Olivia Marie - Virus

A special thank you to Erin Lee. You are my biggest supporter and the one person who doesn’t hold back when it comes to telling me to keep pushing. Thank you for all you have done to guide me on this crazy journey, including those late night talks!

To Olivia Marie, this journey has been fun and a bit disturbing. Hope we survive it!

Thank you to Erin Lee who is always pushing me to do things I don’t always think I can do. Who knew a conversation on a video would lead to this story? Stay amazingly crazy and enjoy.

To Rena Marin. Thank you for heading into ground zero with me. Stay safe.

Opening the door slowly, I was hit hard with the pungent odor of rotting flesh and human waste. The ground was thick with rags covered in blood, vomit, and sweat. The once vibrant town was now desolate and somber. The sounds of painful cries echoed off the concrete walls and surrounded where I stood trying to figure out where to go first. When the doors closed behind me, the silence was louder.

“Thank God you are here. Put this on now. Where have you been? Did you see anyone else out there on your way here?” The small woman was wrapped in scrubs and I couldn’t make out much more than her face. Her blue-grey eyes pleaded with me to hurry and follow her. They gave her away and I knew it was Marissa, the overnight triage nurse.

“I saw a few people, but not many. Where is everyone?”

“Gone or in here. A few of the hospital staff are still here. The rest are either in a bed or have gone home to check on family.” Tears ran down her cheeks hiding behind the mask on her face as she broke. I watched her start to shake at the realization that all she knew was gone.

“Show me,” I ordered her. Not to be harsh, but to kick her into work mode and get her to pull it together. If things were as bad as what I saw on the way in, we were in major trouble.

I thought back to the woman crawling across the road. The sounds coming from her were more animal than human. A cry of a rabbit being eaten alive was the closest I could compare to it. The loud shrieks and low gurgles as she scraped her body across the asphalt. The temperatures, being in the high 90s, made the ground too hot to touch and it burned at her flesh as she ran her front over it. I watched as pieces of her fell off and left a clear trail of where she had come from. Her face was disfigured so badly, I couldn’t make out any of her features. She was a bloody chunk of ground meat by the time I got to her.

I pulled my car over and put it in park. Opening the door slowly, I froze when she suddenly stopped. Turning to face me with a smile, I watched as a tooth flew from her mouth. Before I could move another inch, she reached out her arm and took a chunk from it. Blood ran from the open hole and I watched her drink it. When she stopped and turned to come toward me, I shut the door and drove the rest of the way to the hospital as fast as my old clunker would go.

I had to shake off the image of the poor woman. There was nothing I could have done for her, and there were people that still needed my help. I tried to think of anything I knew of that would make a person tear at their own flesh the way she had and came up empty.

Part of me hoped they were filming a horror movie in our small town and nobody bothered to tell us. It would have been a way to get a real reaction from us, but there was no way she was faking what I saw.

“Please, are you coming?” Marissa asked. She grabbed me by the sleeve of my doctor’s coat and tugged to get me to follow her.

“Yes.”

The halls were dark for being mid-morning and sunny outside. The quiet of the three-story hospital was something I had never heard before. The place looked abandoned with papers and equipment scattered along the long corridors. The light flickering above me drew my attention. Hanging down by the hinges, I watched a drop of blood drip from the casing.

“What happened here?” I asked without taking my eyes off the ceiling.

“A man went crazy. He leaped up in the air, grabbed on to it, and pulled it down. I didn’t notice at first, but I saw it after he did it again.” She froze and was clearly lost in whatever flashback she was in.

“See what?”

“The bite marks. He was missing part of his hand. I didn’t see it until he went in for a second bite. He ripped the meaty part here,” she said and held up her hand grabbing the thicker part below the thumb, “and ripped it off like it was nothing. I waited for him to spit it out, but he didn’t. He chewed it up and swallowed it. He swallowed part of himself.” Her voice rose as she talked and I saw her start to become hysterical again. I placed a hand on her to ground her a little.

“I saw something like that on my way here. A woman bit her own arm. I think she would have swallowed it too if I wouldn’t have made a sound. She spit it out and came after me.”

“So, he wasn’t the only one? What is going on?”

“I don’t know yet, but it isn’t good.”

“Was her skin falling off?”

“It might have been, but she was dragging herself across the highway and chunks of her left a trail along the way. I did see blisters on her face though. Some looked like they had split open and she had a milky white puss leaking from them. I wasn’t sure at first if it was from whatever made her sick or from burning herself on the asphalt.”

“You better come with me fast. I think it was whatever they have. I have seen the blisters break open and the same thing came out of them.”

We went up to the third floor and I wasn’t prepared for what waited on the other side of the door. The calm from earlier was gone. Screams rang out in all directions as nurses and the few doctors still there ran to try and get to them all.

Lights flickered making the eeriness of that heighten. Everything in me said to turn and run from that place, but the doctor side kicked in and I knew I had to try and help them. I wasn’t holding out much hope. From what I had seen, it went fast, and it was unlike anything I had seen before.

“Dr. Hammond, can you come here?” one of the older doctors, Matt Warner, asked peeking from around the corner.

“Yes.”

I ran to him and as I got into the room, I felt what little hope I had been holding onto leave. There on the gurney was Tim Johnson. I went to school with him and he was in the best shape of anyone I knew. Being over six foot with nothing but solid muscle from years of sports and working out, he was the heathiest person I had ever met. Never once missing school for a cold or the flu when the rest of us did, it was hard to see him lying there looking the way he did.

“Tim?” I asked making my way closer to him.

“Don’t get much closer. When this one turns, he will be hard to stop.”

“Turn?”

“The fever seems to speed up the infection and once it hits the brain, there is nothing we can do. I called you in here because I want to see how long it takes for him to get to that stage. If he takes longer, then it gives me something to go on.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well, I guess at this point, I’m not sure any of us have a chance of beating it.”

“We have to try Matt. It’s what we signed up to do. But you said turn. This isn’t a movie and you sound like we are dealing with zombies.”