Word Count: 63,420

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said to me. He had no right to say such a thing. All should have been welcome to pay their respects to the dead. He should have been ashamed for hiding them. But I couldn’t help wondering how all the bodies got here, and under whose permission. The bodies in the hospital had never been moved, until the building’s final collapse, where they all rested indefinitely. I had never thought what might happen if the public began dealing with those bodies – what those who first encountered the disease would think to do with them. If just one person woke up, they might have been inclined to think that everybody would wake up. They would begin storing the bodies in a convenient place… like a pile, on top of a mountain. “Do you hear me? I’m really telling you to get down the mountain immediately. This is not a place for outsiders. You can never have seen this. Mention it to nobody.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be telling anyone. I’ll leave you with the guilt of hiding it.”

“I’m not hiding it alone,” he said. “Now get lost. I don’t ever want to see you on this mountain again. Next time you’re in the parking lot, I’ll charge you just for standing there.”

I left the mountaintop under his terms, but was not satisfied by agreeing with him. The only other person I’d seen go up the mountain was the mother, the other day. I thought that I could pay a healthy visit to her as well. Perhaps she would know something about the mountain, I thought. She would tell me through watery eyes what she’s seen at the top, I thought. I assumed she was surprised by it, that when she reached the top of the mountain she too froze in shock at the massive pile of death that towered above her, as though the mountain were a World War II death camp.

When I knocked on the door, nobody opened. I opened the door for myself. I found not a soul inside the house, but I searched just in case people were still running away from me – which they were. In the end, the house was truly empty. I was concerned, because I needed to speak with the woman, and with her daughter. I roamed the town looking for a living person to ask about the woman’s whereabouts. I assumed that because the village was so small that everybody would know her. The hospital had referred me to her, so she might have been a well-known citizen of Westendorf.

At the school I saw all of the children sitting in solitude. Several were crying. Something had happened while I was gone. Or, something had happened since last night. The teachers looked just the same as ever, still standing at the blackboard, shivering and refusing to properly teach the children. It was beginning to rain, but it was also nearing the afternoon, so I decided that I would spend the remaining hours until the medicine shipment arrived inside the hospital. I didn’t walk far into the building before I saw the mother there, sobbing to the receptionist, and drizzling tears on the papers below. She did not speak, she only lamented. But lamented what?

I reached out and touched her right shoulder, to get her to turn around. She jumped and spun around, looked at me straight in the eyes. Her gaze never wavered, and nor did mine. When we were both sure that we had complete visible and mental contact with one another, she ceased sobbing and spoke. “She is gone,” she told me. “Yesterday… while at school… she collapsed, like the other one…”

She had only just finished those phrases before returning to her sobbing. Telling the story was obviously too painful for her to bear. I had the receptionist tell me; the mother could not hear our conversation behind her tear streams, her sniffs and sobs, her laments and woes. The receptionist told me that her daughter had been only one of many children to collapse while at school and that it was becoming increasingly common. The hospital had made a habit of declaring citizens of Westendorf dead. When the girl was rushed in after collapsing, they ran one simple test. Once she’d passed that test, they let her slip away – without giving any further attempts to recover her.

Naturally, this drove her mother to madness.

She’d been crying ever since. The death had occurred yesterday, at around noon. The mother said that she knew just what to do with her daughter’s body, that she had a grave already reserved for her when the time came. In my travels, I’d seen the family graves. In Westendorf there was a small cemetery beyond the church. In this cemetery were family graves. The tombstones created for these family graves were twice the width of any normal tombstone, and three times as simple. They were simply large slaps of granite, polished and engraved upon. The most extravagant had engraved pictures of the deceased family members. The cemetery reflected the smallness of the village. There were hardly any dead buried in this cemetery. Those who were dead seemed only to have died of old age, or random serious complications that I couldn’t have explained at the time, but was not interested in besides. The cemetery was small because the graves were doubled up. When one family member died, the family grave was emptied, and the new dead body was placed on top of the old one’s coffin. They saved space, of course, but it made the graves meaningless. They might as well have stuck all of these people in the pile of the dead with the rest of them, if it had existed at that time in any case. Most of the dead in that cemetery died fifty years prior.

I had not seen anybody else go up the mountain with the mother, but I knew, strangely, who else had gone up with her. The mother had brought her daughter up to the top of the mountain with her that day. The hospital had given her complete custody over the body, and she had taken it away. But why up the mountain? I had no solid proof that she’d done this, and I was barred from investigating the mountain once again to see if she’d really dragged the body up there. I approached her, acted sympathetic. “I’m so sorry about your daughter,” I said. “I know you were worried sick only two days ago… it truly is a tragedy. She seemed like a fine girl.” The truth was, she’d been scared of me. I didn’t know what to make of her, and I didn’t know why she was so afraid of me. I didn’t know why everybody was so afraid of me, but I felt that it was somehow linked to the massive pile of dead bodies at the top of the mountain.

“She was more than a fine girl,” said the mother, “she was my fine girl. She worked so hard in everything, and now she is gone. Just like her rotten, asshole father! She is no better than him! She had the nerve to leave me!” The mother buried her face in her hands, and then wiped the tears away with those same hands.

“I realize this is a difficult time, but I have to ask you… what were you doing going up the mountain yesterday?”

“I did nothing! I only wanted to look at the view to calm myself. There is nothing on the mountain. That is why it is peaceful there.” She dried her eyes again. “There is nothing on the mountain. It is so peaceful on the mountain.”

“Ma’am, the mountain was closed when I went to see it. I wanted to go up myself, but the man at the ticket collection booth stopped me from using the ski lift.” Suddenly, the tears stopped flowing. Her head snapped up. Now she was really paying attention to me. “If you were doing anything on that mountain,” I told her, “tell me now.”

“I said already, I did nothing but observe the view.”

“I know about what’s on the mountain. I saw the bodies.”

Her eyes opened even wider now. Now that she knew I knew about the pile of bodies, she wouldn’t bother to hide her knowledge of it as well. She would share it all with me. “Okay,” she said, “I did go up to see the bodies. And I brought my daughter’s body with me – but not because I wanted to! This hospital, they asked me to take the body there. They have asked me to do this with many bodies. I work at this hospital in my spare time. I run errands… recently, going up the mountain with heavy bags… has been my job.”

I suddenly felt sorry for her. She was innocent, if her story was true. It was the hospital that was to blame for her shameless act, or acts, as she had described. I figured that it was the proper time to ask if my shipment of medicine had come in. I thanked the mother for her time, and she resumed crying into her hands. Meanwhile, I went up to the receptionist and asked where the owner of the hospital building was. She pointed me towards the room where he resided; he was always shifting rooms, and was quite a dodgy character. As I entered the room, he recognized me. With a huge smile on his face, he said,

“Hemmings! We’ve got some great stuff for you.” His English was impeccable. He might have been more fluent in the English language than I was. “You’re wondering if your shipment has arrived? Indeed it has, good man. You should pick it up in our storage room. It’s marked with your name on it. Where’s the storage room? Just walk down the hall, and make a turn on your second left. Don’t take the first left, or you’ll get completely lost. This place is bigger than it looks, you know!” He was so cheery that it was mildly disturbing, but I followed his instructions anyway.

I found my shipment from Pharand in the storage room the man had described. The box had the large distinct Pharand, Inc. logo and had my name brushed on the top of the box with a spray can of paint. I took a nearby box cutter and opened the parcel. It revealed endless vials, with lids only a syringe was meant to puncture. I couldn’t imagine ever using all of these vials, nor did I know how long the medicine would last – we hadn’t had enough time at Pharand to research how long the medicine remained potent – but I assumed that with this type of shipment something horrible was expected to happen in Westendorf. Something far worse than anything that was happening at the time. I was more afraid now that I’d seen the bottles of potent liquid myself. I expected the hospital to tell me that I had to go up the mountain, and use the medicine on the individual dead bodies. They must have all been given information about Athan’s. I couldn’t imagine what kind of chaos would ensue if they hadn’t.

It was still raining outside, hours later. I could do nothing. But I would have to do something, soon, because in those few hours the mother also fell extremely ill. I remained up through the night, watching her after she’d been transported to her own room. She was the first of many to later be transported to the hospital. It was as though the arrival of the Pharand parcel had signaled a cue for every last man and woman in Westendorf to suddenly fall ill. By midnight, under my watch, the mother passed away. I did not grieve, because I did not feel grief. The box of medicine consumed my grief and guilt. Just as the painting had once given me comfort as I ate, reassuring me that I was the doctor I’d hoped I could, so did the Pharand box of my own medicine. Sure, it slightly discolored from the medicine I’d seen at Pharand, but that was what I took as the effect of the slightly warmer weather in Westendorf. Either way, it gave me the confidence I needed to not grieve for the mother. It gave me the confidence to keep my chin up and give her the medicine, just as I’d given it to the lab rats. And as more people flooded in sick to the hospital, day after day, I watched her and made sure that she would eventually wake up.

But as more people became sick, and more people began to die, I did not have the time to watch over the mother specifically anymore. The hospital needed my service, and I gladly obliged as it was my Pharand job to give them my Pharand service. After confirming that the patient had Athan’s Disease, and never using that name specifically on the patient’s chart, I simply gave them my own calculated dose of the antibiotic. And that was how it went. Once most people had been treated – this was after about a week, with a consistent stream of incoming patients – I was asked to leave the hospital. “My job was done,” according to them, and they “could handle it” from there. They did not encourage me to remain in Westendorf, but I felt like I hadn’t seen everything I wanted to yet. I stayed anyway, against the will of the local hospital.

As the week had passed by, the city became less and less stable. This was to be expected, but I did not expect only to see people outside their homes once their family members had begun to pass away. I did not expect to see so many in mourning, especially as it was becoming commonplace for the village to wither away. A select few did not fall ill eventually, just as I and my partners had not fallen ill back at the hospital. Those who did not fall ill were, unfortunately, in the minority. But I did not see them attempting to aid the sick in any way, as I had done. In fact, many of them seemed to be shunning the dead. I saw one older man scorn his son for dying, and wished that the son would never block his thoughts again with horrid images and fond memories.

And then I knew. I knew what had happened to the mother’s husband. I knew where he had gone, and where he was now. I knew that I’d been afraid more, but I do not believe I was any more afraid of Westendorf itself than I was at that moment, when I realized that the husband had, in fact, died and come back to life. Before anybody else had in Westendorf.

He was the first case. And there was, I assumed, only one man who knew that somebody was bringing objects up the mountain.

The day after I’d been asked to leave Westendorf by that wretched hospital, I went to the ski lift. I followed the river, now overflowing due to the constant rainfall, and approached the ticket booth where the man who had once chased me up the mountain waited for customers for eternity. “So, you really feel like testing me today, do you?” he said.

“Not particularly,” I responded. “However, I would like to ask you a few questions about your wife.” Just as his wife’s eyes had, so too did his eyes open wider than ever before, to the point where I thought they might fall out of their sockets and begin rolling around the parking lot. They never did this, but his expression said that he’d rather they had, because he could see that I knew who his wife was, and that he’d been letting the woman go up the mountain with the permission of the hospital, thereby unleashing her to infection and subsequently her daughter. But that wasn’t all – I wanted to extrapolate the advent of his sickness from him as well. “Why do you work here?” I asked.

“This has been my job for a long time,” he answered. “I’ve always been here. I’m a big tourist guy. I like taking the money from them. It makes me feel like I give this village sustenance. Unfortunately, tourists only come on the coldest days of winter and the warmest days of summer. Beyond that, Westendorf is not successful. We live modestly and contently, and therefore I don’t believe you have a right to ask me why I have been monitoring this ski lift for the last week and a half.” He crossed his arms, looked at the dark sky. He was thankful, I could see, for the shielding he received from the rain and entirely indifferent to the sight of the rain drenching me half to death. He’d rather have seen me drown then explain to me that he’d known about the bodies only because he was the first man to awaken from that pile; only he was not in a pile, but the hospital building. He’d rather have seen me drown then explain to me that once he’d woken up from the Athan’s death-sleep the town turned against him, considered him inhuman, and exiled him to the outskirts of Westendorf where his only chance of sustenance was to work at the ski lift ticket booth. He’s rather have seen me drown then explain to me that once he worked at the ticket booth he collaborated with the hospital that had aided in his exile to exile all others who fell ill with this disease. He would rather have seen me drown then explain any of this to me.

But he didn’t see me drown. And he did explain it to me. He explained to me that he’d known about the bodies only because he was the first man to awaken from that pile; only he was not in a pile, but the hospital building. He explained to me that once he’d woken up from the Athan’s death-sleep the town turned against him, considered him inhuman, and exiled him to the outskirts of Westendorf where his only chance of sustenance was to work at the ski lift ticket booth. He explained to me that once he worked at the ticket booth he collaborated with the hospital that had aided in his exile to exile all others who fell ill with this disease. And then he cried, and shunned himself.

I quickly learned why the pile of dead bodies existed, but not because I wanted to. Staying those extra days in Westendorf revealed more than my week-long stay had told me about Athan’s disease. But more than that, I started experiencing the terror in Westendorf first hand as the hospital chose a new ward to bring bodies up the mountain. I gave the husband dirty looks every day, shunning constantly his acts to aid the effort to rid Westendorf of the sick, of the “inhuman.” But I remembered myself saying the same thing about Shane – that he was only a fraction of a human. If he were to live for so long, could he possibly be called human? Was Westendorf wrong to exile the husband? Part of me couldn’t blame them for being unknowledgeable and scared, but another section of my being wanted to take the rest of Westendorf and exile them from the husband, as though they had been the sick and he the healthy. Then they would understand his pain.

His pain, unfortunately, was to be everybody else’s. As more and more were carried up the mountain, I became thankful that I hadn’t left. Because my medicine wasn’t working fast enough – they would awaken by the command of Athan’s Disease and not by the command of my antibiotic if it continued to take that long for the medicine to work. And that was something both Westendorf and I could not afford to have happen.