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Death #15 – Jungle Fever

The NKOTBSB tour was winding down, but their show in New York was just getting underway. The Backstreet Boys had taken the stage for their medley of ballads, and their most dedicated fans screamed with delight as they sang the final notes of “10,000 Promises,” a song most of these American fans had never heard live in concert before. The raised platform they’d been standing on slowly lowered, and they moved to the catwalk, where four stools had been placed in a line, for the next song in the set, “I’ll Never Break Your Heart.”

It was one of Nick’s favorite and least favorite parts in the show. “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” wasn’t a song he cared much for singing; he didn’t have any solos, so he was stuck doing the boring background vocals and harmonies on the chorus. It was a song that made him empathize with Howie, who had always been limited to those parts.

On the other hand, this was the number where they chose fans out of the audience to serenade, and Nick liked that. He liked picking the most random people to pull up onstage, making his admirers look at each other in bewilderment. He liked teasing the girls, dangling his rose in their faces, thrusting his junk in front of them, then jumping back out of the way before they could grab either one. He liked entertaining himself and the crowd while they sang the most boring single in the Backstreet Boys’ song catalogue.

That night, as the four Boys moved to different sides of the stage to find their fans, Nick took his time making his selection. He carefully scoped out his section of the crowd, surveying his options. AJ and Howie usually brought up hot chicks, while Brian stuck to little girls and his own relatives, but Nick got a kick out of picking the kind of people no one would expect him to pick – fatties, uglies, crazies, and so on. He smiled at a four-hundred-pound walrus bobbing up and down in the front row, smirked at the drooling girls in the back waving posters that offered to have his babies or be the frog to his chimp, and ignored them all.

His eyes finally came to rest on a sign sticking out of the middle, bright yellow with black letters, which said, PICK ME NICK! I COME FROM THE CONGO! The girl holding it up looked like she came from The Congo. She was wearing a brightly patterned headscarf and a long, flowing dress that made her stand out from all the white girls crowded around her in jeans and t-shirts. He smiled and beckoned to her, pointing her out to security so they could go and get her. He saw her eyes widen as she realized he had chosen her, and he knew he had made her night, maybe even her whole life.

Sadly, he didn’t know that choosing her would mean the end of his.

The security guard brought her up to the stage, and Nick met her at the stairs and walked her across the catwalk to the last stool in the line. He felt good about himself as he helped her onto it, noticing how skinny and sickly she looked. He thought of the starving African children in those old commercials with Sally Struthers pleading for sponsors, and he congratulated himself on being charitable and choosing her.

Then the band started playing, and AJ started singing, and Nick started up his usual antics, prancing around the girl on the stool while making sure he stayed just out of her reach.

“I’ll never break your heart…”

He twirled and thrust and toyed with the long-stemmed, red rose in his hand, offering it to her, then snatching it back with a smirk when she tried to take it.

“I’ll never make you cry…”

The poor girl was shaking, swaying on her stool as if she might swoon in his presence; moisture seeped from her eyes, and Nick milked it for all it was worth.

“I’d rather die, than live without you…”

He touched her shoulder from behind, tugged on her headscarf as he circled around her, and finally threw himself backwards across her lap. He heard the crowd scream, delighted by the little show he was putting on at his end of the catwalk, and he grinned, pleased with himself, happily soaking up the attention.

“I’ll give you all of me, honey, that’s no lie…”

As he started to get off her, he felt something warm and wet spatter his face, and he looked up at the girl in confusion, just as a second drop hit him right in the eye. “Ugh!” he gasped, scrambling up and wiping his eye, which was burning. His fingers came away wet and sticky, and when he held them up to his face, they shone with red in the spotlight.

His mouth fell open in shock, and he gaped at the girl on the stool, the girl he’d brought up to serenade. At first, he thought she’d just gotten a nosebleed. Indeed, blood was dripping from both of her nostrils. But that wasn’t all. It was also pouring from her mouth and trickling out of the corners of her eyes, like bright red tears. Her face was blotchy and streaked with red, and in the bright spotlight, he saw something he hadn’t noticed before: a rash of reddish pustules, standing out on her dark skin.

He backed away, disgusted and horrified, as she sat there and shook, raising her hands to her face. But when she started to topple off the stool, instinct kicked in, and he sprang forward to catch her before her head hit the stage. He lowered her to the floor, where she writhed and convulsed, her bloodshot eyes rolling in their sockets, bloody vomit foaming out of her mouth.

“Somebody help her!” he cried, and as security rushed onto the stage, the music stopped, and all he could hear were the audience’s screams. He knew they weren’t screaming for him anymore.

Out of nowhere, his bodyguard appeared and pulled him off the stage, saying, “Come on, Nick. Let the paramedics help her. There’s nothing you can do.” He escorted Nick to the dressing room under the stage, where Brian, AJ, and Howie were waiting in shock.

“Nick, what happened?” asked Brian, whose stool was on the other end of the catwalk. He probably hadn’t seen a thing.

Nick shook his head. He held up his hands. They were shaking. Shaking and soaked with the girl’s blood.

***

One week later, a man and a woman stood on either side of his hospital bed, staring down at him. His face was gray, except for the hemorrhagic rash that polka-dotted his skin. Blood oozed out of the corners of his eyes, the sides of his mouth, his nose, his ears, every orifice of his body, a sign of the massive internal hemorrhage happening within it. A ventilator forced air into his failing lungs, but not even the machine could keep him alive much longer. His blood pressure was dangerously low. His organ systems were shutting down.

It was only a matter of time, the nurse realized sadly, as she looked at him through the clear face shield in the helmet of her Hazmat suit, which she wore to protect her from the virus that had infected him. “Did you ever imagine we’d be dealing with ebola here, in New York?” she asked the doctor who stood across from her, looking more like an astronaut than a physician in his protective garb.

“Never,” he replied, shaking his head.

The last week had been the most intense one of her young nursing career, the hospital filled to capacity with fans who had been infected at a New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys concert. The source of the deadly virus had been traced to a young woman who had flown in from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She had died the night of the show, and everyone who had been exposed – fans, venue staff, bodyguards, roadies, band musicians, and even the boyband members themselves – had been hospitalized and quarantined.

Nick Carter had been among the first to start showing symptoms. Five days after exposure, he’d spiked a fever, started vomiting blood, suffered severe bouts of diarrhea. They had watched him deteriorate over the past few days, but even now, seeing him in his final throes of death, the nurse still couldn’t believe it.

“I used to like their music,” she murmured. “The Backstreet Boys. When I was a teenager.”

The doctor snorted and said nothing. She didn’t expect him to understand; he was practically her father’s age and didn’t have daughters.

“Yeah, I-” she started to go on anyway, but she was interrupted by a high-pitched alarm, as the heart monitor flatlined. She sighed and bowed her head. It had only been a matter of time. “You wanna try anything?” she asked the doctor.

He shook his head. “No point. I’m calling it,” he replied flatly. “Time of death, 22:50.”

She made note of it on the chart and got the death kit. “Should I clean him up?” she asked, looking down at his bloody face, as she unhooked him from all the machines and monitors.

“No point,” the doctor said again. “The body will need to be incinerated.”

The nurse swallowed hard. “He was my favorite, you know.” She felt a rush of emotion as she draped a white shroud over his ravaged corpse. “He used to turn my insides to mush.”

“And now it’s his insides that have been liquefied,” said the doctor. “And we’re stuck with a ward full of bloody boyband fans.”

Chapter End Notes:
I've always wanted to write a story where one of the Backstreet Boys gets ebola, but never had the opportunity. Dreams really do come true! Thanks, Rose!


EBOLA FTW!!!


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