Pale Highway by Nicholas Conley

Author:Nicholas Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2015-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28:

Twist

Summer 2018

Gabriel was shell-shocked. He had been staring into his microscope for hours. He had thrown up a couple times, filling his garbage receptacle with plenty of gooey stomach acid. The mounds of notebook paper on his desk were covered with scrawled black ink.

Michael had been right. Within moments of placing that sample under the microscope earlier that morning, Gabriel had known the truth. The Black Virus wasn’t a virus at all. It was something far worse.

“Kill me,” Gabriel muttered. “Kill me now, and just get it the hell over with.”

The skeleton doll sat propped against his lamp, staring at him with its empty eyes. He’d put it there a few hours ago, and it’d been mocking him ever since.

“Kill me,” he repeated.

Bernard, watching TV on the other side of the curtain, didn’t respond. Gabriel’s blood seemed to trickle through his veins with the consistency of a cold frappe. His palms felt clammy. You were right, Michael. You were right, goddammmit.

Gabriel pressed his call button, and a few minutes later Harry Brenton entered the room.

“Hi, sir,” Harry said.

“Fruit punch,” Bernard stated from the other side of the room.

“I’ll bring you one in a minute, Bernard,” Harry said, then he turned back to Gabriel. “Sir, is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bernard said.

“Um… no,” Gabriel replied. “Harry, do you have a minute?”

Harry glanced back at the hallway.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Gabriel said. “I understand that you have a lot of work to do. But if you do have a minute, I really need some advice, especially from a bright microbiology student like you.”

Harry stared at Gabriel for what felt like ten minutes but was probably only a few seconds, then he sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay, sir. I’m here for you. I’m guessing this pertains to your research on the new virus?”

Gabriel nodded. “I’m afraid it does. I know that you’re familiar with my work. You know how the Schist Vaccine works, right?”

“Of course. It makes the immune system smarter. It’s like a shot of intelligence, like a steroid, in a sense. That’s why it makes the body immune to so many different types of infection.”

Gabriel nodded and smiled in spite of the seriousness of the discussion. When Harry talked about science, his stutter disappeared, his shoulders rose, and he appeared more confident.

“Perfectly said, Harry. Now, when I started researching this new virus, my original hypothesis was… well, when the immune system becomes smarter, what do the pathogens do?”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Oh, crap. Are you saying that the pathogens become smarter, too? You mean, that’s what’s happening? It is, isn’t it? I mean, that actually makes sense! That’s why this virus is so powerful. Because when you introduced the ultimate medicine, in a sense, the pathogens were forced to create the ultimate assassin in order to retaliate. So to cure this virus, we’d need to create something that makes the immune system even more powerful. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. That’s what I thought, but…” Gabriel stepped over to his whiteboard.

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