I have to admit, I didn’t know which way to go, but looking at Tim Tom’s face I spoke up, “Go ahead Tim Tom, give it to him.” Tim Tom understood.
“What the hell Joe? I thought you were a soldier!”
“Do you know how loud he’s going to get if he starts starving to death in there?”
Eric shut up at that, but he wasn’t happy.
“Thanks big guy,” the voice said to Tim Tom as he slid a steak and some bread through the slot in the door, which I guess they feed the dangerous ones through. “Do you happen to have any A1?”
Then he laughed, and it gave me the fucking chills.
Luckily, most of the rooms on the floor were empty so we had a few beds and could make do with the couches too. Maybe I was feeling a little too safe in here, but I let Tim Tom and the Doctor take the first watch while I wrote in my journal and got a little shut eye. They didn’t wake me up for my shift.
CHAPTER EIGHT
From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates
12/24/2012
I had stayed up all night. Quite frankly I just couldn’t sleep and working all night was not that uncommon to me, I’d always needed less sleep than your average person. But having a problem to solve like this, well, there was simply no way I could sleep. I had to know what was going on, what was causing this. It’s just in my nature.
The computer at the nurses’ station was still working, as was the electricity, for now. The internet was still there too, for who knows how long, so I saved or printed anything and everything I thought might matter, starting with the news reports from the first outbreak, the professor at Oxford.
“Dr. Peter Neworth, a professor of linguistics at Oxford, and an expert on runology. I found numerous articles about him and even scholarly papers by him on various language related subjects. He had an impressive resume to say the least; ancient Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic, just a few of the ancient languages he had studied and translated into English for scholarly discussion. He’d delved into rituals like the Dionysian Mysteries, Templar writings, and other esoteric areas. But I kept coming back to the runes, feeling like maybe this meant something.”
“And?” Jude asked, taking notes in his journal. I’d found him wandering the halls this morning, terrified, not having any idea what was going on. I calmed him down and got him to read his journal to catch up and I must say; he is taking the end of the world pretty well.
“Well, I don’t know what it means, really. What I’m thinking is completely illogical, nothing I would normally put stock in but…well, let me give you exhibit B first. The Pattern.”
“Pattern?”
“Yes, from the news reports it looks like he was the first to… act out, to succumb. Then more at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Cornell.”
“Universities.”
“Yes. At first. Then it was students, young people. Most of the reports the second and third day were of younger people — an engineer, a programmer, college students — then the riots broke out and the news became so scattered, the violence so widespread, it became hard to follow the pattern.”
“What about today?”
“Today? Today I haven’t found any news. No official reports, no blog updates, no tweets. At least not in English.”
“Not in English?”
“No, but there are some in French, German, Spanish. I know a little Spanish and can tell from the pictures that they were reporting about killings and riots in their own countries. And more reports in Arabic, Chinese, etc. that appeared to be about what was happening in the US, but I didn’t see any pictures indicating that it was going on there, yet.”
“Yet?”
“It is, I would assume, only a matter of time. It’s probably starting already.”
“So, where are you going with this?”
“Well, at first I thought virus or some other communicable disease. Then maybe toxins, some sort of weapon or terrorist attack.”
“You saw reports in Arabic and Chinese, maybe it was one of them, terrorism or an act of war.”
“No, it’s so widespread, it doesn’t fit the pattern of diseases. And attacks, why start with universities? No, there was a report from China the first day, I suspect that the government there has simply cracked down on any other reports.”
“Then the middle east? Iran?”
“No, I have another theory, one which maybe doesn’t even make as much sense as a biological or chemical weapon, but, well, here it is. There is this phrase.”
“Yeah, it was in my journal, worm milk…”
“Stop! Don’t repeat it. And, I must urge you, if you have written it down, scratch out most of it. Save the first few words, just so you can recognize it.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how long the whole phrase is, or if any of us have heard or seen the whole thing, but I urge you to make sure you don’t have it written down anywhere. So scratch most of it out, and leave just the first couple of words.”
“I’m not following.”
“OK, come look at this.”
I took him to the nurses’ station and sat down by the computer. Then I brought up the video I had saved, the video of the President, addressing a nation in turmoil.
“My… fellow Americans. We are facing…”
He paused, he seemed to be struggling.
“Our darkest hour.”
He was visibly sweating.
“A threat, a crisis, like no other we as a nation… worm.”
He whispered it.
“Or as a world, have ever… milk”
This time was louder.
“My heart, in my chest, these words from my mouth. This wound from this sea of violence…”
He wasn’t making sense. Someone in the crowd started chanting. There was a commotion and a secret service person opened fire on what I assumed were reporters and on the Presidents face, instead of shock, we saw rage. Then it was over, the camera turned off.
“Fucking shit.”
“You heard it, yes?”
“The words? Of course. But I don’t understand.”
“I think… I think it is something like a virus.”
“But you said…”
“A computer virus.”
“What?”
“A virus that spreads through information, through language, and infects the mind. Like a virus would infect a computer’s software.”
“How is that even possible?”
“It’s not. It shouldn’t be. But that is what I believe.”
“Then, everything is gone? The President…”
“The government, society, at least here, collapsed, yes, gone. From everything I can tell.”
“How come we aren’t?”
“Well, that’s another part of why I believe my theory is correct. The professor at Oxford, he was the first day. Then there were more the second day. Maybe it takes a while to set in. And you, perhaps you simply can’t remember it long enough for it to affect you.”
Jude was silent, thinking, so I continued.
“And Timothy, perhaps it is that he cannot understand it, so it doesn’t affect him. Same with some of the other patients who are, well, less responsive. And Cassie, well, her paranoia about computers and TV and radio, might actually have protected her.”
“What about you, Doc? And Eric, and the rest?”
“I don’t know, Jude, I don’t know. Perhaps, being somewhat isolated here, we haven’t been fully exposed. Like I said, I don’t even know if I have seen or heard the whole phrase. Or, maybe, it is too late for us, maybe it is only a matter of time.”
“So what do we do with you?”
From the journal of Timothy Lorne