Pulse (13 page)

He stroked her forehead, a grin on his face.

In the middle of the night the male host woke from his coma. It wasn't because he was dead, or that he'd exploded.

It was because he wanted to talk.

Adam had been in the observing room all night. The three guards on duty were uncomfortable with his presence. It was probably because he never spoke to them; his eyes stayed glued on the figure as he scribbled notes wildly at the slightest shift in the host's vitals. It wasn’t as though he didn’t like the men—they both seemed fine—it was that Adam couldn’t spare an iota of energy towards anything not relating to the parasite. If that meant he was coming off as a stiff, then so be it.

When the host finally woke, Adam shot from his chair and pressed against the glass to watch. Six days. They had new live host victims in another part of the lab, but they weren't nearly as close to maturing. This was it; what he had been waiting for. Whatever caused the little girl’s chest to explode was about to
happen. The host’s vitals were through the roof: high pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature. 

The man thrashed about on the bed, pulling at the restraints. The bed rocked. The sheets slipped from his body revealing the grotesquely distended stomach. It was freakish, as though he were pregnant. The parasite writhed beneath the skin.

Then he turned and looked through the glass right at Adam. His eyes were bloody, some kind of viscous opaque substance seeping from his tear ducts. Around his mouth, saliva was crusted. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, swollen and black.

"Hi there," he whispered. "Hi, hi, hi there. Come here."

Adam gulped. He looked at the guards who remained still. Finally, he pressed the intercom button. "Mr….Mr. Price?"

"That's me. Sammy Sam Price." His voice hissed the S in his name. This is what the reports of mental instability must've meant. The way he spoke…well, it wasn't normal.

"How are you feeling?" was all Adam could think to ask. Now faced with a mature host, he wasn't sure what to do.

"Like I want to rip my fucking guts out all over you and
kill kill kill
you."

Adam's chest was tight. "Why is that?"

"Because I feel like it. Because I want to tear the balls off that guard and feed them to the dogs at home, then slit the other one's throat and—"

“Do you know what happened to your wife?” Adam intended to startle the man. It worked, though not in the way he thought it would. Sam’s brow furrowed as though concentrating.

“Wife.”

“She’s dead. She wanted to kill you. Why would she do that?”

Sam arched his back and screamed. “Don’t care! That fucking cu—”

Adam released the intercom button, not hearing the rest of the sentence.

"Dr. Baker, shouldn't we be calling someone?" one of the guards asked.

"Who are we going to call?
I
am who you call.” Adam took a deep breath, his gaze still averted from the lunatic on the other side of the glass. “Just…just give me another minute, okay? We don't know how long he'll be coherent."

"Not sure if coherent is the right word," the other mumbled.

Adam held down the intercom button again. "Mr. Price, do you remember how you were infected?"

"
Infected?
I feel great, just fine and dandy."

"Do you remember what happened to your daughter?"

This time he squeezed his eyes shut. Liquid streamed down his face. He let out an agonizing howl and tried to escape again.

"Please tell me something," Adam begged. "People are dying!"

Price grinned, locking eyes with Adam again. "Good. Good.
Goody good
. Want to fucking kill them, fucking tear them apart."

Fine, if that's what you want, then blow up
, Adam thought.
That's what we want to see.

One of the host's hands broke free.

"Get in there!" Adam shouted to the guards, notions of protocol and safety escaping him. What if the man killed himself somehow? Before they could study what they needed to? "Restrain the host before he hurts himself!"

They glanced at each other. None of them had hazmat suits on. It would be breaking protocol to enter without one. Plus the patient was obviously violent and strong. Adam flew to his feet. They didn’t have much time. He’d risk his own life to ensure the specimen wasn’t harmed.

He moved towards the door. "If you don't go, I'll go myself!"

That got them. The last thing they needed was punishment for disobeying orders
and
letting a scientist get killed. Adam felt a surge of guilt, like a young child being reprimanded for their selfishness. He knew he was putting the guards’ lives at risk, but if anything were to happen to this host…

"Hunt, go. Charles, go get backup," said one of them. Hunt clicked the safety off his gun and went into the first safety chamber. The other guard keyed in a code. One door slid open. A moment later the other opened into the lab.

The host freed his other hand. As the guard entered the room and approached, his aggression levels increased as he honed in on him. The guard approached, unsure of what to do now that the host was half-way freed. Price started shouting about balls again and everything he'd do to the guard.

Whatever decision Hunt planned on making, he ended up not having to decide.

The host laid down and arched his back, using his own hands to tear through the taut skin of his stomach, lifting his belly into the air as thousands of parasites burst from it.

A handful of them landed directly on the guard. They were fast and surprisingly agile. The ones on the ground and bed migrated towards him, flopping off the bed in a mess of bodily fluids and blood. The ones on him crawled up to his exposed face and latched on.

The guard panicked and grabbed at them. He moved towards the door, screaming for help. His hand slapped against the door release button, sending it flying open. He stumbled in, still clawing at his face.

As the other guard went to let him back in, Adam grabbed his shoulder. "You can't do that! They'll get in here."

They looked at each other and to their companion.

“Fuck you, Baker!”

He opened the door just as Hunt came barreling in, knocking the other guard to the ground and running straight into Adam. His gurgling screams were slowly fading as the worms made their way into his mouth and down his throat.

Adam fell backward as Hunt toppled onto him. Hot, slimy worms slapped against his face as Hunt desperately tried to get them off. It took every bit of strength Adam had to shove him aside and crawl away. He gripped a thin worm, about as big and thick as a pencil, peeling it off his face. A sharp pain stung on his cheek as he yanked the worm free.

Panic took hold of every fiber of Adam’s being.
I’m infected, I’m infected, oh God I’m infected
. He looked to the other guard. His heel hit a parasite as he flung himself around. As he went down they overtook him, wriggling into any openings in his clothes. They crowded his face and, before long, there was nothing to be seen except a pile of white worm-like creatures with only glimpses of the body beneath them.

Adam scrambled to his feet and left the room, clutching his bleeding cheek. Were there more on him? Had they gotten into his clothes? Was a few seconds truly all the parasite needed to infect him?

He felt as though a million of them were crawling on his skin. As he ran back to his office he kept patting at his body, only to verify that he couldn’t feel any.

Rick Lavender wasn't looking forward to work that night. Half his buddies already said they weren't coming in to work until things blew over, or in some cases never again since they thought it was the end of the world. But Rick always had a good work ethic and he saw no real reason not go in. He'd been working night security at the Georgia CDC location for six years now and not a single day missed.

Besides, North Dakota was states away. The infection had reached Montana, but nowhere else according to the news. He was going in
to work—despite his wife's protests—and that was that.

Only that night was turning out to be the worst night to come in. It started with a call from the third quadrant of the building for backup security on a possible hostile situation. That was already bad. Nothing ever went on during the night shift. As Rick trekked across the campus, he prepared to draw his gun; something he'd never done on the job. On the way he met up with another guard responding to the call. It was Chuck Fehd, someone he worked with frequently.

"Any idea what this is about?"

"No," Rick answered. "But isn't that quadrant where they're storing infected people?"

Fehd shrugged. "Beats me." He ran his security card through a door leading to a higher security area of the building.

As they rounded a corner they saw another guard slumped against a door, his body visibly shaking. The two ran over and knelt by him. He was muttering incoherently about worms, and Cole, and balls getting cut off.

Fehd shot Rick a wary look. They weren't getting anything from him, but whatever hostile situation was happening was behind the door.

Rick drew his gun and ran his card. The door swung open into a room with a giant floor to ceiling window on the left and another door straight ahead.

"Oh, God."

He wasn't sure if he said it or Fehd, but the sight behind the window was enough to make anyone want to meet their maker. On a gurney in the other room a man's body lay, his ribs
burst outward from the gaping hole in his torso. Blood and flecks of gore were everywhere, splattered against the window, ground, and wall. On the floor another guard laid motionless, bloodied.

"What the
fuck
happened in there," Fehd whispered.

"I don't know but we need to help that guy. I think it's Hunt," Rick said as he went to the other door. He ran his card through. Fehd followed behind him. They had to pass through another security door before entering the room. Where was the hostile threat? Had it moved?

What am I getting myself into?

The scent of human bodily fluids and something else, something more acrid, hit Rick's nose and made him gag. He brought his sleeve to his nose as he rushed over to Hunt, bending down to check his pulse.

"He's alive."

"Well let's get him the hell out of here," Fehd said, eyeing the corpse. "What the fuck are they doing in here? The CDC studies diseases, they don't do fucking…fucking crazy experiments!"

"Calm down. Just help me drag him out of here, okay? It looks like he's bleeding."

"
Lavender and Fehd, please report your location."

Rick paused to click the button on his radio. "This is Lavender. We reported to the hostile situation. We're recovering officer Hunt."

"Get out of that room, Lavender. Get out of that room right now!"

"Hey, what's that?"

Rick turned in time to see big white worms seeping from the vent above Fehd. One landed on his shoulder and slapped on the ground. But it was fast. It was crawling up Fehd before he moved an inch. The flow of worms increased until a mass of them seeped from it.

"What the f—"

Rick's body took over. He dodged beside Fehd who was now screaming as he slipped and fell, his head cracking against the window.

Rick reached for his security card when he felt something hot and slimy against his shoulder. He glanced down to see a white, shapeless worm five inches long cling to his fingers. They were on him, all over him. He felt panic, pure and primal, surge through his body as he flung himself around wildly in hopes of dislodging them.

The worms wriggled their way up his neck. He tried to beat them away, but they clung to his clothing and made his fingers sting as they brushed against him. He thought of his wife, at home waiting for him to call during his break, of the guys who decided not to come in.

He thought of his perfect attendance record, how even in death he wasn't going to ruin it.

Then he felt the first one begin fighting its way into his mouth, tiny teeth grinding away at his lips. His hearing dampened as he felt smaller worms wriggle into his ears. He thought of nothing but the searing pain in his body as the tiny ones got under his clothes, pinpricks of pain all over his torso as they burrowed into his body.

When the worm finally got into his mouth, it went straight down his throat into his stomach, shredding and eating Rick's insides
as its brethren followed suit.

Outside, the chaos reached its crescendo. Dom and Brian huddled in the bathroom, the farthest room from the windows, as stray bullets shattered glass and thudded in the wall. Chelsea lay in the bathtub in a fetal position, her body shaking. It was obvious she was crying, but she said to leave her alone. Dom wanted nothing more than to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay. Not being able to only added to his misery.

The previous day passed in pleasant quietness. They played Monopoly and made a huge dinner since they were in such good spirits. It wasn't until midway through the night that the first gun fired and from there…well, that was it. They watched for a little while, but once the first bullet hit their building they retreated as far away from the walls as they could.

"We should have left when we had the chance," Brian groaned. "We don't stand a chance now."

"You're the one that said we shouldn't leave," Chelsea said. "You said we had nowhere to go and we couldn't make it."

Dom pressed his face into his hands. He could barely keep his eyes open but was too afraid to sleep. As much as he hated Brian's incessant whining, it was the only thing distracting him from fixating on the noise outside.

"Before we had to get
your
sorry ass I wanted to get out of here. Right, Dom?"

Dom couldn't remember. He couldn't think. It didn't matter who said what. He just wanted the gunfire and screaming to stop. "Brian, why don't you get your phone out and try to find out what is going on."

Brian opened his mouth for a rebuttal, but an explosion somewhere across town shut him up. The fighting outside subsided for a moment, as though everyone stopped to listen. Then someone fired and it started again.

"Oh, God."

Brian's jaw dropped and his head sagged. The glow of his phone illuminated his wide eyes. He handed the phone to Dom.

It was
a painfully brief announcement on KOMO News from the state that they were carpet bombing the entire city within a ten mile radius. The goal was to prevent the spread of the parasite and kill as many infected as possible. There were evacuation sites where they claimed to be bussing uninfected people out to safe zones.

A map with a red circular overlay on Seattle and neighboring cities showed the bombing radius. While they were on the fringe of it, there was no doubt they’d get hit. The closest evacuation zone was the middle school a few miles south from their location. The bombings would take place in approximately 48 hours. How did they jump from martial law and curfews to
leveling the entire city?

Was that why people were losing it outside? In their mad attempt to flee the city?

“How can they do this?” Dom said, his question distant and unsure.

Realizing something was wrong, Chelsea sat up. “What is it?”

He handed her the phone, unable to repeat what he’d just read. Chelsea set the phone on the edge of the tub, sinking back in behind the shower curtain, silent.

“This is a joke,” Dom whispered. “Someone hacked the website. It’s a sick joke.”

It had to be. There was no way the government would up and bomb a city like that. Didn’t they need approval? Wasn’t there authorization and protocol? Dom grabbed the phone and began checking all the other local news websites to be sure. Each one showed the exact same message.

"I'm leaving."

Brian's voice was oddly level. It scared Dom. His best friend stood and walked out of the bathroom as he and Chelsea watched in disbelief.

"Get him," Chelsea cried. "He's going to get himself killed."

Dom stumbled to his feet and grabbed Brian as he b-lined it for the bug-out bags and weapons by the door.

"Brian, you can't do this. You're going to get shot out there, or infected, or God knows what!"

He jerked his shoulder away and hoisted his backpack on. "I'm leaving," he repeated. "I don't care what you do, but I'm not staying here to get bombed. I'd rather risk it out there."

“We should all go together.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? This is pathetic. We thought we were hot shit with all our gear and our food, but none of it matters. Tomorrow we’re going to be burnt to a crisp. Everything in here will be
gone
.”

“This could be a joke,” Dom said, grasping at any reason he could. “We don’t know this is even real.”

Brian took the assault rifle from the weapons pile. Dom’s rifle. “Doesn’t matter. Real or not, we’ve been kidding ourselves. In real life, you can’t hole up in an apartment and survive the end of the world. This is the wakeup call we needed.”

“Hey, you can go but you can’t take my stuff,” Dom snapped. He felt his face reddening. If he couldn’t talk sense into Brian, he had to try something
else. To distract him, at least, until he had a better idea. “You’re staying here.”

Brian lifted the gun, pointing it at Dom’s head. “I’m leaving.”

His mind blanked the second he was staring down the barrel of the rifle. He wasn’t sure who the person was that stood in front of him. It wasn’t his roommate anymore. It wasn’t his friend since high school. It was a stranger, someone he once knew turned into a monster in a week. Like everyone else.

“Fine. Go. But the second you walk out that door, you aren’t coming back in.”

The front door slamming shut was his goodbye. Dom stared at the door. He checked the peephole, part of him hoping Brian still stood there. That he could convince him to stay. Despite the constant arguing, there was safety in numbers.

It took a moment, but the world finally rushed back in around him. The noises, the fear. The impending bombings that would kill them if t
he infected didn’t do it first. Joke or not, everything was crashing around him. Dom dropped to his knees and crawled back to the bathroom where Chelsea sat in silence.

“Brian is gone. I told him not to come back.”

Chelsea climbed out of the tub. Her brown hair was a mess of tangles. Her eyes were red from crying. She crawled to him and hesitantly put her arms around his neck. Dom collapsed into her grip, holding onto her. “What happened?”

“He pulled a gun on
me. God, I swear I didn’t recognize the person I was looking at.” Dom rested his cheek against her head. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“
You did the right thing,” she said. “He was losing it. What else could you have done?”

Despite her comfort
, Dom felt like it wasn’t right. They had many ups and downs, but Brian was still his best friend. It was unimaginable that either of them would end the friendship. When they met in high school, Brian was easygoing and popular because he was friendly to everyone. Dom was a loner; his intense love for retro videogames and foreign movies was ahead of his time. They were partners in freshmen year chemistry and became inseparable friends, never looking back, even through the most brutal of fights.

He leaned into Chelsea
and welcomed her embrace as he told himself there wasn’t anything he could have done. Brian’s fear for his own life exceeded whatever bond he and Dom had. He tried not to consider it an insult to their friendship, but something more base.

It was the only way his brain could make sense of it.

“I guess we should leave soon, too.” Dom blinked away the forming tears in his eyes. “Let’s try to rest and make a plan. Then we’ll go.”

“Can we make it on foot?” Chelsea said aloud.

“I don’t know. The question is, do we want to?”

She paused, rubbing her fingers against her temples. “My friend Nina lives a few blocks away. She has a truck. If we could get to it, maybe we could all drive to the middle school?”

Dom nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good. I guess if this is a hoax, we’ll know then. And we’ll keep going.”

“Hey?”

He looked up at her. She kissed him softly on the lips. “You did the right thing,” she repeated. “You couldn’t stop him.”

“Then why does it feel
like I sent him to his death?”