changes being made that it is impossible to take note of them all, much less determine their implications. But of note is a strange knot forming in the brain – not a tumor, or cancer, but a great nexus of neural activity in the amygdala and hippocampus that far exceed that of a normal human.”
“What does that mean?”
“We have no idea. Those areas of the brain are related to memory and emotion, to put it simply. Why there is growth in both of them and deterioration in other areas, I don’t know. It may not even matter. By this point, the patient is dead. His body temperature is the same as this room. No one could survive that.”
They were all quiet.
“Well,” Chan said. “Perform what tests you need to. Learn all you can. When you’re finished, have him incinerated. I will not risk him infecting others.”
At that moment, Chan’s voice dropped off. I leaned closer, thinking they were only speaking more softly.
“Is…is he moving?” one of the assistants asked.
There was a long pause. I stopped breathing. Then, my curiosity won over caution, and I lifted my eyes to the window.
All of them were so transfixed on the body that they were not looking in my direction. The body appeared still, just as it had before.
Khloe stood next to me, also watching through the window. Chan was facing away.
Then, the body jerked, causing all the men to jump back. The legs convulsed, planting themselves on the floor. The eyes opened, two completely white orbs. The arms reached out for one of the assistants.
“Get him away!” he screamed.
Chan pulled out a handgun, pointing it at the patient. “
The patient pressed forward, paying no heed. He leaned into the assistant.
Chan fired. The bullet entered the patient’s head, splattering the wall and the assistant with purple and grayish goo. The patient collapsed to the ground. The smell was so foul that it permeated the door. I gagged.
Immediately, Chan turned, his eyes burning into me like fire. They narrowed as he scowled, his left cheek twitching. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen out of him, and it terrified me.
He still held the gun in his hand, and he holstered it.
“Clean this mess up,” he snapped to the assistants.
My father was now looking at me with his soft, brown eyes, wondering why, of all places, I was here. I felt guilty – doubly, because I knew I had gotten Khloe into trouble, too. I would take the fall for that as well.
But Khloe was not even looking at me. She was still looking at the body with widening eyes. She pointed through the window.
“Oh my God…”
The body on the floor was bloating, fattening, swelling in all the limbs and chest like a balloon.
Everyone stared at the body in horror, now fat and trembling uncontrollably. The skin stretched as liquid beneath it bulged outward. Then, it erupted with a sickening plop. Purple, gray, and red splattered the walls, the ceiling, covering the window through which I watched.
The stench made me vomit in my mouth.
I turned aside to spit it out. Khloe grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into the main part of the medical bay.
I didn’t merely feel physically sick, but emotionally sick. My dad was in there.
My dad, who was probably now infected with the xenovirus.
Chapter 8
Khloe pulled me away from the door and back into the medical bay. We stood there, unsure of what to do.
“Stay here,” Khloe said. “It might be okay…”
No words could describe the horror we had witnessed. The man had come back to life and exploded. I didn’t see how it was possible. But there was no denying what I had seen.
The door opened. The four men walked into the medical bay. The purple slime covered their heads, their bodies, their mouths, their eyes. The odds of them escaping the xenovirus were slim to none.
They stared at us. I could see nothing but horror. My father, having removed his glasses, stared at the floor. Chan, however, was eerily calm. I could see the hate in his eyes, as if I were to blame for what had happened.
“Everyone, to the showers,” my father said. He looked at me as he said this, though I knew he was not talking to me. “There is still a chance it might not be too late.”
There was an air of defeat in his voice.
“Stay here,” Chan said to us. “You are not to leave.”
They filed off for the showers, leaving Khloe and me alone in the med bay.
“Maybe…maybe they’ll be okay…” Khloe said. “It’s not impossible, is it?”
“I don’t know.”
We just stood there, not talking, for the whole time we waited. I could not suppress the sickening dread I felt. Ten minutes later, all four men reemerged wearing scrubs.
Before anyone else could, Chan spoke.
“Stay here,” he said. “Stay here, and wait.”
Officer Chan raised his communicator.
“Officer Hutton, report to the medical bay, immediately.”
Everyone waited in silence for the one minute it took for Officer Hutton to come. When he entered the bay, he stopped short, his normally stony demeanor shocked. He was of average height and a broad build, and had a trim black beard and short, black hair. Burt Hutton was Chan’s second in command.
“What is going on?” Officer Hutton asked, eyeing the four men’s scrubs up and down.
“Come with me,” Chan said. “All of you. Alex, Khloe, Hutton…stay on the other side of Dr. Keener’s desk.”
We followed Chan into my father’s office. He sat down in the chair. For the first time in my life, I saw Chan scared. His face was white.
Khloe, Officer Hutton, and I stood by the door. The other four men stood on the far side of the desk.
The room was quiet for a long while. Then, Chan looked up.
“There is not a small chance,” he began, “that me, Dr. Keener, and assistants Ybarra and Jones will soon fall ill and die.”
Hutton’s eyes widened. “What is this, some sort of joke?”
“Officer Hutton,” Chan said, “you know full well that the chance that my words are true far outweighs the chance that I would joke about a matter of such gravity.”
Hutton stared at Chan in shock. But Chan went on, regardless.
“In a matter of days – maybe even hours, I will likely be dead, along with everyone else who was in the room with the patient. We are infected with the xenovirus, a strain that targets humans.”
I searched my father’s eyes for some other answer – any answer that was not this. But he was grave and clearly believed in his own doom as much as Chan.
Chan was giving Hutton instructions on what to do. To assemble the officers, making them aware of the situation. To post a constant guard of four officers by the medical bay, allowing no one to enter or exit. Chan gave Officer Hutton full authority to do all this, and as Chan’s second, to assume control of the Bunker.
It sounded so clinical, the way Chan made plans for four eventual deaths. How could his mind work so clearly at a time like this? It made me hate him, the fact he did not even acknowledge the tragedy of the situation.
My dad was dying.
“Lead the children out, and return them to their families.”
