Page 16 (1/2)

He tucks the blanket around me, and with one fluid motion heaves me out of the bunk and over his shoulder As a definitively infected civilian, I’m pretty shocked

"Chill, zo to a better place now"

I believe hi to die after all

26

THEY TAKE ME to a quarantined floor at the base hospital reserved for plague victiet an ars I’m treated by a woman who introduces herself as Dr Pam She has soft eyes, a calht bun And she sled with a hint of perfuether

I have a one-in-ten chance of survival, she tells h I s One in ten? And here I was thinking the plague was a death sentence I couldn’t be happier

Over the next two days, my fever soars to a hundred and four I break into a cold sweat, and even my sweat is flecked with blood I float in and out of a delirious twilight sleep while they throw everything at the infection There is no cure for the Red Death All they can do is keepdecides whether it likes the way I taste

The past shoves its way in So next to me, sometimes Mom, but most of the tih a diaphanous curtain of blood The ward recedes behind the red curtain It’s just me and the invader inside me and the dead--not just my family, but all the dead, all however- Running And it occurs toand the dead; it’s just a matter of tense: past-dead and future-dead

On the third day, the fever breaks By the fifth, I’un to clear The red curtain pulls back, and I can see the ward, the gowned and masked doctors and nurses and orderlies, the patients in various stages of death, past and future, floating on the gentle sea ofwheeled out of the room with their faces covered, the present-dead

On the sixth day, Dr Pam declares the worst over She ordersto miss my morphine

"Notet back on your feet We’re going to need you"

"Need me?"

"For the war"

The war I re into the tent and they’re inside us!

"What’s going on?" I ask "What happened here?"

She’s already turned away, handinghi him to the exam room at fifteen hundred hours, after he’s clear of thehiar near the entrance to the base Everywhere I look, there’re signs of the recent battle Burned-out vehicles, the rubble of de, pockmarked asphalt, and three-foot-wide craters from mortar fire But the security fence has been repaired, and beyond it I can see a no-man’s-land of blackened earth where Tent City used to be

Inside the hangar, soldiers are painting huge red circles on the shiny concrete floor There are no planes I’h a door in the back, into an examination room, where I’m heaved onto the table and left alone for a few ht fluorescent lights What’s with the big red circles? And how did they get the power back on? And what did she hts fro in every direction What happened here? If the aliens attacked the base, where are the dead aliens? Where’s their downed spacecraft? How did we ence thousands of years more advanced than ours--and defeat it?

The inner door opens, and Dr Paht in s, thuray pellet about the size of a grain of rice

"What’s that?" I ask I half expect her to say it’s an alien spaceship: We’ve discovered they’re the size of an a device, hooked into the base’s hly classified, been used by thepersonnel Each pellet transnature that can be picked up by detectors as far as a mile away To keep track of us, she tells ives me a shot in the back of my neck to numb me, then inserts the pellet under es the insertion point, then helpsroo chair that reminds me of a dentist’s A computer and monitor She helps me into the chair and proceeds to tie me down: straps across my wrists, straps across my ankles Her face is very close to e today over the disinfectant in the Odor Wars She doesn’t miss my expression "Don’t be scared," she says "It isn’t painful"

Scared, I whisper, "What isn’t?"

She steps over to thein coraed to one of the infested," Dr Pam explains Before I can ask what the hell an infested is, she rolls on: "We’re not sure what the infesteds had been using it for, but we know it’s perfectly safe Its code name is Wonderland"

"What’s it do?" I ask I’ht-Patterson and hacked into its coet the word infested out ofinto ram," she answers Which really isn’t an answer

"What does it , unco whether to tell the truth "Itdown from three…two…one…"

And the universe implodes

Suddenly I’ on to the sides oflike so that day; I’ ot I had

Ten now, riding hooldfish in ht yellow dress

Thirteen, it’s a Friday night, I’ deep

The reel begins to slow I feel like I’s kick helplessly against the restraints, strapped in tight, running