He woke up the next day face down on a throw rug. His head pounded and his mouth tasted like a baby with diarrhea had used it for a potty chair. He looked around, trying to determine the time. One negative aspect to the tunnels was that it looked the same inside them twenty-four hours a day. A man couldn’t tell if it was noon or midnight without walking to the entrance.
Jody slept draped over the couch, mouth open, snoring like a wounded warthog. Sam wiggled his feet into his shoes, pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders, and tip-toed out the apartment door. He walked close enough to the tunnel entrance to see shards of daylight streaming in- at least he knew it was daytime. It looked gray and cold out there, and Sam had zero interest in going further. He was about to turn back toward his new cubicle when the sound of a man clearing his throat broke the silence. He peered through the gloom and could make out a figure leaning against a support pillar.
“Come here a minute,” the figure called out in a deep, quiet voice.
As Sam approached, the figure became clear. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a head of thick black hair. He wore a holster with a pair of handguns around his waist and crossed his burly arms over his chest. He didn’t look at Sam but directed his gaze past him, toward the exit.
“Would you be Will?” Sam asked as he drew next to the man.
“Yes sir.” He spoke in a quiet, almost uninterested tone and kept looking out at the quarry floor. “You the doctor?”
“I am. I’m a veterinarian, not an M.D. But I’ve treated a lot of people lately.” He extended a hand. “Dr. Samuel Joseph, DMV.” Will turned to shake Sam’s hand and focused on him for the first time. Even in the dim light, Sam could make out the dark fury in Will’s eyes as they bore into him. A shiver of fright worked its way up his spine.
“Nice to meet you,” Will said, his voice calm. He held on to Sam’s hand, his grip just short of painful. “If you ever point a gun at one of my boys again, I’ll cut your fucking head clean off and not give a shit how it affects the quality health care around here.”
Sam gaped at him and tried to hide his fright. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he nodded instead. His voice made an audible click when he swallowed.
Will let go of his hand. He stared at the Doc for another few moments, then turned and ambled toward the quarry floor.
Sam leaned against the pillar, knees shaking.
“It’s good to have a doctor here,” Will called without turning around. “Make sure you tend to Jiri’s leg.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sam croaked. He bent over with his palms resting on his knees. “Jesus Christ.”
The Exam
* * *
Jiri sat on a metal chair outside the defunct offices of The Eastmark Food Group. Eastman appeared to have been a food broker, purchasing meat, vegetables, and dairy from local farmers and selling it the big food conglomerates. Dr. Joseph had set up shop in their building, converting a big conference room into an examination space and taking the former President’s old office as his own.
Eastmark’s artwork still adorned the waiting room walls. He looked at the pictures- a single, perfect, Vidalia onion, a ribeye sizzling on the grill, farmers harvesting a corn crop. The images gave him an unexpected pang of loss, a sharp pain like an uppercut to his belly. He believed the dead would keep decomposing while at the same time fewer and fewer people would turn- meaning the number of creepers would shrink to the point that mankind would prosper again. And he still believed it. But how long would it be before anyone, anywhere, could go to a local market and pick out a nice, fat onion to serve with supper that evening? How long until there was such a demand for corn that a grower would measure his crop size by the square mile? When would there be a need for a food broker, a middleman to move green beans and tomatoes from the producer to a Fortune 500 company? How long until there would be Fortune 500 companies? Not in my lifetime, he thought with a sigh.
A door opened across the hall and Dr. Joseph peered from inside the room. “Ah, Jiri,” he said, sounding pleased. He opened the door wider and gestured. “Come in, come in.”
Jiri rose from the chair and walked over, limping on his injured leg. He hid a smile. The Doc wore a pair of khakis and a white broadcloth dress shirt. His silk tie was knotted in a perfect Half Windsor. He topped off the ensemble with a white lab coat that had Dr. S. Joseph embroidered over his heart in classic script. His tufts of hair flowed in the same direction. He was a far cry from the wild man in the red suit who roared up to save Jiri from the dead.
Jiri stepped into the room and his eyes widened in surprise. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but what lay before him wasn’t it- a modern, well lit examine room, complete with a patient’s bed and two well-stocked cabinets.
Dr. Joseph’s eyes shined with pride. “Not bad, eh? We stayed busy while you recuperated.”
“Not bad at all,” Jiri replied, looking around. “Was this stuff already down here?”
“Some of it. Do you know about the tunnels on the other side of the road?”
“I’m aware they exist, but I haven’t been over there yet.”
“The young hunter, what is his name?”
“Coy.”
Dr. Joseph nodded. “Yes. It seems Coy has explored them extensively. A large cheese factory had a facility over there with a nurse’s office in it. That’s where we got the bed and most of the supplies. For the rest, we made a trip to my compound.”
Jiri pointed at the ceiling. “And the lights?”
“Yeah, doctoring by the light of those lanterns wasn’t cutting it. The Judge had some guys hook up a generator for when I’m seeing patients.” He gave a brisk hand clap. “Enough about the office. Take your pants off and clamber up on the table.”
The Doc rubbed sanitizer on his hands and pulled a tray of medical instruments close while Jiri blithely shucked articles of clothing. Back when he was a college senior he faced a choice. He was a two-time all-conference power forward at Fordham with dreams of NBA riches. Unfortunately, the NBA wasn’t interested. His scouting report said he was too slow and his shooting was too poor, and his phone didn’t ring on draft day. The common route for talented college basketball players who don’t get drafted by the NBA is to keep living the dream in the European pro leagues. On the advice of his father, he hung up his sneakers and went to graduate school. Sixteen years of peeling off his basketball gear with a dozen teammates removed any inhibitions he had about nakedness- his or anyone else’s.
Clad in just his underwear, he sat on the end of the bed with his injured leg extended in front of him.
Dr. Joseph examined the bullet wound. “I noticed your limp wasn’t too severe,” he said while pressing on the skin around the injury.
“It gets worse as the day goes by. So does the pain.”
“That’s to be expected.” The Doc probed his sutures with gentle self-assurance. “Bullets do a phenomenal amount of damage to tissue. They create a cavity that can be up to thirty times as wides as the projectile itself. The cavity closes back in on itself in less than a second, but the damage is done- torn tissue, perforated veins, shredded muscle. Because of the damage, blood and other fluids don’t make it to the tissue in and around the injury, or it makes it there but can’t move on. So, you experience swelling, and with it, pain.”
He peered into Jiri’s eyes with a penlight, then clicked the light off and shuffled through some papers on a clipboard. “Your wound is healing nicely. In five days we can remove the sutures. I pronounce you cured- whoever removed the bullet and sewed you up did a bang-up job.”
“He may have done a great job, but he was kind of an asshole.”
“Bah- I bet you were a big sissy. Get dressed and get out- I have actual sick people to tend to.”
More Science
* * *
Jiri gathered up his boots, socks, and jeans. He stopped and looked at the doctor, a quizzical expression on his face. “Hey, Doc- I have a question about the creepers.”
The Doc p
ressed his lips together and shook his head. “Jiri, I’m not an epidemiologist, a virologist, a microbiologist or even a physician. I’m an old country vet. I doubt I can provide the information you seek.”
“Sure. But your educated guess is more valid than mine.”
“Maybe. What’s your question?”
“If a creeper bites you, you die from the infection and reanimate as a creeper yourself. But I’ve seen people get scratched by one, and they don’t turn. This time last year, when we first headed south, we fought those things every day. We were out on the road and they were everywhere. The first time you ever get creeper blood in your eye it’s like being handed your death certificate- you just sit back and wait for the fever to kick in. But we got it in our eyes, our ears, we’d get blood from one day’s fights in the cut and scrapes from the day before. After a few days, we learned that getting their blood in your system didn’t cause you to turn.
“So, my question- why can they pass the sickness through a bite but not through their blood?”
The Doc pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and fished one out. He lit it, inhaled, and blew out a plume of bluish smoke. He waved the butt in the air. “This thing tastes like ground up platypus turds.” He took another drag, then ground it out in an ashtray he pulled from a drawer.
He studied Jiri with solemn eyes. “I’ve never been out there fighting them every day like you, but I have had occasion to tussle with them from time to time on my trips to town. I remember one time I was digging around the back of a store. Do you remember that fence around my place?”
Jiri nodded.
“The day after the Vice-President was bitten on live TV I began to fortify it. Took me a month to put up the razor wire and plant the beams. One day while I was working on it I drove to the farm store in town for a bucket of galvanized nails.
“Fella by the name of Pete Workman owned that store. Pete showed up for work in bib overalls and a pair of Florsheims every day for forty years. He was a big, beefy guy- when the guys out on the feed dock got busy, he’d jump in a help them out. He’d swing a hundred pound bag of feed over each shoulder and toss them over the side of the customer’s truck like they were Kleenex boxes. Back in ‘97 or ‘98, he was walking down an aisle when a hammer fell off the top shelf and hit him in the face. He wore those eye-glasses with the old-fashioned black plastic frames. Well, the hammer broke a lens and drove shards into his eye, and they removed it. He always wore an eye-patch after that.
“So there I was at Pete’s farm store, and to be honest I got careless. I thought I’d given the place a good inspection when I first arrived, and I let down my guard. I headed for the door, my bucket of nails in one hand, when I turned a corner and ran right into Pete the Zombie. His eye patch was gone, leaving an empty, scarred up eye socket. The straps on his overalls came loose, causing them to hand around his waist.
“I ran smack into him and bounced off like a beagle on a trampoline. My feet got tied up, and I fell. All I could do was roll over onto my back before he was on me. Long story short, we tussled like the dickens. It seemed like it lasted five minutes, but it was really closer to thirty seconds. I kept my forearm against his throat to hold his head back, but holy hell he scratched the shit out of me.” He pushed the sleeves up on his lab coat and held out his bare arms. There were short bursts of red, angry-looking scars on both of them. “I’ve got these on my chest, my legs; he gave me a hell of a tear on my scalp. It bled like a stuck pig.
“I got my hand on a file, one of those heavy duty ones with the pointed end. I bashed him in the side of the head with that about a half-dozen times and caved in its skull. Blood washed over the both of us and that black goo oozed everywhere.
“I pushed him off me and sat up. I had his blood and my blood mixed together from the waist up, blood in my eyes- his, mine, I couldn’t tell. The black stuff covered my arms. I didn’t even get up. As you said- I sat on the floor and waited for the first symptoms to develop. I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to turn until the next morning.”
Jiri whistled. “Sounds like a close one. What do you think? Why don’t we turn when we get their blood in us?”
“Are you familiar with how rabies works?”
Jiri shrugged his shoulders. “If you get bit by a dog with rabies, you’re fucked. Something to do with the brain.”
The Doc was nodding. “Rabies is transmitted via a bite from an already infected animal. The virus first infects the muscle cells close to the bite, so it’s able to replicate without the host’s immune system noticing. From the point of entry it travels to the central nervous system and then to the brain. Once the brain is infected microbes gather in force in the salivary gland, for easy transmission to the next host. That’s why popular media associates rabies with foaming at the mouth- the glands become so infected the host is unable to swallow. Plus the host develops hydrophobia, so even if it could swallow it would be afraid to do so.”
“I’ve always wondered- why do they fear water, of all things? Is that just in the movies?”
The Doc gave a brisk head shake. “No sir. People and animals suffering from late-stage rabies have a frantic fear of water. Think about it. The virus gathers at the salivary glands. It couldn’t very well get passed on if the host had anything to drink. So it programs your brain to fear water because if you drink you wash it from its gathering spot and it couldn’t continue to infect more hosts.”
Jiri looked at him with eyes wide. “You’re kidding. It does that on a molecular level?”
The Doc nodded.
“How?”
“With folded proteins and nucleotides and ribosomes and a bunch of other shit you’ll never understand.” The Doc gave him a wry grin. “Mother Nature is a vicious bitch. But, we’re getting off point. The point is this- you’ve seen thousands of infected people. But have you ever seen an infected person act afraid of water, or a freshly turned biter with foam around its mouth?”
Jiri thought hard. “I have not.”
“Right. And logic tells us this- if people with this virus aren’t suffering from hydrophobia, and hydrophobia is a classic end-stage manifestation of rabies, then this virus isn’t a bastardized or genetically altered form of that disease. As they called it on the news when it first developed.”
“Okay. That’s what it’s not. But I’m trying to figure out what it is.”
“That’s science, son. Keep eliminating possibilities until only one is left. That one, no matter how implausible, is your answer. We know it’s a virus or enzyme that’s passed via the mouth. We know it’s not passed through the bloodstream. And we know it’s not a new and virulent form of rabies. Come see me next week and we’ll see what else we can eliminate.”
“That sounds slow and tedious.”
“Precisely. Which is why I became a vet rather than a virologist.”
“They had virologists when you were in college back in the thirties?”
“Ah, wit. Everyone’s a wit.” The Doc smiled for a moment, but quickly sobered up and turned to Jiri with a serious expression. “This is what a learned in sociology. In time, the community here will grow large enough to justify some sort of governing council, which you will no doubt be a part of.”
“I would imagine.”
“I’m too old to fight the dead, and I don’t have enough years left to sit on some damn council.” Jiri objected, but The Doc waved him off. “No, it’s true. A body Like that should consist of men young enough to see their ideas come to fruition.
“But I am a man of science. And I have studied these reanimates, or zombies, or creepers up close, since the outbreak began. I’ve learned much about them, Jiri, and there’s much more I suspect but haven’t proven. You ask me your questions and I will tell you what I can. And when the day comes that I leave this wretched Earth, I’ll do so with the knowledge that mankind will win this fight.”
Next Christmas
* * *
Becky had almost finished with the cleanup afte
r the evening meal. The Hendrickson sisters bustling around, helping her. Meghan was quiet, but not in a morose way. Her eyes sparkled, and she replied when Becky spoke to her. Ashley kept up a steady chatter- talking about her day, the horses, what she missed from the past, and what she hoped for from the future. Becky listened without really hearing, commenting when it seemed appropriate while thinking thoughts of her own.
Jiri and The Judge kept saying they would all start dining together any day now, but that day never came. Since moving into the quarry, their group had moved the opposite direction from communal dining. On the road, they almost always ate together. Now, though, more often than not they broke into small clusters scattered around the tunnel. The Hendrickson girls usually ate with Will and Becky, as did Danny. Coy joined them when he was around, but often he and Sally were out hunting or scouting. On those occasions he ate alone when he returned. Jiri split time between eating with Becky’s brood and joining Tara and Tess. David and Kathy always dined together, just the two of them. Sylvia and Tempest hosted George most nights; on the rare night George didn’t eat with them, he joined Cassandro and Brianne. Andro kept an eye out for dried peppers, tomatillos, beans, and other staples of his native diet. He taught Brianne to cook the way he had eaten growing up south of the border.
Becky considered Andro and Brianne and approved. The girl and her boyfriend, Clay, had joined the group near Baldwin City in Kansas. Clay was a strapping young man who’d fled the family farm he grew up on for college at The University of Kansas. He was a valued member of the team, a fearless and skilled fighter. Brianne was quiet and a tad mousy, but never hesitated to jump in and help when work needed done. Somewhere along the way, Clay got her pregnant. Not long after that, a creeper took a chunk out of his shoulder. They’d put him down late one night in Buffalo Missouri.
The Haven Series (Book 2): Haven Page 17