Prologue
1999
The dogs were no longer barking. All twenty-three of them lay in their tiny cages, their noses dry, their eyes red. Their breaths were minute, soundless, arid. Their paws were scarlet with fever, their heart shrunken but ready to explode at any moment. The dogs knew their fate; they’ve watched miserably as ten of their dear brothers and sisters struggled with death, faded into inexistence, breath halted abruptly, skin crumbling on meat.
A silent yowl came from Joe, old, strong Joe, who had lived well after his tenth birthday, who had escaped death countless times. Yet he was powerless. He fell to his stomach, spit flowing from his mouth, and passed away.
The man walking down the corridor could hear a pandemonium of barks and scratches coming from the room he was about to enter. He liked dogs, but killing these ones would be crucial, and the job propelled onto him could be, perhaps, the most important he would ever perform. Already two humans died from the virus, and those dogs could endanger more than a thousand human lives. The syringes in his gloved palms were bursting with arsenic, all set to plunge into the dogs’ mutated bloodstream.
He wasn’t afraid of stepping in there; the heavy material that covered him from head to toe itched, so that not even the slightest drop from the dogs’ liquid could brush the hairs on his skin. Teeth not sharp enough to cut through the layers, claws too soft. He walked through three more sheltered halls before he reached the door.
The mayhem stopped when the man marched in. He gazed into the cages on both sides of him, and prepared to open the first one before he noticed that the dog inside was lifeless. Nevertheless, his superiors told him to inject the poison into each one, and so he stuck the needle in and pushed.
None of the dogs tried to fight. They were too shattered, too worn out to even raise their mitt, and it was a wonder that these dejected dogs could even bark as loud as they did only seconds before. Their fur was spread out all over the floor, and as the man killed each one of the dogs, the stone in his throat floated up and down. He tried not to look at the dogs' infected eyes when he injected them.
Once all the dogs were dead and the virus could only be passed by touching the bodies, the man exited the room, across three halls and then out to the corridor, before he could walk into the special cleansing room where they burned all the layers he had on and washed him thoroughly.
A day later, the man was in his bed, with his wife, sweat breaking out all over his body. The fever has gotten worse. That morning, the headaches started, and by sunset those headaches had invaded his mind. He moaned all the way to the hospital while she drove.
A week later he died from organ failure. His eyes were crimson, and the vomit on his shirt was tainted with blood. His fingers were crisp-yellow like old age, and his stomach was the color purple, as if someone has punched him. It was a horrible death, the nurse watched him as he rattled and yelled, vomiting, crying.
This case was forgotten. The dogs were written up on a piece of paper, stacked far away, the man’s death was remembered by his wife and doctors. But as the days, weeks, months, years passed, memories were brought up back from the dead. His wife, the nurse, the woman walking down the street: somewhere along the way, somebody touched someone else. Slowly, a string, a stiff string of demise, has begun to unravel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is this science fiction? Because I plan to delve much more into emotion and personal objectives than this.
Thanks for critiquing!
Gender:
Points: 1108
Reviews: 404