Not Hunger, Not Feeling

We hear that same knock like clockwork: rhythmic, almost polite. Every hour on the hour. Only Morgan and I remain in the cramped, musty surveillance room on the fifth floor. Darrell left three days ago. We have bottled water. Two bags of Pizza Combos. One bag of Skittles. A tiny bathroom too. The backup generators hum on—but for how long? Darrell would have known.

On a series of tiny screens, Morgan and I watch as our former co-workers, department supervisors, and even a stray Uber Eats driver roam the halls. Without the presence of a non-infected viable host, the virus goes dormant. These last few hours have been quiet. Watching Rhonda shuffle quietly across the hallway in the East Wing, I can pretend for a few maladaptive moments the world didn’t end.

I first saw it on TikTok: a short, shaky fifty-second video showing a man violently ripping apart a woman’s dress. Then him tearing her apart. I scoured Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram to see if anyone else was watching this video. I fell asleep that night thinking of the woman’s lavender-frost lululemon dress. I had almost bought that same dress until I realized it was $148. It couldn’t be real, right? It was totally some AI deepfake.

Two weeks later, the BBC confirmed the video was real. Most news outlets were too busy covering the celebrity trial of the year, the President’s nuclear threats, or a social faux pas in the US Open. Or something else. The video went viral anyway.

It’s called HSV-3. I liked that—the orderliness of it. Numbers make catastrophe seem manageable. Herpes Simplex Virus Type 3, like HSV-1 and HSV-2, was transmitted through human-to-human contact or bodily fluids. Highly contagious, certainly. Unlike its cousins, HSV-3 attacks the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, erasing inhibition and reason while leaving the brainstem intact—an elegant, brutal design. Even from afar, the damage is obvious. For hours, Morgan and I watched the crazed as they bumped into walls and smashed their heads against chipped white paint, dark splatters blooming across the grainy footage.

First detected in Romania three years ago, HSV-3 was dubbed the “Killer STD,” but I don’t remember hearing about it. Odd, considering my fascination with viruses and pandemics. My mother called it an obsession. At eleven, I’d begun to delve into epidemiology. Spanish Flu, Black Death, Typhus, Smallpox. I read every book, watched every documentary, and listened to every podcast. In high school, I ran a small blog tracking local virus outbreaks. COVID only confirmed my morbid habit.

The world ends both at a crawl and with a bang, creeps up on you if you’re not looking close enough. It doesn’t happen overnight. We should have known. But we were all seemingly asleep at the wheel. I saw the signs—disappearances, rising violence, the criminalization of sex work, strikes at the CDC and Mayo Clinic. I saw everything. And I did nothing. Despite the videos, the articles, the reports on HSV-3. I got up at 7 am, caught the 108 bus, arrived at the office by 9, ate a half-dry turkey sandwich, took a forty-five-minute bathroom break, clocked out at 6, spent the evening with Mrs. Marie Callendar, smoked a bowl, went to sleep. A sad little life, but it was mine.

It ended on a Tuesday.

It’s kind of funny; I’d told Morgan this, too, but I wasn’t even supposed to be in the office that day. SHU offered two flex workdays a month, and I planned to use one that Tuesday. My plan: lie in bed, watch Pride and Prejudice (2005), drink a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and pretend to answer vendor emails. I work, or rather worked, in Purchasing & Acquisitions for a midsized software company. Life was a hodgepodge of Excel spreadsheets, calls to the Hong Kong or London office, and pointless email memos. I knew my job would vanish within five years because of AI, but I planned to coast and enjoy the time I had left. There’s beauty in being unimportant.

On day three, after Darrell left, Morgan admitted she never liked me much. We split a bag of half-stale pretzels and pretended not to watch the screen monitors intently for any sign of uninfected life. “I always thought you were kind of weird and quiet, to be honest,” she laughed.

“Am I not weird and quiet?” I asked.

“Nope. You’re real cool, Gretchen.”

I’d never been called cool in my life. Morgan was a payroll specialist and part-time yoga instructor. She had a long-term, live-in boyfriend named Justin and a cat named Gerald—or maybe it was the other way around? Over the past few days, we’ve grown familiar with each other’s natural odors. Morgan, fortunately, didn’t sweat much. I couldn’t say the same. The only reason we ended up here was because of Darrell.

We had received an email from HR Monday night:

###

From: Kate Delaney
To: All Staff
Date: March 25th, 202-
Priority: Medium-High

Dear Team,

We are writing to inform you of an important and immediate change to our workplace operations in light of recent developments concerning the outbreak of the HSV-3 in the United States.

Per updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and our internal health advisory panel, SHU Solutions will transition to full remote operations effective immediately. This decision was made out of an abundance of caution and in the interest of employee safety.

All employees are being asked to report to their home office tomorrow to retrieve personal artifacts and their work computers. Attendance is mandatory as a brief interoffice meeting is scheduled for 10 am to address work from home etiquette and expectations of employees. Managers will send updated remote task lists by EOD.

We recognize this is an unusual and unsettling situation. Please remain calm, follow all safety protocols, and remember—we’re in this together!

Warm regards,
Kate Delaney
Head of Human Resources

###

Apparently, Kate Delaney was interrupted during the staff meeting by Andrew Wynne from Accounting. He threw her over the desk, tore her blouse, bit off her ear, and stabbed her with a tactical pen eighteen times. I don’t know if he ever found a release. I don’t know why I say “apparently” because that’s what we saw on surveillance footage once we reached the room later that day.

In the later stages of HSV-3, the infected move erratically. People online described it as “tweaking out.” They experience muscle spasms, facial twitches, bloody noses, and drooling. Some go catatonic after multiple seizures. The outcome is always the same: necrosis of the brain, sparing only the brainstem. Technically, they’re still alive, but higher brain function is gone. Irreversible (or so the CDC claimed).

Darrell was a survivalist of sorts. He listened to talk radio shows and collected guns. He worked as janitorial staff in our building. Morgan was at the fourth-floor vending machine when the chaos began—she always went there because it stocked Canada Dry Ginger Ale. I was in the gender-neutral bathroom on that floor as well (the only restroom without a smoke detector). Darrell was collecting trash in the same wing, as usual. Habit, routine, and chance left the three of us stranded together.

We heard it before we saw it: screams, moans, rumbles, and the slapping of skin. A woman stumbling out of the elevator. She looked familiar…Nancy, maybe? Her left breast had been sliced clean off, and both of her eyes gouged out. An opaque liquid leaked from one eye socket. She moaned unintelligibly. It was something out of a Shudder flick or some B-rate slasher movie. I couldn’t tell if she was infected, but Darrell grabbed Morgan and me as we stood frozen. He pulled a .38 revolver, the kind my grandfather had owned, and shoved us toward the stairs. Morgan suggested the ground floor. “That’s where everyone else is,” Darrell said. “We need to go up.”

We reached the fifth floor before encountering Andrew Wynne or whatever he had become. Darrell ushered us into the surveillance room. “It’s one of the few rooms with reinforced doors,” he explained. Morgan had resisted at first; it took some coaxing. The growing screeches outside made the choice easy.

“I’m Darrell,” Darrell said after locking the door from the inside with a key he took off the carabiner hanging from his belt loop. It must have had dozens of keys, bronze and silver, hanging from it. Yet he knew exactly which key to use without a second thought.

“I’m Gretchen,” I offered.

Morgan looked between the both of us. “And I’m Morgan. HR Department. What the fuck is going on? Is this the thing from that email?” She clutched her chest. “Oh my god, that woman!”

“We couldn’t help her. It was too late,” Darrell said. He wasn’t really looking at us. He was trying to catch his breath. The man must have been in his 60s. He looked tired.

Morgan was still suspicious. “Why do you have a gun? Why did you bring us here?” Darrell just motioned toward the surveillance screens. There were twelve monitors in total. Each screen offered a glimpse into different wings, different floors of the office building. The screens were filled with bodies; living or dead, I could not say.

We spent hours on that first day, just watching, just waiting. We assumed the security guard or someone would appear; other survivors, demanding to be let in. We imagined scenarios where the National Guard showed up or the entire greater metropolitan area was bombed to hell. We feasted on cold pizza and flat Dr. Pepper.

Only Morgan had her phone. Darrell didn’t believe in them, and mine was probably still on my desk. She tried calling her boyfriend, 911, her parents, and her therapist—in that order. The lines were all busy, and Emergency Services was down. Eventually, she reached her parents, only to hear the answering machine. She offered me the phone. I told her I didn’t have anyone’s phone number memorized.

An old desktop sat in the corner. I spent the first days online, reading the same articles I’d seen weeks before. Breaking news reports were behind paywalls, but the consensus was clear: nobody really knew anything. I read until there was nothing left—no posts, no videos, no articles. It felt like the internet had died overnight.

To pass the time, we watched the surveillance screens and played I Spy. It reminded me of childhood games before smartphones—the license plate game, car bingo. I must be one of the last generations to play them. Now, whenever I’m on the road, I just see kids glued to iPad screens.

So we watched. Through the grainy cameras, we sometimes caught glimpses of the streets outside—empty cars abandoned at intersections; a lone figure prowling over cracked pavement. The city seemed paused, waiting for everyone to resume their lives.

Morgan’s iPhone died on day three. The previous occupant of the room must have been an Android user. My vape died soon after. On day four, the emergency generators kicked in, lighting the building with dim backlights. At night, the surveillance screens went dark, shrinking our window into the world. Morgan didn’t like looking at the screens very much. It seemed everyone left in the building was infected. The once-bustling office became a mausoleum now ruled by the dormant infected.

Darrell formulated a plan: one of us would reach the roof, use the fire-escape, and make a run for the parking lot. Hopefully, the car will be waiting for the rest of us. Darrell mentioned he had a hunting cabin upstate we could hide out in, or he could drop us off somewhere along the way. It wasn’t a terrible plan. We debated drawing straws or flipping a coin. In the end, Darrell volunteered. “I have the gun and know this building like the back of my hand,” he said. Morgan didn’t stop him. I told him he didn’t have to go.

Darrell left, calling over his shoulder, “You chicks don’t worry, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

We were to wait and watch the screens. Darrell’s old pickup would appear near the building’s left flank on screen five—our signal that the coast was clear. I hated looking at the clock but was powerless to ignore the ticking of the little and big hands. Hours passed.

Morgan finally said, “Darrell’s either dead, infected, or a lying bastard.”

We had watched him on the screens until he made it to the stairway. He or the blue Dodge Dakota he drove never reappeared on screen. That night, the fifth night, we broke open our last can of soda and toasted Darrell. Diet Mountain Dew.

“Rest in peace,” Morgan cheered. “You were a decent man. I thought when you shoved us into this little room you were planning on raping and murdering us, but you didn’t.”

I didn’t have anything to say, really. I was never good at funerals or goodbyes or writing heartfelt messages on birthday cards.

“You really thought he was going to rape us?” I asked Morgan.

“It’s never a non-zero chance.”

“The thought didn’t even occur to me,” I admitted.

Morgan didn’t comment on that; all she said was, “Is there any way to turn these screens off? I’ve frankly seen enough tits and dick to last me a lifetime.” It was true. I’d seen more nude bodies in the last five days than ever before in my life. There was this weird phenomenon with HSV-3. Many of the infected stripped naked in the later stages of the disease. I wonder if their skin felt like it was on fire, if their bodies ran too hot, or if they simply, instinctively, wanted the unimpaired ability to pillage and ravage indiscriminately. On screen, we saw the pink and brown areolas, the flaccid cocks, the bodies. The screens were full of them—stripped bare, twitching, and unrecognizable. I felt like an unwilling witness to some grotesque exhibition of the human form.

Morgan explained eventually that she had medomalacuphobia. It was a fear of penises. It began in her childhood. “I’m maybe seven or eight,” she began. “I’m at the mall with my mother. We were Christmas shopping, I think. She ran back into one of the stores to get a receipt she forgot. I was standing by the fountain. My mother swears she only left me for a moment, but it felt like—”

Morgan was lying down on the carpet. She, like me, was staring at the ceiling, trying to make art out of the assorted water stains. We’re waiting for Ativan to kick in. It was my last two pills. I was surprised that she took me up on the offer. Morgan is well-structured, always cleaning, organizing, and performing even the most tedious tasks with an admirable tenacity.

“This man,” she continued, “came up to me in a trenchcoat. I remember thinking it was odd he was wearing a coat like that instead of a puffer jacket or snow coat. It was freezing out. And he flashed me. His penis was so short and round and ugly. I screamed.”

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “He ran off as soon as I screamed. My mother and a shop clerk came out of the store. We filed a police report, but nothing came of it.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “I wish I had a cigarette.”

“You smoke?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I feel like this is the sort of story you should be smoking a cigarette for while you tell it.”

It was late. The clock said it was two in the morning.

“I have issues with intimacy and men now,” Morgan added, like an afterthought. “It’s silly. Like, the guy never touched me but ever since I saw that man’s penis, I’ve been afraid of them. I’ve tried the therapy thing, and I don’t know. Something just changed after that day.”

“You have a boyfriend, right?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s great. Gerry understands—understood or tried to. It was certainly the longest relationship I ever had.”

“He might be fine,” I offered.

“Yeah,” Morgan said.

On the morning of day six, we heard the knocking. Quiet, but loud enough to wake me from a lousy night on the lumpy couch. Morgan was passed out on the floor. On surveillance camera #9, a man stood outside the door. I nudged Morgan awake. Another knock. So we walked over to the door, silent, praying he could not hear anything.

Cooper McCreery, standing outside, was nicknamed “Creepy Cooper.” He hit on every young woman he saw, listened only to Joe Rogan, and got far too friendly around the office. He worked in my department. At the last Christmas party, Cooper tried to grope Susan’s 16-year-old daughter. No one particularly liked him. Mouth-breathing, smelling of Axe and body odor, well into his thirties, incompetent at work—but untouchable; his uncle was a VP.

Through the crack in the door, we heard a soft, pleading voice, “Hey, let me in. It’s Cooper.” Morgan brought a finger to her lips: stay quiet. Cooper rapped again. He said, “I know you’re there. I ran into Darrell. He didn’t make it. Let me in. Those infected fucks could be here any minute.”

On screen, he tried pushing his body against the door. Each thump echoed, drawing the infected closer. Cooper left, disappearing into the stairwell. We thought it was over.

Except he returned, every few hours, knocking relentlessly. Pleading became crying, then cursing. He told us we were lying, conniving bitches. He promised cooperation. Knock. He told us we would rot in hell. He would throw us to the infected to be raped and bred like animals. Another knock. He promised us that he was a good man. He begged to be let in.

On the grainy, low-definition screen, he looked fairly normal—disheveled but alive. The left sleeve of his white button down was stained with blood. His or an infected’s? We couldn’t tell. HSV-3 begins subtly: itching, headaches, mild fever. Then blisters, sores, irritability, insomnia, loss of control, paranoia, delusions, hypersexuality.

“So fucked-up, violent, sexual deviant on bath salts.” This is how Morgan described it. Early stage infected? Maybe. But Cooper was always like this—erratic, entitled, vulgar. It was his nature. Even uninfected, he was a rabid dog; the bite was inevitable. You could see it in his eyes.

Morning of day nine. The knocking. It has been going on for four days now. I start counting the seconds between Cooper’s visits. Morgan sits at the desk, begrudgingly watching the screens.

“He’s attracting the infected,” she says. “If they notice us, I’m not sure the door could hold a horde.”

“You’re right.” I say.

“I think we should make a run for it,” Morgan says. “The stairwell must be clear enough if Cooper can make his hourly rounds. I say we make a go for the roof and climb down the fire escape like Darrell suggested.”

“You’re right,” I say. We get to work, and I help her prepare the provisions—what little is left of the snacks and bottled water, a half-dead flashlight, and the measly first-aid kit.

“It’s so absurd,” Morgan says while we work. “None of us should have been here. I keep asking myself, ‘Why the hell did I even come in?’”

“Yeah,” I offer sympathetically.

“This company didn’t give a shit. Half of your entire department was being laid off in the next three months. Did you know that?” Morgan said.

I had forgotten she worked in HR. “Yes,” I say. I saw a memo by accident a while ago.

She repeats to herself, “Why did I even come in? I saw on the news that the attacks were getting more commonplace, that roads were being closed. Yet I came in. It’s kind of funny; I used to daydream about some sort of apocalypse happening. After all, it meant I wouldn’t have to go to work on Monday. I could do anything else. I’d be a Carol, a Furiosa, or an Ellen Ripley. I could become anyone I wanted. Yet I came into work.”

I didn’t really see what she meant by that. I’d been thinking of ending things. Hanging myself from the exposed beam in my loft apartment. I guess, I just really didn’t see a point. I came in because it didn’t really matter if I was at work or at home when the world ended. It was just another Tuesday.

Knocking again. On the grainy cameras, I look at Cooper’s eyes. I could see clarity—no twitching, no frothing, no hint of HSV-3’s madness—just him, desperate and entitled.

Morgan walks to the door and opens it. Before I can protest, Cooper stands there, smiling—or maybe just grinning. Then he’s on the floor, blood pooling around him. Morgan plunged a knife—box cutter, maybe—into his neck. The gurgle is obscene. She pants, motioning for me to help. I freeze, eyes fixed on the mole on his neck. A mole? She motions toward me to help her with the body. I grab his arms; she takes his feet. Together, we drag him out. I check his arm—only a bloodstain. Once he’s outside, Morgan slams the door with a certain finality. A box cutter. That’s what she used.

“I don’t think he was sick.” I mutter.

“That’s not why I did it,” Morgan says. “You know that, right?” Her eyes reflected a calculated, instant understanding. This wasn’t about infection.

It clicks eventually—immutable, immaterial, something intrinsically I know I should know. Morgan saw it, understood instantly. The sort of thing I need hours to process.

On the screen, Cooper’s bloodied form stares back at us. Morgan vomits into the trash can—mostly bile. We haven’t eaten in a day. The smell is nauseating.

“Ever seen a dead body up close like that before? Both my grandparents were cremated.” Morgan’s hands shake. Her eyes look watery. She’s flustered.

“Yes,” I say. Every summer, I spent a few weeks with my grandparents. They lived in the mountains. All their kids had moved away, closer to cities. Mom still sent me to visit. My cousin Moira came too—two years older, cooler, and prettier. I worshipped her. There was little to do; there was no cable, no internet. So we played forts, cops and robbers, and all the sorts of games you play at that age. I remember we found a bird with a broken wing that summer. Our grandpa brought it home. He tried to save it, but it died. They usually do.

Then she got sick. My grandparents thought it was just the flu. Her parents planned to pick her up if she worsened. We slept in the same narrow twin bed. The next morning, she was dead. Lying like a porcelain doll, still, right beside me in bed. Cursed. I remembered thinking that we must have been cursed, first the bird, then Moira. I thought it meant I would die too.

It was meningitis. There had been an outbreak. Most people got better. Moira didn't. Morgan is staring at me, “We need to leave.”

“Yes.”

“We can’t stay here locked in this room forever. We need to leave or we’ll die here.” She throws the packed bag over her shoulder and grips the box cutter close to her chest. She looks at the door and then at me. “I can’t die like that.” She’s thinking of Nancy, Darell, of a violent cruel end.

“I know.” I don’t know how to explain that my instincts, the little part of hindbrain responsible for survival, my internal warning system, quietly broke many years ago. The sort of thing even time can’t fix. I think I’ve just been waiting since that day Moira died, waiting to die too.

Still, I follow her, hand in meticulous hand. We walk out the doors on day nine. Screeches, grunts, and moans echo through the formerly sterile building. The outside, monochrome hallways and deserted cubicles wait for us. Hunger and fear are irrelevant—only unsteady steps into the unknown, into the infinite chaos matter.