Degeneration (19 page)

The
CDC
white-suit walked into the room holding
a small silver case. He q
uickly closed the door and instantly reduced
the commotion in the hall down to a murmur.

“Are you a doctor?” Richard quickly
asked
.

“
No, sorry,
” the white-suit said
as he walked
over towards Terry. “
But I understand that you two are doing pretty well on our temperature scans so I’m here to take some blood.
If everything checks out, we’ll have you on the first evacuation helicopter headed towards Atlanta.
”

The
CDC
white-suit walked to the nightstand between the two beds and sat
the
case down on it. He opened the case and brought out some syringes and small glass vials. He walked over to
wards
Richard first and injected a syringe into
Richard’
s forearm.

Beads of sweat started to form across Richard’s brow and his hands were fidgety.

“Look, when will a
doctor
come see me
? I have some very important medication that I need
refilled
,”
Richard said
as
he watched
the
man drew a vile of
blood.

“
Are you on
diabetic or asthmatic
medication
?
” the
CDC
white-suit asked as he tossed the syringe into a red bin, wrote down ‘Room 120-A’ on the vial
’s sticker
, and then put the vial into the silver case.

“No, it’s
a
psychotropic,” Richard said in a quiet voice.
“It feels like I’m coming apart inside my own skin…”

Terry looked at Richard
with wide-eyes, alarmed
.

“
Oh,
well that all will get taken care of later,
” the
CDC
white-suit
dismissively
said
. He turned
towards Terry. “
What about you
?
Diabetic?
”

“No,” Terry said.

T
he
CDC
whi
te-suit went to work drawing Terry’s
blood.

“Ah, that’s g
ood. And as far as non-essential
medication or any other medical questions, I’m afraid you will have to wait to see Dr. Mathews. He has this floor,
” the
CDC
white-suit said, finished drawing Terry’s blood. He
labeled the vial ‘Room 120-B’ and
put the sample in
the case
with Richard’s
.

Terry broke into a spasm of wet coughs.

The CDC white-suit startled and looked over at Terry. He reached into the case, retrieved Terry’s blood sample, and threw the vial in the trash with the used syringes.

Terry didn’t notice.

“Well how long do we have to stay here? The phone doesn’t work and I need to ca
ll my wife!” Terry said as he sat-
up.

The
CDC
white-suit gently placed a hand on Terry’s shoulder and lowered him back down onto the bed.

“
Once again, I can’t say. It really all depends on the result of your blood test. That will determine how long you have to stay here,”
the
CDC
white-suit said.
“
But I’m going to see about getting you moved to another room.”

“One with a working phone?” Terry asked.

“
Yes,”
the CDC white-suit lied.

“So we’re prisoners, is that it?” Richard suddenly asked.

The man turned in his bulky
hazmat
suit and faced Richard.

“
Prisoners? No, we’re here to help you,”
he
said defensively. He walked over t
o Richard’s IV and injected a
serum into the
IV’s
injection port. “
This is for the pain, doctor’s ord
ers. He wanted to tide
over his pa
tients until he can get up here.
”

“Oh,” Richard said, and then lay back down
. He stared
at the ceiling as his world started spinning
and his mind started to float
.

The
CDC
white-suit walked over to Terry and injected the
rest of the serum into the
IV
’s injection port
.

“
When can I use the damn phone?” Terry
asked
.

             
Richard’s eyes fluttered closed and he slipped unconscious.

The
CDC
white-suit shook his head.

“
Soon
” the
CDC
white-suit
promised
and then quickly retreated back out into the hall, slamming the door shut
behind him.
Terry thought
that
he hear
d gunshots, but he wasn’t sure. H
is world was spinning.

Terry
coughed, and then fell asleep.

Thirty minutes later, the CDC white-suit sat inside his make-shift laboratory, analyzing blood samples. The gunshots coming from a few floors below had intensified, but he was too busy with his work to pay attention. He didn’t even hear the fire alarms going off.

He slid a glass slide marked with blood from the vile labeled ‘Room 120-A’ underneath the microscope.

He drew back, blinked, and then looked through the lens again. “
Oh my God…
” he muttered. He hurriedly reached for the satellite phone to call Atlanta.

His door flung open, startling him, and a woman wearing a blood-splattered patient smock ran into the room, snarling, knocking his table aside as she lunged towards him.

1
3

B
y the end of the evening
, every sky
scraper in downtown Raleigh had been
draped in plastic and boarded up.
A small battalion of
soldiers
in white hazmat suits
stood gu
ard in front of each
towe
r. The white-suits
w
eren’t expecting any problems. T
he occupants inside
the towers, if any were
still alive, would be too sick an
d feverish to cause any protest
.
Throughout the day,
people
inside the towers periodically
t
ook
to the roof
or tried to shatter a window and escape
, but the
sniper’s expert marksmanship
made their efforts fall
short. The screams
inside the skyscrapers even
tually stopped and the frantic pounding against
the plywood
-covered exits
slowly subsided.

A Humvee rolled along Fayetteville Street past small groups of white-suited soldiers as they stood watch in front of the sealed
skyscraper
s
.
Colonel Mathis, wearing a white
h
azmat suit
just like the others, sat in the passenger seat and stared
out the window. For the first time since the
‘
PT-12
’
virus escaped the
Fort
Detrick facility,
Col. Mathis felt some sense of an uneasy calm. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt that continued to gnaw at him.

The Humvee drove past countless
shattered storefronts
as it made its way
towards the
161
st
do
wntown base camp. Col. Mathis stared listlessly out the window at the activity outside, chewing on his bottom lip inside of his white-suit.

Outside, s
oldiers were burning large pyres an
d rummaging through emptied buildings
for
more
corpses to
burn
. Abandoned vehicles littered the street and peppered the sidewalk. Telephone poles and traffic si
gnals lay mangled and toppled. The q
uant downtown shops
had been gutted-
out by looters earlier in the day and by soldiers later in the evening. The state capitol buildin
g had burnt down to the ground and
the cause of the fire was anyone’s guess; army vehicles
parked
on its once pristine
lawn while groups of white-suits
w
atched the remnants of the building smolder
.

The
Humvee
approached the Meymandi Concert Hall, where Mozart
and Chopin once filled the air. It had been reclaimed as
the 161st Bioterrorism Response Regiment’s d
owntown base camp.

Inside the concert hall, three bored soldiers wearing white-suits were taking
it upon themselves to redecorate
the concert hall with graffiti. They abruptly stopped when Col. Mathis entered through the front door, flanked by two sergeants.

The soldiers were surprised when Col. Mathis said nothing and simply walked towards the main auditorium.

Just as Col. Mathis reached the auditorium’s heavy wooden doors, he stopped and turned towards the soldiers. The two sergeants stopped and turned as well.

“Sgt. Trevor, Sgt. Rivers? How about taking these three outside and running them through some drills?” Col. Mathis said. “I can’t imagine that their environmental suits will make it a very pleasant experience. When they’re done, I want them to come back inside and clean up the mess they made inside my base. We’re probably going to be here for a long time, so let’s keep it looking nice. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeants quickly replied. They walked towards the soldiers, barking orders.

Col. Mathis turned and entered the auditorium, shaking his head. He felt disgusted with himself, disgusted with his men, and, frankly, disgusted with his own country.

“A long fucking time,” he muttered to himself. He kept trying to forget about the dying souls trapped inside those skyscrapers, but found the task to be impossible.

             
Meanwhile, inside a darkened office on the fourth floor of the plastic-draped RBC tower, Howell paced back-and-forth.

             
His eyes were clouded, his skin was pale, and his clothes were caked in dried vomit. He gave guttural groans as his muscles fired in wild spasms. He paced jaggedly from one side of the ransacked office to the other. Periodically he would stop, stick his nose up in the air, and sniff like a feral animal, listening and smelling for new prey. He could hear thousands like him outside the office, aimlessly wandering the recesses of the darkened skyscraper.

Howell gave a frustrated snarl and kept pacing.

             
The desk in the middle of the office was overturned and coved in dried vomit. Howell’s unfinished handwritten manifesto against the government lay strewn across the floor, lying in pools of urine, trampled beyond recognition by his relentless pacing. The bookcases were ransacked, and the door was riddled with deep fingernail gashes from when he tried to claw his way out. In his final form, doorknobs were no longer something he could master.

             
His duffle sat in the far corner of the room, next to the window, underneath a pile of books. The bomb inside, Howell’s last creative endeavor on earth, started beeping as the timer reached the ten second countdown.

             
Howell flew across the office in a feral rage, snarling, and dug into the pile of books with blood-stained hands, digging towards the sound. He reached the duffle and battered it with closed fists, screaming.

The timer reached zero and t
he
resulting
blast vaporized
Howell
along with
most of the fourth floor.

The massive explosion created a shockwave that shattered the building’s exterior windows and blew the plywood off the lobby doors. The small battalion of white-suits standing in front of the building was hurled backwards as a pillar of flames shot out from the lobby.
The plastic tarp
over
the building
started to melt and dribbled
into co
ngealed lumps onto the pavement as the RBC tower engulfed into flames.