung to the one button that had tricked the doors into closing again and pressed it so hard she cut blood flow to her fingers. The elevator started jerking, Christine growled and pushed her arm through. Anu felt her fingers brushing against her and she smacked them away. The elevators wrenched down, Christine’s hand disappeared from Anu’s touch. There was a loud grating sound followed by a long, ghastly howl. The elevator slowed down, as if something were pulling it back. The whirring
of the motor became louder and then whatever kept the elevator from moving finally let go, the gruesome howl dying in the distance. Something fell on the floor of the elevator car with a loud splat. Warm liquid spattered on Anu’s face. She heard a persistent drip—drip, drip, drip—as the elevator dipped farther down.

  Anu slid to the ground and closed her eyes, her mind refusing to think about the grating howl still echoing on the above floor, about the object that had caused the loud splat and the drip. She wiped her face with back of her hand.

  The elevator stopped. The doors rattled and opened.

  Anu blinked, as though the blinking would restore her eyesight.

  It didn’t.

  She felt the cool air of the new floor in her face, yet not a single particle of light came to her retinas.

  * SEVEN *

  A scream pierced through the walls. “Help!”

  There goes another one, David thought.

  He took one step toward the middle of he room, stretching his hand out in search of one of the chairs. “Where are you, Jeff?” he called.

  “Right here,” Jeff replied, his voice redirecting David’s path. “I’ve got one, right here. What’s your name, son?”

  “Greg,” a terrified voice replied. “I’m ok. I just—I just can’t see!”

  “It’s ok. Nobody can. I’ll help you sit,” Jeff replied.

  David squatted and groped close to the ground until he found the next person that had fallen. “Are you ok, sir?”

  The man wheezed, his arm feeling frail and bony under David’s touch. He couldn’t remember anyone this old from the faces he’d spotted earlier in the room, back when he could still spot things and people. Now everything was blanketed in complete darkness. Dense, palpable darkness, as if suddenly all light had been sucked out of the world and all there was left was this black, suffocating blindness.

  The first three minutes were the scariest. Everything around him wavered and dimmed down, the computer screen, his hands on the keyboard, the whole room around him. At first he thought he was fainting. It’d happened once before, in graduate school: his blood pressure had plummeted, his vision had started spotting and then everything had gone black.