“Obviously,” Sorsha replied, tone impossible to read. “Have you determined anything from studying them?”
“Ah, well, I’ve only had the specimens since yesterday, and there are many other avenues to explore.”
“I see. This is all very interesting.” Sorsha paused a long moment. “The whole affair reminds me of . . . zombies.”
“Yes, isn’t it fascinating?” Kristi trilled a laugh. “The parallel to movie zombies has certainly crossed my mind.”
“I’m well aware of the ‘Louisiana Zombies dash One’ designation for LZ-1, Dr. Charish. Amusing.” She didn’t sound one bit amused. “I’m more interested in whether you’ve seen anything zombie-like before. Anything at all.”
Shit. What was Sorsha’s angle?
“Before this?” Kristi laughed again, but it verged on nervous. Not her typical smooth-operator style. “Movies, once or twice. Not my cup of tea, really.”
“Mm-hmm.” Pages flipped. “What can you tell me of the other researchers here? Ariston Nikas? Has he been helpful in your research?”
Helpful? I ground my teeth. It made him sound like he was Kristi’s assistant.
Not that Kristi did a damn thing to dispel that notion. “Ari has been an absolute godsend,” she gushed, and I could practically see her putting her hands on her chest and batting her eyelashes. “His assistance has allowed me—”
“Um, lady?”
I whirled and landed in a fighting stance. A slender black man around my age stood in a doorway on the other side of the room. He wore a lab coat over jeans and a Star Wars t-shirt, and carried a coffee cup. And he was shorter than me, which took a lot considering I was barely five foot three.
“You’re not allowed to be in here,” he said, though he didn’t seem too bent out of shape about it. He took a sip of his coffee. “This is a secured area. If someone else sees you, they’ll ask me why I didn’t call security. So you should go.” He waggled his hand at me exactly as I had done to the gators. “Or I’ll have to call.”
“I can’t leave the same way I came in,” I said, straightening from the silly fighting stance.
He cocked his head. “Were you sneaking around in the LZ-1 suite, too?”
“No! I work over there, but I, er, didn’t want to run into my supervisor.”
“Supervisors.” He gave a nod of commiseration. “That’s why I like the night shift.” He lifted his chin toward the door to the gator room. “What’s in there? Rumor has it alligators were brought in, but the sounds aren’t like any gators I’ve ever heard. Creeps me out all night.”
“Details are, um, classified.” I offered him a helpless shrug. “Sorry. Nothing to worry about, though. I promise.”
“Says the tricksy eavesdropper,” Short Guy said, his voice colored with humor. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Skedaddle, Ninja Girl. Out this way. The exit to the LZ-1 suite is down the hall to the left.”
I breathed a thanks as I passed. The corridor was deserted, but quiet voices drifted from somewhere. Following his directions, I escaped to our lab area then paused in the corridor, listening carefully for Sorsha or Kristi.
No sign of either one. If I was lucky, the two were off making someone else’s life miserable instead of mine.
I scurried back to the main lab room. Beardzilla and Hairy Tech worked, heads down, at the back table. Brian was doing his hourly sweep for listening devices as part of his normal security protocol. Dr. Nikas jerked his hand away from Kristi’s computer, looking guilty as hell.
“Oh. It’s only you, Angel,” he said quietly.
I moved in close and kept my voice low. “What are you doing?”
He slipped a thumb drive into his pocket. “Keeping tabs on Kristi’s work and progress. Everything in the lab is kept on the local computers—no cloud or outside server—to protect the zombie information. Her data is encrypted, but we can unravel it.”
“Smart. You don’t trust her.”
“Never again.” He looked a little sad at that, but then he straightened. “And I wanted her most recent activity safely acquired before I confront her over the gym death and her lack of communication.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Do you have results from the protein packet samples yet?”
“Jacques should have them later this morning, then I will meet with Kristi.”
“If you need someone to watch your back, or even just to supply loads of moral support, I’m here for you.”
He gave me a warm smile. “That hardly needs to be said.”
I flushed, warmed by his unwavering trust in me. “By the way, I overheard the FBI agent ask Kristi if she’d ever seen anything zombie-like before. Seemed like an odd question to ask a scientist. Made me a little uneasy.”
His brows drew together. “Troubling, indeed. We’ll see what comes of this visit.”
With any luck at all, Sorsha would leave after talking to Kristi. “On a related note, when I went to check on the gators, I noticed most of them have wounds.” I described the odd injuries. “What’s that all about?”
He frowned, perplexed. “We took small snips yesterday. Nothing at all like what you saw. I don’t know what need she would have for more and larger tissue samples. She did not confer with me before taking them.”
I glowered. “That’s because Kristi thinks she thinks she’s hot shit and in charge.”
Dr. Nikas sighed. “I’ll have a word with her about that as well.”
“You need to start making a list,” I said. “Like Santa, except it’s alllllll of Kristi’s naughtiness.”
He cleared his throat, quickly squelching the ever-so-brief flash of amusement in his eyes. “Jacques called a few minutes ago with a report on Nick’s condition. He’s stable,” Dr Nikas added quickly before I could freak out and imagine the worst. “There’s been no change, which in our current scenario is good. However, I believe we can dispose of the theory that you infected Nick via saliva.”
“You mean kissing? How do you know that wasn’t it?”
“Jacques found a mosquito bite on Nick’s left arm.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Nick was friggin’ smothered in DEET.”
Dr. Nikas spread his hands. “Unfortunately, even the best repellent cannot offer perfect protection.”
“But he had on a long-sleeved shirt,” I said.
Sympathy filled his eyes. “He could have been bitten anytime in the last forty-eight hours.”
“Something’s not right. The cases in the morgue each had one mosquito bite. The majority of the shamblers in the gym only had one mosquito bite. Nick has one bite. What are the odds of that many people getting only one bite if there are mosquitoes around?”
Dr. Nikas exchanged a glance with Portia, but it was Rachel who spoke.
“What are you saying, Angel?”
I looked around the room as I tried to make sense of my thoughts. “I’m saying . . . maybe the mosquito bites aren’t mosquito bites.”
Chapter 33
Well, that got everyone’s attention. I gulped as the enormity of what I was suggesting hit home. But if there was any chance it was true, I had to keep going.
“What if someone is deliberately spreading the zombie epidemic using tiny little darts or something?”
“The CDC found traces of Aedes albopictus saliva at the bite locations of the deceased,” Dr. Nikas said gently.
“Seriously? How do they know it’s albopeck, er, mosquito spit?”
“The presence of certain enzymes.”
“Oh.” So much for that theory. “Maybe—” I paused to seize another thought before it flitted away. “Wait. I know it’s a stretch, but if I wanted to intentionally spread the zombie disease and make it look like mosquitoes were doing it, I’d make sure that my little infectious darts or needles or whatever came with a side of skeeter spit.”
Dr. Nikas’s brows drew together. “That is a fair point. I’ll ask Jacques to excise the bite area on Nick and test for Eugene and LZ-1.”
I blinked. “They’re different?”
“To the CDC, all cases are LZ-1 since they don’t know the cause and haven’t yet discovered the parasite. We, too, assumed Eugene was the universal pathogen until yesterday when I analyzed blood samples from the gym and the blood you recovered from the bowling alley.”
“Okaaaaay,” I said. “In other words, LZ-1 is new but kind of the same?”
“Correct. Eugene is the parasite mutation found in the cases we can trace directly back to you. Judd Siler from your bite. Douglas Horton and Deputy Connor from the alligators that consumed Judd’s remains. All other cases show a variation of Eugene.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “I would name it Eugene junior, but I fear that would sow confusion with outside authorities. Therefore, I have adopted their blanket designation of LZ-1 to use in reference to the new strain.”
Damn. Eugene junior had more zing. EJ-1? “But doesn’t a different mutation make it even more likely that someone purposefully caused the LZ-1 epidemic?”
“It raises many questions.” He patted my shoulder. “We will see what Nick’s mosquito bite shows.”
“Thanks,” I breathed, warmed to my toes that he was taking my concerns seriously—or at least seriously enough to run more tests to prove me wrong.
Dr. Nikas typed in a text message to Jacques.
“You know,” Portia said, head tilted, “just as a thought experiment, Angel’s deliberate inoculation theory could potentially explain how groups of people turned shambler within minutes of each other.”
Dr. Nikas took a step toward her. “You think all could have been inoculated with LZ-1 at the same time?”
“Not necessarily. You tested the water bottles for traces of LZ-1 and Eugene.” She said the name with no hesitation or scorn which made me love her all the more. “But what if the water contained a stimulant—a hormone perhaps—that could radically accelerate LZ-1 activation in someone already infected.”
The look on Dr. Nikas’s face was pure adoration. “Inoculate a group of individuals minutes to hours before, then trigger them all at once via an activator.”
“That makes sense, even to me,” I said. “Like soaking a sponge with gasoline. Nothing happens until you drop a lit match on it, then bam. Stick ’em with LZ-1 whenever, then the victims drink the activator water and they go shambly within minutes.”
“Or leave them be and they eventually turn anyway.” Dr. Nikas got that faraway look in his eyes that told me he was already leaps and bounds ahead and working through possibilities. “It’s quite likely the stimulating substance would be harmless to people who had not been inoculated, meaning entire cases of water bottles could be treated.”
“Yes!” Portia said. “That would eliminate the need to ensure only inoculated people drank the water.”
“And the victims who turned in groups yesterday were all together and drinking bottled water,” I said. “The bowling alley, the band. I’m betting the lawyers had bottled water in their meeting, too.”
“I have already confirmed the lawyers had Nice Springs water,” Dr. Nikas said as he sent another text. “The bottles you collected from the bowling alley are at the Tribe lab. I’ve asked Jacques to run full analyses on them as well.”
“Wait one sec.” I pulled out my phone and called Bear. “Hey, it’s Angel. When you were at the bowling alley, did you drink any bottled water?”
“They were giving away free bottled water, but I had a Coke Zero. Never opened my bottle. Why?”
“Not sure yet. If Jacques comes in to check you for a mosquito bite, don’t give him a hard time, okay?”
“I checked myself, but hard to see everywhere. I’ll behave.”
“Good deal. How’s Nick?”
“No change,” he said, voice a bit rougher.
“We’re going to get the cure, Bear. I promise.” I held back a sigh of frustration. “I gotta go now. I’ll let you know when we have something.” I hung up and shoved the phone into my pocket.
“Let me guess,” Portia said. “He didn’t drink the water.”
“Nope,” I said. “And he hasn’t shambled. Yet.”
Dr. Nikas sent another text then looked up, expression sober. “Very disturbing. If this hypothesis proves to be valid, it means that an organization or individual might truly be coordinating a deliberate spread of this terrible disease.”
“But?” I said. Dr. Nikas didn’t have his we-have-the-answer face on.
He remained silent for a long moment. “Frankly, I’m baffled. Though your hypothesis has merit, I believe it would be impossible to develop a specifically altered strain of Eugene in the few days since Douglas Horton and Deputy Connor succumbed.”
“But it did alter,” I said.
“Given the three-plus weeks since Judd’s demise, natural mutation could account for it. The only other option—purposefully directing the mutation to a desired, stable outcome—is a time-consuming challenge with no guarantee of success.” He shook his head. “Additionally, whoever created it would be foolish to release LZ-1 into the wild without also having a cure at hand, lest they fall victim themselves. And developing a cure would take even more time.”
“So it’s not possible?”
“I simply don’t see how in such a short timeframe,” he said. “Yet, I don’t have the answer, either, which is why I asked Jacques to run those tests. Science is about gathering data and being willing to accept the results.”
I forced a crooked smile. “Is it wrong for me to hope a bad guy is responsible for the epidemic since that would mean a cure already exists?”
“It’s not wrong, Angel,” he said, eyes warm with understanding. “And I can’t deny that the hypothesis fits except for the timing.”
“But why would anyone start an epidemic on purpose?” I asked then immediately shook my head. “Duh. If they’d already developed the cure, an epidemic would mean treatments. Pharmaceuticals. Money.”
“Greed and the lust for power have been the driving forces behind any number of heinous acts,” Portia murmured.
“Indeed,” Dr. Nikas said. For an instant it looked like he wanted to take her hand, then he pulled his gaze away. “We’ll know more once Nick’s bite and the water are analyzed.”
Fighting an evil organization or person to get the cure was something tangible I could do. To help all the victims. To help Nick. I couldn’t fight nature or science. My chest tightened, and stupid tears welled up.
Dr. Nikas took my hand. “I believe we’re close to a cure here, Angel.”
Not close enough, I wanted to scream. Instead I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything without bursting into full blown tears. He was doing everything he could. We all were.
I gently tugged my hand free then stepped away to make a call.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, voice thick.
“You okay, baby?”
“No. I mean, yeah, I’m okay. I just wish we were on the other side of this shit, with Nick and everyone else fixed up and healthy again.”
“I get it, Angelkins.” The nickname wrapped around me like a warm hug. “You’re out working your tail off while your boyfriend’s in trouble. It’s rough. But if anyone can come through this after wrasslin’ that sickness into the dust, it’s you.”
My boyfriend. Nick and I hadn’t even had time to talk about what we were to each other. But it felt right. “I’m doing my best, Dad. I really am.”
“I know you are, baby. I seen you in action. Wish I could be more help with all this, but I ain’t as smart as these other folks.”
I scowled. “First off, you are smart. You don’t have the same experience and education, that’s all. Huge difference. Second off, you are helping. You’re staying safe
so I don’t have to worry, and I bet you’re keeping people’s spirits up, too.”
“You know what I mean.” He sighed. “I wish I could do something. I wanna stay busy so I don’t fret so much about you.”
“Yeah. I get it. Well, I started out washing dishes and beakers and stuff. Everyone there kind of pitches in when it comes to keeping the place clean, so how about you sweep up or whatever.”
“I can do that! It’ll be just like at the bar but with less dead bugs.”
“A lot less! Hey, could you ask Rosario something for me?”
“Hang on. Let me get a pen and paper.”
“Nah, this one’s easy. Ask him if he told Kristi about seeing Judd walk off into the swamp after being killed with the tranq.”
“Okay. I think I got it.”
“Thanks. You can text me what he says.”
We exchanged “love you”s and hung up. I returned to sorting project results, feeling much lighter.
My phone buzzed with a text about five minutes later.
“Hey, Dr. Nikas?” I said. “What if someone had weeks instead of days to create LZ-1 and a cure?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “How so?”
I related what Rosario had said about seeing Judd walk off, and that he’d told Kristi. “What if she put two and two together and figured out Judd was some kind of zombie variant. Then used that info to start working on the LZ-1 mutation? Hell, she could have sent people into the swamp to find Judd’s remains.”
Portia looked thoughtful. Dr. Nikas ran a hand over his hair in a rare show of consternation. “Three weeks could be sufficient for a researcher of her caliber.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Brian said. “We’ve been watching Dr. Charish closely in Chicago, and she hasn’t set foot in a lab in the last three weeks.”
Rachel cocked her head. “But she could have relayed the Judd info to Saberton R&D for them to do the work.”
“That’s true,” Brian said. “We know there’s a leak or a bug in our organization that we haven’t pinned down yet.” A look of aggravation swept over his face. “So let’s assume that Monday, Saberton found out about Horton waking up and shambling in the morgue. Not only could that have triggered their gator hunt—and, thanks to the leak, they knew precisely where to go—but it also presented the perfect opportunity to debut their new LZ-1 toy, especially after Connor collapsed the next day. A case untraceable to Saberton that served to muddy the waters.”
White Trash Zombie Unchained Page 33