by James Harden
I couldn’t stop thinking about Kenji and how much he had changed, how much he had grown. He was so different to the boy I used to know, especially when he had a rifle up to his shoulder. He was two years older than me. But growing up we were always pretty much the same size. Now he was at least half a foot taller than me and I could tell he had filled out.
The weather had turned from bad to worse. Every few minutes a lightning bolt would streak across the sky. Outside the Humvee, I thought I could hear gun shots and explosions. But it might have just been the thunder. Everything was chaotic.
Despite all the distractions, Kim was able to keep us on the road. She was actually a very good driver. I guess she’d had training at the academy.
Kenji was constantly looking through the scope of his rifle out into the darkness. He would look out the window into the pitch black and then look through the scope. "Slow down," he said.
"Yeah I’ll slow down when you tell me what the hell is going on," Kim replied.
Jack chimed in from the back. "Yeah. What exactly is the military doing here? Like, what’s your mission?"
Kenji’s eyes checked the rear view mirror and the side mirrors. "Can’t tell you that. It’s classified."
"Classified?"
"I’m just a grunt anyway. They don’t tell us anything. I’m just here to do a job."
"So what’s your job?"
"The quarantine. To keep you guys safe."
"Could you be anymore vague?" Maria said.
"Trust me, the less you know the better."
Kenji’s words weren’t very reassuring but at that point we were more concerned with getting Officer Dennis to the emergency department so he didn’t bleed to death.
The sad thing was Officer Dennis was beyond saving. And it wasn't because he had a sword sized piece of glass in his leg that was right next to his femoral artery. It was because in approximately twenty minutes or so he was going to become a dead man anyway, or undead, or living dead or whatever the hell you call it. That’s why he didn’t feel any pain. It wasn’t the adrenalin. It was the virus. But at the time we didn’t know that. All we knew was if the shard of glass was to cut his femoral artery than the poor guy would bleed to death in three minutes. So we kept on driving.
We arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. It was absolute pandemonium. There were thousands of people out the front trying to storm the entrance. It’s amazing what fear and panic will do to people. Kim was forced to slow down so she didn’t run anyone over. People started banging on the side of the Humvee.
"What the hell is going on?" Kim asked.
It looked like the military had set up a barricade blocking anyone from entering the hospital. The angry mob was shaking the temporary fence; some people were even trying to climb it but stopped as soon as they realized there was razor wire at the top.
"Drive around the back," Kenji suggested.
Kim beeped the horn and revved the engine, scaring people out of the way. We avoided the crowd and drove to the rear of the hospital. Kenji was able to smooth talk our way through several check points before we were eventually ordered out of the car at gun point by soldiers who appeared to be wearing space suits. They looked like they were out of a sci-fi movie. It was unsettling to wonder why they needed to wear such heavy duty gear.
We were then escorted by the soldiers to an isolated wing of the hospital. Officer Denis had his leg inspected and was promptly put on a bed and wheeled away.
Maria, Jack, Kim and I were locked in a room together. Kenji was taken away for ‘debriefing’.
"What now?" Jack asked. "Can we go home?"
"I don’t really feel like arguing with strange men carrying machine guns," Kim said.
She made an excellent point. The men in the suits made me anxious. Apart from the fact they were pointing guns at us, they looked like soulless, killer robots.
"Isn’t your mother a nurse?" Maria asked.
"She doesn’t work at this hospital," I replied.
"Oh."
"OK, as soon as they let us go I think we should go straight home," Jack said.
Kim looked at her brother. "And do you still want to walk home?"
"So maybe walking home wasn’t the best idea. But I didn’t realize things were getting so out of control. Is it like this all over?"
"In certain areas it’s getting pretty crazy," Kim said. "Most of the looting and riots are happening at the grocery stores and the pharmacies. I think people just want to stock up on supplies, prepare for the worst."
"Rebecca, maybe you should come home with us? I think it’s getting a little dangerous to be at home on your own."
"I totally agree."
Kim told everyone to remain calm. "Guys, just remember we’re at a hospital. This is the best place for us to be right now. If there is some sort of virus then we’re in the best place to get treatment. Just think of all those people outside. We’re pretty lucky when you think about it."
I suppose we were lucky to be inside an actual hospital where we could get treatment or a vaccine or whatever.
A few minutes later the soldiers in the space suits were back. They dragged us down the corridor and into what could’ve been an operating room. We were then separated. I don’t know what happened to the others, but I was taken to a little room. The room was just like any doctor’s office. There was a desk and a bed. There was a poster on the wall explaining how to prevent type two diabetes.
A man in a space suit who could’ve been a killer robot pushed me into the room and sat me down. "Wait here," he said.
"Hey, where did you take my friends?"
He didn’t answer me. When he left two other soldiers and a doctor entered the room. They were all wearing space suits and the soldiers were carrying rifles, like the one Kenji had.
The doctor introduced himself to me. He said his name was Doctor Hunter. He had a soothing voice. It had a calming, almost hypnotic affect on me.
"Please, Rebecca," he said. "Sit on the bed for me. I need to ask you some questions."
Chapter 12
My first thought was how the hell did he know my name? My second thought was why was he wearing a space suit as well? I didn't ask, but I did exactly what he said and sat down on the bed. After all if I was in some sort of trouble or if there was some sort of virus, I wanted his help. I didn't want to be like all those people trapped out the front of the hospital on the other side of the fence. We were lucky to have even made it inside and I felt privileged to be receiving medical attention when so many people were going without. I was still worried that he needed to wear the suit and that it was necessary to have two heavily armed soldiers in the room but maybe it was just a precaution.
"Lie down for me."
Again I did as he said. No questions asked. But then he raised the rail guards on the sides of the bed and bound my hands and feet with Velcro straps. "Um, is this really necessary?" I asked as my pulse quickened.
"Just a precaution."
"Precaution for what? Why do I need to be tied to the bed?"
"You're one of the lucky few. Do you realize that?"
"Lucky?"
"Yes. Very lucky."
I assumed he meant because I was inside the hospital instead of being locked out. But what I didn’t know is he meant that not many people who come into contact with the Oz Virus survive.
"Rebecca, I need to ask you some questions about what happened at the police station," he said. "I need you to be completely honest with me. If you lie, I will find out."
He said it as though it was a threat.
"I'm not a liar," I said.
"Good. Now tell me what happened."
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t really sure where to start. Did I need to tell him about the party and how we broke curfew?
"Anything you say will be held in strict confidence," the Doctor assured me as he clicked on a Dictaphone.
For some reason I didn’t believe him. "Why do you have a Dictaphone?"
; "Just for my personal records. Please Rebecca, we don't have much time," he said as he checked his watch.
He kept checking his watch every thirty seconds or so. When I think back to this moment, it’s like he knew what was coming. It's like he knew he needed to get the hell out of Sydney before it was too late.
I told him what happened. I told him that we were arrested for breaking curfew and were kept in a holding over night with this weird guy. And how the weird guy went crazy and wrestled with Jack. And then how we were attacked by a couple of other psychos. I told him that Sergeant Pearce and Lieutenant Smith and this other soldier, who I didn’t even know the name of, had been killed.
"You shared a cell with a person who turned violent without warning?" Doctor Hunter asked seemingly ignoring the part about how two soldiers and a police officer had been killed.
"Yeah. He was completely wasted when they brought him in. He was passed out for the whole night. And then the next day when he woke up in the afternoon he went crazy and tried to bite Jack."
"Strange, most cases take twenty to thirty minutes for infection to take over," he mumbled to himself. "Fascinating. Maybe because he was intoxicated there was a delayed onset?" The doctor had the Dictaphone recording but he also scribbled notes furiously with an intense, laser like focus.
"Were, you bitten at all?" he asked me.
"No."
"Did you come into direct contact with any bodily fluids, like blood or saliva?"
I think back to all the blood Officer Dennis was covered in. I thought about the crazy lady and how she was frothing at the mouth, how Tommy was drooling blood and how Jack wrestled with him in the cell.
"No. Not me. But one of the police officers was covered in blood." I explained. "Private Yoshida asked him whose blood he was covered in and he said it wasn’t his."
"And what of young Jack? Was he scratched or bitten when he wrestled in the cell?"
"No. I don’t think so. I think he just pushed that guy off him and then he fell back and cracked his head against the wall. It was totally self defense by the way."
Doctor Hunter stared directly at me, making me uncomfortable. It was like he didn’t believe me. Not about the self defense part but about the wrestling. I had omitted the closeness and the fierceness of the wrestle and I didn’t even know why.
He flared his nostrils. "I hope you’re being honest with me, Rebecca. This virus is not to be taken lightly."
"I’m being completely honest."
He wrote something down in his notebook, probably something along the lines of how he didn’t believe me. "This virus is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before," he said. "It completely robs a person of their humanity, it takes away their soul."
"Do you think the people at the police station were infected with the Oz Virus?" I asked.
"It’s possible. The very first thing that happens to a person upon exposure is they lose their basic motor skills and they lose sensitivity in their limbs. These early symptoms are fairly standard but then something else happens. You begin to lose the ability to perform even the most basic of cognitive processes. After a few minutes they lose the ability to process simple hypothetical questions. We think it might attack the frontal lobe of the brain. But we’re not sure. Five minutes after exposure the virus has destroyed enough brain cells that you can test a suspected case by asking them a simple hypothetical question. If they can’t answer, if they don’t understand, then they are undoubtedly infected. Would you like an example of a question we use to test suspected cases?"
Did he think I was infected? "Why, are you going to test me? Do you think I’m infected?" I said.
He raised his hands as if to reassure me that everything was all right. "Of course not, Rebecca. It’s just a precaution."
He kept saying everything was just a precaution.
"For example to gauge whether or not someone is infected or even to get an idea of how far advanced the infection is you could ask them a question like, what three things would you take to a deserted island? Or my personal favorite, are you dog person or a cat person? Simple enough question, right? Most people would either choose one or the other. Some say, that they can’t decide and that they’re a lover of all animals. A minority will say they don’t like either of them.
"But a person infected with the Oz Virus will not give any of these answers. It’s almost as if they don’t understand the question at all. Some of them close their eyes to concentrate, exerting an unusual amount of effort to actually visualize the question. But after a few attempts they simply stop trying. After this you can ask them even more basic questions like their home address and their date of birth. If the virus has advanced to a certain point, they won’t be able to answer these questions. Some cases will give their old home address, displaying symptoms similar to concussion."
"Sounds pretty full on," I said.
"It is," he replied. "Twenty minutes later the virus completely takes over causing the infected to become extremely violent." He slid the Dictaphone closer to me. "So Rebecca, what are you? Are you a dog person or a cat person?"
I opened my mouth to answer but then thought to myself what if it was a trick? What if infected people always say cat? Or that they didn’t like animals at all. But then I thought no, that would be stupid, why would he trick me? And then I thought, oh no, he’s going to take my hesitation as a sign of infection! So I started rambling, guessing that a whole bunch of ideas blurted out was better than none.
"Let me just start off by saying that it’s an excellent question. And really, I'm a lover of all animals but if I had to choose. I mean if someone came up to me and pointed a gun at my head and forced me to choose, I'd have to say I'm a dog person. And let me explain. I think the reason I'm a dog person boils down to one main reason. And that reason is that cats have a real evil streak about them. If a cat catches a mouse to eat, it’ll play with the mouse before it actually kills it. A cat is at the top of the food chain, but that's not enough. They need to rub it in. It's sadistic. You don't ever see a dog doing that."
The doctor raised an eyebrow. "I see."
There was a silence. He wrote down more notes.
"So, did I pass?" I asked.
"Of course you did."
"So I’m not infected?"
"I was at a barbeque just the other week," he said ignoring my question. "It’s funny how we could afford a simple luxury like barbequing not so long ago. Anyway, this guy, one of the Woomera locals brought his pet along. It wasn't a dog or a cat or anything cute and friendly. It was little baby snake. And it wasn't a non-venomous snake, like a python or something like that. It was a Taipan. An Australian inland Taipan. Do you know what that is?"
I shook my head
"It is without doubt the most venomous snake on the planet. Forget the black mamba, forget the King Cobra. The inland Taipan or fierce snake as it's commonly known as is the deadliest by far. Nothing else even comes close. One bite from this particular snake and you’re dead within a few minutes. Forget calling an ambulance, forget the anti-venom there's just not enough time."
I had no idea where he was going with this. I just wanted him to give me the all clear so I could go home.
"This virus is much the same," he continued. "One bite and you’re dead. Forget the anti-virus, forget the cure. There’s no time."
He seemed to be talking to himself at that point. I noticed his Dictaphone was still on. It was almost like he was making notes, recording his thoughts so he could publish them in a medical journal one day.
There was a knock at the door and the Doctor snapped out of his reverie. A soldier in a space suit wheeled in a bed. On the bed was Kenji. He was strapped to the rail guards like me.
The doctor collected his notes. "Thank you, Rebecca. You’ve been most helpful." "Leave these two here for now," he said to the soldiers. "At least until we interview the others."
"Hurry, sir. We don’t have much time," one of them replied.
The doctor turned his Dictaph
one off and left.
Kenji’s bed was right next to mine. I sort of understood why they would strap me to a bed, but why would they do it to Kenji, to one of their own?
"How come they tied you to a bed?" I finally asked.
"I guess they figured I came into close contact with the virus," he said. "It's just a precaution."
"But we don’t even know if those psychos at the police station were infected."
"They were showing all the symptoms. The violent behavior, the indifference to pain, the bleeding. We have to be real careful. This virus... it’s extremely volatile."
"So I keep hearing. But I thought the virus was contained at the Woomera immigration centre?"
Kenji shook his head. "The immigration centre was a mess. In a matter of days it had spread through the population. I was basically on clean up duty and containment. But I knew this thing couldn’t be contained. It was already out of control by the time I got there. That’s why I deserted my post. That’s why I came for you, Rebecca. I needed to warn you."
There was an awkward silence, which was weird because I used to be able to sit with Kenji in total silence for hours and hours and there was nothing awkward about it.
"Look, Rebecca," he said. "I’m real sorry about when I left. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure how to tell you."
"A simple good bye would’ve been just fine. Way better than not saying anything at all."
"I know..." he said his voice trailing off.
It was like he was thinking of the right way to say it without upsetting me further. Or maybe he was waiting for me to ask him why he didn’t tell my why he left. I don’t know. I didn’t want to play games so I kept my mouth shut. I was stubborn like that.
"My parents shipped me off to military school," he said after awhile. "I dropped out after a couple of weeks and joined the marines. I had some cousins of mine from San Fran forge a fake birth certificate that said I was eighteen. I didn’t even tell my parents right away. I know that doesn’t make it right not to have told you but I was scared, you know? And I didn’t want to get you into any trouble of my folks.
