“No, it doesn’t, but old age does reveal to you the things that you really love. When you get to be my age, when you can’t even pick change up off the floor without hurting your back, you’ll understand. Yes, I had an exciting youth, one I don’t regret. But at this point in my life, it’s the simple things—love, companionship, my faith, the church, a good paperback novel—that I enjoy now. Maybe that makes me sound like a broken-down old geezer, but there it is.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Oh, stop it.”

“Stop what? Stop whining?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s okay. Because I’m not whining. I’m actually quite happy with my life, all things considered. The truth is, I’m an insufferable old geezer. Why should I deny that?”

“Because you’re giving up,” Gabriel said. “And you don’t have to.”

“Strange to hear that from you, since you just admitted to giving up on your life’s work. You don’t have to give up, Gabriel. Someday, you’ll be my age, and you’ll understand. You’ll know what it’s like to reach the point in your life where all the exciting moments are done and you’re free to just sit back, reminisce, and patiently look forward to heaven.”

Gabriel shook his head and gulped down the rest of his ale. He motioned for the waitress to bring him another. “Marvelous. Let’s waste our last years looking forward to an imaginary kingdom in the clouds.”

Gareth sighed. “Fine. Substitute ‘death’ for ‘heaven.’ When you reach my age, when your body has transformed from a friend into a withering old enemy, the one thing a man looks forward to the most is death.”

Gabriel stared at him then shook his head. “No. Never. I won’t. I refuse.”

“Gabriel—”

“No, Gareth, I’m telling you this right now. I swear that, no matter what happens in my life, no matter what goes wrong, I will never allow myself to actively anticipate my own death. Never.”

Chapter 28:

Twist

Summer 2018

Gabriel was shell-shocked. He had been staring into his microscope for hours. He had thrown up a couple times, filling his garbage receptacle with plenty of gooey stomach acid. The mounds of notebook paper on his desk were covered with scrawled black ink.

Michael had been right. Within moments of placing that sample under the microscope earlier that morning, Gabriel had known the truth. The Black Virus wasn’t a virus at all. It was something far worse.

“Kill me,” Gabriel muttered. “Kill me now, and just get it the hell over with.”

The skeleton doll sat propped against his lamp, staring at him with its empty eyes. He’d put it there a few hours ago, and it’d been mocking him ever since.

“Kill me,” he repeated.

Bernard, watching TV on the other side of the curtain, didn’t respond. Gabriel’s blood seemed to trickle through his veins with the consistency of a cold frappe. His palms felt clammy. You were right, Michael. You were right, goddammmit.

Gabriel pressed his call button, and a few minutes later Harry Brenton entered the room.

“Hi, sir,” Harry said.

“Fruit punch,” Bernard stated from the other side of the room.

“I’ll bring you one in a minute, Bernard,” Harry said, then he turned back to Gabriel. “Sir, is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bernard said.

“Um… no,” Gabriel replied. “Harry, do you have a minute?”

Harry glanced back at the hallway.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Gabriel said. “I understand that you have a lot of work to do. But if you do have a minute, I really need some advice, especially from a bright microbiology student like you.”

Harry stared at Gabriel for what felt like ten minutes but was probably only a few seconds, then he sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay, sir. I’m here for you. I’m guessing this pertains to your research on the new virus?”

Gabriel nodded. “I’m afraid it does. I know that you’re familiar with my work. You know how the Schist Vaccine works, right?”

“Of course. It makes the immune system smarter. It’s like a shot of intelligence, like a steroid, in a sense. That’s why it makes the body immune to so many different types of infection.”

Gabriel nodded and smiled in spite of the seriousness of the discussion. When Harry talked about science, his stutter disappeared, his shoulders rose, and he appeared more confident.

“Perfectly said, Harry. Now, when I started researching this new virus, my original hypothesis was… well, when the immune system becomes smarter, what do the pathogens do?”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Oh, crap. Are you saying that the pathogens become smarter, too? You mean, that’s what’s happening? It is, isn’t it? I mean, that actually makes sense! That’s why this virus is so powerful. Because when you introduced the ultimate medicine, in a sense, the pathogens were forced to create the ultimate assassin in order to retaliate. So to cure this virus, we’d need to create something that makes the immune system even more powerful. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. That’s what I thought, but…” Gabriel stepped over to his whiteboard. “I found a sample this morning, and after studying it, well… I was wrong. My original smart pathogens hypothesis underestimated something crucial.”

“What’s that, sir?”

Gabriel drew a Möbius strip. “I underestimated just how intelligent this virus is. I saw that it was clever back when John Morris died. I saw the way it performs like an actor, mimicking the symptoms of other diseases in order to confuse the body. But I misunderstood why it was doing this. I completely misunderstood its motivations.”

“Uh, Mr. Schist… motivations? What motivations? Sir, this is a virus that we’re talking about.”

“Not quite.” Gabriel sighed. “When I say that the virus is intelligent, I don’t mean it in the sense that we might normally call a pathogen intelligent. I mean that it’s really, truly intelligent. Just as intelligent, just as cognizant as… as a human. It’s not a virus anymore, Harry. It’s practically a new species of animal. It’s alive.”

Harry scoffed, then seeing the grave expression on Gabriel’s face, he sobered. “I’m sorry, sir. But c’mon, an animal? Alive?”

“Yes. It’s conscious. It thinks, it feels, and—”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m dead serious. When John Morris died, I quickly surmised that emesis was the final step of the cycle. Emesis causes death. When he died, though, what shocked me the most, was that I saw something born inside his vomit.”

Harry raised an eyebrow and started to interrupt.

Gabriel held up his hand. “But I was wrong. Emesis isn’t the end; it’s the beginning. Killing the human being it has infected isn’t the culmination of the lifecycle. Instead, emesis is the process wherein the virus finally cements its rebellion. It’s the moment where it extricates itself from the human body, casts aside its former home, and creates its own house, its own body, one that it can freely move, breathe, and crawl around in.”

Harry crossed his arms. “How do you know this?”

“I tested a blood sample from someone infected with the virus, and I tested a residual trace of the creature itself. Post-emesis and pre-emesis. Then, I compared the results. The pre-emesis sample presented symptoms of other random diseases as a way to grow, to get knowledge and gain full consciousness. It tested the body’s limits to learn about the digestive system, circulatory system, everything. It even overtook the victim’s brain and absorbed all of the information, knowledge, memory, and neural synapses. That’s why victims are comatose. Afterward, the post-emesis creature had consciousness. That’s why it finally expelled itself from the body when Morris died. By that point, it was fully developed and ready.”

Harry stood up. “Hold it.” He began pacing, his brow furrowed. “No one else saw this creature? Are you sure that it really…” His face reddened. “Well, that it was really there?”