The Epidemic

Chapter 5

The Epidemic

Chapter Five

"Not again." Jacob said with a sigh.

"Well, some of them were dreams with more of the story added on. But, there's just something that makes me feel like what that dream is about is actually happening." I responded.

"Tell me what the dream is about." Jacob said.

"Let me tell you what I dreamt about, word-for-word." I explained.

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A young girl covered in the swollen bumps lied on a cot. She was wearing a short white gown and seemed to be in some type of cage.

It looked like a jail, with iron bars blocking her from the outside world. She moaned and the dirty, cream-colored brick walls received another bloodstain from her cough.

Her brown hair was dirty, covered in lice and maggots as she moved and moaned loudly from the painful swollen bumps that covered her arms and legs.

"Hello? Do you need me to get something? What should I do for you?" I called to her.

She didn't respond.

I cocked my head and looked around. There were hundreds of others in the cells around me.

There was nothing I could do to react. They were all moaning and I heard one calling for help.

I ran to the call, trying to ignore the moans and cries around me. When I reached the cell of the person calling for help, I found them on the floor, their hair greasy and covered in lice and maggots like the first girl I saw. She also had on the white gown that the first girl had. It must have been some kind of uniform here at the.... whatever this place is.

"Hello? I'm here to help you!" I called to the girl.

But she sat there, not even noticing that I existed. She sat in the fetal position on the floor and suddenly, two people wearing red hazmat suits entered the room and ran to her cell.

One seemed to be standing in me, so I could only assume I was merely a visitor to the world. Wherever this strange world is, I don't know.

The people wearing the hazmat suits pulled a stretcher over to them and one picked up and placed the girl on the stretcher. The girl remained in the fetal position and then a man in a white hazmat suit entered the room.

"Dr. Orlov! We were going to meet you in the office." One of the guys in the red suits said.

"No, I said we need to do the deed here. We can't let another case out." The man, named Dr. Orlov said.

"Have her parents given consent to do the deed?" Another man in a red suit asked.

Orlov nodded. "They want to put her out of her misery. Her father went a long time ago, and her mother and brother are close as well. She'll get to see her father and her mother and brother once again soon."

"Okay. Let's lay her down and administer the deed."

The group laid the girl down on the stretcher and the doctor pulled out a syringe.

"This will let her rest peacefully."

The doctor placed the needle in her arm and administered the "deed."

The girl took a sharp breath, closed her eyes, and all of the air left her body.

She was dead.

My eyes widened as one of the people wearing the red suits took out a body tag and wrote the girl's name on it and placed it on her inflamed toe.

The wheeled her body out of the room and a new group of red-suited men entered the room with a new person to take the girl's place in the cells.

"So, The Federation outlawed strong antibiotics and now they can't heal all these people?" One of them asked.

Another one shook his head. "That's the thing, I've never seen anyone, other than the doctor's group and Orlov, I've never seen any patient come out of here alive."

"But they come here seeking help. How can we let them down by just killing their family members?"

"Nick, the government doesn't care about anybody but themselves. As long as they are fine, then they won't do anything about the epidemic."

"So? That doesn't mean we should do something! These are real people, not test subjects that ended up as experiments gone wrong that don't have feelings. These people have families. The worst part is that I'll be called heartless for caring for these people and their families. I should have joined the Dynasty years ago."

"Nick!"

"Well, it's the truth, James. They wanted help but the government outlawed the cure. We can't help them, so we give them the worst last days of their lives; in a prison, with the doom of the deed glaring down at them. We've done the deed to many people, and I think that everyone has grown desensitized to it. They are as human as we are as well. We need to do something. Please, just help me."

James turned and looked at a sick woman who was in the corner of her cell, coughing, running her hand through her greasy black hair.

"Fine. Let's take them somewhere else and find the treatment where it isn't illegal. But, we can't let it spread." James said, as he began to think.

The room was silent for a few minutes before Nick looked out one of the iron-barred windows in an empty cell, one of the few.

"What if we secretly enlisted in the help of, oh, what was her name?"

"Adalyn Maybelle James?" James whispered. "You know that we can't say her name out loud."

"Well, maybe she can help get the allies to airlift supplies into the Federation? I think they have been kind of eyeing us as strange due to our inferior ways of thinking." Nick finished.

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"Hm. That is very frightening and I bet that what you're seeing in that dream is real. At this point it seems like it is done progressing, but we'll have to wait for what Nicola has to tell us about what's going on in the Federation." Jacob responded.

I shrugged. "From what I understand from the dream is that the black plague has returned and now, it's attacking the Federation. The cure is basic antibiotics and if you remember, those are outlawed in the Federation. I wonder how it spread?"

"I don't know. Let's hope it's not what I think it is..."

"The Dynasty."