The APOCs Virus (6 page)

She tried to avert her eyes from the tables in the middle of the room on which lay four cadavers—two human and two victims of the MDR
-
V6 virus.  The pale gray corpses lay naked encased in plastic like frozen human fish sticks.  Their faces were locked in an eternal grimace, each displaying their personal death story. 

Lost in her thoughts she was startled by the sound of the air lock.  The laboratory was kept at a negative pressure to prevent the escape of contaminants.  Two figures entered the room, both wearing surgeon's aprons and gloves. 

"Ah Ava my dear, you seem to have forgotten your scrubs," the first man said mockingly. 

Dr. Puck was Ava's boss.  He was Dr. Angus Puck, director of the center.  He was a meticulous, waspish man, five
-
foot eight and underweight.  He had a regal profile, but when he turned full-face, people experienced a disappointment.  His face was not handsome.  The eyes were the flaw: they were vaguely pale, neither gray or blue, lifelessly devoid of expression.  Though he wasn't what you'd consider ugly, few people liked his face: the face was too cold, the eyes too fleeting, nothing to lend him to endearment or compassion.  His mousy brown hair was thinning and barely covered the top of his head.  He bragged about saving money by cutting it himself with surgical shears and a mirror. 

"No Dr. Puck, I'm just following your orders—I just came here to observe. Why are we not in level 4 or at least level 3?”

“There’s not a need—when the host dies, so does the virus.  It’s not contagious, it’s completely inert.”

She wondered why she was here at all.  She noticed the way he lingered over her body with his eyes.  She unconsciously closed the front of her lab coat over her blouse. 

"So how long has it been now that you've been the center's liaison to the CDC?  Six months, seven?”  Puck asked.  He made it sound as if it were something for which Ava should be forever in his debt.  He didn't wait for her to answer before he continued. "You haven't been away from the lab so long that you're getting squeamish around a couple of cadavers now pray tell?"   

Ava watched Dr. Puck give a secret smile to the man that had entered with him, before turning to a tray of instruments.  The second man, a Class
A security lab technician, began preparing the bodies for autopsy.  The large man with forgettable features unzipped the plastic coverings and removed the remains to the cold chromium tabletops.  The horror of the sight was amazing.  Differences appeared, and it was easy now, even for Ava's untrained eye, to tell which had died with the virus. 

All the bodies had abnormal dents and indentations on their stomachs, chests, and legs, even their ears.  Puck turned and beckoned her closer with a wave of his hand; it was a gesture that he made with a stiffened arm by simply moving his wrist.  As she neared, the sight became worse.  The corpse's fingers were flattened and strangely large.  The nails protruded from the surrounding skin and were the color of sweet potatoes.  The former smell of antiseptic was replaced with the pungent penetrating aroma of formaldehyde preservative.  The odor attacked her nostrils.  The sickly sweet and sour odor of decaying, rotting flesh radiated from the bodies. 

The head, thorax and abdomen of each corpse had been violently violated.  Rigor mortis had set in hard.  The assistant moved the bodies with a series of pushes and pulls.  No matter how assiduously the man tried to move them, they kept assuming their original positions.  Puck had his back to Ava as he attached the blade on the handheld saw.  When the assistant was finally satisfied with the positions, he placed a tray of tools on the chest of the nearest carcass. 

"What you see here, Miss Porter, are four very different specimens."  Puck said as he placed the saw on the tray and stood in front of her. 

She noticed how he had used the word ‘specimens’ instead of a more humanistic term. 

He continued with no emotion in his monotone voice.  "The first," he said pointing to the corpse on the right, "is an indigent brought into the Norfolk Morgue yesterday afternoon— succumbed to coronary thrombosis.”  The body of the old man, even after being washed, still looked filthy. 

  “The second," he moved to the right and stood in front of the next body, "died of complications experienced after an attack from a virus carrier."  Ava could see half
-
healed scar marks on the torso of the middle
-
aged woman.  "Yes, those are the wounds from the attack."  He said looking at Ava through his eyebrows. 

"But they are almost healed.  How long after the attack did she die?" 

"Three and a half hours," he said perfunctorily.  He moved to the next table. "This, Miss Porter is a carrier of the MDR
-
V6 Virus."  This was the first sign of emotion in him.  She saw a slight widening of the eyes and what Ava appeared to be a smile.  The body was that of a teenaged boy.  He was frozen into an unnatural position; the legs slightly askew from the torso, knees and feet together.  The face was welded with a look of agony.  The specimen had achieved perfect maturity, untouched by the ravages of age.  

"I love working with this kind of raw material," Puck said.  “There's no excess fat to impede my scalpel slowing down my work.  The arteries are elastic, strong and muscular.  The lungs are clean and pliable, not tarnished by cigarette smoke or pollution.  There are no rampant abnormalities to have to explain.  Yes, working with this tissue is a real pleasure."

"I'm sure the boy would be happy knowing he was such a big help," Ava said.

Ignoring her statement Puck said, "And this is what killed him."  He pointed to a gaping, purplish hole just below the boy's sternum.  He then moved to the last table. 

"And lastly, we have what we theorize to be a virus victim, a minimum week to ten days advanced."  There were immense differences between the body of the boy and that of the fourth.  They differed in more than just size too. The man, Ava guessed him to be somewhere in his thirties, was at least six foot five and weighed close to three hundred pounds.  The neck had been nearly severed. The head was attached to the body by thin pieces of skin and the spinal cord and   was tilted backward as if at the moment of death the cadaver had been watching a plane fly overhead.  Its gums were pulled back from the teeth and the incisors looked incredibly oversized and malevolent.  To say that the prone figure had anything approaching human skin would have been a gross misstatement.  It was too dark, too deviant a brown.  The texture looked scaly. 

"Now it's time to get to work."  

Dr. Puck and his assistant made half
-
moon incisions in the cadavers starting in the soft flesh behind the ears.  The scalpel cut quickly and efficiently as they moved from one body to the next, in assembly
-
line fashion.  After Dr. Puck made the cut, the subordinate seized the hair on the temples, and with a hard jerk downward, removed the skin from the skulls.  They didn't have to be neat; there would be no one to view these poor souls in an open casket funeral. 

"This is always been my favorite part."  Puck said with a sickly grin.  He picked up the electric saw and made 360-degree cuts around the skulls.  He removed the pieces of bone like Jewish yarmulkes exposing the delicate gray brain tissue inside. 

Ava was appalled at the way Dr. Puck made light of the situation.  She wasn’t sure she liked her boss before, but now she was sure she didn’t now.  She thought of the pathologists who work in this environment of death day after day. She supposed after the novelty wore off, it became just another job.  Something that washes away at the end of the day as easily as the blood off their dissection aprons.  But did it?  Or is there always that stain, that shadow of blood detergent can't wash out? 

 Ava had noticed the difference in the shapes of the heads of the cadavers, but after seeing the differences in the brains, she wondered if she had really seen it.  She saw that the cerebrospinal fluid went from a clear, watery consistency in the brain of the alcoholic, to a cadmium-mushroom color in the skull of the Apoc.  She alternately studied Dr. Puck and the brains as he laid them on four metal trays each in front of the original owner.  It went from the normal to the obscene.  She tried to think of what exactly caused the grotesque deformity in the brain of the Apocs. 

"As you can see, Miss Porter, the Apoc's brain has an extremely formidable hypothalamus,” Dr. Puck said. 

He sounds like he's talking to a two-year
-
old, Ava thought.  The hypothalamus, of course, any first year medical student would have known that.  Instead of answering, she simply widened her eyes at him.    

He could see she wasn't going to give him the pleasure of admitting she hadn't known what the disparity was.  So he continued.  "As you may   . . .” He paused and gave her a slight look of condemnation.  “ . . .Or may not know, the hypothalamus lies at the base of the brain under the two cerebral hemispheres.  It is a specialized nerve center connected with other parts of the brain and the pituitary gland.  This area of the brain is also closely linked with the senses of smell and sight, with behavior and the organization of memory.  But, my dear Miss Porter, that is not the only disturbing peculiarity . . .." 

He moved to the table of the old man that had died of non
-
MDR
-
V6 complications.  Still carrying the brain of the Apoc, he set it on the metal tray and turned both over.  "As you can now more clearly see the hypothalamus is not the only brain region affected by the MDR
-
V6 Virus.  Notice here, the frontal lobe of the derelict that succumbed to a heart attack—normal.  And now notice the frontal lobe of the Apoc . . .." 

Ava didn't have to examine it closely to see the shocking dissimilarity.  The frontal lobe of the Apoc had withered in on itself like a deflated balloon.  It was no longer the pale gray/blue of the surrounding areas, but had taken on a purple/black color.  She remembered enough from studying the brain to know that the frontal lobe was the center for complicated thinking and worrying thoughts. 

"This is not the first time a condition such as this has been diagnosed—although never before has it been so magnified.  There is a rare brain dysfunction known as 'Sham Rage'.  Some symptoms are: hypersexuality paradoxed with feelings of inadequacy, extreme and violent rage and unjustified indignation." Puck stared at the metal trays almost purposely avoiding looking at Ava as he proceeded with his explanation.  "Some so-called scientists believe that the hypothalamus is the center for extrasensory perception.  Although, I myself, think that the whole area of research is nothing but subterfuge.  Of the other hard facts we have, the most unexplainable is the hyperactivity of the thyroid gland.  The metabolic rate of an Apoc has been so greatly propagated that the nerve cells should have burned out.  We have been able to get accurate readings and the temperature of the Apocs is 110 degrees plus.  The longer they have had the virus, the higher the temperature." 

The lab
tech was on the far side of the room working unnoticed by Ava. 

"If you would please, Miss Porter, accompany me to the work station." 

 She followed Puck realizing she hadn't spoken, even those "yes’s" or "ah
-
huhs" that perpetuate conversation or show attention, in a long time.  She still couldn't fathom why he had insisted she transfer to the Center when she was needed more than ever at the CDC in Atlanta.  He was the one who decided she made a better "PR" person than a research scientist.  Ava watched as the lab
tech used an eyedropper to put vicious yellow syrup on a white rat.  The fluid was directed to an exposed piece of skin on the research animal's backside.  A similar drop was placed on a piece of living tissue in a petri dish. 

Completing his task, the middle
-
aged aide
-
de
-
camp gathered up his tools and left the room. Ava suddenly felt very apprehensive about being left alone with Dr. Puck. 

"Now Miss Porter please step forward and observe the effects of one milliliter of MDR
-
V6 on the chemical make
-
up of living tissue." Puck said.  He pulled the cage with the rat to the edge of the counter. Ava was not prepared for the cacophony that followed.  Though they were in one of the innermost laboratories in the Center's seven
-
story complex, she was sure they heard the screams of agony from the rat six floors down. 

A brackish foam gurgled from the patch of pregnable hide on the hindquarters of the animal.  The rat's face was gripped with a guise of torment and panic.  Its mouth was gaping open as far as it could stretch.  The skin on the corners of its face looked like it was going to rip.  A high-pitched squeal—almost too loud for such a small creature, echoed in her ears.  Ava watched as it jumped in the air in fits of agony filled with shudders and spasms.  

As strong as Ava liked to portray herself, she finally had to turn her head from the atrocity. 

 "Excuse me Ms. Porter, if this is too much for you, maybe we should bring in someone else," Puck said demandingly.  

Someone else for what, she wondered?  She swallowed hard and finally said, "I'm sorry Dr. Puck, please continue." 

"Thank you," he said with a frown.  "This is what is known as the infectious stage.  In a higher life
form, such as an ape or human, this stage can last anywhere from twenty to sixty minutes.  In a rodent of this size and body weight it usually lasts five to ten minutes.  Mass, natural resistance, metabolism, all comes into play." 

"I think you will find this quite interesting," he said as he removed a piece of the tissue from the petri dish and placed it on a slide.  He then placed the slide under the micron microscope. 

Ava watched in awe, as far removed as Dr. Angus Puck was from the actual research that went on in the facility, he showed an uncanny skill with the laboratory instruments.  She could see how this proficiency as a scientist had led him to his administrative post.  Dr. Puck's expertise in consulting the Meredith Pharmaceutical group had been well
documented
in many leading medical journals.  His philanthropy was well known also. He not only donated all his government salary to charity, but a good portion of his dividends from Meredith as well.