I'm not sick

Food makes me feel so nauseated. But I keep it down.

Water makes me gag. But, I keep it down.

I’m not sick.

Mind over matter. The toxicology came back clean.

Toxicology came back clean

I was bitten. I’m not worried.

I’m not worried, because I grabbed as many files as I could carry, and just finished going through every single one.

They didn’t miss anything. Toxicology came back normal. All bloodwork doesn’t show ANY sign of something wrong. And they’re all victims.

I bet mine is normal. I think I’m going to be fine.

Mind over matter. I’m going to be fine.

Melissa and Anthony are debating on whether or not they should kill me. I can hear them in the next room.

Kyle is defending me. He says I’m strong enough to beat it. Mind over matter. He doesn’t want to lose anyone else. With his grandfather gone, Anthony and I are probably the closest things to family he has left. No parents, no grandparents, just a couple of kids he grew up with.

Mind over matter, that’s all this is. Because the toxicology came back clean.

Kyle, and Transcript #4

We’ve been biding our time and surviving off everything Kyle has, in here, but it’s not going to last us for that much longer. At least, it’s not going to last us long enough.

We think everyone may be dead. Or, undead, as the case may be. It’s mad. It’s totally crazy.

They shamble. They’re weak. They don’t seem to have much drive. They don’t even have the will to survive, much less wrench us apart to kill and eat us, the way Anthony is convinced they want to. If anything, it’s worse. They’re trying to get to us just to get to us.

They’re looking for uninfected people. We watched it happen, Wednesday. Melissa’s next door neighbors had been doing the same as us, it looks like, but they tried to leave too soon. A dad, a mom, a pre-teen girl. They were armed with hockey sticks, frying pans – like that was supposed to be enough.

The Wasted Ones dragged themselves over to them, and crumpled when they were hit. I heard the little girl shriek every time she struck one down. Then she’d shriek louder, because they’d get back up.

They were bitten. All three of them, and then the Wasted Ones just wandered away. Dragged themselves, in some cases. Literally, trying to grab fistfuls of asphalt and ripping apart their dried-out skin as their legs were hauled after them.

The disease, if that’s what it is, is taking effect faster now. The family of three is already dead. Or, on the cusp of death. Pseudo-death. I don’t even know what to call it.

This is the rough transcription of the conversation happening behind me:

AT: We can’t wait it out in here forever. We’ll start looking like them soon.

MB: Leaving would be reckless, we agreed.

KS: What alternatives have we got?

MB: I. I don’t have an answer.

AT: Small town. We all know it like the back of our hands, right, what if we go quick?

MB: But for what? Food, and then we come back and hide out here?

AT: …Good point. We need a long-term plan, this is dumb.

KS: Long term plan. Like…killing the Wasted Ones?

MB: Kyle.

KS: You were thinking it. We’ve killed a couple, we can kill more. It’s like Anthony said, they’re not living, anymore.

AT: We’ve got guns. One bite and it’s over, but still.

MB: …We don’t have enough bullets.

KS: I’ve got a baseball bat.

AT: Headshot rules. Smash in the brain with a bat, that’s just as good. Plus, every party needs a melee fighter, for when they get close. You sure you wanna handle that, man?

KS: Yeah, I’ve got it.

MB: That’s three of us.

AT: Leigh!

LT: What.

AT: What kind of w– are you typing?

LT: I want a record of everything. Even if no one believes us, there should be a record.

KS: (he’s talking over me) – can’t just kill everyone, anyway, record or not, we’ll go to prison if any of those useless CDC fuckbags see us –

LT: The clinic.

MB: You want us to go there? …Do you really think that’s wise? That’s where a majority of the sick people were being taken.

LT: I need their records. This is driving me too insane. There has to be something in the toxicology reports that we missed, or, I don’t know. Some link between the patients. And, this whole thing, being transferred by bite – there has to be something that was missed. If it’s an infection, there will be signs. I have to look at the charts again.

KS: …What’ll you do if you find something?

LT: I don’t know. Call someone? Tell the CDC people?

MB: The CDC would have looked over the reports, too.

AT: Not if they don’t care.

LT: I have to try. I’ll go by myself, if none of you want to risk it.

AT: Don’t be dumb. No one’s splitting up, that’s the first rule.

KS: When do we go?

MB: Anthony and I will figure out a route to take. Quicker is probably better, right, Anthony?

AT: Yeah, not like heavy traffic matters anymore.

MB: You two should look for more weapons around the house. We’re not going anywhere until everyone is armed.

KS: Think I’ve got a few bats, but I’ll see if I’ve got anything better in the basement.

LT: Okay. Just let me finish this, and we’ll go.

Anthony and Melissa started looking over the map on my brother’s phone. Our phones are still working, incidentally. If you’re wondering why we haven’t called for help, we have. No one comes.

My best hope, right now, is that someone reads this and tries to get to us.

But that won’t happen.

I like privacy. I didn’t put my location, on this blog, or in my profile. And I still won’t.

No one can help. Not in time – we’re leaving too soon, and I really don’t think it would matter anyway. The most help anyone could lend us are an extra pair of hands to kill more of my neighbors.

And then they’d probably get the bite, too, and that’d be just another Wasted One to deal with.

Forget help. I have to help us. I have to help me, because no one else can, or will. I’ll figure this thing out.

Transcript #3

KS: You’re typing? You’re seriously fucking typing?

AT: Leave her alone!

KS: What the fuck good is typing gonna do us, Leigh?!

LT: There should be a record. There has to be a record.

MB: No one will believe this.

AT: I would.

KS: You bought a gun ‘just in case’ the zombie apocalypse is real.

LT: Stop.

AT: And would you fucking look at that – I was right. Do you seriously know how to use that?

Melissa is loading shotgun shells into her antique rifle.

MB: Yes. It should still be functional, I’ve never tried it out. I do know that it’s not only decorative.

KS: Great that we’re all so fucking prepared.

LT: Stop.

KS: What in the name of… What are we supposed to do? You just. I just. You killed my Grandpa.

AT: Your grandpa was already dead, you know he was dead. Leigh was at the clinic when he was pronounced, Kyle, he was honestly gone.

LT: It’s true.

KS: Not gone permanently.

AT: Look outside. He’s not the only one out there, and I’ll bet my ass they all died, too. They wasted into walking corpses, and now that’s exactly what they are.

KS: Shit. Fucking shit. Fuck. Leigh, will you stop typing?!

MB: Everyone needs to just keep calm. We have to be practical about this.

AT: Couldn’t agree more. We’ve got food in here, and the CDC should-… Oh, fuck…

LT: What is it?

AT: The quarantine. God damn it, what if they’re trying to wreck us?

LT: Wreck us?

AT: Like R-E-C, Rec. us. Like Quarantine? The movie – they might just be containing, they might not even care if we make it out of this alive…

MB: I’m sure that isn’t true. We can hole ourselves up in here until they’re gone, at the very least. Then we can get back to your house, evacuate Mr. and Mrs. Tran…

AT: We can’t.

LT: What?

AT: We can’t go pick up family, Leigh, it’s too dangerous.

LT: Are you shitting me? You’re talking about our parents!

AT: It’s already setting in, for mom! You saw! I. I don’t want to give up either, but that means we have to stop everything, not.

Anthony is having a difficult time speaking.

AT: We can’t get distracted. That’s how people die. If we want to help them, we have to rely on someone figuring out what the source of all this shit is, and putting a stop to it. It’s no good, otherwise. We’ll just get bit and die, too.

KS: …Leigh? What do you want to do?

We’re all silent for far too long. Anthony was frozen, for a little while, but resumes picking up more boxes to stack in front of the windows. Melissa is helping him.

LT: I don’t know what to do.

KS: I know.

LT: This doesn’t seem real.

KS: I know.

LT: I can’t live with myself if I let our parents die.

AT: Leigh…I think mom’s already dead. I think if we hang around any longer, we’ll be dead, too. And I know that mom would kill herself before putting us in danger, Leigh, you know that. Leigh?

LT: Maybe, but I

AT: I’m sorry, Leigh, I’m really, really sorry.

I have a hard time typing. Anthony is hugging me, and my vision is blurred.

Mrs. Booker

Anthony has a gun. He says he bought it online, with my credit card, just in case. Explains why my card was compromised.

He has a gun, and mom won’t get out of bed. Mom’s sick. She’s like the others.

We think she’ll turn out like Mr. Sauber. But there are worse things.

Mr. Sauber is dead. Dead, but he’s still walking around.

He’s outside, and was trying to get into Kyle’s house. Trying, until Anthony shot him.

He shot Mr. Sauber in the back, and he swore. He kept shooting until Mr. Sauber’s head was nearly unhinged from his neck. He’d blown a hole so deep through it that his head had almost come off.

He’d been aiming for the back of the head. He said sorry. Not because he shot Mr. Sauber. Because he missed the first few times.

Mrs. Booker didn’t call the police. She ran outside, but she didn’t call. She was the only one to run outside. Not even my father came to check what was going on. He didn’t call the police, either. I don’t think. They didn’t come, anyway. No one’s coming to help.

We’re barricaded inside Kyle’s house, all of his stuff is packed up in boxes, and no one is coming to help us.

Transcript #2

MB: So you’re just going to type everything I say? Oh. Silly question, you’re already typing. Okay. This is a little unnerving.

AT: Just ignore her, Mrs. B. I guess I just ask questions? Is that all you want me to do?

LT: Basically – I’ll chime in if I want you to expand on anything.

AT: If you don’t feel like answering, though, just give us the teacher-glare and we’ll back right off.

MB: (She laughs; in my opinion it sounds weak) Alright. Fire away.

AT: Mr. Booker was in great health before, right?

MB: That’s right.

AT: When did he start presenting symptoms?

MB: A couple of days before we went to the clinic. I got home, Wednesday evening, and found him just inside the doorway. Just sitting, staring at nothing, really. He told me he’d fallen, but we’ve been married for five years. I know when he’s lying to me.

AT: He was lying? About what?

LT: Anthony-

MB: It’s okay. I presume you’d know, anyway – the bite mark, on his shoulder.

LT: What?

MB: You didn’t know?

LT: No… Please go on.

MB: I would have thought it’d be in his medical record… I think he was chased up our driveway, and someone bit him. It wasn’t very deep, but the mark was there. I was petrified, I told him we should go to the clinic immediately, get him some antibiotics. He, um, he said they wouldn’t help. He was listless, I didn’t really- I didn’t know what to do, other than to help him get up, make dinner. He didn’t eat anything, and that’s when I was becoming even more afraid. I kept insisting we should go, he said he didn’t want to trouble anyone. Then, um, I called the next day. And, when I got home, he hadn’t moved from the bed. He’d just skipped work altogether, and hadn’t moved.

LT: There was nothing in his file about a bite.

(The rest of the conversation wasn’t relevant and didn’t last for much longer. Melissa started to get upset, and Anthony turned the conversation to other things; school, her massive collection of antiques, in particular an old rifle they stopped making in WWII, according to Anthony. Afterwards, we returned home to make it back before curfew. I’m glad we did. I can hear the late residents throwing an argument outside.)

Anthony

I’m not likely to help much of anyone. The science is interesting to me, but I don’t get people as well as I get facts and books. I’m not great at emotionally being there for people, which – weirdly – my brother Anthony is way better at. Our parents baby him for it, but it’s sort of like he babies them right back. He says he can read me too, and would spoil me if I weren’t so spoiled already. So, he’s still capable of being a jerky teenager.

Still, I kind of wish I were more like him, sometimes. Not the laziness or the academic failure, and definitely not the time-wasting zombie-killing hobbies, but the ability to make people smile. I went to go tell Anthony off for playing his stupid game too loudly and told him it was giving Kyle a headache…and somehow, Kyle wound up playing with him in co-op mode and left with the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen on him all week.

I’m considering taking him with me, tomorrow, to talk to Melissa Booker. I honestly hate to do it, but work hasn’t slowed down even remotely – I’m being shafted with ridiculous hours and working at least one shift per day. I say that because sometimes I work until 6 AM and am coming back into work for 4 PM the same day.

It might be awkward – I think Mrs. Booker actually teaches art, at his school – but Anthony’s agreed to it so long as I don’t change my mind. He’s expressed some wild theories about what’s going on, which hasn’t been helped with one of the more recent developments.

The town’s plague has got the attention of the Center for Disease Control – I think. They’ve put into effect what Anthony’s calling an ‘unofficial quarantine’; there’s a curfew for everyone who doesn’t have clearance to be out, and they’ve closed the roads leading out into the city. They haven’t come right out and said so, but they’ve made it pretty clear to the people who’ve tried to take their loved ones to the hospital – they’re expecting the clinic to handle it all, and we aren’t even equipped to find out what ‘it’ is.

Transcript #1

(Working in medical reception, I’ve gotten fairly practiced at taking down dictation; the record of my interview with Kyle was typed on-the-go with as much accuracy as I could manage.)

LT: Okay, I’m all set up. Go ahead whenever you’re ready.

KS: I’m still not sure I’m good to talk about this, just yet.

LT: If you want more time, I don’t mind putting it off. Seriously. A case study won’t even come up as a thing for another two years or something, if I’m lucky.

KS: You’ll save enough for school way before two years. No. No, I’ll do it now, I’ve got no *** clue how much longer I’m even going to be living here for.

LT: You know when you’re moving out?

KS: Soon as I find somewhere cheap to rent.

LT: Sorry, um. I mean, I’m sorry in general, about your grandpa…

KS: …But you want to keep the conversation relevant, seeing as you’re typing everything we say? You don’t HAVE to type this up too.

LT: Compulsive habit. So, the doctor at the hospital.

KS: Right. Yeah. ***. It was… Well, it was like I was telling you before. I never got a good look at the doctor, but Grandpa kept telling me – he kept repeating that he didn’t like him, and that he was making it worse.

LT: Did he say how?

KS: Not really. Always vague, like, uh. He’d tell me that he was just poking around with his condition? That’s basically word-for-word what he said. Uh, he said he didn’t like the doctor’s face. And, when I asked which doctor it was, he couldn’t give me a name, said he wasn’t sure, and I’d try to point out doctors – so I could request another one, you know? Grandpa didn’t recognize any of them, and said mostly his face was covered up by a mask.

LT: Like a surgical mask?

KS: Yeah. I mean, uh, I assume? I didn’t think to ask. ***. Leigh, sorry, just –

LT: No, take all the time you want. I’m really sorry, we can stop.

KS: It’s cool. ***.  No, seriously, it’s fine, this *** is important. So we came back from the hospital, and it was like he was this totally different person. I mean, you remember Grandpa, he didn’t take *** from anyone or anything. It’s like, uh, it was like all that was just gone. He threw up everything he tried to eat or drink, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t really move unless I made him. He wouldn’t bathe on his own, I, I had to do that for him. I was picking up adult diapers from the drug store, and it was so *** embarrassing that I wanted to just… ***, I don’t know. I was dragging him to the doctor – you know that already…and then, last week…

LT: I’m so sorry, Kyle.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, me too. ***. I just, I don’t know what happened. He wasn’t that sick before we went to the hospital, then suddenly it’s like…***, he’s dying, and there’s no reason why. And then my boss starts…

LT: And the neighbors. The employees at the drug store. The entire town.

KS: Yeah. They. ***, I’m watching the exact same *** thing happen to everyone around me, and according to you –

LT: Not according to me. According to Dr. Wen. Every test we’re running is coming back normal. So it could be some ultra-rare strain of virus…or something more mundane, but either way, this is weird.

KS: Are you going to talk to Mrs. Booker next?

LT: Don’t know. I haven’t seen her leave the house for the past few days.

KS: Don’t. I wouldn’t. She’s got to still be grieving.

LT: You are, too.

KS: Well, yeah, but ***. Her husband died over the course of like, a week. I had some time.

LT: Bull***.

KS: Yeah, kind of bull***. Still. Wouldn’t talk to her yet.

LT: Mrs. Melissa Booker has been fortunate in the sense that she didn’t present with any of the wasting symptoms. Mr. Booker came into the clinic on Saturday, September 9^th – or, was dragged in, like all the others so far – with an inability to digest his food, spitting up water, and, as noted in a few other cases now, a delayed ability to heal. He’d scraped his leg falling down the front steps two days before, according to MB, and while the wound was starting to fester there was no indication that it was beginning to heal. No scabbing, nothing. Get that look off your face, only talking to myself to get my thoughts in order.

KS: Why don’t you just type them quietly like a normal person?

LT: Because. I don’t know. Habit. Do you want anything?

KS: No. Actually. Wouldn’t suck if Anthony could turn down his *** game. Gunshots are giving me a headache.

(That was the definite end of any relevant conversation; I will be attempting to speak to Melissa Booker at the first available opportunity. Normally I wouldn’t – Kyle hasn’t had the proper time to grieve, either – but the majority of the town is presenting with all the same wasting-without-explanation symptoms. I need to know more. Not just as a matter of interest; this could save lives.)

Mr. Sauber

Residents are often asked to present interesting case reports, and even though I’m not in med school yet, I’ve come across a medical mystery that should be written about.

First case presents itself about two months ago, patient Mr. Sauber – my next door neighbour, actually. I’ve obtained consent from his next-of-kin, my friend Kyle Sauber, to log what I feel is a very interesting case. Mr. Sauber was kind of our Patient 0.

Mr. Sauber is a frequent flier given his diabetic condition and old age. Even if I hadn’t lived next to him for my entire childhood, I’d know by his medical records that he was always teetering on the edge of poor health; generally, our clinic is well-equipped to help him or keep him overnight if need be, but in July he was taken to the hospital out in the city out of concern that his kidneys may be failing.

He was held for three days before being sent back home; according to his file, it had been a false alarm, but Kyle had been raising concerns since the day he got back. Since I do a lot of the appointment booking, I was able to get Mr. Sauber in once a week for check-ups (it would have been twice a week if they could afford so many medical bills).

I observed for myself Mr. Sauber’s steady deterioration. I watched him go from a 230 pound man to a frail skeleton. Towards the end, his skin was a few shades paler and flaking right off; his hair (or, what was left of it) was thin, dry, and fell out; I could see his bones when he moved. We’d given him a walker to use because it seemed like he just didn’t have the will to support himself.

All the while, his bloodwork, his vitals, urine samples – they all came back normal.

Mr. Sauber died one week ago.