The Virus (9 page)

Obviously, one of the
doctors heard her because the only conversation that followed was a
quick proclamation of “Oh!” before the door was pulled closed all
the way and three highly-concerned doctors quickly passed the front
windows to her room. Fresh repulsion flooded Delilah’s breast. She
knew
something
was wrong with her, otherwise she surely would’ve been
screaming at the top of her lungs hours ago for her father to be
contacted and for her to be taken out of this place that very
instant.

Even now, it was much more
difficult than usual for her to get upset—
Delilah
upset
, that is—and she knew that it must be the effects of the
sedatives flowing freely inside her. Anyone who knew Delilah
would’ve assumed that those sedatives were the extra strength
variety to quell the Hanson fury as they had, and they would’ve
been right. As Delilah lay beneath leather straps and dim lights,
revulsion began to subside and in its place rose up a fiercely
strong feeling that she was being watched. By the feel of things,
it was the room’s odd
mirror
that was doing the watching. She wanted to yell,
but it was just too difficult to summon the energy for her usual
tantrums, so she just lay there pouting, wanting to cry, but unable
even to summon the comforting tears of self-pity.

After a while, another doctor entered
the room. “Hello, Ms. Hanson.” The doctor said.

Delilah had been staring at a far
wall, still pouting over just how unfair her situation was, but
turned her head sharply at the voice. It was not the voice of
someone she would consider a friend, but it was familiar and right
now, that counted for more than she’d have ever thought
possible.

“Help me get out of here, Ian.”
Delilah pleaded. “Get me out of here. Get my dad. Get me out of
here please!”

“Whoa, slow down, Miss Hanson. Just
calm down,” answered the doctor.

“I want my daddy!” Delilah was so
frustrated and confused that she didn’t care if she sounded like a
lost four-year-old. It was also possible that she didn’t care
because a lost four-year-old is exactly what she felt like, yet
again.

Either way, the doctor didn’t seem too
disconcerted as he said coolly (or at least it sounded cold to
Delilah), “Listen, Miss Hanson, I’m going to do my best to explain
to you what’s going on, but I need you to promise that you’ll calm
down. If I can’t get you to make that promise, then frankly, Miss
Hanson, I can’t help you.”

Delilah glared at the
doctor. It wasn’t that she was still under the delusion that she
could get her way with loud, harsh words or, as in this case, long,
harsh stares, as much as it was simply force of habit. As many
overly privileged people just like Delilah already knew, getting
what they wanted all the time with just the flick of a credit card
or the punch of a button (usually on the phone, to call good ‘ole
daddy, so
he
can
flick a credit card) can grow on a person. Just like a well-baited
hook in the mouth of a fish, once a person gets a good taste, it’s
hard to let go. Once the fruitless staring match had run its
course, Delilah reluctantly relented and agreed to ‘play
nice.’

“Great. That’s absolutely fabulous,
Ms. Hanson. But one other thing before we get started: I’d prefer
that you refer to me as Dr. Crangler. I’m a professional and I’d
appreciate being addressed as such.” Delilah gritted her teeth so
hard that it was a miracle her gums didn’t touch, but eventually
she nodded. It would seem that she had fallen greatly from the high
and mighty command giver she had been just a few days ago. Without
a doubt, she much preferred her former state, but she was beginning
to realize that if she was ever going to get a shot in hell at
returning to the way things were, she’d have to cooperate, because
her money and looks obviously didn’t give her the upper hand in
this strange place.

“Now, Ms. Hanson,”
Dr.
Crangler continued
“I need to get some machinery set up in here. I need to run some
very important tests on you and I need to get it done as quickly as
possible. I apologize for my comrades who were here just now. But I
promise you that you will not be seeing them again. Only I will
attend to you from this point forward.”

“I want to know what’s going on
first.” Delilah said, in a noticeably stressed tone, and through
strained lips. She had agreed to cooperate. She hadn’t agreed to
like it. The doctor sighed audibly.

“All right, Miss Hanson,”
said he “I think that’s fair. You’ve been snatched from your home,
sedated,” thankfully he had enough tact to not add,
repeatedly,
“and brought
to a place that I’m sure is unfamiliar and scary to you. But I must
warn you, Miss Hanson, what has happened and the unwitting part you
now play in all of it is not easy to explain…or believe.” As the
doctor noted, Delilah had been through a hell of a lot already.
This past year had awarded her with experiences that were literally
out of this world and Dr. Crangler may’ve been surprised at exactly
what she would believe at this point.

Instead of going through all that,
Delilah just nodded her head faintly and said, “Okay.”

“Good, that’s good,” answered the
doctor. He pulled a chair out of the hallway and took a seat near
the head of Delilah’s bed where he could talk to her face to face.
He explained to her that an alien life form had saturated Earth’s
atmosphere with a brand new and unique kind of deadly virus that
was specifically designed to attack only the female population. The
effects of this virus were that, besides the ubiquitous yellow eyes
and unnaturally flaking skin, neither mother nor child of any
infected person would survive childbirth. From what they had seen
already, the virus was permanent and was the first disorder ever to
affect every member of the female population on Earth, regardless
of age, ethnicity, nationality, way of life, or any other notable
difference.

The virus was designed to spread by
something every woman needed to live—oxygen—which turned out to be
its greatest and most ingenious strength and simultaneously, its
most exploitable and only known weakness. Dr. Crangler explained
that this was because of oxygen’s highly-adaptive and corrosive
nature. The virus attached itself to oxygen molecules and saturated
the world’s entire supply of fresh air within hours, but because
oxygen has the ability to change so rapidly, the virus survived
only long enough to infect anyone breathing the planet’s air, but
not long enough to sustain itself for any extended length of time
otherwise. Also, due to the volatile and changing nature of oxygen
and the complex way the human body uses it, the virus ceased to be
contagious once it had found a female host.

“This is where you come in, Delilah.”
Dr. Crangler said. “You were the only female occupant on your space
flight and since there were no women aboard the International Space
Station, you were the only female outside of Earth’s atmosphere
when the meteor appeared.” Dr. Crangler licked his lips and leaned
in. “You were the only female in the entire world who had not
contracted the virus.” The doctor’s eyes narrowed, “As far as
perpetuation of mankind is concerned, you are now most important
person on the face of the planet.” Delilah lay slowly in her bed
and was silent and still, her features as blank as if she was in
another world. Her mind couldn’t encompass the awesome information
that she was just given. Had it not been for all she had
experienced, including her current surroundings, as well as the
thick leather straps that held her down and constantly reminded her
that this was reality and not a horrid nightmare, it was likely she
wouldn’t have believed any of the nonsense the doctor just fed
her.

Unfortunately, denial or naiveté were
no longer viable options. She believed that all Dr. Crangler was
saying, but understanding it…well, that was a completely different
animal altogether.

After a long silence, the
doctor spoke up. “I understand this a lot to handle…” he mused to
himself for a moment “yeah, a
hell
of a lot. But as I told you before, the only
thing I can offer you is the truth, and right now, the truth is not
easy. Not easy at all.” A few more silent moments passed, when the
sound of a light tapping from the mirror filled the room. “I really
need to get these tests underway. I have a couple of other
important gentlemen that I need to attend to soon.” He stood and
looked down at Delilah. Her mind was still wandering off in the
recesses of space. “Do you have any questions, Miss Hanson?” he
asked.

Surprisingly, she did have a question.
Her eyes cleared with an almost alarming quickness, as she turned
her face to the doctor’s. “What happens to the women…you know, if
they try to have kids?” The question was so sincere and innocent,
and the look on Delilah’s confused face so childlike, that, for the
first time, the doctor felt a pang of sympathy for the young women.
He hadn’t exactly hated her (perhaps he would have if he knew her
better) but he certainly wasn’t fond of her. He knew her story, not
only from the publicity that had always been lavished upon her, but
from classified surveillance documents that were compiled upon her.
He knew that disappointment and lack were not words that she was
familiar with, that, like most people who didn’t have to earn their
own money, she assumed the world revolved around her (how ironic
that now it was closer to the truth than it had ever been, and it
was nothing like she had expected), and deep down, he resented her
for it.

From the moment she had been brought
to the secret underground facility, he vowed that if nothing else,
he would show her that she was not the boss here. Now, she could’ve
been his own daughter for how plaintively she was reaching out to
him for answers. “I don’t think now is the time, Miss Hanson,” he
said with sincere angst. Suddenly, he didn’t want to further crush
her world by explaining to her the gruesome effects this virus had
upon the beauty of childbirth. “Maybe, a little later, when you’ve
had time for all this to sink in.”

“Now.” She answered,
simply. This was not one of her usual
if
you don’t do what I say, I will have you fired!
demand. Rather, it was the firm resolution of a woman who
felt like she had earned the right to some answers. The doctor
looked at her intently. He looked back down at his chair and slowly
lowered himself into it again. As delicately as he could, he tried
to paint an understandable picture of something that was anything
but. In a low voice loaded with gravity, he explained what was
already happening to women around the world. Thanks to the
ingenuity of properly-functioning hormones, a pregnant woman’s body
normally alerted her when it was time for the carried child to be
introduced to the world. Then, once that precious newborn had been
expelled into the harsh world of overly bright lights and overly
loud sounds, its own hormones (and maybe a firm tap from a doctor
or other) would alert it to begin breathing.

That was all before The
Virus. Now, the bodies of yellowed eyed, scaly skinned, pregnant
women did not alert them to the proper time of childbirth. In fact,
it was as if their swollen, pregnant bodies didn’t know that
there
was
a time
to give birth. The first women to experience the phenomenon after
The Virus suffered the worst, since no one yet knew what to expect
from this strange and sudden ailment. Perhaps, there was a teenage
girl who didn’t want her parents to find out that she was pregnant,
or perhaps, she didn’t know herself. The child inside her would
grow and move and function normally. The problem was that this
continued on indefinitely. Said teenager, anxious to keep her
condition a secret, and in addition, unfamiliar with the natural
progression of pregnancy, didn’t register alarm as she should have,
when ten months, eleven months, perhaps an entire year passed and
the overgrown child remained yet in the young womb.

The alarm would register, though, when
the unbearable pain came. It was not the pain of childbirth. This
agony was the pain of her delicate insides being pushed and
stretched heinously beyond their limits. There were those who were
so desperate to hide the shame of being labeled “loose” that they
literally burst from a continually growing baby that their bodies
would not birth as nature had dictated. Of course, the mother and
child both met a severely slow demise. Pregnancy was always a
difficult, and many times, uncomfortable experience for many women,
but even the harshest pregnancy paled in comparison to a frightened
and pain plagued teenage girl being tortured to death by 44 weeks
and twelve to fifteen, or possibly more, pounds of compressed baby
crushing her lungs and internal organs like an angry, expanding
water balloon.

Just like a water balloon that is
continually being filled beyond its ability, so the unfortunate
mother would eventually (but only after an awesomely agonizing and
drawn out decline) fall over dead, her internal cavities having
torn to bursting. Even those who were not so unfortunate, were no
better off. Grown women, married women even, would draw closer to
their appointed time of delivery and anxiously await the tell-tale
signs of impending labor only to find that days, weeks sometimes,
passed, and nature had not taken its course. Many of these women
were eventually taken to the hospital only to have their questions
of what was wrong answered with the blank faces of trusted medical
professionals who were genuinely as confused as they. All the lab
tests showed that everything was right on paper and computer
screens, so why had women suddenly stopped going into labor…at
all?