Crazed humans were restrained on tables, a number of them partially vivisected. Their greying hearts and lungs were exposed to the light, glistening horribly. Some had their arms cut off, others no longer had legs. Across the room, jars holding assorted organs were scattered on a table.
Alayna covered her mouth and nose, trying to block out the stench. Ralph and Brandon both turned away. Clay was trying not to look at the faces of the crazed humans, knowing there was a chance he might recognize any one of them. If they’d come up from Carterville, he might very well find an ex-neighbor or an old friend.
Jacobs, however, showed intense interest. He walked around the bodies, skimming the notes about each one. “I see,” he murmured. “You were trying to get to the cause of the infection.”
“That’s right,” Lane said. She was clearly acclimated to the stench. A part of her everyday routine. “We ran just about every test that we could think of. Took volumes of blood samples. Looked at their stool samples.”
“We even studied their dental progressions,” Marcia said. “It appears their mouths completely change after their transformation.”
“Fascinating,” Jacobs whispered. He snapped latex gloves on his hands, and pushed open a crazed woman’s mouth. He peered in, his eyes widening. “Jesus. She almost has fangs—”
“That’s right,” Lane sounded oddly excited. “But we haven’t been successful in finding a cause, or a cure, unfortunately. It seems to be irreversible.”
“Well, I’m here now,” Jacobs said, his eyes intense. “There’s bound to be something you haven’t thought of. Something we can test for . . .” He trailed off, his mind humming. Marcia and Lane joined him near the body, leaving the rest hovering against the wall, wishing for a way out.
Brandon joined Clay, his eyes watery. “Dude. She said Helen’s clear of the monsters, right?”
Nonplussed by Jacobs’ reaction to the experiments, Clay nodded. “Yeah, she did,” he said.
“Well, then, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Brandon said. “Let’s find something real to eat.”
“I think we should stay down here,” Clay said hesitantly. “They said they have food down here—”
But Brandon objected. “No. I don’t want to eat another goddamned granola bar. I want something real and hot and good. There’s bound to be a place around here that’s stocked up. You know, the way the Carterville hotel was.”
Clay tore his eyes away from the scientist and looked at his companions, noting that they were all stooped, their eyes dark and hollow. They were clearly malnourished, they’d left the hotel some time ago. He cleared his throat.
“Gang?” he said. “Let’s go find some grub.”
Lane gave him a warm smile. She broke off her scientific, lab-talk, and pointed toward the door. “You know, there’s a great café across the street.”
Brandon’s smile widened, showing his candy-coated teeth. “You heard the woman, Clay,” he said. “I’m going to eat at that café if it’s the last thing I do.”
Clay patted his back and followed him up the steps and out into the darkness. When the door of the candy shop closed behind them, everyone—including the scientists—inhaled the fresh mountain air deeply, grateful to leave the putrid stench behind.
Chapter 12
The café was a local place, not a franchise, with diner-like booths, different colored lamps on the walls, and a long, thin mirror wrapping around the dining room. Clay felt immediately at home there, reminded of all the dinners he’d had with his wife and daughter at the Carterville diner. Maia always ordered a grilled cheese, his wife, a burger, choosing to nibble both his and Maia’s fries. He shivered at the memory, suddenly craving a massive meal.
Brandon and Ralph bolted for the kitchen, with the scientists following close behind. Clay heard Ralph muttering something about biscuits and gravy, as it was easy, and could fill up the whole troop.
Clay followed a moment later, finding the two scientists looking stunned. “Why didn’t we ever think to make that?” Lane joked, tapping Ralph on the back.
Marcia laughed. “We needed people around. Otherwise, we were going to keep eating the same four things until we died.”
The survivors helped each other, with Ralph running the show. He made homemade biscuits, using whole-grain flour and stirring with his left hand, impressing everyone with his one-handed skills. One of the scientists flipped on the radio. They heard music for the first time in what felt like years. It was an ‘80s song, one from Clay’s youth. He closed his eyes and leaned back against a cabinet, remembering Valerie whistling the tune to herself as she drove in the car.
Would he ever hear her melody again?
Thirty minutes later, Brandon and Daniels shoved several tables together and set out silverware. Alayna collected some fake flowers from the back and arranged them in coffee cups, dotting them between the plates. Ralph brought out a vat of sausage gravy, and Jacobs followed him out with a large tray of biscuits. They portioned out the meal quickly, and then everyone sat, almost in awe at how delicious their impromptu meal really looked. They felt like they were outside of time, like travelers from the future, looking at a distant past.
“What are you waiting for?” Ralph said. “Prayer? Because you can wait all night for that. I’m not going to give it to you.”
They ate then, ripping open their biscuits and dipping them into the gravy, slathering still more over their plates. As they ate, the lights flickered around them, a reminder of the power outages in Carterville.
Clay pointed his knife in the air. “You’ve been getting these too?” he asked.
Lane nodded slowly, taking a small bite. “In fact, we need to tell you that it’s really messing with the meat and dairy. We thought we’d have this stuff for a while longer, but as Ralph was cooking it—”
“Oh, yeah,” Ralph said, interrupting. “This shit only has a few more days, if that. But it’s good for now, ain’t it?”
“Good for now?” Brandon said nervously, eyeing his half-eaten meal. “I’m not going to get sick, am I? I got food poisoning once. On a trip to Florida. I was over the toilet for hours.”
Marcia reassured him, “If it was going to make you sick, it would have happened before you’d eaten half your plate.”
“We’ve moved quite a bit of the frozen food to the freezer in the lab. But we might have to say goodbye to meat and dairy. At least for a while,” Lane said quietly.
Silence fell. They listened to the unfamiliar sound of each other chewing vigorously, reveling in flavor of meat and fat and bone-sticking goodness. Finally, Clay cleared his throat, dropping his fork back on his plate.
“There’s something wrong with you, isn’t there?” Lane asked.
The rest of the survivors turned toward Clay, alarm in their eyes. Brandon quit eating immediately, and covered his mouth. “It’s this fucking meat, isn’t it?” he asked. “I knew I shouldn’t—”
But Lane held up a finger, stopping him. “You guys haven’t noticed how pale this man is?” she asked.
Alayna assessed Clay from the other side of the table. “I assumed it was stress.”
“It’s hard to know if any of us look right,” Daniels chimed in. “We’re all on the brink of insanity, aren’t we?”
Clay sensed she could almost smell the radiation poisoning inside him. Disgruntled, he pulled himself to his feet and began to pace, the savory flavor of the meal still coating his tongue. Everyone was staring, and no one was eating any longer.
“What’s the story, Clay?” Lane asked in a gentle voice.
“He wasn’t infected, was he?” Marcia asked, looking at Jacobs.
Jacobs shook his head, his movements almost imperceptible. “My preliminary analysis,” he began, his voice cracking, “is that Clay has radiation poisoning. From the meteorite.”
The scientists’ faces were grim. The other survivors seemed to be seeing Clay for the first time. Alayna burst from her chair and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him t
ight.
“How much time do you think I have?” Clay asked. He scratched the back of his neck, remembering how weak he’d been before Jacobs had started giving him the pills. “Oddly enough, I feel stronger now than I did before. Much more . . . aware, even. It’s like those pills are making me a better version of myself, despite being generally malnourished and exhausted. Does that align with the diagnosis?”
Alayna nodded, her eyebrows furrowing. “You do look better than you have for the past few days,” she said slowly. “I didn’t want to say anything. I just thought you were stressed out.” She shrugged, not wanting to comment on the fact that they hadn’t really been speaking, not since they’d slept together.
“So, he’s cured?” Ralph said, taking a large bite of biscuits and gravy, the first to return to his food.
“It’s too early to tell,” Jacobs said.
“And you’re sure you didn’t have any recent contact with one of the crazed?” Marcia asked. “I was watching you earlier. You were sweating in the kitchen. Like you have a fever.” She paused. “That is a symptom of the infection.”
Clay’s mind filled with those first images of Cliff in the jail cell, sweating and weeping and vomiting, fighting what Clay had assumed was a hangover. God, he’d been so wrong.
“The first guy was Cliff,” he told them. “The guy you said worked in the lab. I was fighting him off, right after he became completely—out of it.” He remembered the volatile motions, the insane eyes. “And as we were fighting, I got some of his blood in my mouth—” He stopped, allowing the information to sink in.
Both Marcia and Lane were shocked. They pushed their chairs back.
“Now, don’t jump to conclusions,” Jacobs said to them. “He’s been with us for a while now and he doesn’t have any of the symptoms. If he was going to turn crazed, he would have already.”
“So it’s radiation poisoning?” Lane asked. “There’s no way to know the truth, Leland. Not until we test him.”
Clay shook his head. Rather than race after his wife and daughter, he would be confined in a lab, tested, “discovered.” He glared at Jacobs, and wanted to insist on a better tactic, on any other plan.
But Jacobs nodded his head slowly. “It won’t take long, Clay. And it’ll give you the answers you’re looking for. You need to do this. If you don’t, you could drop dead in the middle of your search. And all this will have been for nothing.”
Clay picked up his plate of biscuits and gravy. He felt like smashing the plate, watching the shards rain all over the diner. But his friends were searching his face, waiting for his answer.
He set the plate down in front of Brandon, their “child,” their growing boy. “Eat up, kid,” he said. He turned back toward Jacobs. “All right. Let’s get this over with, then,” he said gruffly.
Clay stormed out onto the deserted street, feeling desolation and loneliness quiver in his soul. If he didn’t survive this, he knew Valerie and Maia wouldn’t, either.
Chapter 13
Clay stood, half-naked, his skin scrubbed clean and his toes bare for the first time in weeks. His toenails were cracked and yellow from all the walking. Lane, Jacobs, and Marcia had worked on him for over thirty minutes, taking blood, saliva, and urine samples to assess his overall health.
As Clay stood there, he looked down, assessing his muscled body. Since they’d taken to fighting the crazed tooth-and-nail, he’d suffered several injuries. He’d been knocked to the ground by their incredible strength, causing cuts and bruises. Once, he’d fallen on his knife, before he’d lurched back up, gasping, with blood on his shirt. He’d just bandaged the wound afterward, hoping it wasn’t as deep as it had felt.
Of course, once your body took on so much pain, it was easy to forget the minute details, the tiny scrapes. You trudged forward, day after night after day, becoming one with your pain. He often remembered Maia who, when she fell off her bicycle and scraped her elbow, refused to ever get back on to ride again.
If he was going to follow the metaphor, he and the other survivors had fallen off their bikes, gotten hit by three semi-trucks, and then proceeded to vomit uncontrollably, while still finding the will to keep going.
He hoped Maia had found some kind of commitment to life, out there on her own.
But all the wounds—minor or otherwise—all seemed to be healing incredibly fast. Clay bent over, unnoticed by the busy scientists, and assessed the knife wound. It had completely scabbed over in a few days, despite its depth. The bruises on his knees were returning to normal color, and the scrapes and cuts were basically gone. Clay tilted his head, confused.
“Hey. I have a question,” he said, his voice cracking slightly.
Jacobs whirled around, still used to Clay being his quasi-leader. “What is it?”
“All these injuries. They’re healing really fast,” Clay said, gesturing at his naked legs. “Normally, it’s not this fast. Is that a side effect of radiation poisoning? Fast healing?”
The scientists exchanged glances. In the back room, he could hear Ralph and Brandon joking with each other, playing a game in which they tossed gummy bears into one another’s mouths. He’d seen Brandon wincing an hour before, when something had irritated his gunshot wound. But, as Clay had said at dinner, he was feeling stronger, more athletic, closer to rational thinking. Why? Could there be an actual, scientific explanation?
Could these scientists actually prove to be useful?
“We don’t have a lot of experience in this field,” Lane began, sounding tentative. “Radiation isn’t our area of expertise. But we do know that radiation poisoning generally doesn’t have any healing properties.”
“Not at all,” Marcia said, her words insistent. “Your body should be dying. You should be on the ground, writhing in pain. But you’re living, you’re surviving, and you’re healing.”
Jacobs considered that. But before he could speak, Lane gasped, gesturing at the lab results in front of her. Clay’s heart sank, sure he was about to receive horrible news.
He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t actually right, either.
“Jesus. Okay. I have good news, and bad,” Lane said, sounding jittery. She was poised over her computer, which was spitting the lab results in a long stream of information.
“I don’t know how to take that.” Clay laughed nervously. He felt naked and strange in front of them, his toes gripping the cold tile floor.
“The good news is that you’ve been exposed to radiation for a considerable amount of time,” Lane said, her eyebrows furrowed with concentration.
“How the hell is that good news?” Clay asked.
“Well, because your body seems to be healing itself despite that exposure,” Lane said. “Last week, you were probably feeling the effects of the radiation a great deal—”
“I lost so much of my hair. And I was vomiting uncontrollably,” Clay offered.
“Right. But now, your body is bouncing back from that. You’re going to live through the radiation. That’s something not a lot of people can say,” she said. As she spoke, her smile faltered.
“All right,” Clay said, his heart speeding up. “Out with the bad news, then. Is it chicken pox? Tell me it’s not chicken pox.”
None of the scientists laughed at his joke. They studied the information on the screen. After several minutes of tension, Jacobs looked up and told Clay the truth.
“The nanites are present in your blood,” he said flatly.
Clay collapsed against the wall behind him. Was this a death sentence? He began to stutter, trying to find reason.
“Th—then I—I need to get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I need to get away from all of you. I don’t want to hurt anyone—”
But Lane held up her hand, her face stern. “Clay, there’s no reason to panic. Not yet, at least. It seems that the nanites are working quite differently in your body than what we’ve experienced to date.”
“How can you tell?” Clay asked, rubbing his hand on his growing beard.
Lane gestured toward the putrid-smelling bodies, splayed out, covered in key places with towels. “Well, we only have your blood to compare with theirs, I suppose,” she said. “But your reaction to the nanites is strange. You said it yourself. You were exposed to Cliff’s blood several weeks ago, right?”
“Seems like forever,” Clay murmured. “But yes. I’m almost certain I was exposed then.”
“Right,” Lane said. “We need to do more tests. We don’t have enough information.”
“And how do you expect we’ll get that, without getting killed first?” Clay asked, crossing his arms stiffly over his chest.
“Oh, come on, Clay,” Jacobs said, almost taunting him. “I’ve watched your fighting techniques every day since you found me at the lab. They’re top-notch. There’s no reason you can’t go outside of town, grab a crazed, and bring him back here for testing. If we know more about them, we know more about you. Get it?”
Clay frowned. He felt that they were wasting time. Time he needed to find his daughter and his wife. “What do you ladies think?”
“It’s dangerous, sure,” Marcia said. “And from your stories about their fighting techniques, it seems they’re advancing quite rapidly. Unpredictable. When they first transitioned, they’d just flail their arms and try to eat you.”
“But from what you’ve said, it seems they work in packs now. They won’t let one of their own go easy. I can’t say for sure,” Lane finished.
“Why not use the neutralizing device, then?” Marcia said. “They’re right over there, just waiting for this kind of problem. Jesus, Lane. I don’t know why you didn’t think of it before.”
Lane blushed and looked at the floor. Suddenly, Jacobs threw a pipette onto the ground, smashing it. Clay leaped back, conscious of his toes.
What the hell was going on?
Chapter 14
“You assholes! You just took them,” Jacobs spewed, his eyes flashing like a tiger’s. “You grabbed the neutralizers, and you just walked out the door. Just like that. You left Cliff and me to die.”
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