by Beth Hersant
Juanita swayed a little on her feet. She really did not feel well, but then that was normal, right? The doctor at the hospital had started her on a course of Imovax rabies shots and the leaflet on Imovax said that she might experience headaches, dizziness, nausea and muscle pain — all of which she had. It was better than getting rabies, though. She shuddered at the thought.
At that moment a man in an orange and yellow mask ran up to her and gave her a gentle nudge with one of his horns. She’d been lost in thought and so it startled her and she gaped up into the face of a demon. It had the standard array of horns and tusks, but what disturbed her was the blank chasm of its eyes and the mouth full of wickedly sharp teeth. That is what she had seen in Manso that night. Nothing behind those eyes — no mind, no soul. But his fangs had dripped white foam. The man danced away from her and she followed him.
“Manso? Venga!” She was convinced now that she was looking at her dog. But those eyes and teeth — he was infected! He was dangerous! No! She had to stop him, to get him by the scruff of his neck and drag him home.
He approached a blond tourist wearing a faded Rip Curl t-shirt. Afraid that her dog might bite someone else, Juanita leapt on him. She was a small woman, but her momentum bore him to the ground. And that triggered it. The pursuit, the leap, the contact of bringing the man down and she was clawing at the mask, knocking it aside to expose bare flesh beneath. It was Pablo Vasquez, her handyman, but she did not recognize him as she bit into the rough skin of his cheek. Pablo screamed and threw Juanita from him. She did not even pause. Back on her feet, she lunged at the blond tourist, who threw her hands out defensively in front of her. Juanita bit her on the hand. The woman’s boyfriend intervened and Juanita raked her nails along his arm like an angry cat. Then she was running, dashing through the crowd of visitors, biting and scratching.
Having used a festival mask to walk unrecognized through the village, Dr. Aaron Pickman watched it all unfold. He noted the bandage on Juanita’s arm and the similarity between her behavior and that of the infected monkeys. It was proof of zoonotic transfer. The disease could be passed to humans. No. His mind rebelled at the concept. No. The woman was crazy; she needed a shrink and maybe some anti-psychotic meds, that’s all.
But whatever the cause, the blood-streaked wretch was bearing down on a small child, a little girl with dark hair and big, startled eyes. Pickman’s arm shot out, his fist connecting with the side of Juanita’s head. As the child’s mother scooped her up and ran off through the crowd, Pickman swore and shook out his hand. He was not a brawler and he’d made the fist wrong, curling the fingers over his thumb. Distracted by the pain, he did not see the woman hop to her feet. In another instant, she’d bitten him on the forearm. Then Sheriff Manolito was there, tackling her to the ground and Aaron Pickman slipped away unseen.
Nine tourists and one local man were treated at the hospital for bites and scratches. The physicians there gave them each a course of antibiotics and a tetanus booster. Juanita Pimental, clad now in a straight jacket, lay sedated in a private room under guard. Doctors had ordered a psych evaluation for nine a.m. the following morning.
While Abran Manolito took statements from the victims, Aaron Pickman snuck up the back steps of Rosemalia’s Boarding House and let himself into Travis’s room. With Montgomery still in intensive care, this was the best place to hide until he could bribe a local fisherman to ferry him off the island.
He surveyed the room: it was a mess. The sheets were hanging off the bed, the place smelled of booze and stale cigarettes, and on the floor in the general vicinity of a clothes hamper lay a mound of hideous Hawaiian shirts, cutoff shorts and sweaty Y fronts. But at least it was quiet. He walked to the ensuite bathroom and ran his injured arm under the cold tap. Then he dumped a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the bite.
“Fuck shit fuck,” he hissed as the solution foamed and burned.
He patted his arm dry and then sat down at Travis’s desk to dress the wound. On the wall in front of him was a canvas picture of one of Banksy’s paintings. In it a monkey stood with hunched shoulders and fingers hooked into claws. Its face was inscrutable, you couldn’t make out its eyes, but it wore a sandwich board sign on its chest that read: “Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge.”
Chapter Nine
Beginning of the End
“…vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No crime, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I call over the frightful catalogue of my deeds, I cannot believe that I am he whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“Here, truly, was something that, in Melville’s fateful words, ‘stabs us from behind with thought of our own annihilation.’”
Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
A clatter in the room woke him. Travis Montgomery jolted awake to find Pickman dragging a chair up to his bed.
“Sorry, tripped over the chair,” Aaron mumbled as he collapsed into it.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, you know, the usual…”
“That bad?” Travis said wryly.
“You were the only one I … I … could talk to. You can … yeah … you you can fix this.”
Confused, Montgomery switched on the light. He stared at Dr. Aaron Pickman — if indeed it was him. The figure in front of him was thinner and a filthy Hawaiian shirt hung from his bony frame.
“You shaved your head?”
“I’m in disguise,” the thing in the chair laughed. “On the lamb from our good sheriff, Maa…” He stumbled over the name for a full minute and finally settled for “whatshisface.”
“Ok…” Montgomery continued to stare in disbelief. The skin on his boss’s face was a dingy grey that clung to every bulge and cleft of his skull. The terms came back to Travis from medical school: the zygomatic bone of the cheek, the mental foramen of the chin, the sphenoid bone of the temples — all stood out in horrible, skeletal relief. And his eyes, underscored by the heavier grey of dark circles, were utterly blank. They’re the open eyes of a dead man, he thought, or the eyes of a Thing, an It. Why did his mind seize on those words? The form in front of him, though emaciated and sick, was undeniably human. He knew this man. But still, the word “thing” asserted itself. Montgomery could not shake the feeling that Pickman was no longer Pickman. He’d been hollowed out somehow and the fact that he still in some ways looked like Pickman made it all the worse. That terrible collision of the familiar and the wholly alien unnerved Travis and made his exhausted heart race.
“I need…,” the Pickman-thing paused to wipe a line of drool away from his lips with the back of one bony hand. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Aaron, what’s going on?”
“The New Rabies — people can get it,” Aaron whispered and held up his bandaged arm.
“What?”
Pickman handed him a notebook. “It’s all here. You have to stop this.”
“What … wait,” Travis stammered, but the doctor was already tottering for the door.
“Please, Travis. Stop this.” Then he was gone.
Travis examined the journal and realized that it was his. The cover was black with a message emblazoned on it in white block capitals: “Dear Scientists, thank you for giving the world Levitra, Viagra and Cialis. Now could you stop playing with your dicks and give us something for cancer?” Yeah, it was his notebook all right, but now it was a bulging, tatty mess and page after page was filled with text. He glanced at the clock. It was three a.m. He started to read…
I was bitten today by a woman who had gone berserk and was attacking people on the street. While I do not know what her mental health status was prior to the incident, she was probably suff
ering from nothing more remarkable than a psychotic break. The odds that the episode is linked to the escape of test subjects 3, 6, 9, and 13 are minute. Hence, I’m not even sure why I’m recording the incident here.
Perhaps it is just a way to fill the hours. Sheriff Manolito’s interference has barred all possible exits from the island and necessitated the destruction of the lab — there were enough evident violations of Law 154 there to get me five to fifteen in a Puerto Rican jail. I cannot afford it. It is vital that the work continues. Yes, the four remaining test subjects are erratic and violent, but THEY ARE ALIVE. They were infected with rabies and yet they live. I am convinced they hold the answer I’ve been searching for and, when I find it, the tens of thousands of lives saved will vindicate the methods I used to develop a cure.
Edward Jenner gave James Phipps the cowpox virus believing that it would render the boy immune to a more deadly smallpox infection. Then, to test his theory, he inoculated that eight-year-old child with smallpox over twenty times. He exposed a human child to a deadly pathogen to test his vaccine and is hailed as the “father of immunology.” I, on the other hand, am stuck hiding here in Montgomery’s flophouse because I experimented on a few monkeys.
So yes, the work will continue. The capture of the escaped test subjects is paramount, and I have set Travis’s alarm clock for 4:30 tomorrow morning so I can get up and resume the hunt. In the meantime, I will consolidate all research data that I collected before I destroyed the lab. The USB hard drive taped to the back cover of this book holds all information available on the development of the Néos Lyssavirus, the New Rabies…
Travis flipped to the back to find a thin memory stick taped there. That was good. It should contain all the information he’d need. The journal then went on to cover what Montgomery already knew: the purpose and methodology of the experiment, the many failures, and the unprecedented results they achieved with J. Fred Muggs. The next entry reads:
3 a.m.
Can’t sleep. My head was buzzing with all the logistical problems I’ll face once I’ve got the test subjects back. Mind you, I don’t even need them all; Subject 13 (the one Travis calls J. Fred Muggs) would be enough to continue the work. Furthermore, one small rhesus macaque would be easier to smuggle off the island.
I think the stress of the situation is finally catching up with me. My head is pounding. I don’t get migraines, but I imagine this is what one feels like. The pressure behind my eyes is incredible and my head seems to throb with every heartbeat. I took aspirin and Tylenol and washed them down with scotch. But that hasn’t helped. My throat is so sore that choking down the whiskey felt like swallowing broken glass. I’ve been working nonstop and I seem to have run myself into the ground. I’ve picked up a bug. Friggin typical. I don’t have time for this — there is still too much to do.
11:30 a.m.
Slept through the alarm — God, I’m so tired. The headache and sore throat are worse and I’m now running a fever of 103°F. It’s making me nauseous. I’ve finally decided that it’s time to admit defeat and just acknowledge that I’m sick. There won’t be any hunt for Muggs today and so I’ll crawl back into bed.
4:30 p.m.
Dozed for most of today, but was aware of the pain and the fever even in my sleep. I’m more tired now than I was before. But I’m restless too. I feel anxious although there is no immediate or discernible cause. It’s a good thing Travis isn’t here. He worries too much and would be banging on right now about the possibility of zoonotic transfer. No. One woman’s psychotic outburst does not indicate that New Rabies has jumped into the human population. I’m run down, yes, and sick. But it makes sense after that cold, wet hunt through the forest. I must be getting better, though, because as I write this I seem to have more energy. I feel I need to go do something. I’ll sneak out for a while. Maybe some fresh air and a little food will help.
Travis groaned aloud. It was a phenomenon he’d encountered often but could never quite understand: the stupidity of smart men. Why the hell didn’t Pickman seek help? Yes, the sheriff was gunning for him and yes, jail time was a distinct possibility for them both. But New Rabies is a disease we know nothing about and for which there is no cure. And still the man, a doctor, did not ask for medical assistance.
Was it guilt or denial or just that he could not bring himself to abandon the research? That was it, wasn’t it? Travis had tried to set the world record for how much coke a man could snort before his heart exploded, but Aaron was the true addict. Aaron Pickman would continue using his drug of choice — his work — even as he lay dying from it. It was an intensity of vision that was at once awe-inspiring and frightening. It could produce great things. Writer Ashley Stanford noted that a man, obsessed, would “push harder, longer, and with greater devotion…it is the person with the obsessive personality who is going to make the great discoveries.” And Travis had believed that it would produce great things and they would find the cure. How could that white-hot focus not reach its goal? But Pickman had become focused to the exclusion of all else. He couldn’t assess the risks he was running or see how needlessly cruel his actions were. He was so hell-bent on finding the answer that he didn’t care what rule, what law, what life he had to crush underfoot to reach it. This wasn’t inspiring devotion to a noble cause, this was a relentless pursuit that ground everything in its path to dust. Travis had once believed that his boss was, in the words of Lovecraft, a “benevolent fanatic.” But he wasn’t. He was a monster, a ghoul. And that thing, (to quote Lovecraft again) that “shivering gargoyle” that came and sat here and handed him this notebook was just the final, physical manifestation of an inner madness that had been there all along.
Travis’s head started to spin and his breath came in ragged gasps. He was getting too upset. He needed to calm down and view the problem with a clinical detachment. Only then could he figure out how to proceed. He took several minutes to quiet himself and then read on.
11 p.m.
Things are spiraling out of control. today I …
Let’s start’s where I left off and take the sequence of events chronologicly. Maybe then I can make some sense of it all.
My walk through the village today was stupid. What was I thinking? There was nowhere I needed to go and yet to risk exposure and arrest … why? and it is clear now that I am not well enuff for even that level of exertion. First of all, to be walking around in this heat and the glaring carribbean sun with a fever was madness. I couldn’t stand the light. It hurt and made me angry and so I darted down a shadow-y alleyway and right in front of a car. the blare of its horn hit like a sledgehammer. And I found myself crouching by a dumpster being violently sick. It was the kind of vomiting that I hate when you just can’t stop and have lost all control over your body and feel in that moment like you’re gonna to die. It was time to head back, but my feet wouldn’t work. All movement has become clumsy, spazmodic and I found I could only make any real progres if I slowed down and inched my way along. even then I kept tripping over curbs, over nothing at all and this hurt my head more and made me more agitated. i collapsed onto a bench near a bus stop and sat there panting and, if you can believe it shivering in the heat.
But it was good to sit down and rest. I was so tired I could have wept. I watched the peeple go by. it was I guess an everyday scene just another street in another small town on a planet full of towns and streets like this. Why then should it suddenly apear so alien to me? These were people who had gotten up this morning and brushed there teeth and dressed 4 the day and gone off to their jobs and i could not fathom what it was like to be them. I could not see the point. Nor could I see the point of all that activity the cars, the buses, the buildings full of peeple who ran around talking, talking endlessly to each other, to their fones. It meant nothing. theres a illness I think — i read about wear everything is seen as froth — no substance n no meaning. Is that whats happening to me? i don’t feel part of the world.
and the people were so strange. They appeared to me all as bits and peaces. The slap of a shoe on pavement, a wolfishly hairy arm, a painted red mouth. They all seemd disjointed, grotesque. And I hated them and they hated me too. there eyes were staring and wary.
I knew my perseptions were skewed. i could remember thinking and feeling differently and I could not figure out what happened to change things. maybe I jus needed to Make a connection. talk to someone. I got up and shuffled over to a newsstand I picked up today’s edishon of Verdad newpaper.
“Do …” i found suddenly that, while i knew what i wanted I didn’t have the words to expres it. “Past. Past Eds”
“Past editions?” The man asked.
I nodded.
there wuz that look again on the man’s face. looking at me like I’m the one who’s crazy. “Let me check.” he disapeard into a van parkd nearby and came out with a small stack of paypers.
I gave him a $50 bill into his hand snatched the papers and walked away.
“Your Change!” He called after me. “Señor, your change!”
I ground my teeth as I stumbled away why was he yelling at me about change? I’m not the one whose changed. The world had unraveled or maybe it was nothing that dramatic. Maybe it had always been this stoopid and meaningless and only now i was seeing it.
