“They’ve canceled the morning meeting and we have a sample list to turn in by ten.” She sat down quickly and dropped her tray and iPad hard on the table. “Time to earn your keep.”
“Just be gentle with me, it’s my first time you know.” It wasn’t worth looking up. I now had a clue what I was expected to do. Some of it could be very interesting. I thought back to the lighthouse and Robert, and the dead boy. I guess sometimes, you do get what you ask for.
“Asshole.” So with that classic interlude, our professional relationship started.
“I see you like bacon.”
“Well, Kathy, you know what they say; bacon is red, violets are blue, poetry is hard, Bacon!”
Number one, actually number BH4-7P1417, for the day was a thin young woman, maybe mid twenties, her head and complete body had been recently shaved and washed as part of the quarantine procedure. All in all, it was impossible to tell what in the real world she had once looked like. Sagging small breasts and female genitalia was our only way to determine sex accurately, as for race, it was anyone’s guess. A good portion of the left side of her face was gone, as well as all the fingers on the right hand. She had that grey greasy skin that all the zombies exhibit, some kind of oily sweat that made the skin shiny. Her musculature seemed particularly well toned. Maybe that’s what happens when you have spent the last few weeks running down your prey, one after another. She was supine and naked. Her ankles, calves, thighs, abdomen, chest, arms, jaw, and forehead, were secured to the stainless steel autopsy table by thick leather straps. I would have to remove some of the straps as part of the procedure. Kathy would walk me through it and be the back up. The zombie’s eyes darted back and forth, alternating her gaze from Kathy to me, full of infinite fury and not even an inkling of fear. Her blinking stayed at a constant one per every three seconds, and it never seemed to change. Kathy took some photos and I noted on the chart that she was sixty five inches tall, and weighed one-hundred and twenty-two pounds.
“What’s up with this?” I pointed out an approximate three inch by three inch square section of skin that had been incised from the zombie’s upper right arm, just over the deltoid.
“That’s odd.” Kathy moved over to a large green plastic binder. There were no computers in the room. “Let’s see, records indicate she came from the Oyster Bay area, uh, we have had her for two days. Nothing out of the ordinary listed. Okay, let’s get rolling. You can do this, right?”
“I don’t think there is a right anymore. Kathy, why are we really doing this? What’s the point?” She just looked at me and shrugged.
The guys who processed the zombies just cleaned them up, shaved them, strapped em down, and moved them into place. The problem for me was that I had to have access to the chest and abdomen, which meant removing two of the straps. This would result in a dangerous, bucking zombie. Kathy showed me the way. To solve this problem, we used meat hooks, yes, real meat hooks, and yes, the kind right out of Texas Chainsaw. I had to insert them into the back and make sure I had successfully hooked several ribs and lumbar vertebrae. Once tension was applied, the creature would literally be pinned to the table. Even so, she moved quite a bit and I wore a steel mesh glove on my left hand to avoid cutting myself. Kathy’s job was just to watch, take notes, supervise me, and shoot the zombie if things started to go south. Once done with the immobilization, I proceeded to make the standard Y chest incision and carefully pulled back the skin. The zombie never even flinched or showed any signs of pain. The skin pulled back far more effortlessly than on a standard human cadaver, and the tissue layers separated from the muscle with remarkable ease. It was like peeling a banana. As expected, the muscles were well developed. She was flexing even as I cut. The surprising thing was that there was very little bleeding. There would be some initial, sometimes intense, blood flow with each cut, but this quickly turned into slight seepage and rapidly stopped. That medic was not kidding. They really do clot like nobody’s business. I used retractors to hold some of the tissue back.
“Kathy, the pupils didn’t even dilate?”
“That’s normal.”
Now I had to be more careful than ever as I proceeded to cut the ribs. The bones were softer than I expected, but a bad snip combined with the tension they were under and... I stopped half way. Sweat and heavy breathing had fogged my mask. I quickly felt claustrophobic and trapped in my biohazard suit. This sucks. All you do is sweat, get slimy and you’re stuck in this fucking piece of…
“Sorry, I just need to calm down. I don’t like this any more than you do. What is her pulse like?”
“Steady at thirty-five BPM. John, just take your time and watch your breathing.”
Once my mask had cleared, I continued to snip each rib until all twenty-two were cut and the skeletal breast removed. I could see the lungs, a pinkish grey, slowly fill with air and exhale. The heart was beating. How could this thing be alive?
“How does the EKG look?”
“Steady so far.”
“You know, Kathy, this had to have been done a thousand times before, with people much better qualified than me or you. All we are doing is reinventing the wheel. Why does it feel like we are being set up?”
She looked at me. “Desperation.”
“Then you know this is bullshit. We only do tissue samples. This gross anatomy crap is just not going to get us anywhere.”
When I looked back at the zombie, she had stopped shifting around. I think she realized she was stuck and just waited for the opportunity. Her eyes never left me. But we continued. I took tissue samples from the lung, liver, and various other organs. Why did we do nothing with the cardiovascular system? Why vivisect and not dissect? In general, everything looked okay, all things considered. The brain was next. I had to move the headband over her eyes so I could cut away the scalp and pull the skin and hair over her face, exposing the glistening white skullcap. This tissue is highly vascularized and she should be bleeding like a stuffed pig, but wasn’t. I cut away the calvaria and the meninges to expose the brain. There it was again, while the rest of the zombie’s soft tissue exhibited some degree of decomposition, the brain seemed fairly fresh. What about the rest of the central nervous system. The zombie was still with us, struggling to blow her scalp off her mouth and get more air into her one functioning lung. Without thinking, I grabbed a surgical spatula, slid it behind her cerebrum, cerebellum, and severed her medulla, and she just switched off and died, again.
“John, I suppose you had a good reason for that.” There was more than a hint of anger in her voice.
“Not really.” I collected the neural sample, reviewed the sample bags and made sure everything was in order. “We’ve got what we needed. Let’s get out of here.”
By the book, it should take us twenty minutes to do a post shower de-gown. Kathy showed me short cuts to bring it down to around five.
“Are you hungry?” I felt my stomach growl.
“Not really; it’s fish and beans tonight.”
“Fish and beans? Oh well, I cannot pass up this culinary experience. I never really liked fish, but I think now is the point in time to force an acquired taste. I think fish is going to be on the menu for quite some time to come. What time do we meet?”
“Eighteen-thirty. Enjoy!” At least she was not mad at me. Kathy got half way down the hall when she spun. “Hey, you’re from New England, right? I heard the Bourne and Sagamore bridges were blown and Cape Cod is isolated.”
“Thanks. Well, we will have some great beach parties next summer.” I continued in search of food. Holy cow. The Sagamore and the Bourne are gone. Just thinking about them brought back the memory of all those childhood trips to the Cape, crossing the bridge sitting in the back seat, my father driving and all was well. It didn’t matter what direction or what bridge. What was important, was the good window seats. I have, had, two brothers and a sister so it was good behavior and a roll of the dice as to who got it. You see, the good seat is the one with the view of the canal through the
girders of the bridge. Time goes to a funny place when you are crossing the bridge, sitting in the good window seats. Oh well, I still have the beaches.
I took off for the cafeteria. I still didn’t really know anybody but Kathy, and generally kept to myself, hanging out on deck whenever time and weather made it possible. Lots of great hiding places among the crates on deck, plenty of spots to read or zone. You know, it is kind of strange that no one has asked me to shave.
The place was maybe a quarter full and it was five o’clock, or seventeen hundred if you cared. Holy crap, did it stink! Someone clearly had a culinary brain fart. What normally would have been a decent meal of fresh fish, red beans, canned onions and tomatoes, and various spices, had been miraculously turned into a pile of inedible steaming shit, with fish bones. On the plus side, someone had made bread! Gradually, I began to notice how each day a tiny chunk of the old world was removed. Today, it was butter. If there is anyone left in twenty years, the concept of toilet paper is gonna blow their minds.
I had an hour to kill before the meeting, the third in two days. About half a dozen of us ‘scientists’ will sit around a big table and pretend we are doing something of value. I went back to my bunk and lay down, tried to rest. All in all, things were not bad. I was still surviving the apocalypse and eating on a regular basis, well sometimes. Stuff was moving along on the Island, or on the L&I, as it has become known. The military quickly adapted to a million fucking zombies all attacking at once. The key was patience, using their flocking mentality to set them up in areas of your choosing, and taking them out en masse. This meant less destruction to the infrastructure. The barrier route has been worked out and some test construction underway. Block Island has been liberated and soon the Cape. I don’t know why I keep thinking of it as a totally military thing. It’s actually all of us, a human thing. I’m just glad humanity lucked out and ended with a bunch of well disciplined, armed young people to do what needed to be done.
July 3rd-5th
Day three, four, and five, was more of the same. Each day, we would get a report at the morning meeting with stats about the subject, tissue checklist, special requests, and any important info the other teams wanted to pass along. Size of sample was specified and whole organs were sometimes requested. We are currently spending a lot of time with lungs. The group found it amusing that one of the people making the requests sent them in German. We would be asked for something like, ‘Zahlen Sie Aufmerksamkeit, um einen großen Teil des rechten vorhergehenden Kostgängers zurückzugewinnen vorhergehend vorsprung’ or something like ‘Pay attention to recover a large portion of the right anterior lobe boarder’ and nobody passing along the orders seemed to notice. Luckily, the computer could translate. Each team got one zombie a day. Kathy and I got the morning shift, and if we started at seven, we would be finished by lunch. A couple of techs would clean up after us and take care of the corpse. In a couple of hours, the lab was ready and the second team went in, and then the third. After two weeks, we would rotate one shift forward. I thought it strange, considering what the future holds, that we were told this project had a two month life span and we should expect no real breaks till then.
Kathy and I usually had dinner together and talked about life before everything went south. I haven’t heard of an official name for the end of the world. Talking about the past was one huge minefield and often prefaced with before all this happened or simply, in the past. I learned the she was not a huge fan of the military, but they allowed her to do research into areas she loved. Like me, she liked the outdoors. She also had a son who just graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder with a degree in mechanical engineering. I told her about teaching and my anthropology research. We spent a lot of time telling stories of the places we had traveled and the strange things we had seen. I never talked about the sad twists and turns that had brought me to Cassandra, and she never mentioned the video or asked me any stupid zombie questions.
Kathy did drop a couple of hints that she was aware of some of the details of my immediate past, but it was understood that for now, this area was off limits. Another item that had an unspoken taboo was the future. Nobody, and I mean nobody, talked of things to come. We didn’t even ask what tomorrow’s dinner would be. You stay in the day, in the moment, and let the future take care of itself. With just a couple simple rules, you could remain in the safe zone, and maybe, hold on to a minute piece of sanity.
After a day or two, I actually began to like Kathy. She really wasn’t that much of a bitch and I guess she was starting to find out that I wasn’t that big of an asshole. We both knew what we were doing didn’t make much sense, and I suspected, she knew some stuff she was not letting me in on, but that was okay. At least, I had a friend.
When I was done for the day, I would find a hiding place on deck and watch the sea and the sunset over Connecticut. There were still a number of fires burning, which paradoxically made the sunsets all the more beautiful. I wondered how Robert was doing on the Vineyard, always promising myself I would give him a call tomorrow. I miss you, Elizabeth. I keep waiting for the dam to burst, but I don’t think I am consciously repressing it. It’s just these storm clouds on the horizon that never get any closer. God, do I need a good therapist.
We never celebrated the 4th of July.
One day, dinner was pizza, and Maureen, the very Irish, very redhead lab manager, informed me that most of my free time would be devoted to being trained as an EMT. Everybody not up to date and qualified would be taking the course. Some specialists from the army were going to chopper in for the task. Sounded like one of the first really good, e.g. head out of ass, ideas I have heard of in a while. Things might be looking up.
Chapter 18 ~ The Tone of the Thunder
July 6th
The next day, someone pounding at my door waked me. My clock read four twenty-six a.m., it was one of the techs.
“There has been an incident in the lab. You are to get down there now!”
“Huh? Okay.” And do what? There was no need to dress, since I was sleeping in some scrubs.
There was no claxon or alarm sounding, but people were rushing about. I was still half-asleep thinking about my dream, the roller coaster at Rocky Point Park and the remote possibility of bacon with breakfast, when I literally ran into Kathy.
“Good, it’s you. We have to get down there and gowned up now. Something went wrong in the second lab.”
What second lab? “Okay, but we both know gowning is BS. What second lab?”
“John, listen to me. They gave you a commission because you’re some kind of hero to some people, but you don’t know how this thing works. If you don’t follow orders, you won’t be let in and you may not get let out. Get it? Now, let’s just see what the hell is going on.” And with that, she headed down the hallway.
I followed her. “What second lab, Kathy? I’m not joking. What the hell is going on here?”
She spoke as we went. “I found out earlier this week. There is some kind of other lab facility on this ship, somewhere in the restricted area.”
“Hey, hey, wait a second.” She stopped.
“What the hell is going on here? I was under the impression that the restricted area was basically for the zombies and maybe some medical shit. Now you’re telling me it’s a real research facility?”
“If you took a second to think about it, a shit load of this vessel is off limits. Yes, they keep the zombies there, but there is this whole other world we are not supposed to interact with. Who do you think we send the tissue samples to? Who do you think gives us our orders in the first place? Get your goddamn head out of your ass and stay close to me.” And off she went again.
Crap, I had not considered the restricted area all that much. I just made assumption after assumption. That’s where they keep the zombies, the samples go to another ship, and I didn’t care where the orders came from.
We started to make our way deeper into the belly of the ship when we ran into a couple of armed marin
es. They seemed to be expecting us.
“Fitzgerald, Patrick, right? Okay, this way.” Without waiting for a response, they turned and headed for a closed door.
Using a key card, one of the marines opened the restricted door. Nothing really changed; no change in air pressure, same color scheme, just deeper in the ship where I did not wish to be. Everyone was armed and seemed agitated. We passed one room where the door was cracked open. Inside, someone was crying hysterically and some kind of violent commotion was going on. We stopped at another door and just as the guards swiped his key card, I heard muffled sounds that had to be gunfire. Kathy and I looked at each other. The marines opened the door with weapons at the ready. Several people in scrubs and lab coats came streaming out, and all had side arms.
Someone screamed as they rushed by our escorts. “Con Three! Con Three!” Okay…Con Three…I have no clue what this means. I could look past the open door and see a long well lit passageway, which could easily run the rest of the ship. All the doors were open, giving it this weird tunnel effect. At the far end, were some figures going back and forth across the hallway. Just glimpses. Most of them appeared white. Lab coats? A few were dull green. Then much closer to us another figure stepped into the corridor. This one was naked, tall, skinny, bald and grey: a fucking zombie!
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