High Water (7 page)

“Do we have it?” she said, choking back a sob.

“I feel pretty decent.”

A small laugh escaped through her sobs and she squeezed him tighter. From his vantage point, Pete had a bird’s eye view of half the water park. He could see bodies lying still and strewn across the floor, with continuing scuffles raging between half naked individuals in the stage pool. A sudden pain in his arm  brought Pete’s attention to a tooth lodged just above the spur of his elbow. Grinding his own teeth, he yanked it out and maroon blood pulse out of the wound.  He watched as his blood dripped off his elbow, through the catwalk and into the dark below.

Patting his pockets, Pete realized his phone was in the car. But Liz had already broken away and had her cell phone out, focused on getting them deliverance. It took several tries because of poor reception in the building, but somehow Liz was connected and he listened to one-half of her conversation.

“Hello yes, my name is Liz Boyer and I’m at Tahitian… yes… yes, they attacked us... yes, it’s me and my boyfriend, Pete… no, we don’t have it… look, what the hell is going on? When are you guys going to get here? ... no, wait!... NO!” Liz pulled the phone away from her ear, looking at the device as if it was infected too.

“They put me on hold!” she said in disbelief.

The Cutlass drifted down the middle of the empty freeway, grey smoke billowing from the window. Walter turned the levels up for “Machine Gun Funk”, absent mindedly rhyming along as he tried to take a hit off Challenger, a parting gift from Pete. Biggie Smalls bombastically rapped about his imminent death as Walter thought about the massacre that just went down at Crescent City Diner. It had been way too long since he’d had a burger, though the meat had been runny and rare. Still, pretty delicious. As Walter clutched the bong between his knees, his phone rang out a notification. He considered not taking it, thinking twice about committing three offenses simultaneously. But the roads were clear and, being honest with himself, he didn’t really give a single shit.

The phone displayed several missed calls and texts, all from Liz, and some as long as twenty-five minutes ago:

Need help at tahtin water adv something in water dead people infected

Walter, please come

Pete and I are trapped

cops put us on hold, and we can’t get out

please

“What the… fuck…” he said aloud. Keeping an eye on the road and balancing the stem of the bong with his elbow, he thumbed back:

You need me to come?

He coasted for two miles, barely able to keep his eyes on the road, but there was no reply.

Attentive to his phone, Walter only saw the cat out of the corner of his eye. Streaking out of the darkness of the road’s shoulder, it made a perpendicular line across the street. Swerving to avoid it, he barely managed to miss a hanging tree branch before regaining control of the car. In the process, Challenger tipped over, spilling hot coals and bong water all over his lap.

“Son of a…!” The cherry would have seared through his pant leg if it wasn’t drenched with dirty water.

Sirens and brilliant flashing lights made Walter look up. A line of squad cars raced past, hauling ass in the other direction. He knew where they were headed and pulled his parking break, swinging the car around. The Cutlass’ engine hesitated only momentarily when he slammed on the gas. He sped toward Tahitian Water Adventures, hoping he’d be there in time.

“How long has it been?” Liz whispered.

“At least an hour,” Pete whispered back.

She didn’t reply. Liz’s phone battery was running down fast as the device tried to find service in the building. Almost everything came back as undelivered, including texts to her parents who lived the next town over. Clutching her bricked device, Liz looked down the ladder. Prowling shapes below fought and carried on among themselves. Pete was done looking. He knew there were many more down there in the dim abyss below, baying like dogs on a scent. Even more disconcerting was that occasionally you could catch them murmuring to themselves with a frightening single-mindedness.

Ever since they had escaped immediate danger, Pete’s wounds had paraded into his awareness one by one. His fists were swollen up like hams and his ribs had taken a beating. Despite his form when he kicked, his foot felt tweaked as well. Stone cold sober, body and mind alike implored him to stay still, to wait out of danger for his wounds to heal. It wasn’t a choice since they had nowhere to go. Not wanting to make noise, Pete and Liz had kept their speaking to a minimum. The practical response to the danger around them rubbed his psyche thin, forcing him to confront his hurts and demons on his own. He sat in pain pondering his next move. Or whether there would be one at all.

It didn’t help his idle fears that most of the lights from the stage had gone out a few minutes ago. All that remained was this already murky building plunging into inky darkness along with their waning hope.

What were the cops waiting for? Were they sealed in? If the authorities were smart, they’d quarantine the building and shoot anyone trying to exit.  That’s what the feds, perhaps even the CDC, would do. It was anyone’s guess how local cops were handling the situation. Pete did not imagine it would end well for anyone stuck in the building, infected or uninfected. That reality kept creeping into his mind, unbidden and unwanted.

The only choice was to settle in for a long wait. For what, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps some change in the situation that would give them a fighting chance. He shifted trying to find a more comfortable spot, but the metal walkway was not meant for sitting.

Pete thought through what he knew, trying to settle the unease and paranoia that gnawed hungrily at his already raw nerves. He was looking for something that resembled an answer to Liz’s original concern: what was in the water? The park was warm, wet, and untreated, perfect for carrying to gestation an organism of a sort that Pete had never seen.  Nor his colleagues, he suspected. When, or if, they ever got out, he was determined to get to the bottom of what made it tick.

His graduate work had been on the dominant strain of the malarial protozoa,
Plasmodium falciparum
, which had spread havoc over multiple continents and affected countless millions of people. The strain was well researched, but still had properties that made it difficult to deal with efficiently. For Pete, it had been both a moral and scientific obligation to find novel ways of combating the evasive, complex disease.

Protozoa weren’t all that smart.  At least not smart enough to carry out their life cycle without very specific, time-tested methods. They followed steps found to be successful by their predecessors, much the way that bees had learned to use the sun as a reference point for their feeding. In the case of bees, the insects had even developed organs to help recognize a great big ball of light in the sky. For the parasitic protozoa, physiological characteristics were often recognizable, either chemically or otherwise. Crucial steps in the tiny organism’s life cycle were taken when those areas were reached.

In his work, Pete had found that
Plasmodium
hopped out of the salvia during a mosquito bite and made its way to the liver.  There the protozoa shed a protective sheath and began reproducing. The first step in the life cycle completed, it swarmed the bloodstream in the thousands. That’s where, as he’d explained to Liz earlier, the
Plasmodium
protozoa would start munching on oxygen molecules in the red blood cells.

Pete’s research specifically sought to head off the disease at the liver, before it ever got to the munchies, by giving the newly introduced protozoa bad signals. He mused that it was kind of like giving the new guy at the office the “bathroom key” and sending him to everywhere but the bathroom. His advisor had originally cautioned him against his route of research in regards to the liver. The liver was fragile, especially in a society full of diabetes, alcohol, and diabetes caused by alcohol. Complex interventions were being developed that seemed to be more promising, but Pete was interested in a chemical solution and forged on.

He tested, retested, and re-retested several promising compounds using immune-compromised mice. Protozoa floated around in the mice for about ten minutes before dying in successful trials. The chemical intervention had worked! However the compounds he experimented with were unacceptable for preventative or long term use in humans. While his avenue of research had been a dead end, Pete ultimately didn’t mind. His work became a tiny contribution to the grand sum of human knowledge. Maybe someone, somewhere, could use that information.

Regardless, he now was an expert in protozoa life cycles.

Feeling run down, he pawed at his eyes and shifted his weight to get some blood moving to his extremities. As he did so, Pete felt sweat become exposed to the air, giving him a chill that ran from his neck down his spine. He rubbed at his sore spots, thinking faster now while the darkness fueled his imagination.

The madness plaguing these victims was fantastical, demonic… and distracting. A symptom like that could be caused by any number of things. The legends surrounding mass hysteria resulting from Saint Anthony’s fire were some of his favorite medical mysteries. It was said that in some medieval European cities fungi infected the water supply and made entire cities go mad. Even Lyme disease could cause mental problems given enough of a foothold.

Madness alone wasn’t enough to identify the contagion. Therefore other symptoms had to be recognized as well.  The cakey, running eyes were an interesting symptom.
Toxoplasma gondii
had some ocular side effects that might do something similar in the worst cases. Fortunately, Pete knew more than a little about
Toxoplasma
. It was closely related to the malaria-causing
Plasmodium
protozoa and could be treated with the same antibiotic. The antibiotic would destroy the former utterly, while taking longer to destroy the latter. Generally treatable,
Toxoplasma
was one of those infections that worried pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems. It simply didn’t have the aggressive nature of the malaria protozoa.

Yet at the same time, it was one of the most prevalent protozoa in the world and present in as much of a third of the world’s
population. That fact alone was staggering. One in three people were walking-talking carriers of a tiny, patient organism that didn’t have the best interest of its host in mind. He’d read the gamut of its effects in his research. In some more recent scientific inquiries,
Toxoplasma
was found to be manipulating its host into taking more risky behavior. Experiments involving lab mice were very revealing. Rather than fleeing from the musk of a cat, a mouse would run
for
it, as if they were trying to get themselves killed.
 

The behavior made sense, considering the protozoa’s ultimate designs.
Toxoplasma’s
eventual goal was to make its way into the belly of the common housecat where it could sexually reproduce. The protozoa were one of those bizarre organisms that could decide whether to asexually or sexually reproduce, the latter only being possible in cats. Who wanted to do it alone when they could find another to do it with? The cat’s gut ended up being the romantic getaway
Toxoplasma
yearned for.

The effects on humans were subtle but scary.
Toxoplasma
could allegedly increase overall aggression and the propensity for getting into dangerous situations. It was even blamed for suicides. Occasionally, accusations arose that housecats were making their owners crazy, because the cat passed diseased cysts out with its feces. Yet the effects were so incredibly subtle that they were hard to detect in the first place. In a way, that was even more frightening. If a third of the population was being driven to be more aggressive because of something nobody could see, it made something like world peace impossible. You might as well say international harmony was hampered by Illuminati brain-wave devices.
Toxo
was little more detectable.

So Pete entertained the idea that it was indeed
Toxoplasma
causing the calamity here at Tahitian. But the strain would be virulent, something that nobody had ever seen before.
Toxoplasma
didn’t turn people into murderous lunatics. It didn’t destroy lives. But tonight, in a womb of evil like Tahitian Water Adventures, anything seemed possible. The disease he was encountering was certainly not something that pregnant women alone need worry about.

Back in the moment and despite the danger, Pete spoke up, murmuring loud enough for Liz to hear.

“You know what’s ironic? The Compari brothers cut corners and destroyed the lives of all these people. They aren’t alone. Not even close. There’s abuse and corruption and graft everywhere, but you, the trained paralegal, cannot get a job. Instead, you have to work for a business that has no respect for anyone or their livelihoods.”

Moving away from the ledge, Liz scooted up close to Pete. Her fingers slipped between his swollen digits.

“Pete…” she said, trailing off. In the dim light, Pete saw a shine to her eyes.

“Yeah.”

“I want to go with you when you leave town,” Liz said quietly.

There it was, Pete thought to himself. It was what he had been waiting for ever since he’d gotten his job offer. Pete knew he should just feel relief that she wanted to go with him, but in the back of his mind, he was asking questions. .

“You were always invited to come with me, Liz. You know that. Why did it take us almost getting killed for you to come around to it?” Perhaps he had put too much emotion into his voice, but he felt justified in his frustration.

Liz was silent for a moment then slowly whispered, “I don’t know…” She continued, a little stronger, “I guess I was just scared of moving in together. I always feel like you’re moving forward, with your degree and this big career move. I’m just the plain, boring girl working at this terrible place.” She looked around the room, searching for something. Perhaps a way out of the building and her dismal career. “It all feels out of my control. Except for you, you’re the constant. And I don’t deserve that,” she said. Her eyes were a mix of regret and fear. A haunting scream echoed through the cavernous room.

Pete touched her neck, and she turned back to him. Her eyes glimmered in the dark like twinkling stars. “Liz, I made way less money as a graduate student than you did, remember? You had to lend ME money for that car. Remember how I was so excited to have it, and the radiator blew in the first week…?” He trailed off, watching her reaction. He thought he saw a grin spread across her face and decided to spill his heart out.

“I am so in love with you. When we get out of here, I want us to share a life together,” he whispered. He put his forehead against hers, grabbing her hands tightly.

“Pete, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered. He closed his eyes as he pressed his face closer to her and cherished the warmth of her skin. For a second, the dread chaos below them faded away and he imagined a simple life together.

Their moment of peace was jarred by the sound of a metal door being roughly slammed. Pete opened his eyes to see fear in hers. Shouts followed the breaching of the door. The world around them got a little brighter as the bright beams of flashlights cut through the soupy gloom of the water park.

Pete and Liz both shifted to the edge of the railing to see heavily armed and armored figures pour in through the front entrance. He clearly saw a long gun in one of their hands, pistols in others. Liz grimaced as roars came from the infected individuals stalking the ruined park. The men were now fully inside but paused for a moment, as though really coming to terms with what was within. Pete’s heart almost stopped when the first shots thundered through the confines of the building. Echoes sounded like a hundred firing lines gone mad.

The radical change Pete had been waiting for arrived.

About a dozen men had breached the park. How many people had been at the concert, a few hundred? Pete and Liz had fought a dozen of these freaks and barely made it to safety. It was clear the cops had no idea what they were walking into.

They could stay at the top of the tower, but he wasn’t too keen about the discretion of a scared person with a gun. There was no way to differentiate between infected and uninfected individuals in the low light.

Pete clenched his hands into fists. The help they’d received seemed inadequate..