Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis Hominidae
Day 1
John woke up ill, the light sweat from running hot making the sheets cling to him, uncomfortable and restricting. Dorothy was tucked under the old white and blue quilt, facing away from him, either asleep or unwilling to admit she was awake. The quilt was bunched up against her back. He must have kicked it off his side of the bed in his sleep to cool down. John sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Tuesdays were full of the kind of meetings that made you want to call in sick, long and pointless, thrashing old topics worn threadbare by their intractable nature but still destined to be brought out and paraded around in lieu of any actual forward progress. But bonus season was coming up and his absence would be noted, the sly innocuous comments by coworkers over coffee advertising his empty chair, a subtle, malicious spotlight.
He rolled up to a sitting position and shook his head a bit, cobwebs from sleep and the faint lightheadedness from the mild fever making him dizzy for a moment. He didn’t know what he’d caught but he knew where he’d gotten it. That old drunk entering the office building and bumping into him when he left the prior day, in clothes that would have been fashionable if they hadn’t been rumpled and dirty. And the smell… like wet gym clothes left in a hot locker room for too long, rank and sharp, permeating clothes and nostrils like water soaking into a sponge. It had given him a sneezing fit. He could still feel it in his sinuses, even had a faint taste of it in the back of his mouth.
He stumbled into the bathroom and popped four ibuprofen. By the time he finished with his shower, after letting the lukewarm water cascade over his head for a while, he was feeling better, the unobtrusive brittleness that came from masking a fever with drugs an acceptable version of normal. He dressed quickly, running a bit behind, blue slacks with slightly wrinkled creases, a light blue oxford shirt, brown conservative shoes, no tie. He leaned over Dorothy, still lying with her eyes closed, and gave her his routine peck on the cheek. Her nose wrinkled and she said “Yuck, you need mouthwash.”
Pretending to be asleep, then.
He smiled and said “Love you too. See you tonight.” She half waved him away and wiggled deeper into the quilt cocoon wrapped around her, auburn hair thrown haphazardly over her face, a victim of her own restless sleep patterns. It was a comfortable routine, grooves worn deep after ten years of marriage.
The drive in was the usual atherosclerosis of the freeway, lumps of slow moving traffic sending resonating waves rippling forward and back, cars darting aggressively between lanes in a futile attempt to avoid the resulting sluggish pockets of petulant vehicles and drivers. That was routine as well, and he’d made his peace with rush hour long ago. His body gently reminded him that he should have stayed in bed with occasional hot flashes, which he took stoically. In the parking structure near his office, he misjudged the angle pulling into the absurdly small parking spot, almost scraping paint. His door wouldn’t open wide enough for him to get out, and he backed up and tried again, grumbling a bit.
It was a half block to the office building, twenty stories of glass and stone, homogeneous and generically modern inside and out. His firm was on the sixteenth floor, secrets jealously guarded by the electronic pass system with its aggressively non-descript bionic congeniality. His card slapped against the reader twice before it made its happy chirp and the light went green, unlocking the door. Inside he grabbed a coffee at the K-cup machine, not as good as the fresh ground at home but convenient. Armed with a caffeine fix, he settled in at his desk and pretended to study the morning accounting reports, numbers vague and menacing through the warped lens of the flickering fever, attempts to concentrate only serving to accentuate the dull throb of a proto-headache.
He welcomed the first meeting of the morning with unusual relief, even with a topic like customizable virtual meeting tools to improve communication with the London office. The meeting was surprising pleasant in a hazy sort of way, and he blended in, nodding agreeably when others did. The actual context and contours of the conversation washing over him like waves hitting a rock on the beach, leaving nothing behind but a damp memory that evaporated quickly. Not that it mattered; the London office disdainfully referred to the corporate office in the US as the “mother ship” and a project that attempted to replace the warmth and personability of meeting in the flesh with a simulacrum on a computer monitor did not seem particularly viable for improving an already hostile relationship.
The rest of the day drifted along in a similar fashion. He found a warm companionable fellowship in the back and forth banter between his peers, but his mind skittered over the surface of the words like a water strider on the surface of a pond, responding to the ripples of conversation, chuckling when he should, looking quizzical when it seemed appropriate, but without really following the topic at hand. In one of the late afternoon meetings he had a small coughing fit and Jim, who was in his group, leaned over and whispered “Are you ok, John? You look kind of flushed” and he realized the fever was back in force, sudden chills running down his back.
John answered back quietly “Ya, caught something yesterday, a cold I think.”
Jim jerked back and waved his hand back and forth in front of his face with a frown. “Wow, you should audition for the ‘before’ example in a Listerine commercial. What the heck did you have for lunch?”
John felt surprise but it was a distant, dull thing, muffled by the fever. “Sorry, nose must be stuffed up, I didn’t notice.” But his nose didn’t feel stuffed up. Maybe you just couldn’t smell your own breath. And thinking back, he was pretty sure he’d skipped lunch. His memory was glitchy, the day soft and bland and run together like a child’s watercolor paints that had been dipped in too many times. It dawned on him that he really was out of it. “You know, I am feeling kind of crappy. I think I’m going to call it and head home early today.”
Jim nodded knowingly. “Good idea. There’s something going around, a lot of people are out sick today.”
After the meeting, John found the Tylenol, two pills to a glossy, slick package, haphazardly mixed with other sample sized residue in a large dispenser that had been in the coffee area since the beginning of time. He dug around until he found another one and took all of the pills. It was close to four, and now that he was thinking about it the achy joints and feel of sandpaper behind the eyes, hobbling little irritants, all came crashing down on him. His cough was getting worse as well, a dry, raspy cough that made his lungs feel twitchy. It took a few minutes to pack up and log off his PC and then he headed for the elevator. Out the front door, the streets were just starting to fill up with people lucky enough to beat the end of day exodus. He joined the throng, heading for the parking garage, glanced over and saw the Liverpool. It was one of those simulated English pubs, long on mahogany and brass, glittering bottles lined up neatly behind the bar on shelves backed by a mirror to make it look like a boundless cornucopia of alcohol. The place was a faux rendition of 1920s Tudorbethan architecture, justification for charging a premium to the after work drinking crowd.
John had never much cared for that sort of thing, but the Tylenol was kicking in and the place had a glow about it that promised cozy and intimate juxtaposed over noisy and boisterous, rubbing congenial elbows with your mates. Your mates, or people that would stand in for them after a few beers. Without meaning too, he found himself angling off the most direct path to the parking structure to swing by the entrance. He glanced in the door. There was a small raised platform with a four piece band setting up, getting ready for the just-after-five crowd. Scattered wooden tables and chairs jammed just a little too close together, a long bar with a few clusters of people forming a semicircle to wall off intruders, an unmistakable personal space claim for their section of the bar. While he was standing there a couple more guys approached the door in half business dress, slacks and collared shirt but wearing bright neon running shoes for the commute. They edged by him with uneasy smiles, unaware of his intentions, flight or fight response queued up if he challenged them for the entrance. He returned his own awkward smile, stepping aside, and they promptly forgot him and wandered in. He followed them through the entrance and found a table in the corner.
The waitress came by dressed in servant-girl Downtown Abby chic, a feigned smile plastered on her face, clearly bored and wishing she was someplace else. John ordered a microbrew amber ale with a predictably silly name. It arrived quickly, but he could see the place was on a steep inbound gradient and service would drop off proportionally as tables filled with people looking for liquid relief from lives of quiet desperation. He took a sip of the beer and frowned. It tasted off, either a bad luck pick on his part or because of his cold. He tried a second sip, no better than the first, and it caused another coughing fit, loud enough that people at nearby tables glanced at him. He finally set it down and just watched as the stream of people coming through the door picked up steam. The band kicked in just before five, the door and windows open so the sound could roll out to the street, a pied piper lure for passersby. It felt warm, welcoming, and he felt happier that he could remember feeling in a long time as the place filled up. The waitress came by again, lifted one eyebrow while glancing between his mostly untouched beer and his face, and when he didn’t respond put down a bowl of pretzels huffily and moved on.
He found his eyes wandering and realized he was checking out the women at the tables around him. And with more than just a cursory glance. Which was crazy. He’d never had any interest in cheating on his wife. But he felt it, felt desire, and not just for the pretty little blondes with their predatory, instinctual awareness of the men around them, on the prowl for handsome and successful. The old ones, the fat ones, the plain ones… he wanted them, wanted to kiss them, wanted to do things to them.
The waitress came by again, interrupting his thoughts, and asked if he was waiting for someone. He shook his head no and she huffed a bit more and said “You want the table, you need to order more than a beer.”
He smiled at her and words poured out of his mouth without conscious intervention. “I’ll order what you want and leave a tip you won’t want to share with your coworkers for a kiss.” He watched her expression go from shock to incredulity to anger in the beat of a heart, then a tight control. She was attractive in an understated sort of way, not a lot of makeup, and he had to guess people hit on her pretty often.
“Thanks for the offer, think I’ll pass. Finish the beer in the next ten, or order something, or leave. Your choice.” And she walked away, shoulders set in angry angular lines.
John was still grappling with how exactly how those words had come out of his mouth when his phone buzzed. It was a text from Dorothy. Wru? He typed clumsily on the keypad. Sry, meeting ran over at work, omw. A few seconds later she sent back Sick. Leftovers 4 dinner. My fault, caught something at work he typed back. He fumbled at his wallet, tried to remember what the beer cost, and finally just threw down a twenty. The drive home was easier than normal, his time at the bar letting some of the traffic die down. When he walked in the door, Dorothy already had some reheated lasagna waiting. Her eyes were a little glassy and he could see she was running a fever. She blinked when she saw him. “You look like hell” she said.
“Feel that way too” he replied. They commiserated over dinner. She offered to pour him a glass of wine but he shook his head no, remembering the beer. “Not good to mix alcohol and Tylenol” he said. He’d read that somewhere. When they were cleaning up, he had one of those intense flashes of desire again and he grabbed her and kissed her.
When they came up for air, she looked at him wide eyed. “Where did that come from?” He shrugged and kissed her again, letting his hands wander. When he started unbuttoning her blouse, she said “I think we can leave the dishes for the morning,” and they headed for the bedroom. The sex was short, passionate, energetic, and as they both recovered their breath she leaned over and looked at him quizzically. “That was … different.” But he had a sudden coughing fit before he could think of a witty answer.
He went to the bathroom. Washing his hands, he noticed the water flowing down the white porcelain bowl of the sink was stained black. He looked at his fingers. There was some kind of black, fuzzy dirt around his fingernails. Something he must have picked up in the bar, although he couldn’t for the life of him think of what it could have been. But it all washed off easily enough and he collapsed into bed. Dorothy was already out.
Day two
The next morning dawned after an evening of feverish dreams that left him more exhausted than when he went to bed. The dreams evaporated while he dragged himself to consciousness, leaving a residue of discomfort and distaste, a vague memory of sex and sweat with an undertone of abuse and domination. Even that vanished under the onslaught of a blinding headache and alternating hot and cold flashes. He was really sick. He stumbled into the bathroom and popped a handful of ibuprofen into his mouth, seven or eight of the things, started the shower and stepped in. The water felt good, washing the night sweats away, and gradually eliminating an itching he hadn’t noticed at first, like he had mild poison ivy all over his body. He stayed under the water for a long time, not moving, not thinking.
The ibuprofen took the edge off the fever enough to allow him to decide on the plan for the day. He could go to the doctors. He’d clearly contracted the flu, not a simple cold. But prior experience told him a doctor’s visit would be pointless. Nothing to do with a virus but wait it out. He could spend the day at home, but the thought of being cooped up in the house made his throat go tight and his breathing ragged, a strange, uncharacteristic claustrophobia that brought him close to panic. No, he wanted to be around people. Bonus season, he reminded himself. He needed to make an appearance. Dressing, he looked over at the bed. Dorothy was moving restlessly. On his side of the bed, where the sheets were thrown back, he saw black streaks down the white cotton and frowned. Whatever he’d gotten on himself at the bar hadn’t just been on his hands. Dorothy was going to be angry, but he needed to head out. She would just have to deal.
At the office, he didn’t even pretend to study the accounting reports still stacked on his desk, just tried to focus on suppressing the racking cough that had progressed along with the virus. People in the cubes next to him looked at him sideways with expressions of distaste. They were easy to ignore, a pounding headache making everything else white background noise, easy to tune out. Just before noon, Jim came over and herded him into one of the small conference rooms. “John, man, what are you doing? If you’re sick enough that you can’t take a shower, you’re too sick to be here.” John stared at him stupidly, blinking, not comprehending. Jim said “the smell, buddy. You stink” with exasperation. John had no idea what he meant.
“The new accounts meeting” he said, grasping for something that would make sense. “I wanted to make sure we covered the …” and he stopped, unable to recall the name of the new client.
Jim shook his head. “Buddy, you belong in a hospital. Or home in bed at least. New accounts meeting was cancelled for the week. Let’s get you home.”
“Cancelled?” said John, and it sent an irrational flash of panic through him. No meeting? But Jim insisted on escorting him to the elevator, even offered to drive him home. “No, no, don’t need it. No traffic at this time of day” said John. He made it to the car and home, but it was good that the roads were mostly empty. His eyes burned and everything seemed cloudy and dark even though the sun was shining.
In the house, he called for Dorothy, and heard a muffled reply from the bedroom. She was lying in bed with a damp cloth across her eyes. He collapsed next to her, not bothering to take off his clothes. The next few hours, he faded in and out, short bursts of fever dreams interspersed with feeling like he’d been run over with a truck. Dorothy insisted they both have something to eat for dinner, and he dragged himself to the kitchen. Dorothy poured a couple of bowls of cereal and squinted at him. “Did you roll in dirt or something?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure what she meant. Maybe this smell Jim was complaining about. But when he asked, she said he smelled fine, it was just that his face and hands were smudged with dirt. They dumped the bowls from dinner in the sink. The dishes from the prior evening were still there, food slowly turning to patches of hardened residue as it dried on, but the blinding pain of a migraine eliminated any compulsion to clean them. They both staggered back to the bedroom. He meant to shower, to get off whatever was covering his face, and because his skin itched like mad, but he barely made it back to the bed. He blacked out within minutes.
Day Three
The next morning it felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to his head. The only thing that drove him out of the bed was the itching, which was worse than the headache. He wanted to scratch until he was bloody, until he had no skin left. He staggered to the bathroom, finding his way by feel. Even though it was morning, the bedroom was preternaturally dark and he could barely see. He turned the shower on, and stepped in still wearing his clothes from yesterday. After a few minutes, the intolerable itching dissipated and he could think a little, but his thoughts were loose and disjointed, put into a blender by his fever until he couldn’t tell where one thought started and another one ended. He stripped off his clothes and let the water run over his face, and that helped with his blurred vision too. He stared stupidly at the tub. The side walls were splattered with black, and the water running down to the drain looked like something from a sewer pipe. There was an alarm going off in the back of his head, an adrenalin spike that let him think clearly for a minute. He was really sick. So was Dorothy. They both needed to go to the hospital. But the thought of the hospital with its clean white walls and smell of disinfectant filled him with a jolt of terror and vertigo so intense he had to grab the faucet handle to keep from falling over.
No. Bonus season. He’d stay home, take it easy today. He just needed a day to rest. He staggered back to the bed and crawled in. Before he could lie down, he had a terrible coughing fit. Where he’d coughed into the white pillow casing there was a black stain, some kind of powdery residue that had come out of his mouth. Another adrenalin spike hit, and he felt another bout of panic, but he was just too tired, and he collapsed into the bed. Things faded in and out, intense fever dreams of a carpet of naked men and women he was crawling over, kissing and touching each as he passed, interspersed with moments of dreadful clarity, feeling like his body was collapsing in on itself. There was a longer period of unconsciousness that ended when Dorothy shook him awake. “Party” she said, then coughed. Her face was smudged with black around the eyes, nose and mouth, like she’d put on witches makeup for Halloween. “Jacob’s party” she repeated. After what seemed an eternity, he remembered. Dorothy’s bridge partner and husband had invited them over for dinner along with a number of other couples.
There was some reason they shouldn’t go, he was sure of that, but it sounded so welcoming. Maybe they could help with the itching, the coughing. Maybe he could touch them. No, that was wrong. He shook his head. Nothing seemed clear, other than the desire to be surrounded by people. He dragged himself out of bed, grabbed something from the closet, pants and a shirt. He fumbled around for a belt, but it was too dark in the closet, and he gave up. The thought of finding socks was overwhelming. He grabbed keys from the nightstand. “Let’s go” he said, his voice a strange, shocking croak. But Dorothy was pulling urgently on his arm, trying to get him to hurry. He didn’t remember getting to the car, was suddenly just driving, going on instinct and some vague memory of direction rattling around in the back of his head. Driving felt strange, and he realized he was barefoot, hadn’t put on socks or shoes. Fortunately, Chris and Julie Jacob were only a few blocks away. When he reached their street, he tried to turn, but his arms didn’t seem to be working properly and he couldn’t remember how to use the brake. The car went into a tree at twenty miles an hour and he blacked out when the airbag hit him. It could only have been for a moment, because he could still hear the mechanical death rattle of the ruined engine fading away when he came to. He looked at Dorothy. She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. The passenger window was fractured and blood and some black, oily looking liquid dripped down from it, dripped down her face. He didn’t think she was breathing.
He pushed his door open, stepped out and immediately collapsed. His left leg was bent at a 90 degree angle just below the knee. He could see bone sticking out of a rip in his pants, and wondered dully why there was no pain. In the distance, he heard the wail of a siren in the distance and it filled him with panic, panic that stuck this time; they would keep him from the party. The Jacob’s house was only two houses down, and he managed to drag himself to a white picket fence, use that to lever himself upright, and half hopped, half dragged himself down two houses. The Jacobs had a stone wall instead of a fence, and inside it, with nothing to support him, he fell again, crawling the rest of the distance to the door. Inside, he could hear music, loud music that must have covered the sound of the car crash. He reached up, pulled the handle to the storm door, and crawled into the foyer. He heard footsteps, then a crash of dropped china and screaming. That seemed to go on for a long time, but it faded along with everything else as he raced down a tunnel to total darkness.
——-
Chris woke with a start, memories flooding back, trying to make himself believe for a moment that it had been a nightmare, that John Rowland hadn’t crawled into his house after a car accident, a bloody mess. Worse than that. John had looked mottled, like there were patches of black blood pooling under his skin, and his eyes and lips had been caked over with some kind of ugly, gunky residue. How did you get something like that from a car accident? And, my god, the smell, a stench so terrible it had permeated the entire house. Even thinking about it made Chris have a sudden sneezing fit.
Great. On top of last night’s horror show, he was coming down with something.
Day 1