The HarpIES – Web Episode 3.
Gerard was beginning to feel the cold. The drying water from the shower, and normally welcoming cool of the bathroom tiles had crept through his bones as he sat hunkered on the floor. He felt little different after his big emotional release. The old wife’s tale of ‘crying it all out’ was just that for him – a tale. If anything he now only felt slightly embarrassed about his naked and teary state on the bathroom floor.
Gerard shivered on the tiles a moment longer, then picked himself up and got back into the shower. The exercise was now as much to raise his temperature as anything else, and this time he made sure not to put his injured head in the way of the jets. When he’d finished washing, Gerard used the magnified shaving mirror above the sink to get a closer inspection of his injuries. Initial impressions were far from positive. Just at his right temple was a large discolored lump with a slightly bleeding rectangular hole in the middle, about a centimeter in diameter. As Gerard came from an island just off the north coast of Ireland, he’d been inherently gifted with a gray skin pallet. Last night’s stress and head trauma had now turned him an almost ashen colour, while sunken dark ringed eyes provided an additional indicator that yesterday hadn’t been one of his best.
Gerard tenderly touched the beaten face staring back at him in the mirror. If it had been a photograph, he would’ve been easily convinced the dark brown eyes he looked into belonged to a stranger – then he remembered Mandy’s eyes. The horrific dark red orbs floated before him in his minds-eye, bulging out from their sockets as though straining under pressure from within.
“Stop it!” He shouted at the face in the mirror, trying to cut off his train of thought.
Gerard could feel his heart hammering, trying to break out through his rib cage. The blood rush kicked in a base animal reaction to flee or hide, anything to be away from the danger. Gerard breathed deep, trying to settle himself. He put his hands on his head in anxious movement, and accidentally touched the angry wound at his temple. Images from last night jumped out in front of him, in the grey after-blur of pain. A jumble of violence, teeth, blood, so much blood everywhere.
“Stop!” Gerard shouted into the mirror again. “Come on Moran, stop it. Practical, think practical.” He began repeating to himself, trying to break away from the tumbling imagery with his mantra.
Gerard went back to the bedroom to redress. His headache hadn’t improved after his visit to the bathroom, but for the first time since yesterday afternoon he didn’t feel overwhelming helpless, or that his brain was going to explode at any moment. Now he was thinking clearer, Gerard couldn’t help but go over his actions last night. The end result would have been the same no matter what. Mandy and her parents would still have been infected, but he couldn’t help feeling a coward, a deserter in their hour of need. Leaving the hospital had been a stupid move. Panic got the better of him, and that was the simple truth. He’d tried to dump the responsibility of Mandy onto her parents, only to find they were in much worse shape than him. Although he loathed to think about it, Gerard knew he was going to have to go back and sort those mistakes out before anything else.
Nursing his head Gerard walked to the kitchen and took a bottle of headache tablets from a drawer under the sink. He stared out the small kitchen window, down the four floors to the ground, while washing the pills down. From his vantage point of the flat, everything seemed normal out there. Still, it was hard to tell. It was a Sunday morning, and although the flats were located above businesses, most of the shops weren’t bigger stores that opened every day, and at the moment no one was walking the shuttered streets.
Gerard returned to the front room and sat down on the sofa to think, automatically turning on the TV so he’d not have to sit in silence. He’d no intention of watching it, but the news was on and Gerard recognised the picture on screen as the station at Piccadilly. The report was showing CCTV footage from the station, with an inset photo of a middle aged man. Gerard turned the volume up as the male announcer continued.
“…authorities are still trying to locate Dr Maxwell Harper, a geneticist at the St. Mary’s facility in Manchester. Yesterday the BBC, and a number of other stations, received what is being called a manifesto concerning the release of a virus in the area. Some of this morning’s tabloids have already christened this the HarpIES virus.
At present we are unable to give any details of the document, but the following statement was made by the Health Protection Agency earlier this morning.”
www.TheHarpies.com
