Hunting Season (19 page)

"Are you ready?"

Tonya nodded and I sliced.  She didn't make a sound but her body shuddered for a split second.

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

I swabbed the cut with alcohol and this time she let out a small yelp and giggled.

"Hum something," she said.

"Any preferences?"

"Something nice.  Hurry, I want to enjoy this sting."

I hummed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for two minutes.  When I finished she opened her eyes and kissed me hard.  We made love the rest of the night.

*  *  *  *  *

I splash cold water on my face and gaze in the mirror.  It's the first time I haven't avoided a mirror in a long time.  I don't look like I remember.  Thinner now.  Gaunt even, with dark circles under my eyes and sunken cheeks.

There's puke still on my chin.  I wash it off and dry my face with a paper towel.

It was your fault, I think.  The memory of Tonya pointing her index finger and flexing her thumb, the thumb I sliced the night before, right before she started working on the sample flashes again in my memory.

My stomach flips over and I swallow bile and place my hands flat on the counter and lean.  Heavy.  Dizziness creeps into my head and chills race over my skin.

I killed her, I think.

I'm about to puke into the sink when the bathroom door flies open.  Danny stands there.  His eyes are wide.

"There you are," he says and races over to me.  "I've been looking for you everywhere."

"I got sick."

"Yeah, Charlotte said she saw you run in here."

I wash my face again.  "You look excited.  What's up?"

"We found the origin."

Straightening up slowly to keep from succumbing to the dizziness, I stare at Danny in the mirror.  "Found it?"

Danny nods.  "Well, not us.  CDC tracked it down to Skinner & Berger BioScience out of Houston.  Apparently they were working on a vaccine for that new strain of West Nile which shuts down the metabolism.  A disgruntled researcher stole a bunch of mosquitoes infected with it and released them in a Louisiana bayou."

I turn from the mirror and face Danny.  "So some pissed off employee is behind this."

"Yep."

"And it was supposed to be a West Nile vaccine?"

"Early in the development stage.  Skinner & Berger had figured out how to increase the metabolic rate in infected rats but not how to control it once it shot up."

My head aches and I lean on the counter to keep from falling over.  "And the CDC caught them trying to cover it up."

"Better.  They caught them trying to develop a vaccine for their own virus.  They were going to sell it back to the government once they patented it."

"Jesus."

Danny slaps me on the shoulder.  "It's over.  We've got the vaccine they were working on coming in this evening.  We're going to nail this sucker."

I nod but don't feel any better.  "But not a cure."

Danny sighs.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to sound insensitive."

"I know."

Danny stands there a moment, tapping his foot on the ceramic tile.  "Well, I'll leave you alone.  I'll be in the lab if you need anything."

Before I can say anything he leaves.  I stay there for a few minutes, biting the inside of my cheeks and humming Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

*  *  *  *  *

"How much longer?" I say.

Danny keeps his focus on Tonya on the other side of the glass.  "An hour, tops."

Tonya's head hangs to one side, hair a matted mess dangling from nothing more than a skull now.  Her skin is the color of a corpse's, almost translucent, many of her veins visible in her arms and legs.  Most of her muscle tissue and fat are gone, consumed by her body.  Her chest rises and falls faintly, the skin stretching taught across her sternum and ribs.

"You've done everything you can," Danny says.

Have I?  I guess I have.  Doesn't make me feel any better.  Hell, it makes me feel worse.  And this type of pain, I don't welcome.

All of the treatments have failed to reduce her metabolic rate.  Even a variation of the new vaccine couldn't slow it down.  Once infected, there is no cure as far as we can tell.  Her body consumes everything we pump into her but it isn't enough.  She's starving to death and there's nothing we can do about it.

In a way, she's already dead.  Been dead since the change.  But more so the last week when her body consumed what remained of her muscle and fat to the bone.  It's a wonder her internal organs stood up this long.

"You never quit on her.  Remember that."

I nod.

"You've done more than any of us would have.  Damn it, you can't hang this around your neck forever."

I nod.

"Are you listening?"

I nod.  "More than you think.  Don't worry, Danny.  I can accept defeat, I think.  She's going to die soon and I need to be here to see it through.  Make me feel better about it later."

"Is there anything else you need?"

I shake my head.  Danny pats me on the shoulder and leaves me alone in the quarantine unit with my wife to watch her die.  The sweats don't come this time, however.  I don't have any problem with my breathing.  I have no trouble looking at her.

The pain, though, is greater than any I could inflict on myself.  It burns through my chest like a flame thrower.  It is both a realization I'm about to lose the woman I love and that there is absolutely nothing I can do to save her, powerless in the face of this virus.

I hum Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and rest my forehead on the glass and remember the good times and the bad.  The ache in my chest scorches through my sides and up my spine.  My lips tremble and tears fall but I keep humming.

The pain of loss, though, is supplanted by the fire of guilt burning through me.  I managed to keep it at bay with the self-inflicted wounds and the work.  Now, though, with the inevitable only moments away, the flames rage within.

On the other side of the glass, Tonya's teeth chatter.  Not from cold.  Even this close to death, she's still looking for food.

I wipe my eyes and move to the door, scan my key card, and step into the test subject room.  For the first time since she was infected, I share the same space with her.  And for the first time since the change, I don't feel panic.

The heart monitor sounds a slow pulse.  Her heart rate is barely registering.  Not much longer.

I step closer and pull my knife from my pocket.  Flip the blade and press it against the pad of my right thumb.  Slice.

"I'm so sorry, Tonya."  I hold my thumb out and move it to her mouth.  "I should have never let it go this long."

Her teeth chatter and her nostrils flare but her head doesn't move even as the blood bubbles and drips.  I gently press it against her lower lip, the blood smearing.  Her tongue creeps out until the tip makes contact.

"I love you."

The heart monitor sounds a monotone pulse and a flatline races across its screen.  The time has come, the one thing I couldn't stop.  The virus has beaten me.

Tonya's head cants to the right, face toward the floor.  Behind me, I hear Danny pounding on the glass.  In me, I feel the change starting.  Won't be long now.

I turn.  Danny stands there, hands pressed against the glass, fingers wide.  He presses the intercom button and yells, "Are you insane?"

Hold up my thumb.  A lick mark bisects the blood trail.  My hunger intensifies exponentially.  Saliva pools in my mouth.

"Why?"

Find the control to press the intercom with a knuckle even as hands start flexing against will.  "Treatment I deserve."

BLOOD SPRING

E
RIK
W
ILLIAMS

From the journal of Nate Lewis:

When you grow up somewhere, spent your whole life in that place, you fool yourself into thinking you know it. You learn its history, its legends, and its gossip. Being the county Sheriff, I thought I knew it all.

Then one day, God smacks the shit out of you. You discover there’s a whole helluva lot you don’t know and wished it stayed that way. But God’s already pulled back the veil. He’s shown you what’s behind door number three and all you can do is accept the brutal reality and pray those things living in the shadows and the dark places stay there.

I used to think the harshness in the world which feasts on the innocent and weak was content with staying outside our little part of the country. Then I walked through one of the dark places, a true blue valley of death, and understood how full of shit I was.

You think you know a place, think again. Where there’s light, there’s dark. And where everything is happy and peaceful there are also merchants of death waiting to rain destruction.

Chapter One:

Hunters

Ed Galloway crouched behind a pine stump, his right knee sinking an inch into the damp ground, and glassed the buck with the scope on his rifle. The deer drank from a narrow stream, its antlers pointed north across the water at the thick forest beyond. Ed had a perfect shot from the west at a hundred yards downwind and knew if he made a single sound the buck would bound across the stream into the dense wood, causing him to lose his best kill in years. Breathing deep and slow through his nose, Ed lined up the shot.

The buck continued to drink.

Ed inhaled, held his breath, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

Something solid and dense like a ball bearing hit Ed in the right temple. He swayed and twisted, firing the round straight up into a miserable gray sky. The buck raced across the stream and disappeared into the woods like a ghost.

Disoriented but still alert, Ed pivoted and kneeled again, trying to locate the attacker through the scope. A bank of azaleas across from him rustled and Ed could see a shape moving on the other side. No more than a blur.

“Show yourself or I’ll shoot.”

THUMP.

Another rock, bigger and denser than the first, hit the back of Ed’s skull and sent him forward onto a blanket of pine needles. A loud, prolonged breath escaped his mouth as he rolled over and tried to defend himself from his back. Gray sky and green spots filled his vision followed by the appearance of two males.

The first male, a dirty and scrawny teenager, not more than fifteen, grinned down at him, a Bowie knife pointed at Ed’s chest. Ed readied to hit the kid with the rifle until he saw the second man.

The second man, tall and gaunt, with a bright bald head and long gray beard, stepped on the rifle and rubbed his bare chest casually with one hand while he pointed an old sword at Ed’s throat with the other.

“If you want to live, you’ll let go of that rifle,” the old man said. “Understand?”

Ed hesitated but the look in the old man’s eyes, eyes which sat sunken deep in his skull, convinced him death would soon follow if he refused and so he let his grip on the stock ease.

“Good,” the old man said. “Now just relax and everything will work out just fine.”

Chapter Two:

Plans

Henry Jacobs walked through the side door of the garage and was greeted by the smell of deer shit. Even after six months of what had become a daily routine, Henry had not grown accustomed to the stench the deer had waiting for him every day when he got home from work. The cherry on top, day in and day out.

Rather than walk straight in, Henry turned to the left and looked at the young male deer curled up on his bed on the floor of the garage. It looked at Henry for a moment and then rested his head back down on the cushion. The deer didn’t fear Henry and Henry wondered if the deer saw him as his servant. After all, every day when Henry came home the first thing he did was clean up its shit.

Henry walked past it and grabbed the pooper-scooper and cleaned up the shit and threw it away and walked to the door to the house. He grabbed the knob and hesitated, looked over his shoulder at the deer, and thought about braining the animal with a ball-peen hammer. Then he’d have his garage back. Then he could park his BMW where it belonged. Henry sighed. If he brained the deer his wife would brain him. No win situation.

He let the thought go.

The deer seemed to sense Henry’s dislike and looked away from him toward the back of the garage. Henry nodded and twisted the knob. Smart move, fuck-o.

Only another day, he thought.

Claire arrived not long after Henry but he didn’t see her until she’d been home a half an hour. As always, she walked into the garage and proceeded to spend her first few minutes home with Brownie. She would grab the leash and walk Brownie around the yard. Then she would feed Brownie and check his healed wounds, trying to find any possible reason to keep the deer another few weeks. She never could, though. Brownie had healed nicely. Henry thanked God for small miracles.

Brownie. Claire had named the deer when she first found it, dying on the side of Highway 49 near their house. A car had hit the poor thing and left if for dead. Claire saw it and Henry soon found himself helping move the dying creature to their garage.

Henry hated the name Brownie as much as he hated the deer. But Claire loved it so he pretended to as well. Better to lie and avoid losing a fight than tackle a battle which could not be won. Ten years of marriage had taught Henry peace and quiet should always be preserved over the sanctity of one’s pride.

The door opened and Claire walked in.

“Hello, hon.” Claire smiled and walked over to Henry and hugged him before he could return the greeting.

“Hey.” Henry leaned down and kissed Claire. “How was your day?”

“Good. And yours?”

Henry nodded. “Same old, same old.”

Claire giggled. “What a surprise.”

“What’d you expect? Think I’d come up with some great strategy to save everyone on earth thousands of dollars?”

“No, I was being sarcastic. Accountants are just so boring.”

Claire flashed a devilish grin. The old feelings kicked in and he forgot about the deer. Claire always teased him about work. And he always loved the playful look she got when she did. He pulled her close to him and leaned in to plant another kiss.