impossible to purchase this system until then,” General Bider said, giving no indication he was sorry about the funding issues.
“If one ever escapes it might mean the end of the world,” Pankow finished, allowing his last words to reverberate in their minds.
“I think Dr. Pankow is reading too many science fiction magazines.” General Bider laughed. “These flies will save our soldiers’ lives. We have them under control gentlemen. Are there any questions I can answer?”
Several hands shot up.
Several months later word came down from the army; they would not end the project nor kill the flies. Testing would resume. Pankow was stunned.
The flies were a weapon the army planned to utilize. They hadn’t even considered the ramifications of their actions, Pankow surmised; otherwise they never would have allowed the project to continue. He made the only moral decision he could; he would dispose of the killer flies, with or without approval. They were an abomination-a lethal one at that.
“Carrie,” he said. He had ceased calling her Ms. Jacobs shortly after hiring her two years before.
“Yes, Dr. Pankow.” Carrie had always been so formal.
“Would you help me eliminate the ‘mothers’?”
Carrie, standing 5?6? with short auburn hair, looked over the paper she was working on. Her beautiful manicured nails tapped on her teeth as she looked him up and down.
Pankow watched, admiring her slender fingers as they danced across her snowy white teeth. Having trained her straight out of college he knew her habits well. She was considering his question.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to exterminate them.” Her face wore a mask of confusion. “Wasn’t that the official word?”
“We aren’t. But I’m doing it anyhow. We’ve talked about this before. They want us to keep the flies alive even though they are incapable of being controlled. What happens if these flies mix with the general fly population? They might mutate into a new strain we have no weapons against. God forbid, one female escapes. We can’t be sure of anything, but I’d rather be overly cautious. It’s my duty as their creator to destroy them. If you don’t want to help I understand.” And he would. It meant both of them getting fired if they got caught. Even if they didn’t, John cared so deeply for Carrie he had questioned even suggesting her involvement.
Carrie stood up from her desk stretching her arms into the air. “I’ll suit up?”
“No way, Carrie. I’m doing it. I just need your help.” John struggled into his protective suit. “I’ll be glad to get rid of those creatures,” he pointed at the acrylic fly cage. “They give me nightmares.”
Carried helped place the space-age glass helmet on John. His eyes flashed his resolve. He felt responsible, she knew, he’d told her that before. “Let’s get on with it John. I’d like a new job by lunchtime,” she said, knowing as well as he did that this would cost them their jobs.
John stared at her silently. Carrie had always called him Dr. Pankow. “Why so informal all of a sudden? You’ve always been so professionally distant.”
“If I’m going to commit job-icide for the man I love, who needs professionalism?”
Love. She loved him too. He motioned for her to move closer with his gloved hand. Then he pressed his lips to the interior glass of his helmet and she pressed hers to the outside of his helmet. They kissed.
“When this is all over,” John said, “we need to talk.” He opened the door to the fly room.
Carrie noticed a piece of lint on the back of his protective suit. She grabbed it. As the door shut behind him Carrie stared at the thick piece of thread in her hand. She watched it unravel as he moved down the decontamination hallway toward the fly sanctuary. She yelled, “John, stop!” But he couldn’t hear through the glass.
As he entered the room the ‘mothers’ became frenzied. First he freed them from their plastic enclosures, letting them into the room, then he swept the remainder out with gloved hands to make sure none would survive. He didn’t want to take any chances.
“ John, don’t! ” Carrie’s voice came through the loudspeaker. Too late he turned to see Carrie’s horrified face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. The flies swarmed around him naturally enough, as the warm suit attracted them. But what he felt next wasn’t natural at all: it was the pin prick of mandibles biting his skin. When John saw the tear in his suit he screamed, “Spray the insecticide. Now! Now!”
Jolted by his pain-ridden voice Carrie raced over to the console and pressed the button. A jet-stream of liquid filled the room.
The stench was terrible. It was the last thing John remembered before he passed out and the first thing he remembered upon awakening.
Blaring sirens, that was what woke him. The terrible chemical odor clung to his body. Flashing lights seemed to blink time to the throbbing pain in his head as he lay in the ambulance. Its slight rocking motion might have felt soothing had it not irritated his swollen body. A plastic IV bottle attached to a metal pole swayed, allowing geometric light patterns to dance inside the small enclosure.
“Carrie,” he whispered, struggling to overcome the pain. Her sweet face looked strained. “What happened?” His voice came out dry and tired, even to him.
“The flies attacked,” she replied. She touched his swollen and puffy arm and he jerked it away in pain. “I’m so sorry.”
“I remember, kind of. But how…?” John struggled to finish the question, but couldn’t. He felt so tired. His body ached and his throat tasted of bitter chemicals.
“I don’t know exactly. A thread. Your suit got…” Carrie’s eyes, red and swollen, began to cry. “Please forgive me. I tried to warn you, but it was too late.”
“I must have passed out.”
“I rushed into the room, got you out and called the paramedics,” Carrie said proudly. “But I killed those damnable flies with the insecticide, just like you wanted.”
“Tell me you followed protocol. Please.” She was supposed to strip him down in the fly room, and then decontaminate him so no flies could escape.
Carrie’s satisfaction vanished as she realized her error. “You were so badly hurt, John. I forgot.”
“Don’t tell me that, Carrie.”
“But I used the insecticide. The flies were all dead.”
“No, no, no!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The reason I instituted that protocol was so no flies could escape. Without the Flash-Kill system one might have survived. And if even one got out…”
“…the end of the world,” Carrie repeated, remembering John’s army demonstration. She knew John was right.
John awoke to a knock at his door. His body felt cold and numb. Opening it, he saw a seven-foot fly. Huge beady eyes bulged inside the strange cavity of its face. It leaned over him, peering into his eyes; then without provocation it bit his nose off with its pinchers. John screamed as blood squirted from the hole. He snapped into a semiconscious state; neither asleep, nor awake.
Forcing himself back to sleep wasn’t easy. But he did it.
He awoke in fear. Other nightmares had spun him away from the safety of sleep. Antiseptic permeated the air, wafting along on a slight wind current, which swept through his room. Was he back at the lab? It smelled like the air circulation system there. Had it all been a nightmare?
John opened his eyes and slowly looked around. He saw the white walls of the hospital and two blue chairs in one corner, looking too overstuffed for this sterile research environment and too comfy for a hospital room. Something else was wrong. But what? He tried to move, but found himself restrained. Straps held him to the bed. His eyes shifted from ceiling to floor. Fear overwhelmed his senses, threatening his consciousness, as he saw what awaited him. Maggots. Thousands of white squirmy maggots, their slimy bodies writhing atop each other, crawled along the speckled floor below his bed. Some were large, others weren’t. All oozed a red substance. Blood.
