Parasite p-1 Read online

  I took all this in within seconds, trying to focus on the normal for as long as I could before I admitted it was absolutely in the minority within this space. This was not a normal hospital room. If it ever had been, that time was long in the past. What it was now….

  I didn’t even have a name for what it was now. Short of comparing it to pictures I’d seen of tuberculosis wards—Sherman wasn’t supposed to show me those, which is probably why he did, and was definitely why I looked—I wasn’t sure something like this had ever existed before. I stopped at the threshold, digging my heels in and refusing to let my father drag me any farther.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head to reinforce my words. Not that I expected it to do very much good; not with the scene that was unfolding in front of me. Whatever I could say would be just that much more noise. “No, no, no.”

  “Yes,” said my father implacably, and pulled me on.

  Beds filled the room, so narrow and packed so closely together that they might be better classified as “cots.” There was barely room for the technicians to move between them, adjusting IV poles and frantically tightening the leather straps holding the patients down. Every bed was occupied. The occupants came from every ethnic group. Men and women, children and adults, there seemed to be no common feature shared amongst them. Except for one:

  They were all sleepwalkers. Their eyes were dead, rolling wildly or staring at nothing as they writhed against their restraints. Some of them were snapping at the air, their teeth slamming shut with such force that it was cutting their gums. Blood and drool ran down their chins, undifferentiated and unchecked. None of the technicians were getting near those snapping jaws, even as they frantically injected what I assumed had to be liquid sedatives into the patient IV bags.

  One man had managed to yank a hand free from his restraints, at the cost of most of the skin on his wrist. He was flailing without any apparent purpose. The main strap holding him to the cot was buckled at his chest. He could have reached it easily and let himself go. But he didn’t. He clearly knew something was holding him down, but he wasn’t acting like he had any idea what that thing might be, or how to make it let him up.

  Some of them were making sounds. Little squeaks and gasps, for the most part, although at least one of them was moaning, a low, constant noise that ebbed and rose with the moaner’s breathing. I couldn’t tell which one was making the sound, and I was glad. It would have been almost impossible to fight the urge to grab a pillow and make the moaning stop. Someone else was giggling. That was less disturbing, somehow, even though the sound was flat and without any trace of humor.

  One of the technicians walked over to join us, clutching a clipboard against her chest as she approached. She stopped a few feet away, saluting my father. “Colonel Mitchell, sir,” she said.

  “At ease,” said my father. “You remember my eldest daughter, Sally.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” said the woman, and gave me a nod. “Hello, Sally.” If she thought it was strange that my father was taking me for a sightseeing trip in an isolation ward, she didn’t say anything about it. Being the boss apparently came with some privileges.

  “Dr. Snyder, Sally is here because she may be able to demonstrate a mechanism for testing for the sleepwalking sickness,” said my father, as calmly as if everything around us was completely normal. The sleepwalkers continued to writhe against their restraints, clawing and gnashing and striking at the air as best they could. I shrank a bit farther down into myself. He couldn’t really want me to go near them, could he? To touch them?

  “Colonel Mitchell, this is highly irregular. I—”

  “She saw the test at SymboGen,” said Joyce. Her tone wasn’t one I’d heard before: it was the same mix of authority and arrogance that I heard from Dad when he was on the phone with his military contacts… and that I heard from Dr. Banks, when he was trying to get me to do what he wanted. It made her sound older, and scarier, like she was a part of the establishment.

  Which, technically, I suppose she was.

  Joyce continued: “This is the first lead we’ve had toward finding a physical sign of infection. We know these people are ill. If they show as positive on Sally’s test, we can begin testing asymptomatic individuals. This could put our preventative measures forward by a matter of weeks, if not months.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” I whispered. My voice was barely audible, even to myself.

  My father looked at me. There was a cold sympathy in his eyes, like he understood my dilemma, and even cared about it, but couldn’t justify doing any more than that. “I know you don’t, Sally,” he said calmly. “The trouble is, you don’t have a choice. Your country needs you.”

  My country had never needed me before. I shrank down farther, the sound of drums pounding in my ears.

  Dr. Snyder nodded once, accepting her orders, and asked, “What will you need?”

  “Sally?”

  I glanced up again and said, “A UV wand, and someone to dim the lights. Not all the way, just enough that we can see bioluminescence.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Snyder turned and walked away from us, presumably to arrange for what I’d requested.

  “Pick a subject, Sally,” said my father.

  They’re not subjects, they’re people, I thought. I didn’t say anything. Whether they were people in the classic sense or Dr. Cale’s people who’d passed through the broken doors, becoming monsters, it didn’t matter. They were sick and confused, and they couldn’t be trusted without the restraints. They would hurt us if we let them.

  I looked around the room, finally settling on a frail-looking little woman who must have been in her late eighties. “Her,” I said. If she somehow managed to get loose, it was unlikely she’d be able to do much damage before someone could get her restrained again.

  My father followed the direction of my gaze, and nodded. “That’s Ms. Lawrence. She’s been here for two weeks. Her family was quite relieved when we offered to take over her care and cover her medical bills, in exchange for being allowed to study the progress of her symptoms.” I shot him a startled look. He shook his head. “No matter what you may think of our work here, Sal, we try to do right by the people who come to us. We don’t have to. Their illnesses will teach us how to prevent hundreds more, and the only way to stay sane in this job is to treat everyone who walks through that door—or is wheeled through—as if they’ve already died. But every single one of us will celebrate the day that someone is able to get up and walk out under their own power. We’re not monsters. We’re just trying to do our jobs.”

  He was calling me “Sal” again. I couldn’t tell what that meant. I just shook my head and said, “I want to go home as soon as this is over.” Then I turned and walked toward Ms. Lawrence, inhaling to make myself as narrow as possible as I edged between the cots with their squirming, moaning burdens. I did my best to avoid the biters, and didn’t go anywhere near the man who had pulled his arm free. If he grabbed me… I didn’t want to die the way that Devi had.

  The thought of Devi made the cold terror curl through my stomach again, winding itself around my spine. These people were dangerous. Even restrained, they were dangerous, and all of them, even the frail Ms. Lawrence, were upset. I didn’t know why. That wasn’t going to matter if they managed to break loose.

  Dr. Snyder met us at Ms. Lawrence’s cot, a UV wand in her hand. “The lights will be dimmed on your order, sir,” she said, offering the wand to my father.

  “Thank you,” he said. He took the wand and passed it to me. “Sally?”

  “Lights, please,” I half-whispered.

  “Lights!” my father repeated, much more loudly. The technicians and doctors who had been moving around the room stopped where they were, except for the few who moved toward us, apparently wanting to see what I was going to do. Someone hit a switch, and the room’s overhead and ambient lighting decreased, slowly shifting us from artificial day into artificial twilight.

  “Can someone get her arm, p
lease?” I asked, turning on the UV wand. It hummed silently in my hand, the sound translating itself into a vibration that traveled through my fingers to my wrist. I swept the wand across the front of my shirt to be sure that it was working, and watched the fabric light up like something out of a bad special effect.

  “How do you want it?” asked my father, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves as he stepped past me to the moaning, barely squirming Ms. Lawrence.

  “Turn it so that the top of her hand is pressed against the cot,” I said.

  He did as I had asked, and everyone was silent as I passed the beam above Ms. Lawrence’s arm. As I had expected, the roots of the parasitic infection responsible for her illness showed up immediately, bright white against the dull purple of her skin. They were thinner and less robust than the roots I’d seen on Nathan’s patient, probably because Ms. Lawrence was older, and had fewer resources for the parasite to draw on.

  “What in the world…?” breathed my father.

  The roots twitched, seeming to respond to the light that was shining over them. They didn’t move much, but they were definitely moving toward the light.

  One of the thicker roots jerked toward Joyce. She made a small squeaking noise, taking a half step backward.

  “The sleepwalking sickness isn’t. I mean, it’s actually a parasite, sort of,” I said. “It’s the SymboGen implant. It’s… doing things.” I didn’t want to tell them exactly what it was doing, in part because I didn’t understand it without Dr. Cale or Nathan there to explain, and more because I didn’t trust them anymore. Yes, this was my family, and yes, they loved me, but their focus was on the public health. It had to be.

  If they were willing to scare me because they thought I might know something, what would they be willing to do to Nathan and Dr. Cale? What would they do to Tansy, or to Adam? Tansy was probably a sociopath—if a tapeworm in a meat car can be a sociopath—but she didn’t deserve to become a lab animal.

  And none of these people deserved to be sick. I didn’t know what to do. I only had six years of living to draw on, and it wasn’t enough. I didn’t know what to do.

  From the looks on the faces around me, neither did anyone else. Joyce was the first to recover, asking, “How sure about this are you, Sal? I mean… D. symbogenesis is an intestinal parasite. It can’t spread through muscular tissue. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nature doesn’t have to make sense. Nature just does.” I moved the UV light along Ms. Lawrence’s arm, causing more of the roots to twitch and writhe away. “What kind of virus could cause this sort of a reaction? If there is one, I don’t know what it is. But you’re the ones with the medical training. Maybe I’m wrong.” I looked up, challenging them to offer another explanation.

  None of them did. Instead, my father let go of Ms. Lawrence, held out his arm, and said, “Check me.”

  “Dad—” Joyce began.

  “Just because I’m not symptomatic, that doesn’t mean I’m not worth examining,” he said, cutting her off. “Sal, if you please?”

  It had the feeling of a test. Still, I stepped toward him, holding up the UV light. “Just give me your arm.”

  Next to us, Dr. Snyder was frowning at Ms. Lawrence’s unmarked skin. The roots were invisible now that the UV light was no longer shining on her. “It seems so strange that there would be no exterior signs….” she said, reaching out to touch the old woman.

  What happened after that happened very quickly, and I didn’t fully understand it until later—until I’d had the time to really think, instead of just reacting.

  Ms. Lawrence, who had been frail when she was committed to the care of USAMRIID, had continued to lose weight throughout her treatment; her overlarge hospital gown made that clear. They’d probably stopped tightening her restraints after a certain point, both because she seemed too weak to pose a problem, and because they didn’t want to hurt her. That’s why she was able to rip her left arm free of the straps that were meant to be holding it to the table. In a single convulsive motion, she had hold of Dr. Snyder’s throat, clamping down with a strength that I wouldn’t have thought her fingers still possessed.

  Dr. Snyder flailed, knocking the UV light out of my hands. It went skidding across the floor as I stumbled back, stopping when my back hit another cot. The occupant was snarling and snapping at the air, trying to struggle free of his bonds—but either he was a more recent arrival or they had been more mindful of security where he was concerned, because his efforts to break loose were unsuccessful.

  Joyce shouted something I couldn’t make out over the drums that were pounding in my ears. I jerked away from the cot that was half-supporting my weight, staggering toward the dubious safety of the wall, where at least no one would grab me. My father was bellowing for security—and that was something I understood perfectly well. He was so loud that I could hear him even through the screams, even through the endless sound of drums.

  Someone grabbed my arm.

  I screamed and tried to jerk away, only to have the intern who was holding me pull me roughly back, away from the sea of agitated patients. “Ms. Mitchell, please! Calm down!” he said, continuing to pull. “We need to lock this room down, and that means all civilians need to be removed.”

  I was too shaken to speak, and so I just nodded, trying to force myself to breathe as I let him lead me toward the door. I glanced back. Joyce was being escorted away from the floor by another intern, and our father was still in the middle of it all, trying to pry Ms. Lawrence’s fingers off Dr. Snyder’s throat. Dr. Snyder was barely twitching as she hung limply, half supported by my father, half by the gnarled hand of the parasite-infected old woman who was crushing the life from her.

  Is this what you wanted, Dr. Cale? I thought, as the sound of drums got louder and the scene started to take on a strangely unreal quality, like I was seeing it through gauze. Is this where the broken doors were supposed to lead us? There are only monsters here….

  Then, as calmly as if he were waking up in his own bed at home, one of the patients sat up. The restraints that were meant to hold him down fell away as he moved, split cleanly down the middle. Either the fabric of the belts had been frayed by the stress of his constant squirming, or his body’s new driver didn’t know yet about the breaking point of flesh and bone—it wasn’t playing gently with its toys. His eyes rolled madly in his head, jaws working as he turned toward us and slid to his feet.

  Someone hit an alarm. Red lights began to flash as a siren blared from hidden speakers, alerting the entire building to a breach in the medical holding area. The intern gave me another jerk, away from the man who was now advancing toward us.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be armed?” I demanded. “You’re the army!”

  “Ma’am, I’m not even a doctor yet! They didn’t give me a gun!” He dropped my arm. “Run!”

  I turned when he did, and I ran, following him toward the nearest door. One of the flashing red lights was above it, and I saw white, terrified faces through the door’s narrow window, looking back at us from their place of safety. Then the security slammed down, the door sealing with a loud bang that sounded like every deadbolt in the world being thrown, and we were trapped.

  I turned to the intern, blindly hoping he could tell me what to do, but he was already running for the corner, leaving me standing on my own. I stared after him for a few seconds—too long—before spinning and flattening my back against the door, hoping that the people on the other side would take pity and open it for me. I’d take falling on my ass over having my neck broken any day.

  What I saw when I turned back to the room was a horror show. The red lights flashing overhead didn’t help; they painted the whole scene bloody, making it look like we were in the middle of a slaughter. And then the jerkily moving sleepwalker somehow caught up to the first of the interns—and how could he move so fast, he wasn’t used to having a body, he shouldn’t have known how to make it work so well, he shouldn’t have been so fast—and grabbed her by the
shoulders, burying his teeth in her throat. She screamed, a high, shrill sound that somehow rose above the alarms for a single horrifying second before it stopped as abruptly as it had started, cut off by the severing of her trachea. The cessation of the sound should have seemed like a mercy. Would have seemed like a mercy, even, if it hadn’t been followed by the sudden red gush of arterial blood that poured from the wound his teeth had made.

  As for the sleepwalker, he stood there for a few moments, swaying, clutching the twitching, half-dead intern like a teddy bear. Then his arms unlocked, and she fell limply to the ground as he straightened and looked around the room for another target.

  The drums were pounding in my ears again. I pressed myself harder against the closed door, praying that his gaze wouldn’t fall on me. Please don’t see me, I thought. Please, please don’t see me. I’m sorry I kept secrets from my father. I’m sorry I didn’t tell him everything Dr. Cale told me. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry….

  The swaying sleepwalker’s gaze fell on me, a sudden sharpness coming into his eyes. I swallowed, glancing frantically around for a place to run. Ms. Lawrence was still latched onto Dr. Snyder’s throat. Dad was no longer trying to pry her loose. Instead, he had pulled the gun from his belt and backed away two steps, taking careful aim on the seemingly frail old woman with the unbreakable grip.

  I wanted to look away when he pulled the trigger.

  I couldn’t.

  Ms. Lawrence collapsed in a bloody heap, just like the intern whose throat had been ripped out by the man who was now advancing on my position. Dr. Snyder collapsed as well, crumpling to the floor. My father, with his first and most immediate crisis handled, turned to scan the room. I wasn’t screaming; he didn’t know where I was, and he had two daughters to worry about, not just one. So maybe it shouldn’t have felt like such a betrayal when he turned away from me, scanning the far side of the room for Joyce before he did anything else.