David Morrell - The Totem

He had to talk to someone, but he didn't know anyone he could call. He crossed the room and grabbed the phone, surprised to find that he dialed his home number. That was something he never did when he was on a trip. The trouble with his wife was so great that they barely managed talking face-to-face, let alone long-distance. But he had to talk to her, to tell her that he'd managed to stop drinking, that everything was going to be all right. Maybe he was too optimistic, but he knew that he could stop at least as long as he was working on this story. After that, he couldn't say. "One day at a time," he reminded himself. Just take it one day at a time. He didn't even care that he would waken her, that in New York it was two hours later. He just had to talk to her and waited while the phone rang and kept waiting, but there wasn't any answer. Still he waited, and at last he had to admit that she was out. But where would she be at this hour? The doubts and the suspicions. He hung up and glanced at the bourbon before he picked up a cigarette. He had to talk to Slaughter and get their differences resolved so he could continue working with the man and have this story. When he found the number in the phone book and dialed it, he was suddenly uncertain, though. He didn't know how he would do this, how he would cancel the ill will he had created. As the phone rang, he was tempted to hang up, but Slaughter answered, and he found that he was speechless. "Yes, who is it?" Slaughter asked and then repeated. Dunlap waited, paralyzed. "Is there anybody-?" Slaughter asked, and Dunlap set the phone back on its cradle.

That was stupid. What's the matter with you? Dunlap thought. But he knew what the matter was, all right, although he had trouble admitting it. He was ashamed of what he'd done tonight, regretful and embarrassed. He'd grown to like the man. Granted, there wasn't any valid reason to pretend that they were friends. Dunlap nonetheless had thought of Slaughter that way. When they had gone out searching for the boy, Dunlap had felt that he was part of things, that he belonged and was involved. That feeling conflicted with his job, his instincts, and his training. No reporter ought to get involved with what he wrote about. His job was to watch objectively and then to write the story. But then maybe that had been his trouble all along, concentrating too much on himself and not on other people. For just a little while this evening, however, he had felt involved, and for that brief time, he hadn't felt hollow. Then they'd searched the mansion, and the boy had died, and he had remembered why he came here. He had realized how strong this story was becoming, had been mindful of the good that it would do him, and he'd switched the tape recorder on before he'd even considered what he was doing, and the next thing he had started taking photographs. Now he thought about the grieving mother and the father, how he'd used them, how he'd planned to benefit from what would happen to the medical examiner. He felt sorry for the boy and for the parents, sorry for what had happened up there, but he'd kept taking photographs. His career. That's where his sympathies had finally been strongest, and he couldn't stop his shame now and embarrassment. So what do you intend to do? Do you plan to give up those pictures and that tape? Do you want to back off from the story? No, of course not. You're damned right, you don't. Because that shame you're feeling is just one more way to be a loser. It's not your fault that the boy died. You're just here to write about that. You can go on feeling all the shame you want, but just make sure you get that story, just make sure that your emotions don't intrude on how you make your living.

He knew that he was right, but all the same he continued staring at the phone. Regardless of the friendship he imagined he had violated, he still had to talk to Slaughter, to smooth things, to fix them so he wasn't cut off from the story. Even so, he debated for ten minutes before picking up the phone again. He dialed Slaughter's number once more and waited while the phone kept ringing. This time Slaughter's voice was angry. "Yes, God damn it, Rettig, what's the matter? Get on out here." Dun-lap didn't answer. "Tell me what you want!" the angry voice demanded. Dunlap set the phone back on its cradle. There was no way he could make a man who sounded like that sympathetic. He would wait until the morning. So he smoked his final cigarette and looked down at his notes, and then he did a thing that he had never done before, had never even dared because he was so bothered by it. Unsettled by his dream, the image fixed in his mind, turning, glaring at him, he was forced (he didn't will it, but was passive, worked on, compelled) to sketch it. He was staring at it, swallowed by its eyes. He kept on staring, couldn't shift his head away. He felt a darkness in his mind begin to open, and he didn't weaken all at once. It took him several minutes, and he fought it, he would later give himself that credit, fought as hard as he could manage, but resolve diminished into pointlessness, and he was reaching for the bourbon.

The medical examiner gave himself the first shot in the lip, frowning at the mirror while he spread the injured portions and then slipped the needle in. It stung, and he was too quick on the plunger so that he felt the liquid spurting through his tissue. All he could be grateful for was that he held his breath and didn't spill the liquid up across his lip and hence he couldn't taste it. Human antirabies serum manufactured from the blood of persons who'd been vaccinated against rabies virus. That would help his system to produce the necessary antibodies and in tandem with a second kind of treatment, it was his best chance to survive contagion. He winced as he drew the needle out. Next he set it down, undid his pants and dropped them, pulling down his underwear and reaching for a second needle that he inserted into one buttock. This injection too was antirabies serum, and he wouldn't need another needle until just about this time tomorrow. Even so, that didn't give him comfort because, if he winced to draw this needle out, tomorrow's shot would be the start of worse things. It would not be antirabies serum; it would be the second kind of treatment: rabies vaccine. Anyone who'd been injected with it cringed when they remembered it. First developed by an Englishman named Semple who had done his research in India in 1911, it was rabies virus taken from the brains of rabbits, mice, or rats, and then killed by incubation in carbolic acid. The dead cells helped the body's immune system. Although harmless in themselves, they encouraged the body to reject the not-yet-rampant live cells that were like them. But the trouble was that not just one injection of the vaccine was sufficient. Fourteen were the minimum, and twenty-one were even better. Each injection was given daily to the muscles of the abdomen. A clockwise pattern was required because the shots were so excruciating that the muscles became extremely sensitive. And maybe you could bear the first five or the second, but the last few were an agony, and this was not a thing the medical examiner was looking forward to.

He didn't have a choice, though. He had indirectly been exposed, and if indeed he had it, the disease would surely kill him without treatment. There were only two examples in which persons had lived through the virus, and there was doubt that they had really had it since their symptoms had been like encephalitis. With the treatment, he still took the chance that he would die from the disease, that it would be too strong for his precautions, but the likelihood was small, and anyway, as he kept thinking, he didn't have a choice. Even rare reactions to the vaccine, like a fever or paralysis, were nothing when compared with certain death. But all the same, the start of treatment didn't calm his fears. The dog had gone through pre-exposure vaccination. It had died, regardless.