M.K. Wilke

H.I.V.E.

 

Roe leaned against the back of a broken railing sitting outside her tent but was still in her bubble, drinking the last of her clean water until she could buy more.  The economy was not what it used to be, a couple years back scientists had been trying to find the cure and the cure for something no one cared about anymore anyway.  I am sure back then it had been important any disease was, now none had a name but H.I.V.E 238.  It stood for everything the world could have ever hoped for, and for everything, the world could ever fear.  It was supposed to be a cure; no one could have known what it was going to do and if they had, they had probably gained a lot, and were tucked away somewhere comfortable and safe.  All tucked into a nice richly padded bunker waiting their days out until it was all over.  And it would be over; she could guarantee that and if anyone asked her how she would tell them it didn’t matter; just to hold their head up and wait for the end.  For if anyone found out her secret she would be dead and HIVE would never even get her.

 

Roe had created HIVE five years ago as a cure for Lupus.  She had used more than a few deadly combinations.  She thought she had it right, and she had tried it out on herself.  That’s what she had been dying of.  She was sure she was the only person left on the planet dying from something else other than HIVE. When she had injected herself with the medicine, everything had been fine; she had even started to feel better. In fact, within days she had undergone every kind of physical exam and her body was as healthy as it could be.  She had shown the results to her superiors along with the possible side effects.  They had given her the go-ahead on group testing, so that’s what she had done. 

 

She tested as many groups as she could and they all seemed to be feeling just fine, but not even two weeks after there were complaints every single person came back with some terrible side effect. None of them were as she had predicted, all of them were much more severe than she could ever calculate and within twenty-four hours of their first side effect, every person in the program was dead.  Then any person they had met was immediately notified and when contacted, they were all found to be in the hospital with the same symptoms.  A week later, those people were dead too.  Any person who had been in contact with them had been dead five days later.  It went on like this until someone realized it was airborne and that the symptoms had gotten stronger; if you came to close to someone who had it you were dead within twenty four hours.  And that’s how it had been for the last two years. People had done what they could to survive. 

 

Most never left their houses. Others had invented air purifiers and those sold fast – people were purifying everything they could. Others made or “found” anything they could to do the same so they could still travel.

 

Scientists’ both world renowned and brand new out of college were called on to cure the disease that had sprung up out of nowhere.  Because Roe’s project  had classified stamped all over it, no one knew who the inventor was and everyone was too busy trying to beat it to ask.  The disease’s actual name is formula 238 but on the street, its slang name  was H.I.V.E which stood for Human Immune Vessel Extermination; that is what they were calling it.  They were right; it destroyed you from the inside out and your last 24 hours were pure pain. There was no peaceful ending for anyone anymore.

 

That’s why Roe had to stop it. She had a feeling she was the only one who could, however to do that she would have to do the impossible! Get back into the secret lab where it had all started two years ago, where she had thought she could cure a disease no one else could.  By doing foolish dangerous things and everyone else was paying for it now because of her.

Roe took out the wire cutters and got to work. She wasn’t worried about stealth or noise.  She knew the place was deserted; there would be no top-notch security here like there used to be.  For everyone who knew it had originated here avoided the place like a plague.  What Roe didn’t understand is if she had been the first one to inject herself with the drug shouldn’t she have been the one to die first?  So why was she one of the few one hundred percent healthy humans on earth?  It made no sense, she thought, it had something to do with her blood but she couldn’t be sure. 

 

Roe got through the gate and front doors and walked through the empty halls covered in a layer of dust and went to her old office and started the computer. “Well, now’s as good a time as any,” she said to thin air, then sat down to begin.

 

Two weeks later Roe had done all the tests she could and she found herself astonished at the answer, it couldn’t be! She had rechecked her stats a million times; she was sure she had to be.  She ran out into the streets with no protection searching for the nearest person she could find.  Roe tripped over the dying man’s body and looked down with a squeal of joy. She kissed him on the lips, then stabbed the man in the chest with a needle; the cure of all things, the cure was lupus! Roe laughed with exhaustion; glad to know that to cure the world she only had to make it sicker.