adventures in infection

This is a short story i wrote awhile back.

Adventures in Infection

‘Don’t worry mister Nagel, your record are completely confidential’ the friendly middle aged doctor with smiling eyes said holding a crisp new manila folder with ‘Richard Nagel’ written in scrawly doctor hand writing. Richard spoke a barley audible ‘ok’ and turned to walk out of the building. Past the nervous people on the plastic seats of the waiting room, most of whom were now flicking through double glossed magazines that whilst designed to reduce paper cuts would still end up in the bin tonight. The depictions of perfection on their colourful covers, the beautiful bodied men and women left staring up from the trash that they would be dumped into.
Outside in his car Richard gripped the steering wheel hard, feeling his nails dig into the soft black rubber, he began to bawl. With hot tears dripping down his face he screamed and yelled nonsensical anger that translated into English meant ‘why the fuck did this happen to me’.
The business people in the street looked out of the corners of their eyes at him whilst shuffling by bug-like on their quick leather business shoes. Their was no sympathy in their shrewd hard little eyes just a fear that one day they might find themselves as the one crying out their terror in the parking lot of an infectious diseases clinic.

After driving home with bleary eyes Richard opened the door and flopped down in to his favourite overstuffed chair. Twenty he was, just twenty years old, as fit as most people can claim to be. Stayed off drugs, didn’t drink and for what? If their had been a mirror in the stark lounge room, that spoke of his minimum wage occupation, he would have avoided it. He was an attractive young man or so he thought. Shortish brown hair slicked back 50’s style. Now he thought what’s the point to any of it.

The small digital numbers of the video players clock silently morphed away the time. After just fifteen minutes of silent green numbers flicking a hard and official knock thudded on the thin front door. Richard sat and sighed heavily, then lifted his body from the chair.
At the door were two people. One a young police officer, who’s nervous eyes darted from side to side and started with fright at Richards slightest movement. The other a heavyset man who had quite obviously just stepped out of the sleek white van with DCC embossed on the side. ‘Hello mister…Nagel’ the heavyset man with a face of subtle pig like qualities said, reading his name with some difficulty off the crisp manila folder. His tone seemed manufactured for maximum friendliness.

Words poured from the man’s mouth but Richards eyes were fixed and glazed, staring right through his head. One thought rolled in his head over and over again, pounding home, your life as you know it is over.

With a single bag of clothing on his shoulder Richard opened the vans white door with the solid black DCC initial and climbed inside. The door thudded solidly in what may as well have been the ominous crack of a jail door slamming shut forever. Beneath him thick sheets of clear plastic bunched uncomfortably, Richard tugged at them in anger.
Next to him the man who later introduced himself as mister smith slid the key into the small metal keyhole and started the van. He smiled in a mix of sympathy and ‘hey you’ll be ok’ that was surely taught to all DCC workers. Richard decided that the man’s eyebrows protruded too much.

The young cop who was now standing next to his motorcycle in the driveway. Looking incredibly relieved. In the back of the van through a thin wall of mesh were the helmeted heads of a four man ‘retrieval’ team, that bobbed up and down with the motion of the van.

To say they looked like something in a sci-fi movie was a massive understatement. Once Richard had seen them chasing a well dressed business lady down the cobble stoned street. She ran with a frantic look on her face, expensive high heeled shoes making a cracking sound like a gunshot every step. It was not a bold athletic stride she took but crazed and scared steps, not wanting to resist or cause a ‘scene’, nor wanting to surrender to oblivion just at this point in her life. You could imagine a person like her would have had her life all perfectly planned out too.
People quickly darted out of her way as a white plastic arm of a retrieval team specialist, rustling in the wind, raised a dull metal tube to point at her. She faulted in her fretful stride as the dart hit and collapsed onto the pavement in a pile of bad angles. Someone like her usually trips over and people rush to help her up but not today. They stood looking horrified as a soft flow of blood trickled from a gash in her knee, through expensive stockings and onto the street.
Her eyes locked onto the sight of her bloody, ruined stockings and she just went limp. The hurried white bodies of the retrieval teams scooped her up by the arm pits and feet as if she were a protester from the 70’s blocking a logging road and put her into the back of an awaiting van. Another pulled out a small black can of spray, sending a fine white mist over the collected blood. A day later there were little stakes and bright orange tape around that one cobble stone. One more day and it had been removed.

The strong smell of disinfectant that usually only lurked in the hall of hospitals drifted up Richards nose and dug in it’s claws of irritation. Outside of the window of his mobile white cell the cityscape slowly passed. Looming skyscrapers in the distance and tacky residential flats of washed out brick veneer. Simple things like four or five broken down cars of various rusty colours in a front yard, with a hand painted and streak infested sign that read ‘parts for sale’ zipped by. Trivial visions that Richard wouldn’t have looked twice at except for the fact he might never see them again.

It was a bizarre feeling to think you might lose everything. But no tears welled in Richards zombie like eyes, he just didn’t seem able. He would miss his friends and cute girls. He’d miss eating out and stupid jokes. He would miss everything, everything that made life in the city so bloody annoying. Getting onto crowded trains or begin hassled for change by strung out looking kids. He’d miss people.

As he looked on the city slowly bubbled and tapered away until the only thing left was the memory of the stage where he had played out his life. Factories of the industrial outskirts belched out hard-edged clouds of grey and black smoke. That reached through the air in purposeful determination against the wind. The kilometres of black highway slowly twisted them into the countryside.

Clumps of trees camped together in the lush paddocks that now lined the road. Here and there a few puffy white bodies of sheep could be seen nibbling at the grass. Richard looked on with eyes that could well have been unmovable glass replicas. He too had been removed.
After hours of countryside his destination loomed and they slid silently through the metal mouth of the gate. Past the unconcerned, middle aged guard in his little white booth and well past the enormous cyclone fence topped with vicious razor wire. Robert looked out the window at the monstrous fence as it faded into the distance. Mister smith looked over with the same mix of sympathy and optimism. ‘it’s to keep unwanted people out’ he said . Richards head nodded mutely but he didn’t believe a word.

The building itself, the DCC ‘country retreat’, was really quite huge. It was made mostly of that shitty hospital kind of semi yellow and orange brick. Big four pane windows pocked the front wall and cast their gloomy eyes about the yard. Some inmates or ‘guests’ wandered around the grounds, though most were probably in the infirmary dying. The scene seeming eerily like a movie set in an old aged home. The difference being that the people shuffling about on sore legs and in quite slippers, or with a supporting hand on a wheeled pole, that housed their swinging drip bag were much younger. None of the inmates would have been over fifty, most would have been in their mid twenties or late teens. In their prime. He wondered faintly in some distant part of his brain if he might run across that business lady he saw so long ago.
After a quick walk up the main vinyl clad hallway and a five minute wait on a row of plastic chairs. Richard was handed a small plastic id, it had rounded edges and a very bad photo of him. He peered hard at the grainy black and white picture. The cheeks were looking a bit gaunt, the cheek bones a bit too protuberant. Big red letters under the photo had ‘DX5-590a’. No name, just the strain that was going to kill him.

In his new room he sat on the edge of his new sterile bed. It had those horrible hospital blankets and was tucked in way too tight. Sitting on top of the covers was a small black walkman with a short typed message taped firmly to it. It read ‘welcome message, more on DCC country retreat’. Richard pushed down the play button which in fact was the only button, after a few moments of silence a strong male voice began talking. It’s radio pronouncers diction bouncing around the barren room.

‘ Welcome friend to the DCC country retreat, the retreat was founded by the disease control co-operative in 2002 as a safe, comfortable place were sufferers of new strain infections could come and recover in a peaceful environment. The DCC are painstakingly involved in constant research to eradicate this new problem faced by Australia and the world, we are confident we will overcome.’

‘To make your stay more comfortable please direct your attention to the selection of medicines on your bedside table. Displacement from your regular life can cause some degree of shock and feelings of isolation, please refer to the back of your id card for a medicinal ledger or in case of emergency please contact one of our friendly caretakers.’
That was it? It was too much to expect that it might say where the hell the new strain viruses even came from. It wasn’t brain surgery to figure it out though. It was a combination of things. Polluted ground water from radioactive dumping, too many cars, too many mobile phones and radio waves, carcinogenic in our food and maybe given a helping hand by bacteria laden meteor fragments. The new strain disease are just another by product of human society in the 21st century, incubated in the laziness that so infests the people you can almost smell it on everyone including yourself.

It wasn’t like the world was engulfed with disease ridden people, a quick look at the statistics would prove that death by contagious disease had only risen by two or three percent on the whole. It was more a radical shift in policy than anything else.
Next to a vase of plastic flowers on the fake wood grain nightstand was a multi-faceted container. Blue, red, green and white pills sat like lollies in the bottom. Richard flipped the plastic card over in his defeated fingers and read what they were for. Moments before slipping into a heavy and sickly sleep Richard decided reds were his favourite.

Days and weeks passed in a gargantuan version of his video players green lit LCD display. Mouthfuls of red pills, passing out, throwing up and waking up in the infirmary had become the steady rhythm of Richards new life. The monotony was only broken once or twice by freak events like a visitor.

A cautious orderly lead him up the passage and into the visiting room. He sat his numb body down onto a hard plastic chair and gazed out of the large sheet of glass that stood in front of him. On the other side was the skin wrapped skull that was the conservative face of his mother. She smiled at him faintly them motioned for him to press the big yellow button on the bench in front of him. Drug dazed eyes glared at the offending button, followed by a clumsy hand slapping it on.
‘hello Richard’ she said in a quite way. He almost imagined he could smell the perfume she would ritualistically pour on, even though the booth he was in had a totally different air supply than hers.

‘hi mum’ he muttered. She clasped her hands together and looking into Richards eyes ‘how are you?’ she asked with all the emphasis on are, in a way that gave him the creeps. Not a simple how are you but something deeper, How is Richard, the real Richard. How is your inner child Richard? He could almost imagine her ask him and he in the form of a drug dazed eight year old, with heavy eyelids and mouth that felt filled with cotton wool would reply ‘ I’m great, a positive change for the better!’
She looked at him as if regarding a bug in a plastic jar that she slightly pitied.
‘I’m fine’ he finally managed in a tone exaggerating his tiredness.
‘except that I hate this place and I want I’m life back’
‘Richard you know that we love you and want you home , but like the ad says DX5 loves no-one. I’m sure they will find a cure or work out the incubation times soon, it’s become quite the industry’ she said light heartedly, chuckling to herself at her quip about it being an industry.
‘did you save any of the stuff from my apartment’ he asked with no hope of a decent answer.
‘They wouldn’t let us, it had to be purged. They pay compensation for it though and for your lack of income.’
He just stared at his stupid mother and musing over pointless nothings like if he spat into the speaker they were talking through could he some how infect this moron too? And thinking it was lucky he didn’t have any pets because they’d probably purge it too, but your stupid parents would get compensation for it though.
From time to time he would fall asleep and his head would rock to a side and snap back up, just like when you fall asleep on the train.
‘Hey mum you enjoy that compensation money for me, ok’
Richard lifted his dumb body from the chair and went back to his oblivion. Leaving his mother, the giant preying mantis posing as a real feeling human, sitting shocked to her very shockable core.

After a wonderful night of colour mixing fun Richard woke again in the infirmary. As he lay there staring up at the foam roofing he felt that it was indeed time to die, he’d seen that roof too many fucking times already.

A needle lay inserted in his arm with a clear tube running to a drip. A nurse appeared for a second told him no more drugs, except the minimum required to stave off the pain of your lungs and stomach slowly turning to liquid, and then left.

Around his bed was completely surrounded by heavy white plastic curtains, only a thin slivers of lights and interest shone in through where the curtains joined. Laying in a bed just next to his was the small frame of a girl, her beautiful eyes were heavily shut and a exhausted ash grey colour. Dried up spit ran around the rims of her lips. The short brown hair on her head was formed into soft matted dreadlocks which stuck out at crazy, bed hair educed, angles. She was stunning.

Richard stayed awake for hours just staring at her through the crack in the curtain. Looking at her small bodies shape under the tight sheets. Or at the funny orange nail polish on the big toe of her left foot, that stuck out from the covers.
Next time that he woke up he looked up to see that she too was looking at him. He smiled for the first time since he’d been in this place and then got a flush of nervousness, don’t want too seem to eager. It was such a strange feeling to feel again.
‘Hi’ she said ‘what are you in for?’
‘ DX5-590a infection’ Richard replied
‘no, in the infirmary’ she said, smiling wonderfully and rubbing the remainder of the dried spit from her mouth.
‘oh, just a small experiment on pill mixing gone wrong’
‘wow’ she responded sarcastically ‘ that’s a crazy coincidence because I too was trying to kill myself, what are the odds of two people in this wonderful place both trying to neck themselves’
‘pretty low you’d think’ he said giggling like a kid. It was the first time in months he’d laughed.

After Richard got released from the infirmary he turned around and went straight back in. They sat talking with Sheena up in bed and Richard quite happily suffering from within a plastic chair. He looked over at her arm where the drip nestled amongst old track marks. Her eyes caught his looking ‘ that’s not even why I’m in here’ she said quietly. He reached out over the threadbare hospital blankets and lightly touched her hand.
‘my boyfriend got DX5-580c and because I’d slept with him within the last month I had to come into a camp too’
‘did they test you?’ he said in alarm.
‘They don’t have to by law but they did and I’m positive’ she barely whispered. Richard kind of smirked at her. Her head snapped up, eyes misty but nearly smiling ‘what’s funny arsehole?’
‘ You’ve only got 580c and I’ve got 590a’ he said laughing ‘my infection could kick your infections arse!’
‘mine was around first though!, that’s got to count for something!’

After Sheena was released from the infirmary they spent most of their time sitting out on the grass in the yard. Dying people wandered around near them and stared, but they didn’t seem a part of it. The sun pouring down from the sky and the breeze skipping coolly about, it was about as wonderfully clichéd as life can get. They sat around and talked, she smoked cigarettes and they held hands. Happiness was found in simple things like lightly resting their faces against each others to feel the warmth of the others skin.

On the seventh day of their romance Richard returned to is room at the to find a red slip of paper laying unassumingly on his bed. The red slip of paper was the ‘country retreat’ people’s way of saying your going to be a corpse in a week. He sat on the corner of his hard hospital bed and laughed bitter and sad gasps that soon turned to pissed off tears. The cosmic joker just didn’t quit.

Sheena stood leaning against the poor quality wood of his door way. He looked up at her with tears running down his red face as walked over and slid her small hand around his shoulders and cradled him into her. Her soft dreadlocks tickling the back of his neck.
‘I really love you Richard’ she said
‘I love you too’ he said smiling despite the tears.
That night at two o’clock, long after the orderly had made Sheena leave, Richard climbed out of his bed and slipped into his almost silent white fluffy slippers. Thanking the quite lino floors he made his way to the farthest point of the giant cyclone fence. Standing down at the fence line and totally dwarfed by it a small silhouette head peered quickly from behind a tree then disappeared again.
‘Sheena’ Richard whispered, feeling like a school kid up to mischief on camp, ‘what are we doing?’ Her teeth glinting in a grin as she appeared fully from her hiding spot.
‘well Richard old bean’ she says unzipping a bulky, clinking backpack containing three huge green bottles of champagne ‘were getting pissed’
Her small hand quickly grabbed his and they were off. Running further along the fence line, trying the best they could to stick to the shadows. The one spot the grass was ripped up and dirt exposed, where some one or something had borrowed right under the far reaching metal claws of the fence. They squeezed their way through the hole to freedom, Richard briefly thanking his drug emaciated state for making it possible. Dirt clinging to clothes and hair they walk, hand in hand, arms swinging in the soft moon light.

A once bold red sign with a blocky picture of a man holding a rifle clings to an ancient and ineffectual barbed wire fence. The black backpack sails neatly over the fence and into the no trespass area. Landing with a thud and tinkling of bottles in the dirt and pebbled shore overlooking the massive lake.
Sheena reaches into the bag, pulls out a gleaming bottle and tears the foil off it’s top. Pointing with one hand out at the water like a baseball player going for a home run, she smiles and then with the free hand pops the cork. Sending it reeling out into the darkness, where it lands with a soft splash. Then she unceremoniously plops down into the dirt with a very self satisfied look on her beautiful face.
‘misspent youth hey?’ Richard accuses.
‘jealous?’
‘no way, I’m really glad I put all that effort into staying healthy it’s really paid off’ he say reaching for a bottle. Which she then had to open for him.
After a few large swigs Richard undoes his shoes, removes his clothes and goes running down into the water, trying to avoid the largish pebbles that lay about. As he sinks beneath the water he realises it is the last time he will ever swim. His head slowly bobs back up spraying the stolen champagne through his teeth and into the water of the lake.
Sheena kicks off her shoes and throws her clothes into a small pile near her feet, purple underwear with a light corded pattern slide gracefully down over the smooth bronze skin of her legs. Goosebumps run in a chain reaction up her body as she walks into the water from the pebbled shore.

They meet in the water and share kisses filled with smoke, alcohol, love and mischief, holding each other’s naked bodies tight to stave off the freezing cold of the water. Richard stares hard at her face, trying to etch the image of her eyes, and the look of love that seems to float in their surface, into his memory. Wishing it could all last. She takes a long drink and then spits it directly into the water. They begin to laugh.
In the moon lit water they laugh, drink, make love and spit. Before the sun can rise they drag their freezing bodies out of the water and make their way back to their oblivion.
The sun’s first rays hit as they lay sprawled together holding hands, just within the fence line.
‘I really like the countryside, why would you exile someone to here’ he rambles. They turn to each other letting their heads rest against each others.
“if we’d ever had kids I would have liked them to see all this, not just the city’ she replies
‘I’m glad we got to create something together’
‘ So you do know what that lake is’ she says, her familiar devilish smile gleaming. Their hands lock tight and the unfailing sun continues to climb in the sky. In hours their bodies will be removed by the day staff.

Regardless in Lake Yee, the cities major water supply. Viruses 580c and 590a mix and mingle, wheel and dive, they remain unfiltered, unchanged and uncaught.