“Need need I want you I need need you Linden need you,” she coughed as she continued, rubbing her pallid, sore-covered body. Some pustules were so full they broke as she ran her hands over them, streaking her flesh with blood. She moaned Linden’s name, and Randal wished he could do something to stop his own arousal, but he was trapped, rooted in the horrible nightmare. That awful creaking noise resumed from her body, a stretching wail that intensified as she writhed on the bed. The odor in the room turned sour instantly, and Randal gagged. But it was Olivia who was making heaving sounds, her mouth opening and closing and opening, though nothing emerged. Nothing slipped from her lips. Instead, he noticed her flesh turning a bright shade of red, a color that intensified as it travelled down to the place between her legs. Her body swelled, and she started calling again, “I need you I need you now Linden now,” as that bulge grew, her legs slipping apart.
From within the folds of her labia appeared the white head of something pushing out, the crowning of a blister both slick and white. The air was fetid, and the noises that filled it were of breaking bones and rending flesh. Randal found himself calling Olivia’s name, or thinking he was calling it out, but the sounds he made had nowhere to go in the imprisoning atmosphere. Olivia was crying out in pain, her white scarred eyes staring straight ahead as the membranous bulge grew larger, an inflating amniotic sac. From where he stood he could see movement through its translucence—millions of tiny creatures squirming, waiting to be born, and as the sac grew larger and thinner, as Olivia’s screams grew louder, those things moved in a more frenzied manner in anticipation. “Oh, God, I can see! I can see!” she screamed, the extremities of her flesh becoming unmade. Too late Randal realized what was about to happen and could not escape the swell before it ruptured, explosively cleaving Olivia to her clavicle, filling the air with flesh and blood and disseminating tiny creatures wide. Randal raised his arms to shield his face, but he felt them rain against the flesh of his arm, fall between the hairs on his head, travel down the back of his shirt. Like thousands of burning hot needles the tiny alien creatures burrowed into his flesh, searing his body permanently in their wake. They writhed under his skin even as he scratched furiously at them, and the flush of blood that raced to the wounds only brought further nourishment.
Randal was gasping, his brain frazzled in disgust and confused terror. Pieces of flesh lay twitching about the room, unrecognizable as the woman he once knew. The smell was like overpowering offal, and the air tasted of a rusty tang. Randal coughed out the vomit that threatened to choke him, and the sputum was already filled with his own blood. He pulled himself away from the horror, tears running from his rheumy eyes. With hands covered in Olivia’s blood, he acted autonomously, removing the clear rock from the night stand, grabbing another handful of notes as he stumbled backwards. Back and out the bedroom door. Back and over the tangle of his feet that sent him crashing down. The impact against the floor was hard, knocking the wind out of his chest, and he writhed, suffocating, until consciousness slipped mercifully away.
6
Randal did not return to the university the next day. Nor the day after. His class found an empty lectern where he should have been standing, an empty lab where Olivia should have been prepping. Talk among them increased, as the days went on, about where Randal and Olivia were and about if they were ever coming back. Eventually, the crowd of students who bothered coming to class dwindled, most of them eager to have more free time in which to sleep, while some of the more studious hunted down the university’s administration. They wondered what had happened to their class, and whether two missing lecturers in a single semester was not two too many. Some wanted to be sure Randal and Olivia were still alive, whereas others merely wanted a refund or, better, an automatic passing grade. News of what happened appeared more frequently on the lips of the students and faculty, until Dean Coxwell finally realized it was time to intervene, lest the reputation of Sandstone’s Microbiology Department start to suffer in the eyes of other schools and institutions—and, most importantly, Sandstone’s board of trustees.
Dean Coxwell’s numerous telephone calls to both Olivia and Randal over the following days went unanswered, and he suspected the two had run off somewhere, abdicating their responsibilities. It wouldn’t have surprised him; young, impetuous—he saw the way Randal looked at her, like a salmon on a fish hook. Perhaps giving him Markowitz’s class had not been the wisest of decisions, but it made the most sense, and for a few weeks it worked fine. But reports from the students and the faculty—and even his own discussions with Randal as time progressed—led Coxwell to question the wisdom of the act. Randal’s reaction to the death of Dr. Markowitz and young Linden was the most troubling, and it led to many quiet meetings among the university’s peer oversight group about what should be done.
After the twelfth day, Randal contacted Dean Coxwell via a short message left on his campus telephone line. Randal’s voice shook and at times was barely above a whisper, but he urged the dean to visit him in his apartment home, said it was urgent, and asked only that the notes and dissertation from Randal’s office be brought as well. They were too important to be left behind, he stressed.
Randal’s apartment was located off of Speedvale Avenue, in a nearly vacant industrial park. Dean Coxwell’s windbreaker was too slight for the weather, but he hoped the trip would be a quick one, lasting only long enough to inform Randal that he was not needed back. The board had agreed to withdraw any offers previously presented and cancel the class for the remainder of the semester. It would be a financial nightmare, but there was little they could do. The dean climbed the warped wooden stairs to Randal’s apartment, his speech practiced until it was near-rote, but once he witnessed the repellent squalor in which Randal lived he forgot what he had intended to say.
If Dean Coxwell were to squint, the remnants of a well-kept residence were there, hidden beneath the mess. Walls were straight and painted brightly, the wood of the bookcases was solid and not the particle board so many students bought. Plates and glassware were unique and upholstery intact. Even the artwork on the wall was more than a series of film posters. And yet, covering the bulk of the room were unclean blankets and rags, overturned mugs whose coffee formed dark brown stains like blood. There was the pervasive odor of sweat. Dean Coxwell pulled his arms closer to avoid contact with anything.
“Dean? Is that you?” The voice was hoarse, a whisper straining for more. It originated in one of the rooms.
“Yes, Mr. Souris.”
“Please come in here.”
Dean Coxwell scowled as he stepped over the remnants of a half-eaten pasta meal and into the bedroom. He was surprised to find Randal was not confined to bed but instead in a wing-back armchair. His legs were covered by a blanket; his swollen head tilted up, mouth agape, as he stared at the ceiling. On the other side of the room, close to Coxwell, was a desk covered with sheaves of loose paper, two microscopes, and a large glass stone. As the dean reached it, Randal tilted his head to reveal a startling degradation of flesh. And a pair of clouded white eyes.
“That’s close enough. Even after everything, I’m still not sure about the radius of infection. There’s a chair somewhere . . .” Randal pointed, but at nothing. Which is where he faced as he blindly spoke to Coxwell. “I can imagine your reaction to coming here. It was probably the same as mine when I discovered Olivia. The truth is, I’m not going to survive much longer. That’s why I need you here. I need to warn someone about what’s going to happen. Dr. Markowitz, Linden, Olivia—they each had only a piece of the puzzle. It took me to put it together. Not that I’ll be remembered for it.”
“Randal,” Coxwell said, “We need to call an ambulance. You need to be at the hospital.”
“No, the time for that is long gone.” He blinked several times in succession. “You need to listen now. I only wish I could have told you sooner, but I’ve been delirious for days. It’s only through force of will I’ve managed to cobble together this much rationality, enough to explain things to you. I hope you remember that later, when people start to ask questions. You’ll tell them, right? That I alone was able to keep it together, even this close to the end?”
“What are you talking about?”
Randal grimaced, then motioned again toward the desk. Scattered across it were a series of frantically scrawled notes weighted down by the large glass stone. Some pages were full of crude diagrams, others strange patterns, yet none were in any discernible order, and Coxwell was disturbed to find that many appeared to be stained with blood. Mixed in with them were photographs of the stone at different distances and angles, including a number of microscopic images of its scratches, marked by circles and symbols and further scrawled words.
“I don’t understand, Randal,” he said. “What is all this?”
“I took everything from Olivia’s when she—when what’s happening to me happened first to her. I figured it was finally my ticket.”
“Ticket to what? What’s happening to you?”
“Do you see the large blue folder on the desk, beneath my research? Those are Olivia’s notes. Markowitz and Linden unwittingly discovered something on their expedition, and while I was too busy and blinded by establishing my name to notice, she was trying to piece everything together. It’s a very interesting read. She didn’t understand the whole picture—she wasn’t wired that way—but she figured out most of it. There are a few a sections I’ve marked. Can you see them? Good. Please read them to me so I can explain.”
The dean turned the pages in the worn folder until he reached the first of the highlights. He lifted the note closer to his face and removed his glasses. His eyes had some trouble focusing on the tight cursive.
It’s been three days and I don’t feel any better. If anything, I’m progressively getting worse. I wish Linden were here to help me. He’d know what was going on. He always knew what was going on. But he’s not here. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
Things that have been no help: the hospital, my doctor, the Internet, none of the med students I know. Nobody has any idea what’s happened, and I’m not sure I would trust them if they thought they knew. There’s only one person who can help me with this.
“You think she meant me, don’t you?” Randal said. “I know I did, the first time I read through her papers. I mean, who else could it be? But it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been, because she never asked. I wish she had—maybe the two of us could have figured it out. Did you know I was in love with her? I barely like anybody, but I think I loved her. I tried to tell her a number of times, but somehow she still ended up with Linden. God, how I hated him. When he was gone, it seemed like everything was finally going my way.” Randal’s chuckle turned into a wet cough. “Keep reading.”
Dean Coxwell flipped forward a few pages.
Randal seemed excited in his weird way about the possibility that these micro-organisms were from outer space. I wanted to talk to him more about it, but things got weird again. Still, I know he’d have some ideas. How is it possible that something like this could be here for so long and nobody ever knew about it? How did Dr. Markowitz know to go looking there? Before they left, Linden said there were satellite reports, but he was vague and like an idiot I never pressed it. Now I really wish I had. That glass rock is the key to everything. I need to study it better, study these micro-organisms better. I haven’t felt as bad in the last few days as I did that first time, and the spores in my skin must have fallen out at some point, but I don’t want to put this aside. I need to solve this puzzle. It’s the only way to make sure Linden and Dr. Markowitz didn’t die for nothing. The only way to make sure they are remembered. Thank God Randal and I are on the same page about this!
“This part made me happy, initially. Until I realized how betrayed I was. Olivia loved science almost as much as I do. Certainly more than Linden. Yet I don’t know why she never mentioned her plan to me. The creatures Markowitz found infest and reproduce inside a human. They gestate, and when they’re done . . . well, I can tell you it’s not pretty. Markowitz set out to find a species that would help us better prepare for space, a species that would help us explore. Little did he know that not only could the colonies he found survive in space, but space was where they came from. They landed in a crater millions of years ago, fortunately at the bottom of the Pacific, which I suspect was the only reason they remained so isolated, enough at least to give us mammals a head start on re-colonization. They probably would have stayed down there a lot longer if Markowitz had any idea what he was doing and left well enough alone. But he pushed it so he might assure his legacy. Keep reading.”
“Randal, I really think you should—”
“Keep reading,” Randal said. Dean Coxwell obeyed, if only because he wanted to understand what had been happening at the Sandstone laboratories while his attentions had been elsewhere. The rest of the pages in the folder had been crumpled then smoothed, and those that weren’t missing had been fused together with blood.
The glass rock is the most interesting piece of this whole puzzle. I spent hours looking through the stereo microsocope at it, looking at the scratches that the colonies were clinging to. I knew I saw something there, but I couldn’t figure out what. I had to get Nehls—
“You remember Nehls? In the Electron Imaging Laboratory? I needed to be sure. Go on.”
—to let me use the electron microscope again so I could take more pictures. It took a bit of convincing, especially when he asked if this was part of Randal’s secret project. I haven’t told a soul, so Randal probably mentioned it, which surprised me, though you’d think by now I’d be used to it. To be on the safe side, I kept it quiet—it’s probably safer that way. Nehls eventually relented and let me use the microscope, but the results were even more bizarre.