Pandemic

THREE.

Braddock parted the plastic sheeting and entered the quarantine zone. Smiling plague victims slept or stared at the ceiling. Intravenous drips fed them a barbiturate cocktail to keep them sedated. Glazed eyes followed him as he passed.

He shook his head. They shouldn’t have been awake at all.

The stale air stank of disease, sweat and neglected bedpans. It was the height of summer, and the air conditioning and ventilation had been turned off to conserve power. The hospital had become an oven. He heard the steady hiss of breath from hundreds of mouths.

On a warm night six weeks ago, Braddock had been working in the emergency room. He thrived on the pulse of the ER—the rollercoaster of boredom and crisis. Even after everything, he was still an intensity seeker. The volume of admissions was staggering. Not a single patient had a disease. They were all trauma cases—broken bones, lacerations, gunshot and knife wounds. A man with a broken bottle in his ass. A woman with a yolky pulp where her left eye had been. A man partially flayed alive. Most were in deep shock. Those who could speak told stories of horror, about how the people they loved had savaged them.

He’d never seen anything like it. When morning finally came, Braddock was sewing stitches into his ninth stab wound. The victims just kept coming. The wail of sirens filled the city—police vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks. The sky grayed with smoke.

A SWAT team wearing respirator masks brought the first diseased people in armored cars. They dragged them inside by the necks with restraint poles. The doctors sedated them, and orderlies strapped them onto gurneys. The first quarantine ward was established on the third floor. Then another and another until the hospital filled with carriers of the Bug.

After that, the police quarantined the entire hospital, enforced it at gunpoint.

The disease killed the old and the very young, while everybody else suffered from frontotemporal dementia similar to Pick’s Disease. The dementia resulted in a dysexecutive syndrome that manifested as severe aggression.

All of which was a very scientific way of saying that men and women would suddenly decide to go after their loved ones with garden shears for a few hours of torture and murder.

Nobody knew why they laughed.

Pathological laughter could be caused by tumors, drug addiction or chromosomal and neurological disorders making the nervous system go haywire. Of all the possible causes, dementia seemed the most viable.

But the laughter seemed purposeful. The infected appeared to enjoy inflicting or receiving pain. They laughed while they shoved a toilet plunger down somebody’s throat. Putting a bullet in their guts sent them into hysterics.

Otherwise, the crazies retained higher brain function. They walked and talked. They displayed a rudimentary cunning. They remembered how to load a shotgun and where they kept the rake in the garage. But they had no sense of self. They felt compelled to seek out others and hurt them until they killed or infected them. They were puppets pulled on a string by the Bug. More than that, they were partners. The Bug wasn’t evil. It only wanted to be spread. The method of spreading was up to those it infected—their memories and creativity. That was the evil part.

After a while, the Bug was categorized as a virus, but nobody knew where it had originated. It appeared to be synthetic, but if the government knew who made it, they weren’t telling. For a time, the media reported that members of an apocalyptic cult called the Four Rider Army had cooked up the Bug and had flown around the world spreading it. It boggled Braddock’s mind that a few crazy people could build a virus that could make the whole world go insane.

Transmissibility: bodily fluids, which mainlined the virus to the brain.

Infection rate: 100%.

Incubation and symptoms: ten seconds to ten minutes.

Braddock theorized that some people might not show symptoms for days. From a medical standpoint, it was fascinating. From a human standpoint, the worst horror imaginable. Humanity might not become extinct, but it might go crazy.

If the Four Rider Army wanted an apocalypse, they were sure as hell getting one.

The disease continued to spread outside the hospital. The news trucks sped off in search of other horrors. The police left with their barricades. The supplies stopped being delivered.

After that, Braddock gave the staff a choice: Stay and try to keep the patients alive, or go home to their families. Most left.

Braddock locked the doors and went to work. He avoided watching the news. Looking out the nearest window told him everything he needed to know. It was far worse out there than it was in here.

They carried on. They had to. Braddock knew how cheap life was—and how valuable. The days blurred into weeks. Eventually, they would run out of sedative, and the patients would wake up hungry and wanting to play.

After that…

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe he’d find some other place where he could do some good. Maybe he’d just give up. Nurse Robbins would stay to the end because of her sister. Braddock would likely stay with her. The hospital was his home.

On the fifth floor, Braddock found a group of heavily armed soldiers dragging his patients out of their beds and hog-tying them on the floor. The diseased opened their eyes and grinned.