"I think we've seen enough," Solomon declared, wiping his upper lip with his left forefinger.
"Oh, I don't think so," Luco replied.
"You listen here, Dr. Luco. I tell you enough is enough and I demand that you show us out."
This time, Luco prevented the smile from crossing her face. She suddenly felt bad for Joseph Solomon. Even as the sweat on his upper lip spread to the rest of his face and she could detect the odor of his poorly disguised flatulence, she realized that he was way out of his element. This man was a juggernaut in court and around the conference table. She had witnessed it. But this particular arena seemed to strip him of even the most basic level of dignity.
She chose to say nothing to him directly, instead addressing them all. "Let's go meet some of the patients."
***
THERE
was a short corridor that took them from the morgue into the laboratory sections. They passed numerous people, each with their minds on their own tasks. There were guards at every junction, each with an automatic rifle. The men wore uniforms but they weren't police uniforms and they weren't army uniforms. Lochschenborgh thought they might be part of a private security force but dearly hoped not. More than likely, they were military, part of some branch he didn't recognize. If they were, that would suggest that the federal government had taken an interest in the situation. He wondered if there were zombies elsewhere in the country and even the world?
Dr. Luco did not stop them in any of the labs. She did comment that her work area was not for them to inspect and the people there were too busy trying to discover a medicine that actually
would
effectively combat the disease to take any time out of their days. As they passed her lab, she glanced in, remembering that she hadn't seen it since Saturday night when Lance had come and swept her off her feet. She smiled once and then got back to business.
Through the labs and down another bare hallway and they came to a solid white door marked with a hazard sign. This was the
Ward
. The door in front of which they stood was the outer door. There was an inner door as well. Luco swiped her card and pushed her thumb into the pad for identification. The outer door opened and they all stepped inside. Solomon hesitated, looking into the room tentatively, like an animal that knows it's going into a trap. But, like that very same animal, he was no longer master of his own fate. He was caught in the flow of a rushing river and all he could do was hold on and see where it took him.
As the outer door closed behind them, trapping them in the small space between, Luco addressed them once again. "This is the
Ward
. This is where we treat the sick. As you walk through this area, I want you to remember something. Every single patient in the
Ward
is going to die. We don't have a cure. We don't even have effective treatment. Some of them have only hours to live. Others will last a bit longer. But they will
all
die and become zombies. Some of them will end up in the morgue and, eventually, the
Butcher Shop
. Others will end up in the
Zoo
."
"What's the
Zoo
," Juarez asked.
"You'll see," Luco said with no expression at all. And with that, she swiped her card, placed her thumb, and waited as the inner door opened up.
The
Ward
was a large area comprised of rooms and cubed off enclosures. Each space had a bed and a table as well as various accoutrements, whatever was needed to care for the patient. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies who had volunteered their time and their safety milled about the rooms, seeing to the needs of the sick. Most of the beds were empty but it was easy to envision the place overflowing with people whose futures included a grisly pallor and a steady diet of, well, each other. The beds that were filled were filled with mostly healthy looking people. They weren't wasting away and they hadn't developed blisters, lesions, or other marks that might be associated with a terrible disease. Of course, the disease ran its course so quickly that there was really barely any time for these symptoms to manifest. Luco noted that most of the beds that had been full when she'd left on Saturday night were empty now. Others had patients in them, patients she hadn't met. Only Mrs. Wilson, poor sweet Mrs. Wilson held on.
"Don't touch anyone or anything," Luco warned. "In the air, the bacterium has a life expectancy of about three seconds but that doesn't mean that a stray drop of spit or blood on your finger won't spawn a swarm of them in your bloodstream. Keep well away from the patients, also. One well aimed sneeze or cough and it's the end of you."
Satisfied that they respected the risks, she led them over to where Mrs. Wilson lay. She was a fighter, Mrs. Wilson. To date, she was the only patient they'd had who had not contracted the disease from another zombie. Her husband, the late Mr. Wilson, had died of the disease during dinner and turned right there. He'd attacked his wife with a face full of mashed potatoes and she had fended him off with a butter knife, escaping out the front door of their house and locking him in.
But it had all been in vain. She had contracted the disease long before he'd died. She had no idea where he'd gotten it and vigorous testing of all of his acquaintances yielded no results. They would never know. So now Mrs. Wilson lived in the
Ward
. She had an unusually strong immune system and Luco had treated her aggressively with varying courses of antibiotics and other medication. The good news was that the bacteria had slowed its advance. In fact, Luco was sure that Mrs. Wilson could go on indefinitely with the bacteria as long as she kept getting the proper rotation of medicines. Unfortunately, those very same medicines were killing her. On the small table next to the bed was a picture of the family. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson sat in two chairs, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. The photo was maybe three years old. In it, Mrs. Wilson was a plump woman with a deep smile and puffy cheeks and chins. Now she was as thin as a rail. The medication had decimated her digestive system. She could barely eat, and even then it had to be liquids that broke down very easily. She'd gone into kidney failure twice, and coded four times. Under Luco's orders, they kept bringing her back. Most of the staff didn't see why it was so important. What could they learn about the pathogen by making this poor woman suffer? But Dr. Luco noticed things the others did not see. She had a whole notebook filled with just Mrs. Wilson.
The older woman looked up from her magazine as they approached. From the perspective of the visitors, she could have been in for a routine procedure. Her expression was placid, her movements seemingly normal. There was an oxygen tube running under her nose and an IV in her arm. There were monitors everywhere. But she seemed nonplussed.
"I didn't see you yesterday, dear," she said to Dr. Luco.
Luco looked away sheepishly. "I took the day off."
But the woman brightened at the news. "Good for you! I hope you spent the time wisely."
Luco cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. "Well, Mrs. Wilson. How do you feel today?"
"About the same I suppose."
Luco nodded, making a show of checking her chart. "Those are good instincts because it doesn't look like there's any change."
Mrs. Wilson nodded sadly. "I had a little bit of breakfast."
"Really? That's good."
"I don't know which is worse for my appetite. The medicine or watching all of these people die every day." There was a momentary silence while the poor women wallowed in her misery. But then it passed and she put on her face again. "And who are these gentlemen?"
"Well," Luco said. "We have Mr. Lochschenborg from the Department of Health here and his associate, Mr. Seaver. These other two gentlemen are here representing
Candid
Pharmaceuticals
. They make
Head Shot
."
"Oh?" Mrs. Wilson's eyes narrowed as she focused first on Juarez and then on Solomon. "I'm suing you people, you know. Just as soon as I get better."
For a moment, Luco thought that Solomon was going to come back with a retort, but he held it. It's possible he felt cowed by her condition and had the decency enough not to argue with a dying woman. More than likely, though, he just felt it wasn't prudent to engage her in any conversation regarding a law suit.
"Well," Luco began. "I have to take these men to the
Zoo
, now."
"I wish you wouldn't call it that."
"You feel better, Mrs. Wilson."
Luco didn't take them to visit any of the other patients. What was the point? Mrs. Wilson was the only one with whom she'd developed a relationship. Any that had been in the
Ward
on Saturday were so close to death that they wouldn't even be able to speak. At the other end of the
Ward
was another set of doors that matched those through which they had originally come. Luco took them through the inner doors and stopped once again before letting them all out.
"We're going to
Zoo
now. That's where we keep them, the zombies. If you've never seen one before, and I guess you haven't, you'd better brace yourself."
"That woman," Lochschenborg asked. "What keeps her going?"
"I do," Luco said, and then swiped her card.
***
A
MONTH
before, when Detective Johan Stemmy had been bitten and brought to that very hospital, he'd been given a room in what was now known as the
Zoo
. Back then, the rooms were designed for people, patients whose conditions warranted quarantine. The rooms had contained beds and televisions and some other amenities. They'd been designed for people. Since the creation of the
Ward
, that area had become exclusive housing for zombies. The rooms could be sealed and locked, keeping the zombies away from the living people in the complex. The zombies themselves didn't retain any of the skills needed to open the locks or devise a method of escape. Besides armed guards, no additional security measures had been put into place.
When new patients died and turned they were put into a sort of pen until Dr. Luco or one of her equals could have a look and pick and choose those that were ideal for their research. The pen was elsewhere. Those selected few were transferred to the
Zoo
. The lighting in the
Zoo
was dim. Bright light seemed to aggravate them, which made it more difficult to take them out for study. A row of rooms lined each wall. Many of them were filled but some were empty. The lighting was just a
part
of what set the atmosphere. The whole place was morose. The rooms weren't rooms anymore, but cells. The first three on each side had been converted to hold animals. There were cages filled with rats and rabbits and some cats and dogs and birds. As they passed, the men thought the animals were eerily quiet. On closer inspection, they could see why. The bacterium that made zombies did not restrict itself to humans.
"We've tried all sorts of animals, reptiles, birds, and even insects. The bacteria will overrun almost anything living. We thought that if we could find an animal with a body chemistry equipped to fight the infection, we could synthesize a vaccine. So far, there's been no such luck. Only plants seem to be immune. The bacteria won't even invade a plant."
The first cell was splattered with gore. Bones and guts littered the floor around the occupant who sat chewing on something.
"Good God!" cried Lochschenborg. "You're
feeding
them?"
Luco did not take her eyes from the cell. "We're feeding
him
."
In life, the man had been tall and well built. He was probably good looking, too, but now he was dirty, streaked with bits of old meals. It seemed that the rot that people normally associated with zombies was mostly absent. Under the filth, his skin was a chalky brown color. He wore nothing.
"I'm going to be sick," Juarez suddenly cried. Luco physically turned him and pointed him toward a series of large sinks against the wall. Juarez wasn't the first person ever to throw up at his first sight of a zombie.
"This is Todd Mayfield," Luco told them, when she was able to give them back her attention. "He was infected at
Sister's of Charity
three weeks ago and we've tagged him as our diet tester. We've tried all sorts of food, both cooked, uncooked, and living. He'll eat almost anything, though he definitely prefers live meals. I've been testing him night and day to see if any of the food disagrees with him or, more importantly, the bacterium that keeps him animated. We have both a behaviorist and a biologist on staff and we are each studying him in different ways. In short, Todd is our most popular patient."
"How do you get him the food?" Seaver asked. Like all of the other quarantine cells, there was a drawer through which objects could be passed into and out of the room. This was convenient when the patients were living human beings. They were mostly useless in cases like Todd Mayfield, whose food was usually too big for the drawer… and often struggling.
"We have safeguards for interacting with the specimens," Luco answered. "Todd's mostly docile because he's well fed. There's always someone with a taser standing by but we haven't had to use it on
him
yet."
"You sound almost affectionate about him," Solomon mentioned, his tone edged with disgust.