“So, Miss Parker,” he asked, “
are
you an American?”
No, I’m a Commie Pinko Bastard
, I thought, remembering one of my dad’s favorite expressions from the seventies. But I didn’t say it out loud. Instead, I gave his question the answer it deserved.
I said nothing.
“Miss Parker, as Professor Fraser has explained, you are a very special young lady,” he said. “Your enhanced physical abilities and immunity to the plague make you the ideal soldier to help us control this outbreak.” He gave me a paternal smile. “Your country needs you, Miss Parker. Ideally I’d like to see you trained and put in the field as soon as possible.”
I stared at him.
What the fuck?
“What the fuck?” Somehow, it seemed worth saying out loud. “Do I look like Lady Rambo here?”
Leaning forward, the General tapped me on one blanket-covered knee.
“Young lady, when we’re done training you, you’ll make Rambo look like a pussy.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile.
I wasn’t buying it.
“What if I don’t
want
to make Rambo look like a pussy?
“I mean, No one’s asking me if I want this training,” I continued. “You’re just telling me what I’m going to do. But it’s my choice, right?”
General Heald’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “Surely, Miss Parker, you’d want to do what’s best for your fellow Americans, and perform your patriotic duty.”
Simone shut her eyes.
“Oh, that’s helpful,” she muttered under her breath, not quite loud enough for the General to hear clearly.
I folded my arms across my chest and looked at him.
“I bet you can see Russia from your house.”
He glared at me.
“Just what are you trying to say here, Miss Parker?”
“That you’re a jingoistic idiot.” Yeah, I said the quiet part loud. I blame the pain meds. But there’s no way I was letting this medal-heavy moron lecture me about my duty to my country, without giving me the chance to make up my own mind.
“America, land of the free, remember?” I continued. “That means I get to choose.” I looked at Simone. “Last time I checked, we didn’t have a draft going on for this zombie squad droolphoney thingy, am I right?”
“We’re not yet taking those measures, no,” she answered, and something in her voice sounded as if she enjoyed it.
General Heald took a deep breath and maintained his composure.
“Yes, young
lady
—” The sarcasm dripped as thick as crystallized honey. “—you do indeed have a choice. But before you make that choice, please allow me to show you what you stand to gain if you decide to do the right thing.”
He glared at Simone.
“Bring her to the lab so she can see the holding pens.”
Simone started to protest.
“Ashley needs to rest up before—”
“Just do it, Professor Fraser.” With that he turned on his heels and stalked back to the door, stopping to shoot me a withering glance. “We don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“That’s
commie pinko bitch
bullshit to you,” I muttered as he slammed the door behind him. Then I turned to Simone. “Is he for real?”
She nodded.
“And unfortunately, not without influence.”
“Why does he want me to see the lab?” I asked. “What does he mean, ‘holding pens’? And how the hell are they going to show me what I ‘stand to gain’ by joining this zombie-hunting team of yours?”
Simone looked me straight in the eyes.
“Ashley, there’s one area in which I agree with General Heald,” she said. “I think you’re a very strong person. And you’re going to need all of that strength in the time to come. So—”
The door opened and Gabriel walked in.
Ah, great. More attitude.
“Sorry to interrupt, Professor, but General Heald said he wants the two of you in the lab. He said Ashley might need some assistance.”
Wow.
I was
so
not touched by General Brasshole’s concern. Judging from the look on Simone’s face, she was equally unimpressed. But she nodded politely.
“Thank you, Gabriel,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t hurt to have some extra support for this.”
Support for what?
I was getting pretty sick of riddle-speak.
Gabriel didn’t look at me. Something seemed different about him. He wasn’t the same as he had been before all this shit hit the fan. Before he’d gotten sick, in fact.
Grimmer, maybe.
“Are you ready, Ashley?” he asked.
For what?
I thought. But I just nodded, because ready or not, I had to go the lab. But first...
“Is there some kind of robe I can put on so I’m not flashing my butt?”
I felt rather than saw Gabriel’s discomfort.
Heh.
Simone ducked out, and in record time procured a set of drab green scrubs for me. Not as cozy as a warm terrycloth robe, but better than the breeze-up-my-ass hospital gown. Gabriel turned his back while I slid on the pants and top, baggy enough to fit me half over. Little sock slippers went with them. It felt comforting to have something between my feet and the floor, even if it was just a layer of polycotton.
I stood, shaking off a Groundhog Day sense of déjà
vu as I wondered for an instant if I was going to pass out again.
“You okay?” Gabriel asked gruffly.
“I think so,” I said, and I meant it. “But I swear, if I friggin’ faint again, I’m gonna change my name to Satine.”
“Huh?”
“
Moulin Rouge
,” Simone said.
Give the lady a pop culture reference point
.
Gabriel gave a small sound that might have become a laugh had it lived a few more seconds. I wonder how many of those things he’d suffocated the moment they were born.
We had to go through the med ward to get to the lab. Gabriel marched grimly in front while Simone stayed by my side as I tried my best to keep my gaze straight ahead toward the door at the other end of the room. But the smells and sounds were unavoidable.
I just wanted out.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a couple of empty cots, blood-and black-bile-soaked sheets the only sign of their former occupants. I stumbled over twisted linen trailing off the end of a cot, and Simone steadied me with a hand under my elbow.
Gabriel immediately dropped back to my other side, ready to catch me should I faint again.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Just tripped,” I answered. “Let’s just get out of this room, okay?” A line from
Ed Wood
ran through my head:
“You’ve got to get through that door.”
Steeling myself, I took the lead until we were out of the room. Then Gabriel moved to the front again, heading down a hallway, through a door on the left, and down a stairwell. Our footsteps clanged on the metal stairs until we reached the next floor. This door was locked, with a little access pad on the wall next to it. Gabriel pulled a lanyard from around his neck, revealing a plastic card key that had been tucked into his shirt.
One swipe of the card and we were through, entering what looked like a very sterile antechamber. A double door in front of us had a number pad set in the center.
“Pretty tight security for a college campus,” I observed.
Simone nodded.
“You’d be surprised at what you’d find behind the scenes in a lot of places... and not just colleges.”
“I don’t think much of anything would surprise me right about now.” I felt pretty cynical as Gabriel finished punching in a lengthy sequence. The doors opened.
The smell was the first thing to hit me—a nasty-ass stew of diseased blood and rotting flesh, similar to the stink in the med ward. The odor here, however, was wrapped up in a falsely reassuring layer of bleach and antiseptic.
It was a large room, the size of a lecture hall but without theater-style seating. Metal tables all held groaning, moaning, teeth gnashing zombies strapped down at the wrists, ankles, and neck. Tubes and needles were stuck into their bodies at various points. Fluids pumping in and out of rotting flesh.
Hazmat-suit-clad techs, all wearing sidearms, were cutting away thin slices of flesh like Dad carving the turkey at Thanksgiving. Those strips were put under microscopes or into carefully marked containers.
I recognized both the African-American kid and the woman who’d asked me to help her in the med ward. All remnants of humanity were gone from their faces as they writhed against the straps, unmindful as the tough canvas rubbed away skin and flesh.
At the far end of the room were cages, with thick iron bars spaced close together. In those cages were more of the living dead, all jammed up against the bars, trying to shove their hands and arms through the narrow gaps to reach the hazmat-wrapped meals walking around the room.
Those had to be the holding pens.
“What the hell is this?” I whispered to no one in
particular. The scope of it all was beginning to sink in, and I didn’t like the feeling.
“Research.” Simone kept her volume low as she answered my question. “Regrettable, but necessary if we’re ever to isolate the root cause or—more importantly—find a cure.”
“So all the people you rescued... they’re just research animals?”
“The ones who don’t make it, yes.” There was pain in her expression, but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel sympathy.
“So if I wasn’t one of your friggin’ wild cards, I’d be strapped to one of these tables getting pieces carved out of me, right?” For some reason, this horrified me—and made me angry—more than anything else I’d seen.
“That’s right, Miss Parker.”
Great.
Even through the weird, tinny filter of a hazmat helmet, I recognized General Brasshole’s pompous tone as he strode into the room and stared at me through his plexiglas visor with what I can only describe as a leer of triumph.
“And this is what will happen to your former boyfriend,” he added, “if you don’t cooperate.” That caught me by surprise.
“Exactly what the fuck are you saying?”
“Simply that if you join our group, your boyfriend will be given a swift and painless death.” He smiled, and it was
so
not a nice smile. “Or to be more accurate, a swift and
final
death. As far as we can tell, zombies don’t feel pain.”
“And if I don’t join your little militarized knitting circle,” I said with something approaching a snarl, “you’ll use him as a zombified lab rat.”
He smirked and turned to Simone.
“You’re right. She’s not stupid.”
Simone kept her cool.
“No,” she said. “She’s not.”
Gabriel stayed silent throughout all of this, just as you’d expect from a good little soldier. A slight tic in his right cheek was the only sign of emotion.
A sudden, tinny yelp caused us all to jump. A tech was trying to wrestle a glove away from one of the zombies. He had been reaching across its face to adjust something on the other side. It snapped at him and its teeth caught in the glove before he could yank the hand away.
The creature worried the glove like an attack dog. The tech smacked the zombie on the head with his other hand and tugged the glove free, desperately inspecting it for rips in the fabric.
General Heald harrumphed his disapproval.
“That kind of carelessness will get you killed, soldier!”
“With all respect,” the man replied, “I’m not a soldier, sir.”
“No excuse! It’s civilians like you who cost me good men.”
As the General shook his gloved finger in the tech’s face, I turned, catching Simone with a look of eye-rolling exasperation. Gabriel was expressionless.
“Question,” I said quietly. “If this disease isn’t airborne, then why are the suits necessary at all?”
Gabriel broke his silence to answer me.
“You’ve seen the amount of blood and vomit an infected person generates.” I nodded, and he continued. “If it spattered on your skin or clothes, you’d be fine. But get any of it into an open sore, your eyes, or mouth, or accidentally swallow it... well, you might as well have been bitten.”
Simone chimed in.
“During previous episodes the zombie virus was spread solely through bodily fluids that got into mucus membranes or open wounds, mainly via bites and scratches.” A frown crossed her face. “Yet this time, without any such contact, several members of our team have
come down with symptoms. Not enough to convince me that it’s gone airborne, but still, it’s worrisome.”
Worrisome. That’s one way to put it.
“So why are we the only ones
not
wearing protective gear?” I asked.
“Ah,” Simone said. “As wild cards, you and I don’t have to worry about contamination.”
My eyes widened in surprise. So Simone knew what it was like to be bitten by one of those things and survive. My already considerable respect for her shot up another notch.
“What about Gabriel?”
Simone hesitated.
“Gabriel is different.”
No shit.
“That’s one word for it,” I said. Gabriel shot me a look. “I mean, different
how
?” Before she could answer, General Heald stepped between us.
“Well,
Miss
Parker?” He moved into my personal space, trying to intimidate me by towering all of two inches above me.
I shot him a deadly look.
“Don’t rush me.”
“We don’t have time to spare. Every moment we lose increases the odds that this epidemic will go global.” He slapped a hand against a nearby table, rattling the metal. “Is it really such a tough decision, Miss Parker? You do the right thing, and your ex will be given a hero’s funeral.
“After all, he died trying to save—” He poked me in the sternum with a forefinger. “—you.
“You owe it to him.”
Oh, you total bastard,
I thought. But he was right. Matt died when he came back for me. If he hadn’t, he’d still be alive, instead of rotting in his Levis.
Still, if the General poked me again, I’d break his finger.
I looked at the cages, wondering if one of them held
what was left of Matt. A greenish-gray hand thrust its way between two bars. Was that Matt’s class ring on one rotting finger?
“Is...” The words caught in my throat. “Is he in here?”