Unnatural Disasters

  Jeremy managed to smile before hanging his head and staring at his plate. After cooking it until the outside was almost black, he’d cut the “round steak” into bite-size pieces to help disguise it. He stared balefully at his portion. Because it was expected, he stabbed a piece with his fork and determinedly shoved it into his mouth.

  It was hell to be starving and so repulsed at the same time. His stomach protested, and he dry heaved.

  “Jeremy, what’s the matter?” Jo asked.

  “Nothing.” The meat rolled around his mouth. He got up from the table and held up a finger to the rest of them. “Heard something outside. Be right back. Eat up.”

  Feeling like a traitor, like the biggest fraud ever born, he stepped outside and threw up. He threw up until bile painted the white snow a sickly yellow-green.

  Jo opened the door and came out onto the porch. “Jeremy, what in the world is going on?”

  “I think I caught a bug or something. Not feeling so great,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. “I’ll be in shortly.”

  She touched his shoulder, concerned, and went back inside.

  Jeremy waited until the fit passed and retreated into his house.

  • • •

  Twelve days later when Ed appeared at his door, Jeremy said nothing. They exchanged a knowing look before Jeremy went to gather his makeshift snow shoes and coat.

  Ed made pleasant small talk with Jo and the children, dropping hints that he thought there was a good chance another delivery had been made at the grocery store.

  Inside, Jeremy cringed at the duplicity but methodically laced up his boots and tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans. He kissed Jo and the kids goodbye at the door.

  “Bring back lots of meat again, Daddy!” Haley shouted.

  Jeremy paled, then smiled. He wondered if the smile looked at all convincing. “You can count on it, sugar.”

  RESURRECTING EVE

  * * *

  J.A. TITUS

  “There, that should do it,” the man said, a devilish smile creasing his face. He licked his lips and kissed the black box in his hands.

  “Do you really think it’ll work? I, uh, I mean, do you think we can bring her to life?” asked the second man.

  Professor Arturo glanced slyly at his counterpart, Dr. Hurst, as he jammed his thumb down on the box’s red button. “Let’s sure as hell hope so.”

  The two men, dressed in white lab coats, stood over the assembled body parts on the table before them. Intricately stitched together, the nearly perfect pieces had been connected vein by vein and muscle by muscle.

  “I feel like Dr. Frankenstein,” Arturo said and laughed.

  Hurst stepped back from his partner’s side as the various machines and wires surrounding the table pulsed and sparked. The buzzing electricity and whistling sounds of the blood transfuser made him nervous, uneasy, but Hurst knew this had to be done. For the continuation of mankind, this had to work.

  If their technique worked, the body on the table, this desperate experiment, would be the perfect woman. And, more importantly, the only woman left on Earth.

  They’d been full of questions throughout the process. What if they were able to do this, only to have their creation die instantly? Would she succumb to the virus, the disease—whatever it was—that had killed off all the women in the world? If she survived, would she be able to carry a genetically altered fetus to full term? Would their efforts be futile? Were they wasting their time?

  “Watch!” Arturo demanded.

  “I can’t!” Hurst exclaimed as he shielded his eyes from the blinding light surging through the room.

  “Watch!”

  Hurst opened his eyes and stared, wide-eyed with terror and wonder.

  Did the body just twitch? Did it move?

  Arturo jumped and danced in place, almost giddy as he cranked the large copper wheel beside the table. The electrical currents pulsed faster and stronger through the surrounding machinery. Hurst cupped his ears, afraid the vibrations would deafen him. The static buzzed around them, frizzing Arturo’s neatly coifed hair. Hurst felt prickly hair on the back of his neck.

  “It’s a good thing I’m bald!” he cried out, his voice lost against the noise that penetrated the room.

  “What?” Arturo responded, distractedly cupping a hand around one of his ears.

  “I said it’s a good thing I’m going bald!” Hurst yelled, this time even louder than before.

  “What?”

  Hurst frowned and shook his head at his partner. “Never mind.”

  Arturo shrugged and turned his attention back to the table.

  The body on the slab twitched and convulsed with each electric surge. Her beautiful, creamy white eyes fluttered. Her right hand clenched and then relaxed, and the two scientists watched in silence, feverishly hoping their hard work would come to fruition. Arturo checked the Simbulas machine, tapped the meter and gave Hurst a quick wink.

  “It’s time,” he mouthed.

  Hurst flipped the large metal switch back, turning off the Simbulas machine and the electrical currents bombarding the body. The men stepped toward the table and watched, eagle-eyed, for any small movement.

  Arturo licked his palm, taming his hair back into its familiar slicked-back style. “Give it time, Hurst,” he said when his partner started drumming his fingers on the leg of his pants. He checked his watch.

  “I don’t think—” But before he could form another word, the patchwork body moaned.

  Arturo stepped away from the table, his mouth agape. Another moan sounded, and the face, the one flawless, unstitched body part, scrunched up, puckering its lips as if it had tasted a lemon.

  “By Jove, I think we’ve done it!” the professor squealed. He rushed back toward the slab and kneeled beside it. “Hello?” he whispered to the woman on the table.

  Hurst stood back, unsure of what was happening.

  “Westin,” he said, dropping any pretense of formality. “Something’s wrong.”

  Arturo waved his hands toward the doctor, keeping his eyes on the body. “Shh…shhh!” he urged.

  Hurst stepped toward the door. He didn’t feel right. He needed air, fresh air. “I think I need to step outside for a moment,” he whispered.

  The professor turned and saw Hurst across the room. “Where are you going? You’re going to miss it.” Turning back to the body, he stared, hands on the table but not quite touching the flesh. “Besides, have you forgotten what it’s like out there?”

  Hurst shuddered. He hadn’t forgotten. With the fairer sex gone, many men had formed gangs, violent and intent on destruction. Everything was fair game, nothing was sacred. It was rare that an hour went by without a thundering boom or screaming air-horn sounding outside their underground laboratory. Men were turning into the savages women had long accused them of being. Before long, the idiots would all blow one another to Hell and the extinction of the human race would be complete.

  A large number of the less aggressive men hid in makeshift underground shelters, scared to come out, afraid of getting their heads blown off. A few lucky ones had found old bomb shelters and claimed them. Arturo and Hurst had heard some of their ham-radio chatter, had even talked back on occasion.

  Above ground, every street looked like something ripped out of a Bosnian history book. Smoldering buildings crumbled to the ground along the once-vibrant streets. Piles of rubble littered every corner, some of them only half-covering corpses no one had bothered to bury. The street signs were spray painted black, covered in angry red gang symbols. Once-prized vehicles were now scattered about, stripped down to bare metal carcasses, empty shells lying silent and immobile in the dangerous, lonely streets. All in all, the city looked like the war zone it was.

  Long gone were the professional men who went to work every day to provide for their families, the decent, clean, dutiful men who strived to succeed. But maybe, just maybe, Professor Arturo and Dr. Hurst could turn everything around. It all depended on their piecemeal
woman. If they could bring her back to life, perhaps they could also re-animate additional women. Maybe they would be able to end all this carnage and turmoil.

  Another moan from the woman on the slab broke Hurst’s train of thought. He wanted to feel hope, but what he felt instead was unease, guilt. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t shake the feelings.

  “Should we pump some more blood into her? Perhaps she’s too weak to move again,” he suggested.

  “Yes, yes, that’s an excellent idea!” Arturo, still kneeling, clapped his hands. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  He jumped up and opened the door of a small refrigerator next to the Simbulas machine. The fridge contained dozens of bags of blood. Donor blood. O-. The professor pulled a bag out and attached it to the blood infuser.

  “It’s awfully quiet this evening,” Hurst said. He hadn’t heard an explosion for at least an hour.

  “Maybe they blew themselves all up and we’re the last men on earth.”

  Hurst scrunched his nose. “Wouldn’t that defeat our purpose?”

  Arturo moved closer, gave Hurst a quick kiss on the lips, and said, “I guess so.”

  Hurst took his hand, and they smiled at each other.

  The humming from the blood pumping machine continued through the silence. The two men watched anxiously, their eyes glued to the body in front of them. Slowly, they began to see a change in the lifeless flesh. At first it was a small, almost minuscule difference in color, but then it began to grow, not stopping until the entire body became flushed with pink. It was a healthy color—the color of life.

  The woman on the table spoke.

  “I—” she said, her first word spoken through chapped, pink lips. “Where am I?”

  The men’s jaws dropped, but they said nothing. They had brought a dead woman, a piecemeal corpse, back to life. It had actually worked.

  “Get the…video camera,” Arturo said, his hands fluttering about as he tried to take in what had just happened.

  Hurst tried to move, but he felt as if his feet were cemented to the tile floor. Trying to lift his legs felt like trying to lift fifty-pound burlap sacks filled with wet sand. “I’m stuck,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Quickly, man, quickly!” Arturo pleaded and turned toward his partner.

  Hurst snapped out of the trance and grabbed the video camera bag from the counter beside the fridge full of blood. As he unzipped the bag, he kept his head turned toward the woman, not wanting to miss anything.

  “Can you hear me?” Arturo asked her, speaking slowly, carefully.

  The woman turned her head and faced him. She opened her eyes with a gasp. “Who are you? Where am I?” She tried to move, fear and frustration clearly visible in her expression when her body wouldn’t respond. “What have you done to me? Where am I?” she asked, her voice high and shrilly now.

  Hurst finally managed to pull the camera out and flip open the display screen. The camera beeped three times when he turned it on, drawing the woman’s attention.

  “Who is that? What do you want from me?” She twisted her head in Hurst’s direction. The heart monitor beeped an ear-piercing alarm. Her heart rate soared well above the normal levels. Hurst cried out a warning, holding the video camera and zooming in on the monitor’s screen, which now displayed 258 beats per minute.

  “Westin, you’d better give her something or she’s going to go into afib,” he said. If the woman went into atrial fibrillation, she could easily throw a blood clot or have a stroke, and all their hard work would have been for nothing.

  Arturo grabbed a syringe. Before his patient could ask what he was doing to her, he stabbed the needle into her chest and jammed his thumb down on the depressor, releasing the medication.

  “Oh…” Her voice faded as the drug took effect.

  Knowing it might cause her to panic, the doctor filled another syringe with Xanax. As he injected the calming drug into her IV, her head slumped to the side and her eyes fluttered closed. Within seconds, her heart rate had steadied and a quiet calm had returned to the lab. Arturo and Hurst stared first at the woman on the table and then at each other. They were both afraid to move or speak, not wanting to disrupt the peace.

  “Keep filming,” Arturo finally said.

  Hurst raised the forgotten camera.

  “My name is Professor Westin Arturo,” he said, “and my handsome cameraman is Dr. Conrad Hurst.” He walked around the slab and checked the bag of blood. It was empty.

  Where is all the blood going? Hurst wondered.

  As he moved to the fridge to grab another bag, Arturo put his hand on the patient’s shoulder.

  “Do you know your name?” he asked.

  The machines all around the woman’s body beeped and buzzed, but she did not respond. Arturo eyed Hurst. “Did you give her too much Xanax?”

  Hurst responded with a scowl and shook his head.

  Arturo returned the scowl with a frown and pressed a finger to his lips. “If you don’t have a name and don’t mind, I’d like to call you Shelley. Is that okay?” he asked the woman.

  She replied with a soft moan.

  “I think you gave her too much Xanax. I might have to flush her system if she doesn’t get moving soon.” Arturo prepared the second bag of blood and again pressed his forefinger to his lips, facing his partner across the woman’s body. “Shelley is a lovely name. My favorite author’s last name was Shelley,” he continued. This time, the woman didn’t respond at all.

  The professor replaced the empty bag of blood with the fresh one and stood beside the slab, watching as the new bag started to shrink. The blood was definitely flowing out rapidly, but where was it all going? He eased his hand under the woman’s back, feeling for a puddle. Not finding one, he gently lifted the delicately stitched legs one by one to see if the blood might be pooling there. Nothing. The once cold limbs were now feverishly warm, and her skin maintained its healthy pink hue. He lifted her arm, traced the lines of blood vessels with his index finger, following along the map of arteries and veins as the blood continued to pulse through them. He traced his way from her wrist up her arm and on to her neck. As he reached her collarbone, the pulsing path split, the vessels going deep into her body and up her neck to her brain. He looked up at Hurst and motioned for him to come closer.

  “The blood, I don’t know where it’s going,” he whispered. His voice was shaky, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he spoke.

  Hurst handed the professor the video camera and pulled his stethoscope out from the pocket of his white lab coat. As Hurst listened to the woman’s chest, Arturo zoomed the camera lens in on the veins in her neck, watching them throb as the infuser pumped blood through them. Hurst listened to the woman’s stomach and jerked back.

  “Her stomach is gurgling,” he said. “Almost as if it’s digesting.” He pressed down harder and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on what he was hearing.

  “What in the world does this mean?” He pulled the stethoscope off and rubbed his temples.

  “Shelley, can you hear me?” Arturo asked, panning the video camera from her toes to her forehead. He wanted to catch any movements she might make.

  “Mm-hmm,” she responded and twitched her leg.

  “Shelley, do you think you could open your eyes?” the professor asked, zooming the lens toward her face to catch the action.

  “Mm-hmm,” she replied again, and her eyes began to flutter open. Hurst kept a close watch on her movements, his back hunched and his brow furrowed as he paced beside the table. He wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen, and he certainly wasn’t sure about the rapid blood use.

  “She needs more blood,” Hurst said.

  Arturo pointed the video camera toward the infuser and the nearly empty second bag of blood. “Remarkable!”

  He took the video camera to the fridge and grabbed another bag. As he hooked it up, he said, “What do we do if we run out of blood?”

  “How much do we have l
eft?”

  Arturo walked back to the fridge and opened the door. “Looks like about—”

  “Shhh,” Hurst said.

  Arturo looked back, and the woman wiggled her foot.

  “Up,” she croaked. She jerked her right arm up awkwardly and let it drop off the side of the slab.

  Arturo smiled, but Hurst met his toothy grin with a frown.

  “We don’t know what she’s capable of,” Hurst warned. “We need to be careful, follow protocol.”

  The professor cocked his head and shot Hurst an exasperated look. “Protocol? There’s no protocol for something like this. And what do you mean capable of? What do you really think she could do? She’s got to be reconditioned, re-taught to use her muscles, to build up her strength, you know? What could she possibly do? She’s only been alive a few minutes. She’s like a baby.”

  Hurst sighed. He knew Arturo had a point. Shelley hadn’t used the muscles of this new body before, and surely couldn’t be capable of anything dangerous. His fatigue and worry were getting to him. “Okay,” he conceded. “How do you want to do this?”

  Once again, Arturo smiled. “She said she wanted to get up, right? Let’s help her up.”

  “Do you want me to set up the tripod and record this?” Hurst asked.

  “Of course, man, set it up.” The professor moved around the slab, handed the video camera to his partner, and started unbuckling the straps holding Shelley down. While Hurst pulled out their tripod from the storage closet next to the laboratory exit, Arturo whispered in Shelley’s ear: “We’ll have you up in no time. Up on your feet! Isn’t that wonderful?” He was so caught up in his own joy, he couldn’t make out her mumbled response.

  Hurst set up the tripod a few paces away from the table. He mounted the video camera and punched the record button. Moving back toward the table, he rolled up the sleeves of his white lab coat.

  The doctor’s movements exposed the sleeves of his old grey sweater. The professor eyed his partner carefully. He rested his hand on the table for balance. “You might want to roll down your sleeves,” he said as he unfastened the last strap, this one holding Shelley’s right leg down.