Rough Road Ahead (In Progress)

Chapter 24

           

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            Staring at the ceiling in my bedroom had always helped me fall asleep before, watching the fan spin, listing to my alarm clock tick the minutes away that I had left to sleep, but in this place I found it extremely hard.

            Checking myself over once to be sure that I hadn't contracted any of those strange spots, I felt confident that I was indeed not sick.

            Brad had the top bunk and I had the bottom. It took an hour or two for my father to finish throwing up, but when he was done he fell asleep in the bed next to me without a word.

            My eyes wandered to the glass, looking out it and seeing the doctors moving the busy bees. There was a lab set up in the back, test tubes and microscopes everywhere. Whatever this was, it was bad. That much I knew. I wished that they would tell us something, anything, but I knew that they were busy with other things.

            The TV was our only source of entertainment and it was so old that all it caught was one channel and static on all the others. I learned that after fumbling around with it for an hour and a half, moving the bunny-ears in different directions to no avail, taking the batteries out of the remote and rubbing them between my hands in an attempt to revive them.

            Suddenly I heard a voice and I sat up, suddenly fully awake, "hello." A doctor said from behind the glass into a microphone. The sound was coming from above us, however and I realized that there were speakers in the room with us. "We are very pleased that you all came willingly, we insure you that this is for your safety as well as the worlds." He cleared his throat, "I'm going to be blunt with you all, this is a virus that we have never seen before. Due to this we have no idea as of yet how it spreads, how long it takes to incubate, or how it came into existence. But, what we do know after testing some of the infected is that this virus works through your DNA, breaking it down. Due to this, we are going to need to take a blood sample of each of you to determine if any of you have it."          

            The older man stopped, putting the phone down and walking into the room next to the one that we were in. After ten minutes the door from his room to ours was open and he walked in, fully clothed in the same type of suit the other male and female were in before. 

            Brad sat up on his bed, climbing down beside me, "I don't like this." He said, his eyes scanning my reaction, but I ignored him. I was just too mentally drained to deal with him, to deal with anything other than what was currently at hand.

            But when he continued to stare at me, I finally gave in. "You say that a lot." I said, my eyes meeting his. He didn't have his contacts in and for a moment I couldn't help but watch his eyes. So beautiful, I thought. I guessed he didn't have a chance to put them in after he had woken up.

            My father was on his bed, sitting up finally as the doctor approached us. "Ok, who wants to go first?" The man questioned, pulling out a needle from his pocket and uncapping it.

            My father moved his arm, rolling his left sleeve up and extending it in front of him. The man kneeled down, pushing the plunger down so all the air was out before tapping my fathers arm, trying to find a vein. It took him a moment of examining, my family wasn't very vein-y. We all had light skin, but our veins were deep under the flesh, nearly invisible to the human eye. The doctor stuck the needle in, pulling back the plunger until he had a vial of blood. "There." The man said, standing up and walking over to Brad. "You ready, sir?" He asked, pulling out a new needle and recapping the last one, placing it in his other pocket.