Hoodoo (by Soora & Ethan)

[Ethan Neufeld 0]

“Something freaky’s going on with Selek."

 

"Alex's Vulcan friend?"

 

"Yeah, he’s one of the patients we just transferred from the Capricorn.”

 

“Freaky like what?”

 

“You hear about that black goo?”

 

“You mean the stuff that turned a bunch of people on the planet into zombies?”

 

“Yeah. That.”

 

“What about it?”

 

“He’s infected with that stuff; parasites or something. I saw it...”

 

 

 

The aide -- outfitted in a bio-suit of sorts per short warnings about possible contagions -- had met Soora and the patient, ‘Selek’, at the Capricorn’s sickbay, ready with O-neg human blood products for transfusion and medical equipment from the Verbistul. They quickly transferred the patient from the stretcher to one of the old bio-beds, prepped and sterilized by the aide. Giving the patient a cursory look over, the aide lifted the Velcro loop and unthreaded the quick-release cable from Selek's carrier; then pulled the front panel up, and with a hand to Selek's shoulder and a sharp tug, freed the rear panel from under his body. The carrier thudded to the ground, the left, interior side and cummerbund and the front bottom edge darkly saturated by blood. A pair of bandage scissors made quick work of the patient's shirt, and the aide peeled it and a layer of bandages away from the wound to Selek's lower abdomen, noticeably flinching at the sight of the tar-like goo contaminating the wound.

 

"Uh... what is this?!"

 

Soora frowned at him, in his silly biosuit, and then straightened out her face and strapped on an extra pair of gloves. She took some gauze to start to clean out the junk.

 

'Not sure exactly what it is, but we know its bad, and he seems to be very infected with it.' She tossed the spoiled gauze in the trash and then got a fresh set, continuing with her work. The excess goo cleaned from the wound easily, but no matter how Soora scrubbed, the exposed tissues remained discolored, like they had soaked in black dye. She sighed, tossing the gauze into the bin, and getting out some antiseptic. She started by disinfecting and wrapping up the obvious, open, wounds first.

 

The aide watched Soora work for several minutes as he hooked up and struggled to calibrate the old bed's diagnostic read-outs for Selek's vitals. Looking the read-outs over, the aide assessed the paitent and his stats were alarmingly poor: unresponsive, pulse thready, breathing shallow, low sats, dehydrated with a fever of 40C (104F). The aide had heard rumors from the Qob team of people on Zoalus, possessed by the same black goo that exhibited gray skin, blackened veins, and cataracts in their eyes. To his relief, this patient wasn’t exhibiting the same external symptoms; the aide had checked twice. Selek’s eyes were hazel and clear; he was pale and sweating, but his skin retained its natural base color and he was clearly bleeding red. Still, the bio read-outs suggested he was suffering from an advanced case of meningitis, and had congestion in his lungs; the aide already had doubts Selek would survive.

 

Finishing his tasks, the aide held out a portable med kit. "I brought an auto-suture and d-gen from the Verbistul," he said. Who knew where they'd managed to find such a valuable tool like a dermal regenerator or afford it in Bull's head.

 

Soora sighed, brushing back Selek's hair from his forehead again. He was passed out cold, but he was in real bad shape. She didn't like it. She hooked up the saline and then pulled out the auto-suture, pondering as the aide hooked up the first bag of blood solution.

 

A more thorough scan on Soora's ODRI revealed that, miraculously, the knife wound to Selek's abdomen had not resulted in internal injuries requiring surgery. Like his other wounds, the gravest damage affected the musculature and management involved repairing the connective tissues to prevent further infection and stem bleeding. The aide stood by to assist as Soora put the auto-suture to work on the abdominal wound first.

 

“What the...?” the aide murmured as he watched agape. The auto-suture didn't work. It drew the severed muscle tissues together as designed, but the tissues immediately separated when Soora moved the device. Something was interfering with the auto-suture’s anabolic stimulation, preventing the growth that would ultimately suture the wound with new cells.

 

“Is it the tattooing on the wound?” the aide asked, referring to the dyed color of the tissues left behind by the goo. Though Soora appeared to consider the plausibility, she didn’t waste time speculating and sent the aide to dig up an old-fashioned surgical needle and medical-grade thread. Scars could be repaired later, but the added trauma of cutting away the visibly affected tissue wasn’t worth the risk and they couldn’t guarantee it would solve the problem. He was infected; that the black substance had spread throughout his body was a given.

 

It startled the aide when Soora began suturing the wound with the needle and the patient tried to grab the doctor. For a moment, the aide panicked, believing he was witnessing the ‘turning’, where the black goo would certainly zombify the patient. Soora corrected him: the patient had merely metabolized the analgesic she’d administered faster than anticipated, and the aide was relieved to see Selek’s appearance hadn’t changed, though his stats remained poor. The aide refocused, a general anesthesia was administered in lieu of more analgesia and Soora continued working on the sutures. They would reassess the patient’s pain management later, likely increasing the dosages beyond Selek’s actual weight.

 

Sure, that event had been unnerving, but it couldn’t compare to the chilling incident that occurred after. Once Soora finished suturing Selek’s wounds, the aide began to clean up the area around the patient’s bed. Kneeling to grab a particular piece of gaze, his eyes grew wide as something black crept across the floor toward his outstretched hand and he quickly snatched it back. Horrified and frozen where he kneeled, he watched as the glob of black crud inched forward, just like in the burning rumors. He was certain he had met his end.

 

He was almost beyond disbelief when it stopped moving not long after he'd sighted it, and it took several minutes before he worked up the courage to even scan it.

 

 

 

“It...died?”

 

“That’s what I said. I scanned it and got nada.”

 

“You tell the doctor?”

 

“Are you kidding? They wouldn’t let me out if they thought that stuff was crawling around and I wanted out of there!”

 

“You're sure it’s dead; you do the scan right?”

 

“Yes, I did it right. ODRI picked up the glob, all the individual cells; but the mitochondria were completely inactive, no cellular respiration, no chemical reactions. I’ll get the scans if you don’t believe me.”

 

“I wonder what killed it.”

 

“Beats me.”

 

“How do you think that stuff controls people?”

 

“Well, Selek’s got all the classic symptoms of meningitis. It's concentrated in the meninges and spinal fluid in his bio scans.”

 

“Think it’ll take over Selek?”

 

“I dunno; seems like it’s trying harder to kill him.”

 

“Wonder why...”

 

“Wonder why it wants to control people more. And who's susceptible.”

 

“Or how we kill it.”

 

Edited January 22, 2012 by Ethan Neufeld