awakeSuzanne Amberlee's nose had been bleeding for most of the morning. It had ceased to bother her after the first hour; in a way, it had even proven itself a blessing. The blood loss seemed to blunt the hard edges of the world around her, blurring things into a comfortable gray that allowed her to finally face some of the hard tasks she'd been allowing herself to avoid. She paused in the process of boxing Amanda's books, wiping the sweat from her forehead with one hand and the blood from her chin with the other. Bloody footprints marred every box and wall in the room, but she didn't really see them anymore. She just saw the comforting absence of Amanda, who was never coming home to her again.
In Suzanne Amberlee's body, a battle was raging between the remaining traces of Marburg Amberlee and the newborn Kellis-Amberlee virus. There is no loyalty among viruses; as soon as they were fully conceived, the child virus turned against its parents, trying to drive them from the body as it would any other infection. This forced the Marburg into a heightened state of activity, which forced the body to respond to the perceived illness. Marburg Amberlee was not designed to fight the human body's immune system, and responded by launching a full-on assault. The resulting chaos was tearing Suzanne apart from the inside out.
For her part, Suzanne Amberlee neither knew nor cared about what was happening inside her body. She was one of the first to be infected with Marburg Amberlee, which had been tailored to be non-transmittable between humans...but nothing's perfect, and all those kisses she'd given her little girl had, in time, passed something more tangible than comfort between them. Marburg Amberlee had had plenty of time to establish itself inside her, and, paradoxically, that made her more resistant to conversion than those with more recent infections. Her body knew how to handle the sleeping virus.
And yet bit by bit, inch by crucial inch, Kellis-Amberlee was winning. Suzanne was not aware, but she was already losing crucial brain functions. Her tear ducts had ceased to function, and much of her body's moisture was being channeled toward the production of mucus and saliva—two reliable mechanisms for passing the infection along. She was being rewired, inch by inch and cell by cell, and even if someone had explained to her what was happening, she wouldn't have cared. Suzanne Amberlee had lost everything she ever loved. Losing herself was simply giving in to the inevitable.
Suzanne's last conscious thought was of her daughter, and how much she missed her. Then the stuffed bear she was holding slipped from her hands, and all thoughts slipped from her mind as she straightened and walked toward the open bedroom door. The back door was propped open, allowing a cool breeze to blow in from outside; she walked through it, and from there, made her way out of the backyard to the street.
The disaster that had been averted when the Colorado Cancer Research Center burned began with a woman, widowed and bereft of her only child, walking barefoot onto the sunbaked surface of the road. She looked dully to either side, not really tracking what she saw—not by any human definition of the term—before turning to walk toward the distant shouts of children playing in the neighborhood park. It would take her the better part of an hour to get there, moving slowly, with the jerky confusion of the infected when not actively pursuing visible prey.
It would take less than ten minutes after her arrival for the dying to begin. The Rising had come to Denver; the Rising had come home.
***
Please return to your homes. Please remain calm. This is not a drill. If you have been infected, please contact authorities immediately. If you have not been infected, please remain calm. This is not a drill. Please return to your homes...
When will you Rise?
May 23 2011, 12:16:00 UTC 6 years ago
May 23 2011, 16:32:23 UTC 6 years ago
Particularly if you're not fast moving and oblivious. ;)
(And mine were not the worst ones I knew of.)
May 23 2011, 17:41:03 UTC 6 years ago
I just don't think you are likely to track it, with your feet, onto the boxes (she's stepping on the boxes?--okay, maybe if she's *really* out of it) and even the walls. Gravity still works no matter how feverish and out-of-it you are.
(I guess she could be having momentary fits of fury and *kicking* the walls, but I would expect that to get a little more description than this, because kicking the walls is not ordinary packing behavior--not even ordinary zoned-and-feverish packing behavior.)
May 23 2011, 17:47:48 UTC 6 years ago
You do realize we're both overthinking this one, right?
May 24 2011, 11:07:25 UTC 6 years ago
I don't know how it works for other readers, but this is the kind of detail that tends to make my suspension-of-disbelief make ugly noises and smell of burnt rubber.
I suspect catching things like this is part of what editors are for.
May 24 2011, 12:30:40 UTC 6 years ago
Errors happen. Especially when you have no editor.
May 24 2011, 14:48:58 UTC 6 years ago
May 24 2011, 12:30:12 UTC 6 years ago