11-The Dead Awake

The Dead Awake

 

Young Danny Fulbright lay on the table in The Center for Disease Control. He was now strapped down because over the last few days he had become restless and violent, which made no sense to the attending physicians, as he had no heart beat that they could detect.

Not that it mattered now.

Something had gone wrong and despite the full body bio-hazard suits they all wore and the decontamination procedures whatever was eating Danny alive was in them too. Doctor Jorn coughed inside his bio-suit, and one of the black maggots they had been chasing around the operating theater ejected from his mouth and impacted on the clear face shield along with some bloody chunks of tissue. He looked at it and he slumped in a dejected manner. It promptly began to inch across the facemask into the dark interior of his sweaty suit leaving a trail of his blood.

He unzipped it and stepped out.

The Colonel had been unable to contain the threat. A digital map on the wall showed flashing blots of red light where known out breaks were occurring, but it had not been updated in three days so surely the problem was much bigger by now. Three days was when most of the staff had fled; one of the cleaning staff had propped open the main door so that it couldn’t automatically lock as intended in case of a bio-hazard breach. Aside from the bodies of the suicides and Danny, he was all that was left.

The boy had by now lost all of his normal teeth, and his face was now mostly a gaping hole. The nose cavity was gone. The new orifice was lined with suckerfish like lips and inside his new mouth rows of needle sharp teeth were growing in.

The brain scan images had shown the organism wrapped around and fused with his cerebral cortex. Apparently when the strongest of the creatures succeeded in reaching the brain the other smaller maggot-like creatures abandoned the host and went looking for a new one. As far as the medical staff had been able to tell the parasites had pushed fluids through the veins, maybe to keep the limbs from becoming necrotic.

Now the boys were open and looking clearly at him. They were black.

He was calm. Jorn was trembling. One of his fascinations as a young doctor had been lethal injections and executions, and he had served a stint in the Texas state prison system where he had been physician in charge in twenty three lethal injections.

He was now gripped with the same anxiety many of those facing execution had shown, because the black maggots meant death. He remembered that there had been a large difference between the inmates that had “found Christ “and those who were just garden variety rapist and murders; The Christ believers had gone to the chambers calm, and in many cases had spoken kindly to the guards. The others had often times had to be drugged in order to be compliant or had messed themselves at the door to the execution room. Many had screamed and and grasped the door frame and pushed away the table only to end their stint on Earth begging to fade to black in terror.

He himself had never believed in God. It was trendy not to for the science and medical crowd. He knew that he was going to die and he was terrified. Except…

Danny Fulbright wasn’t dead.

He was maimed. His face was a gaping hole lined with teeth and he had no heart beat but his eyes were alive and looking at him as a child might gaze lovingly at a parent.

He unstrapped his arms and legs and helped him down from the table. His blue hospital gown was filthy with gore and feces and the boy was helpful as he changed him into the clothes he had been brought in wearing; all the while gazing at Jorn.

“There, “he said. Tears now flowed down his face. He was nearly paralyzed with fear but at the same time he felt an almost overwhelming love for this poor ruined child. He didn’t understand that. “I am going to take care of you. “

The boy didn’t reply, but he rubbed his belly in the universal language of hunger.

They made their way out of the Center for Disease Control. It was after two in the morning and for now, the streets were deserted. They passed some homeless men around a barrel of burning trash and as he pressed the boy’s face into his side to hide his strange new features, he almost thought of him as “it “for a second. They hurried on.

They finally came to an open gas station and the boy hurried inside. The man working the counter screamed like a dog caught in a trap as Danny Fulbright leapt on him with amazing speed and filled his belly.

Overhead, a full moon leered down and Doctor Jorn covered his ears. He spat on the sidewalk and moaned as saw a molar in the fluid.