Authors: Jim Kroswell
***
Dr. Samuels ly on his back on the red leather couch that was in his office. He looked up at the ceiling and only felt sadness in his belly. He had something at least now, he had a name, Dr. Lawson. He was behind this. Dr. Lawson was a shady fellow with not a hair on his head and a round stomach. He always hated the look of him as he would catch his glance at the candy machine. He was evil and he knew it. Dr. Samuels needed to devise a way to uncover what exactly Dr. Lawson was up to and as he hadn't seen him around the hospital in several weeks, he wasn't exactly sure how to proceed next. He looked down at his watch, he hadn't spoken to Wesley in several hours and he knew he needed to call. He half dreaded the conversation, he didn't want to know that his poor son was getting worse, but the odds were that he was. He pushed himself to go over to his desk and pick up the old phone and dial. "Wesley, how are you?" "Is that you Daddy? I'm okay." "Good job Buddy, you have to stay strong. Your mom needs you to be a strong boy." "I know she does. She wants to talk to you, here." "You son of a bitch, you can't even come down here!" "Calm down, please, for the boy. I know, I know, I'm doing all that I can here." "How is it that all you can is never very much!" She spat venom at him and he knew that it was his job to be the infinite sea that absorbed the venom and only returned kindness. It seemed that this was his role in his most intimate relationships as with the rest of the public world. "I have a lead. I need to get to the bottom of this." "What, you're the sleuth that's going to save the world! Just like you, spend your time doing that while your child dies!" And with that she slammed the phone down. Dr. Samuels ear felt like a sledge hammer had hit it and he sat there in a moment of slight dizziness. He deserved that, he knew. He needed to get to his son, but he just could not afford to at this moment. He needed to think of other things, he needed to think of Lawson.
Lawson was a shred cat. He knew this from what he heard in hallways, in snippets of conversations quickly shut down when he entered the room. Lawson was working with someone and these two were somehow behind this all. It was a heavy burden to take out the world, but to a mad man, it may not quite seem that way. Lawson must have some pretty hairy plans.
***
Samantha sat in her bed, a big mess of goo. Both emotionally and physically, she was completely drained. Who was this person next to her that was so loathesome to her at this moment but who once had such an important part in her life. Her life seemed so dismal now that it seemed no one was inside her world at the moment, not even Renaldo. Renaldo looked at his hands. He didn't know how to be there for the love of his life. He did truly love Samantha but did not know what to do at this juncture. He looked up into her eyes as some sort of green goo leaked from her right eye. "Samantha, I'm sorry. I just didn't know what to expect. You know I risked a lot by coming here. They say the hospitals are the worst. Everyone is dying who walks in here. But I had to see you. I'm so sorry, for everything, for you being like this. I should have been able to protect. I just don't want you to die. I love you. I don't care how you look. I'll be here until the end for you. And hopefully, we'll find a way to fight this and the end won't be for a very long time. Just hold on Samantha, I'll figure something out." She couldn't help herself. Her eyes welled up with tears. The tears were mixed with puss, as they were quite infected, and they poured out a whitish greenish fluid, seemingly unstoppable. Renaldo reached down with his latex covered hand and enveloped her hand with his. "I'm here for you. We're going to make it." She wanted to believe him, she wanted to with all of her quickly being eaten away heart. She could barely utter a word and felt maybe she should just not say anything for a moment. She wasn't sure what to believe, her brain was leaving her, with who knows how many infections starting in the folds of her grey matter.
***
Lawson sat in his office. The sun filtered through his grey curtains. His room was dark other than that bit of light. Dr. Terrence Lawson was a dastardly human being. He was also very ugly. There was stains covering his head but not a single strand of hair, only pukey cancerous lesions decorated his top. He had a plan. He was going to rule the world. He had a meticulous way in which he was going to go about this involving the new technologies developed regarding bacteria. He was going to infect every person in the world with his smart bacteria. They were to be genetically engineered to control the infected party using a complex system of neuronal signals executed via hormones. He was a biology major in college and landed upon a paper one night as he was studying in the library about a mad scientist who was trying to get bacteria to control human hormones, thereby curing hormonal diseases. He had lofty ambitions this scientist, and Lawson was just the person to parasitically ride this man's desires for good and twist them to his own agenda. All of the negativity Lawson endured from every person he ever encountered would be turned inside out and he would execute this negativity upon the world. He found the writer of this paper and he befriended him. He learned everything about the bacterial experiments and what the extent was to which he would be able to program them and allow them to control the host species. He learned it all and he learned it deeply, for although Lawson was a deeply evil person, his ability to retain knowledge and his curiosity for the chemical and biological sciences was great, and equally as deep.
Lawson breathed in a deep breath and looked at his computer screen. The map blaring at him from his screen showed a map of the world and the red dots represented cases of bacterial eruptions. He watched it with an evil joy in his heart. Each little red dot represented a spot where his finger reached and these were the spawns of his soul. They represented his power and his potential, they were his army and he was their leader.
***
Dr. Samuels now had a clue and he needed to act upon it. After several calls and research attempts by his assistants, he had been given an address. They knew where he was. He should have probably made plans to contact someone first, but he felt the most direct approach was the best, so he booked his plane flight and he would be leaving with the next five hours.
Dr. Samuels car pulled up the driveway and he noticed the beads of sweat starting to form on his temples again. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was go in there, but the doctor in him, the healer, the care taker, wanted nothing more than to bust through the door and make it all better. His eyes were red and although he knew that he was on his way, he was close to something that could possible pull this under control, he also knew he had nothing tangible and in reality he was millions of miles from a solution. The world was deteriorating fast and he could hear the news casters on the radio, with frantic energy in their voice, talk about the lootings of the stores and the break down of the general fabric of society as panic and hysteria set in, panic and hysteria that there was no hope and there was no doctor or scientist or government official that had the ways or means to stop this. He pulled up the courage, the last bit of courage he seemed to possess, and cracked open the door of his car. He trudged up the sidewalk and put his finger to the door bell. He knew that his estranged wife would not be able to hear it, or would not be able to answer, so he grabbed the key beneath the mat, and unlocked the door. He entered slowly as if entering a tomb, in a way it was, and walked slowly up the red carpeted stairs to where he knew his young son's room was. He whispered out into the air, "Hello. I'm here." He could hear soft sobbing and something inside of him died. But this death gave him the strength he needed to turn the knob of the door. There they were, his entire world. "Linda. I'm so sorry." She sat there with the boy in her arms, his eyes sealed shut with some kind of infectious crust. He rushed over and grabbed the boy, who gave a slight start and whose limbs gave a slight quiver. He was dying, quickly. It strengthened his resolve to get to the bottom of this, to find out what part Lawson played in it all, and most of all, to save his son. Linda looked up with her blue green eyes. They were tired and there were many creases on her face. Dr. Samuels looked at her and in his stare he transferred all of his hope and good intentions and she immediately felt it. The energy that had been zapped away from her all came back and she grinned at him. They were going to make it, he knew it in that moment. He handed the boy back to her and proceeded to explain to her that this may all be an attack, an attack by a mad scientist on the entire world, and that he alone it seemed had an idea of what was happening and who was at fault. He told her he was going to go and try to stop it. She knew that he had more than her and the boy on his plate, he had the fate of the human race, and she forgave him the neglect.
***
Dr. Samuels sat in his plane seat and stared out the window at the clouds below him. He had the world hanging on his actions. He took out a picture of his son, looked at it for half a second and returned it to his pocket. He had Lawson on the brain. He was going to find this dirt bag and rip his guts out.
He felt like personally injecting him with the bacteria he so eagerly infected the world with.
He let his head fall backwards and hit the head rest. He needed to be more methodical about this. He could not allow himself to become hot headed. Lawson was a bad man, there was no doubt, but to meet him with anger would be a fool's mistake. This was a scientist and he would be careful not to expose himself to too much vulnerability, so he needed to find an in, a way to gain his trust and then bam, rip his guts out.
***
Lawson thought long and hard about what he should do next. He looked out his window and then down at his pudgy fingers. He knew he was a mastermind but at the moment he felt confused. He had set out his bacteria onto the world, the problem was that they were not proliferating as quickly as he would like for them to. Yes, they had been outbroke at hospitals, and there were many infected and they appeared to look incurable to the doctors there. Yes, he knew that at any moment he could flip the switch and the bacteria would begin to latch onto the hosts nervous system and proceed to control them. These were all well and good, but the waiting was monotonous. He wanted to have a saturation of approximately 50% before her turned his bugs on and right now it hovered around 22. His eyes were blood shot, as he hadn't slept in three days. Really, who could. He was planning on taking over every living thing, every person would be at his disposal and the rush of dizzying energy would not allow his mind to rest for even an instant.
Lawson had a childhood filled with books and bullies. He was constantly tormented by school boy aggressors and he fled inside his own mind. He was a consummate scientist, he worked day and night to understand the laws of nature, biology and chemistry. He was in his lab one afternoon when the thought hit him that he could use what he knew about the microbiological world to inflict his will upon all those around him. He could make all of the bullies of his past pay for when he could see them, infected by his bugs, clamoring for life, but all the while controlled by him, then he could be satisfied. He ached to see their faces full of pussy sores. He wanted them to be in pain. He felt he needed a general sort of pay back to all of the people of the world who rejected his very existence. No, he was not a handsome man, he was a very grotesque looking man, and his grotesqueness grew more and more year by year. He recognized this, he could see himself in the mirror. He was fully aware that he was not accepted, let alone welcomed, into the society into which he was born. He felt he was born into the wrong world, but he blamed the inhabitants in it for the scourge they inflicted upon him, a scourge of lonliness and sadness that only felt lifted when he felt he could exact his revenge upon him. When he made them pay, then he could be satisfied, then he could rest. He felt the top of his head, it was extremely smooth. He had no hair on his head, although it would be mostly white if he had. He had a series of brown spots on his head that looked as if someone with brownish, greyish paint had poured it out in splotched by holding a can and pouring it directly above his head. He truly was hideous. He accepted his discoloration, but he did not accept that it was not accepted by others. They treated him like a pariah and he counted not even one person as a friend. In a person with a lesser mind all of these things would probably be expressed at monster truck rallies or at wrestling matches, pities drowned with beer and hot dogs, but in a person with the kind of steel trap of a mind like Lawson, every bit of emptiness and sadness was felt and magnified and seen as impetus for a plan to make the world feel, if only a fraction of, the amount of bitterness he felt daily. Lawson turned his eyes towards his computer screen. The next step of his plan could not be embarked upon until he reached 50. He needed to infections, he needed more rapid transmissions. The options were to rest or to find more methods of innoculation. He had already made use of water supplies, food supplies, restaurants, hotels, libraries, any place where he could start the process of spreading. He began it in Los Angeles and watched it as it spread to the eastern states. He knew that the United States would be the best place to begin the world process as so many people travel through the country and he knew that the LA International Airport was the prime spot of international innoculation of US soil. He worked hard to infect as much of the airport as a single person could, with he himself completely immune to the bacteria, as he had made sure of that from the beginning.
***
Dr. Samuels watched the trees go by as he drove down the freeway headed for the biological research center Dr. Terrence Lawson created, The XLaw Bio Labs. He was using the XLaw Labs as his cover for his devious plans. Under guises of pills to lower cholesterol and the like, Lawson was hatching his schemes. Samuels was nervous about the confrontation. He wasn't even sure what he was going to say exactly. In any case, he had to do this. At the moment, every major scientific organization was busily trying to figure out a way to stop the bacterial infection spread and no one was having any luck. He himself had nothing left. They had tried every antibiotic known to man and a few experimental ones that were not quite released yet. Nothing was working and the people who were supposed to be in charge, the people who you called in for back up, even they had no clue where to go next. They had suspected for years that an outbreak of this magnitude was possible and maybe even probable, but no one expected that something would come along that could possible take out the human race. That was something for the science fiction books, not real life, and yet here was Dr. Samuels, facing the possibility of losing the ones most dear to him, and looking around to see things slowly descending into mass hysteria. Luckily there was still infrastructure, the roads still worked, the airplanes still flew, but he didn't know for how much longer. It seemed the news could only report more and more cases of new bacterial infection and no one was getting any better. He didn't really believe that Lawson was behind this. He didn't really believe that he was traveling towards an answer. But he had no choice. It may be a needle in a haystack and he may just be chasing after a piece of hay, but it was the only piece of hay in his grasp so he had no choice but to hope it was the needle. Could Lawson truly be at the heart of this? He didn't know much about him, only that he was a somewhat crazy scientist and that he was known to be greedy and his company was always innovating new drugs for high profits. Samuels didn't really believe that a single person, or even multiple people, could be behind such a phenomenon. He thought, truly, that this had to be the work of a higher mechanism, possibly not god, as he was not a religious person, but possibly a biological mechanism, an evening out of things if you will. Maybe the earth was tired of people and needed to get rid of them and this was the way it was going to do it. Samuels cringed at the idea that the people of the earth were going to be swept aways like so much debris from a living room floor. He wasn't going to let it go down like that, not while he still had a breath of air in his body. He coughed. He wasn't sure what that was. So far he had had no signs of being infected. He was careful to keep his immune system in top shape and to use as much antibacterial lotion, gloves, masks and all other sorts of protection that were commonly used at the hospital. He couldn't catch it. He needed to be in tip top shape to save everyone. It was just a cough. Maybe he was just being overly sensitive and who could blame him for being paranoid. Everyone was dropping like flies around him.