Alien Infection

by Darrell Bain

  I thought for a while that maybe some of whatever drug the doc suspected that patient had been zonked with had gotten into my bloodstream from the needle prick. With my mind unable to reason except very slowly, it took hours before I reached the conclusion that I could not possibly have gotten enough of a drug from that little bit of blood to affect me, assuming he had been drugged at all, by no means a certain assumption.

  By that night the slow turning of my mind led me to think that I had almost certainly caught a disease from that injured patient through the bit of blood I had inadvertently injected into myself. It wasn't a happy thought because I again began to believe I must be dying. I still felt no urge to relieve myself and that couldn't be good. And I still couldn't move much, other than to blink my eyes and twitch my body enough to relieve pressure on one part or another. Curiously, the thought of dying didn't upset me; it was simply a fact that the molasses-like processes of thought brought to my attention from time to time. There was none of the panic that a dying man ought to feel. I thought I would simply drift into a deep sleep and not wake up. Eventually someone would find my body, probably when I didn't return to work after my normal week off, which had fortuitously started the morning after the emergency room fiasco. I was working a seven-on, seven-off night shift, which suited my reclusive nature. I wondered idly who would find my body without really caring. I felt very sleepy. And then I did go to sleep.

  * * * *

  The phone woke me. I came awake instantly and reached for it.

  "Hello."

  "Mike? This is Gloria. Hey look, I have to go out of town overnight again. Would you feed Bomber for me?"

  "Sure,” I said, momentarily forgetting about how sick I had been. Gloria lived upstairs and a few units over. Bomber was her fat neutered tomcat. Gloria and I had dated once or twice but nothing ever came of it and we were just friends now.

  "Thanks. You're a doll.” She hung up abruptly, like always.

  And suddenly I realized I was sitting up in bed, awake and fully alert. Not only alert, but I felt good, as if laying there in bed for two days had allowed me to save up all the energy I would normally have expended during that time period. In fact, I felt better than I had in years. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, ready to fight wildcats or anything else that got in the way of a good steak.

  Or had the whole thing been a dream? No, my bedside clock told me that it hadn't been. Besides, I was still fully dressed except for my shoes. Three different urges were suddenly vying for my attention. All at once I felt the need to relieve myself; I was as hungry as a starving mountain lion; and I wanted to change clothes and take a shower. Competing with those urges was a roaring curiosity about what kind of disease had made me lay in bed like a corpse for forty eight hours then wake up feeling great.

  The bathroom won. I expected to have to piss for ten minutes after all that time but it was just a normal stream. The hunger was something else. I nuked a full size pizza and ate it with more than a quart of milk, all that was left in the jug. While I was eating, I was thinking about my illness, or whatever the hell it had been, and the contrast with how good I felt now that it was apparently over. It was like those few days had shaved five years off my life. It made me want to get out and do something for a change instead of staying home and reading or spending countless hours on the computer, corresponding with people I'd never met, surfing for the odd pieces of information in the science and technology fields I liked to read about or just wandering randomly around the web.

  I showered and dressed as if I were going out for a drink but first I decided to see what had been happening in the world while I was in bed. No, first I needed to check my voice mail. There was nothing important there. One old girlfriend had called asking about a mutual acquaintance. Marsha Pells, a busybody from the lab was wanting the full story about what I had fallen into and there was one call from a local television station asking for an interview. I didn't return any of them.

  The sense of well being continued. At first I was constantly aware of it like the feeling I used to get back in the days when I had occasionally sampled speed, before figuring out that it is an insidious killer. After a while it retreated into the background and was absorbed into all my other sensations and ruminations. Yet it persisted in the sense that I knew I had more energy than normal and felt more alive than I usually did. It is really hard to describe to someone twenty or thirty years younger than myself-I can plainly remember always feeling like I did now back when I was that age, barring a hangover or illness. But in those days, it was such a normal part of the self that I never noticed. It's only when the aches and pains of advancing age start creeping into the crevices of your body that you begin to remember what you had-and will never have again.

  The local news station didn't mention a thing about the contretemps in the Emergency room, much less the lab. I wondered why, then remembered that it had occurred three days ago. Damn! I needed to get caught up in the world. I switched over to national news on one of the cable networks. Nothing there either. Last resort. I turned my desktop computer on and began searching. Finally I found it, or what I thought was it. Just a simple few lines about an escaped terrorist who had been captured at “a local hospital” and then had escaped again. It didn't even give a description, which I thought was awfully funny. On the other hand, I was already beginning to suspect a cover up of some kind, and that would fit in with the lack of details in the story. I didn't worry about what the government might be trying to conceal. Ever since 9/ll, what little honesty was left in government had mostly disappeared in my opinion. And nothing I could do was about to change anything. Frankly, I just didn't want to get involved. If I harbored a disease that was going to kill me there was little I could do about it. At my age I was looking forward to retirement and had already given notice at the hospital that I would be leaving on my sixty third birthday. After that, I didn't know what I would do. Maybe try one more time to write a novel, an on-again, off-again prospect I had harbored most of my life. After a while I put the computer to bed and went out for the afternoon, not sure what I wanted to do but knowing I needed to stretch my legs a bit and get out of my apartment for a while.

  * * * *

  A quiet bar is always a good place to sit and think. I went to my usual watering hole, a place that played old time rock and western songs, but not loudly. I took a table in a corner and tipped the bar tender to bring my drinks when I signaled and otherwise leave me alone. For an hour or two I had a serious debate with myself. Should I turn myself in and find out if I was contagious? I didn't want to spread a disease around if I had one, and the reaction of the government agents certainly indicated something of the sort. On the other hand, no one had specifically told me or anyone else that what he had was contagious; rather, they had acted more as if the blood from that patient was something to fear, and if that were the case, I couldn't hurt anyone but myself. The liquor seemed to go down better and rest easier once inside me than usual, which made me drink more than I normally would have. After a certain point, it affected me hardly at all and after finishing my third strong rum and coke I began to wonder. Ordinarily, I would have had a buzz on; possibly enough of one to boost my courage enough to approach one of the two likely looking middle aged women sitting on bar stools. Sex might not be my top priority any more, but that day I caught myself taking an interest.

  I ordered one more drink, hoping it would lower my inhibitions a bit more. It didn't. I still felt the same. Diluted liquor? It happens some times. A bartender will grab a shot from a bottle while the boss isn't looking and replace it with an equal measure of water. As long as you don't trade more than two or three shots per bottle, it's usually not noticeable. I should have felt something more than I did though, even if I was drinking from a diluted supply. I gave up and started to leave.

  What occurred next was my first inkling that whatever had happened to me had produced a change, a striking one that I wouldn't have believed had someone told me in advan
ce.

  As I passed the blond sitting at the bar nursing a mixed drink, I got a sudden impression of disappointment, like the realization that an item on a shopping list had somehow been overlooked. It was vague but definite enough to make me hesitate, wondering whether it was something that had popped into my mind or had come from an outside source.

  "Leaving so early?” The blond asked, somewhat wistfully. Her voice was husky but pleasant. She was a little overweight but not bad looking other than a tiredness in her face, maybe from playing the dating game too many times and suffering too many disappointments. She wasn't even much beyond normal in the weight department considering her age, somewhere in the forties I thought. She was wearing green slacks and a lime colored blouse one size too small. Her breasts pushed at it, probably the effect she intended.

  "I was thinking about it,” I said in response to her question about leaving.

  "Sit down and have one more with me.” It was as overt a provisional sexual invitation as you can get without coming outright and asking directly.

  I could sense her interest in me. It was like a very fuzzy picture in my mind, but definite for all that. Was it coming from her? No, I didn't think so. I was imagining it. Or maybe those four drinks were having an effect on me after all. I decided that staying for one more wouldn't hurt. It wasn't as though I was over the hill or that bad looking myself for my age. I still had most of my hair even if it was gray. Most of my teeth had grown there naturally and the lines in my face weren't too bad yet.

  Her name was Margie-Sue or something like that, one of those female double names that are typically southern. I don't even remember now. I sat and talked with her for an hour. She made it pretty obvious that she was interested in more than conversation and my body was certainly urging me to do something other than talk, but in the end I couldn't make myself do it, not after remembering the way those government guys had gone crazy over the blood, and after thinking about how ill I had been. There was just too much of a chance I might be passing on something I would be sorry about later. In the end I paid for our drinks and left without even asking for her phone number. Even if whatever I had gotten could be passed only through blood transfer, I still couldn't be that blasé about the possibility of giving someone else a disease—if I had one that is. Right then I felt fine, but HIV patients felt fine too, until they began having symptoms sometimes years later. Well, if I had something, it was too late to worry about it now. I turned to another concern.

  I thought I could sense changes taking place inside my body and mind, changes that upset me and roiled my imagination like an overload of good pot, not that I had smoked any for more years than I cared to admit. And I began connecting the dots too. The sick man in the ER, the accidental stabbing of my wrist with the syringe filled with his blood, highly abnormal results from the blood cell counter and last-and most bizarre-the remembrance of those Homeland Security Agents bursting into the lab with drawn weapons. Now that I looked back on it, I knew what had been bothering me about them. They had been in a goddamned all-out panic! I had no doubt now that they would have shot me down in cold blood if that was what it took to get that blood back. I drove back home and said a bad word because someone had my parking spot and I had to drive back to the visitor's area before finding a space for my car.

  The next morning I got up, still feeling great. I showered and dressed while drinking my first cup of coffee. I decided to go out to eat somewhere rather than bother cooking just for myself. I carried my jean jacket with me and put it on while walking toward my car, hoping I could remember where I had parked.

  No problem. It was just where I thought it was, another unusual occurrence. I am notorious about parking somewhere then being unable to find my car again. I have no sense of direction, or to put it in the new parlance, I'm “directionally challenged". I got into my car, took my little Glock forty caliber automatic out of the glove compartment and shoved it into the side pocket of my jean jacket. I had gotten a license to carry ten years ago and picked the cut down version of the Glock .45 chambered for .40 because it fit so conveniently in the side pocket of a jean jacket, my normal attire, worn over a western shirt and jeans and low heeled boots. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the nearest McDonald's. I was as hungry as a Kodiak bear at the start of the salmon runs. McDonald's may not be the best, but they're fast and that was what I was after.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The new sense of well being not only didn't wear off, it grew more intense slowly but surely. A youngster probably wouldn't even have noticed because they feel like that all the time as I well remembered, but it was new all over again for me. It got me to thinking of my retirement. Maybe I would do some more traveling while I still could. That was odd in itself because I had lost interest in seeing new places years ago, unlike my younger self.

  Back then I always had itchy feet, perhaps inherited from some pioneer ancestors who kept moving ever farther toward the west back when the continent was still largely unexplored. That probably contributed to my two divorces. I was always wanting to move on to another job or to a different part of the country and neither of my ex-wives liked to travel. There was no issue from either marriage and I had reached early retirement age this year so there wasn't any reason I couldn't quit work if I wanted to. My social security check, supplemented by the retirement check from spending twenty years in the army would support me without a lot of difficulty. I had some savings, though nothing to brag about. I even kept some cash and gold hidden in my apartment, probably a bad idea but I did it anyway. The terrorist war wasn't getting any better and nothing much was being done about some of the Muslim countries that were developing or already had nuclear weapons. I had read that the terrorists even had cyberweapons, an even scarier thought in a way. It was enough to impel me to keep some of my savings at home rather than in a bank. If a cyberweapon ever took down our financial house of cards, I wanted to be able to lay my hands on some money right then because I would head north immediately, into the mountains of Arkansas where my folks originated from. My brother and I still had a little land up there, inherited from Mom and Dad.

  The way my body seemed to have more energy and fewer aches and pains made me briefly consider postponing my retirement, but it was only a thought. By the time I finished the other few days of my week off and got ready to start the week on, I had made up my mind. One more week and I was gone. I might not have gone back at all except that I wanted to have a look at that blood I had tucked away in a rack in the back of the cooler. It should still be there. It took an act of congress to get that damned fridge cleaned and certainly no one on the opposite shift ever did it. And in the back of my mind was the thought that I should do nothing unusual, nothing that would draw the attention of those government agents. I didn't want to be quarantined. Besides, I wondered if they were really from Homeland Security. They had acted more like some of the military spooks I had run across in the army, field agents of the kind who had authority to settle situations without referring to the home office. Whatever, I didn't want to tangle with them again.

  * * * *

  "Hi, Mike,” Cindy Crawford (and boy didn't she take some kidding about that name) greeted me when I came in that night.

  "Hey, Cindy. How's business?"

  "Quiet, for a Saturday. So far. But you missed all the excitement while you were off. Homeland Security came in after you left and made us sterilize the whole lab, including the lines and tubing of all the instruments. What a mess. We got so far behind that all of us had to work overtime two days in a row. Maybe you'll get lucky and have a quiet night and not cause us any more trouble like that.” She threw the last remark at me with a friendly grin.

  I laughed. “Not likely.” Business would surely pick up before the night was over, what with the drunks all trying to drive home with one too many under their belts, or more likely, more than one too many. And then would come the family violence from hubby spending the paycheck on booze and gambling. You could almos
t predict a wreck or a stabbing or shooting and having to cross match blood for a transfusion as a result, on any given Friday or Saturday night. It was all part of the job though, and my decision to retire made the anticipation nothing to worry about.

  Cindy was the holdover from the dayshift who covered until I came on, a duty taken in rotation by the day crew. I would then take it until morning. She left as I was setting up the coffee pot. After a quick check of the lab to see what was pending and to make sure the instruments had been calibrated and that I had plenty of supplies of various sorts to last the night, I headed for the cooler. I was anxious to see just what was in that damned blood.

  It was still there, just as I expected. I took it from the rack, double-checked to be certain it was the one I had saved and walked over to the hematology island where the blood counter and other paraphernalia of the hematology department lived. I didn't bother with the counter; I already knew how weird those results were. What I wanted was to see the little red and white blood cells under a microscope.

  It took only a few minutes to make the slide, let it dry, and set in the automatic stainer. After that I waited impatiently while it slowly wound its way through the staining process. It only takes a few minutes but it seemed like forever before it was finished. In general the red cells usually all look more or less alike, barring a really bad blood dyscrasia, but the white blood cells come in five special classifications. The proportion and maturity of those cells can tell a doctor (or a lab tech) a hell of a lot about what is going on in the body.