Jill woke up in the night to blackness, confusion, and pain. She sat up in her bed shooting several nail-like pains all up her back. She groaned and again pain went off like firecrackers in her skin sending her toppling over in agony. As she hit the floor she screamed. Her body was throbbing. Her shaking hand reached for her night-light and flicked the switch. She gasped in horror. Under the pale night-light Jill saw she had round bumps all along the surface of her skin. Jill gasped and more pain shot through her body. She yelped. The skin was raised like someone had placed a marble under her skin and was trying to push it out. Jill couldn’t calm her breathing and her dad rushed in and gasped at the site of his disfigured daughter. He gazed upon the bumps that ran up and down her arms and face. For a second Jill felt that her own father feared her. He quickly got himself together as Jill’s mother ran in and wrapped Jill up with a blanket.
“Honey,” Jill’s mother said, “We have to get you to a doctor!”

* * *

I thrived inside my host multiplying and affecting her pitiful organs and cells. I was in the bloodstream and there was no stopping me now. My victim was now fully contagious and could infect anyone she comes in skin contact with and if I’m lucky she could cough one of my many selves out and infect another person. Indeed I was ready to rise from the ashes and shock virologist across the world. They will be at wits end once they learn that a killed off virus has risen and is ready to kill. I was about halfway through my work with my host. I was in the stage of where pustules raise out of the skin. From here it was all down hill for the poor organism I had taken over. To bad any one who is foolish enough to touch my host will soon be infected too and then my conquest to conquer will just be beginning.

* * *


“Please send Jill McCormick to see Doctor Locosto,” the speaker in the doctors office blared. A blanket covered Jill’s hideous bumps as she wobbled into the indicated door, which said, “P.H.D Dr. Locosto.” The Doctor indicated Jill to sit on the table. As Jill stepped out of the blanket she revealed the many bumps that covered her body. The doctor did a double take. Jill saw his face as he looked at the raised skin. She instantly felt like a lab rat being poked with a scientist pen.
“Nurse McKay!” the doctor frantically called out. A nurse then ran into the room with a concerned look. “Take a blood sample,” he commanded. As she did, Locosto just stared at Jill. Jill couldn’t decide what his look contained, was it curiosity or fear. Jill looked away feeling a bit embarrassed as Nurse McKay took her blood.

* * *
They took blood from my host. Whether this is a good or bad thing I cannot decide. It is bad because the humans are going to put up a fight. They will probably throw every antibiotic they got at my host. Even though they most likely won’t affect me I am still concerned. Yet them taking blood is a good thing too. For when they did so they were unaware that if the proper procedures are not done right I could escape the needle in which they took some of the blood and infect the rest of the beings in the area. That is only if they make a mistake. I am mostly worried though because once they identify me as Variola major they will soon take precautions in handling me.

* * *

Smallpox. Jill had repeated the word in her head over and over again. Locosto had diagnosed her with this disease, which has a death rate of 30%. It was a virus that once caused the world much trouble until it was eliminated 1977. The doctor said Jill had a rare disease considering the last of the Disease had been frozen and stored in laboratories. Jill felt like she was in a movie, it seemed so far fetched that she out of all people would be diagnosed with this rare and horrible disease. The disease was highly contagious from the moment she got the rash and the pus filled bumps scientifically called pustules. The worst part was, there was no cure. Jill shuddered as she thought of this; no disease she had ever came down with had no cure. The doctor said there was a vaccination that they could give her but it would have little affect on her. They said that Jill better wait it out until the horrid bumps scabbed, fell off, and she was no longer contagious.
Jill agreed to the terms to stay at the local hospitals holding room to wait it out. They put her on many antibiotics to stop as much as the excruciating pain as possible. The holding room was plan with one big metal door and a bed. Jill could read books but that didn’t provide much comfort. The time she spent the room was very dull. Jill examined her aching pustules examining that it was crusting over. She dropped back in bed and waited for this horrid disease that had caused so much agony to be done with her.

* * *


I could feel that my last week of torturing my host would be a hard. The doctors were doing everything in their power to stop me. Injecting her with their vaccination and giving her antibiotics to stop the pain I have cause her. White blood cells are starting to be efficient and are destroying some of my viruses. Even though I soon might be wiped out of my host the organism will certainly not forget me. I will scar for the rest of its life with the marks left by the pustules. My host has certainly not seen the last of me.

* * *


As of yesterday Jill McCormick was let out of her 2-week containment of her disease. Jill still had the little bumps and craters the disease had left on her body. And would probably never get rid of them. Jill was just fortunate to be alive. Doctor Locosto informed her that the small pox disease had mutated since 1977 and was more advanced. They said that they sent her new form of Variola to the Center for Disease Control to examine it further. They also made a headline story warning about the latest outbreak of small pox. Jill was a mix between worried and relieved. She was not totally sure about if they could stop what had happened to her. The Doctor reassured her that her parents had already been treated and tested for it and they destroyed all cases of the disease. They said Smallpox would not harm again.

* * *


They thought that they destroyed me. They thought that I was gone. They concluded that I died. They just didn’t know, I never die. The incompetent fools at Doctor Locosto’s office must have forgotten about how many blood samples they took from my host. Not one but two, one for the CDC, and one for themselves to examine and to treat. And they must have forgotten that Nurse McKay had left a dim-witted intern to clean up the office. And no one must have noticed how the next day the test tube vile wasn’t there. And it might have just slipped the intern’s mind that when she accidentally broke that vile of blood that it could infect her. Instead taking caution she cut her self on accident when picking up the shards of the vile that once said Jill McCormick: Smallpox. The silly fools at CDC and Doctor Locosto’s office must think that I was dead, but now you know I never die.