by Paul Seiple
Felicia Randall didn't answer. Guilt tapped her on the shoulder, reminding her that just yesterday, and only three doors away, her colleagues were murdered.
Katie scrunched her nose. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned it."
"No, it's OK. I don't have the whole story myself, but the media isn't telling the truth." Felicia took a deep breath before continuing. "Jill called in, so I was working the front desk when this guy came in. He had been shot. Reggie took him back. The FBI showed up."
"Holy shit. That must have been insane."
Felicia didn't answer.
Katie noted the color leaving Felicia’s face. "You OK?"
"The part the news isn't saying is the guy..." Felicia paused again. "He murdered Reggie, Rebecca, and Dr. Kildare before the FBI killed him."
"Oh my god. I had no idea."
"They're keeping it a secret for some reason. Maybe it's because of the hospital," Felicia said.
"I can't believe you're here today. I just couldn't..."
"It's strange, but being here actually helps me not think about it. If I was home, it would drive me crazy. Helping people keeps it off my mind. Speaking of, why are you on the other side of table today?"
Katie coughed. "Sore throat, headache, nausea. Probably whatever's going around. I hope it's not the flu."
"I've seen so many people with similar symptoms the last few days. I feel crappy too. The nausea is weird. It's more like hunger pangs."
Katie thought about it. The nausea was weird. She never felt like she was going to vomit. There was just a queasy feeling, a burning in her stomach.
"All right, let's get your blood pressure." Felicia wrapped the cuff around Katie's arm. She pumped the inflation bulb, but nothing registered.
"Must not be tight enough," Felicia said as she twisted the air release valve and loosened the arm cuff.
The sound of Velcro pulling apart assaulted Katie's ears like the magnified sound of nails down a chalkboard. Felicia held Katie's arm as she latched the cuff again. When Felicia's fingers touched Katie's flesh, something changed. Katie's mouth watered. A gnawing snapped at her stomach, sending convulsions through her body. Katie shook as if electricity flowed through her veins.
"You OK?" Felicia asked.
The gnawing intensified. Katie closed her eyes. Saliva flooded her mouth and trickled out the corner of her lips.
"Katie?"
A drop of spit splashed against Felicia's fingers. She tried to pull away, but Katie grabbed Felicia's wrist.
"Let go, Katie. You're hurting me."
Felicia placed her foot against the bed and pushed off to free herself. Katie's grip was strong. Felicia tried again to break free. She placed her foot on the bed again. The force moved the bed away from her, sending Felicia to the hard linoleum floor. Katie held on and tumbled on top of Felicia. Her warm breath flicked against Felicia's neck, running along her jugular. Fear and the stench of Katie's rancid breath stunted Felicia's breathing. Katie opened her mouth with a hitched movement, as if she was trying to speak. Saliva trickled onto the side of Felicia's face, causing her to plant a forearm against Katie's cheek.
The inviting smell of human flesh so close to Katie's nose stole her attention. It was only seconds, but still enough time for Felicia to gain a little separation. She slid out from underneath Katie and headed for the door. Katie lunged and grabbed Felicia's arm, dragging her back to the cold floor.
"Stop, Katie."
Katie ignored the plea. The hunger was loud, deafening the world around her. Mouthwatering turned to foam like that of a rabid animal. Katie drew Felicia's arm toward her mouth and tore away a slab of skin just above Felicia's wrist. A sense of peace blanketed Katie as the flesh satiated the hunger. She closed her eyes and savored the taste. Felicia heaved her fist into Katie's chest. The back of Katie's head slammed against the bed's metal frame. Her eyes rolled back and her body slumped. Felicia stumbled for the door. She ran by the waiting room and out of the hospital, never looking back.
Dull throbbing radiated up Felicia's arm, tickling her funny bone. She couldn't help but find irony in the pain. There was nothing funny about what had happened. Once she was a good distance from the hospital, Felicia veered off the road into a wooded area that was soon to be developed into the latest neighborhood of the growing suburb. She eased her back against a tree and slid down until her butt rested on the hard ground. Until now, Felicia avoided looking at the bite. Blood covered her teal scrubs like crimson polka dots. She took a deep breath and looked at her arm. The wound wasn't as bad as she imagined. It was more of a nip than a full-on bite, but that didn't lesson the terror that her friend took a chunk out of her. She rested against the tree for a moment before contemplating her next move. Felicia left her belongings——cell phone, car keys——at the hospital. There was no way she was going back. She couldn't walk into a store, not even the shady convenience mart about a mile up the road, drenched in blood. Her apartment was ten miles north. She wasn't walking home. Felicia laughed and shook her head at the thought of trying to explain her appearance to an Uber driver. A rustling of leaves startled her. She lowered her head to her knees and tried to become invisible behind the tree. Probably just a squirrel, she thought as her tightened muscles sent waves of tension to the bite on her arm.
"Felicia?"
Fear wrapped itself around Felicia like an extension of the ivy growing on the tree. She knew the soft-spoken voice all too well. Katie. She wasn't going to give Katie another chance to hurt her. Felicia grabbed a softball-sized rock and spun around the tree. Katie cowered, fell to a knee, and shielded her face with her hands.
"Don't hurt me."
Felicia hesitated and fell back against another tree. The joints in her fingers ached from the grip on the rock, but she wasn't about to drop it. Or throw it. Katie's demeanor was different. She wasn't the woman with the foaming mouth and dead eyes at the hospital. Katie looked like a frightened little girl.
"I'm sorry. I…don't…know…why…" Katie broke down in tears.
Felicia straightened her spine, shaking off any visible fear. The words of her instructor from a self-defense class echoed through her mind. No fear when confronted.
"You're sick, Katie."
Katie fell to her butt. "What's wrong with me?"
"There's something going around." Felicia paused, thinking about her symptoms. They mirrored Katie's except for the eating flesh part. The hunger pangs, she thought. The craving. Felicia eyed Katie's exposed neck. There was no desire to take a bite.
"I'm sorry for biting you. I don't remember much. I think I had a seizure."
"Do you want to bite me now?" Felicia asked.
"No. It's like morphine. Everything is numb."
"The hunger?"
"It's gone."
Felicia thought back to Katie's blood pressure. It didn't register. Human flesh satisfied the hunger. Felicia fashioned herself as a horror buff. This was a stolen storyline from any zombie movie. A subtle pain shot from her left temple to her right. That's fiction, she thought as she rubbed the side of her head.
"Is it bad?" Katie asked.
"Huh?"
"Where I bit you?"
"I'll probably have to wear long sleeves for a while. Good thing fall is coming. But, hey, I'll live."
The words "I'll live" hung in Felicia's mind like after taste from a diet soda. If fiction was impeding on non-fiction, there was a good chance living wasn't in the story.
"I'm really sorry," Katie said.
The pain bouncing between Felicia's temples intensified. One moment it felt like a grueling game of Pong. The next, a rally between Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. It disrupted Felicia's cognitive thinking.
"Are you OK?" Katie asked.
Felicia pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes and moved them in a clockwise motion. She felt sick. Not sick. Hungry.
"Felicia?"
"I'm fine. I just need to get home and out of these clothes. I left my keys at the hospital."
Katie pulled a set of keys from her sweatpants. "We can take my car."
Felicia didn't have any other options. She had run out of the hospital. There would be list of questions waiting for her if she went back. Questions she couldn't answer. Felicia had no idea what was happening. The only thing she knew for sure was that she needed to get home and lie down. The hunger grew stronger. The pain was more intense. She didn't trust Katie. At any moment, Katie could turn back into the monster that tried to kill her. Felicia only hoped to stave off another attempt. She was out of options.
"Here, I'll drive," Felicia said, extending an open palm toward Katie.
Katie placed the keys in Felicia’s hand with a gentleness to suggest she had no intention of biting
Six
A field of gray enveloped the window as the plane diced the clouds. The dreary scene was typical of a fall day with a cold front moving in. Strange for late summer, but the temperatures hadn’t been very summer-like for a few weeks. The turbulence didn't set well with Q. He turned away from the window. Dickson noticed the color rush from Q's face as another pocket shifted the plane.
"Not a fan of flying?"
Q swallowed hard, trying to coax the protein bar he ate for breakfast back down his throat. "Not a fan of dying."
Dickson chuckled. "Almost there." He shifted in the seat to get a little closer to Q. "Is it even possible that these latest occurrences are related to what Hendricks was working on?"
"Unless there is another super-secret 'Let's Play God' group you're not telling me about, I'd say it's definitely related to what happened in Black Dog."
"I need to be upfront with you about Black Dog. We didn't torch the town. Most of it remains intact."
"There are survivors?"
Dickson shook his head. "No. What I'm saying is the government didn't get involved. Hendricks was working on two projects. One was the virus, which he called Judas, and the other was a bomb called the Judas Kiss."
"Really good idea naming something after someone who betrayed Jesus," Q said, clutching the arm rest as more turbulence shook the plane.
"We didn't know about the virus. We were only interested in the bomb. Hendricks created the virus solely to prove how well the bomb worked."
"You're telling me he infected an entire town just to bomb it?"
"That was not the initial plan, but unfortunately, that is what happened. The bombs, or smart bombs as Hendricks referred to them, were so technologically advanced and the precision was so pinpoint that Hendricks guaranteed no civilian casualties."
Q laughed. "Do you hear yourself? He wiped out Black Dog. Those people were innocent."
"The bombs worked as advertised. The entire town was infected. We don't have much information on the virus, other than it spread like wildfire. The bombs contained it, or so we thought." Dickson pointed to a flat-screen television attached to the wall. "That is the future of war. With technology advancing, the days of hand-to-hand combat are disappearing. We’re entering an age of real-life Battleship." Dickson grabbed a remote and aimed it at the screen. "You've probably seen something like this before. It's a thermal scan of what's below. I don't know about you, but to me it looks like a kid got into a bunch of different paints, but watch this." Dickson tapped the remote again. The screen morphed from splotches of red, yellow, and blue to a bunch of tiny red dots on a black background. "With the push of a button, this just became the world's biggest heart monitor." Dickson highlighted one of the dots with a laser emitting from the remote. A gray box popped out to the side of the dot.
HUMAN-ADULT MALE-HEART RATE 98BPM
"Impressive, but of little use, right? With a few tweaks, we will be able to penetrate bunkers in Iraq to determine if any children are present before we bomb them."
"Why are you showing this to me?" Q asked.
"You need to know the whole story if there is any chance of stopping this."
The answer didn't sit well with Q. This was highly-qualified technology that surely fit into a classified category. He's telling me this because I'm not leaving Black Dog, Q thought.
Dickson pressed a button combination on the remote. The screen went black before rows of blue numbers filled the screen.
"This is an approximate calculation of males, females, and children populating the area below. Hendricks was working on technology that could factor the threat level of each individual," Dickson said.
"How is the even possible?"
The idea intrigued Q to the point he forgot the United States government had more than likely sent him on a suicide mission.
"The smart bombs had many intricate layers of add-ons. There are tiny cameras attached to the plane. These cameras allow us to determine heart rate, height, weight, bone development, sex, and so on."
"And how do you gauge a threat level based on those figures?" Q asked.
"The nervous system. Apparently, you can detect threat through the nervous system. Really scientific stuff, above my pay grade. Hendricks was developing a harmless gas that could be dispersed from planes.”
"Chemtrails. You were releasing chemicals in the air," Q said, interrupting Dickson.
Dickson smiled. "A safety assurance. These are troubling times, Q. Terrorists do not give one good damn about us. We are only a target. We're just trying to even the odds." He paused for a sip of coffee. "Hendricks had a team of scientists working on an agent that, when dispersed, would act like the common cold. Once dispersed through the gas, people would inhale it. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know exactly how it was to work, but the agent would attach to the nervous system. Hendricks promised us that we would be able to tell if someone was unstable by the results."
"You were creating an agent to read people's minds?"
"Again, the safety of the American people is of utmost importance to the government. But erase the negative thoughts for a moment, Q. This could end violence. Essentially, we could prevent rape, murder, you name it, with this agent." Dickson pressed a combination on the remote and the red dots appeared again.
"By turning people into zombies…" Q paused when a cluster of yellow dots appeared on the screen. "What does yellow mean?"
"That's strange." Dickson pressed another combination and a laser emitted, pinpointing one of the dots. A gray box appeared.
HUMAN-CHILD-FEMALE-HEART RATE 0BPM
Dickson moved the pointer to another dot.
HUMAN-ADULT-FEMALE-HEART RATE 0BPM
Dickson cleared his throat and shut off the television. "The system is in beta. Hendricks warned us there would be hiccups."
"Like destroying a small American Town?" Q put added emphasis on American.
"We will be touching down in two minutes, sir."
The voice echoed through the plane, interrupting Dickson and Q. Dickson welcomed the distraction. He didn't have a good comeback for Q's swipe.
"All right, Q, we have one mission here, and that's to find out if what happened in Black Dog has spilled over into other areas of the country. You're probably going to see a lot of things that you will question…just keep your mouth shut and look for anything that will help with the virus."
And if I don’t? Q thought.
"I don't need to tell you that this could pose a huge risk for the country, so let's stay on focus. Are we clear?"
"Yes, sir," Q said. His words were a mixture of sarcasm and fear. There was very real possibly this was a death trap, and Q didn't have a plan to escape.
Seven
"How are you going to get in without a key?" Katie asked, stopping to catch her breath. I run 5ks, a flight of stairs shouldn't wind me, she thought.
"Chad has a key."
"How's that going anyway?"
Felicia let an awkward chuckle escape. "He wants me to move in with him, but he's too possessive already. Can you imagine if we lived together?"
Felicia rang the doorbell to apartment 2A. No answer.
"Well, he lives right across the hall from you now. It can't be that much difference."
Felicia ignored Katie and rang the bell again. No answer.
"What if he's not home?" Katie asked.
Felicia smiled. "All the better." She bent down and removed a key from underneath a welcome mat.
"He leaves a key under the mat?" Katie asked.
"Yep."
Felicia opened the door but didn't enter the apartment. She reached inside and grabbed a key from a hook next to the door.
"All set."
Felicia watched her arm seem to move in slow motion as she reached for the door knob to her apartment. Her vision blurred. She blinked fast to gain focus.
"OK, a few rules before I let you in. One, you cannot bite me again." Felicia paused. "You don't want to bite me, right?"
"Well, you didn't taste all that good." Katie laughed. "Of course, I don't want to bite you. I feel much better now."
"OK, two…"
Pain stabbed Felicia in the gut, sucking her words back down her throat. Another pain, more intense, dropped her to a knee.
"You OK?" Katie asked, placing her hand on Felicia's shoulder.
"I think I'm sick too."
"Let me help."
Katie took the key from Felicia and opened the door. She grabbed Felicia near her elbow and helped her into the apartment.
Felicia sat in a chair by the door. After a few moments, her vision returned to normal and the sickness in her stomach subsided.
“Any better?” Katie asked, walking around inspecting the apartment.
"I’m good…for the time being…I think.” Felicia cleared her throat, trying to cure the itch that clung to it. “Want some tea?"
"Chamomile?" Katie asked.
Well, it supposed to ease stomach cramps, Felicia thought, rubbing just below her bellybutton. "Sure."
Katie sat on the couch. Her watch vibrated. "I love this smart watch, but I swear I have to charge it every few hours."
"I was thinking about getting an Apple watch," Felicia said, putting a tea kettle on the stove.
"Tom got me this for my birthday. It's really good for logging my runs, but I'm not big on all the bells and whistles. I'd rather check texts on my phone, ya know?"
