Virulent

Chapter 13(a): Horror

Ezra hadn't slept well since returning to the base—wherever the base was. If she'd thought her sleep had been bad before, it was nothing compared to the insomnia she developed since Antarctica. She barely slept, days piling into weeks. Dark circles ringed her eyes, caused by nightmare upon nightmare, of diseases and deaths, thanks to her creation. Not to mention the fact that her dad had sounded completely heartbroken on the phone—not that she'd told him everything that's happened in the past few months, but she told him the gist of it. She was fine, but the men that took her want her help with something terrifying...

Every time she closed her eyes, she could still recall his sobs and pleas of, "Please come home, beta. Do whatever they ask of you. Just make sure you're safe... and come home."

It was these, and the lack of sleep, that had her on the brink of abyss one morning; awake but not; asleep but not. She barely registered the thunder of footsteps clomping down the hallway then. Soldiers rushed past her room at an alarming rate. Nor did she register the urgent squeal of the siren. She was far, far away, in some dreamless, foggy land to care.

Heavy army boots that thumped the ground and faintly shook the floor even, thinned, yet Ezra was semi-dead to the world. Until someone banged on her door like they meant to force it down—thump, thump, THUMP—that she finally dragged her heavy eyelids open. "What?"

"Practice fire drill, Doc! Better hustle before they lock the base down and the system vacuums out the air!"

Ezra didn't know who it was that had almost blown her door down, but she pushed herself up on weak arms, grabbed her jacket—much like a zombie. Who's going to vacuum the air? Is it dirty?—and slipped on her slippers. She ambled equally heavy footed to her door. By the time she came out into the corridor, it was empty and eerily so, with only a distant, rhythmic thump, thump, thump of synchronised footsteps rushing away from her.

"Wait!" she called out, "I don't know the way..." her voice was husky and cracked from little use this past week. She had isolated herself in the hermetically sealed section of the lab, oxygen supply tethering her to her level four biohazard suit. For days she heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the rickety clump of her heart, replaying Dad's shaky, desperate words like a survival mantra: Please, Ezzie. Do whatever they ask of you. Just make sure you're safe and... come home...

For days she'd seen nothing but pathogens she never thought she'd study up close or that the sight of her shaky hands almost always made her swallow her tongue in fear. I can do this. I can. I'll make this and a cure... and no one has to die because of me... Just have to play along and get home with the antibodies or a vaccine... then I can save the world...the thoughts of a delirious, sleep deprived woman obsessed with getting out alive.

And today, it was the first she'd appeared even remotely interested in others, but now no one was around.

"Hello," she called out again, rather useless. "Wait for me!" Why vacuum seal the base? But the empty floor only echoed her own voice.

Ezra tried her best to navigate to the bunker entrance as best she could. Weeks ago, she'd taken that very route with Captain Rai. But that was weeks ago, and this was a maze. Soon, Ezra heard nothing but the shuffle of her own slippers as she climbed stairs after never ending stairs. And soon, with each passing step, the air felt thinner and thinner till her lungs burned for air.

"Why suck air out...?" She followed her poor sense of direction up, mumbling to herself.

To choke the fires! No air, no oxygen!

Suddenly, panic gripped her throat and her burning lungs. She wasn't that out of shape. One positive thing to come out of living at an army base was that exercise wasn't an option. The men, especially Millen, dragged her to his sessions almost every day—except these past few weeks, since Antarctica. She couldn't have gotten so out of shape in just two weeks.