Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (37 page)

Daniel Houser staggered into Southampton
General hospital and found his way to reception.  A weary-looking nurse
peered back at him from behind an ancient CRT monitor.  Her spectacles
were lopsided, which may have been because her ears were not level.

“Can I help you?” she asked, quite obviously forcing a
smile.

Houser cleared the fiery gravel from the back of his throat
and nodded.  “Something’s wrong with me.  I think I have the flu or
something…but worse.”

The nurse gave him a curious look, as if silently pitying
him for assuming he could possibly make a correct diagnosis of himself. 
“Okay,” she said.  “Fill out this form and I will have someone come see
you shortly.”

Houser took the form and selected a seat in the waiting
area.  He was glad to see that the form was only a single page long, but
even the thought of filling that out felt like too much.  He was so…weak.

What on earth did I catch?

He plucked the stubby pencil from the top of the clipboard
and began filling out the questionnaire.  His hand was frustratingly
unsteady.

 
NAME: Daniel Houser

 DOB: 05/12/198

RACE: White British

Houser filled out the rest of his details, including his
parent’s address where he could be reached, and then got down to a box marked:
SYMPTOMS.  With blunt pencil marks, he wrote:
headache, blocked nose,
sneezing, itchy eyes, aching joints, stomach pain, throbbing ears, dizziness…

Before Houser had chance to write down more of his symptoms,
a slender woman in a doctor’s coat entered the waiting room.  He struggled
to his feet to catch up to her before she left.  She turned and smiled
when she spotted him approaching.  The name on her badge read:
Clark
.

“Hello, sir.  Can I help you?”

“I…I need to see someone.”

The doctor looked past Houser, at the chairs behind
him.  No one else seemed to be waiting for the moment, so she
nodded.  “Okay.  Is that your information?”

Houser handed over the clipboard.

“Come this way.”  Dr Clark led Houser into a nearby
examination room.  She pointed to a treatment table in the centre. 
It was lined with recycled paper from a roller at one end.  “Hop on up,”
she said.  “Let’s take a look at you.”

Houser failed to get himself up the few inches onto the
table and it took him a second attempt to climb up onto its surface. 

So weak.

The doctor headed over to a cluttered desk in the corner of
the room and examined the clipboard he had given to her.  After a few
moments of checking his information, she turned to face him and tutted. 
“We are feeling quite under the weather, aren’t we?”

Houser nodded.  “I’ve never felt this bad in my
life.  I feel rough as hell.”

“Well, my name is Dr Clark.  Let me see what I can do
for you.”  She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck and placed the
receiver against his chest by going up under his t-shirt.  “Hmm,” she
said.  “Your heart rate is a little fast.  Have you taken any drugs
or alcohol in the last twenty-four hours?”

“I…smoked a bit of weed to take the edge of my headache.”

She nodded.  The admission of guilt was obviously
uninteresting in her line of work.  “That could explain it,” she
said.  “When did you start feeling ill?”

“Couple days ago.  Some of the guys I work with started
feeling bad, too.  We assumed it was a bug going round.  You get sick
a lot living on a boat.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow at him.  “You live on a
boat?”

Houser nodded.  “I’m a merchant sailor.  We just
docked in Southampton after a salvage operation in the Med.”

“You…you weren’t involved with that cruise liner, were you?”

Houser nodded.  “Yeah, we were one of the boats
involved in the rescue attempts.  There was no one to be saved,
though.  We spent a day running nets and picking up debris, but eventually
we were ordered back to the mainland.  It was all a bit strange, if you
ask me.”

Dr Clark was shaking her head and pursing her lips. 
“It’s terrible what happened there.  More than a thousand dead, I heard.”

Houser nodded.  “Nobody has any idea what
happened.  They’re saying it could have been a terrorist attack.  A
suicide bomber in the engine compartment or something.”

“I don’t understand this world sometimes,” said the
doctor.  Then she seemed to refocus on what she was doing.  “So, you
say you and your colleagues started feeling ill back on the boat, in the
Mediterranean Sea?  Were you docked anywhere prior to that?”

Houser shook his head.  “We made a drop off in
Civitavecchia the day before, but no one left the boat.  We just dropped
off some shipping containers with the crane and then set off again.  I
suppose one of the officers could have stepped off briefly to fill out some
paperwork.”

Dr Clark nodded her head and seemed to run a few things
through her mind.  “Well, there hasn’t been any health warnings. 
It’s probably safe to assume that you just have a nasty case of flu.  Not
a lot I can do for you, unfortunately.  I’ll give you something to help
the headaches, but you just need to get a lot of rest.  You’ll feel better
in a day or two.”

Houser nodded weakly.  “I really hope so.  I can’t
take much more of this.”

The doctor patted him on the back.  “Just get some
sleep and try your best to battle through it.  I’ll be back in a minute
with your prescription.”

“Thank you, Dr Clark.”

Houser waited on the table while the doctor headed out of
the room.  He was relieved to hear he just had the flu.  He’d
suspected as much, but had also been supressing a gloomy concern that it could
be something worse.  He knew flu was bad, but he didn’t know it could be
this bad.

Feels like my whole body is turning to lead.

Houser felt his nose run for the hundredth time that day and
wiped at it with back of his hand.  He blinked his eyes a couple of times
as they began to itch.

Dr Clark re-entered the room with a prescription in her
hand.

“Take this to the pharmacy on the ground floor and-” Her
words trailed off.  She gawped at him.

“What?” Houser said.  “What is it?”

“Your nose!”  She hurried over to the corner desk and
pulled some tissues from a box in the drawer.  She handed several to him
in a clump.

Houser took the tissues from her and noticed the blood which
covered the back of his hand.  It was almost black it was so dark. 
“Wh-what the hell?”

A wracking cough exploded in his chest and blood spurted
from his mouth, covering Dr Clark from her face all the way down the front of
her jacket.  She seemed shocked by it, but wasted no time in leaning him
forward and placing the stethoscope against his back.

Houser continued to hack and splutter and more blood leaked
from his mouth and nose.  Through the sounds of his own agonised heaving,
he heard the doctor’s panicked voice.

“You’re lungs are filling with blood,” she said
frantically.  “We need to get you into surgery.”

Houser tried to catch his breath and make sense of the
situation, but his mind was a raging blur.
  Surgery?  But I just
have the flu.

Then he collapsed off the table and landed on the
floor. 

Dr Clark sat in her office and
examined the patient’s preliminary test results.  Daniel Houser was
currently in surgery where efforts were being made to control his internal
bleeding.  She couldn’t deny that she was worried.  The blood coming
from the patient’s mouth had been thick and arterial.  Most of it still
stained her coat. 

From some sort of internal injury or…

I don’t know.  Something crazy, like Ebola or
Lassa? 

That’s insane.  If the patient had just gotten back
from third-world Africa, perhaps there could be the remotest chance of him
having haemorrhagic fever, but he said he’d just gotten back from the
Mediterranean.  The worst he should have been exposed to there is sunstroke
and dysentery.

She had a growing desire to contact the disease control unit
which covered her district, but she forced herself to hold off until the blood
results came back.  Medicine had to be practised on a factual basis. 
She wasn’t about to make assumptions with so little information at her
fingertips.

He could be a nut, for all I know.  Swallowed a
bunch of nails as a way to kill himself.  God knows it’s more likely than
someone bringing Ebola into the hospital.

There was a knock at the door and she immediately said,
“Come in.”

It was one of the nurses from diagnostics.  She was
carrying a folder.

“Do you have the haematology reports?” Dr Clark asked the
woman.
 

The nurse handed over the folder.  “Just partial results
so far.  The blood tests seemed to be contaminated by a foreign
substance.  We’ve compared the markers we could find against the database
of diseases, but nothing came up.  Dr Besser is getting more samples now
and will be working on them as a priority.”

Dr Clark looked over the blood report that was inside the
folder.  She scanned the page quickly and located what she was looking
for.  “It’s not Ebola.”

“No,” said the nurse.  “Nor Lassa, or anything
similar.”

Dr Clark sighed.  “Then, if not for this foreign body
you mentioned, I would assume internal injuries.  Maybe the first blood
sample was compromised.  Maybe Dr Besser will find the new tests to be
normal.”

“Maybe so,” said the nurse.  “I will let you know if
anything changes, Doctor.”

“Thank you, nurse.”

The nurse departed.  Dr Clark continued looking through
the blood reports.

Foreign substance?  What on earth could that
be?  Did he poison himself with something?

She let her eyes scan the numerous lines of data, looking
for anything out of the ordinary.  Nothing seemed to jump out at her,
until…

Silicon?

Why on Earth would there be silicon in Houser’s blood?

She examined the rest of the results and located several
unknown proteins.  There was a chance that those proteins belonged to some
kind of virus.  She wouldn’t know for sure until Besser did a full
workup. 

But the silicon…

Silicon was a substance used mainly in electronics, and also
for some cosmetic procedures.  Daniel Houser did not seem like the type to
get breast implants.

So what?  He has computer chips running through his
blood stream?

Dr Clark knew experiments were being done that would produce
machines and computers made from silicon that would be small enough to exist on
a cellular level, but the technology was still in its infancy.  Even
getting something down to the size of a pinhead was a vast challenge to most of
the scientific community. 
Nanotechnology
was still closer to a
pipedream than a reality, but for some reason it was the thing she was thinking
of now.

Aren’t they looking at ways of bonding silicon-based
machines with bacteria?  Trying to find a way to combine biology with
technology to make self-replicating, self-sustaining robots that can fight
cancer cells and seek out infection? 

Science fiction.

But Daniel Houser had silicon in his veins
.

Dr Clark scratched her chin.  She wasn’t about to
believe in
nanotechnology
just yet, but the presence of silicon in her
patient’s bloodstream, along with the unknown proteins, made her wonder if it
was something manmade that had caused his condition.  The patient had
mentioned a possible terrorist attack, after all.  It might be time to get
someone else involved.  She picked up the phone on her desk and dialled in
the number for Disease Control. 

Someone on the other end answered immediately.

“Oh, hello,” said Dr Clark.  “My name is Dr
Clark.  I am calling from Southampton General Hospital.  I have a
patient that was complaining of flu-like symptoms about ninety minutes ago, but
his condition has suddenly progressed to internal haemorrhaging.”

“Did you run blood tests?”

“Yes.  Negative for Ebola and other conditions that
would present similar symptoms.”

“Then what is your primary concern?”

“I found silicon in his blood.”

“Silicon?”

“And some unknown proteins.”

The voice on the other end of the line suddenly seemed more
interested.  “Has the patient been exposed to anything?”

Dr Clark thought about things and then nodded into the phone
as she replied.  “The patient is a merchant sailor.  He was involved
with the rescue operation for that cruise ship which sunk in the Mediterranean
last week.  He also said that some of his colleagues-”

“Isolate the patient and anybody who has been in contact
with them.”

Dr Clark rocked back in her chair as if the person on the
other end of the phone had punched her.  “What?”

“We’ll have a team on site within the hour.  You must
enforce emergency protocols immediately.”

“What is going on?  Who is this man?  What does he
have?”

 There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then…
“Dr Clark, there have been dozens of cases in the last few hours of people who
were involved in the Mediterranean clean up operation becoming very sick. 
We have quarantined several ships already and the French Navy have currently
closed all shipping lanes in the area.  Your patient must have fallen
under the radar somehow.”

Dr Clark felt the blood leaving her cheeks and making her
face pale.  “What does he have?”

“We…don’t know.  The attack on the cruise ship may have
been down to terrorists.  They may have released something.”

Dr Clark’s mouth fell open.  “I…”

“Just isolate that patient, Doctor, and stand by for our
arrival.”

The line went dead.  Dr Clark just sat there, holding
the phone against her ear in stunned silence.

Then she leapt to her feet and raced for the door.  She
had to get the situation contained.  God only knew what Daniel Houser had
brought into the hospital, but she had a duty to contain it.  She quickly
headed towards the emergency department and made her way to the operating
theatre.

We need to quarantine the patient.

Oh God, oh God. What does he have?  His blood is all
over me.

Houser was still in surgery.  Dr Clark pushed through
the heavy double doors and entered the theatre.  The attending surgeon, Dr
Bryce, looked up at her from behind his mask.  Both of his gloved hands
were covered in blood. 

He looked at her over the top of his surgical mask. 
“Dr Clark?  Can I help you?”

She nodded.  “I just got off the phone to Disease
Control.  We need to isolate this patient immediately.”

Dr Bryce and his two attending nurses all shook their heads
simultaneously and sighed.  It seemed like something they had been
prepared to hear.  “Great,” said Bryce.  “What are we exposed to?”

“I don’t know.  They just said to isolate him and
ourselves until a team arrives.”

Bryce wiped some sweat from his wrinkled forehead with the
back of his arm.  “Okay,” he said.  “Let me get him sown up.  He
should remain stable for now, but I don’t see him recovering from whatever has
gotten inside him.”

Dr Clark frowned.  “What did you find?”

“His organs have liquefied.  I knew there would be a
story with this man.  Let’s just hope we don’t end up in the same
condition.”

“I’m sure we won’t,” Dr Clark said hopefully.  “He
might have been the victim of a terrorist attack.  He may not even be
contagious.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” said Dr Bryce.  “I’ll let you
know when I’m done here.  You’ll be in your office?”

She nodded.  “I’ll stay there until you’re ready to
enact quarantine procedures.”

Dr Bryce nodded and got back to work.

Dr Clark headed out of the operating room and back towards
her office.  Along the way she bumped into Brad, the floor’s security
officer.

“Brad,” she said.  “We need to lock down this
floor.  Can you secure all the exits?”

Brad raised an eyebrow.  “Sure I can, but why?”

“No time to explain.  There may be an infectious
disease in the hospital.  Disease Control are on their way.”

Brad seemed worried.  His lower lip was
quivering.  “Infectious?  How infectious?”

Dr Clark sneezed. 

She blinked tears from her eyes and then sneezed
again.  Brad’s face was drenched with her mucus.  She tried to stay
calm as she spoke to him, but was already losing herself to panic.  “I
think it’s pretty damn contagious,” she said.  Then sneezed again. 
“We have to get this place locked up now.”

She ran off to lock all the doors herself.

Brad, however, snuck out quietly while nobody was
looking.  He was still wiping the doctor’s mucus from his face as he
headed across the car park.