Infection

Infection

Appears in Teeming Terrors

Published July, 2015

KnightWatch Press

Buy Links:

Teeming Terrors - Amazon Kindle U. S.

Teeming Terrors - Amazon Kindle U. K.

Teeming Terrors - Amazon Print U. S.

Teeming Terrors - Amazon Print U. K.

Blurb:

Nature. Filled with wonder, beauty, majesty and mystery. Also filled with things that want to kill us. Normal things, little ordinary things. Things that creep and crawl. Things that fly, swim, scuttle and slither. Things that you might expect and be rightfully phobic about … as well as things you may have never imagined as a threat. Individually, maybe they wouldn’t be. But that’s just it. They aren’t coming for you individually. They’re coming for you in swarms, in flocks and hordes, in masses and multitudes. They’re coming for you by the thousands. They are … TEEMING TERRORS.

Excerpt:

"Something's moving in there. I feel it crawling around, lots of things, tiny things. Oh, God, it hurts." Mr. Jones buried his face in his pillow. "Please, get it out of me. Now!"

"Okay, Mr. Jones, I need you to calm down. I can't open your leg with you thrashing about. Lie on your back and I'll get started." The doctor said.

"John, lie back." Mrs. Jones said. "You're going to be alright but you have to do what the doctor says."

He turned onto his back and shoved a fist in his mouth, squinting his eyes in pain. The doctor turned to the wound nurse.

"Gauze and alcohol." He said.

She handed him both. He poured alcohol onto the gauze and then swabbed the wound and the rash around it. Then, he tossed the waste into a trash can with a red bag inside with biohazard symbols on the plastic.

"I'm going to inject a numbing agent into your wound, Mr. Jones. This will help you with the pain. It's a topical painkiller."

The wound nurse prepared the injection and handed the syringe over to the doctor, who injected close to the wound's opening. A high-pitched but faint buzzing droned around Mrs. Jones, as if it came directly from the wound but much like a cricket's chirping it was hard to tell exactly where it came from. It sounded similar to air being let out of a balloon. The noise was shrill and angry, but so faint she thought she imagined it. Maybe it was an I.V. alarm going off down the hall. The nurses let those things beep forever, but somehow, Mrs. Jones doubted that was the case. That noise came from her husband's wound, and it scared her.

"Did you hear that?" Mrs. Jones whispered.

The doctor looked up. "I'm not sure what that was. Let's get the wound opened and cleaned out. Scalpel." He said.

The nurse opened a small package to reveal a sterile scalpel, which she handed to the doctor. Mrs. Jones held her breath as the doctor's steady hand approached the wound, which by now had turned a deep shade of rose with black edges and yellow pustules erupting on the surface. Mr. Jones gripped his t-shirt in his fists so hard his knuckles had blanched. Terror etched across his face. What the hell was wrong with his leg? Was it a brown recluse bite after all?

The doctor leaned over his leg and cut down the center of the boil. Blood gushed out, running down his leg and staining the bed linens. Creamy yellow pus filled the wound. As the doctor picked up the instrument to scrape out the infection, that shrill keening sounded again, coming directly from the opening he had cut.

Mrs. Jones backed away, closer to the bathroom.

The doctor inserted the instrument into the wound, and Mrs. Jones was shocked to see it disappear nearly an inch into his calf. When he scraped along the inside, Mr. Jones cried out in agony, but Mrs. Jones barely heard him. Hundreds if not thousands of tiny mites flew from the wound's opening, covering the doctor's white jacket so thickly it appeared to be crawling. They flew onto the nurse, who swatted at them, screaming and howling with surprise and terror. Mr. Jones screamed and crept up the bed towards the wall, but the mites surrounded him, flying in his face and against his arms and legs until they held fast.

Then they began to bite.