by R. A. Hakok
The count reaches eighty-nine and somewhere off in the darkness he hears the click as the locks disengage and a soft groan as the door is opened. Across from him the girl has moved to the front of her cage and is looking out through the bars. He shuffles back into the corner and listens. The doctor is coming first; the heels she wears click hollowly on the hard floor. He can hear the soldier’s boots scuffing the concrete in her wake. The beam from the flashlight dances between the rows of cages. He keeps his eyes open, making an effort not to squint. He does not want the doctor to know the light bothers him.
She stops in front of his cage. Her face appears in front of the bars as she bends down to look in but it’s a perfunctory examination and for once he is grateful. She turns around to face the girl. The soldier catches up and stands beside her, the stick held loosely by his side. Johnny 99 wishes the girl would go to the back of her cage like she’s supposed to, but she doesn’t. She just sits there holding the bars.
‘Do I need to have the Corporal place you in restraints?’
The girl considers this for a moment and then shakes her head.
‘Good. He told me you refused to take your medicine yesterday.’
The girl looks up at the soldier.
‘That’s not how I would have described it. We had a misunderstanding over his use of the cattle prod.’
The doctor tsks her disapproval.
‘Yes, he is something of a blunt instrument, aren’t you Corporal?’
‘Ma’am.’
She turns to the soldier and holds out her hand. He passes her the stick. Her fingers slide along the shaft, all the way to the ugly metal prongs that protrude from the end. The girl doesn’t move but she watches the doctor closely.
‘They are such ugly things, aren’t they? Do you know we found them here? I suppose the powers that be – the powers that were I should say – anticipated a certain amount of unrest, even among their appointed representatives. They have proved quite useful, though. Those infected with the ferrovirus are quite susceptible to the effects of electricity, far more so than the rest of us.’
‘Was it you, who gave it to me?’
‘Yes, dear, and no doubt you feel aggrieved. What you need to understand is that I really had no alternative. We are running very short on time. The electromagnetic pulse Kane thought would destroy the virus did not have that effect. I could have told him of course, had he thought to consult me. It is so much more resilient than he ever gave it credit for. But then the man was always such a buffoon. The only real surprise is that he was capable of conceiving a plan of such scope in the first place.’
The doctor regards the baton a moment longer and then hands it back to the soldier.
‘But I digress. The net result of course is that the infected were not permanently disabled; they have merely been temporarily incapacitated. At some point, I suspect not very long from now, they will begin to wake from their slumber. And when that happens there will be nowhere for you or Gabriel or anyone else who might still be alive out there to hide. So you see my dear, in a sense your fate was already sealed. I just speeded the process up a little in the interest of finding a cure for all of us.’
The girl’s brow furrows as the doctor explains this.
‘You didn’t come down here to give me that speech so you could feel better about what you’ve done.’
‘Quite right dear, well said. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? The reason I am here is Gabriel.’
‘Does he know?’
‘That you have become infected? Yes. He thinks you accidentally contracted the virus while trespassing in my laboratory. I know dear, another awful deception; no doubt you are horrified. But if I could just have your attention for a few more minutes; this is really rather important. I have developed several prototypes of an antivirus but unfortunately I am lacking subjects on which to test them. If it were not for Sergeant Hicks’ intervention Gabriel would already be down here with you. But the Sergeant has convinced me that your young man can be more valuable to us on the outside. I have therefore agreed to give him a short trial. He has left this morning with the other men to try and find a suitable subject for my experiments.’
‘What do you mean, ‘a suitable subject for your experiments’?’
‘Why, a live infected, of course.’
The expression on the girl’s face doesn’t change but Johnny 99 thinks he sees her grip on the bars tighten. If the doctor notices she shows no sign of caring.
‘As long as Gabriel proves himself useful he won’t have to join you down here. He has however insisted on seeing you, and against my better judgment I’m considering having you brought out to him, assuming of course that he returns. Would you like that, Magdalene?’
This seems to take the girl by surprise. She looks up at the doctor.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. You will need to maintain the fiction of how you came to be here, of course. Do you understand?’
The girl nods.
‘Very well. Corporal Truckle will come down to prepare you. You will do exactly as he says or the next time you see Gabriel he will be in the cage next to you. Is that clear?’
The girl nods her head again but doesn’t say anything. The doctor is about to turn away when she speaks.
‘Can you do it?’
‘Do what, dear?’
‘Find a cure for Kane’s virus.’
The doctor pauses for a long moment, and when she finally answers it seems to Johnny 99 that she is speaking to herself as much as to the girl.
‘It is a truly remarkable piece of engineering; so incredibly tenacious. You only have to look at how little time it took to supplant us as the dominant organism on this planet.’ She looks down at the girl. ‘But yes, given enough time and an adequate supply of subjects on which to test my work, I can find a cure.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because the virus isn’t Kane’s, my dear. It’s mine.’
*
WE REACH BLACKSBURG the following morning. We pick up signs for the hospital long before we hit the town. We follow them up a winding access road. Cars mount the sidewalk at haphazard angles; others sit abandoned in the middle of the road, their trunks agape like startled mouths.
Stonewall Hospital waits for us atop a low promontory. What must once have been a large, imposing structure now lies in ruin. One entire wing seems to have crumbled under its own weight; to the west it ends abruptly in a mound of broken concrete and twisted rebar. On the other side things seem to have fared only slightly better; the roofline dips alarmingly at various points as whatever was bracing it there has succumbed. Rows of dark windows march off towards the last remaining corner, staring down at us as we approach.
I look up at it as we approach. Marv always said we had to stay clear of places like this, so I’ve never set foot inside one. I’ve read enough from the newspaper articles I used to collect to imagine what they must have been like though. The hospitals were where the virus cases were taken, at least at first, before anyone knew what we were dealing with. Later they would work it out, but by then of course it was too late. There were reports the military took to targeting them in the end, in a last desperate attempt to halt the spread. I can’t say if that was true. I only know that if it was it didn’t work.
Hicks leads us towards a tall atrium that juts from the center. The steel uprights have buckled and now they list drunkenly, the large glass panes that would have once completed that part of the structure long since released from their frames. The parking lot’s full, a sea of humped gray shapes resting silent under a blanket of snow. We have to pick our way through. As we get closer I can see an ambulance has crashed into the entrance, coming to rest half-in, half-out of the lobby. The rear doors hang open. A gurney that looks like it might have been ejected from the back pokes out of the snow nearby.
We unsnap our snowshoes and make our way in. Hicks goes first. The Viking follows, pressing himself up against the ambulance’s scabrous pan
el sides as he squeezes past. I’m beginning to wonder whether Jax even realizes there’s been a virus; maybe to him the world seems just like how it’s always been. Ortiz goes next, but at least he shows the good sense to give the contaminated vehicle a wider berth.
I hang back. I’ve been preparing myself for this but now I hesitate. The fear of what we will find in here rises up, coiling around my insides, settling in my stomach like ice water.
I take a deep breath and step through. Inside it’s darker; I lift my goggles onto my forehead and look around. A sign on the wall says to use the hand sanitizer provided, but the dispenser’s been ripped from the wall and is nowhere in sight. Over in the far corner a soft drinks machine lies on its side, its front smashed, the contents long since removed.
The soldiers have already taken off their backpacks and set them on the ground. I shuck mine off too. Hicks removes his gloves and unzips his parka. He draws the pistol from the holster on his hip and starts rotating the cylinder, checking each of the chambers in turn. When he’s done he steps over to a directory that’s hanging from the wall behind reception.
Ortiz draws a long black stick from his pack, like one of the billy clubs the Guardians used to carry in Eden, except for the two ugly prongs protruding from the end. Hicks told me the furies don’t care much for electricity; a single jolt should be enough to knock one out long enough for Jax to bag it. As I watch Ortiz holds the baton up and thumbs a switch on the handle. An arc of blue light jumps between the prongs. He looks at me and then over to Hicks.
‘Remind me again why this ain’t the kid’s job?’
Hicks doesn’t take his eyes off the wall.
‘Gabe’ll get his turn. But first he’s going to watch how you do it.’
He turns to me.
‘You ready?’
I nod, mostly because right now I don’t trust myself to speak. I sling the rifle off my shoulder and pull the handle back to load a round into the chamber, like he showed me.
‘Alright. Just keep your eyes peeled and try not to shoot anything you don’t mean to.’
I tell myself I can do that.
‘Jax, you got the bag?’ The Viking’s huge paw finally emerges from his backpack gripping a large sack made of thick black plastic.
‘Okay then. Let’s get this done.’
We follow Ortiz down a long hallway into darkness, our footfalls the only sound in the cold silence. I can hear my heart hammering, beating wild inside my ribcage. I check each doorway and alcove we pass, my eyes darting into the shadows, searching for whatever might be waiting for us there.
At last the corridor ends, and another runs off at right angles. Ortiz stops to get his bearings. There’s a map stuck to the wall next to me, above a drinking fountain. I shoulder the rifle and dig in my pocket for the flashlight. The little dynamo whirs as I turn the stubby plastic handle, but before the bulb has the chance to warm Hicks growls at me to turn it off.
Up ahead Ortiz must have figured it out because he holds the stick up and signals left. We follow him around the corner. I see him reach inside his parka and a second later a cone of red light appears in front of him, casting the corridor in shades of crimson and black.
A bank of elevators appears out of the gloom. As we approach I can see that the doors of the last one are open. I’m not in control of the flashlight so it takes me a moment to figure out why. The body of what once was a man is holding them open. He’s lying there inside his rotting clothes, all shriveled and drawn, what little remains of his flesh cloven along the bones. His ligaments have dried taut as wires, curling him up into a tight ball. We step around him and continue on.
The beam from the flashlight settles on an abandoned gurney ahead of us. It’s sitting at an angle across the corridor by what looks like a nurse’s station. Something that might once have been a woman lies slumped over it, little more than the trellis of a person now, the hide stretched over the bones all dried and shrunken inside what’s left of her uniform. The wheels of the gurney are locked. Their screeched complaint echoes down the corridor as Ortiz pushes it out of the way.
We make our way further into the littered darkness. There are more bodies, strewn about like so much flotsam and jetsam. Sometimes they lie by themselves, other times they huddle together, a frieze of heads and limbs and torsos, so many that we have to pick our way between them. All their faces are alike, the same rictus grins and gray, rotting teeth and hollow eyes.
*
THE HALLWAY ENDS at a door with a sign for a staircase above it. Ortiz opens it with the toe of his boot and points the flashlight into the crack. He peers through for a long while and then pushes it open and disappears. Hicks follows him.
We make our way down the concrete stairwell, the sound of our boots echoing and rebounding around us. It gets colder as we descend; every time Ortiz exhales now I see his breath hanging red in the air in front of him. Hicks pulls off his liners and starts slowly opening and closing his hands, flexing his fingers.
Eventually we reach the bottom. Ortiz opens another door and steps through. We follow him into a long corridor, this one mostly free of bodies. More doors lead off to the left and right. We come to a section where the wall’s blown out. Jagged fragments of metal, what looks like the remains of an oxygen tank, have embedded themselves in the concrete. Other pieces lie scattered across the floor. They clink against each other as Ortiz moves them out of the way with his boot.
Up ahead the corridor opens into what seems to have been a makeshift ward. On both sides cots stretch off into darkness. Ortiz stops and raises the stick in the air and we wait while he slowly scans from left to right with the flashlight. It looks like there was a fire here. The paint on the walls has blistered and the floor and ceiling are covered in a thick layer of soot. As the beam slides over the beds I can see that the bodies that lie there are just so much charred meat, their blackened skin stretched upon the bones, their faces split and shrunken on their skulls. The air down here is stale, spent, and for once I’m thankful; the smells that remain are mercifully faint.
We move forward again. To the right another row of cots, this time untouched by flame. The bodies that lie strapped to the beds are different from the ones we saw in the corridor upstairs. Scraps of clothing hang in rotten tatters from their cadaverous frames, but as the beam from Ortiz’s flashlight slides over them I can see that underneath the skin is the color of the snow outside, and unblemished by decay. They look just like they’re sleeping. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, gathering what remains of my courage around me. When I open them again Hicks has already moved on ahead.
The corridor ends at a set of large double doors underneath a sign that says Radiology. A glass panel, reinforced with criss-crossed safety wire, sits in the center of each. Ortiz holds his flashlight up and peers through for a long time before he finally goes in.
The first door we come to is ajar. A small plaque in the center says Darkroom. Ortiz pushes it with his boot and it creaks back. He points the flashlight inside. The beam slips over a series of shallow stainless steel tanks. Racks hanging haphazardly from the ceiling cast strange shadows against the walls. When he’s satisfied there’s nothing hiding among them Ortiz motions with the baton and we continue on.
We make our way slowly down the corridor, checking each room as we go. As we get to the end a large steel sliding door stretches across one wall from floor to ceiling. Ortiz shines the flashlight across the metal. Large leprous patches spread across it, almost obscuring a yellow and black radiation warning sign. A panel to one side that looks like it would once have lit up reads X-Ray In Use. Ortiz tries to slide the door out of the way but it’s slipped off its track on one side and won’t budge. Hicks turns to Jax.
‘Well don’t just stand there. Go on and help him.’
The blond giant steps forward and bends down, slipping his fingers under the door. It groans in protest as he takes its weight and then there’s a loud metallic clang that echoes along the hallway as he lets it fa
ll back onto its track. He grips one edge with a huge glove and pulls. The runners screech in protest but inch by inch the door slides back until there’s a gap large enough for a person to fit through.
Hicks’ fingers move closer to the pistol on his hip. He tells me to be ready so I press the rifle to my cheek. I take a deep breath to try and steady the barrel but my hands are shaking too much for that to work.
Ortiz picks up the flashlight and shines it inside. On the other side of the door there’s a large, tiled room. Some of the tiles have peeled away, revealing a dark surface that shines dully as the light slides over it. A table where people would have had their X-rays taken waits in the center; even from here I can see how badly corroded the metal is. There’s a cubicle in the far corner from where the machine would have been controlled. The glass there is broken; it gives back fractured carmine images as Ortiz points the beam at it. After a moment he steps inside, continuing to sweep the room. I wait, holding my breath. My insides feel like they’ve been scooped out and replaced with Reddi-wip. But there’s nothing. He turns around and motions to Hicks that we can move on.
As I step back to let him out I catch a glimpse of something slip from behind the operator booth. Ortiz has his back to it; he hasn’t noticed yet. My eyes widen and for a second I just stand, paralyzed with fear, the gun heavy and useless in my hands. Hicks must see it now too, or maybe he just reads what’s written on my face. If he’s shocked he doesn’t show it; his expression doesn’t change that I can tell. But then I reckon Hicks is the kind of person who does his freaking and starting mostly on the inside. By the time I open my mouth to stammer a warning he’s already shoving me out of the way. The hands that were empty a moment ago now hold a pistol.
