The Virus (30 page)

She didn’t know if the
vomit was saturating the truck with its putrid fumes yet, but in
her mind, she was already suffocating. She had never before been
forced to endure any situation like this for any length of time,
and it was decidedly
un
pleasant. In fact, Delilah had just made up her mind that she
was tired of this mysterious hidden piece game, when she opened her
mouth to shout at Lieutenant Dan that she still needed someone to
clean up the mess she’d made on the floor, but before she could
sound off her displeasure, a faint click from Geoffrey’s general
direction halted her attention. By the time she had turned back to
where he was kneeling, the spot that he had been staring at was
beginning to move and open. A foot by half foot rectangle of
flooring moved into the rest of the flooring, revealing a
compartment. Geoffrey lifted out a white Styrofoam container that
filled the compartment. The container was relatively square and
Delilah thought that it might contain food. Forty-five minutes ago,
and that would’ve been a most welcome reality, but now, after her
recent ‘spill’, not so much so.

When Geoffrey opened the
box, it did not contain food, but rather the sawdust material that
he had described earlier, and what looked like a thin
washcloth.

“Spread the sorbent evenly
over the spill site, and use the cloth to reclaim the debris from
the affected site. If the cleanup is performed properly, it should
leave behind no odor or residue.” Lieutenant Dan instructed through
the speakers. It was clear that he was not used to speaking in
every day conversation. Geoffrey could easily imagine him talking
as he just had to a soldier under his command on the battlefield
dodging enemy fire, or a subordinate officer, over schematics of
rival territory. Meanwhile, Geoffrey followed the lieutenant
general’s orders as obediently as one of those soldiers or
subordinate officers, spreading the ‘sorbent’, the trademark name
for the sawdust mixture, Geoffrey assumed, over the ‘spill site’,
giving it a few moments to absorb, and then, wiping it up carefully
with the washcloth. The sorbent had absolutely no smell and, except
for the fine grain of it, looked nothing like sawdust. The cloth
was abnormal as well. It appeared to be a regular washcloth, though
very thin even for a wash cloth, but it felt like a moist chamois.
It was so moist in fact, that he was sorely tempted to ring it dry
after he had soaked up the sorbent-saturated ‘spill’ with it, but,
it was the very fact that he had just soaked up the sorbent with
it, that he resisted.

As he was nearly finished
with the necessary but unpleasant task at hand, Geoffrey noticed
that he had heard no word from Delilah since he began. He placed
the sorbent filled cloth back in the container, careful not to
spill any of the mess, and once the container was safely closed, he
turned to see whatever had become of his female companion. He
turned and saw that her mouth was drawn in a line, and her gaze was
unmoving at the horizon, stuck upon the spot where the two lifeless
bodies had been earlier. Lieutenant Dan’s men had moved the mother
and her miniature, though not nearly as
miniature
as it should’ve been,
offspring away some time ago. They had even shuffled the sand trail
and imprint that was left behind by the two corpses, so that there
was no sign that they had ever even been there at all. Even though
the two latest victims of The Virus had been removed, the hideous
images of them remained burned in her mind as indelible as if
mutilated mother and child were there still in the sand. Every
moment she spent staring at the images in her mind, they were
engraving themselves upon her psyche as surely as if the bodies
were still there on the side of the inlet.

It was likely that Delilah
would’ve remained in this position indefinitely, had Geoffrey not
introduced himself and a shining bottle of champagne into her line
of sight. He held the bottle up with one hand and with the other,
he gave Delilah’s knee a gentle but firm squeeze.

“Oh!” she exclaimed
softly. She turned away from the horizon and saw the bottle. She
looked confused for a moment and the smile that spread across her
face looked painfully forced, but it was there. Finally, Delilah
shook her head violently. Both she and Geoffrey knew that such
realities as they had witnessed could never be shaken completely
out of either of their heads, but to occupy their focus elsewhere,
at least for the moment, was good too. “Oh.” Delilah repeated, but
this time with less of a violent start. Once she had reasonably
returned to herself, she said, “I guess I was pretty out of it,
there, huh?”

“Yeah, you were.” He
answered, as compassionately as he knew how. “But what else could
be expected, especially when you’ve seen something like…” he was
reluctant to even intimate the sight of such an unsettling scene
“like, that.” He made a vague gesture, indicating the inlet behind
him. “I don’t think that’s something either of us will ever
forget.”

“Yeah, I think you’re
right.” Delilah answered, in a tone and vacant expression that
indicated she was being pulled back into a bottomless chasm. Even
though Geoffrey’s conversation had been meant to do the exact
opposite, it was only reminding Delilah of the images in her
mind.

“Right.” Geoffrey said,
more to himself than to his fellow captive. Then, in a louder and
more jubilant voice (which was not easy, under the circumstances)
he said, “But look what we have.” He raised the bottle higher,
where Delilah would be forced to look up and away from the inlet to
see it. At the same time, he moved closer and deliberately
positioned himself between her and the inlet so that she would have
to intentionally move around him to see it.

“Champagne!” she said once she realized what she was looking
at. “And, oh my God! Is that…that
can’t
be.” She tilted her head to
the side, “
Cristal
.” She reached out quickly to snatch the golden bottle,
filled with the shimmering and very expensive liquid. Geoffrey
could’ve easily moved the bottle out of her grasp, but didn’t. Once
the bottle was secure in her grasp, Delilah coddled the champagne
to her chest like a newborn babe.

Just as quickly as Delilah
had hugged it, she snatched it away and stared at it in wide-eyed
wonder. “Cristal! And it’s
cold
, too!” she shouted, excitedly.
Holding the frigid bottle nearly at arm’s length, she admired the
rare luxury for a moment, and then lost no time uncorking it. The
cork flew a short distance before finally landing in the exact spot
where Delilah had vomited earlier. Geoffrey saw that this was about
to happen and had groped at the air-bound cork before it made its
landing, but to no avail. It hit the spot with a muffled
thud
. Geoffrey loomed
over it, knowing that if he and Delilah didn’t finish this entire
bottle of champagne, it would go to waste because its cork was not
fit to reseal it—not if anyone intended to re drink from it again,
that was. Geoffrey didn’t bother to pick it up. It was no good now,
anyway.

His attention was now
drawn to the spot where the cork had initially landed. It was
clean, as if nothing had ever been there. In fact, the entire area
that Geoffrey had wiped once, twice at the most, with the special
cloth as he had simultaneously gathered up the sorbent all but
shined as if he had given it a brisk scrub. Geoffrey was tempted to
bend down and smell it. It looked so clean that he half expected
the area to emit a fresh lavender scent, but he didn’t bend over.
When he turned back to Delilah to draw her attention to the oddity,
she had already drained nearly a quarter of the champagne bottle
and would have finished the upturned bottle had Geoffrey not
resumed his place beside her and smoothly lowered the bottle from
its elevated position. Delilah wiped her mouth with the other hand
but didn’t try to stop Geoffrey from gently taking the bottle
away.

“You know, we do have some
very nice champagne glasses.” Geoffrey said with a smile, gesturing
toward the table where two champagne glasses were sitting atop the
table. Delilah turned her head to look. When had those gotten
there? It didn’t really matter, though, as was clear by her face as
she turned back to Geoffrey. He noticed that her eyes were
glistening as much as the expensive bottle. She was still trying
hard to forget the deceased and ruined mother and child images
plaguing her brain, and by the looks of things, that wasn’t going
so good. The champagne helped, which is why she was trying to
dispense with it rather hastily.

“Yeah, I guess this really
isn’t the time for moderation, huh?” Geoffrey mused aloud, and
lifted the bottle to his own lips as well. Once he had drained a
little less than a quarter of the contents himself, he passed it
back to Delilah who lost no time in re-elevating it. The quarter of
the bottle that both Delilah and Geoffrey each had downed, almost
instantly took effect and both were satisfactorily woozy. Even
though Delilah raised it back to her lips, her alcohol-affected
equilibrium didn’t allow her to remain that way for long, nor would
her tolerance allow her to overwhelm it so quickly. It was the same
with Geoffrey. Both were still drinking straight from the bottle,
but much more slowly now, as if they were indeed sipping from the
empty glasses on the table not far away.

In time, the golden liquid
lessened, and with it, the world around them, until the destruction
in every direction, the guards looming everywhere, the gruesome
sight from earlier, the very Virus itself, held no meaning. It all
flowed together in a dance of unreality not unlike a vague dream
that one doesn’t even properly remember having. The sun was
beginning its descent now and the clouded horizon assumed a
hypnotic array of grays, reds, and oranges, just beyond the water’s
edge. It was simply magical, doubly so for the two VIPs because
they hadn’t laid eyes on a sunset in over a year. The bottle was
empty now, and as the sky’s flaming orange jewel made its final
peek beyond the horizon, Delilah again lifted her face, no longer
streaked with tears and makeup, toward Geoffrey. This time, there
was no philosophical meandering holding him back. He lowered his
head and kissed her with all the denied passion that had been
smoldering beneath the surface. Delilah matched that fervor more
than equally, and they kissed for a very long time, tongues and
hands both groping wildly in a flaming dance of ecstasy, as the sun
drowned itself into the open ocean and darkness covered the
destroyed land all around.

Chapter 28

When Geoffrey woke up the
next morning, the first thing he noticed, after struggling to piece
together a vague memory of what had happened the previous night,
was that he didn’t have a hangover. He clearly remembered drinking,
and he remembered drinking a
lot
. He couldn’t recall exactly what
it was—only that it was shiny, and that it was
good
—but he knew that it must’ve
been potent because it wiped out most of his memory of it. As more
time passed and he had the opportunity to awaken more fully, a
clearer picture of the happenings of yesterday trickled into his
mind like a leaky faucet. He already remembered one bottle of
champagne, but now, he remembered Delilah popping the cork on a
second bottle as well. He must’ve been the one to retrieve the
bottle from the hidden compartment in the floor, but he couldn’t
actually remember doing it. He also didn’t remember, as yet,
whether more bottles followed, though something inside him
whispered to him that there was, indeed, a third. After that, it
was useless trying to recall anything; it was lost to the
bottles.

Still, his recollections
leading up to that first bottle were becoming more recognizable by
the moment, but, even then, only in bits and pieces. Geoffrey sat
on his bed (exactly how he made it back to his bed was one of the
many things lost to the bottles), rubbing his temples and
simultaneously trying to organize his mind and clear it of the
foreign voices that were growing more intense with each passing
week. There was so much going on with him lately that he didn’t
muse on it much, but now that he was thinking on it deliberately,
he noticed that other people’s internal thoughts were becoming
louder, more profound, and easier to discern from farther distances
and with more obstacles in between. By all accounts, his telepathy
was strengthening. Though he didn’t use it nearly as much, his
ability to project thoughts as well as receive them was becoming
stronger. He could feel it, just below his skull somehow, bulging
against his cranium, becoming stronger and more intense.
Consequently, it was more difficult to not use it more and more,
but there was a reason he tried not to speak into anyone else’s
head besides Dr. Crangler’s. As the doctor had informed him, this
thing was best kept as quiet as possible, and would certainly draw
attention, the likes of which Geoffrey would definitely not want.
Besides, Geoffrey had spoken telepathically to the doctor, but only
after lengthy preparation. Intruding directly into someone else’s
head could get him killed, or at the least, hurt very
badly.

None of this altered the
fact that, whether he liked it or not, he was still changing and
there was no way to know how far that change would progress. The
thought resurfaced that he was becoming more like the alien
intelligence and, at this rate, he would have more in common with
that alien intelligence than not. If his new ability could be
somehow generated in others as it was passed on to him, then the
entire human race would eventually become, as he had already
prophesied, the newest alien intelligence. Even without telepathy,
it wouldn’t be long before this new mind reading,
singularly-connected breed of humanoids would, like The Virus
wielding aliens, want to ‘branch out’ and conquer those they deemed
inferior. Perhaps a planet wouldn’t be enough. Perhaps, this single
human entity—especially scarred by the millions upon millions death
toll inflicted by the merciless Virus—would only find solace in
laboring to conquer the entire galaxy. The idea of a Bonaparte
contingent spreading out in every direction, leaving little else
but ruined, unchartered ecosystems and foreign life forms that had
called them home, sent a shudder all through Geoffrey, and made him
yet again turn his thoughts elsewhere.