Guinea Pig (4 page)

Chapter Five.

“Crud!”

Will was in the shower going through his morning ablutions when the water started ponding around his feet, and he knew that the drain had blocked. Again. The flat was old, the plumbing was worn out, and the landlord was too cheap to do anything about it. Which was why they kept a plunger in the bathroom vanity. A plunger which he knew he'd probably have to use shortly. The last time the shower drain had clogged the water had run all over the floor and sunk into the ancient wooden flooring – the landlord was too cheap to even spring for waterproof tiles on the floor. The bathroom had stunk for days. And his feet had got cold and wet every time he'd walked in.

Still, that was the price you paid for living in a cheap flat off campus. He could have lived on the Hill, but accommodation there was tight for graduate students and expensive, even for someone on a full scholarship. So a dive in Westwood was better for his finances. Unfortunately in their case it was a true dive. The landlord had taken the concept of cheap to an entirely new level, and some days he wondered if the flat was actually legally fit to live in. This was looking to be one of those days.

Cursing his rotten luck Will crouched down and unscrewed the shower trap, something that wasn't easy when he was still taped and bandaged up. He didn't want to be, as his injuries felt like they had almost entirely healed. It was something he still didn’t understand given how bad they had seemed originally. Still, in the hospital he had been told to keep it all on for at least four days, or until he saw his doctor. He didn't want to spend the money to see his doctor if he didn't have to. So he'd kept them on.  Today though was day five and so it was probably time to take them off.

Will hoped that it would be something simple and they wouldn't need a plumber. The last time they'd needed one, the landlord had hired cheap and they'd ended up without showers for three days. Hopefully the clog was only in the metal trap and not in the pipes as it had been before. After all, that was why the drain trap had been installed in the first place. To catch things before they blocked the pipes. Before they needed to start plunging or calling the plumbers and their snakes.

Soon he had the trap in his hands and was busy unscrewing the top. But he could already see that it was full. There was some sort of black fibrous material poking out through the holes, hair in all likelihood. Which was good because it meant it would be an easy fix. He simply needed to clean out the trap and screw it back into the drain. Then when he finally got the trap apart he discovered that the blockage wasn't quite what he'd expected.

“What the hell!”

The clog in the shower trap was hair as he'd thought. But it was dark hair like his. And when he looked closer to check just in case it was his he realised it was short. Very short. Not like the hair that he or his flatmates had had on their heads. Instead it was more like the hair he had on his arms. Except that when he finally thought to check he discovered that he didn't have any hair on his arms any longer. Or on his chest or legs or anywhere else on his body not covered in bandages when he suddenly thought to check. He didn't even have body hair where everyone was supposed to have body hair. All of it was sitting in the disassembled metal trap he was holding in his hands.

A brief spurt of alarm ran through him as Will realised something was wrong – with him. He'd adapted to the idea of recovering so quickly after being injured. Or at least feeling so much better. That wasn't after all a sign of something wrong. It was a good thing. Even if it had seemed a bit strange. And it could be that he hadn't been injured as badly as he thought. A few decent night's sleep could have been all that he'd really needed. But this was different. Very different. In fact there was nothing good about it at all. He quite liked his body hair. It was part of him.

Standing there, holding the drain in his hand and staring at the hair clog, he suddenly understood that there could only be one reason for it. Not only was he healing too quickly but he was also losing his body hair. It had to be the experiment. Somehow, something they'd done had caused him to lose all his body hair.

The bungling idiots! Will silently cursed them all, but most especially the doctor. For whatever stupid mistake he'd made he deserved to be cursed. He also cursed himself for being stupid enough to believe the doctor when he'd promised that everything would be fine. That it was safe. His greed had overcome his common sense.

It wasn't as if it was even his only warning sign that something had gone wrong. The dreams were still with him, and while at first he had assumed that they were simply because of the disaster he'd been in, he was no longer so sure. That was five days ago. Fear decreased with time, and he was no longer living every minute of the day with those memories in the forefront of his mind. The dreams should have faded. But they hadn't, and he wasn't sure that they would. There was something about them that spoke to him not of bad memories, but of things coming. He couldn't have explained it, but somehow he was certain the dreams were a warning. A warning that things were happening within him. Things like he was being transformed into a hairless freak.

No wonder they'd been willing to pay him ten thousand bucks! Except that they hadn't even done that yet. In the wake of the disaster he wasn't even sure that they were going to. He didn't even know if Doctor Millen had survived. Or for that matter if there were any records of the drug trial remaining. And that would be the ultimate tragedy. Side effects and no money to show for it! That was simply unfair. But he did understand that the money was no longer his biggest worry.

If his body hair was falling out then his body was changing in some way. And if it was changing in one way it could be changing in others. What else was coming? Was he going to go bald? Were his teeth going to fall out? What else was he going to lose? And could it be stopped? That was the important thing. Could it be stopped before he lost something he really didn't want to live without?

It was time to track down Doctor Millen he realised. Time to find out just what had gone wrong with the experiment. And to get it fixed. If it could be fixed. The doctor had said the changes were permanent. That they couldn't be reversed. They would be a part of him for life. But then he'd also said they were safe. And he hadn't said anything about hair loss. If he'd been wrong about one thing could he be wrong about the other?

Still, maybe before that he should go and see his own doctor at the student health service. He should have gone to see him before, he knew. The people at the hospital had told him as much. But he'd felt good enough that he hadn't bothered. He didn't want to spend the money. He'd just taken the meds he'd been given and went about restoring his life. Most of which amounted to claiming his insurance and shopping for a new laptop and some clothes. But what could his doctors do about body hair falling out? What would they do? After all, many people paid a lot of money to get rid of their body hair.

Worried, Will cleaned out the trap, reassembled it and screwed it back into the shower floor before getting out and drying himself off. After that it was a quick rush to his bedroom and an almost frantic sprint to dress himself and then find his car keys. He had to go back to the crater.

He didn't want to go. He didn't want to have to see that thing ever again. He didn't even like seeing it on the news. But it was there that the FEMA people had set up their emergency command post, and they were the ones who could tell him if Doctor Millen was alive and where he could be found. They were probably the only ones who could since the clinic itself was gone.

But even as he was pulling on his shoes, events conspired to stop him.

The first he knew of it was when he heard a rumbling sound coming from outside his bedroom. He looked out but of course could see nothing. His window had a perfect view of the side wall of the flat next door a whole ten feet away. And as he pulled on his other shoe he couldn't help but notice that the rumbling was getting louder. Like a heavy truck driving toward him.

Earthquake? The thought made him panic. But it didn't feel like an earthquake. Or at least not the one he'd just been in. Whatever this was it seemed to be more noise and less shaking.

Thunder? It sounded like thunder but it wasn't coming and going as it should after each lightning strike. It was continuous. Like a man on a giant drum beating it with all the speed and power he had. And it was in the ground as well, though luckily not like the violent shaking of four or five days before. The ground wasn't moving. It was trembling as if in fear. The whole flat was trembling.

Alarms had started going off as well. Car alarms, burglar alarms. And just like the thunder they seemed to be coming closer as well. Will knew that whatever was happening outside had to be big. For so many different alarms to be sounding at once, it had to be very big.

Suddenly there was a huge bang, like a cannon firing and he almost jumped out of his skin in fright. The more so when he realised that as well as the original detonation there had been the sound of splintering wood. He knew even as he landed back on his feet that something had happened to the flat. Something bad. Something that made him want to get outside – fast. He'd already been in one collapsing building and barely escaped with his life. He didn't want the ground to have another chance to swallow him whole.

So Will ran for the front door, not even looking behind him to find out what had exploded. If there was one thing he had learnt from the clinic it was that you didn't waste time looking back when something bad happened behind you. You ran. You ran or you died.

“Oh shit!”

When he reached the front door however and looked out to the street it was to discover that it wasn't an earthquake. It was far worse than that. And he also discovered at that moment that he couldn't flee. Whatever was behind him couldn't be as bad as what was in front of him. To go outside was to die. The insanity of the last few days had returned – crazier than before.

It was hailing. In California! And it wasn't hailing little hail stones like it did back in England. It wasn't even hailing golf ball sized chunks of ice such as you occasionally saw on the news. Instead what were falling down out of the sky were blocks of ice the size of basket balls. And where they hit the ground they smashed into it like missiles, exploding and leaving craters. Impact craters in the roads and the side walks. In the front yard. That was the thunder he could hear. Thousands upon thousands of these things were smashing into the ground and exploding across the entire city.

Standing there watching it, his face slack with disbelief, Will could almost imagine that he was watching a big budget Hollywood disaster movie. One complete with wall to wall sound and a massive base speaker to shake the ground. But he knew it wasn't a movie. It was real. And it was a catastrophe. Another one.

All around in the distance Will could see people running and screaming in blind panic. Trying desperately to get away from the death in the sky descending on them. Not all of them could.

So Will watched helplessly again as more people died. There were bodies in the street and the front yards of homes, those who hadn't managed to get out of the way in time. And while some of them were moving too many of them would never get up again. He knew that from the blood he could see running down the street. And from the cartoon like shapes many of them were laying in. Shapes that no living human being could ever make. Not if they had bones. But their bones had been shattered and their flesh had been torn asunder by the crushing impacts, and what was left behind was no longer alive.

Cars were being destroyed by the falling ice missiles as well. Their thin metal roofs and bonnets had never been designed to take these sorts of impacts, and the hail stones were tearing right through them, ripping them apart. Will guessed that inside some of those cars would be more dead people. Especially inside the ones that had crashed and looking down the street he could see several pile ups.

“Take cover!” Will screamed it at everyone he could see, but knew it wasn't enough. There was really nothing he could do for them. They were too far away and he was trapped. He couldn't go to them. Something that became abundantly clear when one block of ice crashed down on the concrete steps just in front of his flat and promptly shattered. Ice and concrete both went flying, covering him, and he knew that to go outside was to die. He was pinned down.

Fairly soon it didn't matter though. Those who could had made it inside their homes or under whatever other shelter they could find. Those who couldn't were dead or dying. The ferocity of the ice storm meant that no one could survive outside for long.

His car had been hit he noticed. He could see it barely thirty yards in front of him parked on the side of the street with all its lights flashing and its siren sounding. He could just hear it over the sound of thunder. Apparently the battery was working though he doubted anything else would be. There were holes in the roof and the bonnet from where huge chunks of ice had simply punched their way through the steel. The windows had all been blown out by the exploding ice. And worst of all he could see the way the car's chassis was pushed down in the middle almost to the road. The ice had hit with enough force to actually buckle the car. Seeing it he knew that the damage was too great to repair. The poor old Nissan would never run again.