3

Chapter 3 of Disease

Shiva has come. There is no denying it. Who better to ruin a world than the Destroyer herself? The signs are there. Your “AD-952” is nothing more than the power of a god. All of your efforts are irrelevant, Mr. Thurman. You cannot save this Earth, for no man can fight against a god.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

Robert Thurman refused to wake up. He absolutely refused. His mind was too diseased, body too uncontrollable. He didn’t want to kill that man. He didn’t even know the man! All the guy did was give a joking blow to Robert’s leg. What had snapped in Roberts mind? What invisible string had chosen to come loose, and unleash the rage of a monster? It was almost as if….

Never. No. It wasn’t possible.

But then, it wasn’t impossible either.

Robert thought back to the days before the lab. The days just after the Burst, when his wife and daughter were still with him on a diseased planet. For the first time since it happened, Robert allowed his thoughts to flow back to those hellish days.

He and his family lived in Detroit when the clouds burst. Those days were best that Detroit had ever been. In early 2040, the city had just finished its long climb out of financial ruin. People were going to back to work for the first time in years, and they were actually getting paid enough to take care of their families. Crime had taken a nosedive from the mob and gang days of the early twenty-first century. Classes were even starting to merge together, everyone having more than enough to share. Charities blossomed, and people seemed to line up to give their money away. Detroit was quickly starting to be as charitable and loving as the North Pole. Robert Thurman himself was a prosperous corporate lab technician, working for a large drug company. He wasn’t loaded with money, but he did have more than enough to get by. He and his wife Elaine took the family on summer vacations to places like Hawaii, the Caribbean, and London. Jessica went to a well-known charter school, and had some of the best grades in the class. She had clearly inherited her father's brains, and was on track for a full-ride scholarship to Harvard the following year.

Then they first heard of AD-952.

The ads on TV all said that it was going to make the world a better place. That everyone and everything would be healthier because of it. They said it would clean up pollution like no other effort that had come before it. Robert himself had extensively researched the bacterium, and he believed it to be structurally sound.

How wrong he was.

“So this is the imbecile who thinks he can do whatever he wants in my house. Hello, little devil. Im gonna make your life exciting.” A deep, gravelly voice said from the doorway to Robert’s cell. Allowing his memories to dissolve, Robert stood up, opened his eyes, and viewed the largest man he had ever seen.

The man’s head nearly hit the top of the doorway, and he wore a deep scowl. Wearing a tight black t-shirt, Robert could easily see the muscles rippling beneath it. His skin was olive, and loaded with tattoos and scars. Several stretched up and down his arms, intense designs seemingly created by the pinched flesh. His eyes spoke of intense pain and hardship, maybe even rivaling Robert’s own. These two shared something deep in common, a brotherhood spawned by their experiences.

The man glared at Robert, as if accusing him because of his observations.

“You want something, punk? Or are you just waiting and trying to figure out a way to kill me like you did that one guy?” He snapped, covering the distance between them in two massive strides. Robert backed up quickly, almost running into the wall behind him. The man leaned right up in Robert’s face. “You think that just because you act sane sometimes, you can do whatever you want? Well, sunshine, I’m gonna break you. By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to wish that you would lose your mind.” He turned around and stomped out the door. “Follow me.” He said. Robert most certainly did, albeit warily.

* * *

“This is my favorite room.” The man said eagerly. “You wanna know why? Because it’s where idiots like you get put in their place.”

“Why?” Robert asked cautiously.

“Why? Because you get to do the worst tasks! Make you realize you’re the scum of the earth. Which is just how I like it,” The man proclaimed, and then laughed a bellowing laugh that swept across the room.

They were standing in an early 21st century style waste treatment plant. Inmates walked around evil-smelling vats, testing them and processing them. All had resigned and gloomy looks on their faces, and they watched Robert with a sadness that said, “Well, here comes another poor soul to lose his mind.” Robert shuddered with the thought of working with these vulgar materials. The man clapped him on the back.

“Yes sir, you get to work with these marvelous men. I fully hope that you’ll learn your lesson here, or else it’ll break the reforming streak they have here. Nobody who had to work in here ever wanted to come back, so they shaped up real quick.”

“Why am I here?” Robert said. The man looked at him quizzically.

“Because you killed a man, that’s why. You think you can just get away with that? You’re lucky we didn’t just shoot you then and there while you were crying like a maniac on the ground.”

“But he was trying to kill me!” Robert shouted, gesturing to himself.

“From a fight you started!” The man shouted back, shoving Robert back a step. “You can’t just act like you own the place! You are nothing, Robert. You are absolutely nothing, and as far as you’re concerned, I am God. So you will do what I say. Got it?”
“I DID NOT START THAT FIGHT!” Robert roared.

“I say you did, so that’s how it will be! You don’t seem to understand, my friend, that I could kill you with a single word. Your life and well-being are in my hands. So you’ll do as I say.”

Robert glared at him, fists clenched, but nodded.

“Good. I’ll let the foreman explain how things work down here. You’ll report to him for the duration of your work here.”

“And how long is that?” Robert asked brusquely. The man looked at him.

“Until I say you’re done.” He said as he walked away.

It wouldn’t be until later that Robert realized that the man had called him by his first name, in the same reverent manner that the men in his lab had called to him.

But that couldn’t possibly be right.

* * *

This room made Robert sick, in many different ways. The injustice of the situation made him boil inside, a soothing inferno of anger that was just waiting to be unleashed. Unleashed at the man who put him here, the foreman, anyone. Someone needed to pay for this.

The foreman had explained the job to him simply.

“You take a long stick, and poke it through this vat here to look for anything that might not belong.” He had said.

“What doesn’t belong?” Robert had replied. The foreman had looked at him with a strange look.

“Anything that isn’t crap or water.”

Robert had soon discovered that the job was easy, but disgusting. Poking a stick through a vat of evil goo wasn’t very eventful or flavorful. He soon took to sitting as far away from the vat as possible every few minutes to keep from tossing some new flavorful goo from his own body into the vat.

As he sat, day after day, he began to notice a pattern. Every three days, the big man in black would carry a big black box through one end of the plant to the other, going through the employees door to a storeroom down the hall. When he left, he carried the box casually, making Robert think that something had been taken out of it and subsequently made it lighter.

Robert didn’t know what had been in it, and neither did any of the other workers. They all thought it was plans for the institution, maybe access codes, or some sort of thing that the powers that be wanted to keep secret.

Either way, Robert knew that he had to get at it. Maybe he could get his revenge by destroying or taking whatever it was that the big man wanted to keep secret.

However, this would require planning.

Week after week, Robert observed the man going in and out of the room, marking exactly how long the man stayed in there and how long it was before Robert needed to get back to stirring the vat. He noted how long a window he would have to sneak in there, and kept his eyes on the foreman to see if his attentiveness would be a problem. Fortunately, it would not. Robert saw one of the other prisoners take some of the stuff from the vat, plop it over his head, and run around in circles singing children’s songs, and the foreman didn’t even give him a second glance.

This would be incredibly easy.

A few days later, while the foreman was off making his rounds, Robert left his stick in the vat, and slowly crept to the hallway leading to the storeroom. Looking around the corner, he saw the man just leaving the room to take a bathroom break. He always did this halfway through his time in the room, and Robert had timed it exactly. As the man continued down the hallway, Robert tiptoed quietly to the door, opened it ever so slowly, and slipped through the crack. Closing the door behind him, he turned around and saw the black box on a table, filled with something. He walked close enough to see what it was.

It was a bunch of files.

Robert stared in disbelief. This is what they store in here? All the time? Just files? He thought. Looking around the room, he saw endless boxes on shelves that stretched down to forever.

He fetched one of these boxes and slammed it down on the table, noting the cloud of dust that plumed up from the impact. He sliced open the tape on the box (and almost his finger) with a box cutter he had found on the table, pulled out a file, and looked at it quickly to see if there was anything useful; however, the name caught his eye. Ignoring the rest of the files, he opened this one and started to read it.

“Elaine Nelson. Age 26. Resident for 3 years. Diagnosis: Acute Agoraphobia and hypochondriasis. Notes: Ms. Nelson is supremely afraid of the Earth. Subject resided in her own home without leaving for a consecutive four years before admittance to CMHI. Intense hypochondriac, Subject washed her hands 20-22 times daily on average. Subject went to extremes by going as far as not leaving her room while it was raining outside. No reason given.”

The file ended there, but Robert sat, holding it in his hands for what seemed like an age. Elaine?

Here?

What kind of cruel, yet heavenly joke was this?

Did God realize how much he missed his wife?

How sorry Robert was for what he did?

Or was this mercy a second chance to reverse the effects of what he’d done?

Ignoring the file for the moment, Robert went on to the next one. He opened it and was immediately taken aback by the name there. Curiosity piqued, he started to read anew.

“Terrence Wiley. Age 34. Resident for Eight years. Diagnosis: Ekbom’s Syndrome. Subject is intensely adamant that, quote, “He has silent killer bacteria sitting in his body waiting to eat him alive.” Subject refuses to eat anything made out of plants, and only eats meat and processed foods. Takes 5 Vitamin supplements daily.”

Robert gasped, and dropped the file in disbelief.

"What's wrong, pretty boy? Is it hot, or are you just terrified of smashed wood pulp?" A voice snickered, causing Robert to whip around and blanch from fright, but it was only Darnell. He searched for the right words.

"No, it's just... Just..." He sighed. "It's just something I didn't expect to see here at a mental institution. It won't happen again." Robert looked down. “I should go. I’m not supposed to be here.” Darnell walked towards him, pulled over a couple of boxes, and sat down next to him.

"Geez, man. I'm not here to evaluate you. I'm trying to be as friendly as my diseased mind can allow me." He scoffed, slapping Robert on the back. Robert gave a wan smile, then turned back to the file. Darnell peered furtively at it. "Someone you know?" He asked. Robert just sat there a moment, then sighed again.

"I really have no idea. At all. Maybe I really am insane. I just don't know anymore." They both were silent for a minute,then Darnell spoke.

"Look, man, I get it. I really do. You think I just forgot who I used to be? I've had to live with this disease for ten years." He looked down, and both were silent for a bit. A moment later, Darnell’s head popped up.

“You want to hear my story?” He asked simply.

Robert nodded.

"They took me when I was a kid." He began speaking in a gloomy voice, a haunting look crossing over his weathered face. “I was twelve. Just began getting hair in weird places, and girls didn't seem so gross anymore. One day, I was playing with my little brothers, and I blacked out. I had no idea what was going on, and when I woke up, my little brother was screaming. He was on the ground, clutching at his nose. It had been twisted to the point where it was diagonal on his face. And all I did was stand there. I stood there as my little brother, one of the best parts of my life, lay writhing on the ground in agony."

"Eventually my ma came and saw what I had done, and she locked me in my room while she drove my brother to the hospital. I just sat there, like the crazy kid I was, and I could not for the life of me figure out how the heck I'd done that to him. I don't even know how I blacked out. It was like, one minute I'm sitting there with him and we're having fun, but the next I go loco on him and he's lying on the ground! How the heck does that even happen?"

"Anyway, my brother made it out okay, at least emotionally. But for the rest of the time we lived together, I could tell he absolutely resented me for it. Seriously, can you blame him? Honestly. Can you really blame a boy for holding a grudge against the brother who nearly killed him?"

"Luckily, the time we spent together after that wasn't too long. My mom got me in to see these psychiatrist folks, those kind of guys who act like they're trying to understand you, but really just want your money. My mum loved sending me to those. She thought they'd be legitimately helping me. That's a load of codswallop. They didn't help me at all. What I needed was my mummy to hold me and tell me that everything would be alright."

Darnell paused at this moment to catch his breath, allowing Robert's observations to coalesce into actual thoughts. He had noticed that every now and then, while telling the story, Darnell had switched back and forth between a heavy western accent and a quiet, thoughtful British one. It was truly intriguing. Here was evidence of Darnell's malady, plain as day. The man really was diseased, having started as an extremely intelligent human being, then being robbed of it through a relentless brain malfunction. It saddened Robert, made him pity and respect the man at the same time.

"But my mum refused to be there for me. She saw herself as the victim of a heavenly prank, receiving a brilliant son, only to have him turn out to be a lurking monster, waiting to ambush the family. It sickens me to realize exactly how much she truly loathed me, wished I didn't exist.” He laughed harshly. “Some messed up family, eh?” Robert just stared at him, their eyes meeting for several moments. Darnell turned away, coughed, looked up at the ceiling, and started yet again, this time in his western voice. “That was when they came for me. Just one day, right out of the big blue yonder, they came. Men in white suits, just like you hear about in movies. They came, and they smiled their big fake smiles, and told me they were taking me to a special place. Now, I’d seen the straps and scary metal machines in their car. I knew they weren’t safe people. But my mom actually hugged me, and smiled at me, and told me to go with ‘em. So I did. I mean, she had hugged me. That hadn’t happened for as long as I could remember. Little did I know, that was the last time I ever saw the witch who gave birth to me.” Darnell’s voice cracked on the last word, revealing his true feelings to Robert. It hurt Robert’s heart to see a man, so worthy of praise, to be broken like this. It was absolutely horrifying, and Robert barely noticed that Darnell had broken the silence again.

“I will admit, life was pretty easy in there. I didn’t have to make a single decision for myself, and I didn’t have to do any work. I just sat in this little room, all decked out in kid stuff, and waited for my next activity. That’s it. Day in and day out, that’s what I did.”

“And it was killing me. Literally killing me. I may have been sane when they first brought me into that place, but I was for sure going to be insane when I left it. All the orders, all the toys, all the tests, my mind couldn’t handle it. The toys even started echoing my thoughts, talking to me in my sleep. So I made a plan. Every day, I’d study. I was allowed to ask for some materials, and I asked for textbooks. Any textbook that I could get my hands on. And I studied. I learned biology, chemistry, Algebra, grammar, you name it. Over the years I learned all of the things you could find in a school. Eventually I was reading things like Ivanhoe, Don Quixote, and War and Peace. Stuff like that, classics, all before I was eighteen.”

“The wardens didn’t know what to think of it. Here they had a killer twelve year-old, a child who nearly murdered his brother, and only a few years later he was reading bloody Shakespeare. They started watching me closely, to see what I did when I thought they weren’t looking. It started small, things like a random guard showing up every now and then, but it didn’t stay like that. Pretty soon they were installing cameras in my room, my bed, even the spines of my books. And you know what they found? Nothing. Absolutely bloody nothing. I was a saint; I never did anything to misbehave. Consequently, they let me out the day I turned eighteen. They left me on the streets, with only some confiscated clothes and my mum's most recently known address.”

“I was grateful. Grateful that my plan had worked, grateful that they were stupid enough to fall for it. Because, you see, deep down, I wasn’t a saint. I was the devil himself. Deep beneath that charming exterior, there really was a monster, waiting to get out. The monster that had killed my brother. Except, this was a monster raised by those people at the “hospital”, the guards, and even my own mum. This was their fault, not the monster’s. And it wanted revenge.”

“I didn’t feed it, though. I fed myself. Those endless days of studying and studying had left me with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I wanted to know more, and nothing could stop me. I also didn’t want to have to live as a bum, washing cars and selling fast-food for the rest of my life. I wanted a degree; I wanted to make something of myself. So, with difficulty, I got my GED and proceeded to enter hundreds of scholarship contests. And you want to know something? I won almost all of them. Me, a kid who had spent the last six years of his life in a mental institution. I won two hundred and thirty-seven scholarships. The total came to about one hundred thousand pounds to send me to school. Therefore, since I had so much means, I chose to go to Oxford. Oh, the home of the wise, lair of the brilliant! I absolutely loved it there. The atmosphere, the smell of the rooms, the voices of the teachers. I was absolutely, inexplicably in love.”

“I worked for eight years to get my Ph.D in astrophysics, working late into the night and even to the next morning researching and brainstorming for my thesis. My flatmates thought I was crazy. ‘You’re twenty-three! Go to parties, get drunk, get a little action! Don’t waste your bloody life on maths!’”

“That almost stopped me. I'll admit that. They almost made me give up the thing I wanted the most. But the one thing that kept me going, the one thing that stopped me from losing my mind all over again, was the memory of my mum’s face as she watched me leave. I hadn’t paid much attention to it on the day that I left, but looking back, I remember seeing relief in her eyes. She was relieved, even a little joyful that her demon son was finally going somewhere that she would never have to be bothered by him again. It drove me, that look. It fueled my rage, which in turn fueled my studies. After eight years, I received my Ph.D and promptly set out to find a job where my talents would be appreciated.”

“It never came. My demons found me first. On my twenty-fourth birthday, I was searching through my closet looking for a paper I had stashed there, but I found the slip with my mother’s last known address on it. You know, the one that the ‘hospital’ gave me on the day I left. I still had it, after all these years. And I thought, for some inextricable reason, that I should see her. See how she was, what she was doing.”

“I was an idiot. My mother never wanted me, right from that day when it happened. She didn’t see her son anymore; she saw the devil that was inside me. But regardless of how she felt, I went to her old house in Essex to see her. Obviously, it was a different house. There’s no way she would stay in our old one, not with the memories. This one was much bigger, and much nicer. It’s as if she was trying to drown the filth of my act in the beauty of her surroundings. With the huge house and nice cars out front, she appeared to be succeeding.

“I knocked on the door, all dressed up in my nicest suit, and I had a bouquet of flowers. I waited for a moment, and then she opened it. My mother. The one who let me go. She looked so tired and worn out, it made me want to cry. Regardless of what I did or what she saw, it looked like she had worried about something or someone for her whole life.

She scrutinized me and the flowers for a second, then said tentatively, ‘Can I help you?’ She didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t really expecting her to, but it was still a disappointment. Regardless, I took off my hat and said ‘Mum, it’s me. William.’”

“The look on her face will haunt me for the rest of my days. Her eyes went wide, and her lip started trembling. She put her hand over her mouth to cover it, and started backing away slowly into the house. She went into a crescendo, starting as a whisper and getting lowly louder, ‘Go away. You aren’t real. You can’t be real. I’ve worked too hard for this to happen now. Not today. Leave now. Go. Go you bloody monster! GO!’” At this point, Darnell paused, tears glistening in his eyes. Robert stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. Eventually, he did.

“I dropped the flowers and followed her into the house. How could I not? I wanted to comfort her, to hold her, to tell her everything would be all right. She was my mother, for heaven’s sake. Just because she was being a screaming banshee didn’t change that. So I followed her into the house, yelling at her that it was I and I wouldn’t hurt her. She wouldn’t listen though. She grabbed a phone, dialed 999, and started screaming into it that her maniac son was coming to finish the job.”

“At that point, I lost control. Literally. I lost control of my body, and I became an innocent bystander in a violent game of cat-and-mouse. She started running through the house, cradling the phone like the rescue it was. While she was running around, I snuck to the outside shed and grabbed an ax I found there. I hefted it to check its weight, then stomped back to the house. I started going room by room, checking to see where she was. All the while I could hear myself saying ‘Come out, come out, milady. The knave has a special gift for you, and you won’t like it unless you come out.’ She wasn’t anywhere on the first floor, so I moved up to the second.”

“I could hear her whimpers the moment I made it to the top of the stairs. They sounded like a wounded animal hiding from a killer. Which is exactly what this was. I went into the master bedroom, and she was there holding a gun to my face. ‘Put down the bloody ax.’ She said. ‘You won’t get me like you got Thomas. You won’t. The police are already on their way, and they’ll take you to the slammer faster than you would ever believe. So put down the ax, you demon. It’s not going to work.’”

“I barely remember what happened next, it was such a blur. I ducked to the side as fast as I could, and she fired, barely missing me by a couple of inches. The bullet ricocheted off a vase behind me and buried itself into the doorframe. I crawled quickly towards her, and she just kept firing. It was obvious, though, she had never fired the gun before. She was holding it in such a way that the recoil would completely ruin her shot, and she would always miss. I took advantage of that, and I climbed up behind her on the bed. She turned towards me, eyes wide in fear, and I wrestled her to the ground. At that moment, the police burst in and shouted at me to get on the floor with my hands on my head.”

“To this day, I am terrified by what I might have been about to do to her. I wasn’t in control of my body; he was. And he obviously wanted something for his trouble. I couldn’t have stopped him if I tried. He’s just too powerful. But that day, I was thankful for two things. The police had come at exactly the right time to save my mother, and I had found out why I had done what I did to my brother.”

“There is another man living inside of me. Not just another side of me, but another man entirely. His name is Darnell, and he is absolutely evil. He wanted to be mum’s favorite child, and he could never be sure he was unless he got rid of all the competition. That’s why he did what he did to my brother, and that’s why I couldn’t remember doing it. Darnell took control of my mind so suddenly, and released me almost immediately, that I didn’t have time to realize that my body was not my own. The only reason that I figured it out the day I visited my mother was because I was in direct opposition to his goals. He wanted her gone and out of the way, so I wouldn’t think and worry about her. But to get rid of her completely, he needed to take over for a long period of time. Which he did, and he nearly succeeded. “ He looked Robert right in the eye. “That’s why I am here, Mr. Thurman. Because I can be possessed by an evil man. Other men are in here for their own safety, but I am incarcerated for others.” He looked away from Robert. “Sometimes I wonder why they don’t just kill me and be done with it. It would save much more time and many more lives.”

Robert put his hand on William’s shoulder, and patted him on the back, even though he could feel revulsion rising up in his throat. This was a broken man, and he needed the support. And Robert needed a friend.

“Because of your good side. Some part of you recognizes that the other is evil, and as long as you keep fighting, then you can conquer it. I know it.” William looked him in the eye, and smiled genuinely. Robert now no longer saw the unstable Darnell, but the brilliant William sitting before him. He understood that here, here was someone who could relate to him. These men understood each other, and they both knew it. Something had just been forged between these two.

They both jumped when a piercing siren went off, echoing throughout the large room. Red lights started flashing, and a voice came over the intercom.

“All patients to their cells now! This is a lockdown!” William and Robert jumped to their feet and raced for the door.

“What reasons are there to initiate a lockdown?” Robert asked above the din of the siren.

‘I don’t know,” replied William. “I’ve never seen one before.”

They fell in line with the other prisoners heading to their cells, and jumped out into theirs when they reached it. About a minute later, the cell doors closed all throughout the block.

There was only one problem. Bai wasn’t there yet.

“What happened? Where is he?” William frantically asked, pacing around the room.

“I don’t know,” Robert said uneasily.

“I do,” a deep voice said from outside the cell. They looked up to see the man who took Robert to the waste room standing outside the bars, flanked by two beefy looking guards. “Your friend was attacked by another inmate.” He unlocked the door, entered, and grabbed Robert by the collar. “Come on, sunshine. The Warden could use your special talents from the prison yard right now.”