Mother Russia

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Chapter Nine

Pavel Voronin went straight home after work. He lived in a nice apartment with his girlfriend Juliya. She was six years younger than him and she liked to party and fool around, which were exactly the kind of qualities that Pavel looked for in a woman. But if he had to be honest, she was starting to annoy him, and he didn’t think they’d still be together in a year. In fact, he’d already cheated on her twice, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for him.

They had a quick meal and then Pavel showered and changed for a night out. It had been a stressful week at work, dealing with the new viral project that had been dumped on them with little warning, and Pavel would have preferred to stay at home and watch some television with a glass of wine. But he had stupidly told Juliya they could go out on Friday if she wanted to, and of course she wanted to.

They drove out to a bar to have a few drinks with some friends before heading to a popular nightclub in town called Sverkhnovaya Zvezda, or Supernova in English. They went there pretty often because Pavel was friends with one of the bouncers.

Pavel already had a mild headache coming on. They sat at the bar and ordered drinks, and he asked the bartender for some tylenol because he didn’t want the headache to get worse. Juliya talked about her day, which he didn’t really care about. He coughed and felt a tickle in his throat. The bar was loud and distracting, and the air felt stuffy and foul.

“Where are they?” Juliya asked. “I thought you told them to meet us here.”

“I did,” Pavel said with a shrug.

“Call them,” Juliya said.

“You go ahead and call them,” he said, shaking his head. “I gotta take a leak, I’ll be right back.”

He reached the restroom and leaned on the sink, taking a few deep breaths. The last thing he wanted was to get a headache when he was out at a club. His head still hurt, but hopefully the tylenol would start to work soon. He coughed a few times and walked over to the urinals.

He went back out into the bar, feeling slightly light-headed. In the few minutes he’d been gone, the place had gotten even more crowded. He had to squeeze between some groups of people standing in the hall that led to the restroom. The tickle in this throat remained, and he cleared his throat and then coughed a few more times.

Juliya took his arm and spoke loudly in his ear. “I called Magda and she said they were running late and we should just meet them at the club.”

“All right,” Pavel said. He picked up his drink and swallowed a mouthful, hoping it would soothe his throat. “You want to go right now or stay here for a bit longer?”

“I haven’t finished my drink yet.” Juliya said. “Then we can go.”

“Fine.”

The bar seemed too loud and too bright, and Pavel kept squinting and shielding his eyes because it was making his headache worse. The bar filled up and soon he was practically shoulder to shoulder with the other patrons getting drinks. Every second that went by increased the pressure on his head and the annoying tickle in his throat. He coughed into his hand over and over.

“You need a cough drop or something, baby?” Juliya asked, leaning against him and kissing him on the cheek.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I think I’m coming down with something. I felt fine an hour ago.”

“Hey!” Juliya said, pointing at the tables on the other side of the bar. “It’s Evgeni and Isabella, remember them? I introduced you to them at that big party a few months ago. Let’s go over.”

She pulled him away from the bar, and as they wove their way across the crowded maze of tables, Pavel almost lost his balance twice. He was sweating too, and he didn’t seem to be able to get enough air no matter how deeply he breathed. Juliya didn’t seem to notice. She brought him over to the table where her friends were sitting, but there were no extra chairs for them to sit down.

Pavel smiled and nodded politely and shook their hands, although he only barely knew them. He desperately wanted to sit down, preferably somewhere outside where he could get some fresh air. His head was throbbing now.

After a few minutes of small talk and chit chat with Juliya’s friends, he touched her on the arm. “Hey, if we want to make sure we meet Ilya and Magda, we should get going.”

Juliya said goodbye to her friends, but not before giving them both a hug. She made her way out of the bar with Pavel right behind her, but he was struggling to keep up. He felt dizzy and short of breath all of a sudden.

By the time they made it outside, he felt like he was going to fall over, so he took a moment to lean up against a street sign and try to catch his breath.

“Is something wrong, baby?” Juliya asked.

“I feel like shit,” Pavel said, closing his eyes. “I think I’ve got a migraine or something. Listen, I think we should go home so I can lay down.”

“We can’t go home,” Juliya said. “We just told Ilya and Magda we’d meet them at the Supernova. They’re probably on their way now. You said we could go out and party tonight.”

“I know, I know,” he said lamely. He was too tired to argue with her.

“Give me the keys,” she said. “I’ll drive. Once we get there, you can sit on one of the couches they have, all right? I won’t make you dance with me. Maybe we can get something for your headache.”

“I’d really rather just go home.”

“You promised we could go out tonight. You can’t change your mind now. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, you just have to sit down for a little while.”

When he still didn’t give her the keys to his car, she leaned against him. “We don’t have to stay long, all right? Let me hang out with Ilya and Magda for an hour and then we can go home. And maybe if you’re in the mood, maybe I’ll do something kinky for you,” she said with a grin. “I bet that would make you feel better, huh?”

Pavel found that he could not argue with that logic. He fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Juliya, and she led him to where his car was parked. The drive to the nightclub only took a few minutes. Pavel felt ten times worse by the time they got there.

“I’m serious,” he said in a weak voice. “I really feel terrible. I think you should drive me to the emergency room ...”

“Don’t be a big crybaby,” Juliya laughed. “You were fine when you got home today. Nobody can get sick so fast. Now come on,” she said, pulling him out of the car. “Maybe Ilya has something you can take. He usually has pills on him.”

Juliya led him to the door where people were waiting in line, but they were able to bypass the line and get inside with little difficulty. Pavel forced himself to smile and thank his friend the bouncer for letting them cut the line.

The inside of the club was dark and loud, with strobe lights flashing deliriously and bright laser beams cutting through the air. Electronic dance music blared at full volume, making his head pound even harder. He could barely remain on his feet, and shuffled through the mob of people blindly, Juliya’s hand tightly grabbing his wrist. She brought him to a seating area off to the side of the main dance floor, where they had tables and plush semicircular couches. The music wasn’t quite as loud.

“All right,” Juliya said. “Take a seat. I’m going to go look for Ilya and Magda. They’re probably at the bar. Just sit here and rest.”

“I don’t …” Pavel whispered, “I don’t think … I should be here ...”

But it was too loud and Juliya couldn’t hear him. She hurried off, leaving him alone.

It felt like his lungs were full of fluid. Each breathe seemed to bubble in his chest, and the effort felt like he was trying to breathe through a straw. He was burning up with fever and his whole body ached. It dimly occurred to him that this was much worse than a migraine, but he couldn’t fathom how he could have gotten so sick so fast.

Minutes went by and Juliya did not return. Pavel felt like he was choking to death, and he coughed and spat onto the floor, but it was so dark he couldn’t tell if his spit had anything in it. With his last ounce of strength, he pulled himself up and tried to get to the restroom, where he could get some water from the sink. He couldn’t walk on his own, so he leaned against the table, the couch, and finally the wall as he made his way to the restroom.

People were everywhere, drinking, laughing, shouting to be heard over the music. Pavel barely noticed them, as his vision had narrowed to a space a few inches wide. He pushed past people and tried to get away. Anyone who saw him probably figured he was drunk or high.

Somehow, after what felt like a journey of kilometers, he reached one of the restrooms. The urinals were all occupied, and two men were at the sink checking their teeth and combing their hair. Pavel shuffled inside and turned on one of the faucets with a trembling hand. He cupped some water in his palm and raised it to his mouth to slurp it down.

“Hey buddy, you all right?” someone behind him asked.

He moved his head from side to side. “No, I’m … I’m just a little sick ...”

Pushing away from the sink, he staggered to one of the stalls and pushed the door open. He had to sit down and catch his breath. One of the men laughed, “Man, that guy’s wasted.”

Pavel sat roughly on the closed toilet seat and let the door to the stall swing shut. He didn’t have the strength left to reach up and latch it. He slumped back and tried to breathe, but it seemed like every breath was more of a struggle than the last. His vision was nearly gone, reduced to just a narrow sliver as blackness closed in on all sides. His arms hung limp at his sides, and he gasped for air, his head tilted awkwardly on the back of the toilet.

He wanted to find Juliya and tell her to take him to the hospital. His last conscious thought was to wonder just what was happening to him.

Five minutes later, his heart shuddered to a halt and he exhaled the last bit of air in his lungs, slumping down even further on the seat. His head rolled to the side, his eyes open, a line of drool slowly soaking into his shirt sleeve.

For ten minutes, people continued to enter and exit the restroom, oblivious to the fact that one of the stalls contained a dead man.

Although Pavel was biologically dead, much was happening just under the surface of his skin. Inside his organs and tissues, the KLR-55 virus was replicating and taking over numerous biological functions, giving the cells of his body some semblance of life. Like the Progenitor on which it was based, KLR-55 essentially kept the body’s individual cells alive while killing the host. And like so many of the variant strains, like the unstable G-virus and the powerful N-strain, it also introduced unpredictable mutative side effects to a primary host.

The color of Pavel’s skin rapidly changed until it was so red that he looked like he suffered from a brutal sunburn, and it became mottled and bruised-looking. His eyes turned red as well, as if they had filled with blood.

“Pavel!” came an annoyed shout that echoed along the restroom’s white tiles. “Pavel, are you in here?” It was Juliya, looking for him.

As if responding to his name, Pavel slowly sat up. His mouth hung open, drool still hanging from his chin, and his slack expression twisted into a snarling grimace with bared teeth.

“Those people said a really drunk guy stumbled into the bathroom a little while ago,” said Juliya’s friend Ilya. “You said he was sick?”

“Pavel!” Juliya said. “My God! What are you doing in –”

She pushed in the door to the stall, knocking his legs out of the way. The last word of the sentence never left her lips. Instead, after just once glance at the person that used to be Pavel Voronin, she backed away and sucked in a breath to scream. The scream never left her lips either.

Pavel leaped out of the stall like a coiled spring and slammed into Juliya with enough force to break her ribs. She flew backward and smashed into the wall. The back of her head cracked against the wall so hard the tiles shattered, and she collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

“Jesus!” Ilya screamed. “Pavel!”

He turned to run, and Pavel leaped at him, knocking him sideways and onto the floor. He feebly tried to rise to his feet, and Pavel grabbed him and lunged down, biting down on his throat so hard it broke Ilya’s neck. He tore a mouthful of flesh away and blood geysered up across the ceiling.

Two other men just entering the restroom fell back and tried to run for it, but Pavel hurled Ilya’s dead body to the side and leaped after them.

By the time he made it out to the dance floor, coated with blood and gore, half a dozen corpses lay butchered in his wake. Pavel dove into the crowd like a shark feasting on a school of fish. In moments, the entire nightclub had turned into a stampeding mob of people screaming and running for their lives.

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