69: A Short Novel of Cosmic Horror Read online

  69

  Tim Meyer

  Also by Tim Meyer

  Novels:

  DEMON BLOOD SERIES

  Enlightenment

  Gateways

  Defiance

  THE SUNFALL SERIES

  (co-written with Chad Scanlon and Pete Draper):

  Sunfall: Season One

  Sunfall: Season Two

  Sunfall: Season Three

  In the House of Mirrors

  Kill Hill Carnage

  Black Star Constellations

  The Switch House

  The Thin Veil

  Worlds Between My Teeth

  Less Than Human

  Sharkwater Beach

  Limbs: A Love Story

  69

  Copyright © 2019 Tim Meyer

  Published by Evil Epoch Press

  Edited by Jenny Adams

  Cover Art by James “Toe” Keen

  E-Book Formatting by Michael Patrick Hicks

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Beginning

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  69

  End

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Although some of the things you’ll find in this novel were researched, I have taken certain liberties regarding the CDC and their operating procedures.

  That is all. Enjoy the show.

  – TM

  “There had stood a great house in the centre of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were of evil. No one ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.”

  – William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland

  1

  Petrified faces. Open mouths. Unheard screams. Stiff limbs. A room full of dead bodies that weren't really dead, just frozen, fixed standing, sitting, walking. Amanda Guerrero had never seen anything like it, not in her ten years working for the CDC. Acute flaccid myelitis, Huntington's disease, Batten disease; none of it came close to the symptoms she'd documented here.

  She paced the common room of the Spring Lake Assisted Living facility, surveying the situation and trying to figure out where to begin, how to dissect and comprehend what her eyes were allowing her to see. And more importantly, how to divvy up the tasks at hand.

  Her team—all two of them—filed into the room. Barnes was already scribbling on his notepad. He stopped when he noticed the faces of the elderly, every resident whose age had hit the magical number of sixty-nine, whose bodies had stiffened and became corpse-like at some point throughout the early morning.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, his pen stopping mid-stroke.

  Understatement of the century, Amanda thought, clicking on her flashlight and peeking into the mouth of one of the sixty-niners—a woman with short curly gray hair and more wrinkles than a crumpled bed sheet. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with her (medically speaking), other than she was frozen still, unmoving, and her eyes remained open despite her dead-like state, staring into a place somewhere beyond Spring Lake. At first glance, one would suggest the woman had died sitting up; in fact, that was exactly the diagnosis given by the good people at Spring Lake when they had discovered seven of their guests, the only sixty-nine-year-olds out of the total one-hundred-and-fifty patients, motionless and utterly catatonic. A local doctor—a well-respected physician who was high on scholarly merits and short on common sense—dropped in to check out the peculiar claims made by the facility's director, Kim Charon, and was utterly surprised to discover the patients weren't dead. Not really. Dr. Ken Lacey, as he'd introduced himself over the phone, had felt their pulses and listened to the slow beats of their hearts. The sixty-niners were alive, indeed, though just barely by the doctor's estimation.

  It's like they are frozen in some sort of... catatonic state, he had told Amanda during their conversation. I think it may be viral.

  He hadn't elaborated on his second statement but had suggested Amanda and her team should make the trek to New Jersey because it was unlike anything he'd ever seen—or heard of—before. He had also added the situation freaked him the hell out.

  Amanda turned to Barnes who was now leaning in the face of an old man, shining his pocket light in his open, staring eyes.

  “Barnes,” she said, adjusting her surgeon's mask. “Grab Phelps and start collecting saliva samples. I want them analyzed ASAP.”

  Phelps, who'd heard her name being called, reentered the room.

  Barnes had hardly reacted to his boss's request. He was too fixed on the old man, the inexplicable nature of his static state.

  “Barnes,” she repeated, still failing to capture his attention. “Barnes.”

  He snapped out of it, clicked off the light, and rose to a standing position. Alert. “What's up?”

  “You and Phelps. Saliva samples. Now.”

  Phelps came over and grabbed his arm, helping him away from his current distraction.

  Finally tearing his gaze away from the old man, Barnes nodded. “You got it, boss.” He left the room and exited through the front door, heading back to the rental van. Phelps tagged along behind him. Amanda watched them go.

  A few bodies that weren't frozen to their seats or rooted to the floor continued to pace the room. One of them belonged to the facility's director, Kim Charon. There were two nurses whose names Amanda hadn’t caught. Two others, lawyers Amanda suspected, also walked around the common area between the front lobby and the hallway that contained the residents' living quarters. Amanda hadn't been introduced to them either, though, she was pretty sure Kim wouldn't involve the suits until after they traced the source of the virus, if indeed a virus was what they were dealing with.

  What else could it be? She wasn't sure, didn't have the slightest clue, but she echoed Dr. Lacey's off-the-record statement all the same—it was freaky.

  Those aged sixty-nine, seven in total, were as stiff as petrified wood, stuck in various positions, as if they'd gazed directly into the eyes of the fabled villain Medusa and turned to stone. There were two women in the corner sitting at a small table, each of them with a seemingly untouched cup of tea before them. One had her head cocked back, mouth open, eyes tilted toward the ceiling, looking like she'd seen something up there that had given her quite the shock. The five other victims around the facility appeared in similar fashion, each looking surprised at something they'd seen. Some were more expressive than others, but Amanda could see beyond the story their faces told—it was their eyes that truly gave them away. Whate
ver they'd witnessed before succumbing to that unnatural state of inertia—it wasn't pleasant. One male, who'd been wearing a flat cap atop his curly, so-gray-it's-white hair, was tilting his head to the side, his eyes halfway closed as if he were about to doze off on his feet. His mouth was slightly open, forming the beginnings of a startled expression.

  Amanda made her way across the common room, over to a sixty-niner sporting a cane. He seemed to have been heading toward the hallway when the sickness had overcome him. She directed the light into his left eye, watched the pupil shrink under the bright intrusion.

  Reacting to light just like he would if he was awake. She wondered if they were awake behind their masks of inactivity. If they could see. Hear. Process everything that was happening around them. Generate thoughts. She wondered if they knew what was happening to them. If they understood.

  Freaky.

  She gripped the man's left arm. It was as hard as stone. His skin was cold, as if he'd been locked inside a walk-in freezer for the last few hours. As if he were a corpse, Amanda thought. Poking the man's chest, she found it as hard as the arm. A solid wall of muscle and bone. She couldn't help but think of Medusa again, the nest of snakes atop the monster's head. She wanted to test a theory, a quick hypothesis, but she wasn't sure if the lawyers would approve. Screw it, she told herself and went ahead anyway. Those weasels weren't running the show; she was in charge and she wasn't about to let a couple of clueless suits influence her ability to do her job.

  She pushed the old man, gently shoved his right shoulder hard enough to dislodge him from his place under ordinary circumstances. When he didn't budge, she tested her strength against other parts of his body, his chest and back, using a little more force with each attempt. Again, the elderly man, who'd gotten around the facility with the assistance of a cane, could not be moved. He didn't waver so much as an inch. Didn't teeter, didn't bend. His skin didn't dimple when she pressed on his flesh. He remained there like a statue, one constructed of sturdy concrete.

  “Should you be doing that?” asked one of the lawyerly types. He wore sunglasses, rose-lensed aviators, and had combed his thinning hair over to one side. Holding his briefcase as if it weighed as much as he could handle, he shot Amanda a stern look. She got the impression he was a man who rarely smiled, not even when he was charging a client two-fifty an hour to pencil some meaningless paperwork. “I mean, should we really be touching them when we don't know what's wrong with them? What if they're contagious or something?”

  Amanda eyed him and arched her back, stretching her vertebrae. “What's your name? Don't think we've had the pleasure of meeting. Officially, that is.”

  The lawyer looked to his partner, then to Kim Charon as if asking her permission to speak. If she gave it, she did so silently. “Name's Hatterman.”

  Amanda glanced over at the other suit.

  “Hart,” he said. “Jim Hart.” He was smaller than the other lawyer by a head, and his voice came out low, matching his stature.

  “Pleasure to meet the both of you,” Amanda told them. “We're not going to have any problems here, are we?”

  Kim stepped forward. “No, of course not. They're only here to address any legal issues concerning our guests. That's all.”

  Amanda wriggled her eyebrows and ran her tongue between her teeth. “Sure thing. Just doing their jobs.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good. And I'm trying to do mine.” She nodded at Hatterman. “How else am I going to find out what happened here unless I run a few preliminary assessments? How can I run tests without touching them?”

  Hatterman coughed into his fist. “I was just simply suggesting we shouldn't touch anything unless we know what we're dealing with.”

  Amanda pulled on the elastic band of her glove, allowing the rubber to slap against her wrist with an audible pop. The sound echoed across the room, the noise as effective as telling the lawyer to step back and fuck his own face-hole. Which was what she had wanted to say but had held her tongue. “I'm wearing my protection, Mr. Hatterman. Are you?”

  Hatterman, who hadn't put on the mask he'd been handed despite Amanda's suggestion, turned his eyes to the paper protective dangling around his neck and, like a brat who thought he owned all the answers, reluctantly placed the mask over his face.

  “What do you think has happened here?” asked Kim, as she made her way across the room, over to where the old man was hunched, frozen mid-stride. Once there, the director poked him with her forefinger just as Amanda had, only with a lot less pressure. She didn't seem to like the feeling of his rock-solid muscle and retracted her finger immediately, as if she'd placed it on a hot burner.

  “Too early to tell. I'd like to run saliva samples, take blood, and get those results as soon as possible. Initial reaction—some sort of bacterial infection that's laid claim to their brains. There have been various reports of things like this happening in third-world countries—shit, just last year, a village in Africa was the subject of a 'zombie virus.' Of course, it didn't turn people into actual zombies, but the brain-eating bacteria did leave its victims walking around in a daze, drooling and unable to effectively communicate. I'm sure the fever had something to do with it, but—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kim said, closing her eyes and pumping one hand in the air. “What do you mean bacteria? This is the cleanest assisted living facility in the entire Garden State. There isn't any bacteria here. I make sure the nurses and aides wipe down each and every room twice a day. We vacuum, mop, disinfect every piece of furniture, every toilet. We pride ourselves on cleanliness.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I won't accept that. It's impossible.”

  Amanda flashed an amused smile. “That very well may be, Ms. Charon.”

  “Mrs. Charon.” She flashed her diamond ring, which sparkled magnificently under the room's bright LEDs.

  “Mrs.,” she corrected. Her smile faded into a cautious wince. “You may be the cleanest facility in the country, but that doesn't mean something like this can't happen. A visitor, a family member of one of your patients, could have flown in yesterday from halfway around the world, having contracted the disease and bringing it back with them.”

  “Guests.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “We prefer to call our residents guests, dear.”

  “Yeah, guests. Anyway, who's to say one of their family members didn't catch something on vacation or while volunteering in some less fortunate region of the world? There's no telling right now, exactly, what happened. Which is why we're here. Which is why we're going to run a few tests, take a few samples, and hopefully get to the bottom of this anomaly. The good thing is that no one seems to be in immediate danger. Everyone has a pulse, is very much alive, and, on the surface, their vitals seem pretty on point, considering the whole... stationary aspect of their current physical state. But my gut feeling—” She swiped lazily at the air between them, already not believing the words she was about to speak. “This is just a passing thing. That said, my team and I will do everything within our capabilities to cure what ails them.”

  Kim gulped. “Honest—have you ever seen anything like this before? And I'm not talking about something you heard on television or read in a report. I mean, have you personally ever dealt with anything as strange as this?”

  Amanda stared at the woman, trying to gauge her intelligence. She seemed smart. Business savvy. A little rough around the edges, which Amanda feared would conflict with her own personality, her way of handling certain social situations. But the woman was definitely smart. A fast learner. Right now, she looked rather manic, on the verge of a major mental collapse. Amanda couldn't blame her, not totally; she had good reason to panic. This sort of thing could ruin a business, especially one that prided itself on being a clean and sick-free residence. As director, she had a lot to lose; her job chief among them.

  “No, Mrs. Charon. I have not.”

  She nodded. “Okay then. Yeah, feel free to do whatever you need to. If you need anyt
hing from me or the staff, be sure to let me know.”

  “I will. And I do. You can start by making a few phone calls.”

  “Phone calls?”

  “Yes. First, I want you to call every available hand you have into work. Overtime is no issue—I'll make sure you're reimbursed every penny. We're going to need all the help we can once the local media gets wind of this. Hell, something as bizarre as this might even attract national attention. Though we can't worry too much about that yet, I'd like to be prepared.”

  “Dear Christ.”

  “Yes, well, what did you think would happen?” She waited for an answer that never came.

  “Anything else I can do?”

  “Yes. You can start calling these people's relatives as well. I want profiles on our seven lucky guests. I want a list of every prescription they've ever taken, what they're currently taking, and where they've been in the last seventy-two hours, especially if they've left the premises. Lastly, I want to know who has visited them within that same timeframe. I want to know if those people have left the country in the past two weeks. Can you handle all of that?”

  “Absolutely.” She seemed insulted that Amanda had subtly suggested otherwise. But Amanda didn't care. She could be insulted all she wanted, as long as she got the job done.