Degeneration (17 page)

“Miss… Brooks, wha
t exactly happened and how long–
” Terry
interrupted
,
making the thermometer bobble in his mouth.

She quickly shushed him, and then sneezed into her sleeve.

“
Don’t talk
. Wait
,
and let me get this.” The thermometer beeped and she took it out
his mouth. “100.1. Well, you
still got a low grade fever but that could be caused by a variety of things. It’s not the worst
we’ve seen,
but it’s not the best
either
. It’s still not
high enough to pull you out. Anyway
, we’ll know for sure after the blood work
gets checked out
.” She sneezed again.

Both Richard and Terry sta
red at her, hungry for answers.

She smiled.

“Pull me out
? What’s going on?” Terry asked, confused.

“All sorts of craziness, I’m afraid. Terrorists released some sort of engineered flu virus and it’s catching like wildfire.
The a
rmy’s got
all of
d
owntown on lockdown, you know. All sorts of craziness,” she said as she started walking towards Richard to take his temperature.
“But you didn’t hear any of that from me.”

Terry look baffled.

“What about the train accident
?” Terry asked, voice shaken.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that. We’ve been busy as bees here all morning and those government people in their
white
spacesuits aren’t exactly
fountains of information,” she said.

Richard raised his hands up and shook his head.

“Look, whatever is going on, I need my medication. It’s not in my pock
et. When can I see a doctor and–
” Richard asked before she popped the thermometer into his mouth
and cut him off
.

“I’m afraid I can’t say, honey. The only doctors left ar
e from the CDC
. The last staff doctor we had just got locked up in the isolation unit downstairs,” she said, frowning. “I
f I were you, I’
d ask the CDC man
when he comes in to
d
o
the blood work. He’d know better than I would. They just have us out checking tempe
rature readings and moving
sick
people into isolation.”

The thermometer in Richard’s mouth beeped and she slid it out, smiling.

“98
.1, good,” she said, throwing the ther
mometer probe cover away,
smiling.
             

“Wait–
isolation? How bad
is this flu?” Terry asked.

The nurse lost her smile.

“You shouldn’t worry yourself. You just need to worry about feeling better,” she replied and then coughed. “I have to go now and check on the others, but I’ll be back later to check on you two, okay? One of the CDC
guys
should be coming
in
to d
raw your blood and give you
som
ething to tide you over until a doctor
get
s
a look
at
you two
.”

Frustration boiled inside Richard and he clinched his fists until his knuckles turned white.

“Can you
please
try t
o get someone up here soon
?” Richard asked, massaging his throbbing forehead. “It’s very important that I see somebody
soon, okay?
”

“You and the other thousand
souls
in here,” the nurse said.
“I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
She exited, coughing violently on her way out.

They never saw her again
.

“Well she was helpful,” Richard muttered over to Terry.
“This is all so fucked-up
.”

Richard unclenched his fists and stared at his open palms. He could hear the whispers growing louder inside his head. He needed his pills.

“This is all too much,” Terry said, shaking his head. “One minute we were on a train and now we’re
trapped
inside a hospital in the middl
e of a terrorist attack? I-
I
really
have to call home.”

Terry reached
towards
the small tab
le between the two gurneys and grabbed the
room phone. He quickly dialed his home number,
desperate to call the one woman who couldn’t care less about his well-being.

“
Due to network malfunctions, your call cannot be completed at this time. Please hang up and try your call again later,
”
the operator’s
voice chimed in
hi
s ear.

Terry cursed and hung the phone up
. He picked the receiver
back up
and dialed
again.

“
Du
e to network malfunctions, your
–
”

Terry slammed the phone down, picked it up, and dialed ‘0’ for the operator, franti
c.

“Due to network
–
”

And again.

“Due to
–
”

And again.

“Due
–
”

And again.

“D
–
”

Terry
hurled the phone off of the table. The cord tore from the wall as
the phone
flew
across the room.

Richard stared down at the phone
as it started to
ring.

Richard startled in his bed, staring at the broken phone as it rang continuously. Each ring was loud and piercing.
It made his head pound as h
e stared
down
at the ringing phone
, trying to make sense out of what he was–

Get the phone, Richie.

The voice reverberated in his head, drowning out the rings.

Richard pressed
his hands against his pounding
forehead as the phone rung
louder each
passing
second.

“Stop,” Richard whispered to the phone.

Te
rry said something, but his voice was drowned out
.

Get the
phone!

Richard startled again at the sound of the familiar voice as t
he ringing
continued to
echo
inside his skull.

“Stop it,” Richard hissed between his clinched teeth. “You’re not really him…”

Answer
the
goddamn phone
!

“
STOP!
”
Richard screamed
at the voice
, squeezing his hands over his ears.

The ringing stopped.

Laugher reverberated inside his head and slowly faded.

“Stop
WHAT?!” Terry asked
for the third time,
fru
strated. “What is wrong with you?!”

R
ichard lowered his hands and stared at the phone
on the floor
, silent. He habitually reached a shaking hand down to his front pocket,
feeling for the
pill bottle that was no longer there. Remembering his missing medication,
he stopped, and folded his arms
across his stomach.
The nausea and dizziness, both of which were common withdrawal symptoms, were already starting to manifest.

“Nothing,” Richard
said
, head aching.
It’s been a long time since he had an episode and it left him feeling beside himself and frightened.

Terry shook his head and muttered som
ething as he slid
his cellphone out from the carrying case on his belt.

Richard shot a quest
ionable look over towards him, unable to decipher what he mumbled
.

(What the hell did he say?)

He said something about you, Richie. Don’t trust that little shit.

Richard winched at the sound of the whispering voice, but he knew that it was right, even if it wasn’t real. People were always saying cruel
things about him under
neath
their breath and behind his back. His condition made him different, and he knew that
everyone
around him picked up on it.
His whole life has been about trying to fit in and appear normal. But w
ithout the medication,
he
didn’t know how long his pharmaceutical mask of normalcy would last
.

H
e felt
his deceptive mask
c
hipping away a little bit more each passing minute.

Terry d
idn’t pay Richard any attention and continued to stare at his cell
phone. Despite being relieved to see that it survived th
e crash, he was dismayed to see the message on his screen.

“No signal
. Great!” Terry yelled as he shoved
the phone back into the
leather
case.

Terry
snatched the remote
off of
the nightstand and turned on the televisio
n. He flipped anxiously through
channels.

Rich
ard closed his eyes
and his headache slowly subsided.
His anxious roommate wasn’t helping him any. His stressed behavior was obnoxious and, frankly, becoming intolerable.
He
wasn’t worried about
the flu. Hell, he had the flu
countless times
before.

“Maybe you should try to relax,” Richard s
uggested with his eyes closed
.

“Relax? We’re in t
he middle of
a terrorist attack! We need to find out what
is going on,” Terry counter and finally found CNN on the television
.

“–as planned. We don’t know the exact nature of the attack, but we have been told that the entire downtown area is affected,” the reporter said from behind the news desk. “The Raleigh evacuation is still in progress and we’ve been told that things are going orderly, due mostly to the multi-agency coordinated response we saw at Fort Detrick this morning. We–”

“
They got Fort Detrick, too
?
! What in the hell is going on,” Terry muttered, shaking his head, watching fearfully.

He flipped to Fox News–

“–in size and scope,” the reporter said. She stood outside a large grass field full of white tents. People wearing blue jackets adorned with ‘FEMA’ in yellow lettering scurried behind her, carrying boxes of supplies while helicopters hover overhead.

“FEMA is establishing a number of refugee centers just like the one behind me in and around the Halifax County area for evacuees,” the reporter said, speaking loud enough to drown out a passing helicopter. “The fact that no vehicular traffic has been permitted through Raleigh’s city-wide quarantine roadblocks has complicated evacuation procedures, a source inside has informed us. The military is transporting evacuees out of the city via helicopter from FEMA centers that have been specially designated throughout the city. Even more time consuming we’ve been told, is that evacuees must pass through strict medical screening before even being allowed to board.”

“Any word on why such strict security measures or why the refugee centers are being placed outside of North Carolina?” a male’s voice asked.

The reporter shook her head.

“Unfortunately, officials have been very tight-lipped about the nature of the contagion. We can only speculate that–”

Terry flipped back to CNN.

A woman stood behind a podium, hurriedly shuffling through a series of notecards. Cameras flashed and cast her in strobe. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read ‘BREAKING NEWS: NC GOV. JANET WELLS
declares state of emergency
.’

“Due to the unprecedented and volatile nature of the biological terrorist attack, I am hereby declaring a state of emergency for North Carolina effective immediately. All schools and public offices will be closed and all off-duty local and state emergency personnel are ordered to report to their duty stations at once.