Tim Curran - Biohazard

He said that viruses are the bridge between the living and non-living, the undead, as it were, of the microscopic world. They only act alive when in contact with living cells. They are parasites, entirely dependent on their hosts for biological processes. They are more or less protein capsules filled with genetic material encoded to replicate the virus itself. That’s it. A virus lays around like its dead until it comes into contact with a compatible cell, then it adheres to it and uses the cell’s machinery to make copies of itself. This goes on until the host cell literally explodes and out come countless baby viruses, each out to do the same thing to infinity unless the host dies or something like antibodies attack them.

“The virus has no lofty, ambitious plans, son,” he told me. “They live only to replicate themselves which ultimately, in the case of Ebola-X, destroys the host. They are cellular predators, but not organized, not thinking. I can’t imagine a line of organic evolution which would allow them to do more than this. They are probably one of the world’s oldest life forms and as such, achieved perfection many, many eons ago.”

I listened and learned, but I was not convinced. And I sure as hell was not about to argue with an expert and particularly when my only evidence was a series of fucking nightmares.

“Ah, now we see the unpleasant results of extreme amplification of the viral body,” Price said, watching Bedecker’s torment. “See how he is now rigid as of a corpse? He is filling with bloodclots. They are forming everywhere. Brain, vitals, organs, skin, bones. Hmm.”

I looked at Price like he was crazy. I didn’t know Bedecker, but he had been a human being once. Possibly a friend of Price’s and here the old man was carrying on with this insane running commentary like this was a sport’s event.

Morse was on the scene, of course, snapping shots of the dying man from every imaginable angle. He even took a telephoto lens from his bag and got some good close-ups. It was insane.

“See, Nash?” Price said. “Bedecker’s not really suffering now. His brain is liquefying. His vitality and humanity have been erased. This is called depersonalization. What you are watching now is no longer a dying man but a biological machine choking on its own poisoned by-products,” he told me. “The vomiting will continue, as will the bleeding…”

He was right. Bedecker was vomiting almost continually now, that same red-black stinking mush. Blood came from his eyes. His ears. His nostrils. He made an obscene farting sound and more drainage ran out from under his ass. Price said that liquefying sections of his stomach and intestines were being passed now, orally and anally. Blood flowed, gushed, poured as the hot agent ran from him, hungry to find a new host.

I was sick to my stomach. I tried to turn away but Price stopped me. “He is about to crash and bleed out.”

Morse made sure this was documented.

I lit another cigarette to get the stink out of my face. I told Price that I had friends over at the dealership, that we should link up with them soon as possible.

“A wise idea,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon. The Scabs aren’t active after sunset. We’ll slip away then, though I fear there are worse things out there, much worse things by night. But we can’t stay here.”

Bedecker was thrashing around, literally sloughing apart as poisoned blood and bubbling fluids came out of every opening.

“It won’t be long now,” Price said.

I took the lead. Janie was right behind me with Morse. Price was in the back. I had three rounds left in my Beretta and that was about the only safety net we had. Scared? No, I was absolutely fucking terrified.

I was thinking hard about Carl and the others. I wondered what they were doing and I prayed they were still alive. But I knew Carl. It would have taken quite an assault by the Scabs to take him out. He was a survivor as they all were. I was surprised that he hadn’t tried to come after us, but maybe he had. I just wanted to link back up with them.

Des Moines by night was dark and forbidding.

The moon was still pretty bright above, but shadows were everywhere, circling, shifting, tangling in the streets. As we rounded the corner from the department store, I could see the vague hulk of the dealership in the distance. On a sunny day it was a short, pleasant hop in the old days. Now, by darkness, it was a slow, hellish crawl through no man’s land. The air was damp, acrid-smelling. Off to the west I could see a flickering red glow. I assumed parts of the city were still burning or had been ignited anew. I could smell a slight odor of smoke, other things I didn’t like to think about. We moved on very carefully. I scoped out the car lots across the way, looking for anything moving out there. I heard a brief, shrill squealing in the distance. Like the sound of an insect…only it was a big, scary sound.

Just relax, I told myself again and again. It’s really not that far.

In the phosphorescence of the moonlight, everything was forbidding and ghostly. Buildings rose like defiled tombs and haunted monoliths. Parked trucks looked like ghost ships rising from the gloom. The skin at the back of my neck was crawling, moving in subtle prickling waves. Something was out there, something was moving around us in the shadows and I new it.

“What was that?” Janie said, suddenly stopping.

The sound of her voice in the stillness made me seize up. “What? I didn’t hear anything.” I wanted it to be true, but I knew it wasn’t. There had been a sound. Something.

Price said, “I would advise a bit of haste on our part, people. Survival by night in the streets of Des Moines is rather minimal at best.”

There he went being clinical again, couching everything in his uppity verse. What he meant to say was, we don’t haul ass, motherfuckers, ain’t gonna be nothing but a stain out here come morning. I ignored him. I stood there with Janie, tensing, my hand greasy on the butt of the Beretta. I decided to start moving when I heard it very clearly this time: a squeaking sound. This was followed a strong odor of decay, of dampness and subterranean dank. The way a sewer might smell, I suppose.

I had smelled it before. I knew what we were up against.

“This is disturbing,” Price said.

“It’s okay. Nash won’t let anything happen to us,” Janie told him like he was some kid in need of reassuring.

Morse circled around us, snapping off shots.

“Knock it the fuck off,” I told him.

What we were facing, if I was right, was something that not even good old Nash could do anything about. I moved forward slowly and I made it maybe six feet before I saw the first of our visitors.

A rat.

It was about the size of a tomcat, its entire body swollen and misshapen with bulging pink cancerous growths that rose from the sparse gray-black fur like fleshy bubbles. In the moonlight I saw them moving.

Every time I saw one I remembered that monster in the storm drains of Cleveland.

“Stay put, don’t panic,” I told the others. “This is probably a scout out scavenging ahead of the main pack.”

Click-click, went Morse.

The rat’s snakelike, scaly tail twitched on the concrete like it knew what I was saying. Its eyes were fixed, blood-red, shining like wet marbles. Its jaws were open, loops of saliva hanging from them. I knew from experience how fast these bastards were. I brought up my Beretta very slowly, very calmly, and drew a bead on old Mr. Rat.

He made a sudden high-pitched squealing sound.

I shot him in the head and he pitched forward, blood running from him in a scarlet pool. I could see the fat, grub-like parasites jumping in his hide.

I pulled Janie away and our chain was on the march again. I knew we were in terrible danger; I just didn’t know what to do about it other than continue on. Maybe, possibly, somehow, we’d make it through. We started to cross the street in the direction of the dealership which looked huge and tomblike in the moonlight, just crawling with shadows. We hadn’t gone far before the rats came out of their hides. They’d been waiting amongst the cars, the main pack, and now here they came. I heard Janie make a disgusted sound in her throat. The rats were everywhere with more arriving all the time. They were huge, absolutely huge. Some of them were the size of full-grown German Shepherds. And all of them dirty and stinking, eyes shining in the darkness, drool running from their jaws, noses twitching.