Degeneration (16 page)

Green reached a hand up and pressed two gloved fingers against the side of Richard’s throat.

“No, he’s alive, too! Christ!” Green shouted.

Small threw his hands up in the air
in exasperation and shook his head.

Green pointed
the infrared thermometer
at Richard and frowned as he read
the results. “38.4 °C. He’s within the infection suspe
ct range.” He paused and turned
towards Small. “There’s a
chance that the observation center won’t accept him. If you’re worried about making two trips, we can leave him and just drop off the first one. I’m not saying kill him, I won’t agree to that, but we can leave him
for another team to find
. It’s up to you.”

Small stared up at Richard, thinking. Finally, he shook his head.

“W
e’r
e already taking the first one so, fuck,
we may as well drag the second
one
along for the ride,” Small said, shaking his head.

“W
ho knew you had such a big heart,” Green said, chuckling.

“Me? Hell, you’re the bleeding heart
snitch
. I’d say
shoot both of them.”

“Well th
at isn’t happening,” Green said. He cut Terry out of the seatbelt and carried him down over his shoulder. “Believe it or not, I still have somewhat of a c
onscience
.”

“I don’t see how, considering the shit we’ve done here today
,” Small said
. He climbed up the luggage pile and cut
Richard
’s seatbelt.

Richard collapsed on top of the luggage pile and his medication bottle fell out of his pocket.

The two wh
ite-suits hauled
Richard and Terry
’s unconscious bodies
out of the derailed train car and loaded the
m
into the back of a white van.

             
Green stared
at the crash site
in the rearview
mirror
a moment and then turned the engine.

“If we stuff anymore in the back of the van we run the risk of cross-contamination. We’ll have to come back,” Green said.

Neither of the
men
really wanted to return to the accident
and, since they supervisor was AWOL, neither
of them would.

The
van
swerved around
abandoned car
s as it sped down the deserted downtown
streets towards the CDC
’s medical
observation
center es
tablished at Central Hospital. D
owntown Raleigh had become a ghost town
within a matter of hours
. Skyscrapers
draped in clear plastic
towered
high
along
every street while soldiers wearing white hazmat suits
hurriedly covered the bottom
floor windows of the plastic-
draped buildings
with plywood
.
The looting was taking its toll on the shops and cafes, but all of the looters, confused on-lookers, and responding police officers were all herded into and hidden away the plastic-draped tombs by the besieging military.

Central Hospital’s parking lot was
filled with FEMA busses
and hun
dreds of civilian vehicles. Near
the building
’s entrance
, National Gua
rd soldiers wearing gasmasks
were unloading plywood and
rolls of plastic
off of flatbeds.

G
reen and Small rolled
Richard and Terry along the sidewalk towards the
hospital’s emergency room entrance
using two wheelchairs
they found in the back of an empty ambulance.
One of th
e masked National Guard soldiers
stopped
unloading plywood and looked
at
them
.

“New admission?” the soldier asked, his voice muffled
by
the
gasmask
.

“Yeah, CDC is still insi
de, right?” Green asked, staring
at the stacks of plywood
and plastic sheeting
; he knew that
it
could only mean one thing.

The
soldier
nodded.

“They’re still in there,” he said, picking up a pneumatic drill off of the ground. “They’re not having much luck though, I hear. Ever
yone who was brought in healthy
is getting sick. Some people may have been resistant or slow to show symptoms…
but they’re all dancing to the same tune
in the end. The damn place is festering! All of their blood work is coming back hot, too. I don’t think anybody has
turned yet
, but it won’t be too much longer until CDC has
to evacuate and let us seal it
. Hell, it’s just a matter of time now.”

“I told you so,” Small muttered to Green.

“Pull out?
Seal it?
We just drove across downtown to drop these two off,” Green said, ignoring Small. “What a complete mess! Are they even taking new ones or are we supposed to take them straight to one of the
quarantine
towers?”

The
solider holding the drill
shrugged.

“I think they’re still taking
them
,”
he
said. “All I am advising is that you hurry in and hurry out, you know? Otherwise… you won’t need to take
them to a quarantine tower,” he
held up the drill and continued, laughing, “You’ll already be inside of one!”

Green and Small quickly rolled the wheelchairs
through the emergency room doors
.

The emergency room was a madhouse and t
he waiting room wa
s the main hub of activity. CDC workers in white hazmat
suits shuffled
amongst hundreds of terrified civilians who were camped out on the hospital floor. The white-suits took
temperature readings and dr
ew
blood samples. Civilian nurses
and Red Cross volunteers
, most of
who were
coughing behind
their thin paper
germicidal
masks, we
re helping to
colle
ct blood samples and pacify the sickly crowd
.

Green tapped one of the C
DC white-suits on the shoulder.

The
white-suit spun around, holding a clipboard in one hand and a digital thermometer in the other. He looked down at
Terry and Richard,
both of
which were still unconscious and
badly bruised.

“We don’t take the dead
,” the
CDC
white-suit said, annoyed.

“They’re not dead, just out cold. They were involved in a train accident near the edge of downtown,” Green said. “Their temperature readings came back acceptable, though.”

“There is n
o guarantee that they will
wake up,
though,
” the CDC white-suit snapped, shaking his head. “And besides, we hardly have the facilities to handle trauma patients.”

“What, this isn
’t a hospital?” Small snidely replied
.

“Not anymore,” the CDC white-suit said, gesturing an arm out at the packed waiting ro
om. “Look, I don’t have time to–
”

“Well what should we do with these two?” Green asked. “Will you
at least
take them?”

The CDC white-suit sighed and quickly scanned Terry and Richard with the digital thermometer. The LED read back ‘37.0 °C’ and ‘38.1 °C’, respectively. He put the thermometer away and flipped through the scribbled pages attached to the clipboard.

“Wheel them up to
any one of the available patient
rooms on… the fifth- Oh, wait, goddamnit,” the C
DC white-suit muttered, flipping
through some more pages. “That floor
is festering, now
. Wheel them… up to the eighth floor…. Let me check… Yeah, eighth floor.
Stick them inside any available room.
”

The CDC white-suit
turned and hurried away without speaking another word.

Green and Small wheeled Richard and Terry through the
crowded
waiting room towards the elevators, ignoring the pleading cries
echoing
all around them.

12

T
erry’s eyes
opened and
the
florescent ceiling lights above him slowly came into focus.
He leane
d up
and saw that he was still in his dress shirt with his sleeves
rolled up. He smelt like
diesel.
An IV fed into his arm and was
tapped securely
against his skin
. He
laid his head back down and closed his eyes as f
ragmented memories of the
train
accident flooded back.

His whole body ached
, b
ut it was not as intense as before
. He touched his badly bruised forehead
and
suddenly
became
reacquainted with the sharp stab
bing pain
s he
had
felt earlier. He
quickly lowered his hand and
allowed
the stab
bing pain to fade
back
in
to dull throbs.
He coughed and made
his body cringe with fresh pain.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked around the windowless hospital room.

The room was nicely appointed with the latest medical and m
onitoring devices
. Gauges and pristine instruments were mounted on the wall be
hind his gurney. In front of him
, white cabinetry and a small sink dominated
the wall. A sterile
scent hun
g in the room and clashed
with the burnt diesel
smell that lingered around him
.
He–

“I didn’t think you were going to wake up,” Richard
said from the gurney next to him
.

Terry startled and looked over
towards the voice
.
It took him a minute, but h
e recognized the tacky rings and then helplessly gawked at the vicious bruises
that covered
the man’s face. He frowned and l
aid his head back down
.

“Hi. How long was I out?” Terry
groggily asked
. H
e glanced around the
room,
but was
unable to find anything that even resembled a clock.

“Not sure, I’ve only bee
n up for about thirty minutes,” Richard said, shrugging. “It’d b
e nice if I saw a doctor sometime
soon
. Nobody gives a fuck
around
here
it seems
. All I saw
so far
was one nurse who was more concerned with taking my temperature then doing something
about the…”

Richard trailed off and
simply p
ointed at his bruised face, as if explanation enough.

“
I can’t believe this…
I better call home,”
Terry muttered, noticing the LED
television on the wall for the first time.
It was turned off.
“Did you check the news?
How bad was the accident?”

Just then, a middle-aged
nurse
walked into the room, coughing. She wiped her sweaty hands on the side of her uniform and slipped on some latex
exam
gloves.

“Glad to see you’re up, sweetie,” she said to Terry, smiling. “Let’s just see how you’re doing.” She walked over to his bed and fished the electronic thermometer from the wall behind his head. She slipped a fresh probe over it and stuck it into his mouth, coughing into her arm.
The silver name pin on her shirt read
: T. Brooks, LPN.

“Look, when is a doctor in? I
need my–
” Richard started
.