Rohan Behl

Wednesday, April 20th, 2022 (29 days after the Shutdown)

Rohan continued to gaze at the different colors, projected from the windows above him. Initially disoriented, his eyes took a while to adjust to the light and it took him even longer to realize where he was.

He was back home, back on Earth.

Tables and desks surrounded him, and tilting his head to look around, he was laid across the center of the classroom.

His heartbeat started to swell and his eyes began to moisten again.

‘I'm free, I'm free, I'm free’ he kept repeating to himself, hoping if he said it enough times he could make it permanent.

Swallowing his desire to scream, he took deep breaths until he became moderately calmer, enough to tear his eyes away and investigate.

He knew it’d been a while since he slipped into his coma. He was anxious to see how his body was doing.

His left arm still throbbed under the lightest pressure, so he had to use the wall beside him to support his weight while he pushed himself into an upright position. Ripping out the IV needle, he studied his physical composition.

Calling Rohan a walking corpse was too generous of a description.

His muscles were atrophied, his thin arms shrunken to reveal the structure of his bones.

Ah… no wonder why my arms felt so… light.

Prodding his skin, it crumbled away on contact.

Is it the same condition as my eyes?

Knitting his eyebrows in his confusion, he dug his fingers under the layer and continued to pull it off his leg. The colored lights made it difficult to tell but his underlying skin was hairless and pale, as opposed to the light tan he sported year round. Picking up the strip of peeled skin, he held it up until his arms fell limp, but the fleeting moment was enough to realize what it was.

Fat and dirt from his body had collected on his skin and dried up, forming a secondary skin.

So I am shedding… like a fucking snake.

Pulling the rest of it off, the skin underneath was unblemished. Even scars, from incidents as far back as the third grade when he’d fallen on concrete, had turned into scabs and fused with the layer of dried skin.

Moving to deal with his hands, his fingernails looked brown with rot and fungus. Biting his tongue apprehensively, they were removed without resistance, already showing new growth underneath.

He did the same for the rest of his body, removing his soiled clothes and undergarments to do so. Naked, the cool air nipped at his nethers as he repeated the process until he made his way to his head.

Peeling off the shedding that had extended to his scalp, clumps of hair fell onto the mat, landing in a neat pile in front of him.

There's no way.

Running his hand over his scalp, it was smooth to the touch. The same had occurred to the inside of his nose and his eyelashes.

I need to see a mirror.

Rohan’s eyes darted around until they fell upon a metal trash can by his bedside.

Instinctively using his arm to try and get up, he misjudged his strength and fell head-first onto the floor. Groaning from the pain, he wriggled over to the trash can with one arm. A kaleidoscope of colors doused the room from the outside, making his warped reflection even worse.

His head was bald, glistening with sweat from the abrupt physical exertion. His face was gaunt, with his skin sunken in to reveal high cheekbones and hollow eyes.

It was just as miserable as he imagined.

Crawling back to the makeshift bed, it took him multiple attempts to get to his knees, until he was tall enough to grab his clothes. Curling his lip when he saw the urine and sweat stains he'd left behind, he took his clothes and squirmed into them.

The light show outside hadn’t stopped. After being locked in his coma, he initially thought the lights were a result of his returning vision, but the paranoia to think otherwise had been ingrained into him. The timing was too perfect.

It was a signal for the start of something bigger.

Eyeing the doorknob as his next target, as he stretched his arm out, his dehydration and malnutrition finally caught up to him and his body was immediately sapped of its strength. Biting his tongue, he managed to push himself against the classroom wall.

The world might end tomorrow and here I am, a cripple, he mused, watching thousands of lights glide across the night sky like a nest of snakes.

Scoffing at his own analogy, he croaked, “Always has to be something to do with a fucking snake.”

***

“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?” a gruff voice roared, waking Rohan up.

Squinting at the source of the sound through the morning light, he found a large man in military uniform glaring at him. Fierce black eyes glistened under heavy-set brows, giving Rohan the impression that the soldier's greatest adversary in life was a smile. There were two students behind him in the hallway, glancing at one another almost guiltily.

Noticing the movement from Rohan, the soldier's expression shifted to mild concern before returning to his perpetual scowl.

“You’re awake? So you’re the “Coma Kid”, eh? How are you feeling, son?” he asked Rohan.

Cool. I even got a nickname.

Licking his cracked lips, he replied, “Like I could use a sandwich.”

***

They found a wheelchair in the school's teacher's lounge. Lifting him into it, the man, who Rohan learned was a colonel, ordered one of his men to push him down to the cafeteria. Rohan didn't fail to observe that the two students he'd seen trailed behind at a safe distance where they could no longer smell him.

A plethora of faces greeted him upon his entry: ignorance, disbelief, anger, but mostly confusion, many likely not recognizing his “post-coma” appearance.

The soldier’s voice broke him out of his stupor. “Is there anywhere you want to sit? Maybe with your friends?”

Rohan shook his head absent-mindedly, not completely registering the soldier's question. When the soldier repeated the question for a second time, Rohan thought for a moment, wondering if the soldier was being sarcastic, before pointing to an empty table.

“There’s fine,” he whispered, just loud enough to be heard.

His throat felt like it was covered in sores, another product of his coma.

Wheeling him to the table, the soldier bid him farewell and signaled for a lunch lady to tend to him. While eating his mashed peas, he thought back to the conversation he had with Colonel Ridges.

Once Rohan was confirmed to be in stable condition, he shared that Rohan had been out for four weeks, and was classified as a liability and given up for dead. It slightly amused Rohan that he was handing him the news with a jovial face as if he wasn’t delivering a bombshell. However, he neglected to provide some crucial details like why the army was here or what happened to the students.

He’d gotten the answer to the latter upon entering the cafeteria.

Two torch lights connected to car batteries had been placed on opposite ends, illuminating the large space. It gave the students who were eating in muted conversation the appearance of being on edge, the grime on their faces accentuated by the deep shadows cast on them. As he surveyed the students, more than once he would catch students sizing him up, before furtively looking away when they made eye contact.

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23 students remained. The fates of the other 7 unknown.

Probably sleeping at home.

The rest of the people in the cafeteria were complete strangers and soldiers.

Events before his coma had become a blur, but he remembered that students, including him, were stranded here until they could get safe passage to their homes on the west side of the city. People had been hopeful that the soldiers would escort them home. With the majority of them still here, something clearly hadn’t worked out.

Bang!

Rohan looked up to see a grinning face sitting opposite to him.

“Heck, I never thought I would see your depressing face again. Why the fuck do you look like Lex Luthor?” he asked, spitting out each word before Rohan could process the last.

Appraising the person sitting in front of him for familiar features, it slowly clicked into place.

“Jake?” he questioned.

Raising an eyebrow, he slowly acknowledged him. “Yea… that’s my name. What, do you not remember me?”

“... no, I do.”

Shaking his head in bewilderment, he appraised Rohan anew. “So you really lost it… Wow. Sorry, I’m just… surprised. Hell, I’m impressed that you even survived your coma. A month! You survived with nothing but a supply of IV. Ha… bro you're making us look bad like our situation is some family camping trip.”

There were deep bags under his eyes like he hadn’t gotten proper rest in a long time. Surveying the crowd of students, he saw a similar theme, with a few in a slightly more severe condition.

Their bodies were hunched over their meals, their clothes were wrinkled and worn out — generally despondent. As he further studied them for discrepancies, Jake brought him up to date on what happened thus far.

After his seizure, Rohan was carried downstairs to the Arts hall in the north-eastern wing of the building where he awaited medical attention. That came in the form of an entire regiment of the army arriving at their school.

Jake overheard Colonel Ridges talking to Mrs. Crouch and Mr. Langley, the two remaining teachers at their school, about how the military would be using the school as a base of operations to serve the community. Being in the capital of the country, the military had been dispatched to stave off growing dissent while the electrical grid remained inoperative.

Rohan was tended to by the army doctors but recognizing his failing condition, on top of the local hospitals overflowing with the injured during the “Global Shutdown”, as the military dubbed it, he was prematurely discharged and spared only an IV.

No, it was the serpent, not the IV that saved me, he deliberated, chewing the inside of his lip. Thinking back to its behavior, it seemed genuinely interested in him akin to how humans see zoo animals, just with the roles reversed.

It helped calm me down when I woke up. That must count for something.

Jake didn’t notice Rohan lost in thought and continued his report.

“... The military assigned chores, like going around the community and carrying out a census since their latest records had been digitized. Took a week to map out the area, and bro, our rations were cut in half over and over again. Fucking exhausting.”

“Doesn’t the… military have food? Shouldn’t there be a… national stockpile for situations like this?” Rohan asked, doing his best not to cough.

“Sure… they brought food but we didn’t get to see any of it. What was it they said? Oh yeah, ‘... to nourish the community…’. Which is sorta funny since I’m 99.99% sure that we constitute a part of the community,” Jake said, his tone becoming bitter.

Seeing Rohan gaping at him, he masked his resentment under a smile. “Nah, but it's chill. We have some food in the pantry left, so you know, I guess we should be thankful that we have something.”

It finally clicked why some of the faces Rohan had seen inside the cafeteria were marred by anger. The students saw him as another mouth to feed, another drain on their limited resources. Rohan looked down at the mushy peas sitting in front of him. It didn’t catch his attention before but the paper plate it was on had stains and traces of other meals, like it had been recycled.

“Can Rohan Behl please come to the front?” a sharp voice called out.

Two soldiers were standing by the doors to the cafeteria, one looking down at a clipboard. Raising a feeble arm, they nodded and walked over to him, their tactical boots drawing a hundred pairs of eyes as they made their way over to him.

Setting down his fork beside his unfinished breakfast, he let them wheel him away, sharing a final meaningful look with Jake.

“I’ll see you around, eh?”

“... Yeah,” Rohan murmured, relieved to be leaving the depressing scene.

His commandeered wheelchair squeaked as he was wheeled around the halls of the high school, the soldier with the clipboard leading them to the backfields. Hitting a bump, Rohan jumped in the chair landing awkwardly on his broken arm.

“Sorry, are you alright?” asked the soldier steering him.

Nodding that he was, he readjusted his arm into a more comfortable position when he understood why it felt so… naked. The tattoo hadn’t reappeared ever since it bound him in a coma.

Maybe that does mean… it was all my imagination?

The event in the bathroom… trying to picture it only brought memories of the anguish. Since then, his arm had been reconstructed and the shards of bone returned to their original shape, which Rohan was certain was unnatural and impossible.

Initially squinting at the burst of light as he was rolled outside, he was amazed at the drastic change that happened over a month. The backfields had transformed into a city of tents.

Near the largest one at the front, a long line had already formed, consisting of residents from the local region. Most came for help, either because they needed medical attention or because they needed something like candles and matchsticks to help their family at home. After hearing their request at the administration tent, they would be directed towards a more specialized tent that generally had what they needed.

Wheeled past the line, angry muttering broke out and many glared at him enviously.

Sorry, he thought, avoiding their accusatory eyes.

Traveling past multiple white tents, Rohan saw piles of canned and preserved food inside, safeguarded by soldiers carrying M4 carbines, their hands toying with the trigger. He’d seen some of the regiment inside of the school where one wing had been taken as Colonel Ridges's main base of operations.

Rohan’s destination, a light red tent near one of the football pitch’s goalposts — which was mockingly ironic — came into view after a short journey.

Entering, the soldiers saluted the man waiting there, apologized for their tardiness, and briskly walked out of the tent, closing the flaps behind them.

The regiment’s doctor was a middle-aged man of short stature but the years in the military and the current situation hadn’t done him any favors. His attendant was a female soldier, whose appearance made Rohan place her age at only a few years older than himself. If the two had any complaints about Rohan's sickly appearance or fetid body odor that clung to him, they held their silence.

The three of them observed one another in silence before the army doctor picked up the clipboard the soldier had left behind, flipping over the pages whilst reading out a summary of his conditions.

“Comatosed for 27 days… All three bones of the left arm are fractured or broken: the humerus, the ulna, the radius… The left arm is dislocated. Left humeral trochlea shattered and surrounding tissue bruised or of similar condition… suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition,” he listed out, taking a pause to look up from the clipboard, to see if the initial assessment was correct.

Not finding anything amiss, he shook his head in disbelief and set the clipboard down, finishing, “Final prognosis… recovery time is 6 to 8 weeks, complete recovery expected in 6 to 9 months… ”

He let out a barking laugh that made Rohan flinch away. “I gave you up for dead weeks ago. You’re incredible, son!”

“... Uh… Thanks?” he replied uncomfortably, wanting to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

“Corporal Anneliese, hand me the stethoscope if you will,” he asked the female soldier who was standing erect in the corner, awaiting instructions.

Checking his breathing and heart rate, he nodded to the female soldier, who walked up behind him and grabbed his shoulders. Alarmed, Rohan whipped his head around, but the medic just gave him a sympathetic look.

“We’re extremely low on anesthesia and morphine since the higher-ups have insisted on only using it during surgery or life-threatening injuries. So we’re going to have to set your arm the old-fashioned way. Here, put this in your mouth,” he said, handing Rohan a regular stick.

Disconcerted, Rohan followed the medic’s instructions, placing the stick between his teeth and biting down. The bitter taste of the bark swirled around his mouth.

“Ready?” the medic asked, gently placing his hands on either side of Rohan’s broken arm.

Before Rohan could nod, the doctor started probing at his arm, lifting and analyzing his range of motion. Rohan on the other hand, blanked, a symphony of pain leaving him nauseous as his arm roared for relief.

“Almost… and done,” the medic announced, smiling at his work.

Half-delirious, Rohan looked down at his arm. On top of a liner of soft fabric, the army doctor had wrapped a brace made of hard plastic and black felt, complete with a nylon underarm strap that immobilized his arm. Where did he get all that from?

“So… how do you feel?”

“... Miserab —”

A scream pierced the still morning air. Confused, all three of their heads swiveled to the tent flaps. From one, it grew to a chorus of panicked shouts until cries rang out from all around him.

The crack of gunfire followed shortly after, the blaze of bullets alternating between automatic and semi-automatic. Someone was attacking the army. Who would be stupid enough or desperate enough to steal from the military?

“RETREAT! ALL PERSONNEL RETREAT!” an officer roared, his voice breaking down as he issued the command. “Avoid physical cont—”

His cry was cut off. Frantic footsteps hammered into the soft earth outside of their tent, running in the direction of the school.

“What the hell is happening,” the army doctor beside Rohan muttered under his breath.

Turning to Corporal Anneliese, he raised his voice over the din of the escalating gunfire, quickly barking out, “Stay here with him, while I take a look outside. I’ll be back shortly. Make the patient fit for travel.”

Spinning on his heel he marched outside, unholstering a pistol strapped to his side. Without wasting a second, Anneliese grabbed an empty box and started tossing medical supplies and equipment indiscriminately.

Rohan wanted to help, but in his wheelchair, he was nothing but an encumbrance. Reaching for a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, her hand froze. Her head snapped up and Rohan saw a fevered look in her eyes.

It had grown deathly quiet outside.