Before Gabriel could react, the thing jumped right out of the puddle like a grasshopper. It plopped down on the floor with a nauseating splattering sound. Wriggling across the floor, the newborn vaguely resembled an enlarged black sperm cell, about six inches long, with a whip-like tail. The serpentine body moved as if it were made of gelatin.
The thing started crawling, swishing its long tail from side to side. It moved fast, as if it knew Gabriel was a threat and it needed to get away.
It scuttled past Gabriel and continued down the hall. Gabriel grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from a wall container, snapped them on, and followed the creature. When he got close enough, he tried to bend his rickety knees enough so he could bend down and snatch the creature before it escaped. The thing leapt forward out of his reach and scurried away, slithering like a garden snake. It was headed for one of the floor vents.
Gabriel hurried forward, his bad leg screaming in pain. As the slithering creature approached the vent, it slowed down. Gabriel crouched as fast as he could and grabbed for the thing’s tail.
He wasn’t fast enough. The dirty sperm cell wriggled between the slats and slid into the floor vent.
Gabriel sat on the floor, his legs too tired to hold him any longer. He leaned against the wall, gasping for air. His varicose veins throbbed, and the injuries on his tailbone and hip sent grueling reminders to the pain centers of his brain. God, he was too old for such activity.
What the hell was that thing? He didn’t know. It defied everything he thought he knew about diseases. It didn’t make sense.
The nurses, who in their protective gowns and masks looked more like bizarre cultists than medical professionals, were carting John Morris’s wrapped-up corpse away on the gurney. Farther down the hall, two housekeepers were preparing the chemicals to sterilize the floor where Morris had died. None of them had noticed the ungodly creature that had wriggled its way out of the corpse. Idiots! Blind idiots!
Gabriel felt helpless and trapped. But peering over at the pool of black fluid, he realized that he had only a few minutes to spare before the housekeepers cleaned up the mess.
He still needed a sample.
Chapter 21:
Mollusca
In the week since Morris’s death, Gabriel had spent every waking hour studying the sample of the Black Virus. He had finally gained a bit of insight into its more unique properties, so it was time to figure out a strategy.
After seven fruit punches and fourteen pudding cups, Bernard was snoring the night away in his chair. It was the first time that Gabriel had ever seen him asleep. About a half dozen of the slugs were perched atop that morning’s newspaper on Gabriel’s scuffed desktop, and the tiny beings expectantly peered up at him with their antennas.
TOXIC PLAGUE FAST BECOMING EPIDEMIC: 33 PEOPLE INFECTED ACROSS NEW ENGLAND
The secret was officially out in the open. The government cover-up had failed. Thirty-three didn’t seem like much at first, not until one considered the speed of infection. And even worse, none of those thirty-three reported cases included the secret elderly victims at Bright New Day. Gabriel suspected that other facilities had been similarly hit and also unrecorded. That meant the actual number was at least in the fifties or sixties. The Black Virus had come out of nowhere, and like a hurricane, it’d already swallowed dozens of unfortunate victims.
“I’ll need your assistance with something,” Gabriel said. “If that’s okay.”
“Yes,” the leopard-printed slug replied. “Our ears are open, Gabriel.”
“Um, no?” Albino scoffed. “We don’t even have ears. We’ve just got sensors in our antennas.”
“Figure of speech,” Leopard Print answered with a sigh. “Anyway. What can we do to help you? Tell us.”
Gabriel cleared his throat and adjusted his reading glasses. In just a few hours, he’d already filled up two entire notebooks with new insights about the virus. “Well, first of all, let me explain what I’ve figured out so far. This virus. It’s brilliant.”
“Brilliant?”
“Yes, it’s insanely brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a jack-of-all-trades, an actor, masquerading in the form of a pathogen. Somehow, it has managed to absorb the traits and symptoms of every other disease imaginable. In just this little sample of John Morris’s vomit, I can watch as residual traces of the virus dramatically change structure. Based on exposure to different temperatures, prodding, stimulations, and so on, these traces show a capability to manifest as influenza or strep throat or syphilis. Elephantiasis. Mumps. Measles. Leprosy. Degenerative disorders. Anything! Yet, like I said, it’s an actor. It’s playing the part of any disease it chooses. It fools the body into reacting and forces the body to defend itself as if it really is fighting that specific disease. Then the virus sends the immune system’s attention in a million different directions. I think this is why previous treatments don’t work on it.”
“Because the symptoms are all over the place,” Leopard Print said.
“Exactly! The symptoms are so widespread, sometimes even to the point of being contradictory, that this Black Virus not only fools us, but it fools the immune system.”
“It fools it, you say?” the black slug asked.
“Yes. My research proposed that the immune system is a conscious, autopoietic entity. But this virus turns our greatest defense into a laughingstock. The victim’s immune system runs in a million different directions, trying to figure out what sort of pathogen it’s dealing with, but it can’t because the Black Virus is the Laurence Olivier of pathogens.”
“Always coming back to the immune system, eh, Schist?” Albino said. “Maybe it was a smart idea to talk to you about this virus business, after all.”
“Maybe.” Gabriel chuckled. “Crazy, isn’t it? I have to look over all of my old notes. I found a way to alter the immune system once before, back when I dealt with AIDS. Now, I just need to find a way to make it deal with this. AIDS was complicated, but this…”
Gabriel looked into the microscope, watching the sample move, bend, and try to escape. As he leaned forward, his back cracked. He yawned, feeling the familiar aches of old age. The bruise on his hip had mostly gone away, but it still hurt like hell. “But there’s one piece that doesn’t fit. That’s where you all come in.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Leopard Print said. “What do you ask?”
“So far, I’ve determined that when emesis occurs—that is to say, when the infected person vomits—it marks the end of the process. Emesis only occurs when the person dies. Final stage.” Gabriel tilted back in his chair. “But there’s one thing that throws me off. When emesis occurs, something remarkably strange happens. I saw some kind of… creature emerge from the filth.”
“Where did it go?” Leopard Print asked.
“It crawled into a vent on the floor. I found a maintenance worker and asked him about it. He gave me the runaround, probably thought I was either a lunatic or a pervert from the instant I began speaking about black sperm monsters. But from what I can determine, it seems like those vents go out to—”
“Ah, I get it,” Albino replied. “You want us to do the hard work.”
Gabriel smiled. “You could say that.”
“You want us to find this creature?” Leopard Print asked.
“Well, any residual traces of the creature would be enough. Slime, mucus, feces, et cetera. Something that comes directly from the creature instead of Morris. This sample has helped a great deal, but it’s not showing me the full picture, just bits and pieces. I know that, by now, the creature may have escaped. But if you can find the whole creature, well…”
The slugs gathered in a tight circle under the lamplight and began murmuring amongst themselves. Gabriel felt like the last pick on the kickball team.
After a couple of minutes, Leopard Print crawled away from the others and looked up at Gabriel. “We can’t.”
“What?” Gabriel asked, trying not to reveal his annoyance. “Why not?”
“The Sky Amoeba has imposed very strict laws upon us regarding noninterference. Humanity must be allowed to have free will, but with free will comes the responsibility to make your own successes, as well as your own failures.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the protectors of humanity?” Gabriel asked. “How the hell are you supposed to protect someone if you practice noninterference?”
“Inspiration.” The slug wriggled its antennas. “Persuasion, reason, logic, love. We can talk to you, and we can guide you to the right path if you choose to take our help, but we are not permitted to actually interfere with the course of human history. We can paint a picture of morality for you, but you must make the decision to follow it. We can’t help you with this task. But we do know someone who is allowed to intervene in times of emergency.”
“Marvelous. And who would that be?”
“Our leader.”
“Your leader.” If they talk about that Sky Amoeba again, I’m going out for a cigarette.
“Yes. He’s been wanting to speak with you for some time, actually. He’s very curious about your experiments here.” The slug crawled closer, right up to the edge of the desk.
Gabriel rubbed his eyes then looked at the cloudy night sky out the window. “Forget it. I don’t want to hear another word about your goddamn Sky Amoeba again. If I—”
“I’m not speaking of the great Sky Amoeba,” Leopard Print said with the slightest hint of irritation in its metallic voice.
