The Beginning of the End (7 page)

The fluid pushed
through the syringe, the man’s arms began to weaken instantly and
finally when limp after a few seconds. Jean-Luc rolled off the male,
onto his back fighting to catch his breath, “Sacrebleu!”

Bob stood up and looked
down at Jean-Luc, “You can say that again!”

“Let’s get him off
the floor and on the gurney.” Jean-Luc made his way to his feet and
helped Bob and Ted get the male onto the bed. Sophie began taking his
vitals and looked up at Bob, “He’s dead!”

Sophie pulled one of
the dead man’s eyelids open and immediately released it when she
saw what was underneath. An eye that had just been brown a minute
ago, was now glowing blue. On closer examination, it almost appeared
that the blue pigmentation was moving or spinning, and a light-gray
haze was beginning to layer over the black pupil. Sophie pulled the
pen light from her suit pocket and shined it across the eye,
expecting to see the pupil fixed and dilated. The pupil shrank to a
pinpoint when it was hit by the light. Sophie dropped the lid a
second time and stepped back.

“What is it?” Ted
asked.

“I must have made a
mistake. He’s not dead. His pupils were reactive.”

Ted shot Sophie a smile
through the clear shield of the protective suit, giving her a little
snicker, “Let me take a look Sophie. Your nerves are still shot.”

Ted borrowed Sophie’s
pen light and pulled the eyelid open again. The black pupil was
completely grayed over now. For a brief second, he was hypnotized by
the dynamic blue spinning pigment, “My God Sophie! Did you see
thi-“

Ted’s sentence was
interrupted when the light from the pen crossed the gray pupil which
immediately shrank it to a pinpoint. The male’s second eye popped
open, already blue and cataracted. Ted’s mouth dropped open to
scream, but he didn’t have a chance. Before a word could pass Ted’s
lips, the male reached both arms up and around Ted’s neck pulling
them face to face. The male’s teeth sank into Ted’s nose tearing
away at the protective shield and the tip of his nose. The male
pulled and pulled at Ted, each time taking fleshy bits from his
cheek, chin and finally neck, tearing away at Ted’s carotid artery.
Blood sprayed all over the monster’s face with each of Ted’s
heartbeats. Splatters hit Sophie and dripped down her plastic hood
giving everything in the room a reddish tint, like she was wearing
ski goggles. Sophie screamed with every breath. Ted was losing his
battle and collapsed. The monster held on, not letting go, until they
were both on the floor. Bite after bite, the male who had now turned
into a relentless monster was ripping off pieces and chewing on the
leathery skin. Nothing could be heard over Sophie’s screaming until
a deafening bang silenced the room.

Bob had been walking
back towards the nurses’ station with Dr. Marcil after Sophie had
pronounced the man dead. He spun in the direction of the bang in time
to see a small plume of smoke rising from the muzzle of the M4.

The soldier approached
Sophie with his rifle still raised to his shoulder, the skills he’d
learned for urban combat, “Ma’am! Are you okay?”

“Ted! Ted’s dead!”
Sophie stood there frozen with panic.

“Ma’am come with
me.” The soldier grabbed Sophie’s arm with his left hand never
releasing the monster's head from his sights.

Bob and Dr.Marcil ran
over and stood in awe, staring at the two dead men. He reached down
and rolled the man off from Ted, exposing his bones and teeth that
had once been covered with pink flesh.

“Oh my god! It looks
like he tried to eat him.” Bob screamed as he reached down and
attempted to find a pulse on Ted. It was too late. Ted was dead and
partially eaten. “Dr. Marcil how could this happen?”

Dr. Marcil was already
on one knee examining the dead patient, “I don’t understand it,
Bob. This man looks like he died from the Ebola virus hours ago. I
need to do an autopsy right away. I'm going to need your help!”

“Why don’t you
start without me Doc? I sent Miranda downstairs to take a nap. She
needs to know about Ted.”

October 11th 8:45pm

Chevy turned off the
TV, and we jumped into action. I grabbed my jacket while Chevy got
his truck keys. Chevy stopped when he touched the door handle and
gave me a serious look. “Ty, they’re gonna be alright. We’ll be
laughing about this in an hour.”

I hoped he was right. I
saw what he went through last year when his parents died in a car
wreck. Going through the same thing scared me to death. It was weeks
of hearing him cry through his closed bedroom door. No matter what I
did, nothing seemed to help. A few months later, I talked to my mom
about it, and my parents invited him over for a family dinner. Since
Chevy had pretty much grown up in my house, my parents considered him
a second son, and my brother. It wasn’t uncommon for my mom to call
Chevy to make sure I was doing okay. On the night of our dinner, my
parents expressed their feelings to Chevy. They explained that they
loved him too, and they would never try to replace his parents, but
he should consider them his new adopted parents. That night he was
unofficially adopted into our family and has been my brother ever
since. He is a little older than me, and immediately took over the
roll as big brother. Consoling me at the door, before we walked out
to the truck, was his way of taking care of me.

Chevy opened the front
door, we were blasted with hot rotten air. “Oh my god! What is that
smell? I’m gonna puke!” he said covering his mouth and nose with
his hand.

“I tried to tell you
that when I got back from the store today. Remember? You were too
concerned about your soda!”

“Dude, it’s like
rotten trash or something!”

We fought the smell and
made our way out to the street, where Chevy kept his truck. The air
was still and stagnate. Our street was still empty, but there was a
commotion on the next street over. Chevy and I cut through the
neighbor’s yard to check it out. The back of the neighbor’s
property was lined with cedar hedges that were about five feet tall.
From just beyond the hedges we heard a girl screaming for help and
then glass breaking. We jogged to the hedge and peeked over the top.
There was a girl, who looked like she was about seventeen walking up
the street moaning. I wasn’t sure if she was the one who screamed,
or if it was someone further down the street. Instinctively, I moved
to jump over the hedges when I felt Chevy tug at my arm.

“Wait!” rolled off
Chevy’s tongue, “Look at her leg. It’s backwards.”

I took a closer look at
the girl. Her leg had been broken at the knee and was bent 45 degrees
backwards. I couldn’t understand how she could be putting weight on
it. The pain must have been excruciating. I was startled by the roar
of a big diesel engine coming towards us from the other direction. I
studied the vehicle as it got closer. It was a green Army Humvee and
there was a soldier manning the fifty-caliber machine gun on the top
turret. As the Humvee got closer, the rumble of the huge knobby tires
against the pavement drowned out the sound of the engine. Chevy and I
stayed concealed behind the hedges, peeking through the ferny
branches. The reverberation of the Humvees' engine began to wind down
as someone inside flipped on the top take down lights. A second
later, a spot light on the passenger side came on, illuminating the
girl who was still attempting to run down the middle of the street
with her broken leg. The Humvee stopped right in front of us, just
beyond the hedges. We stayed silent and continued watching through
the cedars. I heard the driver yell up to the soldier on the turret,
“Shoot her!”

I almost jumped out
from behind the cedars. I felt Chevy’s grip tightening on my arm
when my ears were assaulted with repeated bangs coming from the
fifty-caliber machine gun. The soldier firing the gun had a smile on
his face. He was yelling, “Take that you dead bitch!” It looked
like every shot fired struck the girl. The rounds didn’t just kill
her. They blew her apart. Time seemed to slow as I watched each round
strike the girl, blowing off body parts. First the bad leg, then an
arm, and finally the girl’s head. It just disappeared. One second
it was there, the next it was gone. The Humvee’s engine started to
rev, and I heard the transmission drop into gear. As the vehicle
drove away, I could hear all the soldiers laughing. I stood there
frozen until the sound of the engine, and those massive tires had
completely faded away. My knees went weak, and I dropped to my butt.
I felt the air in my lungs release when I hit the ground.

Chevy yanked at my arm
and said, “Come on, Ty. We’ve gotta get out of here!” I pulled
away from Chevy and took my stance on my ass, “Those soldiers just
shot and killed that girl right in front of us! We didn’t do a
goddamn thing to help her!” Chevy dropped to his knees and put both
of his hands on the side of my face, pulling my head up, so I was
looking him in the eyes.

“Ty, those weren’t
soldiers.”

“What do you mean
they weren’t soldiers?”

Chevy’s hands
tightened on my face, “I mean, the guy firing the gun had long
hair, and he was wearing a white muscle shirt. They just murdered
that girl, and if we don’t get out of here, they might murder us
next.” Chevy grabbed my arm and started yanking me again, “We
need to get back home and make a plan, before we find ourselves lying
in the street next to that girl.”

October 4th 3:30am

Bob held on as Miranda
slapped her hands against his chest, “What do you mean, tried to
eat him?” Bob leaned back so he could see her face, not letting go
of her shoulders, “Sophie thought he was dead, but then he reacted
to stimulus, and in the next second, Ted was being attacked. There’s
nothing anyone of us could do Miranda. It happened so fast.”

“Where is he now,
Bob? I want to see his body.”

“Jean-Luc and I put
him on a gurney in the nurses’ station.”

Miranda’s voice began
to rise, “No, Bob! Where’s the male who attacked him? I want to
see his body!”

Bob escorted Miranda to
pathology where Dr. Marcil had already started the autopsy. Without
saying a word, and showing no sign of emotion, Miranda began
assisting with the post.

“I was only asleep
for a little while, when did this happen?” Miranda asked.

Dr. Marcil was removing
the liver and placing it in a large hanging scale that looked like it
was taken from a 1970’s grocery store vegetable aisle. Dr. Marcil
noted the weight by Dictaphone and said, “Miranda, I don’t
understand how any of this is possible. These organs appear to have
been dead for hours and already show signs of decay. Based on the
corpse temperature, I estimate the time of death to be five hours
ago.”

Bob interrupted, “Come
on Doc! You’re making a mistake! This guy was just fighting with us
less than thirty minutes ago. Let me tell you, for a dead guy, he
almost kicked my ass. So you tell me just how the hell is that
possible?”

Miranda took over the
conversation, “Are you saying that Ted was killed by a ……………
Zombie? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. People
don’t just come back to life after they’ve died.”

Bob and Miranda were
completely focused on Dr. Marcil, looking for an answer. “I’m not
saying he’s a zombie. This isn’t the movies. I’m merely stating
that his cells appeared to have been somehow reanimated."

“Doctor, with all due
respect, I have never heard of such a thing. This guy isn’t
Frankenstein!”

Dr. Marcil motioned for
Bob and Miranda to sit down, “There is something else I haven’t
told you. Sophie and I were part of a team comprised of researchers
across Canada studying animal disease, primarily Ebola. Under a
controlled environment, we inoculated piglets with the Zaire Ebola
Strain, the deadliest strain known to man. The piglets were held in
the same room with some macaques, a type of monkey we prefer to use
in laboratory experiments. The animals where each separated in wire
cages, there was no direct contact between any of them. All the
piglets died, but before they died, the monkeys began to show signs
of the Ebola virus. We had just begun initial testing with ZMapp and
tested it on the four monkeys. We were able to save two of them. The
two that lived turned out to be perfectly normal, but with the two
that died, we had some interesting findings.

Bob interrupted again,
“Doctor, please don’t tell me the monkeys turned into zombies.”

Dr. Marcil rolled his
eyes at Bob, “Of course not Colonel, that’s ludicrous. However,
the blood work on the two deceased monkeys showed extraordinary
cellular activity even after autopsies were done.”

Bob stood up angered,
pointing at Dr. Marcil, “So what you’re saying is that you and
Sophie decided to play God, just to see what would happen!”

Dr. Marcil paused for a
moment, not wanting to aggravate Bob any further, “We thought we
had found a cure for hundreds of diseases. It was hope in the shape
of a mutated virus. Can you imagine the possibilities if we could
reanimate healthy cells? We could fight diseases like cancer and AIDS
with a single shot. The possibilities were endless, but unfortunately
we could never reproduce the findings. It was a billion to one, that
the mutated strain of Ebola gave us reanimation, and I’m afraid
it’s lost forever.”

Bob charged over to Dr.
Marcil close enough that their protective face shields were touching,
“Well Doc, your billion to one just killed Ted!”

October 4th 4:15am

Bob was in mid-lecture
when he was distracted by a barrage of gunfire coming from the Ebola
patient’s floor directly above them. Miranda released a
gut-wrenching scream. Bob ran out of the room and straight for the
stairway. He leaped up four steps at a time, until he crested the top
landing. He stopped short of grabbing the door handle. He peered out
of the metal door’s shoe box sized window. Bob could see the
soldier who had saved Sophie, was now shooting into the room with the
Ebola patients. Sophie was crouching behind him crying, and hanging
onto the back of his suit. The soldier continued firing three-shot
bursts from his M4 into the room. Bob grabbed the handle and slowly
opened the door, trying to get Sophie’s attention.