Chapter 25: Quiet Little Voices
After a week and a half, the 2nd Mass had settled in to William Harrison General Hospital quite comfortably. Everyone was making use of the facilities they had been without for so long, especially the industrial laundry. Casey had never seen so many people so thrilled to be washing clothes. She'd barely needed one machine to wash all her and Etta's things. Casey hadn't realised how few clothes she had. Etta had more clothes than she did, but that was due to Lee and Casey raiding the nursery. Casey had been reluctant to go there at first as she'd been concerned about seeing teeny tiny bodies wrapped in the same blankets Etta was using. But there was no one, dead or alive, anywhere in the hospital. And that included the nursery.
The only smells that greeted Casey as she opened hospital doors were mothballs and antiseptic. No decay or decomposition. Casey guessed the hospital had never even had a patient, and thought maybe it was just about ready to open to the public when alien spaceships came soaring into the atmosphere.
After resting for their first few days at the hospital, Casey found herself naturally waking up at around seven in the morning. Etta was usually awake by then but she rarely cried in the mornings. Until she saw someone was awake, then she started screeching. The 2nd Mass had quickly settled back into their routine with the cooks organising the cafeteria and the soldiers setting up guards around the perimeter. All the medical equipment was moved up to the third level where Anne was boss, and Jamil had a whole mess of apprentices working on keeping the electricity running smoothly.
On the Friday of their second week at William Harrison General, Casey dropped off Etta in the cafeteria where Matt and the other kids were starting their school lessons again, and took two boiling hot cups of coffee towards the triage ward. Two days after the 2nd Mass had arrived in the hospital, Weaver had ordered the beds cleared out of the triage ward and the equipment sent to Anne, and then he designated the space for morning meetings with his soldiers. And that would be every morning, at nine o'clock sharp, no excuses.
But, despite herself, Casey found that quite an easy rule to obey. Perhaps it was the comfort and ease of sleeping in a bed again. There was no rain battering her tent or roars of bikes speeding through camp. She had a nice, dark, quiet room and a clean comfy bed. Casey figured this was partly why she had never been late to a meeting. Lee, despite sleeping in the bed right next to Casey, always seemed to be rushing to make the deadline. But Lee was always in her seat before the clock hit nine. Tom, however, was either late or slipped through the door right on time. Everyone knew why. Since arriving at the hospital, it hadn't gone unnoticed by anyone that Tom and Anne were sharing a room now. Casey didn't blame him for not wanting to get out of bed. Or her, for that matter.
Casey backed through the swinging doors into the meeting room being careful not to spill the coffee. The triage ward had been transformed into sort of a classroom with one main desk up the front for Weaver a dozen or so chairs in rows lined up before him for the soldiers.
As Casey walked to her chair she noticed Weaver leaning over his desk. He didn't look well. He was the only member of the 2nd Mass who looked less rested since they'd been at the hospital. He looked like he hadn't slept, but Casey knew for a fact that he had because more than once she'd passed his room and he was in there snoring. But even though he looked so wrecked, that didn't mean he let up on his soldiers. He was still there, dressed in his uniform and ready to go every morning.
Casey slid into her usual spot in a chair next to Lee and handed her the mug of coffee. Lee was messing with a long piece of maroon fabric. "What is that?" Casey asked.
"It's for you," Lee swivelled in her chair and started tying the fabric around Casey's head.
"Aw, yay - ow," Casey flinched as Lee pulled her hair while fastening the knot way too tight. "I don't think I'm built for bandanas."
"Yeah, your head is weirdly shaped," Lee loosened the bandana and pulled it down over Casey's eyes. "Better."
"You suck," Casey slid off the bandana and tied it around her ponytail in a bow.
"Alright," Weaver cleared his throat at the front of the room. "Let's get started."
There was the familiar shuffle of bodies and chairs scraping across the ground; it took Casey right back to primary school. Aside from every one of the "students" being heavily armed.
Weaver scanned the room with a haggard look in his eyes. He instantly looked twenty years older. "Firstly, I wanted to thank you all for signing up for guard duty without me even asking. That's the kind of work I like to see, but it's few and far between. I'm glad most of you seem to make it to these meetings on time, but-"
"Hi," Tom burst into the room straightening his shirt collar over his jacket. "Sorry."
"That's twice this week, Tom." Weaver scolded him.
Tom took a seat up the front. "Yes, sir."
"Well, that just underlines the main point of the discussion that we're going to have this morning." Weaver said to the group. "Fact is, this whole company become too relaxed, too complacent. I can see it already in the neglected chores and the sloppy drilling, the tardiness."
"Captain, with all due respect," Tom spoke up. "2nd Mass has been through quite a lot these last few months. A little R&R can't be a bad thing."
"I disagree, Tom." Weaver argued. "It can be the death of us. We cannot afford to let our guard down for even one single day." He lifted his mug from his desk and took a sip. "Now, this whole reason, the point we stopped here was to restock and prep for the long haul to Charlest-" he stopped suddenly.
His pause caught everyone's attention. Weaver wasn't one to stumble during a speech, especially to his soldiers. Casey straightened in her chair and saw Weaver was still holding his mug, but it was shaking in his hands. He lowered it, but it banged against his desk as he tried to set it down evenly. Then all of a sudden he just slumped forwards.
"Captain?" Tom rose out of his chair.
"Hold on," Weaver panted and tried to right himself. "I'm fine. Gonna be all right," he pushed up off the desk and began to fiddle with the button on his left shirt cuff. He stumbled backwards. "Just push the-"
Whoomp!
Weaver slammed back into the wall so hard the windows shook. Everyone jumped out of their seats but not before Weaver lifted off the ground and slammed into the wall again, higher. Like he was being picked up thrown by some supernatural force. Casey flew from her chair, fell to her knees and skidded to Weaver's side. Tom was right beside her.
Weaver seemed to be unable to breathe, his breath was coming in sharp bursts like he'd just run ten miles. "What's happening?" Weaver gasped. "What's happening?"
"Captain, hold still," Casey tried to steady his body but he seemed to keep involuntarily jerking out of the way.
Tom tried turn Weaver's head towards him, but he stopped when he noticed something on Weaver's neck. "What is this?" Tom pulled down the front of Weaver's shirt.
Casey body went rigid. "Oh, my God." Weaver's chest was red – not pink, red – with some sort of violent rash. It seemed to cover his whole chest, so Casey checked Weaver's arm where he'd been fiddling with the button. "Oh, Hell." The rash was all over him, and the veins in his wrist were like thick, purple shoelaces bulging out of his skin.
"Somebody go get Dr. Glass!" Tom screamed over his shoulder, people were already running out calling Anne's name.
"What have they done to me?" Weaver's began to shudder. "What have those damn aliens done to me, Tom?" His body jerked violently backwards like he'd been hit with a Taser.
"Hold him!" Casey cried. He was thrashing so forcefully Casey couldn't keep her grip on him. "Hold him steady!"
"Aarrch!" Weaver screamed, his body went taut and then suddenly he fell silent.
The culprit for Weaver's illness was quickly confirmed by Anne to be the skitter harness bite on his leg. Casey's stomach flipped when she saw it for the first time. The bite was seriously infected, or poisoning him, or both. The skin on his calf was red like a deep, abrasive burn, and the skin around the bite had swollen. The tissue was crusting and flaking, and it was covered in a translucent wetness. The purple bulging veins weren't localised to Weaver's wrist, the veins on his legs and ankles were the same. He was fading in and out of consciousness, and right now was in a clearly distressed sleep. Anne ripped off Weaver's pant leg to get a better look at the bite, but she didn't seem to have any idea what to do.
Weaver was sweating, but when Lourdes got Casey a bowl of cold water and a washcloth to cool him down, Casey discovered Weaver didn't have a temperature. She put her palm to his forehead. "Anne, he's cold." Casey said.
"I know," Anne moved away from his leg and set her hands on her hips. "His body should be heating up, using energy to fight the infection."
"But he was bitten weeks ago," Casey pointed out. "Wouldn't an infection have set in earlier? Or killed him already?"
"Well, like I told Tom, my theory is that this toxin or parasite or whatever is slow acting," Anne said. "And it needed time to incubate and mature. Like larvae or eggs; I don't know."
"But then why is he cold?" Casey questioned. "Even if it was slow to kick in, shouldn't he be fighting this infection like any other infection?"
"I don't know," Anne repeated helplessly. "But what I do know is that his temperature is dropping so we have to warm him up." She grabbed the thin blanket from around Weaver's middle and pulled it up higher. "Casey, there are blankets in the storeroom at the end of the hall, bring me as many as you can carry. Lourdes, go ask Jamil if he found a heater around here. Maybe if we can stabilise his body temp, he'll improve."
Casey nodded and fled out of the room with Lourdes. Lourdes took the stairs while Casey ran to the end of the hall to the storeroom were the shelves were lined with hospital blankets and towels. Casey began to stack blankets in her arms when Tom stuck his head in the storeroom door.
"How is he?" Tom asked.
"The same, I dunno," Casey shrugged. "Anne told me to get blankets so I'm getting blankets." As Casey lifted a stack of blankets under each arm, she noticed the troubled look on Tom's face. "Why, what's wrong?"
"We don't have the diesel to get the 2nd Mass to Charleston," Tom said. "Weaver had Jamil drain our diesel vehicles to keep the hospital generators going, but Jamil says we've only got enough diesel left for maybe twelve more hours."
Casey organised about a half dozen blankets under her arms and headed back out into the hall. "Okay, so what are we doing?"
"I'm having Dai organise three scouting parties," Tom said, following her. "Jamil's giving them enough fuel for four hours out and four hours back. Right now, we're going to start shutting down all the power in the hospital except for here in the ICU. Jamil thinks that'll double the time we have left."
Casey stopped in the middle of the hall. "So, what we hope that the scouts find fuel or Weaver dies?"
Tom shook his head. "He won't die." He said firmly. "Can you keep helping Anne while I deal with the Karen situation?" He brushed passed her.
"Okay. Wait, what?" Casey dropped one armful of blankets and grabbed Tom back by his elbow. "Karen? Hal's Karen? What do- she's here?"
Tom looked confused. "You didn't know?"
"Does it sound like I do?"
"Hal and Maggie found her amongst the bodies of a bunch of de-harnessed kids," Tom explained. "All dead, except for her. She's resting now in a secure room in the psych ward, but Ben says we can't trust her. Her harness is gone, but he says she's still connected to them."
"No one tells me anything," Casey mumbled and picked up the stack of blankets she'd dropped. "Okay, well what do you think about Karen?"
"I don't know. Hal trusts her, Ben doesn't. I just asked Anne to check her out, but right now my biggest concern is Weaver." Tom gave Casey a reassuring smile. "Just stick with him, okay? I'll get the word out for everyone to pack up and get loaded for Charleston. There's no time to lose."
"Okay. But Etta-"
"Lee's got her; she's fine." Tom said as he took off. "They're packing up your room; don't worry."
Casey jogged back into Weaver's room just as Anne was rushing out of it. She told Casey she'd be as quick as she could with Karen, and to just try and warm Weaver up. Casey moved a chair from against the wall to beside Weaver's bed, set the blankets on it and started covering him. She kept the first blanket folded once over and laid it across Weaver's legs. She did the same with a second blanket over his middle and then a third over his chest. Then she shook out another blanket and laid it over him up to his neck. She gathered another blanket around his head to keep whatever heat he was managing to generate from escaping. He looked so sick, Casey couldn't believe he'd been on his feet just a couple of hours ago. Her father hadn't looked this bad on the day he died. Then again, he'd had a massive heart attack and just dropped dead. Maybe when a person died so suddenly, their body didn't have a chance to degrade or look sickly and sort of just froze in time. The day her father died, Casey clearly remembered standing in the hospital and wondering why the doctors were apologising to her and her mother when her father was so obviously just asleep on that operating table.
Weaver, on the other hand, looked like he was dying. His skin was washed out and grey, and his chest kept heaving like each breath was more strenuous for him to inhale than the last. It was as though his body was deteriorating right before Casey's eyes.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Casey mumbled to him. She'd overheard Anne telling Tom that Weaver begged her not to discuss his ailing health with anyone. Anne had been trying her best to treat the bite on her own for the past couple of weeks, but nothing had worked. "With all due respect, Captain, you are a stupid man."
Weaver eyes twitched and he turned his head towards Casey. "Jeannie?"
"No, sorry, Cap," Casey tucked the blanket in around his neck. "It's just me."
"Oh," he seemed to attempt to smile. "That's what she'd call me." He wheezed another breath. "A stupid, stupid man."
Casey smiled to herself and felt his forehead with the back of her hand to see if he was any warmer. He wasn't. "She's a smart girl."
Weaver lifted his arm out of the blankets. It took him a lot of effort, but he opened his eyes, reached for Casey's hand off his forehead and squeezed it. "Casey, you get that girl of yours to Charleston," he told her. "You get her there, she needs to be safe." His eyes began to close, but he didn't let go of Casey's hand. Instead he held it securely in his own and rested it against his chest. "You gotta keep 'em safe."
Casey lowered herself into the chair by the bed and laid her other hand over his. "I will," she said quietly. "Don't worry. Just rest."
Lourdes soon reappeared with two heaters. After she hooked them up and Anne returned, they checked Weaver's temperature every ten minutes for almost two hours. And finally; they had some good news. Weaver's temperature was rising. Anne and Lourdes engaged in a conversation that Casey could only half understand since every second word included a medical suffix she had never heard before, but they seemed to have a plan.
Just before the sun set, Anne sent Casey to retrieve Tom, Dai and Jamil and bring them to Weaver's room. Casey found Jamil and Dai outside rationing fuel and grabbed Tom on his way out of the cafeteria. When they returned to Weaver's room, Anne and Lourdes both appeared energised with renewed hope.
"We think we've come up with something," Anne told Tom. "Well, Lourdes, actually."
"It really started with the Captain being hypothermic," Lourdes explained. "His body temperature has been dropping. And that doesn't make any sense since the normal reaction to an infection is an elevated temperature, a fever. But that's not what's happening here."
"So we wondered if the pathogen needed a cooler host environment to survive," Anne said. "Which is why it's moving through the capillary system nearest to the surface of the skin. So we've been raising Captain Weaver's core temperature back up with heaters and blankets, and that's slowed the pathogen down, but hasn't stopped it."
"And that's when I remembered something from my immunology class." Lourdes said. "A technique called extracorporeal hyperthermia."
"The idea, as crazy as it sounds," said Anne. "Is we pump out Captain Weaver's blood, warm it to over one-hundred-and-five degrees, then we pump it back into his body. That change in temperature should at least disrupt the growth of the pathogen if not killing it altogether."
Tom looked almost amused. "You're right, that sounds crazy."
"The technique has been used to treat cancer and Aids." Lourdes told him.
"Okay," Tom scratched at the back of his neck. "Assuming for half a second that that's even possible, how do you do that without killing him?"
Anne gave him a shaky smile. "Well, that's where Jamil comes in."
It took Jamil a half second to realise his name had been spoken. "Me?"
Lourdes gave him an almost pleading look. "All we need is a way to pump and recirculate the captain's blood through a heating element."
Jamil looked bewildered. "That's all?"
"This is a hospital," Anne said. "I know we can find the raw materials and machines you'd need."
After a few moments, Jamil gave a semi-confident nod. "I'll see what I can do."
"There's no other choice, is there?" Tom sighed. "Okay. Just do it. But in the meantime, we keep prepping for Charleston. As soon as those scouting parties get back with fuel, we're on the road."
So Tom went back to organising the 2nd Mass while Jamil tried to come up with something to save Weaver's life. Almost three hours went by and none of Dai's fuel search parties had returned. Casey stayed put by Weaver's bed but could do nothing but rearrange his blankets as he grew weaker and weaker. His brief flashes on consciousness came less frequently and lasted for only a few seconds.
The sun set and the hospital quickly darkened without electricity. The 2nd Mass went back to flashlights, candles and lanterns. Lourdes and Casey lit a line of candles on the window sill of Weaver's room and that made things easier. It also warmed things up which, in a room with two heaters, was not so welcome. But, according to Anne, any extra heat they could generate for Weaver was a good thing. So while outside the 2nd Mass were wandering around in jackets and scarves, Casey and Lourdes were in a singlet and t-shirt respectively.
One of the candles burnt out, so Casey rose from her chair by Weaver's bed to light it. The room was facing the entrance to the hospital, and while Casey struck a match she also heard rumbling truck engines nearing the hospital. She peered over the candles, careful to keep her hair from igniting, and saw two of the 2nd Mass trucks pulling into the ambulance bay. Casey tried to see who was behind the wheel, but once the engines were turned off and the headlights out, Casey couldn't see anything.
Casey looked over at Lourdes who was fiddling with the buttons on one of the heaters. "I think one of the scout parties is back." Casey said.
"Oh, thank goodness." Relief seemed to wash over Lourdes delicate face. "Anne's down there, she'll have them put it right in the generators."
Casey set her hands on her hips and walked back to Weaver's bedside. "He doesn't look any better." She said.
"His temperature's still rising." Lourdes said hopefully.
Casey felt Weaver's forehead with her hand again, and let out tight breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding in. There was definitely heat coming through Weaver's skin, but he still looked pale, ghostly, and had the appearance of someone twice his age.
"Here! Here!" Anne's voice suddenly echoed through the hall outside.
Lourdes looked worriedly over her shoulder, but didn't move from her spot by Weaver's bed. "That sounds bad."
"Wait here," Casey said to Lourdes. "I'll go check it out."
Casey quickly exited the room and saw Anne leading a little convoy of people up the hallway. Just behind Anne came Dai and Tom, and Casey felt her mouth fall open. Suspended between Tom and Dai struggling to walk on his own two feet was Anthony. Following them was Lyle, and unconscious in Lyle's arms, Pope.
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