The Doomsday Infection Read online

  Luke slipped on a shirt and tie, making himself presentable. He found it difficult to dress as the truck lurched, squealing around the bends. He patted down his hair, and checked out his appearance in the truck’s vanity mirror.

  The streets looked more depressed and covered in graffiti the further they drove away from the ocean and the closer they got towards Liberty City.

  20.25 PM

  Overtown, northwest of downtown Miami, originally called Colored Town during the Jim Crow era of the late 19th and early 20th century and designated as a ‘colored’ neighborhood after the creation and incorporation of Miami in 1896. The residents barred from entering the nearby middle and upper income white areas of Miami Beach and Coral Gables without having the required passes.

  Overtown had served as the place to stay overnight for the black mainstream entertainers of the day such as Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole, who not unsurprisingly were forbidden from staying at the venues where they had just performed, such as the Fontainebleau Hotel and the Eden Roc.

  As the I-95 interstate highway and other freeways were constructed, they fragmented the neighborhood, the district suffered serious decline, and the area became economically destitute as businesses stagnated and closed and the region became a ghetto.

  The inhabitants migrated to the Liberty Square housing project, built during the 1930s the first of its kind in Southern United States in response to the deteriorated housing conditions of Overtown.

  The civil rights act dramatically altered the neighborhood as increasing numbers of lower income and welfare-dependent families swamped to Liberty City following their displacement from Overtown, leading to large-scale ‘black flight’ as middle and higher income families moved out to suburban areas like Florida City and Miami Gardens.

  Crime grew prevalent in the increasingly poverty-stricken region during the 1960s. The ensuing problems of the poor and disenfranchised most notably culminated in the race riots of 1968, but still erupted into violence and large-scale disturbances to this day.

  “Christ, it’s hot!” Luke said, leaping from the news-truck. He looked presentable above the waist in a smart shirt and tie, yet still wearing his Hawaiian shorts and flip-flops, as they would be out of shot during his report. The police cordoned off the area with tape strung across the street blocking their progress. He watched the riot from the safety point. “Is it me, or are there more crazies than usual?”

  Kenny hoisted the news camera to his shoulder, and then jumped back in fright. “Shit!”

  “What’s up?”

  “A Goddamn rat.”

  “Where?” Luke asked in alarm.

  Kenny pointed. “There, and there! Christ, this place is crawling with them. Fuck, I hate rats.”

  Luke kicked out at a rat and it scuttled away as dusk settled over the projects highlighting the burning flames of a looted store.

  He positioned himself and made sure that the plumes of thick, black smoke would be in shot. He checked his tie, cleared his throat and counted down to the report. “In three, two . . . one. I’m Luke Spencer reporting from Liberty City, where, once again, the city is in flames as the police fight a losing battle trying to regain control of the streets -” he paused as rapid-fire from a machine gun echoed around him. “Their grievance, it seems, is due to the latest round of government cuts that have left the city woefully underfunded and naturally the poorest areas are the hardest hit. When will -” He stopped dead as a rapidly accelerating police car hurtled in their direction, Kenny filmed the retreating car as bullets from a rooftop gunman chased the vehicle down the street spewing up dirt.

  The Police officer leaned from the passenger window, and shouted to his colleagues, “Pull back! Pull back!" He paused to sneeze. “Get everybody out! Go!” The police car zoomed off, leaving them dumb-founded.

  A nearby cop waved to them. “You heard him, get going!” He scuttled off to a safer point. Luke shuffled after the cop, until he was distracted, then ducked under the tape and made his way closer to the action.

  21:20 PM

  Lieutenant Graves slumped against his ratty mattress propped against the wall of his crummy apartment in the Liberty City projects. He folded his eyelid back and inserted a hypodermic needle loaded with the heroin he had stolen earlier into the underside of the lid. He had to inject into his eyelid as the coast guard did cursory checks for track-marks on their personnel. Therefore, Graves had gotten devious; sometimes he injected between his toes, or the soles of his feet, and one time, only one time, into his penis.

  He squashed down into the mattress to get more comfortable and waited for the narcotic to do its work and relieve him of his miserable existence. He scratched under his armpit and discovered that his fingers were wet. “Hur? What the fuck?”

  He lifted his sweat-stained t-shirt and found the black swelling in his armpit. He pushed against it and it burst covering him in thick, oozing pus “Argh!” He recoiled as discharge ran from the lump. What the hell? he thought. He checked under his other arm, and felt a similar bulge. He stood and checked the growth in his broken shaving-mirror, and noticed his torso covered in raised boils and bumps. What is this? He gazed at his reflection for a long moment.

  He scratched his balls and froze.

  “Oh no...” He dropped his shorts and discovered buboes developing either side of his groin. “No, no, no. Not good.”

  Bright light lit his room. A searchlight of a police helicopter shone a beam through his cracked window. He jumped back into the shadows instinctively. He sneezed and blood streamed from both nostrils. He wiped his nose on his arm, horrified by the amount of the blackening fluid. He squatted down on the mattress as the drug weakened him, and he slowly shut his eyes, but even this simple action caused blood to squeeze from his tear ducts. He touched his face and choked back tears unable to believe that his eyes were bleeding.

  The roar of the helicopter got louder and the searchlight flicked around his grimy slum. He lurched under the mattress, grabbed his Sig Suer service sidearm, “Hey! People are trying to sleep in here!” He yelled and emptied the chamber aimlessly through the window at the noisy helicopter.

  21.45 PM

  Kenny filmed up, down, left and right at the sporadic gun-bursts. Luke stood with his microphone at the ready to address the camera. He motioned to Kenny to commence filming, when a hand grabbed his leg, making him jump out of his skin.

  He looked down to see a Hobo had grabbed his ankle. “Get offa me, man.”

  Kenny kicked out at the hobo for ruining the shot, “You drunken bum, Jesus. Can you believe that – begging during a riot?”

  Luke pointed at the hobo. “What’s that on his face?” He pointed to the pus-filled black circles on his cheeks. He heard a commotion behind him and turned to see the police chopper flying in. He knew this could be a story. He concentrated and turned back to Kenny. “Ready?”

  Kenny prepared to film when the Hobo screamed. Professional as ever, Kenny pivoted and trained his camera onto the god-awful sound the Hobo made. “What’s the matter with him, I thought he was dead?”

  “His chest is moving,” Luke observed. “Oh, man! It’s a rat and it’s eating him.” He felt sick, and then it dawned on him. “This is fantastic.” Luke said knowing a macabre story would sell, when Kenny lowered the camera, “What’s wrong, man?”

  Kenny smiled. “I’ve had an idea; why don’t you rescue him?”

  “I ain’t touching that rancid piece of filth.”

  “Think about it, imagine the headline: Brave hero reporter saves homeless veteran being eaten by rats.”

  He smirked. “Let’s do it. Go on three...two -”

  Luke rolled the Hobo over, and swiped out at the gnawing beast. The vicious looking rat stared at him for a moment as if it thought about attacking him, then scampered away. “That was disgusting.”

  The Hobo tugged at Luke’s sleeve. “Help . . . me . . .,” he begged as blood wept from his eyes.

  Luke slapp
ed his hand away. The Hobo vomited and convulsed, gasping for life. “Man, did you see his eyes?”

  “Sure did. I want some of that.” Kenny stood over the dying Hobo and filmed a close-up, “Never shot someone’s dying breath before.”

  “You worry me,” Luke said.

  The Miami-Dade Police Department’s Eurocopter AS350 hovered overhead. Kenny switched his attention to the chopper and filmed as it moved closer to the buildings.

  Luke prepared himself, cleared his throat, and as Kenny lowered the camera to include him in a head shot said; “Three . . . two . . . one, once again a solitary police helicopter, the same old story of the police’s response to this poorly patrolled region; too little too late.”

  Lieutenant Graves’s bullets hit their target and the police helicopter lurched over, recovered, when the engine spluttered, and the chopper went into a quick spin, rotated a semi-circle, the pilot corrected, when abruptly the helicopter dipped, went into a dive, floundered then jerked upward. It looked as if it should clear the building, when the engine coughed and the chopper wobbled onto its side, with smoke belching from the engine. The pilot struggled with the craft and turned tight circles fighting for control as the engine stalled and choked, then with a deafening roar it shot forward crashed into the second story where it burst into a ball of flames scattering debris into the night.

  A piece of shrapnel shot through the air and ripped through Luke’s bicep in a plume of red mist, the impact of the force spun him into the ground. He glanced up at Kenny. “Tell me you got that?” he managed to gasp before passing out.

  Kenny held his thumb up, grinned, and went to speak, when a rogue helicopter blade, turning end over end in the night sky, spinning at over three hundred revolutions per minute sliced him in two.

  His eyes froze, and he stood motionless for a moment as blood trickled along the line of the wound, when ghoulishly his severed upper torso slid down to the dirt, his legs remained upright for a moment longer before they too toppled to the ground.

  CHAPTER 3

  21:50 PM

  Doctor Sophie Garcia down-shifted a gear in her cherry-red jeep, glad she had the top down, feeling the welcoming breeze in her long dark, naturally curly hair. Her tires changing sound from the pavement to metal and back to pavement, as she crossed the cantilevered bridge from mainland Florida to the spit of land known as Sandbank Island that housed The Good Samaritan, the run-down hospital where she worked.

  After graduation she’d had her pick of prestige hospitals, but instead chose research work in the field; mainly in Africa studying the unusual and exotic, not to mention the most dangerous virus’s that mother earth could produce, after which she returned to work in a less affluent district, finding satisfaction helping the hard-up and needy at the pay-as-you-go hospital.

  Yet even this meager facility had been withdrawn, the hospital had fallen victim to the latest spending cuts and was scheduled to close the next day. This would be her last night. The hospital-board had deliberately run down the number of patients so she wasn’t anticipating a busy night.

  She pulled into the three story hospital parking lot, entered the building, and was hit by the smell of the disinfectant as she slipped into her white coat. A Latino girl with a distinctive purple streak in her hair bustled past her and rushed to the reception, ignoring the line of other patients and blurted. “I need to see one Doctor. Help me, PLEASE. My baby - she is dying.”

  The larger than life receptionist on the desk ruled her domain with a rod of iron. She looked over her spectacles at the young Latino. “Not here, honey. Not anymore.” She saw the girl’s confusion and tapped the sign affixed to the front of her desk. “Didn’t you read the sign?”

  “I no read American too good,” she said, and then more urgently. “Please. My baby need help.”

  The receptionist leaned over the counter and tapped the sign with her pencil for effect, and quoted. “The sign reads: Hospital closing. All walk-in patients to find the next nearest hospital.”

  “I no understand? Why you no help?”

  The receptionist spoke slowly. “This hospital is closing tonight due to the cut-backs. It’s been in the news for weeks.”

  “No comprendo?”

  The receptionist sighed again, losing her patience. “You need to go to a different hospital.”

  “Habla usted espanol?”

  “No I don’t. This is America and I speak American.”

  Sophie intervened, “What’s the problem here?”

  “This lady don’t speak American. I tried to explain -”

  Sophie turned to the distressed Latino girl and addressed her in Spanish. She glared at the receptionist for her lack of compassion, and then quickly walked the Latino girl and her baby though the admissions door. One of her colleagues unwrapped the swaddling to reveal a dead African-American baby, as Sophie guided the mother to the waiting room, “It’s dead,” said her colleague. “Stone cold.”

  “That’s curious,” said Sophie. “She acted like she expected her baby to be saved.”

  “She’s been dead for hours.”

  “OK, alert the coroner. We’ll need cause of death on this,” she peeled off her latex gloves. “I’ll go and speak to the mother.”

  Sophie steeled herself; she hated this part of the job, all doctors did, informing the next-of-kin. It was especially difficult for Sophie; she felt such empathy with the bereaved, and found it doubly hard when it involved such a young person. The girl howled at the tragic news. A guttural wail, from deep in the pit of her stomach, that echoed around the empty hospital. It shook Sophie badly, but worse, much worse would follow.

  __________

  The Latino girl not only lost her baby, but also had to go through the indignity of a formal interview with Police. Not that the hospital suspected any wrong doing on the mother’s part, more of a formality to cover themselves in a world where litigators lurked around every corner. The girl still had to go through the rigmarole of filling out reams of endless paperwork, made harder by her lack of spoken English and complete absence of any written. Above all else, and to start the ball rolling Sophie had to ask the Latino girl to give a visual identification of her child as part of the protocol.

  The Latino girl understood the request, and in a trance followed Sophie to the morgue. Her back stiffened and she readied herself to see her beautiful baby girl dead.

  The drape pulled back to reveal her baby. Sophie squeezed her hand sympathetically when the girl laughed. “What is this? You make one joke?”

  “I, I don’t understand . . .?”

  “This is not my baby.”

  “I assure you it’s the baby you brought in with you. We don’t make that sort of mistake, besides she's the only baby left in the entire hospital.”

  “I’m telling you this is not mine,” she folded her arms defiantly, glowering at Sophie. “How dare you. What sort of girl do you think I am that I could produce this – this thing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at it - it’s black.”

  23:15 PM

  Sophie sat alone in the empty hospital canteen, gazing absently into her Styrofoam cup at the liquid that was loosely described as coffee and hesitated before taking a sip, as she went over the earlier event that had left her stunned. Bereavement struck people in different ways, she knew that, but she had never experienced a mother denying her own baby before. The whole incident left her feeling uneasy, but that was for the coroner to sort out during the post mortem.

  She finally took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Vile isn’t it?” said her friend Doctor Juliet Miller, joining her at the table. “You’re not due in tonight. I thought you were meant to be convalescing?”

  “I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, it was only an auto-accident.”

  “Only an auto-accident? You nearly died. Three blood transfusions I heard?”

  Sophie shrugged it off. “I thought I would be more use here, helping to close down the hospit
al. What about you?”

  “I haven’t left since yesterday. I've been flat out for twenty-four hours.” She glanced at her watch. “Boy, they run us ragged. You know, I wouldn’t let a grease-monkey touch my Benz if he hadn’t slept for two days, yet this is what the board expects us to do with human lives.”

  “Ah, but this is the poor hospital, we can’t be, or are unlikely to be sued,” Sophie said. “I thought they’d be easing up on the pressure as we close tonight.”

  “It’s only a skeleton staff, although we were inundated earlier, everyone sneezing all over the damn place with summer flu. The nurses ran out of medicine at one point.”

  “I noticed a lot of sneezing tonight.”

  A janitor passed them. “It’s going nuts out there. It’s this damn heat. It’s still over one hundred degrees, fourth night in a row. And the humidity, don’t get me started on the humidity, it’s freaking unbearable. The heat brings out the loony-tunes. The heat, that or the full-moon, and tonight we got both.”

  Miller scoffed at him.

  “Actually, it has some merit,” Sophie said. “Many a study has shown an increase in the mentally ill and a propensity towards violence during the different phases of the lunar cycle.”

  “Yeah, I know,” agreed Doctor Miller, “lunar cycle equals lunatic. But it’s just not medical enough for my taste.”

  “I tell you,” said the janitor, “Full moon and heat; it’s gonna be a hum-dinger tonight. We had a coupla cracker-heads in earlier; both been bitten by rats.”

  Sophie scrunched her face horrified. “What is the world coming to?” She rubbed her injured shoulder.

  Juliet Miller noticed. “Go take a nap; I’ll come wake you, if I can’t cope.”

  “You promise?”