The World Without Flags

“I need tests,” Doctor Bragg says. He reaches his hand inside the living zombie and continues talking. “The Vaca B is a very complex organism. It doesn’t engender one kind of worm but four, actually six if you count the microscopic ones. Little maggot-like Worms in the stomach, thin, nematode-like Worms in the eyes, long, hooked Worms for the brain that are very much like marine arrow worms. There’s a thin, flat Worm of the ear that I don’t understand. Somehow they all work together.” His hands are moving inside her body and she is making a low, gurgling groaning sound. Her whole body twitches. The Doctor continues pitilessly, talking as he works. “How do they communicate? Which type of Worm is the most efficient at infection? How do they produce different types of Worms and when? Do they work the same in all populations? Women, children, Asians, Africans? So many questions.” The Doctor suddenly reaches down into the red hole he has cut in the poor woman and makes another cut. With horror, I watch as he pulls out a handful of small, wriggling, maggot-like Worms from her stomach. He walks toward me, a fistful in his hand, dripping them behind him. “These are questions that we need to answer. We will answer them, but it will take sacrifice. Heroes.” He leans in closer to me. “Heroes like you.” He looks at me. “I need diverse specimens to study. We don’t see many like you. Young female with African ancestry. We need you.”

My eyes are wide with horror. The smell coming from the woman now is noxious. He wants to infect me I realize. I’m shaking as the Doctor returns to the table. My heart throbs as he picks up a strange, plastic tube with a plunger on one end, like a gigantic needle, and begins to put live Worms in it. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

“No, no,” I say, trembling.

“I need specimens,” he repeats. “I can watch what it does to you. You can save countless people. You can be the hero.”

“Please,” I say, my lip trembling with fear.

“I know I’m not the hero,” he says without feeling. “That is my sacrifice.”

“Don’t do this to me,” I plead, but my voice is hardly a whisper.

He straightens up and examines the wriggling worms inside the tube. “This is when the screaming starts,” he says.

I open my mouth to scream, when I see that Doctor Bragg is looking down at the corpse of the woman. He prods her once. I clamp my mouth shut, watching. “When did she die?” he asks, annoyed. He looks at me. “Was she dead before or after I acquired the Worms?”

I look at him speechless.

Doctor Bragg puts down the maggot-filled tube and examines the dead woman. His shoulders slump. He sighs and then looks up at me, almost apologetically. “I had to acquire the Worms from a live host.” He seems embarrassed by the mistake, or like I should feel pity for him. Relief hits me so hard that I begin to weep. Doctor Bragg leans over the corpse. “If I hadn’t been talking to the girl,” he mutters. “If I was more professional and not so…” he trails off into inaudible muttering.

I’m still weeping with relief when Doctor Bragg shouts for Squint.

I am so relieved, I can’t concentrate. I hardly notice when the Doctor is standing in front of me again, giving orders to Squint. “Get her back to her room and feed her, please. I’ll be using the other one to acquire the specimens tomorrow.”

Although he’s planning to do to Eric what he did with that woman, I’m too relieved to think about it. I’m shaking and weeping when Squint shoves me back in my cage. For a long time, I can’t think of anything. I lay there for a long time, shuddering, trying to forget the sound of the woman groaning as the Doctor reached inside her body. I keep hearing it again and again until, somehow, I fall asleep.

83

I wake up to a metallic clatter. Squint has tossed a steel plate of food on the floor in front of me, beans and corn, it looks like. As I grab the food, I notice Squint is still looking at me, angrily somehow, as if I’ve misbehaved. As he backs away and shuts the iron bars, I ignore him and scuttle across the floor to put my back to the cement wall, next to Eric. Squint stares at me for a second, glares I should say, and then he rests on the bars and wipes his forehead, and I hear him mutter something there’s no need to repeat. Ignoring him as best I can, I eat the beans and corn with my fingers as the bastard couldn’t be bothered to bring me a spoon. Finally Squint pushes himself away from the bars and walks away, strangely unsteady on his feet. I have the feeling he’s drunk.