It was getting hot outside as I crossed the courtyard, walking quickly toward Old Main and the Colonel's office. I had left the shaken Pamela in my lab to steady her nerves and maybe go over the samples more thoroughly. I saw women leaving the dining hall in guarded groups. I was relieved that they were taking these measures to protect the civilian population.
A familiar face broke from the nearest pack on a course intercepting mine. It was Melissa. One of the women soldiers followed her closely.
"We need to talk!" she said firmly.
I stopped in my tracks. I had heard that tone before. She meant business. The other woman cut between us, and blocked Mel as she spoke.
"They took the guys away!" she said, fighting around the camo-clad woman.
"They're forcing them to join the military!"
"You need to rejoin the group!" Mel's guard cut her short in an authoritative manner.
"Sergeant!" I barked. "Stand down!" Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. "What is going on here?"
"Sir, the-"
"Not you!" I said, cutting her off in mid-sentence.
I turned to Melissa and asked her in a calm voice what was happening. She explained everything. The sergeant stood motionless, not knowing what to do. She flinched slightly when Melissa told me about their earlier altercation. They must have been under some special orders about my treatment.
"My wife is coming with me!" I told the woman who had pushed her earlier.
"No, Henry. I will go with the other women. I'll do my part," she said while glaring at the woman.
"Ok," I conceded. "But you had better tone down your attitude, sergeant! If I hear anything like this again, the Colonel will get more than an earful."
"Yes, sir!" she said crisply.
I thought about making her do some push-ups or something, but I didn't want to push my luck. I didn't know what the limits of my power were, but it seemed to have put some fear into the woman.
The pair left me standing there with my guard. He had stayed a few yards away and hadn't said a word.
"What are your orders pertaining to me?"
He looked at me, debating something, then said, "To keep you safe and happy, sir."
"Not a great start, huh?" I mumbled.
"No sir."
We power-walked the rest of the way to the office, occasional arms fire popping in the distance only fueling my outrage. Conscripting my friends into the army was not something I condoned. When I entered the outer office, the commander's aid tried to stop me from entering the Colonel’s office. I bowled past him and threw open the door.
"What are you doing!" O'Neill bellowed, veins in his neck and forehead popping.
"I need to have words with you!" I yelled back, my face heating also.
"Lieutenant, this will only take a second," he said to the man who was standing before his desk. "Please take a seat."
The soldier sat heavily down onto a wooden chair to one side.
"Now, what is your problem?" he continued, locking eyes with me.
"What do you expect me to do with that undead creature in my lab?" I intoned vehemently.
"You asked for a subject," he answered, clearly not understanding.
"But, it's alive," I shot back, now not as self-assured as I had been earlier.
"I thought that's the way you would want him," he said, retaking his own seat.
I hadn't thought of that. I guess the stress of seeing the bound creature attempting to attack us had unhinged me.
"Colonel, I think..."
"Lieutenant, could you wait outside a moment?" he asked. The young man reluctantly stood and exited the room.
After the door closed, I continued. "I am way out of my element here, Colonel. I don't know where to go from here."
"You will do what you think is the next step," he soothed, his inner politician coming out. "I believe in you, son. You can do this. You have to do this. We're all depending on you. Heck, the world might be depending on you."
His ministrations were working. I was feeling better. "But what if I fail?"
He came around his desk and put an arm around my shoulder. "You won't fail. Now, get back there and do your job."
I turned around and headed for the door. Before I grabbed the handle, I turned once again. "My friends, you're training them for the army?"
"Yes."
"I don't think they are the type-" I began.
"We need men," he answered in a low tone. "We have lost a lot of good men and women battling these infected things. We need people who can go out into the field and help us clear out this town. Everybody will submit to training and work duties. The only exceptions are you and Mason. I want you two totally focused on finding a cure."
"But three of the guys who came in with me are not fit for military life."
"But they were fit enough to survive this long," he reasoned. "We are low on soldiers. Did you see the man I was debriefing when you barged in here?"
I glanced at the door and nodded.
"He lost one of his men getting you that subject you needed. Every soldier we lose to them depletes our ranks and adds to theirs. If we don't get everybody ready, we will lose!”
"But, if they have to storm into buildings, I'm afraid..."
"They will purely be used as backups, pretty much out of harm’s way."
"Are you sure?" I asked, feeling relieved and a bit silly.
"Yes, I am. And you can have my word on it."
He offered his hand and I accepted it warmly.
"Now get back to work and find me that cure!"
I was still unsure of how to proceed. As my guard and I walked back to the lab, I mulled over various options.
As I entered the lab, I saw that Pamela was making her own notes while reviewing the slides. Twin plates of what looked like creamed beef on toast sat untouched on a side table. My stomach churned at the thought, so I resigned to leave them that way.
Dr. Mason and I discussed various ideas on how to go ahead. We settled on a direct method. First, we would take samples and then proceed with an autopsy.
I instructed the four guards on what we had done with Bill, so they tightly bound the creature and I carefully extracted blood, saliva, urine, and even feces. All of these, we carefully stored in a refrigeration unit that had been moved into my lab.
"Have you ever done an autopsy?" I asked Pamela.
"No. Have you?"
I shook my head, indicating I had not, and suggested we get some anatomy books from another office I knew of down the hall.
Thumbing through the pages, we refreshed our memories of what things should look like in the human body; and, keeping the tomes at the ready, we ordered the corpse’s execution.
A few moments later, the men carried the now still corpse to a makeshift examination table in an adjacent lab. Doing autopsies would be creepy enough, but in a world where the dead typically got up and tried to eat you, it added a whole new level of creepiness.
We started by cutting away its clothing and examining its outer skin tissue. It was gray, and we found what we believed to be the site of infection; but other than some advanced deterioration, we found nothing of interest.
Next, we proceeded to open its torso. We cut from his sternum to the groin. The stench was so incredibly terrible that we had to rub some Vick's VapoRub under our noses to mask the smell. I could hear the short guard emptying its stomach into a nearby garbage can as we began removing organs and comparing them to the images in the book. As he was having his breakfast, I had this strange sense of karma. The way he had abused the creature, he deserved this.
We took samples from every organ. Unsure of what to look for, we didn't want to waste our chance to study anything that might hold the key.
Our gloved hands covered in bodily fluids, we enlisted one of the older soldiers to label the various samples, dictating what each item should
be called so we would have no problem identifying them later.
Pamela was great, offering keen insights as we pulled the various organs from the cadaver. When we concluded with its torso, we moved on to its cranium. Having nothing better, we used a hacksaw to open the top of its head. When we removed it we knew we had found the culprit.
From the creature’s brain protruded half-dozen tapeworms covered in blood, probably introduced into the brain fluid from the head trauma induced by one of the guards. Each worm lay slack against the brain. Dr. Mason pulled two of these out with a pair of tweezers and she dropped them into individual vials. Stoppers in place, we removed the brain and probed deeper. We sampled tissue from the nasal cavity, eyes, ears, and salivary glands. We even rolled the corpse over and extracted some spinal fluid.
"I think that's enough," I said, my voice weary.
"I agree," Pamela said, sounding little better. "Let's get a look at the tapeworms. That has to be the cause."
Grinning at her determination, I was also eager to have a look. We placed one of the worms under a microscope and, after some further study, decided that it was dead, the cause of which we could not determine.
We spent the night examining the samples we had taken. We left nothing unchecked; looking in the usual places, then in the unusual, in search of clues to its life cycle.
The soldiers who guarded us were replaced and later those were also relieved, but we worked on, coffee fueling our all night investigation.
A knock at the door brought our work to a halt. It was the Colonel. He looked like he also hadn't slept. His usually crisp uniform was rumpled and he had rings under his eyes. He gave us a cordial grin.
"How goes humanity’s greatest hope?"
We exploded into a flood of information, both talking at once. The O'Neill waved both hands in front of his face. "One at a time, please," he begged, somewhat revitalized and grinning fiercely at our excitement.
I deferred to Pamela. "We believe the cause of the outbreak is a flatworm located in the brain of the host. We have found eggs in the victim's salivary glands and actual larvae in the saliva itself. This is quite unusual, but our current hypotheses is that one of the two known tapeworms that invade the host’s brain has evolved into this current variety and has altered its typical life cycle in the process."
Colonel O'Neill looked very excited. "Great news! Now how do we prevent it?"
"We don't know yet," I said. "But we believe having the larvae in the saliva itself gives the parasite a much greater chance of transporting its next generation to another host, thus assuring the continuance of its species."
Anger shone through O'Neill's eyes as he spat, "We are well aware of the continuance of its species. Look around. The world is teeming with this parasite. While you guys are sitting in here throwing ideas back and forth, people are dying. We need a cure!"
We both were taken aback, not anticipating his wrath. We had worked through the night and thought we were making headway.
The Colonel rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I haven't slept in who knows how long," he apologized. "Why don't you two knock off and get some rest. We all have a lot of work to do."
With that, he turned and left my lab.
"What was all that about?" Pamela asked, looking deflated.
"I'm not sure," I answered. "But I do think he's right. We need some rest, or we might start to make mistakes."
We walked together back to the dorm, still tossing ideas back and forth. When we reached a "T" in the hallway, we went our separate ways. I took a long, hot shower and relaxed my tired muscles. The bed was neatly made and I hated to mess it up, so I just lie down on the comforter and immediately fell asleep.
Chapter 31
Melissa