Читать книгу The Immune - Doc Lucky Meisenheimer - Страница 14

John arrived at his condominium shortly after midnight. He couldn’t sleep. At six a.m. he took 20mg of diazepam, causing him to doze for the next twenty-four hours. For the next week he remained absent to the world, not leaving his condominium. Multiple calls from the hospital were ignored. He lived on Ramen noodles, diazepam, and root beer.

On the eighth day he finally broke free from his sedative-induced haze. He began walking to get away from the condominium and the various reminders of Cassandra. His appearance looked more like a homeless druggie than a successful physician as he wandered downtown. His hair was unkempt, his eyes swollen and red from crying. He wore nothing but flip-flops, a light blue t-shirt, and matching surfing shorts, which he’d slept in for the last week.

John’s emotions swung repeatedly between grief and absolute rage. After a couple of hours, only from pure Brownian motion, he ended up at Lake Eola in the downtown park. The giant central fountain was flowing in the twenty-acre lake framed by an early morning cloudless blue sky. It seemed bizarre, with the world in crisis. Somewhere, some way, someone was making sure the fountain ran. He could take no joy in its beauty today as blackness crowded out any pleasant feelings.

In front of him, several hundred “passive warriors” from the “Love the Airwar League” had cast their clothes aside. With the exception of pumpkin orange arm and headbands, the passive warriors all laid prostrate on the ground, completely naked. This display was presumably to demonstrate passive unity in the city to the airwars.

Over the last few days, airwars had been using the lake as a drinking station. The airwars would glide over the water surface, let down a tube called the central siphon and take on water. ASC discovered airwars electrolyzed water into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrocytes, similar to those found in electric eels, were contained in specialized tentacles. These long serial arrays created voltages needed for electrolysis in small organs under the hydrogen sac. The sac collected hydrogen, and oxygen was released. Lighter than air, hydrogen allowed the creatures to remain airborne similar to early zeppelins.

John thought of the televised press conference the night before. It was the first time he watched television in over a week. ASC spokesman Glavin was at the podium. “For the last two days the heroic members of the Love the Airwar League have placed themselves in the paths of airwars coming to drink,” said Glavin.

A B-roll clip of airwars passing over the unclothed bodies was shown.

“As you can see, the airwars are lifting their tentacles to avoid these passive warriors,” said Glavin, grinning widely, “This is a remarkable confirmation that our Run, Hide and Do No Harm policy is the correct path to follow.” He raised his arms to the heavens.

John reached for the remote, but before he could turn the television off, Glavin pointed directly at the screen.

“Should one err and join the militia filth—this is what happens,” said Glavin, with vitriol.

Clips from the Zimbabwe Colossus video started running. John turned the television off with disgust. The last thing he wanted to watch was a lecture on how to get along with airwars . . .

Now, absolute rage replaced the black despair. He loathed airwars. He wanted to kill, but he knew the futility in that action. Ultimately, he wanted fewer, not more, airwars. He hung his head again and felt impotent as melancholy returned.

A middle-aged man with a gray beard wearing only round, wire-framed glasses and an orange wristband called to him, “Brother, shed your clothes and become a passive warrior with us. The key to victory is passivity.”

John turned and walked away. Somehow, lying naked in the paths of airwars didn’t seem a great strategy, even though it was the current politically correct action.

As John was winding his way through all the naked bodies, he noticed several airwars appearing between buildings on the edge of the lake. The reflection of the sun off the water through the trees gave a greenish aura along the edges of the black airwars. The aura appeared similar to the corona discharge seen in Kirlian photography. The first group of five passed over the horizontal bodies without incident. As one in a second group began to reach the water ’s edge, three large solid black vans screeched to a halt on the road next to the lake.

Several militiamen, wearing fatigues with American flag armbands and their faces covered with black sock hats, jumped from the van. The men and women all carried automatic weapons. In unison, the group aimed at an airwar and released a deadly hail of projectiles into the airwar ’s hydrogen sac. The airwar ’s sac immediately caught fire, but not before hundreds of coal-black juveniles released into the air.

The terrorists continued a stream of fire into the air and juveniles were popping and disappearing like bubbles in the wind. John counted; he could only detect three floating out of range. The burning carcass made John smile even though he knew three more would replace it. Still, he had to admit he enjoyed the show. The “passive warriors” had begun to sit and were screaming profanities at the militia. John thought, perspective is the only difference between a hero and a terrorist.

As he continued to watch, John felt a deep vibration. As sound added itself to the vibration, he realized it was a large, gray Apache helicopter. He looked forward to seeing more burning airwar carcasses, but the flying vehicle passed several of the black monstrosities without engaging them.

The “terrorists” were back in their vans as the helicopter approached. Two rockets abruptly fired from the helicopter. One directly hit the middle van, which immediately exploded into a fireball. The other hit the sidewalk, shearing off a hydrant, which resulted in a strange scene of smoke and fire surrounding a fountain of water.

The other vans, wheels shrieking, sped away in opposite directions. The helicopter followed the left van, creating unusual vortexes in the smoke and spraying water as it passed. Then both the pursuer and pursuee went around a building and were lost to sight, but machine gun fire could be heard for the next few seconds, followed by one explosion.

Most of the “passive warriors” were now sitting or standing, watching the end of the spectacle. They all seemed to turn as a single unit as one solitary scream pierced the air.

A twenty-something, red-headed female wearing nothing but an orange headband and a peace sign necklace was entwined in tentacles, but she wasn’t screaming. Her mouth was making movements like a goldfish out of water. No sound, only frothy sputum came from her lips. The scream came from her tall blonde friend who could pass for a runway model. She also wore an identical headband and necklace and stood less than five feet from her entrapped friend.

The scream was short-lived as tentacles engulfed the blonde. From that point on, it was madness. On one side floated scores of airwars, on the other was the lake, and sandwiched between were hundreds of “passive warriors.” The passive warriors, now no longer passive, were running helter skelter, naked and panicked.

It was a phantasmagoric dance of black with orange. Adding the running, naked bodies to the dancing colors made John think the sight would have been quite comical, except there were injured and dying people everywhere. John, for a few moments, disassociated himself from the scene, but a shadow passed over him and he realized he was in grave danger himself.

As with the passive warriors, his position was also between the airwars and the lake. Unlike the others, John ran toward the lake. For him, water was safety. He could easily swim out to the middle, outflank the airwars, then run to safety. He kicked off his flip-flops as he was running and stripped away his light blue shirt. He was still wearing surfing shorts, and this wouldn’t slow him down too much in the water.

As he ran into the bluish-tinged water, he noticed airwars were floating above the lake, tentacle tips barely touching the lake surface. The airwars weren’t in his planned escape path, though. As his head dipped below the water surface, the screams behind him seemed to vanish into a muffled background of moving water.

The water enveloped his body, which gave him a sense of security that he didn’t feel on the land. He remembered a poster Cassandra had given him for his birthday, a picture of a swimmer doing butterfly. The inscription read, The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll never rule the water. The thought of Cassandra and his loss began fueling a raging anger. He lifted his head to get a directional bearing, but all he could see was an advancing curtain of black tentacles. The tentacles parted somewhat, revealing a red inner layer.

With a defiant curse, he put his head down and swam straight forward, infuriated, toward the red. He had no plan. He was only enraged. He felt a tentacle pass over his back. He waited for stings, but none occurred. Tentacles loosely grabbed at his extremities, but the wetness of his body, coupled with slime on the tentacles, allowed him to release himself easily.

It was dark in the middle of the airwars tentacles, not pitch black, but like dusk. Only a small amount of reflecting light passed through the hundreds of tentacles.

Then he heard a sucking sound. A bubble gum pink tentacle with linear striations its entire length, dissimilar to other tentacles, was touching the water ’s surface. It was the diameter of a fire hose, and the base flared like a funnel. The tube’s expanded end engulfed water, and a peristaltic wave carried the water as a one-foot diameter bulge up the tube. It looked like a hanging boa constrictor that swallowed a basketball, and the basketball was ascending through the inside of the snake.

This must be the central siphon, thought John. He grabbed the tube and figured if he was dying anyway, why not agitate the creature along the way?

A bolus of water entered the end of the tube just below where John wrapped his arms and now his legs. If I can’t kill it, at least I can make it thirsty, thought John. Instead of blocking the bulge of water, the swelling pushed him up the slippery tube. Riding the wave was like sliding up a fire station pole. After a relatively quick sixty-foot ride, he almost lost his grip when his body slammed into what felt like a giant sac of wet flour.

He looked over. It was a lifeless, naked man seemingly suspended in air adjacent to the siphon tube. The blow caused the body to rock back and forth in the cradling red tentacles.

As he passed the body, he looked up and realized he was nearing the end of his ride. The airwar siphon ended in a water storage chamber that resembled a giant pink cow’s udder covered with thousands of narrow elongated teats. It was the size of a large bathtub. Adjacent to it was a large deep purple sphincter, slowly dilating. The sphincter opened into a purple sac-like structure, slightly larger than a minivan.

On the opposite side was a translucent white five-foot tube, six inches in diameter, which looked like a corrugated drainage pipe. It hung from what appeared to be fleshy bellows the size of an extra large sofa. The tube maintained a pipe-like appearance by rings in the wall along its length. It reminded him of a giant trachea. In man, rings of cartilage support windpipe walls to keep the lumen from collapsing. Air rushed in and out of the tube each time the bellows compressed.

John realized, when the traveling bulge finally entered the water chamber, he would slide back down the siphon until he hit the next bolus of water. He doubted he’d be able to maintain his grip if this happened. As he reached the base of the water chamber, he let go with one hand and grabbed the air tube.

Between rings, the translucent membrane was compressible. He pressed down and in with his fingers, getting a grip on one of the rings. The membrane was flexible and didn’t tear. Although rubbery in consistency, it wasn’t slick like the siphon tube.

As the water entered the chamber, the bulge disappeared, and he started sliding back down. His grip on the air tube stopped his downward progression. He released his other arm and got another handhold on the air tube. Now he lay at an angle under the airwar, hands gripping near the top of the air tube, legs wrapped around the siphon tube.

He gave a couple of tugs on the air tube and it seemed to be able to support his weight. In one last move, he released his legs and swung entirely to the air tube. He pressed his toes between the membranes above the lowest ring. The bottom ring was thickest; he could rest his entire weight on it securely. He hung there for a moment and thought, now what?

He looked down through darkness. He could barely see water below. If he fell from this height, he might survive hitting feet-first. Otherwise, a seventy-five foot drop into water was like striking concrete if you didn’t punch an entry hole. The collision would knock him unconscious and he’d drown.

John took time to study the central base where he was hanging. The siphon tube and water chamber were in the center. On the opposite side, the sphincter opened wider. It began to emit a purple phosphorescent glow. Unfortunately, he learned the reason why at that moment.

The previously encountered body arrived at the opening. The sphincter began the process of slowly sucking it up, legs first. The lifeless corpse suddenly had one last spasmodic opposition to being swallowed. An arm wearing an orange wristband pounded violently on the purple sphincter without effect. The body sucked upward until only the head remained out of the opening.

John looked directly in the upside-down face of the man. He recognized him as the gray-haired passive warrior who had invited John to join him only minutes before. When the man appeared to notice John, he said nothing, but an expression of surprise and confusion merged with terror. With a loud pop, the head disappeared through the sphincter.

A green, gelatinous substance extruded out the sphincter and dripped as the glowing, purple sphincter clamped down. John, paralyzed from horror, could only watch as walls of the digestive chamber moved with the struggle of the passive warrior. The entire digestive chamber phosphoresced an intense purple, which began to fade as the struggle slowed to a standstill.

From John’s estimate of the digestive chamber size, it could hold between eight and ten bodies. This explained why airwars let some bodies hang in the tentacles and if there were too many, why they would drop others to the ground.

Thanks to John’s medical experience, he was able to disassociate himself from the previous drama. He immediately shifted his full attention to his own dire situation. On closer inspection, the bellows seemed to have many branching tubes spreading to all areas of the external hydrogen sac, like veins on a leaf. The base of the water chamber was smooth at the siphon entrance. Two feet out from the entrance, tiny worm-like tentacles hung like thousands of earthworms. These covered the entire water chamber base.

John reached out and grabbed the fringe of miniature tentacles. They weren’t slippery or wet, nor did they move. Some ruptured and popped when he squeezed hard. As the small gas pockets burst in the worm-like appendages, the sound reminded him of popping that occurs when breaking air blisters in bubble wrap.

John thought, These must be the organs that electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen. Squeezing these firmly provided a good handhold. He felt, if he had to, he could move around under the airwar sac, holding on to the fringe while wrapping his legs around either the air tube or siphon tube.

John also observed, in the clear area surrounding the siphon tube’s entrance, four smooth softball-sized lumps equidistant apart, like cardinal points on a compass. He had no clue to their function.

John noticed the airwar finished taking on water, or at least peristaltic boluses stopped ascending. He was thinking of sliding down the siphon tube when it suddenly coiled.

The tightly curled tube was seven to eight feet in diameter and looked like a large coiled fire hose. It hung three to four feet beneath the base of the water chamber. John reached one leg over and pushed on top of the coil. It didn’t budge.

Holding onto the mass of appendages in the fringe, he swung, put both feet on top of the coil, and pushed down. The coil didn’t unwind. He slid one arm down around the four-foot section of siphon tube, which was the neck between the water chamber and coil. He straddled the coil and sat down.

It looked like he was riding a velocipede, the old style bicycle with one large front wheel. After a few moments, it was evident the siphon wasn’t going to uncoil from his weight, and he decided to move back to the air tube.

Once he was securely on the air tube, he began to reanalyze his situation. The only way down besides jumping was sliding down the siphon as it uncoiled. It might be another 24 hours before the airwar took on water again.

How could he better secure himself? He was wearing surf shorts and nothing else. His phone was long gone, and his wallet and keys were lost during his swim and aerobatics. The shorts did have a drawstring made of a cotton cord. He thought he might be able to secure this for a better handhold. John figured it was better for his shorts to fall than him. He pulled out the cord and looped it around the air tube.

He began pulling the cord tightly around the air tube, which reduced its diameter between two support rings. The whooshing sound of air passing through the breathing tube changed to a higher pitch. As the cord tightened, the pitch of the airflow became a high whistle. When he constricted the lumen to a diameter of a couple of centimeters, the airwar started jerking. Tentacles began writhing spasmodically. John smiled maniacally and thought, So you like breathing, Mr. Airwar?

He wrapped the cord around his wrist several times and pulled hard. The loop constricted, blocking all airflow. The bellows kept contracting, at a rapid pace, but no air passed.

Below John, tentacles were writhing like a pit of snakes that had hot grease poured on them. The bellows pumped so furiously that small tears formed at the base of the hydrogen sac. He could hear a steady hissing. John held fast, never releasing his tight grip on the cord.

John estimated less than three minutes passed since wrapping the cord around the air tube. The last twitching of tentacles had ceased two minutes before. The coil of the water siphon suddenly released downward. John thought this would be his chance to escape, but he didn’t want to release his chokehold yet. His dilemma ended when he noticed the sensation of descending.

He looked down. The airwar was gently floating toward the water. The only sound was the hissing tears in the hydrogen sac where the bellows attached. The sac was losing hydrogen at a rate fast enough for the airwar to drift downward. He wrapped the cord around the air tube a few more times, tied a knot, then looked for an exit point.

From above, lifeless tentacles looked like a plate of giant red spaghetti on the water ’s surface. He didn’t want to end up trapped between tentacles and the hydrogen sac base. As the airwar ’s breathing tube descended to fifteen feet above the water, John saw an opening between the tentacles and dropped through. The drop plunged him several feet under water, then he began swimming.

As he looked toward the surface, it was obvious the mass of tentacles was blocking his exit. John swam at least twenty meters, then began to see flickers of light between tentacles. He aimed at a sliver of light and dolphin-kicked hard, forcing two tentacles to the side and passed through the interface to air. After several breaths, he re-submerged, swam fifteen more meters underwater and popped out to a tentacle-free surface.

As it was, he ended up only ten meters from shore. Although airwars were visible in the distance, the attack was over and they appeared to have moved on. General mayhem was occurring around the lake, which was typical following an airwar attack, but the developing crowd in front of him seemed unusual. As he stepped from the water, the crowd cheered.

For a moment, he didn’t understand the reason for cheers, then he looked back at the floating airwar carcass. He suddenly realized he single-handedly killed an airwar. The sac was deflated, but intact, and not one solitary juvenile was released.

Not knowing how to respond, he waved to the crowd and shrugged. The cheers heightened. He noticed several cameras, phones, and video cameras aimed his way. He thought, I’ll be on the Internet shortly if I’m not live now. I guess I’m the next Ube. Five armed marines pushing through the crowd immediately broke that thought.

“Sir, you must come with us!” ordered the largest, a sergeant with a chiseled body who was sporting a blond flat-top haircut.

A marine on either side grabbed his arms firmly, while the other two created a path in the crowd with pointed rifles. The sergeant, pistol drawn, ran point directly in front of him. The crowd began to boo. The marines walked, half-carrying John to a large gray-colored military van with side doors that slid open at his approach. John hesitated entering for a moment, but found himself lifted and shoved through the opening as the doors slid shut behind him.