Aquarium Quarantine

Chapter 5

We sat for what seemed like hours silently grieving while listening to the pounding and scratching on the door. At some point the silent pleas turned to screams of pain that never seemed to end. Now we all knew what fate awaited us if we got infected, and it was truly terrifying.

It was approximately 11:00 pm at night when the cell phone service cut off. Charles had been on the phone with his wife, quietly talking her through a game plan of what to do to prepare in case the disease spread off the island, when the call suddenly dropped. All of us aside from Sasha who had passed out from exhaustion, all checked our phones at once. Much to our dismay, none of us had service. The one and only cell phone tower on the island must have been shut off. We still had electricity and spotty internet service from our office Wi-Fi, but the loss of the cell service was a bad sign.

We knew we needed to get some rest, but no one was really going to be getting much sleep tonight. Still, we all needed to try to get a few hours at least in case we needed to run or fight. There were only four beds and five people, so we planned on taking turns keeping watch while the others got some sleep. The fear that a single sickly diseased human could break down a steel door and four inches of thick plywood was very unlikely, yet it was still a horrible fear that was on everyone's minds and we had to be cautious.

Madeline and I picked Sasha up and carefully carried her to the bunk room and laid her gently on the bed. We were cautious not to wake her, grateful that she was asleep and not still in a panicked state. When I pulled the blanket up over her, I could see the tears crusting her face. I wondered how she would ever recover from the pain she was facing. I don’t know how I would react if it was one of my loved ones on the other side of the door instead of Harold.

I kept watch for the first few hours, sitting just inside the door of the bunk room, ready to slam the door shut if there was any sign of movement anywhere in the building. The lights were still on over the tanks, agitating the sharks who were very confused of why the daytime suddenly became 24 hours long. Every now and then I could hear them splashing around or clanking into the tank walls. I knew that they were annoyed, but we were not going to risk turning out all the lights and leaving us at a disadvantage if something crazy happened.

“Sorry guys…” I muttered under my breath. “I’ll give you your favorite food tomorrow to apologize…..”

As soon as everyone else had fallen asleep, I started to feel extreme depression creeping over me. Everything that was happening was so awful and sad, and the full weight of it was finally hitting me now that there was no one to talk to about it. I looked around me at the green brick walls of the bunk room, the place that use to make me feel so safe during hurricanes, and felt the tears dripping silently down my cheeks. No matter what happens, this building will never feel the same again. Coming to work will never feel the same again. I realized that I would be carrying the weight of what happened here the rest of my life, and even if we lived, part of me would always be afraid because something like this could happen. I felt like my whole perception of the world was shattered now.

I tried to distract myself by watching a video online on my phone by using the spotty Wi-Fi, but it just felt so fake that life was going on outside the island while people were dying here. After an hour of obsessively searching the internet for any information, I still couldn’t find anything on the outbreak here. I was tempted to post something about it somewhere, but I decided not to. I was worried that people wouldn’t believe it, and even if they did, it could put a target on us if this was somehow caused by our government. Hell, even if it was some sort of foreign attack, our government still wanted a media blackout to be going on for some reason.

I sent my sister a quick email, telling her that I was safe but the cell service here was down. I told her we still didn’t know what was happening but it could have been some kind of terrorist attack and we were bunkering down in our work building like we would do in a hurricane. I was hoping that it would give her some relief, and I didn’t know how much longer we would still have internet. I started writing everything down in a journal, partially to pass the time but also to make sure there was some kind of record of the events. There was still a lot that we didn’t know, but it was at least something. The scratching at the building door set my nerves on edge, and I longed for the blip of comfort that crawling onto one of the lumpy mattresses on the creaky wooden bunk beds would offer me.

Scarlet woke up a few hours later and came over to swap with me. When I stood up, she saw the dried tears on my face and gave me a silent hug. When she let go, she gently ruffled my hair and whispered, “It’s going to be alright, okay?”

I nodded, but I didn’t really believe it.

I sauntered over to the bed slowly, each of my footsteps seeming louder than they should have been, making me cringe with every step. I climbed onto the top bunk, my limbs feeling heavy as I went, and collapsed onto the bed. The sheets smelled like Scarlet’s honey-like perfume, and it was oddly comforting.

I planned on burying my head in my pillow and blasting the loudest possible music in my earphones until I fell asleep. I was successfully able to drowned out the screeching outside enough to fall asleep, but I feared that the scratching and screams of pain would follow me into my nightmares forever.