Word Count: 40,007

“I can’t explain it more. There’s nothing else I can say – I just know something is happening, and that you’ve got to listen.”

I did listen. I listened that night, and I listened the next day, when three quarters of the hospital dropped down dead.

They’d been murdered right where they stood. Nearly everybody, and almost simultaneously. The bodies were strewn across the hospital floors, like somebody had raked up the autumn leaves, put them into large bags, and left them strewn across their leaf-free yard.

It happened slowly, but it had seemed so quick. I had noticed the process happening for months; the hospital staff members were weaker, wearier, and constantly taking breaks even when they were not supposed to. But I did nothing to intervene or warn them, and for that I felt guilty. I had caused the death of hundreds! Was I murderer? I told myself that I wasn’t, but I knew the contrary. I had murdered all of them by neglecting to tell them that they’d been sick. And now that they were gone, the only thing that I could do for them was stare at their lifeless bodies, hoping that one of them would wake up before the rest would, and ask that person to help me stare at the remaining bodies on the floor. I did not remove them; I knew their bodies wouldn’t rot, just like Shane, Kasten, Victor and the warehouse worker.

My mind flashed back to Edward Nambet, after he lost his driver’s license. The day he received it he went on a driving rampage – which would permanently scar me from the click, click of car engines, for I was in the car with him – and lost it that very same day. He’d been so excited to get his hands on it and so deep in despair when it was gone. It was not losing his license that he was afraid of, but the reprimanding from his parents that he feared the most. The police had only suspended it for six months, but his parents would ensure that he didn’t get his license until he turned twenty-one.

Slowly, I watched him turn into a decrepit individual. In due time his presence would frighten me, but before then he simply migrated to a bitter individual. I didn’t notice the transformation until it was nearly complete, and by that time Edward was lost forever. I lamented over the loss of a friend, and there is a reason why I never kept in contact with him up to that point in my career. Edward and I had long since distanced ourselves from each other. Within two years I found a newspaper article identifying that he had died, in a car accident no less.

By midmorning the hospital had all but stopped completely. I could sense that something was wrong. People stopped by to ask me, “How can you be so energetic, Ethan? Today is such a slow day…” and I simply ignored them. So, they forgot to drink their coffee, I thought. That, obviously, turned out not to be the case. By lunchtime, people were collapsing. I was eating under the painting while it happened, and only noticed when a woman getting her lunch trudged in front of me, holding hot food. He collapsed and fell face first into the scolding plate. I heard the hiss of the steam as the plate cooled down after touching the woman’s face. When I turned her on her back, not only did she have severe burns – she was dead.

I threw my lunch away and walked to the end of the hall to see if anybody was around to help this woman. Nobody rushed through the halls, not a soul seemed to be anywhere. I checked in several rooms; many doctors had also collapsed.

“Help,” a voice said from behind a hospital room curtain. “He’s fallen and isn’t getting up. Help him, please…” the voice cried. I could not help him, I’m afraid. Death had lulled him too long ago to sleep. As for the patient who asked for help, she too collapsed and died an hour or so later. I wouldn’t even notice when it happened. I was out searching the other parts of the hospital, looking to see if it was happening hospital-wide. Indeed it was. Those of us who had not collapsed joined together; those who were close to dying also joined, and roamed the halls as though they were the undead. They staggered with each step, trying desperately to remain alive as all of their companions around them perished. They did not want to know the pang of death, as most every human does not. They clung to life fervently, but lost the game with death in the end. The group fell as one, while those of us who had not yet died, including me, banded together to form a scouting team. All this happened over a matter of hours.

The scouting tram split up and began searching the hospital to figure out what was happening. We determined a time to reconvene, but when the time came only so many of us returned; the rest were later found dead as well. The challenge would be containing the hospital and ensuring that no media source of any kind found out about what was happening, or else we’d have an even more difficult time explaining the numerous bodies – all which were dead without a single mark on their bodies – to the police, and to the world, who I personally did not believe were prepared to hear that the bodies would eventually spring back to life, returning he hospital to normal. The truth was that the hospital would never return to normal again. Everybody who survived the incident knew this. We knew that when everybody else woke up we’d have to explain to them that they’d been dead for so long, and it would be the whole patient procedure all over again.

I didn’t want that to happen. In part I wished the disease was more mainstream, as part of a secret wish deep inside my heart and subconscious mind. What was I going to do? Take the opportunity to dissect everybody and examine the bacteria within? No – I was going to find a cure, and prematurely wake these perished citizens from death. I took that entirely upon myself, and vowed to cure this dreadful disease. Nobody wants to die, and certainly nobody wanted to die, wake up, and then have to die again at the actual end of their life.

After speaking with the survivors, I told them to go home and leave me alone in that godforsaken hospital to work on a cure. They obliged and I was let alone to explore and wade through the mass of meat and dead bodies. There were still patients entirely alive who were absolutely dumbfounded by the situation, but I did not seek them out. Those who I did find I informed them to not be alarmed, but to contact their family and leave the hospital at once. “You can’t let anybody know what you’ve seen,” I told those select people I met. “This is a very serious incident, but word can’t get to the press. If it does, we’ll have one hell of time getting things fixed in this hospital. So just get out of here and don’t come back – not for a good while, okay?”

They all always looked at me with blank faces after I said that. How could they leave so suddenly, and with no assistance? They must have thought that while they looked at me. I couldn’t say anything else, and turned around to walk out of the room. One patient called back to me, “Sir! I’m scared,” they said.

“Yeah, me too. You’ll get used to it.”

I had become jaded – the disease was no longer an interest. It could easily become an entire life’s work, and my life was only just beginning to revolve around it. I was immune to the patients’ concerns around me. All that mattered were the numerous dead bodies strewn around the hospital. They were left untended to; nobody wanted to touch them. I wish I had wanted to touch them. Perhaps I would have had the courage to move them if I were then as I am now. Now I am conditioned to these sorts of things. Back then, it took me entirely by surprise. I had no idea what I was doing or where I would take this to. But now I know exactly what to do, and I know how to accomplish what must be done in a timely and neat manner. Back then it was all haphazardly completed – not just my work, but everybody’s work. The disease had begun to spread.

I locked every door to the hospital and make sure that nobody could come in or out, then prayed that the owner of the hospital was still alive. I ran to his office, and noticed he was sitting comfortably in his chair at his desk. But was he alive? I saw him move a bit. Yes, he was alive! I burst open the door. “Sir!” I shouted. “Sir, we’ve got a problem, and you need to look. You know those strange patients we’ve had the last few months? No? No time to explain – just step outside your office.”

“I’m quite busy, if you mind.”

I wanted to rip my hair out. Was he mad? Did he have no concern for the wellbeing of his staff? “Sir, if you’d please listen to me, this is urgent. It could cost you to lose the entire hospital if not dealt with immediately.” He stood up after hearing that, and I grew a grin. I led him outside of his room, and with a large gasp he nearly fainted. He was finally able to see the terror that had befallen his hospital. I was looking for that. I wanted him to temporarily close the hospital. “Now that you’ve seen what’s going on, I’d like you to close this place down. Say it’s for ‘renovations,’ if you will.”

“I’m inclined to have you arrested for killing all of these people, you know that?” he said, with heavy breath. His arms slowly crossed, and his eyes widened. He began to walk around the halls. I followed him, begging for his approval. Eventually we came to the lobby of the hospital, where the most bodies were laying on the ground.

“You don’t understand – I killed none of these people. It was all a horrible disease; it’s been killing people now for months! You don’t have the option to arrest me. I’m the guy who knows about this threat, so you’ll either listen to me and close down this hospital, or get infected yourself and die alone.”
“Ah, but I’m not alone. I have a wife and children. You are the one who’s alone.”

“How did you know that? You don’t even know my name.”

“Ethan Hemmings.”

“I stand corrected,” I said, surprised a bit.

He continued to walk around the floor strewn with bodies. He stepped on one, lifted his foot up, and stepped on it again. “I never did like this one. I wish he’d stay dead.”

“Sir, please listen carefully,” I said, not wasting more time. “Close down this place, for a week. One week, and say you’re doing minor alterations to the building. In that time I’ll work on a cure, and revive all of these people, if they don’t revive on their own. The disease is already out in the world. I’ve tried to keep people quarantined here, but it’s not working. It’s just a matter of time before—”

“Quit your talking, Hemmings. I’ll close this building down, but I want you to get out of my face. Hear that? Out of my site until you’re damn sure that you’ve got a cure. I think you’re crazy to try and make one in a week, but suit yourself.” He turned around a walked, but stopped halfway down the hallway. “Oh, and make sure none of them wake up,” he shouted from the distance.

I found the smallest body I could, and found one other person who was still alive. Together we carried the light body to a room and placed it on a table. “Do you think this’ll work?” the man asked me.

“I’m not sure, but at this point anything’s worth a shot. I need to see if this’ll get rid of the bacteria without harming the person. The owner said he didn’t like this guy anyway. If this person ends up actually dying, we can pin it on him. He’s an angry lad, I’m sure he’ll be able to take the punishment.” With that, I took a scalpel and punctured the body – it was a messy process, with very little preparation. Behind me was a cockroach-sized KIAPS robot. The person did not bleed when I cut them, so I continued forward. I saw the network of bacteria, spinning their web further, choking the organs. I took the KIAPS robot and turned it on. A high-pitched whine filled the room; it was the sound of the plasma and the electrons jumping from gap to gap. As they jumped, they created ozone. The stench of ozone quickly filled the room.

I took the robot and held plasma-end down just above the bacteria. The bacteria backed away.

I continued to track down bacteria and kill them, but they kept avoiding it, as though some outside force were pushing them away. This clearly wouldn’t work. I took a second robot and turned it on, afraid that the device might explode in my hands, for plasma is volatile and dangerous. But instead of exploding in my hands, they exploded on the body. The body had burns from the plasma – it was hurting them badly. Afraid that the person might never wake up, I asked the man who had been watching to stitch up the body. “It’s just like using a needle and thread. You just have to push harder to get through the thicker fabric,” I told him. Luckily for him I hadn’t opened up the body too much – he just had a small patch below the chest to repair. But he was an intern, so I trusted that I could accomplish the task.

When I returned a half hour later, the lad was still stitching the man up. I finished the job quick, told him to gather up everybody else, and get out of the building. We weren’t cleaning up – everybody was to be left as they were, dead on the floor. I heard the trampling of feet over the next few minutes as people rushed out of the hospital, fearing that their lives would be taken by this dreadful pseudo-deadly disease. I thought of what Shane had told me about his face, and his body; his body never changed, from the day that he woke up to just yesterday. I thought about the future. If people were dying and waking up, was it possible that those meant to die might stay alive?

I perished the thought. No, I told myself, they would die just as normal people would. There would be complications. As Shane said, we didn’t know what would happen with these bacteria. It was entirely possible that after the dead person woke up he or she was unaffected by the infection for the remainder of their lives, until they died permanently.

But by now I was already panicking, thinking of every horrible situation that could occur now that most of the hospital was dead. I wanted to run around and spare some of the energy within me, but I ended up standing in place, holding it in. I had so much to release that I could not move. I let out one large scream. Nobody heard it, because there was nobody there.

The owner was still in the building, in his office. He’d asked me not to bother him, but I was becoming afraid that he’d been affected. I wanted to beg him to let me run take some samples and see if he, too, would die, if only to ensure that the man closing down the building would not perish before he had the chance to do it. Not wanting to confront him again, I ignored the issue. He had scolded me for speaking with him. I decided that if he was to die, I should let him die. He would wake up in two weeks anyway if he did, I thought.

I left the building and heard the door slam behind me. It was the last time I would ever hear that door, and that day was the penultimate time I would see that luncheon painting inside the hospital.

I had taken one skin sample home with me – a very small shard of flesh from a random dead body, put into a bag. I had one week to find a cure, and I knew that it wasn’t going to happen. I had to seek ulterior methods of ridding the world of this disease before a massive epidemic began. My work with this would take me to places I’d never been before, cost me my job, and land me in a new one. I toiled during that week over steaming pots, filled beakers, chemicals and antibiotics. My original goal was to create an alternative form of Emeticillin, something far more powerful, but not powerful enough to destroy the human body. I thought back to the first antibiotic scare, where one American scientist created a super-antibiotic that could wipe out anything – literally, anything. Unfortunately, it also killed the good bacteria inside the body, and dissolved parts of the body itself as well. The one man who injected the special solution died in mere hours.

Of course, I couldn’t kill anyone. They were already dead! I felt so foolish, working on cures for death. I was the mad scientist looking for the key to immortality. Out my window I heard traffic go by, just the minute amount that you find in the suburbs. Inside my home, however, I heard the floor rumble loudly. I couldn’t figure out what was causing the rumbling, until I noticed that I was shivering. I was shaking so violently that the wooden floor shook with me. The room around me shook. Everything shook – even the painting in the kitchen. Then the painting fell.

I ran from the upstairs rooms to the kitchen down the stairs and picked up the painting. The man in the painting now shunned me – “You’ve killed all of those people!” he wanted to say. He wanted to jump out of the painting and ignore me in person. The rest of the men looked at me curiously; I was being inspected. Was I safe to look at? “No,” said the man in the painting. His no ripped me apart into thousands of broken pieces, and then I felt worthless. The painting was worth more than I was, because it could see that I truly was a murderer. I was murderer for not quarantining those four people. I was murderer for unleashing the warehouse worker back into the open – so many people must be dying now! I remember screaming out loud, “Everybody’s dead! Everybody’s dead!”

“Pick yourself up,” a voice said to me. “Get up and get back to work.” There was nobody in my home. It was the voice of my conscience, but it was said out loud. I was talking to myself. I could see me standing in the kitchen, holding the painting near to me, just about to hang it up but stopping just short of the nail in the wall. I was in deep despair, but I couldn’t let that stop me. I couldn’t let anything stop me, because I needed to find a cure.

I hung up the painting.