Pulse (2 page)

Brian worked part time at Gamestop in the mall, but mostly lived off money from his parents. He was allegedly taking classes online, but Dom had yet to see him spend any time on the internet
not devoted to watching videos.

Sure, rent was always paid on time, but Dom didn’t like coming home to a messy house and Brian doing nothing
, even if he
did
order pizza. Every time he felt that twinge of irritation come over him, he reminded himself that’s how his dad was and it got nobody anywhere. Plus, technically he wasn’t leaps and bounds better than Brian on the education front so he couldn’t judge him too much. Dom finished community college with intent to transfer to the University of Washington, but his grades weren’t good enough for a scholarship and financial aid wouldn’t cover all his expenses.

Dom was the first person to admit his life needed a catalyst; something that could reboot him and motivate him to get going.

Brian barely glanced at Dom. “You won’t believe this.”

Dom shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the back of the door. “Yeah? What?”

“Just…just watch.”

He kicked off his shoes and came over, grabbing a slice of pizza from the counter as he went. It was still warm and he savored every bite, the fat and carbs already making him feel better.

“
…unknown white male in his sixties came into a grocery store and attacked ten people. The man was reportedly shot four times before he finally went down. Three are dead, the rest wounded. And now, Walter with the weather.
”

“So? A tragic violent incident. The news eats those up, exaggerates them, and spits them back out,” Dom said.
There were cups of ranch dressing on the coffee table. Dom snatched one up and dipped his pizza into it.

Brian’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious, man?”

“Yeah.”

“They had to shoot him four times before he went down. And plus, watch this.” He clicked the back button and rewound the news. “The people he attacked had bites on them.”

He paused on a scene of two women limping from a small grocery store. The footage was shaky, probably from a cell. One clutched her neck. Red cascaded down her front. The other woman had what appeared to be bite marks on her arm. Well,
could have been
bite marks. Dom was already projecting what Brian said.

“You don’t know they’re bites. It didn’t specify how the man attacked them. If he had a knife, it would cause a lot of blood. He could’ve scratched them, too. Besides, are you trying to say this was—"

“Zombies. Damn straight I am. I mean the evidence is obvious!”

Dom wasn’t sure how to react. Obviously he wanted to think it was zombies. The fluttering in his chest was excitement, panic, and denial all at once. He remembered bath salts a while back, and how a guy ate another guy’s face off or something. Everyone thought it was zombies. That was more ‘zombie’ than this. Yet no one truly did anything. No riots, no panic. This would be the same thing.

Plus, there was such a huge fixation on zombies lately it was in everyone's mind. Hell, he was just talking to Chelsea about it.

But something about the shaky footage of the women running from the building made him feel uneasy. It was in a remote farming area; the news barely said anything about it. They hadn’t explained how an old man could attack that many people before someone stopped him. It seemed the report was carefully
unexaggerated.

His phone chimed. It was a text from Chelsea.

Did you see the news?

Yeah.
Dom typed
.
Probably nothing

Still scary. Sleeping with the shotgun by me tonight

“So, stock up on ammo and board up the place?” Brian changed the channel to the Food Network, apparently having lost interest. Dramatize something, act like it’s the end of the world, then watch someone do a seafood boil? That was Brian.

Dom walked off to his room, grabbing another slice of pizza on the way. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

Adam Baker wasn't a religious man. He believed in the power of what was real and what was now. With that mindset, he was always at the top of all his classes—not just scientifically oriented ones—from the time he was in grade school through getting his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Washington. It also helped him avoid thinking about higher powers, fate, and other intangible topics as he excelled in subjects that truly meant something to the world.

That could make a difference
, he always thought, remembering what his high school chemistry teacher always said. These days that kind of talk might come off as antireligious and get you kicked out of the job. Adam hated that. It was why he had no interest in becoming a professor, no matter how deep his love for learning; he wouldn’t sacrifice truth or integrity for anything. More than a handful of professors he had in college carefully skirted around issues on occasion, avoiding offending students. Only the tenured professors seemed to say what they wanted. Adam didn’t want to tiptoe around students until he earned tenure. It seemed like a huge waste of intellect.

With his knowledge, determination, and love for biology, he
was confident his passion would lead him to new discoveries and work in the field of biological warfare. He had big dreams and a lot of plans. But he didn’t plan for Gina.

Gina wouldn’t have been his first choice for a girlfriend. She was getting her undergrad in psychology with a double major in philosophy (an absolute joke to him, and a source of contention in their relationship even to date) and seemed like kind of a flake. Adam met her at the second ‘real’ college party he’d ever been to—and
real
meant not Dungeons and Dragons night or Theoretical Science Night with his colleagues.

The only reason he was there was because he was a popular biology tutor among the frat brothers, and they felt oblig
ated to invite him so he could ‘get laid’ and ‘join the real world.’ The primary sounded good, the latter a joke considering most of the frat guys would go nowhere in life.

Looking back, the fact that a semi-attractive girl was speaking to him clouded his perception of Gina. He tried to tell himself her double major was impressive, but she held a low GPA and couldn’t carry on a conversation about anything beyond who she saw at Starbucks, who such-and-such was with, and who slept with who for a better grade. The problem was that Adam had never had a girlfriend.

At all. Ever.

His looks got him in the door, but his awkward and shy personality sent him right back out.
In high school and all of his college years, girls liked to flirt with him yet keep him perpetually in the friend zone. His lack of experience made him a perfect target for a girl like Gina; he was easy to manipulate, especially once sex was involved.

After a year of dating she got pregnant, with twins to make it even worse. Adam’s deepest fear was being a father, not because he disliked children, but because it meant he’d have to sacrifice his own personal agenda to raise them. Growing up, his mother sacrificed her sense of autonomy for him and his father worked endless hours as a mechanic to support them.

Yet Gina convinced him to marry her and, well, it's the same old story from there.

Upon graduating, he tried to follow his heart in experimental research despite having a wife and children to take care of. It was invigorating, meaningful work and the best time of his life. But Gina wore away at him for years, complaining constantly about money and security, until he caved and began applying to higher paying, “stable” jobs. The offer to work for the CDC was exactly what she’d been waiting for.

Even though it meant uprooting their lives in Seattle and moving almost three thousand miles away to Georgia, she insisted it was the only logical thing to do. Adam hated the idea of it. He loved Seattle; its landscape, culture, and people. Leaving it—or dating Gina, if you look that far back—was the worst decision he’d ever made. But he wouldn’t leave his daughters without a father, and Gina would slaughter him in the courts anyway. She was good like that, putting on a show and saying whatever she had to in order to get her way.

Plus the twins had already joined their mother’s side. Adam tried getting them interested in any type of science possible, but Gina simply had more time to cater them into carbon copies of herself. They thought Adam was an idiot by the age of three.

As he reviewed what information he had on the outbreak of a virus in North Dakota, he never felt as remorseful about his mistakes in life. If he hadn’t gone to that party, he wouldn’t be in Georgia dealing with the worst incident of his career.

Even though he understood the North Dakota incident was probably some kind of biological warfare tactic, or bizarre form of human rabies, his mind had a way of making it personal. Insult to injury. Rubbing salt in the wound. This had only happened since he was there.

But feelings were something he didn't like dwelling on, especially when they seemed to be rooted in irrational thoughts. He took to shuffling papers on his desk and rearranging his drawers—making a determined effort to wipe thoughts of his past transgressions away—considering what he knew about the case before he got down to writing reports and authorizing tests.

He took out his yellow legal pad and set down a pen, scrawling ‘Facts’ on the top. A trick his mother taught him was, when feeling overwhelmed, to simply write down what he knew to be true so he could ground himself. Adam took that advice to heart and always did it on difficult cases.

The old man, Jay Lehmann, attacked a grocery store full of people and was reported to have been shouting unintelligible words and exhibited erratic movements. The people he'd attacked began showing similar symptoms after a short period of time.

Some bodies retrieved from the scene were chewed up, the bites from human teeth. Others were mutilated by surgical tools, raped, or showed signs of other torture. The range of deaths were broad, so much so that it obviously pointed to some kind of loss of brain function rooted in the individual. It seemed there was no other way to explain why there was such variety in the murders. Perhaps a chemical imbalance caused by the virus?

Those were the facts. He let his mind wander into dangerous territory: speculation.

Why release it in such a small area? If it was biological warfare it would've made the most sense to release it in a densely populated area. Based on patient zero's age and location, Adam would've argued him the
worst
candidate for such a thing. Yes, Lehmann did make it to the grocery store. He did infect other people. But so much could've gone wrong. It might never have worked. If it was an act of war, it would’ve started in a big city.

Whenever the sinking anxiety and fear of the unknown got to him, he let anger take over. If the doctors at that hospital had followed protocol and informed the CDC about the unusual behavior early on with Lehma
nn's victims, they might have been able to stop the spread in its tracks. Five similar cases warranted a call to the CDC, yet not a single email was sent or a phone called.

Now there was an epidemic on their hands. The virus was spreading through North Dakota like wildfire. According to the files they retrieved remotely from the hospital's network, patients initially fell into a coma for two days. On the third, they became extremely violent towards others and themselves. After that, they could only rely on
security video to see anything else.

But the virus was spreading much faster than what the three day timeline reported from the hospital should have been capable of. It only took a matter of a day or two after transmission for the virus to reach
full form
and patients to begin losing control. Police and hospital reports from adjacent towns were flooding the CDC; none of them said anything new or helpful. It was the same case report over and over: someone was acting insane, harming themselves and others. They were forcibly detained.

Detaining these crazy people would only work for so long. From the police reports Adam read, they’d often kill each other in jail cells. They’d run out of room eventually, plus the
threat of the officers being around infected persons was undeniably risky.

Adam wrote the word
dangerous
on his notepad, underlining it three times. “This isn’t a drill,” he said aloud, mimicking a line from one of his favorite movies.

Whatev
er it was, it was strong. Smart. The hosts were immune to sedation and were resistant to physical harm. The only thing to stop them thus far had been multiple gunshot wounds, incineration, or full destruction of the brain. Their behavior was similar to those infected with Mad Cow or rabies, but tenfold. The consumption of human flesh was unsettling, but it appeared to be an act of violence rather than a desire to consume. And the sadistic violence he'd seen in the videos…

The memory hit him before he could block it out.
Two women dragging a doctor into a hallway in the ER. Their bodies twitched, heads snapping left and right as though they had no control. One beat his head into the ground while the other removed his leg with a bone saw.

Adam took a breath, his fingers hovering over the keyboard
at his computer as he prepared to write a report. The facts weren’t proving to be as reassuring as they had been in the past. Whatever was happening, it was unlike anything he’d ever seen. In this case, there was cause for alarm, speculation, fact gathering; anything a person could dream up.