Pulse (10 page)

He collapsed on the couch next to them. Chelsea had gone silent.

"I hope not. I don't see how this could get any worse."

When Gary LoPiccolo woke up, everything was different. The door to his room was unlocked and outside other patients wandered the hall aimlessly. There were no orderlies to be seen. He felt hot and a little agitated, like how he did when he didn’t take his meds, but at least ten times worse.

And he liked it.
It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was one he knew well and was the reason why he was in the Greenwood Mental Facility. In the past, when that hot, tingly sensation became uncontrollable, Gary would find pretty girls to admire. To keep for himself. He’d done it many times before getting caught. What did him in was when he tried keeping more than one girl locked away in the basement of his house. They conspired and one got free.

When they caught him, they said regular prison
wasn’t the place for him. They said his brain was broken. Gary disagreed; he knew what he was doing. But his mother mentioned something about pleading insanity, and…Well, Gary didn’t like to think about it.

Whatever nonsense they sa
id seemed a blurry memory compared to his senses now. He had his hot and tingly sensation, but with a deeper sense of urgency. To do something. Really do s
omething
.

But what?

Gary peeled himself from the sweat-soaked bed and stood in his room. His arms had pus-filled wounds on them. He touched one, feeling it sting. Something wiggled under his touch, but when he moved his finger away there was nothing but a tiny stream of fresh blood.

Down the hall he heard someone crying. He followed the n
oise, checking for orderlies as he went. People he recognized from the rec room were out of their rooms. Oliver, an older man Gary knew, was on his butt on the floor, reaching into a pool of blood on the ground and painting the walls with it. The blood’s source was under the door in front of him, still fresh and seeping. Oliver kidnapped 15 boys in his lifetime. Or at least that was what everyone said he did. Whether he did or didn’t, Oliver couldn’t speak to say otherwise. He had cut his own tongue out to feed to two of the boys.

That’s what Oliver did; he kidnapped them and cut parts of himself off for them to eat. It’s why his body was so lumpy and misshapen, from the muscle he’d been filleting off.

It became obvious the patients had mutinied. Is that what you called it? No one in charge was anywhere to be found, and the patients were either screaming or fighting each other. There was something wrong with their eyes and a truly rancid scent permeated the halls.

“Hail, LoPiccolo!”

He turned on his heel, pressing his back against the wall for defense. Coming from an Orderly Only room was Madison Cole, with loops of intestines hanging heavy on her neck.

“
We got a fieldtrip bus outside ready to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

Madison giggled, stroking the slick intestines. A puncture in one of them was forcing foul, lumpy juices out of it. They dribbled on her clothes. Gary didn’t know what she was in for. He didn’t like talking to the girls in Greenwood.

“Anywhere. We just gonna get in and drive drive drive together! No one can stop us. Can’t you see, bud? We’re FREE!”

She spun in a circle. Her morbid necklaces flapped against her body, eventually sliding to the floor.

“Who else is going?” Gary was cautious, especially with these crazy people.

“Um, everyone,” she said as she put her intestines back over her neck. “Everyone from my hall. ‘Bout half of yours. So what do you say? We’re leaving right now. I just stopped to get goodies!”

Madison reached into a plastic bag, pulling out a blood smeared can of pop and a torn candy bar. Gary was accustomed to her stupidity. She didn’t have an ounce of smarts in her entire body. She was dangerous and wild, like an animal, but she was offering a way out and Gary couldn’t say no to that.

“Ok. I’ll go with you.”

“Good.” Her red eyes bore into his. “The more the merrier.”

The sweat was a defense mechanism.

Through shatterproof glass, Adam observed the husband and wife brought in from North Dakota. It was confirmed they were infected by the version of the parasite that burst through the little girl's chest cavity.

Their daughter becoming infected through blood contact. Her eventual death. Both claimed worms burrowed into them through their skin and that's how they were infected. The first sweep over their bodies did show puckered, oozing wounds in a circular pattern on their torsos.

They’d been trying to contact emergency services for their daughter but weren’t able to make contact with anyone. Lindsey was unaware of the infection
, but Sam had heard about the hospital massacre on the radio on the way home from work. He called the infection hotline the CDC set up and informed them of what happened.

Local CDC reps covering the breakout in the hospital descended upon their house within the hour, then transporting them to Georgia, interviewing en route. Both were shaken from the incident, but tried to explain all the circumstances to the best of their ability. The worms were big and fast, crawling up their pant legs and latching onto them. Lindsey described ripping the worms from her skin being more painfu
l than when they first bit her. They were asked if they would be willing to undergo tests once in Georgia, to which they agreed with no hesitation.

After a couple of hours their symptoms worsened. The sweating became worse and they fell unconscious. By the time they arrived in Georgia, they’d been in comas for hours.

Even though his team couldn’t run tests on them while they were conscious, Adam considered what they told them a wealth of knowledge. Not to mention their bravery and rationality in contacting the CDC, which was admirable. They were the only living infected beings they had to study. He felt terrible about their being infected—it could only mean they’d end up dead or crazy—but at least they’d be able to monitor live hosts and learn something.

His bosses enacted the obligatory “can we save them or hospitalize them” spiel, but the safety of the nation was at stake.
Their fates were inevitable and Adam and his team needed to be there to see it happen. In the end, it didn’t take much convincing. Besides, they had volunteered their bodies to science. All Adam had to do was drop a statistic to get them moving; North Dakota had an estimated infection rate of 67%. Drastic measures had to be taken to find a solution.

His bosses were concerned they were going to conduct inhumane experiments on the couple. E
xperiment
was too dramatic of a word. Adam assured everyone they were simply going to observe and take samples. They needed to be observed through all stages—their vitals and samples taken on the hour.

"There is no way to save them," Adam assured the higher-ups. "The best thing we can do for them is use their deaths to save other people."

When Adam first went to see them after they were secured, the smell was unpleasant but not intolerable. It was sour with undertones of rotten vegetables, but he breathed through his nose and managed. As the hours progressed he didn't get used to the smell because it worsened. Beyond it being bad it actually made him feel dizzy and nauseated. If he hadn't left the room when he had, he surely would've vomited.

He realized the smell in their yellow sweat was a defense mechanism once he compared it with their decreasing vitals. Their pulses were slowing, and their incoherent mumbling ceased. The male's stomach became distended and movement, the parasite no doubt, was visible under the skin.

The chemicals in the sweat were so unbearable that it warded potential threats to the host body. Indeed, they were easy targets in their comas. It was simple and effective, much like how a skunk operated. Based on the scene photos and bodies, the young daughter exhibited the same symptom. Her bed had been saturated with sweat. Had the parents intended to take her to the hospital? Were they unable to be in her presence long enough to even move her?

He refocused his attention to the couple. Lately he’d been spending more time than anyone else inside the viewing room, simply watching the couple and scribbling notes. He could only draw himself away if he knew something
had
to be done elsewhere. The white bed sheets around them were yellowed. He watched as viscous liquid dripped from their pores. Their fevers were beyond what the human body could handle without damage to the brain.

The parasite had to protect the host body during this defenseless period. Adam wondered what would happen if they killed one of the host bodies during the gestation period. Would the worms flee the body and seek a new host? Would they eventually die inside the body? Regardless, he wanted to see these two hosts through to the end. The entire lab was abuzz, fixating on even the slightest change in vitals. Lab techs were always removed from these situations, emotionally and physically. Things came to them, they ran tests and analyzed. Adam wondered if he’d act the same way if he was in their position.

Adam imagined the parasite growing bigger inside them, using up their organs, tissue, and blood. He waited for the moment when they'd be ready to burst. He'd be prepared.

Beside him, the door beeped and swung open. It was Marla. She wasn’t surprised to see him. In fact, she walked straight to him.

He glanced at his watch. “What are you doing here? Physical checks aren’t for another hour. But based on your lack of hazmat suit, I don’t think that’s why you’re here.”

She pulled a chair next to him. Metal squeaked against the floor. “I’m on my way home, which, by the way, you should consider doing some time.”

Adam knew the techs made up silly rumors about his “obsession” with Anisakis Nova. He overheard a guy named Kaiser in the cafeteria mention it.

“Perhaps if everyone had the same sense of devotion I do, we’d be coming up with solutions faster.” The remark came off harsher than he intended, but Adam was irritated with her flippancy. “Again, what are you doing here?”

“I just had a thought, something positive that helped…I don’t know, reassure me?”

Marla ran a hand through her hair. It was dark and curly, cut just above the shoulders. Very different than Gina’s painstakingly styled, fake red hair. He looked away, feeling his cheeks redden slightly. He wasn’t supposed to notice Marla’s hair, especially considering the circumstances.

“What is it?”

“I was thinking of Ebola. It’s a terrifying, powerful virus. It would be perfect, potentially even unstoppable and more destructive if it didn’t kill its host so quickly.”

Adam’s brows rose. “Ok? What is your point?”

“The parasite we’re dealing with is indeed horrible, but like Ebola it isn’t perfect. From what we understand, many of the hosts exhibiting violence kill the uninfected. They don’t seek to spread the parasite. Could you imagine what kind of trouble we’d be in if they consciously sought to infect other people?”

“I suppose you’re right. However, I think it makes up for that one flaw in many other ways.”

Marla continued as though she didn’t hear him. “And look at those two! The hosts are in a coma for an extended period of time. If we started seeking out and killing host bodies rather than trying to detain or save them, imagine what a dent we could put in stopping this thing.”

“It is a rapidly mutating genus of nematode we’ve never heard of. For all you know, within a month it will have evolved beyond such a long coma stasis,” Adam said, intent on getting his point through. “Not to mention, if the parasite learned to secrete less chemicals that cause said violent behavior, the host
could
develop more intelligent behavior.”

She frowned. “Don’t think that, Dr. Baker.”

“Why? Because thinking it will make it true?” Adam laughed, but it was bitter. “Positive thinking and ‘what-ifs’ aren’t going to get us anywhere.”

Marla stood quickly, closing the distance between her and the door. Before she left she looked back. “The second you start losing hope, we don’t really have a reason to keep trying.”

Adam was left with his own thoughts, only now they weren’t so focused.

***

On the fourth day, as he would've expected, Lindsey Price woke from her coma. At first she laid there, red eyes scanning the room back and forth. It seemed she was trying to figure out where she was. Two lab techs came in to take samples. They got so far as doing the usual sweat tests when she became violent and wanted to kill.

Then s
he thrashed wildly in her bed. Had she not been tied down she would've done damage to herself and the room. The lab techs ran out and retrieved security. Guards in hazmat suits came in and tried to sedate her. It did nothing. Eventually she got one hand free from the restraints.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said in a loud, yet disturbingly flat tone. She repeated it until the words blurred together. It took a moment before Adam realized she was saying it to her unconscious husband.

“Gonna shove a bottle of vodka down your throat,” she said calmly. “Gonna make you drown on it.”