Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  * * * * *

  Thad didn't have to wait long to be convinced. As they continued towards the elevators that would take them down to the lower floors, the doors opened to a patient being wheeled off in a hurry by staff. The patient was still in his hospital bed, which was whisked into an open labor and delivery room.

  Jennifer tugged Thad by the sleeve, and the two of them had to jog to keep up with the orderlies.

  Once in the room, Thad stood aside and watched all that was going on. The patient, unconscious and unmoving, was being strapped down by three different people, one at the feet, and one on each side working on the arms. When she was finished, the staff member at the feet moved to the patient's head and began securing it as well.

  Meanwhile, other personnel, mostly doctors who Thad hadn't met yet, were busy squeezing gel onto diodes and sticking them to the patient's chest for an electrocardiogram and on the patient's head, dodging and working with the nurse strapping it down, for an electroencephalograph. Yet another doctor checked the equipment as they worked, either giving a thumbs-up or telling someone to move a diode.

  Dr. Montgomery was there as well. Apparently, he'd found his stethoscope and used it to listen to the patient's heart rhythm, which Thad could guess was very weak.

  Thad noticed he and Jennifer were the only ones wearing the biohazard suits.

  When everything was ready, everyone stood back away from the patient and waited. The only sound was that of the heartbeat monitor, the pings following one another in slow succession. The auricular and ventricular complexes were unnaturally far apart.

  "What's happening?" Thad whispered to Jennifer.

  "This patient is about to die. It's important to learn as much as we can from the transition," she answered him. "As a matter of fact…"

  "Transition? Transition to what?" But she was already moving away from him.

  "Dr. Montgomery, may I borrow your stethoscope again? I'd like Dr. Palmer to call it." Jennifer held out her hand and waited for the stethoscope to be put in it.

  "That's highly irregular, Dr. Laramie. I'm the on-call medical examiner, and per the CDC manual—"

  "I know what the handbook says, Doctor. But this is my operation. I want Dr. Palmer to call this one. He needs to. It's important that he does."

  Thad stepped forward as Dr. Montgomery surrendered the stethoscope. "What am I calling exactly?"

  "The time of death," Jennifer said.

  "If you are all so certain the patient is about to die, why are you not trying to save him? Why is there no crash cart? No defibrillator?"

  "Dr. Palmer, understand that the infected are beyond hope. Our mission here is to study them in hopes of finding a cure, a vaccine, or some means of containing the contagion." Jennifer held the stethoscope out to him.

  "But all of us, every doctor in this room, took an oath…"

  "Dr. Palmer—"

  "Dammit, Jen, do you have to keep calling me that?"

  "Thad…do you recognize the patient?"

  Thad was surprised by the question. He broke her gaze and looked passed her at the patient's gaunt face.

  Of course, I don't know the…

  His thoughts hovered a moment. There was something about the forehead. A small scar over the left eye. Thad leaned in closer. It couldn't be. But it was. Thad knew the scar was a baseball injury from when the man was a child, although Thad had heard the man telling vulnerable women at least a half-dozen times that he'd gotten it in a bar room brawl.

  Dr. Thomas Walker. Thad had also met him at Tisch Hospital all those years ago and the two of them had become good friends. They'd had similar lofty egos, taught at the same schools, wrote for the same journals, and slept with many of the same women. Thad hadn't seen Tom in a couple of years, but the man he remembered was tall and broad-shouldered, well-built from exercise, and handsome, full of life. Vibrant and witty.

  This patient was small and bone-thin. His skin wrinkled, delicate, and colorless. Most of his hair was gone and his body emaciated, almost shrunken.

  "Tom…" Thad said quietly, but in the stillness of the room, it sounded louder than he'd anticipated. The patient didn't respond, of course, and Thad was glad of that. It gave him a brief moment of hope that the patient wasn't who he thought it was. That maybe he had the wrong guy.

  Jennifer spoke. "Most of Tom's organs have already shut down. There's nothing we can do for him. But you remember him; the man he used to be. He'd want us to learn as much as we can from this. Otherwise, he'd have died for nothing. Just three days ago he was standing where you are now, doing what I'm asking you to do. Now look at him."

  As if to punctuate her last words, Tom flatlined, the heartbeat monitor belting out a long, continuous yowl. Thad expected everyone to jump into action, to start CPR, anything to try and revive him. But no one moved. Everyone watched Thad. And at least one of them, Dr. Montgomery, did so anxiously.

  "You need to do this, Thad." Jennifer held the stethoscope out further. "You need to do this now."

  Reluctantly he grabbed it from her. She and Dr. Montgomery gave him room. Once again, he tried the technique of holding the earpiece to one ear while closing off his other ear with his shoulder, but he quickly grew frustrated and it suddenly seemed too cumbersome, the hood too bulky and unwieldy.

  He put down the stethoscope and reached for the zipper on his hood. When he couldn't find it easily, he cursed and pulled at the hood with both hands, giving a hard yank until the zipper separated. He kept pulling until the hood was almost completely free, hanging behind him like a partially-severed head.

  The air was cool on his face and he breathed like it was the first time in a long time. The steady tune of the heartbeat monitor was noticeably louder.

  "Turn that damn thing off," he said to no one in particular. The room was completely silent two seconds later.

  Glaring quickly around the room, Thad put on the stethoscope and listened for a heartbeat. Satisfied there wasn't one, he listened for breathing. Then he felt a wrist and the neck for a pulse. Nothing, but he still had his thick gloves on.

  He turned to Dr. Montgomery and plucked the penlight out of the doctor's front coat pocket. Leaning over Tom, Thad lifted the eyelids and, clicking on the light, danced it back and forth over Tom's eyes. No pupillary response.

  He handed the light back to Dr. Montgomery, then reached down into his bio suit and removed the temporary I.D. he'd been issued upon arrival at the hospital. He bent back the stick pin and tapped it against the pad of Tom's big toe. Again, no movement or response as expected of someone still alive.

  Finally, he pushed his way across the room, first to the EKG machine, noting the lack of cardio-pulmonary action, and then to the EEG machine, its indicators drawing a series of long, unwavering lines signifying a complete lack of brain activity.

  Thad looked up at the clock next to the door, then turned to the only nurse waiting with Tom's charts held aloft and an ink pen at the ready.

  "3:48 p.m.," Thad finally announced. Everyone could hear the pen as it scrawled the time in the allotted space on the page.

  Thad sat down in the room's only chair, one he knew folded out into a small bed and that was normally reserved for new fathers who were staying the night to be close to their wives and newborn children. The room had seen happier days.

  Thad put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Meanwhile, Dr. Montgomery, wanting to maintain official procedures, grabbed his stethoscope. After a brief, less vigorous examination of the body, he nodded his concurrence that Dr. Thomas Walker was indeed dead.

  The minutes passed silently while Thad worked to wrap his head around the situation, and eventually he realized the peculiarity of the stillness in the room. He lifted his head and looked around. All eyes were either on the body or on the EEG machine. Were they acknowledging a moment of silence for a fallen colleague? If so, that moment should have passed and was now bordering on absurdity. This was a hospital, after all, and there were surely more patients who needed at
tention.

  "What's going on?" he asked, looking at Jennifer. She'd removed her hood as well, although apparently in less dramatic fashion. He hadn't heard the zipper unraveling.

  "We're waiting," she said, her eyes never leaving Tom's body.

  "Waiting? For what?"

  She didn't respond immediately. She allowed a few more minutes to tick away until Thad's agitation was palpable, his patience faltering. Then: "You'll see."

  That satisfied him reluctantly for the moment. Another five minutes spun away. Finally, Thad stood up.

  "Look, maybe we could—"

  Beep.

  The sudden noise caught him off-guard and he jumped. A light blinked on the electroencephalograph.

  Dr. Montgomery, now stationed next to the machine, looked at the clock. "3:59 p.m.," he said to the nurse who had noted the time of death on the charts, which she'd never lowered. Again her pen moved on the page.

  "What was that?" Thad asked.

  "Come see for yourself," Montgomery suggested, almost like a challenge.

  Thad joined him at the EEG device. All the indicators were steady save for one, which drew a slow series of shallow peaks and troughs, denoting mild electrical activity in the hypothalamus region of the brain. Thad opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't form words.

  "We've got motor activity," one of the doctors called out. Thad turned to see Tom Walker's fingers moving slightly on each hand.

  "4:01 p.m.," Dr. Montgomery announced. The nurse with the charts noted the time again.

  "But…how…?" Thad started. It's as much as he could manage.

  The corpse's eyes shot open, and upon seeing the other people in the room, it suddenly began to jerk and writhe against its restraints. Thad jumped away and had to stop himself from climbing up into the chair like some cartoon housewife trying to evade a mouse.

  "Was he dead, Thad?"

  He looked around until he met Jennifer's eyes. Again he couldn't speak. He looked back at the corpse. It was trying to yank its arm free with such force that Thad thought the forearm might snap.

  "Thad, you called it. Was he dead?"

  "Yes!" Thad shot back.

  The corpse on the table, what used to be Tom Walker, began to make a guttural snarl. It moved its head from side to side and snapped its teeth.

  "And if you're finished proving your point, Dr. Laramie," Dr. Montgomery said to Jennifer, "please complete your discussion outside. We have a lot of tests to perform."

  Jennifer grabbed Thad by the shoulder and pulled him outside. As she closed the door behind them, both of Tom's forearms broke above the wrists, the bones tearing through the skin.

  * * * * *

  At his request, Thad didn't complete the tour that day, but rather piecemeal over the next four days. He told Jennifer he would see what he needed to see as he went along and that he was anxious to get to work.

  His first order of business was to see what sort of tests the CDC had already completed, analyze those tests results, then redo them all to be sure they were done to his aggressive standards. Tests were run on patients at every level of infection, from new admits to the few remaining corpses of the Liberty Coast Disaster.

  He was, of course, also particularly interested in the infected among the staff who seemed to be immune to the more deadly aspects of the infection and survived simply as carriers, capable of infecting others, but not succumbing to the infection themselves.

  Thad was certain that, between studying the subtle differences in DNA sequences of the infected-immune (I.I.'s, as Thad dubbed them) and biopsies taken from non-degraded nerve fibers of living corpses, he'd hopefully be able to identify the components that would, eventually, lead to a cure—or, at the very least, a vaccine.

  He wasn't the first to isolate the I.I.s and the nerve fibers as the best place to start, but Thad offered the outside-the-box thinking such a revelation for a cure required. So he spent his first four days at Shoreline Hook Regional personally taking samples from patients and staff and overseeing the tests performed, but all with frustrating results.

  Not only was he unable to make inroads towards a cure, he also failed to create a Litmus test of sorts that would allow them to know whether the as-of-yet uninfected would eventually be of the I.I.-variety if introduced to the infection, or if such exposure would be deadly.

  Such knowledge would be useful when recruiting for more help among the CDC's offices around the world. As it was, they were having to make due with a diminished staff, as the CDC couldn't risk the lives.

  Again Thad wondered why he was brought in if they knew there was a better-than fifty percent chance it could kill him. He decided it was a question best left unanswered.

  Another top priority was to figure out exactly how the infection was spreading. Obviously it was airborne, but usually protective suits and rigorous sanitation techniques are enough to keep contamination at bay. But this bacteria propagated regardless of the protective or hygienic measures taken.

  In this area, Thad's unique ability to perceive possibilities that were outside or the norm proved its worth. It was he who first suggested they test the sweat of the newly infected. When they did, they found spores of the infection. When someone who got the infection first developed a fever, they sweated out the spores, which come in two basic varieties—one that clings tightly to anything it contacts, spreading by touch, and another type, lighter than the other, that spreads like pollen, blown around by even the slightest of breezes.

  The heavier, stickier of the two, Thad and the researchers dubbed SporeX1. It was capable of infecting new hosts by soaking into the skin. The other, lighter version, spread once sweat dries, was named SporeX2 and could be breathed in from the atmosphere.

  The spores could survive an inordinate amount of time outside of a host, and they couldn't be killed or cleansed with antibacterial cleaners or medication. So the infection was able to spread among the staff simply because it was patient—no matter how stringent and meticulous the decontamination process, the spore would survive, and eventually the staff would have to take off their biohazard suits.

  Once Thad discovered how the infection spread, he didn't immediately tell Jennifer. First, he called his ex-wife and told her to pack a few bags and get their daughter out of New York and to his father's house upstate. She knew better than to question him. She knew what he was working on and that knowledge, coupled with the local news coverage of what was happening around the city, was enough to convince her to do what he said.

  Next, he called his father and told him to be expecting Allison and Karen, but also to be stocking up on supplies. He and his father's primary bank accounts were already linked, but Thad gave his father the account and routing numbers, as well as the access codes and passwords, to his offshore accounts. He made his father read it all back to him to make sure he'd written it all down correctly. Thad told him to transfer it all into Thad's primary account and to use whatever was needed to shore up supplies. It would be more than enough money.

  Unlike the conversation with his ex-wife, Thad took the time to share with his father the possible gravity of the situation. His father was a doctor, after all. Thad implored him to buy enough supplies on which they could survive not just a few weeks, but possibly years.

  Thad's money-market account was also attached to his primary bank account, and his next call was to his stock broker, who was shocked at Thad's request to sell everything. Thad had to assure his long-time money manager that he'd done nothing wrong and that Thad had always been more than pleased with the progress of his portfolio. In the end, he extended a sizable gratuity to the broker as a means to soften the blow. It would take four or five business days for the broker to finalize the selling of all Thad's positions and secure the funds.

  Only after he'd made these calls did he call an emergency staff meeting to share what he'd learned with Jennifer and the others. Afterward, she called another top-priority meeting, by means of a video-conference call, with the President and his cent
ral advisors. Thad had Jennifer put off the meetings with the President for two hours so he could prepare a proper presentation and suggestions on how to move forward, which the President would certainly ask for.

  In actuality, Thad wanted to give his ex-wife time to evacuate their daughter out of the city. He already knew what actions he would propose the President take next, and they required no formal presentation—quarantine New York City and the entirety of Long Island. Shut down all the bridges and tunnels and disallow all travel by air, sea, train, or roadway in or out.

  He also knew such measures were pointless. Although people could be quarantined, the infection itself could not. The SporeX2 was of the type that could travel on wind currents and, using them, could easily cross the Hudson and Long Island Sound. Plus, the infection had already had ample time to infect plenty of people beyond New York's borders.

  There was little doubt Karen and Allison were already infected, but if they were not showing symptoms, then they just might be I.I.'s themselves.

  Thad was biding his time, hoping to slow the infection's progression just enough so that the inevitable chaotic reaction would hold off long enough for his father to gather everything they needed to sustain them all for an extended period of time.

  Towards the end of the meeting, the President warned that, at the behest of his advisors, he was giving the CDC one week to make significant progress towards a vaccine. After that, he'd have to go public with the severity of the outbreak and advise the public to do what was necessary to prepare for the worst. Thad suggested the President wait two weeks. After all, he'd only just come on staff and was still gathering information about the infection. He reminded the President of the significant progress he'd made since his involvement began. The President compromised, settling on ten days before going public, and the discussion was ended.

  Ten days.

  Of course, Thad had every intention of at least trying to find a cure or vaccine during that timeframe; he would definitely give it his best efforts. But he didn't intend to fool himself. Thad knew all the optimistic thinking in the world wouldn't change the increasingly apparent truth; that they were likely facing what scientists would call an E.L.E.—an extinction-level event.