Thomas Irving

I wake to a volley of thumping knocks at my front door. I sit up, groggy, still half asleep. It’s late, past midnight. I feel a frisson of fear when I hear the harsh, metallic rattle of the knob.  A man’s voice booms through my front door, and the threat comes into focus. ‘You have been selected for a random pathogen test. Open the door immediately.’

I press my weight against the door and grip the handle. There’s a small ripple under the skin of my wrist. I roll back the sleeve and see the rash is still there. Worse than it was yesterday. Pus oozes from a crevice in the raw skin. It’s just a rash, I try to convince myself.

There’s a brief silence, then: ‘Break it down,’ the voice commands.

My apartment block has been locked down for six weeks now. After contact tracing was used to track one of the occupants back to a superspreader event, the government rushed to send in a Rapid Response Team to quarantine the building and exterminate the infected occupants. The pathogen is highly contagious, and with its high mortality rate, they aren’t taking any chances. I imagine an army of militant RRT officials waiting in the hall, ready to bash my door in with a battering ram. Though, there is a chance it could be looters masquerading as the RRT to gain entry. While quick to send in the officials, the regime was not so quick to provide us with basic living supplies. I’ve heard rumours of desperate occupants, out of food and mad with starvation, attacking their neighbours.

CRACK! A heavy blow. Metal on wood. The door won’t hold for long.

I sprint to the window, open it, and peer down to the street below. Police surround the perimeter. Jump. I try to think back to stories I’d read online about people who’d survived jumping from tall buildings to escape fires. My apartment is on the fifth floor. Is that too many floors? Probably.

A cool breeze touches my cheek, and I am thrust back into the moment. Horrified, I realise I’m standing on a slender ledge next to my open window on the outside of the building. I don’t remember climbing out. Deep breaths. I steady myself, then dive back into the relative safety of the apartment.

CRACK! Another heavy blow.

I bolt to the kitchen to grab the biggest, sharpest knife I own. There, I notice the bulging veins in my forearm; however, upon closer inspection, I realise they are not veins at all. The stringy mass moves beneath my skin. I am infected. I feel a sharp and sudden urge to thrust the knife into my own arm to extricate the flesh-eating parasite crawling under my skin.

CRACK! This time, the door bursts open.

‘We’re here to perform a random pathogenic test,’ the voice bellows into the apartment. ‘This is a compulsory test, your compliance is required, however, your consent is not.’

Two RRT officials in full PPE—hazmat suits and visors—stand in my hallway. I react on instinct and rush toward them. I’m thankful there are only two, I can handle two. I have the element of surprise and use it to thrust the sharp blade deep into the first official’s throat. His legs turn to jelly, and he stumbles backwards grasping at the air trying, unsuccessfully, to remain upright. He falls back into his partner and gets a good grip on his visor, ripping the protective shield right off the other man’s head.

The first official slumps to the floor, dead. The second, stares at me, wide-eyed and frozen—a deer in headlights. He is exposed and knows it. I take one step toward him, and, with that, he flees. I watch him disappear into the stairwell and, for a moment, I am relieved.

It doesn’t last long.

Suddenly, an incessant alarm blasts throughout the building. Then, the power is shut off. The stark white LED lights fade, and the building is painted in the eerie neon glow of the backup-powered EXIT lights.

Don’t think, just act. I strip the dead official, don his hazmat suit and slip his visor over my head. As I move toward the stairs, one curious occupant peeks out into the hall. I try to hide my alarm when I see the parasite has completely eaten away the occupant’s eyelids, exposing the full roundness of both eyeballs, setting their face in a horrific, permanent expression of shock.

‘Get back in your room!’ I demand in my best impersonation of an official.

Then, through a receiver in the visor, I hear the grim shortwave radio transmission being broadcast to all members of the RRT: ‘This is a code black. There has been a containment breech. Extermination protocols are to be followed, effective immediately.’

I rush to the stairs and begin my descent. The Rapid Response Team are fully deployed. Imposing figures dressed in hazmat suits, with flamethrowers and a type of fire extinguisher that I have never seen before, race up and down the stairs. I barge my way through. Disguised in the hazmat suit, and somewhat due to the mayhem, I make it to the ground floor without any trouble.

I can hear the nightmare unfolding on the floors above, but this floor is eerily quiet. The Rapid Response Team have enacted their extermination protocol with brutal efficiency.

I peer through a broken-down door into another occupant’s room. What I witness disturbs me. I see the scorched remains of a family—mother, father and a small child—all burnt alive, then put out with some chemical that continues to burn their bodies in death. Worse still, is the meter-long worm protruding from the kid’s open mouth. The worm is covered in chemical burns, twitching and writhing, soon to be dead too. I throw off my visor and vomit on the floor. When I see the wriggling mass of worms in my vomit, I scream, then vomit again.

My mind reels. I am no killer. But I’m sick. I had to. I don’t want to die. Run. Get out! GET OUT! On the brink of madness, I run for the exit. As I reach the front door, I see my reflection in the glass. My skin ripples as the parasitic worms crawl about below the surface. I claw at my face in a frenzy and scream as I rip out a large worm that is buried deep within.

A voice in my head screams run! but I force myself to stay. This ends here. My features twist into a lunatic grin. I can’t let the outbreak spread.

The electricity may be shut off, but this is an old building and I’m pretty sure the gas should still be working. I rush from room to room turning on every gas appliance on the first floor. Then, I make my way back upstairs, repeating the process on every level until I come face to face with an RRT official on the fourth floor.

This is it. I turn and sprint back downstairs. I am sure they will follow; I just hope the building will be filled with enough gas to cause a large enough fire to burn this place to the ground.

I reach the ground floor with just enough time to take pause and second guess my decision to stay and immolate everyone in the building, infected or not. Is there a chance this is nothing more than a petty revenge plot? I shake the thoughts from my head and inhale a deep, calming breath. Sacrifice the few to save the many. But my mind will not be placated. Run. Escape. Survive.

‘Don’t move!’ I am interrupted as my pursuer bursts into the hall, flamethrower at the ready. They approach, needing to close the distance in order to reach an effective firing range. I don’t move. I need them to ignite the gas with their weapon. Suddenly, and with great intensity, I feel the worms writhe under my skin. The feeling is so intense I rip off my hazmat suit and begin to frantically scratch at the parasitic creatures living inside me.

My exposed flesh ripples all over, the skin pulsating as the restless worms wriggle within. The parasites break free of the flesh. Large worms burst forth, writhing in freshly torn wounds, to create a sick parody of Medusa. This has a sort of medusoid effect on the official, who stops dead, petrified, frozen in abject horror.

The stunned official watches as my mouth lolls open. In place of my tongue is a giant worm twisting and turning as it slithers out of my gaping orifice. The worm, my worm, snakes toward the official, winds up their leg, and makes its way up under their visor.

I push open the front door of the apartment building and step outside for the first time in six weeks. Disguised as an RRT official, I slip past the police barricade, make my way down the busy street and disappear into the community.

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Thomas is a writer and filmmaker from Melbourne, Australia. His work has been showcased at various festivals. Highlights include winning best screenplay at the Peninsula Film Festival, 2019, and receiving nominations for best comedy at both the St Kilda Film Festival, 2020 and the Melbourne Web Fest, 2020. In 2023, Thomas submitted his horror screenplay, Hurt People, for a fellowship with Writer’s Victoria and his work was highly commended by the organisation.

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