The Grimhaven Disaster by Leo X Robertson

Author:Leo X Robertson [Robertson, Leo X]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unnerving
Published: 2017-08-07T20:00:00+00:00

Grimhaven III

Socrates and Helen regained consciousness in the back of an ambulance, both of them opening and closing weary eyes along the journey to see EMTs in hazmat suits who looked at them almost indifferently, or so their clinical curiosity appeared.

Socrates longed to see her, his mistress, in hospital, but regulations forbade his leave from bed, lest he irradiate anyone new. Nurses who wore special suits–which in those days made them look more like they were equipped for bomb disposal than radiation protection–would come in and feed those few who could eat, tuck in those who could sleep, and change the gauzes and dressings of those who were losing their skin, weighing the collected matter to monitor the fluid loss of each patient. Later on, pleural punctures removed fluid from the lungs. Bone marrow and hematopoietic stem cell transplants kept up immune function. Skin grafts replaced necrotising flesh for those whose chromosomes had been fried so badly that they could no longer hope to produce new skin of their own.

Day and night, both Socrates and Helen, from their opposite ends of the ward–the separating doors featuring sheets of lead–heard screams, moans, surfaces unsticking from one another, fights between distraught civilians trying to see their lover or kin one last time, and guards who kept out anyone other than the hospital staff and their patients.

When the doctors and nurses passed by them, Helen and Socrates insisted that they felt perfectly fine. They became ever more assured of their invincibility when the curtains around the beds billowed in an untoward manner and they saw the anaemic, nauseated pallor, exposed spines, spread of silvery Aspergillus fungus over the skin, and the spilling, swollen organs of their former coworkers.

As days and weeks passed, corpse after corpse wheeled away on trolleys. Socrates examined his skin, looked at its warped reflection in the beds’ shining bars, but… nothing. He was fully intact.

Once enough had died that the nurses had time to say more than one word to them, the staff were soon clued up too, and passed dosimeters over the pair, lifted them from their beds to examine their skin’s integrity, shone lights in their ears, tapped hammers to their tendons, created micrographs of their bone marrow cells, analysed their blood for white cell and platelet count, sampled nose throat and skin tissue to monitor infections, and even took X-ray photos and CT scans. For whatever reason, they remained in perfect health, and, against all odds, were free to go.

Socrates’ wife collected him from the hospital, and gave him a clean set of clothes–given that what he’d worn when he entered the hospital had since been incinerated. As he left, he saw Helen get into the back of her father’s car. He looked at her, eyes filled with awe and passion. She grinned back and kissed the car window.

There was no doubt to it: they had survived with purpose; they were miraculous, true creatures of God. Socrates explained this to her over the phone, late at

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