The Book of a Few (21 page)

Dr. Milaka led us through a door. The sign next to it read “Delivery and Labor Unit.” Dana huffed and puffed from a number of steps behind us, which was not surprising considering we had just climbed two stories. We paused a moment as he caught up to us, then resumed walking down a hallway to our left.

“
Now, the only thing we exposed our test patient to was this gas. We gave the man a scalpel and let him do the work. After roughly twenty minutes, we retrieved him and locked him up in a room of his own.” Dr. Milaka slowed in front of a door and turned to us. “Now be strong.” Dr. Milaka opened the door to the delivery room.

A man with bloodshot eyes and bleeding wrists noticed us immediately. He howled, and lunged for us. The restraints that kept him on his wheelchair held true to their purpose. The infected man landed face first onto the hospital floor with a crack. We all stood there outside the door, watching, and the man lay there motionless for a moment. Suddenly, springing back to animation, the man yanked and squirmed. He hysterically tried to break free and reach one of us. Dr. Milaka took a step into the room and looked the man over.

“
He agreed to this?” Will asked with a quivering voice.

“
Yes, in the end, he did. The man snuck from his family home, or wherever, and we spotted him rolling down the sidewalk a block away. We took him in, and asked him why he was outside with his disability. He said he didn’t want his family wasting food on him and risking themselves protecting him. He simply wished to escape them and find his own way or die honorably.” Dr. Milaka shrugged.

“
Nobody
would want to die this way,” I said assertively.

“
Are you angry that he died for a purpose and not from a quick bullet to the brain?”

“
Why do I feel that you forced him to go out this way?” I laughed to myself. “I bet you told him it was this way or nothing.”

What made the sight so horrific to me was the victim’s lack of legs. The doctors of the hospital were desperate to run this test, so they wouldn’t dare throw away a crippled body that would be useless for any other purpose. Even the test subject was too desperate to throw away his own life that he took any route that he could get. I imagine that, in his final moments, he had prayed that he would cease to be conscious when the sickness took him over. The man was willing to be turned into the biggest thing that threatened his life just so he could stop running away from it.

But thinking about it again, now, part of me doesn’t blame the man for taking that route. If he did say no, what other ways would he be able to get what he wanted? Being eaten alive sounds just as bad, if not worse. Maybe this way he didn’t feel any pain, just a slow numbing effect until his consciousness and awareness of what he was doing, and the world around him, faded away. At least I’d like to think that those unfortunate people don’t know what they are doing and suffer from internal turmoil as they tear their family into pieces. Or
enjoy
it.

Dr. Milaka scoffed at me. The others didn’t say anything to back me up. Thanks, guys.

“
Anyway,” the atrocious intimidator of men said, “that isn’t the only test we have run. Two other men, who were found to be criminals, were all killed in—”

“
Criminals?” Dana said, followed by a laugh. “
Everyone
is a criminal, you curry-muncher.”

Dr. Milaka’s jaw dropped.

“
Don’t tell me you haven’t done
something
immoral. There is no way you’d be standing here in that white coat all safe and secure if you didn’t. You gotta keep the riff-raff out, even if it means doing shitty things.”

“
I don’t think you understand how important it is to discover as many details of the virus as we can. We are trying to save the lives of more than just ourselves.”

“
Yeah, yeah.” Dana waved his arms in the air and rolled his eyes. “You’re a saint, Doctor. You really are. But tell me, I’m more interested in
who
deemed them criminals. Was it you or one of the others here?”

Dr. Milaka’s fists tightened. “The C.V.P.M. has a few trucks that are always out sitting somewhere in town. The men were caught trying to kidnap a woman.”

“
The military made the call then, right?”

“
Yes. There has been talk of enforcing civil order to try to prevent people from killing other people. That will help slow down public exposure to the virus.”

“
I don’t know if I like the sound of the military enforcing anything,” I said.

“
It’s necessary,” Dr. Milaka said. “There is also talk about trying to find safe housing for citizens and feeding the hungry.” He looked us all over. “Now if I may continue, in the experiment, one man had been bitten by the infected numerous times, and another was a clean slate. He was the control in the experiment. They were executed, like I said.”

Dana’s disgust at this was obvious.

“
In this experiment, we confirmed our suspicion that the virus may be in us all.”

“
I don’t know about that. He could have been bit somewhere under his clothes,” Will said.

“
Trust me; we did a full body examination.”

“
So potentially everyone has it?”

“
Yes. Even the man who had never been bitten before experienced bloating like the one that had been bitten.”

“
All the more reason to burn the dead,” Dana said.

“
How is it possible that everyone has it?” I asked.

“
It could be in the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink. There is no way of knowing right now. We could have had this in our blood for the last month without knowing it. It wasn’t until people started killing each other and dying in large numbers that the virus was brought out of the dark,” Dr. Milaka said. “The virus incubates in the dead, causing the contagious gas to be formed, and in turn infecting others with rabies-like symptoms. But that’s not all. I’ve gotten two reports in the last two days of something else. Sightings, you might call them. A figure of a man was seen that appeared to look like oh, what did he say, a ‘Slender Man?’ That American folklore?”

“
Long and lanky arms and legs?” I asked.

“
Yes. Tall, thin, and its skin was a tint of red and black. The man only caught a glimpse of this ‘Slender Man,’ unfortunately. It hasn’t been seen since.” Dr. Milaka sighed. “The second report was of an even larger creature. The witness spoke of it as a giant with no hands. We have no idea if the people who reported these stories were on narcotics, but we would like to think so. We sent word to the C.V.P.M., and they went to investigate the locations where these two different creatures were seen and they didn’t see anything.”

“
Well,” Dana said, “let’s hope they were high. I’ve seen some shit, but nothing like that.”

“
Do you use hallucinogens, sir?” Dr. Milaka looked at Dana inquisitively.

“
What? No, I don’t do drugs. Just seen stuff out of the corner of my eyes, in the shadows, you know?” Dr. Milaka continued to stare Dana down, looking for a sign that he was lying. Dana shrugged, “Anyway, back to the military. Where is Thomson?”

“
He has not worked since Bella’s death.”

“
Is there any way we could get a hold of him? Where could we find him?”

“
Last I knew, he left for the C.V.P.M. to start a search party for his brother, but that was two days ago.”

“
He has
that
much say over there?” I asked.

“
Thomas and the Colonel are close,” he answered.

“
Well, thanks for the insight, Doctor,” Dana said. “You guys have anything else you want to talk about?”

“
So, I’m still confused about all this,” Will said to the doctor. “Maybe you could just summarize what you know so far, please?”

Dr. Milaka groaned. “All right. So, no matter if you’ve been bitten or not, it seems that when you die, your body will bloat. If this bloated body is disturbed, moved, or otherwise naturally pops and you breathe in the fumes created from the body, you take on the characteristics of rabies within a few hours.”

Will nodded, understanding so far.

“
But the next thing we have to learn is why the bodies of the infected bloat as well,” he paused for a moment in thought. “Well, now that I think about it, before Thomson left, he told me about what you had seen; the sick man that appeared to suffer from bone deterioration.” Dr. Milaka looked at Will intensely. “This is purely a hypothesis, but what if the virus has stages? Each time a carrier of one specific strand dies, it incubates inside the corpse as it dissolves the organs and bloats. Meaning that your ‘squishy boned’ infected could be the second stage of something much larger,” he paused for a moment, waiting for us to give him some perspective when we could not. He continued, “If the virus
does
change itself and the host each time it transfers from one host to another, it could explain the sightings.”

“
Well, that’s why we have you, Doctor,” I said, bewildered.

His eyes drifted around the room, and he nodded to himself as he thought until he said, “Well, it’s a good thing we still have him.” He motioned toward the infected man strapped to the wheelchair in the delivery room.

With nothing else to say, we closed our conversation with the doctor. As we took a few steps away, the doctor spoke again. “If you see anything, tell us as soon as you can.”

“
Sure,” I said.

We went back down to the main floor and spoke with the guards and retrieved our firearms. Being smart, we checked to be sure that they hadn’t pocketed any of our ammo. But everything was in order, and we left the hospital. The sun had sunk beneath the treetops, and we began the long walk back to the Warehouse.

“
Do you really want to talk to Thomson?” I asked Dana as we walked the streets.

“
No,” he laughed. “I was just curious what he was up to if he hadn’t been at the hospital for a while.”

We slowly made our way through the quiet streets and tried our best not to disturb the silence. We ducked and rushed through a few backyards to avoid a few madmen that were busy feeding on a body that lay on the side of the road. After roughly a half an hour, the Warehouse finally came into sight. Sitting atop its hill in the distance, it was funny how welcoming it seemed. It felt safe; a lot like my mother’s house back in Readlyn. Both places were where I could truly relax, for the most part, and escape from the problems that plagued me elsewhere.

We walked through the gate and up into the parking lot. A truck, our truck, sat parked outside the main doors. We walked up to it, asking one another if one of us knew why it was outside.

“
Did Lisa take it somewhere?” I asked.

“
I have no idea. I mean, I don’t think so,” Will said.

“
We didn’t tell her
not
to touch it,” Branden said. The rest of us groaned and cussed in response.