He sauntered off, whistling under his breath, much to Gita’s amusement. I shook my head at Greene’s antics, but had to admit that bantering with him was bordering on becoming pleasant. That annoyed the flying fuck out of me, but what would you do if the people you could trust were ranging in the low double digits these days?
“Have you considered that it’s just plain exhaustion?” Gita’s question made me focus back on her. “What’s going on with you,” she explained. “I haven’t really known you for that long, personally I mean, but that trek up to that base alone wiped me for weeks, and that’s ignoring that insane day of breaching the zombie streaks and getting into the installation—and I was just part of the group that went straight there, without going the scenic route with some extra zombie chasing. And before that, you drove through half the country to get here, and spent an entire twenty-four hours alone out there, running for your life. Let’s not forget all the shit that happened before that. Just thinking of it all makes me stressed out and needing a vacation.”
I ignored Nate’s condescending huff as I finished my beer in a rush. “Hate to break it to you, girl, but since that sunny day in May last year, vacation’s no longer on the menu. Besides, I’ve been through worse.” I couldn’t help but smirk in Nate’s direction. “At least I got some quality alone-time this summer. Last year it was hanging out with Broody-Mc-Broodface here every hour of every day.”
“You did go out on a few sorties without me,” Nate was quick to remind me.
“Which took me away from you exactly how long? Thirty hours max?” I ventured a guess.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You counted. Oh, that’s so sweet.”
That got me snarling, but of course that went ignored, as usual. To avoid having to escalate this into a physical altercation—that might well have ended with me losing way too many layers of clothing for a public place—I turned back to Gita. “If you ever decide to get hitched, take my advice. Don’t. It may sound convenient to have someone indebted to you to put out on a regular basis, but nothing prepares you for the level of insolence you have to deal with in turn.”
Gita’s laugh prompted one of my own, but any possible reply was cut short when Nate grabbed me around the waist and quite unceremoniously threw me over his shoulder.
“Indebted, you say?” he jeered. “Looks like my dear wife just talked herself into a corner and I’m going to ask her, nicely, to hold up her end of the bargain. See you later at that poker game, kid!”
As Nate marched me off, I managed to wave at Gita from where I was hanging over his shoulder, catching her thumbs-up before she turned to the bartender to chat. I kind of expected Nate to make for that cabana on the beach, but he dropped me about a minute later just around the corner from the main bar room in one of the many maintenance corridors, conveniently filled with stacked munitions crates. I opened my mouth to deliver a scathing retort to inform him that he couldn’t just carry me off caveman-style like this, but his mouth on mine shut me up, and by the time his lips drifted over to the side of my neck, his hands were far enough inside my clothes that I didn’t really want to bicker anymore. Mostly.
“What happened to that almost touching concern you had for my well-being?” I snarked as I wove my arms through his to get started working on his belt buckle. “She could be right, you know? Even with an amped-up metabolism, I have been burning the candle at both ends, and even you stuffing me full of high-calorie food whenever you can isn’t showing that much of a difference.”
“Shut up,” he growled. “The only thing you need that mouth of yours for right now is to either suck, lick, or moan, and seeing as you’re doing none of that—“
“Why don’t you make me?” I challenged, abandoning his pants in favor of getting one of my legs untangled from my own. The thick fabric caught on the knife sheath on my calf, forcing me to hop on my other leg for a moment to get it unstuck. Nate snorted as he watched me, a comically bemused expression crossing his features that broke the tension that his words might have created had I not been hard-pressed not to laugh in his face because of it. Finally, he had enough, giving me a push that made my ass land on a crate so he could pull my pants off.
“I still can’t decide whether that’s hot or pathetic,” he griped as he stepped between my thighs, grabbing them to pull me close.
“Just a thought. Not using terms like ‘pathetic’ might actually help,” I proposed.
“Maybe,” he conceded, leaning down to kiss me but stopping shy of my mouth, while I got busy aligning the important parts of our respective anatomies. “But that would be too easy.”
“I’ll show you easy,” I huffed, followed by a wince at my own words. His resulting grin was asking for a punch in the face, but instead of verbally making things worse, he thrust his hips forward, making everything a lot better. Ah, but some things never change—and as I wrapped my arms around his neck and dug my heels into his ass I knew that this would be one of the things that would always remain the same.
Chapter 3
We ended up doing what Greene had predicted—freezing our asses off at the beach, but mostly because Nate insisted that we needed to sleep in a sleeping bag sandwich rather than each of us snugly ensconced, me complaining several times that he really wouldn’t sweat to death if he didn’t stick out a leg at odd times during the night. He made up for that in the early morning, ending with us both working up enough of a sweat that we didn’t need to hide under that upper layer of insulation anymore. I considered cleaning up at the communal showers, but that would have meant either doing a mad dash half-naked that would end with me freezing my tits off, or getting dressed first anyway, so I might as well postpone that until later—or once we got back home. Running water didn’t mean hot running water. If we got back home by afternoon, someone would have for sure set some water for washing over the fire and wouldn’t mind me stealing some of it.
After eating through half of what remained of the evening at that poker game—where, I had to admit with shame, Gita’s prediction of her cleaning all of us out became awful truth—I didn’t mind skipping breakfast, and so it came that I was still in relatively high spirits as Nate and I retraced our steps to the infirmary. That was, until we found the large room otherwise empty, with Anderson and two nurses all suited up in plastic over their scrubs, face masks and protective goggles included. They’d even cordoned off part of the room with plastic sheets that they could more easily hose down with disinfectant later.
“It’s all fun and games until someone gets out the hazmat suits,” I muttered, trying for levity but failing by miles. Nate shot me an unreadable look but I ignored him, instead focusing on Anderson’s face—or what I could see of it. My exhale was a rather shaky one as I asked, “That bad?”
The doc offered an ambiguous shrug. “Depends.” He nodded at a tray to his left where what I guessed were the same vials of blood he’d drawn yesterday. “We couldn’t really get any of the tests done with that.”
Stepping closer, I scrutinized the rack before picking up one of the vials, watching the congealed mess slowly move side to side as I tried to slosh it around.
“Please tell me you used them for something else before and didn’t properly clean them? Like, I don’t know, glue? No?”
I didn’t need to see him shake his head to know that it was only wishful thinking.
“That happened less than twenty minutes after you left,” one of the nurses explained. I thought I remembered her from before—one of the gate guards by the main docks. “I barely got enough liquid out to smear it on two petri dishes. That’s those right there. I could do none of the other tests so I figured I might as well see if anything grows at all.” I glanced at where she indicated the two plastic dishes, heavily wrapped with film to keep them thoroughly sealed. The trace of the swab she’d done was still visible, but overgrown by a thick layer of white and red… something. That certainly did not look like what I remembered, vaguely, from my microbiology lab time in school
. But next to the other dishes, they looked perfectly normal.
“What the fuck is this?” I said as I picked up a petri dish that looked like the surface of a really fine blue cheese.
“Your stool sample,” the same nurse supplied. “And that’s a multi-antibiotics medium.” I could barely make out her writing, spelling out an entire grocery list of the most common antibiotics used in culture mediums. The bacteria weren’t just growing on top of the medium but had grown right through it. I carefully set down the dish before I could drop it.
“That’s—“ I tried to find the right words but failed. “Unfortunate,” didn’t quite cut it. The scientist in me was very fascinated by the dishes, utterly useless for analysis and results as they were, but I’d seen a few volumes of the common microbiology textbooks on one of the shelves by the door. I was sure that with proper testing and use of more specific components in the growth medium, it would be easy to discern exactly what made up that fuzzy, speckled goo in there.
The much larger part of me that had “survival” as her prime directive was a breath away from abject horror—and quickly getting there.
The following silence, filled with my ever more erratic breathing that I tried, in vain, to keep under control, was well into the realm of awkward, until Anderson cleared his throat. “The tests are, of course, inconclusive,” he said. All eyes zoomed to the petri dishes, and his voice held a slight hitch as he went on. “We don’t really have the stocks here to start proper analysis.”
“Yeah, not sure that’s even necessary,” I said, still staring at the wonders of nature my body had produced. “I can pretty much tell you what’s going on just looking at these.”
The nurse gave something that sounded very close to a muffled laugh. “Your guess is as good as mine.” When she caught sight of my raised brows, she shrugged. “Literally. I have a PhD in botany, specializing in microbes.” So much for her being a nurse, but I didn’t verbally admit my wrong assumption. Pointing at me, she said, “You’re a virologist. So maybe I should say, you might have the upper hand, seeing as the virus you’re infected with is up your alley. What I can tell you is that you have a secondary bacterial, maybe also fungal, infection.”
“That’s one way of phrasing it,” I grumbled, finally catching Nate’s imploring stare. “I’m like Typhoid Mary. Only for different bacteria, and not contagious. I hope.”
“That’s not quite how I would have phrased it,” Anderson interjected, but at my flat stare stopped protesting.
“Close enough,” I stated, forcing myself to take another calming breath so whatever else I was about to say next wouldn’t come out as a panicked squeal. But my mind was blank, giving me nothing for once.
Nate, ever practical and proving once again that he wasn’t easy to shake, turned to Anderson. “What are our options? If you don’t know shit, who might?”
For that, I had an answer. “The Silo. I can tell you already that Dom’s going to bust a nut just hearing about this.” And my, weren’t that quite the happy thoughts that came up at the back of my mind at the mere memory of the Silo scientists and what topic we’d last discussed.
Anderson nodded. “We can try another round of experiments, but honestly, even if we put you on a cocktail of everything antimicrobial that we have, I’m not sure that would do anything except kill off your gut microbiome and worsen your condition because of that alone.” He glanced at Nate. “That must look scary as hell, but it doesn’t have to mean much. After all, she’s doing fine—“
“I’m not freaking out because of some weird colored shit growing on a dish,” Nate stated in a way that also contended that he wasn’t concerned in the least. “It’s her reaction that I’m basing my level of concern on.” He didn’t say it, but to me that spelled out rather plainly that I did a shit job remaining calm. But then, why would I?
I still didn’t know what to say, or even ask, for that matter. Nate took over when that became obvious. “You couldn’t conduct any other tests, I presume? Except for this?”
“There’s nothing we can do,” the nurse—botanist, I quickly corrected myself—explained. “Her blood’s congealing at a rate that makes pretty much everything we could do useless, besides maybe a standard glucose level test. I’m not sure whether possibly being pre-diabetic would be of much concern now, considering the circumstances. She doesn’t really have symptoms, and none that are even remotely related to an infection. No elevated or lowered body temperature, normal pulse and blood pressure, no nausea or diarrhea, and no swollen lymph nodes that relate to her immune system ramping up for a fight. It might be a simple by-product of her altered state, and maybe not something to be concerned about.”
“Or I’m rotting away with every breath I take,” I added jokingly.
Anderson gave a shrug that was an, “or that,” if I’d ever seen one. Not very comforting.
“If the people at the Silo know more, that’s where we’re going,” Nate insisted with a sidelong glance my way. Far was it from me to protest. “Unless you can think of anyone else we might consider paying a visit?”
It took me a second to realize that he was fishing for information. So much for him trusting the people here. Suddenly, his uncustomarily friendly behavior around Greene from last evening made my own paranoia spike. Greene had connections, as he so liked to flaunt, and with these people being, without a doubt, his medical elite, it wasn’t a long stretch that they’d be the ones in the know if there was anything to know about. The expression on Anderson’s face was a little bland for my taste, but the women looked sincere as they both shook their heads. He was likely just better at delivering bad news and consequently schooling his features.
“The Silo’s your best bet,” Anderson insisted. “If you want, I can give you a list of possible chemicals you might procure on the way up there that might be of use, or textbooks you might come across, but considering your level of knowledge in the field, Annie was right. Your guess is at least as good as ours.”
There wasn’t much else to say, so we left, my brain still half frozen, Nate’s obviously kicking into overdrive. “I’ll call ahead to tell our folks to pack some things,” he explained as we stepped into the first rays of morning sunshine. “We’re almost done setting up the defenses, so we can leave right away. Let someone else pick up the slack.”
“Wait.” I didn’t just say that to make him halt, but also to give my thoughts a moment to catch up.
When I didn’t go on right away, Nate’s brows drew together. “What?”
“You’re taking this awfully in stride,” I noted, my voice surprisingly wry.
He shrugged. “Far as I see it, there’s nothing definitive to take yet.”
“But you are concerned.”
He opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. I couldn’t help but feel queasy when I realized that he was trying to be tactful. “Of course I am,” he finally offered. “Watching you silently shut down is not something I simply ignore. But there’s a possible solution to a problem we cannot yet define, so it makes perfect sense to go for that.”
“We don’t even know if they’ll let us into the Silo. We heard nothing from them since Stanton went silent. Nobody came to join our little crusade, and nobody told us they’d shoot us on sight if we ever crossed over the border into Montana. I don’t think they’ll greet us with open arms if they find out I’m a walking viral bomb.”
“They did last time,” he noted, snorting when I glared at him. “Oh, come on, don’t take this so seriously. We’ve been joking for months that you’re my half-zombie girl.”
“That was before I knew that I had half-congealed glue pumping through my veins.”
“But it’s still pumping,” Nate stressed, and of course had to correct me. “It was still liquid when Anderson stuck a needle in you, or he wouldn’t have let you just walk out like you did. Besides, they only geared up to protect themselves. If any of them were actually concerned that you’re a health hazard to others, they would have l
ocked you up as soon as they realized something was weird with your various bodily fluids. And semi-solids.”
“And that’s about the only reason why I’m not sitting in a corner, rocking myself,” I bit back, then forced myself to calm down. For once, he wasn’t the reason for the tension my body was vibrating with, and didn’t need to consequently suffer for it. “And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try the Silo. I’m just concerned that if you and I show up there, alone, and just lay it all out as it is, they will shoot us on sight. You’d do the same.”
Nate conceded that point with a slow nod. “So what level of subterfuge do you propose, wife dearest?”
Suddenly, that term sounded more like mockery to me than minutes before. Half-zombie girl, my ass.
“Not subterfuge,” I replied, thinking. “We just don’t need to be all open and honest about every little aspect of our visit. They keep secrets from us. Why shouldn’t we pay them back in turn?”
My musing got cut short when Gita turned around a corner, bearing two steaming styrofoam cups. The sight of her was both welcome and not so much so, making me wonder if I should turn back and ask Anderson for a box of surgical masks. That was certainly the first thing on my list of items to find as soon as we were back out there. The familiar skip in her step faltered maybe two seconds after she’d laid eyes on us, proving that she was damn good at reading people—but then I doubted Greene would have sent her with us before if she wasn’t.
“That bad, huh?” she asked, partly joking, but cleared her throat before either of us could answer. “Here, these are for you.” She held the cups out to us, waiting for Nate to accept them. I was suddenly loath to touch anyone I might regret losing. Where was Greene for a hug when I really wanted to give him one? “Gabriel asked me to ask you over for breakfast with him. That is, if you can spare the time?” Belatedly I noted the haphazard stack of papers in her hand, figuring that those were the shopping lists we’d been talking about earlier. Scavenging? Not really on my mind any longer.
Green Fields (Book 7): Affliction Page 3