ALARA - MARTIN MATTHEWS

FOR LORRAINE MATTHEWS, MY CONSTANT READER

Thurs. 19:17

“...Breaker...”

“...You have yourself a fine, fine day for sure. God speed and...”

“...Yo, twenty-five, twenty-five, ha ha, you gotta look out for Uncle Sam round these parts!”

“...Cobra five, Cobra five, hot dang, you boys look like a dressed chicken out there...”

“...Hello, Baby Boy. I’m out here on the big rock. Hey, Baby Boy, I’m trying, ha ha! You stay away from Uncle Sam now, ya hear...?”

“...Romeo, this is Lima Two. We’re having an early spring, the trees are really ready to pop.”

DeShawn Winterson closed the window displaying the online CB/Ham radio lists. The streams — spotty at best now — were only wasting precious bandwidth.

“Lucky for some, eh?” Michael Stilson said, fingering his short mustache. “We’re snowed in up to our asses. That’s all you’re getting on the lines, Winterson?”

DeShawn leaned back in his chair. “There’s some local news on the line about Route Three. Logging truck jackknifed.”

“Hell,” Stilson growled.

DeShawn spun in his chair to face the lead department tech. “And before you ask, NOAA’s not showing a chopper window for another three days, soonest.”

Stilson seemed to shrink. He sighed and rubbed his chin, which was bristled with new growth.

“Relax, Mike,” DeShawn said. “The base is a ghost town. A museum. And besides a couple of RNs, this whole hospital’s a dead zone. We’re on full autopilot.”

The words ghost and dead seemed to pass through Stilson like a cold draft, causing the man’s lanky frame to shiver. He crossed his arms and said, “I don’t like being stranded out here. We should’ve been gone weeks ago.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” DeShawn said. He picked up his coffee mug — empty — placed it back down. “But like I said, we hang tight for another three days, then it’s goodbye frozen wasteland, hello sunny…wherever.”

“Back to California for me,” Stilson said. His face suddenly creased in a frown. “That new governor’s a total head case.”

“Yeah, but it’s hot,” DeShawn said. “After eighteen months of freezin my black ass off, I’m ready for any place else.”

“Ah, calientes chicas españolas, no?” Stilson nodded.

“No. Illinois, actually.”

“Midwest? Oh, that’s right. The ex is out there. Sucker.” Stilson laughed derisively.

“We’re separated, there’s a difference.”

“A piece of friggin paper. Big deal. And newsflash, pal, Alaska’s about as ‘separated’ as you can get. We’re talking non-contiguous, amigo.”

DeShawn shrugged. “Life doesn’t always follow our well-conceived plans, Mike. You of all folks should know that.”

“Don’t preach to me,” Stilson said. “We’re all out here because we done goofed, one way or another. My mouth gets me in trouble. Rats digs youngens a little too much. Morgan…well, she’s Morgan. You could write a textbook on that one. We’ve done our time, paid our penitence, whatever you want to call it. And you’re right, Alaska’s no place for those of the African persuasion, or any persuasion for that matter. But you should at least consider California.” Stilson slapped a hand over his mouth in mock-embarrassment. “See. There I go again, putting my foot in it. Stomping all over political correctness like a giant, radiation-breathing lizard in downtown Tokyo.”

“Uh-huh, you keep jiving and I’ll keep ignoring. Three more days I gotta put up with your sour cream ass.”

“California’s wasted on blacks, anyway. All that coast… You ever seen a black man on a beach?” Stilson was giggling now.

DeShawn shook his head slowly, unamused.

“It’s a serious question. I’m curious.”

“Do you actually have a point, or did Ratulowski ask you to play me up because I stole his last bag of M&Ms?”

Stilson leaned down and spoke in hushed tones. “Is it true what they say, Winterson? Once you go black—”

“Man, get the hell outta here before I bust your pointy-egg head wide open with this mug. I’d be curious to see if you’ve got a brain in there.”

Stilson patted the man on the shoulder. “Take it easy, won’t ya? And let me know if you hear anything on that window. With the road closed, those damned choppers are our only way out of here.”

DeShawn rolled his eyes.

Stilson ducked out the door. Leaning his head back in, he called, “You must be hungry. Why don’t I call down to Anchorage, see if they can’t fly us in some fried chicken—”

A hurled medical dictionary slammed the door shut on Stilson’s grinning face. DeShawn heard the man’s laughter and clucking sounds from behind it, fading away.

21:03

James McVigger sat staring at two high-resolution monitors. Next to them was a regular resolution monitor displaying dozens of patient names, study types, dates. The mouse cursor flittered between all three monitors. 

“Hey, DeShawn? Did that report fax in on that knee we did?” 

DeShawn sipped coffee from a black mug that read Supa Tech!!! in neon green and glanced up at McVigger, who continued to stare at the screens. The left displayed a male femur, patella and tibia-fibula in lateral profile. The right screen was the same image from anteroposterior aspect.

“You know…that knee we did on the one-armed guy?” McVigger repeated.

“That was a week ago, kid.” He turned his attention back to the reports he was validating.

“Crap, really?” McVigger looked up from the monitor with wide eyes that reflected the artificial glow of the screens; young, no more than twenty. DeShawn often wondered why the kid was out here, in the forever winter of a soon-to-be-closed military base. “Huh. Weird. Felt like yesterday.”

DeShawn nodded. “All runs together out here. The report came back, docs want a weight-bearing, which we should’ve done in the first place. But no one listens to me.”

“Bi-lateral?”

“Sure, it’s the best way to see reduced joint spaces around the knee. But don’t listen to me, I’m just the house negro.”

James laughed, then caught himself. “Wait…what does that even mean?”

DeShawn sighed. “Never mind, kid.”

“So, DeShawn,” McVigger continued, not missing a beat, “you’ve been around, right? Like, done your share of crazy stuff…and stuff?”

“How’d you think I ended up out here? Yeah, sure, kid. I did my share of stupid.”

McVigger swallowed. “Have you ever, like, done it…Uh, I mean been with, like, a girl who wasn’t…you know…?”

DeShawn sighed. “Have I ever had sex with a white girl? Is that what you’re asking me, McVigger? Listen, did Stilson put you up to this?”

McVigger turned back to his screens, cheeks turning red. “Nah, I was just curious, man. It’s this place. The boredom. Forget I ever asked.”

“Best to ignore guys like Stilson,” DeShawn said. “Don’t get me wrong, the boss is okay, but he’s a barrel of TNT. One of these days he’s going to light too many fuses, and I don’t want to be around when he goes up.”

McVigger nodded.

A ghostly scream erupted from the corner of the office as the requisition printer began coughing out a sheet of paper. The old fax machine lived next to the stacks of now unused cassette readers and PACS workstations, most of which were offline.

DeShawn jumped up and tore the paper from the machine. “Looks like we got a…da-de-da! Left knee. AP and lateral. You want this, Rookie?”

McVigger looked up. “Sure, man, nothing else going on.”

21:20

“Do you need me to take off my clothes?”

DeShawn grinned. He stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching as James McVigger walked Irene Watkins to the examination table.

“That, uh, won’t be necessary, ma’am,” James stuttered. He gave DeShawn a knowing look, a look that said why is it always the octogenarians that want to get butt naked?

Irene halted her shuffling gait. “My word. You don’t even want my bra off?”

“We’re X-raying your knee, ma’am,” McVigger said.

“Call me Irene.”

“Okay, Irene. We’re nearly there.” McVigger nodded towards the examination table in the corner of the room. The little step to help patients climb up was pulled out. “Unfortunately the table doesn’t lower. I’ll help you.”

“Okay,” Irene said, somewhat dubiously. “Doctors say I need to go up on my good leg. Or is it down with my good leg?”

McVigger glanced at DeShawn for reassurance. “Whatever leg you feel comfortable with, Mrs. Watkins.” 

Irene’s unsteady frame began its ascent up to the table, McVigger’s hands holding tightly to her arm and hip, guiding. She turned to face him, sitting down on the smooth surface.

“I’m sorry it’s cold and hard, but we won’t have you here for long.”

“I’ve been through a depression, a war. Lost two husbands. I can handle it, young man.”

She reclined until her old yet thick body lay supine, head on the white pillow. McVigger glanced at the blue gonadal shields hanging on the wall, shook his head, grinned.

“Okay, Irene,” he said in a voice that was a little too loud and annunciated. “I’m going to keep your leg nice and straight, just like it is. Got it?” 

He reached up for the colorless plastic box that hung above the table. The X-Ray tube could move in almost any direction, and McVigger quickly angled the device. He pushed a button, and a light with crosshairs projected onto the table.

He began mumbling. “Fifteen degrees...Cephalic... Inch or so inferior to patella apex...”

“What was that, young man?”

McVigger looked down. “Sorry, Irene, just talking to myself. Hold tight now, I have to slip this hard cassette under your leg.” He did so, feeling the fabric of her sweatpants to ensure he had good coverage. The crosshair in the rectangle of light did not match the black surface of the ten-by-twelve X-Ray cassette. McVigger twiddled two knobs until the length and height matched exactly, and the crosshair sat just below her kneecap.

“Am I doing this right?” Irene asked. “You just tell me what I need to do.”

“You’re doing great, Irene,” McVigger said. He placed a piece of plastic imbedded with a big letter L and smaller letters JM on the cassette. “Now hold right there, and I’ll take the picture.”

He looked over at DeShawn who was busy behind the lead wall. Through the thick window he saw him at the control station setting a technique for the knee radiograph. 

DeShawn looked up. “Whenever I do an extremity, I always start at—”

“Sixty-four at four,” McVigger finished for him, grinning.

The first number referred to the kilovoltage peak that would push the radiation through Irene to the cassette, forming the radiograph. The second number was the amount of radiation produced. Too much of one or too little of the other meant the difference between a diagnostic image and abstract art. 

“As low as reasonably achievable, right, DeShawn?”

DeShawn nodded. “ALARA. Guess you’ve been around me too long.”

“Hold still, Irene,” McVigger called from behind the lead wall. He pushed the button to spin up the X-Ray tube’s rotating anode, the disc that would shoot radiation at the woman when struck by electricity. “Here it comes!” With his finger still on the rotor he hit expose. 

Zap!

The lights dimmed a little.

“You can relax, Irene,” McVigger said, grabbing a fresh cassette. “Run the other one for me?”

DeShawn took the exposed cassette from behind Irene’s knee. “Getting a replacement for this one, Misses Watkins?” he said, rubbing her kneecap tenderly.

“God, yes! They’re going to give me a new knee,” Irene said as DeShawn placed her old knee back down on the table. “I’m quite excited, but... Well, I wasn’t told you were leaving, you see. I didn’t want to have to go all the way to Homer. I always liked this base. My husband served here for many years, bless him. My, how things have changed.”  

“And they keep changing,” DeShawn said.

“They can replace things so easily these days,” she said, her words gaining speed. “And there never used to be no colored doctors.”

DeShawn took a breath. “Well, I’m not a doctor, Irene,” he said. “We’re just the picture takers.”

“I didn’t mean no offense, hun,” Irene said quickly. “Both things are positive. Times change, that’s all. Times change. Just what are we going to do without you?”

“One more picture, Irene,” McVigger announced.

Irene sighed. “Oh? Okay. One more, then. I’m quite tired now.”

22:00

Paul Ratulowski sat stuffing peanut M&Ms into his wide mouth with one hand and slurping a can of Diet Coke to wash them down using the other. 

His large face was an unhealthy pallor akin to some mushrooms. In part, this was due to the glow of the hi-res monitors he was intent on, DeShawn knew, but there was something else. It wasn’t simply the man’s unhealthy diet or the sickly sheen of sweat that always clung to his fleshy face like a damp mask.

“Heard you guys did a knee this evening,” Ratulowski said, and belched. “Any hotties?”

DeShawn, who was busy finalizing his own paperwork for the day, didn’t turn around to answer the man. “Sure. 70 years ago.”

Ratulowski slurped his cola. “Ugh, this place never changes. Old war birds that moved here during the Big Two with their dumb military boyfriends. Never moved back. Damn shame, Winterson.”

“Why’s that?” DeShawn asked, although he immediately wished he had not.

Ratulowski half-spun in his office chair to face his coworker. “1940s, man, this place woulda been packed full of skirt from all over the Union. They’d get shipped here to the base with their boyfriends, their boyfriends got deployed, voila! A military town full of lonely country girls barely in their teens. Man, the poon I coulda gotten back then. Fish in a barrel, DeShawn, fish in a hot-damn barrel.”

“Yeah, but, wouldn’t you have been deployed too?”

“Nah, I’m an unconscious objectifier.”

DeShawn frowned. “Conscientious objector?” 

“Same thing,” Ratulowski said and belched again. “It’s one of them oxymorons.”

“Right.” DeShawn rose from his chair. “Well, that’s a day’s work. Goodnight, Paul. You’ve got my cell in case of an emergency. There were no reported accidents on base, we’re still at minimum staff. As far as the latest NOAA reports go, we’re looking at another three days on lockdown until this front passes—”

“Great,” Ratulowski groaned, crushing his soda can a little.

“There’s a jackknifed logging truck on south bound Route Three—”

“You’re killing me, DeShawn! Where’s the Rookie?”

“—Should be cleaned up by morning. McVigger’s down in medical achieves with Morgan, they’re helping to box up the last of the hard copies. Page em if you get into trouble.”

“Nah, it’s better than wasting their time up here — though I’d tell McVigger to watch out. That Morgan’s a first class bunny boiler. She’ll have his balls for breakfast, with a side of bacon.” Ratulowski snickered to himself. He was clicking through past radiographic studies on the monitor. “Nah, I’ll find myself a good cutie to entertain me. Maybe that one chick we did last month, damn she was a tight little mamma.”

DeShawn’s stomach tightened. “Rats, you we’re a tech down in L.A., right? Had to’ve been good money. How’d you end up here?”

Ratulowski poured the last of the M&Ms into his mouth, funneling the candies into his gullet. He pulled another bag from his bulging scrub’s pocket. Mouth full, he mumbled, “Hmm, yeah, hmm.”

“So, what happened?” DeShawn pressed. 

“Same thing that happened, hmm, to everyone else stuck in this POS hospital. You’re here for the same reason I am, DeShawn.” He selected a pelvis study from a 14-year-old girl.

DeShawn shook his head, mumbling, “I doubt that.”

“Huh?” Ratulowski tore open his bag of candies.

DeShawn turned to leave. “Goodnight, Rats.”

22:37

DeShawn heaved the dumbbells back into their safety slots. He’d had time since relocating to Alaska to work on his physique, and the results were quite pleasing, if only to himself. He glanced furtively at his reflection in one of the wall-length mirrors, despite being the sole occupant of the facility. What he saw wasn’t half-bad. He wasn’t bulky, not like a body builder, but the glamor muscles were starting to define themselves nicely.

He picked up his towel, tossing it around his neck, squeezing the last of his water into his mouth. That’s when he saw, out of the wall-to-ceiling windows of the hospital’s gymnasium/physical therapy suite, a shadow staggering between shadows.

DeShawn moved closer to the windows, which were one-way, but the overhead fluorescents coalesced to obscure his view. From inside, the night bound beyond the glass wall was mute. He could not penetrate his vision beyond the parking lot lights, where ragged snowdrifts continued to accumulate. The snow flakes clung to the windows in white spider-webbed clusters. An animal maybe? There were animals here in Alaska that DeShawn had never seen before. He knew nothing about them and didn’t care to further his knowledge of the last frontier state.

But that shadow had moved wrong. Not like an animal. Not like a person, either.

DeShawn turned to locate the facility’s light switches. The overheads were auto-triggered, and would turn themselves off after he left. But maybe if he turned them off now, maybe if he too was in darkness, he could see beyond, into the night.

DeShawn didn’t move. He peered again into the frozen night. Whatever had wandered by this window was long gone, he was sure of it. And if it was a man — maybe one of the local tribespeople — then he was damned if he was going out there after him.

But the base was closed to the public. No one was left, not a single military clerk. Six months from now there would be a crew here from God-knows-where to strip the hospital of every piece of equipment down to the floor tiles. But until then…

Why was someone wandering around an abandoned military base at night in a blizzard? The question wouldn’t leave his mind. It was late, he was tired. Had he imagined it?

Despite the storm and the endless Alaskan night, DeShawn knew what lay beyond the shadows. Frozen grass, grey streets, empty buildings, the bay, the grey ocean. 

His limbo. His prison.

It didn’t matter now. Three more days and he’d be gone. A ghost.

He turned and walked out of the gym, the automatic doors closing behind him. Ten minutes later the lights blinked out, and darkness reigned.

Fri. 01.07

DeShawn’s eyes opened to complete darkness. For the briefest of moments he had no recollection of who or where he was. Something was ringing in his ears. His arm flopped over to the nightstand, fished around, came up with his cellphone. He touched the screen.

“I’m not on call.”

The voice on the other end was smooth, warm, and filled with concern. Morgan Chaya’s. “Are you awake, DeShawn?”

“Am now, Morg.”

“I hate when you call me Morg.”

“I hate when you call me at...” DeShawn checked his watch. “Damn, girl, it’s way too early. Call me back in six hours.” There was silence from the other end of the line. “Hey?”

“I’m here,” Morgan half whispered. “Put your thermals on, DeShawn, I need you at the hospital ASAP. We’ve got something here.”

DeShawn sat up in bed. “Got something? What, a wreck?”

“No — I mean, I don’t know. DeShawn, just come down here. Please?”

In the darkness, DeShawn’s face grew lined with concern. “Now you’re scaring me, girl. Need me to warm up my scanner?”

“Yeah, that’ll be prudent. I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. It’s snowing like a bastard out there, DeShawn. Drive carefully.”

01:25

The Jeep trundled along the two-lane highway, headlights slashing white lines in the night, filled with a flurry of snowflakes. A plow had been through recently, but the drifts were quickly reforming. The Jeep’s heavy snow chains thundered against the hardtop: Ka-Thump-Ka-Thump-Ka-Thump!

Inside the cab, DeShawn’s eyes burned with the strain of seeing. He was sleepy, too tired to be driving in this kind of weather. He had the driver’s side window cracked an inch, the freezing air a continuous slap to his senses, staving off unconsciousness. 

DeShawn goosed the accelerator. He’d driven this stretch of base highway, which led from the staff barracks to the hospital, countless times in the past ten months. Tonight, however, the road ahead had become a dark mystery filled with secrets. Every curve seemed alien to him, familiar landmarks obliterated by the night and the storm. The only way he would know he was safe was when the lights of the hospital came into view.

The Hospital. That was its inglorious designation now. No name really, no recognition. Just bad memories and forgotten history. A soon to be abandoned building in a forest of abandoned buildings.

When the base had announced its impending closure, the hospital’s life support was cut with it. Everybody knew it. The administrators tried to put on a brave face — to keep the public happy — but everybody knew. The local towns were not populace enough to keep such a facility alive, not by a long shot. Local techs left, then the doctors and nurses. Abandoning ship.

Temps were brought in, lured with the promises of nice bonuses and free base housing. Even with that kind of resplendent bargaining clout, the hospital struggled to find qualified replacements. Any medical facility would have a hard time finding the talent necessary to fill the holes left by so many absent MDs, ARNPs, RNs, techs, let alone a hospital in the middle of a Base Realignment and Closure operation in frozen Palin territory, halfway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. 

Not for the first time, DeShawn half-smiled at the idea of bringing in damaged health care workers with less than reputable backgrounds and caging them in a self-contained village with only each other for company. Suffice it to say the ‘talent’ the admins and directors had lured to keep The Hospital comfortable during its hospice stage were as colorful as they were self-destructive. 

Peter Ratulowski was a fine example. DeShawn didn’t know what he had done to lose his previous position, not for certain, but he suspected it was inappropriate behavior with a female patient. Probably an underaged one. The man was rank with it, a walking HIPAA violation, a lawsuit in scrubs. Most nights DeShawn clocked out leaving Rats ogling young girls’ CT scans, plain-films of pelvises (Ratulowski called them ‘Hips with Lips’) Chest scans with good soft-tissue density…

DeShawn shivered hard. He wanted to turn on the radio, but decided against it. Snow was whipping against his left ear, stinging the skin down to his skull. He wanted to wind up the window but dared not. There was good sized game out on these roads, even with a blizzard. One ill-timed curve, one eye taken off the road, even for a second, and you’d be down into a ravine, wrapped around a yellow cedar and on a one way flight in a pine box.

He turned his heater on instead, tried to gain control of his shivering skin. Yes, the temps were colorful, and it wasn’t just Ratulowski. Morgan was a jigsaw puzzle missing a few pieces; fragile and desperately hanging on to her identity (and her sanity, it seemed, although that felt to DeShawn a touch histrionic and melodramatic). In the nine months DeShawn had known her, he still couldn’t figure the doctor out. And when it came to HIPAA violations, Michael Stilson, the radiology department lead, was little better than Rats, although his temperament tended to lean him more towards inappropriateness of every kind. He wasn’t a true racist, homophobe or misogynist, (or so DeShawn hoped), but he was out there enough to drop the N-word in public, belittle the very concept of womanhood, and bash just about any fringe group in existence.

The Rookie, too, wasn’t without a taint. Fresh out of tech school from Washington State, James McVigger had partied a little too hard during graduation night. Two girls were found dead in his dorm; some kind of nasty drug overdose, DeShawn wasn’t clear on the details or why the kid had ended up in Alaska after it all went down. Hell, he wasn’t clear on his own details, not anymore.

The snow was coming down harder now, pummeling the windshield in thick clumps, being wiped away by the old blades, clumping again. It was a losing battle, DeShawn knew, but just as he was about to panic, he saw lights. The hospital. The Hospital. It loomed like an old ship in a sea of darkness and snow.

The Jeep’s powerful headlights swept along the turn-off for the main parking lot, which stood almost completely empty. The main doors to the illuminated E.D. were closed, but DeShawn thought he saw movement inside. He parked, took a deep breath, and for the briefest of moments considered reaching for the gun he kept under the seat.

01:46

DeShawn half staggered through the emergency department doors, the wind and snow following him between the automatic sliding glass panels. He scrubbed his boots on the heavy doormat before pulling off his thick coat.

Two nurses fluttered between rooms, gathering equipment, checking supplies. No one else was around. DeShawn glanced at the floor by his feet. Two tracks through the mud and slush. A cart?

“Yo, Sally, Mary, who’d they bring in?” DeShawn called. 

One of the nurses — Mary Sullivan, who DeShawn suspected took more pills than she dispensed — paused long enough to reply. “They want you in X-ray, DeShawn. You’d better get down there.”

DeShawn hesitated, pondering Mary’s skeletal frame; drawn face, sunken eyes, overly pale Irish skin. Something about those eyes made him hold his tongue. She was done with this place, by God, he could tell, and she wanted nought to do with any shenanigans that could keep her here a second longer. That was fine by him. After all, didn’t he feel the same way?

He went for the elevators, entered an already open cart, tapped the G button. The doors rumbled shut. DeShawn’s stomach rose, then sank. The doors seemed to pause a moment longer than usual before opening.

He walked the wide hallway, quiet except for his footsteps echoing off the faded beige walls. He passed the file room, then the reading rooms where, in busier times, radiologists sat staring at computer screens filled with diagnostic radiographs. He saw no one. Heard no one.

DeShawn was suddenly thankful that, after nearly a year, he knew his way around the hospital, because the overhead signs seemed to be in a different language, and the walls were filled with pictographs he couldn’t decipher. And now a humming noise in his head was beginning to grow distracting.

The stench of bleach assaulted his nose, stung his eyes. The minimal night crew of cleaning staff had been through this way. The floor was still shiny and damp. Looking down, he saw his own hazy reflection glaring up at him. He looked away. He passed the reception area, darkened and empty at this hour, as it should be. Anything this late would be patched through from the Emergency Room.

One last corner and the radiology department appeared, though no signs or icons labeled it as such. As DeShawn neared he saw that all the doors to the examination rooms were closed. 

“…You can’t know that, none of us are qualified, who the hell can tell what it is?” It was Ratulowski’s low growl, coming from Room 3. DeShawn knocked on the door before entering.

There in the dimly lighted room, huddled around the examination table like a half-time consultation, stood Paul Ratulowski, James McVigger, Michael Stilson, and Morgan Chaya. Their faces and eyes locked on DeShawn’s as if zeroing in on an enemy target. Hostile.

“This’d better be good,” DeShawn said.

“Winterson,” Stilson snapped. “Took you long enough. Get in here, close the damn door.”

DeShawn did that. “Storm’s getting worse. I got here as soon as…” But as he came closer he saw the table was occupied. A white sheet, the kind usually put down for patients to lie on the exam table, was draped over something about the size of a child.

“God…” DeShawn muttered. “This a peds John Doe situation?” He looked at each of his colleagues for an answer. Their mouths seemed to hang open at the point of speaking, but nothing came out. If the child had died, why wasn’t it in the ER? Where was the crash cart?

Suddenly DeShawn was hit with a wave of paranoid suspicion. Were they playing a practical joke on him? It was two o’clock in the goddamned morning, did they think this was funny?

“DeShawn…” Morgan said, finally finding the words. No, he could tell by her eyes, there was nothing funny about this situation.

He looked down at the table. The form beneath the sheet was about the size of a child, yes. “Who’s on call tonight? Dr. Owens?” 

They looked away. Morgan hugged herself. McVigger seemed to be shaking.

“Winterson,” Stilson said, “truth is, we don’t know what the hell to do. I wanted everyone here to assess the situation… To…figure out a protocol.”

“What kinda protocol is there for this?” said Ratulowski.

“‘This’ what?” DeShawn said. He didn’t like the strange look on Rat’s face. All the hunger that was usually present there had gone out of it.

Morgan suddenly found her voice. “This,” she nodded downward toward the sheet without looking directly at it, “was brought in by two tribesmen. They said they’d hit it out on the road somewhere. Put it on their truck, brought it here.”

“Where are they now?” DeShawn asked.

“They wouldn’t even come inside,” Morgan said. “They dumped it on the steps, shouted at the nurses to give it to the military, then sped off in their pickup.”

“How’d they get on base?” DeShawn asked, but he was hardly listening now. His eyes were fixed on the form beneath the sheet, fingers going for the top of it, where the head should be…

“Should probably prepare yourself,” Ratulowski said.

DeShawn paused, raised an eyebrow. “This ain’t clinicals, Rats. I’ve seen dead children before.”

“Not like this you ain’t,” Ratulowski whispered. “It’s a freakin monster.”

DeShawn’s hand hesitated. He couldn’t seem to make his arm move. Something in the back of his mind kept recoiling, as if he were about to plunge his hand into raw sewage, or blood. Revulsion. That was the feeling, wasn’t it? The idea that wouldn’t stop running through his mind like a bad movie trailer, that he would be contaminated somehow, that when he pulled back the covers he was removing the only barrier between him and it. But what was it? ‘Other’, he knew. Something that did not belong. Something that was not meant to be, but was. Was, despite the impossibility.

The impossibility.

DeShawn sniffed at the air. What was it he was detecting, above the usual hospital chemicals and materials? “It smells like…” he stopped, suddenly embarrassed. But it was, wasn’t it? That smell he’d known since he’d turned thirteen. And it wasn’t simply the bleach mopped over the faded linoleum. Or the stench of drying CaviWipes. 

“Smells like junk,” McVigger said.

DeShawn glanced at the kid, who had his hands in his pockets and his back to them all.

“Seminal,” Morgan said. “We’re not sure what’s causing it to smell like that.”

DeShawn moved his hand away from the sheet. “The nurses who brought this in…where they at?”

“They didn’t see it,” Stilson said. “The damn thing was wrapped in a plastic sheet. We got it inside and Paul and I opened it. That’s when I called everyone in.”

DeShawn turned back to the sheet and the small figure beneath it. No more than four feet, maybe. “Why the sheet, then?”

“Just look at it!” Morgan almost shrieked.

DeShawn’s heart was pounding in his chest now. Morgan’s face was twisted in silent horror…or terror. He couldn’t decide which. She stared at him, her eyes pleading. 

“Okay. Okay, I’ll take a look. Probably just some animal they hit out on the wastes.”

“That’s why we need your scanner warmed up,” Stilson said. “We can’t fully determine…what exactly it is we’re dealing with here.”

DeShawn looked at McVigger, who remained with his back to them. “Hey, Rookie, you wanna warm up Old Betty for me?”

McVigger turned slightly. “You just want me out the way. You think I can’t handle this. I can handle this. I can handle anything.”

DeShawn heard the edge in the kid’s voice. He didn’t like it. “What I need, James, is my CT scanner warmed up. I’ll send Morgan if you can’t…”

“I got it!” McVigger said and stormed out the room.

“Winterson?” It was Ratulowski’s voice.

DeShawn started and looked at the man. “What?”

Ratulowski nodded toward the table. “Ain’t you gonna look?”

Had he not? DeShawn wondered. He felt as if he had already peered beneath the sheet. Or maybe I just thought about what it would be like to peel back this white linen…like peeling back the eyelid of a dead man…

The feeling of revulsion returned, pouring over him like oily water. He had to swallow several times to keep from coughing. His fingers reached again for the top of the sheet. Stopped. 

“Rats, toss me some gloves.”

Rats threw the box of mediums at DeShawn, who pulled out a pair and slipped them on.

DeShawn saw Stilson punching at the face of his iPhone. “I can’t get hold of Owens, shit.”

“We’re going to have to get someone in here to call this.” DeShawn said. “Morgan, you’re the closest thing we have to a licensed doctor. Was the patient DOA? Do we have a record of vitals? Dr. Owens may be unreachable for the foreseeable, but we can at least get the paperwork started for this — cover our asses in case there’s foul play involved.” DeShawn looked up to see that the three of them were staring at him. Staring at him like he was crazy, it seemed. “What?”

“You still ain’t looked, Winterson,” Ratulowski rasped, running a hand over his stubbled jowls.

Rats was right. DeShawn’s gloved hands were now in his pockets. “Damn…it’s like…”

“Like you think you already looked, but you haven’t, you just think you have,” Morgan said.

DeShawn nodded. He cast his gaze once more to the table and the sheet and the form under the sheet. His gloved hand reached out and tore back the cover.

The seminal-stench assaulted him, made his eyes water. He blinked a few times and swallowed. He kept thinking of deep sea creatures, the kind on TV documentary specials about the deepest parts of the ocean; pale, translucent skin with blood vessels visible like dark pathways beneath ice; dead eyes that saw nothing because there was no light that far down.

An animal. No, too human. The face was like a child almost, but the jaw was too small, the eye sockets too large, the skull misshapen. “Albinism…with some form of severe hyperplasia?”

“Hyper what?” Ratulowski said.

“Enlargement of the organs and bones,” DeShawn said. “This may have been a severe case of cancer.”

Stilson whooped. “So you’re a doctor now? That look like any kind of cancer you’ve seen before?”

“I’m just trying to be objective, rational,” DeShawn said. He continued to stare down at the body on the table. The limbs were thin, the chest small and punctuated with ribs. There was obvious trauma to one side of the head and chest. “You said the native folks hit this…person with their truck?”

“That’s what they said,” Ratulowski mumbled. “But I’ll be a celibate vegan before that thing’s a person.” He pointed at the body lying on the table.

DeShawn turned to the man. “Then what is it, Rats?”

“Hell if I know. I’m just a tech.”

“Yet you’re quick to dismiss this as human…”

“I’ve got eyes, Winterson. How many people you know look like that, huh? It’s messed up. And don’t try and tell me it’s some type of disease. Monster. That’s what it is. Christ, who’da thought anything like that could exist?”

“No one here’s ever seen anything like this,” Stilson cut in. “We need to figure out if it’s… We need to know what it is. Can you CT it? Maybe if we take a look inside, we’d have a better frame of reference.”

“We should burn it,” Ratulowski said.

“We’ll do no such thing!” Stilson barked. “This could be something.”

Ratulowski’s face twisted in disgust. “It is something, Mike. A goddamn monster. A freak.”

“What if there are more of these things out there?” It was Morgan, chiming in again as if she’d just remembered her part.

The others stared at her.

Ratulowski snorted. “More? You’re saying you think there’s others like this, out there?” He pointed to indicate a place beyond the current confines of the hospital.

DeShawn looked back at the body before covering it again. He instantly felt the tension in the room drop a few notches. “Get a gurney. Let’s move it to the scanner and see what we can get.”

2:17

By the time they had all bundled into the computed tomography room, the giant X-ray tube was warmed up and ready to use. DeShawn noted that McVigger had gotten everything ready for the scan competently, including loading several scanning protocols on the operator’s terminal.

“I figure we start off with an abdomen scan, get the gross anatomy out of the way,” DeShawn said as he slid into the operator’s chair and checked the system. “Then we can do a head.”

“I want bone as well soft tissue,” Stilson said. “We need to ascertain whether these deformations are congenital abnormalities, or…something else. Hydrocephaly, for example.”

“Sounds to me like you’re just trying to justify what ain’t there, Mikey,” Ratulowski said. “You know as well as I do what this ain’t—“

Morgan raised her hands. “Boys, let’s not jump to conclusions. DeShawn’s right, we need to act rational about this—“
“Morgan and rational, two words that don’t end up in the same sentence too often,” Ratulowski said.

“Meaning what, exactly?” Morgan said cooly.

Ratulowski shrugged. “Meaning you’re too dosed to even care what’s happening here, toots.”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed.

“I set up okay?” McVigger asked, his voice small, unsure.

DeShawn put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and squeezed. “Perfect. Thank you. Now would you do me another favor?”

The kid nodded.

“I could use some coffee.”

McVigger' shoulders visibly dropped. “You just want me out the way.”

“I just want caffeine,” DeShawn said. “Look, we won’t start until you get back, okay? You could see this, if you want. Or you could help the nurses up front?” There it was, DeShawn thought, a way out if the kid wanted it. A way to save face if the idea of being in this cramped room with a — what did Rats call it? A Monster — was too much to bear.

“Straight black, right?” McVigger finally said.

“Just like him,” Stilson put in. “Uh, make mine real sweet, would ya, kid?” He chucked him on the shoulder. “Just like me.”

McVigger furtively rolled his eyes and left the tiny control room.

The remaining techs peered through the view window at the giant donut that was Old Betty. 

DeShawn, not for the first time, missed the scanners he’d had in Illinois. He missed the wife he’d had there too, their small house they’d bought together. But the scanners had been hi-res models capable of two- or three-hundred slices in a pass, not like this sixty-four slice dinosaur they had locked up in the basement. Each ‘slice’ was an individual X-ray itself, and when stitched together provided a full image of the cross section of the region of the body being scanned. Simply put, the more slices, the more complete the picture. But right now, Old Betty would have to do.

He punched up the first protocol on the terminal. This one was a standard abdominal-pelvis routine with an option to run the scan with or without contrast. There was of course no way to run the routine with contrast — a radiographic dye that allows blood vessels and certain organs to show up better — because there was no active cardiovascular system to transport the dye.

“We’re almost ready here,” DeShawn said. “If you’d be so kind to get our patient on the bed, I’ll run it through the tube.”

“Think there’s anything inside it?” Ratulowski said. “I mean like in those movies where the little critters come busting out and kill everybody in the half-abandoned hospital.”

DeShawn sighed. “Guess we’ll find out. Mike, will you assist Rats?”

Stilson was staring at the gurney they’d wheeled in. He didn’t seem to hear DeShawn. 

“Yo, Mike?”

The department lead blinked. He looked at them with glassy eyes. “Miles away. What?”

DeShawn saw Ratulowski frown. “Uh, just help get the body onto the table so I can run the scan.”

“Why do I always have to do the shitty jobs,” Ratulowski whined.

“Because you’re an asshole, Rats, and assholes beget shit,” Morgan said pleasantly and smiled. “It’s the natural order of things.”

“Oh, is that you, Morgan?” Ratulowski said, mock-squinting. “I didn’t recognize ya with your legs pointing down.”

“Guys, it’s nearly three in the morning, and unless you want me to get back in my car and—“

“We’re going,” Stilson said. “Rats, shut up and help me move it.”

Ratulowski set his jaw and reluctantly followed Stilson out into the tube room.

“This is like those crappy ‘documentaries’ they run on cable these days, instead of serious scientific stuff I remember from when I was a kid,” Morgan said, her tone low. “You know? The stuff about finding a weird creature in some Mexican village, urban legends about chupacabras eating babies, stupid stuff about Area 51 and pyramids on the moon.”

DeShawn nodded. “Except whatever this is, it’s real. We’ve all seen it. Unless I’m dreaming.”

“Which begs the questions, DeShawn. What exactly is it? What if this turns out to be something… God, I don’t know — something else? We are on a military base after all. We’re pretty isolated out here…”

DeShawn raised a hand. “Weren’t you the one not five minutes ago warning us about jumping to conclusions? Last thing we need tonight is to let our collective imaginations run crazy. And ninety-nine-point-nine-percent of the time, all that urban legend crap is just that, crap. Some mangy dog someone mistakes for a chupacabra, or some deformed animal skeleton being pawned off as a…as an…”

“Extraterrestrial,” Morgan finished for him. “What? Oh hell, DeShawn, it’s been on all of our lips since this thing came in. Nobody wants to say it.”

“Because no one’s thinking it, except you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And Rats thinks it is, too. He as good as said it.”

DeShawn sighed. “Look, it’s nothing personal, but you ain’t exactly the most stable of elements in times of crisis. Not saying I can’t trust you, but you know how it is.”

Morgan laughed. “Come on, you’re not still holding what happened between us against me, surely?”

“Of course not,” DeShawn said cooly. “Because nothing did happen between us, Morg.”

“Always hate it when you call me that. It sounds so…morbid.”

“I’m a married man.”

“Were married. There’s a difference. And it wasn’t like I was picking out a wedding dress. It was just…you know? Uncomplicated.”

DeShawn hooted.

Morgan frowned out the viewing window as Stilson and Ratulowski pulled on gowns and gloves and masks. “I think this thing could be it, DeShawn. A life-form from another world. Or at least a brand new species we’ve never seen before.”

“Now who sounds rational? It’s not from another world. That’s impossible.”

Morgan folded her arms, tossing her red braid behind her shoulder. “So you’re an expert on aliens now?”

“I’ve seen the Discovery Channel.”

“This could make us famous. Rich. We’d be on all the channels. All the talkshows. The doctor that discovered we’re not alone in the universe!”

DeShawn imagined being paraded around the media circuit, enduring a non-stop circus of narcissistic talkshow hosts and neurotic radio personalities out to make them look like idiots or worse; harassed by the government for information they simply didn’t have but couldn’t prove; universities looking to study their findings; cults and whack-jobs looking for any reason to drink the kool-aid and join the big mothership in the sky. His life as he knew it would be over, along with any hope he had of getting back with Monica. 

Suddenly he felt himself grow angry. Why couldn’t this stupid thing have waited a couple more days? A week? He’d be back in the Midwest working PRN until he could get himself reestablished in Illinois. Now here he was, getting ready to run a scan on something so hideously removed from their everyday experience that they were willing to entertain the idea of alien life to make sense of it.

“Morg, think about what you’re saying. If you went public with something like this, you’d never be taken seriously again in the medical field.”

She snickered. “My promising career as a doctor, you mean?”

DeShawn had been at the hospital less than a week before he’d heard through the grapevine that Morgan Chaya had slept with almost every willing man (and a few women) during her medical program. Later, she had confided in him that most of the rumors were true. And then she had tried to sleep with DeShawn, despite the fact that he still wore his wedding band. Despite all that, DeShawn found that he liked Morgan. Admired her, even, in an admittedly strange and somewhat complicated fashion. She was a survivor at heart, willing to do whatever it took to get ahead. Except that she had slept with the wrong people, pissed off the wrong spouses, and had found herself ejected from the medical program during her last year of residency.

“You can still be a proper doctor. But if you go through with this, you’ll be jeopardizing your chances. Trust me, it’s not alien, Morg. Can’t be. And that’s just plain facts.”

“How can you be so sure about something like that? So convinced we’re alone in the universe. Strikes me as a little arrogant to think that somehow we’re the only special ones.”

“Leave aside for a moment whether or not you believe we’re the only life in the universe,” DeShawn said. “It’s simply a numbers game. Even if the galaxy’s teeming with life, the distances between stars makes it near impossible for any of that life to reach us. The speed of light can’t be broken, and even if it could, relativistic effects would mean that for the observer traveling through space, hardly any time passes at all, while for us hundreds and thousands of years go by. By the time anyone got here, we’d be long dead. Extinct. It makes interstellar flight completely impractical. Not to mention that, at those speeds, you’d blow up the second you hit so much as a pebble. Then there’s radiation to deal with, fuel, food, water and breathable air to carry with you. The problems with interstellar flight are insurmountable. And I haven’t even mentioned the time it would take for an alien race to develop the technology in order to even begin thinking about traveling across our galaxy. And then to believe somehow these beings would be capable of breathing our air, or dealing with our gravity? So you see, Morg, not only is it unlikely that this thing is from another world, it’s almost guaranteed not to be. To believe anything else is the real arrogance.”

Morgan looked at him, expressionless. “Almost guaranteed.”

DeShawn sighed. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Morgan, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“So you admit it could be real, no matter how unlikely?”

DeShawn glowered at her. “There are a hundred — no, a thousand explanations between ruling this thing extraterrestrial and what it really is: some freak of nature that found itself out on the reservation, got hit by a truck and died, was brought in by a couple of guys who got spooked and ran off, leaving us to clean up the mess.”

Morgan visibly shuddered. “But, DeShawn, you feel it, right? When you look at it? That it shouldn’t be here. That whatever it is shouldn’t exist at all.”

DeShawn shrugged. “The natural human response to the strange and unfamiliar is revulsion and fear. It’s a survival instinct.”

“Yeah, well, right now my instinct’s telling me that no place on earth could have spawned this thing. It simply doesn’t belong in the Natural Order.”

DeShawn couldn’t argue with that, despite what he’d just said about creature from another world. When had he seen anything so humanoid…yet not — outside of the apes. And he’d only seen them in zoos or on TV. Then he wondered if the military had maybe been experimenting with monkeys, like that one Charlton Heston movie, turning them into hyper-intelligent killing machines ready for deployment on the front lines of the next war.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Morgan almost breathed into his ear.

It made him scoot away on his chair slightly. “I’m worried about the kid.”

Morgan shrugged. “James? What about him?”

“He’s vulnerable. What if this gets bad? What if we end up having to… I mean, he’s got his whole life, Morg. He doesn’t deserve to have it all go to hell because of something like this. I think maybe we should send him home.”

“Send who home?”

McVigger arrived carrying two steaming cups. He set one down near the keyboard by DeShawn’s elbow. The other he set down farther away near the second monitor. He saw Morgan and DeShawn glance at each other. “What I miss?”

“Listen, kid — James,” DeShawn said. “You’re only starting your career, your life. Something like this…” he nodded out the window to where Stilson and Ratulowski were finishing transporting the body to the table. “We don’t know what this is, and frankly it could be bad. Dangerous even.”

“I know,” McVigger said, frowning. “I’m not that green. I’ve seen dead bodies before. That guy that had the fishing accident, with the prop…“

Morgan shifted her weight, finding her shoes suddenly interesting while DeShawn sipped his coffee and coughed. 

“I don’t mean seeing bodies or blood and trauma. James, this thing lying out there, it could end up drawing a lot of attention. Which means it could bring us a lot of attention.”

McVigger shrugged. “So what? I mean, get rich or die trying, right?” He laughed.

“Man after my own heart,” Morgan said, smiling lasciviously.

DeShawn let out a long breath.

“We’re ready out here,” Stilson called.

DeShawn hit the button on his desk to allow his voice to be heard in the tube room. “Come on back.”

“Hey, you want the sheet on or off?” Ratulowski called.

DeShawn hesitated. The scan would be slightly affected by having the material of the sheet over the body. Not enough to cause major distortion, he knew, but this wasn’t exactly a standard procedure. Yet, at the thought of exposing that pale body to the air of the room, the feeling of revulsion returned to him. 

“Leave it on. If I see any artifacts we can remove it for the next pass.”

Stilson and Ratulowski returned to the control room.

DeShawn hit a button and the scan began.

Then stopped.

Everything stopped. Everything went dark. And in the confines of the CT room the blackness was complete.

DeShawn heard a quick rustle of fabric, then a slapping sound. 

“Don’t move, anyone,” he said. “Keep calm, wait for the backup to kick on.”

“It should already be on,” Stilson said from somewhere in the darkness.

“Shit,” Ratulowski growled. “Where’s a flashlight?”

“I got my phone,” McVigger said. Suddenly a blinding white light erupted from the back of the room.

“Point it at the ground,” DeShawn said, blinded now by the white spots and afterimages floating through his vision.

“The backup’s not kicking in,” Stilson said. “Great, just great. What the hell happened, DeShawn?”

“Why you asking me?”

“Because we lost power when you hit the button,” Stilson accused.

DeShawn shook his head. “Coincidence. Has to be.”

“We got other problems…” It was Morgan, her voice tremulous in the darkness. She was out of the little control room partition with her own cell, aiming the LED flashlight at the scanner.

DeShawn slid off his chair and joined her. There on the table was a smoking pile of ash.

“We fried it,” McVigger said. “Holy crap, we cooked it.”

“Don’t be stupid, kid,” Ratulowski said. “Look at it, there’s only the sheet. Where’d the body go? Not enough there to account for the whole thing.”

“CT scanners do not cook people,” DeShawn said.

“Then,” Morgan hissed, “where the hell is it?”

Everyone froze.

DeShawn shivered despite the heat radiating from the CT scanner. This wasn’t right, he knew. There was no way for this to happen, no way he could have fried the body out of existence.

“What’s going on?” McVigger said. “It’s getting really warm in here.”

“Something’s wrong with the tube. Everyone, back to the tech station,” DeShawn said, fighting to keep emotion from his voice. His throat felt tight. The smell of burnt linen hung in the air around them. He backed up slowly from the scanner, his eyes flicking up to the ceiling where it was almost completely shadowed.

“The elevators will be out,” Morgan said. “But the stairs—“

A howl erupted from near the door to the room. DeShawn spun around as the two cell phone lights focused on the source of the scream. It was Michael Stilson, framed in shadow, clutching his right hand with his left at the wrist because the skin of the palm and fingers looked near melted off. 

Stilson screamed again when he saw his hand.

“Jesus, what happened?” Ratulowski said. “Wait, don’t touch the door handle!”

He was right. The metal of the handle was now white hot, smoking where Stilson’s skin had made contact.

Morgan was already assessing Stilson’s injury, playing the doctor. Stilson himself was looking away and hissing breaths through clenched teeth. 

“Third degree, he needs treatment,” she said.

“No shit,” Ratulowski barked. “How the hell do we get out? We’re trapped in here.”

DeShawn remembered that there was a real flashlight in his desk drawer under the control stations. He went for it, praying that the batteries were still good. They were. The room was bathed in a wide beam of the warmer, orange-yellow light from an incandescent bulb.

“What do we do?” McVigger asked DeShawn.

DeShawn saw the way the kid stared at him, wide-eyed, as if DeShawn was his platoon leader and they were hunkered down waiting for orders. Then he realized Ratulowski was staring at him, too, waiting. Morgan met his eyes between trying to help Stilson.

“James, try the front desk on your cell,” DeShawn said as he moved to pick up the two phones in the control room. Both dead.

“I’m getting this weird sound,” McVigger said.

“Here, hand me that.” DeShawn took the cell and listened. Killed the call and redialed. Same thing. “Sounds like a bad line.”

“Signal’s okay,” McVigger said, taking the phone back from DeShawn. “Morgan, can I try yours?” He took her offered cell and tried the number again. Then he dialed other numbers. Finally he dialed 911.

DeShawn saw the defeat in the kid’s eyes.

“What does it mean?” Ratulowski said.

“Plan B,” DeShawn said. “Everybody take a lead apron. Don’t touch anything without checking for heat first.” He glanced at Stilson, who was whimpering under Morgan’s treatment, forehead glistening with beads of sweat.

Several lead aprons hung from pegs on the wall. The clothing was designed to shield the techs from the small, but cumulative radiation doses they received in their work, especially if they were required to assist a patient while the X-rays were being slung.

DeShawn took an apron down and put it on over his head, passing the others out to the group. Then he took a pair of lead shielded gloves and put them on, too. He walked to the door, handed the flashlight to Ratulowski, and tried the door handle. The handle hissed against the fabric covering the lead glove. Smoke rose from around where DeShawn held the handle. With a pop the handle and the assembly came away and the door swung open.

“Whoa,” McVigger breathed.

“Get the flashlights out there in the corridor,” DeShawn ordered, kicking the door handle clear of the threshold. He tossed the lead glove on the floor and stamped out the little flames.

Instead of going out the now open door, Ratulowski handed DeShawn his flashlight back. “Hell if I’m going first.”

“But you were trapped a second ago,” McVigger said. “You want to stay here?”

“I don’t want to stay anywhere near this place, kid,” Ratulowski said. “Far as I’m concerned, you can all play Scooby-Doo in the dark with this freakin monster. I’m getting out. Call me in the morning.”

“We don’t split up,” DeShawn said.

“Hey, no one made you boss,” Ratulowski said. “Look what this thing did to Mike. Friggin melted his hand off. Well, not me, pal. Screw this. I didn’t ask for this crap. You guys might be getting paid enough to chase some freakin monster through a blacked-out hospital on an abandoned military base, but not me.”

“Fine,” DeShawn said, sensing a losing battle. Ratulowski repulsed him, sure, but the man wasn’t exactly wrong, either. They were in the dark, and whatever it was they had tried to examine was now loose…and possibly hostile. “Take a flashlight. But we all go. We’ll get up to the nurses’ station, try find the rest of the staff. Morgan, who’s left in the building?”

“None of the bigwigs, that’s for sure,” she said. She had found some sterile pads and some gauze and had finished patching up Stilson’s wound as best she could in the dark without help. “Just about everyone’s gone home. It’s three A.M. We’re closed down. No inpatients, just emergency — and even that’s pretty much closed.”

“Who’s in ED?” DeShawn asked, trying not to look too closely at that burned hand.

“A few nurses, not even a doctor,” Morgan said. “They’re working third shift with an MD on call. Mostly moving stuff into storage, like us.”

“What about that truck that jackknifed earlier this evening?” DeShawn said.

“It was routed to Anchorage,” Ratulowski said.

DeShawn thought about that for a moment. “Route Three is totally shut down?”

“Between here and Nenana north. All lanes, totally down,” Morgan said. “They’ll be picking up logs for days, assuming this storm ever quits.”

“Damn storm,” Stilson growled between clenched teeth, and swore. “What kind of jerk takes a logging rig through this weather? Now look, we’re stuck here. All because some asshole didn’t chug enough energy drinks. And he’s safe and warm in Anchorage sipping hot coffee and waiting for an insurance pay out while we’re stuck here with this thing…” he trailed off, the pain in his hand overcoming his fear and anger of the situation.

DeShawn’s eyes grew wide. “We’ve got to close this place up,” he said.

“Whoa, wait just a second,” Ratulowski said, holding up his large, pudgy hands. “We’re leaving. The roads on base are still good. We all live on base. What’s the freakin problem here?”

“The problem, Rats,” Morgan said slowly, as if talking to a recalcitrant child, “is that we can’t let it out of the hospital.”

“Beyond the base is nothing but Denali,” DeShawn said, “and that’s one big-ass national park. No way we’ll ever find it.”

“Good!” Ratulowski exclaimed. “Let it freeze out there in the woods — that’s where it came from, didn’t it?”

“We don’t know that,” McVigger said in a small voice. “It could’ve come from anywhere.”

“Then we find the guys who hit it,” DeShawn said. “They’ve got to have some idea where it was or what it was doing out there on the backroads.”

Stilson laughed painfully, sardonically. “You really are a flatlander, aren’t you, DeShawn?” And he pronounced the De with a poor redneck accent. “Think those Aleut bastards are gonna let us find them, talk to them? You’d have more luck finding a horizontal smile on a lineup of assholes.”

Morgan nodded. “They’re not Aleuts, but we’re better off focused on finding it here.”

“Again with the it,” Ratulowski said.

“Cletus,” McVigger said. 

The others looked at him as if he were deranged, which, in the upward cast of the flashlight beam, took little imagination.

“Something I learned in counseling. Name your fears, then they have less control over you.”

Ratulowski glowered. “That’s the stupidest bull—“

“No, he’s right,” DeShawn said, waving a hand at Rats. “We keep calling it ‘it’ and ‘thing’. Truth is, we don’t know what it is, and we’re scared. So here’s the plan. We get to the rest of the folks in the building and then whoever wants to leave can leave, but through the main entrance only. Everywhere else is locked down, so we won’t have to go around securing every exit. Anybody who volunteers to stay and find…Cletus, can stay behind. We’ll form teams and search with flashlights, methodically. Each section of hospital we clear gets locked down with fire doors.”

“Just follow the glowing doorknobs,” McVigger mumbled.

They said nothing as DeShawn led them to the stairwell, moving slowly, while the three with flashlights (both Edison and LED types) continued to sweep the floors and ceilings as they went, searching for signs of Cletus. The lead aprons made it difficult for them to move fast, anyway, and they dutifully tested each door handle before daring to grasp any with bare flesh.

3:01

They emerged into the darkness of the ground floor, where even the great bay windows of the hospital’s foyer provided no exterior light to penetrate the forbidding dark.

Seeing no one, Morgan said, “Maybe they all went to the ED when the power blew.”

“The parking lot,” DeShawn said, pointing.

“No light,” Morgan said. “Whole grid must be down. Great. Now what?”

DeShawn examined the automatic doors. They were offline, but he also locked them with Stilson’s facility key so they could not be pulled apart manually.

“Ain’t that just closing the stable door?” Ratulowski said.

“I don’t think Cletus came this way,
 DeShawn said. “We didn’t find a single hot door, and it’s unlikely to want to freeze to death out in the wilderness.”

Morgan said, “Unless it becomes desperate enough, feels threatened.”

“Does anybody else have a key?” DeShawn asked.

They shook their heads. 

“Not me,” McVigger said. “No surprise there, huh?”

“The only key was Stilson’s,” Morgan said. “Now you’ve got it.”

“Ratulowski?” DeShawn said.

The man shook his head. “Guess that makes you the Key Master ‘round here, don’t it?

DeShawn ignored him. “Come on, let’s find the rest of the crew and begin the search.

“Whoa, not so fast, Fearless Leader.” Ratulowski held out his hand like a child asking for candy. “Unlock the door. I’m leaving.”

DeShawn glanced at Morgan, who just looked at him unhelpfully, almost amused. “We leave together, like I said. Once we find everyone else—“

Ratulowski snorted. “And risk running into Cletus and getting my face melted off? Don’t think so, hotshot. I think you’d best open the door.”

“You’re not in anything more than scrubs, Rats,” DeShawn said. “There’s a blizzard going down, if you haven’t noticed.”

Ratulowski shrugged. “I’m touched by your concern, but I’ll take my chances with the snowpocalypse. Open the door, DeShawn.”

A moan issued from Stilson, who leaned heavily on Morgan’s arm. DeShawn noticed how white the man was; not just caucasian pale or even Alaskan pale, but white. His eyes met Morgan’s again, and this time he saw the concern on her face. Stilson was going into shock.

“We need to get him situated,” DeShawn said, nodding at Stilson.

“We need to get him out of here,” Ratulowski said.

“We’re in a hospital, he’s already in the best place,” Morgan said.

Ratulowski sniggered. “Sure thing, toots. A blacked-out hospital with no one but Dr. Easy for medical assistance? I’d take my chances with the storm if I were you, Mikey.”

Stilson didn’t respond. He was shaking, shivering. His eyes were glassy in the reflected flashlight beams, as if he were focused on something beyond the shadows.

“We need to do something,” McVigger whined.

“Fine,” DeShawn said. “I’ll go find the others, you all wait here until I come back. Then and only then do I unlock that door.”

“You can’t go wandering around by yourself with Cletus on the loose,” McVigger said. He hesitated a moment before swallowing. “I’ll go with you.”

DeShawn half-smiled. Brave kid, he thought. Braver than that sack-of-cow-pie Rats, at least. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“I don’t like this,” Morgan protested. “We should stick together.”

“There’s not much to like,” DeShawn conceded. “But you’re the closest thing we have to a doc, and we can’t keep moving Stilson around with that injury. Severe burns cause shock. Keep him calm, situated. Stay here in the lobby, in the open with the flashlights. There’s seating enough, but stay away from the walls, vents, anywhere it could hide.”

“At least bring me back some medical supplies,” Morgan said. “Something for the pain?”

“I’m sure you can take his mind off it, toots,” Ratulowski said.

DeShawn nodded. “We’ll be back.”

Morgan was already putting Stilson in a chair. Stilson was now quietly mumbling to himself while rocking back and forth cradling his injured hand. 

“And maybe some food?” Morgan added.

“Smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” Ratulowski mumbled.

DeShawn realized the expression he wore staring at Stilson. He consciously relaxed his face, tried for what he hoped was a smile. “See what I can do.”

3:23

Moving through the hospital wings in the dark with only a flashlight and a cellphone LED slowed DeShawn and McVigger down. Having to check each door and under every table or desk ensured a thirty or forty second walk to the emergency department stretched into minutes of tense, methodical travel through empty corridors that looked anything but the sterile milieu of a house of healing. By the time they made it to the ED, they had worked up a sweat from the exertion of moving so intentionally while trying to keep their lead aprons from making excessive noise.

DeShawn scanned his flashlight across the dark of the ED The place was a mess of stacked chairs, file boxes, medical equipment, monitors and gurneys, and a million other pieces of detritus from an emergency department in the middle of being stripped and gutted.

“Can’t see shit in here,” McVigger hissed. “Hey, what’s that smell? It’s like…Kansas City barbecue or something.”

DeShawn smelled it too, like roast pork mixed with ozone or burnt plastic, acrid, stinging the back of his throat. 

“Stay behind me, kid.”

DeShawn edged closer to the nurses’ station, fingers tight around the barrel of the flashlight. Not for the first time that night he wished for his pistol, the one in his Jeep under the driver’s seat.

DeShawn reached the counter of the nurses’ station and froze. The barbecue in Hell smell was stronger now, and he consciously fought back the need to gag. Then came a sound that sent ice through his veins and the stab of an icepick through his heart. An airy susurration that could only be rapid breathing, coming from behind the counter. Coming from the place where umbra was inkiest and malodor strongest.

Not wanting to simply peer over the top of the station and risk getting his face torn off or his eyes melted out by Cletus, DeShawn nodded at McVigger to hold position while he crept around the back to get a better view of what could be the source of both stench and aspiration. With no weapon save the flashlight, he would be at a disadvantage if the creature were to attack from below, could only hope to blind it with the light long enough to… 

To what? DeShawn didn’t know. If, through some preternatural power heretofore unknown to science, Cletus was endowed with the unique ability to superheat metal at will, what good would come from cornering or attacking such a creature, except certain death via immolation?

As DeShawn rounded the counter, his flashlight revealed a   phantasmagorical tableau of horror. His mind reeled at the sight exposed by the wide beam, trying desperately to reach for and grasp some level of context for the diorama of death he so desperately wanted to un-see.

“What is it?” McVigger hissed, seeing the other man freeze. “DeShawn? Speak to me, man.”

DeShawn could not speak. His voice would not come. He did not want it to come. A train of terror was pulling into the station of his mind, and no conductor was present to allow his thoughts to board and disembark in an orderly fashion.

At the end of the industrial linoleum floor of the nurses’ station, slumped against the wall in a sitting position, sat skinny Mary, the pale-skinned, gaunt nurse whom DeShawn had seen on the way into the hospital just over an hour ago. Mary’s usual no-bullshit expression was, however, absent, replaced with the thousand-yard stare of a person who has mentally checked out, who was so far beyond scared that the terror train had already boarded, departed, and was on a non-stop rail track to Hell.

DeShawn slowed his breathing, swallowed the bitter ichor that threatened to escape from his stomach, told himself to keep focused on Mary, to help Mary, to get Mary out of here. But his eyes kept flicking to the mass of still cooking flesh and bone that lay perpendicular across the floor in front of pale, skinny Mary, and that used to the Sally Perkins, RN.

“DeShawn?” McVigger almost whimpered.

Somehow DeShawn reeled in his fear long enough to find his voice. He stood up straighter and nodded toward the kid. “S-stay back. Just s-stay back for now, okay? Don’t come over here.”

“Who is it?” McVigger said.

DeShawn didn’t answer. He was fixated on the way Mary’s hands were out in front of her as if she were praying, her fingers quivering like the leaves on a quaking aspen in a breeze. DeShawn felt the heat emanating from the charred corpse that sat between him and Mary, intense heat that lapped against his face and hands as if he were standing next to a warm hearth instead of the middle of a cold Emergency Department.

In the stark beam of the flashlight every strand and tendon stood out in relief against the blackened remains, while pockets of white protruded from cooked flesh like the bones from beneath the Grim Reaper’s ragged shroud. What remained of the face was contorted in a skeletal scream, the strands of jaw muscle tight like black rubber bands, while exposed teeth gleamed in the direct light to form a mad grin.

DeShawn retched, staggering in a swoon, gained control of himself.

“Mary Sullivan?” he said.

The woman’s eyes were twin looking glasses. DeShawn didn’t like what he saw in them. She made no attempt to move.

DeShawn, sensing time was against him, reached out and took one of her hands. It was icy.

“We need to get you out of here,” he said gently. “But before we can move, I need you to tell me what you saw. Where did…it go?” He inwardly chided himself for nearly saying Cletus.

Mary’s eyes seemed to focus for a second. Comprehension appeared to fill them. Then they flicked upward and to the left.

DeShawn looked over to where he thought Mary was indicating, a set of double doors leading to the ED waiting room.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, it’s gone. You hear me, Mary? It’s long gone now. Let’s go. James?”

“Yeah, man?” the kid replied.

“Stay there, you stay there now, okay? Mary’s coming out. Don’t move. We’re coming out. Just keep cool.”

“I’m good,” came the weak reply.

Mary and DeShawn got to their feet. The woman felt like a scarecrow in his arms, weight negligible. In the gloom of the ED, DeShawn could make out the shape of James, his cell flashlight aimed at the floor.

DeShawn tugged Mary past the still cooking remains of her shift partner. Together they rounded the counter and rejoined the young man.

“What’d you see back there?” McVigger asked.

“Nothing, tell ya later, kid. Get Mary back to the others, okay?”

McVigger’s eyes grew wide. “But…”

“I need you to get her to safety,” DeShawn said, his tone firm, insistent.

“Where do I tell them you’ve gone?” he asked, stalling.

DeShawn waved his flashlight at the double doors. “It’s not a large hospital, if there’re others here, I’ll find them, bring them back. Don’t try to find me. Stay with the others. When I get back—“

“Yeah, you got the key, boss,” James said.

DeShawn tried to smile. “Right. And don’t let Rats give you any crap.”

“Those eyes…” It was Mary’s voice, low and somehow devoid of any substance. “Those eyes… Mother of God, it touched her. Took her soul. Ate her soul…right out of her.”

“Go with James, Mary,” DeShawn said.

The woman did not resist. James took her by the arm and led her back the way they had come.

Before going through the door, James turned and looked back at DeShawn. It was the look, he thought, of someone saying goodbye.

Behind DeShawn, the double doors burst open.

Mary screamed. McVigger screamed. 

DeShawn turned around in time to see something lunging at him from behind a stack of plastic chairs.

A force struck him in the chest. There was heat, an intense blast of hot air, like opening an oven door with your face way too close to the baking rack. The lead apron took the brunt of the impact, and he went sprawling backward across the linoleum floor.

And there it was, crouched on the nurses’ station counter. The thing that couldn’t be real but was. Cletus.

“DeShawn!” McVigger called as he dragged Mary out of the ED.

DeShawn shuffled backward on his butt, his boots slipping on the polished floor. The heat from the creature rippling around it, smoldering. The eyes were twin lamp-lights hot with a bioluminescence as equally impossible as the creature itself. The countertop crackled and sizzled as the plastic laminate began to curl back and melt.

DeShawn noticed the smoldering hole in his apron, his lead apron. He realized that would have been his chest. It ate her soul! This thing was feeding somehow on energy — electrical, radiation, biological. Charging itself up. The taut skin pulsed with inner-red light, like stoked coals in a furnace.

In his hand, the flashlight flickered and dimmed. He moved it away from Cletus. The creature’s head followed the light, the eyes fixated on the beam.

“DeShawn!” McVigger called again.

“Go! Go now!” DeShawn cried and scrambled to his feet. He tossed the flashlight deep into the room. He didn’t have time to see if the creature followed it. He turned and ran, barreling Mary and McVigger out of the room as he did.

3:40

“Where’s Rats?” DeShawn said through panting breaths. “We need to evac.”

“What happened?” Morgan asked. “DeShawn, Christ, your apron!”

DeShawn pulled the smoldering apron off over his head and tossed it aside. “Change of plan, Morg. We’re getting out of here.”

“But it’s too dangerous to leave,” Morgan protested. “Stilson’s unconscious. I’m afraid to move him—“

“If we don’t move, we’re all gonna be toast,” DeShawn said, cutting her off. He glanced down at Stilson’s limp body spread out on the sofa. “We couldn’t get any supplies.”

“And where exactly do we go from here?” Morgan said. “It’s a blizzard out there—“

“It doesn’t like the cold,” DeShawn said.

Morgan frowned. “Cletus?”

“It’s feeding on energy somehow, heat, light, radiation. I think. That’s why it came back to life when we hit with the tube. The X-rays, Morgan. Remember how hot it got? The power blew, backups failed. Now it’s looking for another source of energy. It’s getting cold in here, but it won’t leave, not with the storm.”

“And you know all this how?” Morgan demanded.

DeShawn ran his hand across his face, spun around with a tiny LED keychain flashlight as if warding off the shadows. “It’s attracted to light, heat. It wanted my flashlight. I don’t think it sees like we see.”

“This is insane,” Morgan breathed.

“It knows where we are,” McVigger said. “It’s probably following us. No one left except us. Warm bodies.”

“Where’s Rats?” DeShawn asked again.

Morgan’s face fell. “The fat bastard went to bust a vending machine, I couldn’t stop him.”

“How long ago?” DeShawn demanded.

“Hell, I don’t know, ten minutes or so. He wanted to take his chances, DeShawn, we should let him.”

“Can we move Stilson?” DeShawn asked.

Morgan said, “Move him where? He’s deep in deep shock. He needs—”

“He needs what we all need,” DeShawn said, “to get the hell out of this damned hospital. We’re moving, now. I’m going to have to carry him, no time for a gurney.”

“No way I’m going back to ED,” McVigger said. “Not for anything. Not for a million bucks. Holy crap, did you see its eyes? Its skin? It was like it was glowing from inside.”

DeShawn went to the glass doors and peered out. The snow was falling as if their hospital was its own little snow globe diorama and they were stuck inside its plastic sphere, stuck with a radiation spewing creature from some forgotten part of the world, or cooked up in some lab, or…

No, it can’t be that. Impossible. Space and time, it doesn’t work that way. Can’t work that way.

What then, for God’s sake? Another dimension? If so, it was no dimension DeShawn ever wanted to see.

He took his key and disengaged the door locks. Without power, the sensors wouldn’t automatically open the sliding doors. They would have to open them manually.

“I hear something,” McVigger almost squealed.

Ratulowski? Maybe. DeShawn didn’t know if he heard it too. He pulled the door open, maybe six inches or so. The bite of arctic blizzard numbed his senses, as if Winter herself along with Jack Frost and a few friends had just slapped him upside the face with an igloo.

Reeling, DeShawn turned back and went for Stilson.

“Back seat for you,” he said, leaning down to pick the man up. He felt hot against his bare arms. No — burning up. The hand wound was bad, yeah, but Stilson was positively radiating heat from his entire body.

“What about us?” Mary asked. “Mother of God, You can’t leave us here—“

“We all go,” DeShawn said, hefting Stilson’s dead-weight in a fireman’s carry. “We’ve got to get Stilson help. I think it’s worse than a burn.”

Morgan frowned. “DeShawn…what is it?”

“The heat,” he said, moving to the open door. “I think it’s radiation. I think it’s rads. If we had a geiger counter, my money’s on this whole place lighting up like Chernobyl.”

“You can’t be serious…” Morgan began, then stopped. “Okay, then we’re all contaminated.”

“Wait, what?” McVigger said, sounding now as if he were going to cry. “We’re irradiated?”

“I don’t know for sure,” DeShawn said. “But I do know I can’t hold this guy forever. Let’s get to the damned Jeep. Everyone, hold on to the person in front. Don’t let go, no matter what happens. It’s a straight shot to the car.”

“Your coat,” Morgan said. “It’s still down in X-ray. Let me go—“

“No time,” DeShawn said. He braced himself for the unforgiving inferno of cold that waited outside. “I’ve got blankets in the Jeep. Go, now!”

They filed through the open door, hand-in-hand, DeShawn in front. The roar of the wind and the swirling vortex of snow a dizzying and disorienting animal, savage, brutal, unforgiving. DeShawn could feel steel spikes stabbing his arms while razorblades of pain slashed at his chest and face. His eyes were slit against the claws of the storm that sort to tear them from his skull.

He could feel Morgan’s hand on his shoulder. He hoped she could hold on. There was no stopping now.

A few feet away from the hospital. A dozen. Darkness. No lights in the parking lot. No light from the windows behind them.

One wrong turn and they would freeze within minutes, lost in the near-empty parking lot.

Nothing ahead except darkness and snow.

DeShawn could hardly draw breath, his lungs burned with the cold. His arms went numb.

Something loomed ahead. Something large.

It was the Jeep.

DeShawn fell against the side of the vehicle, nearly collapsed to his knees. Morgan had the back door open. She helped him as he pushed Stilson’s unresponsive body into the back seats.

“Get in!” DeShawn cried.

Mary got in with Stilson as Morgan moved around to ride shotgun.

McVigger was following her. DeShawn reached out his hand and grabbed the kid. “Not you!”

McVigger’s eyes widened with horror. He turned back to look at DeShawn.

DeShawn shoved the kid toward the front of the Jeep.

“What are you doing?” McVigger cried, his voice all but lost in the tumult.

DeShawn pressed him against the driver’s side door. “Meds and supplies. My place. Get them there. Hold up until the storm passes. Don’t leave until help comes.”

“DeShawn?”

“Get them there!” DeShawn screamed, stuffing the keys in the kid’s hand. He leaned down and with numbed fingers opened the door, shoving the kid inside. His hand went under the seat. It took all his strength to hold onto the concealed gun.

Then he slammed the door shut and ran. The last thing DeShawn saw before turning back to the dead hospital was the kid’s face pressed against the window, screaming.

4:01

DeShawn collapsed in the lobby.

He didn’t remember closing the door behind him.

After what felt like a million years, he was able to stand. The warmth of the rapidly cooling hospital was enough to revive him, but the shakes didn’t stop until he fell into the staff bathroom and turned on the showers. Enough hot water remained to steam the room up. He lay there, trembling, for a long time.

He’d seen the Jeep’s lights flick on. Had seen them move away, illuminating tornados of snow before fading into darkness. His crappy military house wasn’t too far. McVigger knew the way. They’d be okay, sure. He told himself they’d be fine. They’d survive.

4:38

When DeShawn left the bathroom he did so with the gun drawn. 

The .38 Special was an old piece he’d gotten from the ultrasound tech when he’d first moved on base. The revolver was a solid weapon, a Taurus with a six-round cylinder. The only six rounds he had were in the gun. It was for scaring away bears or moose that got too frisky out on the backroads, not that DeShawn spent much time wandering the wild country. Still, as a city-boy he’d felt it was a smart idea to carry it.

Now he thanked God for the gun.

The .38s in the cylinder were over-pressured rounds, which gave the shots an extra kick — or so the tech had assured him. DeShawn knew little about firearms, except for what he’d seen in movies or read in books. He hadn’t even bothered to buy extra ammunition for it, figuring the chances he’d maybe encounter something big enough to need scaring off minimal at best. Or worst, depending on your outlook.

The corridors were dark. DeShawn didn’t even have the LED flashlight. He didn’t have a plan. He needed to find Ratulowski and hole up somewhere until dawn, which wouldn’t be until almost 10am. He needed to survive. He needed to get back home to Monica and tell her what an idiot he’d been, that she was right, that he shouldn’t have done what he’d did, that he was sorry for all the pain and the mess he’d caused.

But that was later.

Now it was him and the gun.

And, somewhere in the black depths of the dead hospital, something else.

He had to kill it. Was it killable? His dosimeter on his scrubs used for measuring his on the job exposure to ionizing radiation would tell whoever found him that this wasn’t just a bad dream. The principle of As Low As Reasonably Achievable worked well in the diagnostic radiography field for keeping both patients and employees from overexposure…

But how well would it work against a monster like Cletus?

Six shots in the pistol.

Six hours until dawn.

ALARA.