“Same thing.” Momma waved dismissively, shuffling around Larissa toward the benches where most of the people huddled, watching silently. Momma kept walking past the crowd toward the aisle leading to the doors. “Scott, bring the girl. T, bring Miss Doctor.”
Scott, Momma’s burly guard, threw the blanket over Larissa one way, then the other, wrapping her like a burrito in two quick flicks. He reached down and lifted her with no effort, hoisting her to his arms to cradle her against his chest.
“Wait,” Wendy said, stepping in front of the big man.
Troy grabbed Wendy by the elbow, this time his grip strong enough to pull her out of the way of the lumbering giant.
“Goddammit, Troy, let me go!”
Momma spun around, glaring. Her eyes darted between them. Troy scowled as his hand dug into Wendy’s arm painfully. He pulled and pushed in one motion, shoving Wendy away from the burly man, who was also looking back with suspicion.
Wendy stumbled toward the stage.
“If I didn’t know it better,” Momma said toward Wendy. “I’d say you two were getting friendly.”
“Him?” Wendy sneered, rubbing the soreness in the crook of her arm where his fingers had dug in. “No thanks.”
Momma harrumphed and kept walking. The burly man carrying Larissa smiled but followed obediently. Troy stepped up next to Wendy and gave her another rough shove. His eyes reflected his anger. She shouldn’t have used his name. Even Momma didn’t use his name.
Twenty-Four
Troy pulled Wendy by the arm as they marched down the snow-packed path. The line of people who poured out of the Conservation Center behind them looked like refugees escaping a war-torn European country during World War II, except instead of a haggard, downtrodden appearance, they all wore expectant expressions. Whispers were passed back and forth, smiles, even a few chuckles…probably at her expense.
A man jogged ahead through the tamped-down snow to a cinderblock building that skirted a fenced-in area. He fumbled with keys and unlocked a big, solid door that swung open just as Momma reached it. He stepped inside and held the door for her. Quarter-height windows near the ceiling let in enough light to see by. The building wasn’t made for people, that much was immediately apparent. Two large pens took up the majority of the building’s space. Each had tall, thick bars from floor to ceiling with sturdy crossbeams and a locked, gated door. Enormous steel sliding doors on the opposite end of the building were used to let big animals in and out of the pens, both closed now to keep the winter chill at bay.
In the pen on the left was a lone, young man. He lurched toward them, moaning.
A zombie!
Wendy didn’t want to step into the building, but Troy pulled her through the door. The fetid stench of defecation and decay greeted her. The windows may have let in light, but none were open to let in any fresh air.
Momma stepped close to the bars and bobbed her head fondly. “That’s right, Momma’s here. Don’t worry, baby, I’ll get you fed.”
The zombie moaned louder and shambled straight into the bars. His hands drove through and reached for Momma, his fingers grasping emptiness in the mere inches of air between them. Momma didn’t even flinch.
Several people filed in behind Wendy and fanned out along the back wall, as far away from the pen as possible. The door swung closed and the cool, fresh air from outside was instantly smothered by the horrid odor of the penned zombie.
Momma turned around to face Wendy, her eyes hard and penetrating. The hands continued to grope the air behind her, sweeping back and forth, grabbing for Momma’s wiry hair, missing only by inches. Wendy stared wide-eyed.
“First time seeing him face-to-face?”
Wendy swallowed, a little confused by Momma’s question. Was she asking about this particular zombie, or any zombie? She had faced plenty. Far more than her fair share, that was for sure.
“Him’s just one. That’s a small number to think about. Most folk think in small numbers. One, two, three…five? Ten? The number of people here, now,” she added, sweeping her hand toward those standing against the wall. “Then there’s them that don’t consider us numbers of consequence. Fractions of parts of segments all going into a piece of the pie. One grain of sugar. Five? Ten? How do those matter? And yet put a grain of sugar on your tongue and what do you taste?”
Momma closed her eyes and licked her lips as though enjoying something sweet.
“Small numbers make all the difference in the world, right?”
Wendy still didn’t answer. She didn’t even think it was a question. Momma opened her eyes, glaring at Wendy.
“Then there’s them like you, Miss Doctor,” Momma said, a slight sneer curling her lip. “You’re used up. Take, take, take. Do this and that. Make, make, make.” Momma sighed and shoved a hand into her pocket. She removed an old orange prescription bottle and held it up in front of her, showing it to Wendy. As she shook it, Wendy could see the pills inside had long ago crumbled to powder. “Everything done is prescribed. You’re told what to watch, what to eat, what to listen to, what to drive, and what to like and why. Mega media made our world, shaped you in ways you’ll never believe…not until you stop taking their prescriptions.”
Wendy glanced to the side, at Troy. He stood motionless, grim. She licked her lips and sniffled. The stench was awful. The zombie in the cage was relentless with his groping hand and swinging arm, possibly doing himself harm by pushing his own body into the bars repeatedly.
“You got the prescription or not?”
“I’m sorry?” Wendy asked.
“Why’s she so dense?” Momma glowered at Troy, who shrugged. “This here’s Egan,” she went on, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. She leveled her gaze on Wendy. “You cured her.” Momma waved indifferently at Larissa. “Now cure him.”
It irritated Wendy that Momma was acting like she didn’t comprehend her, like they spoke a different language. In a way it was true. Momma’s babbling was hard to follow.
“You don’t cure him, we throw you out.”
“What?” Wendy could hardly believe her ears.
Momma took in a deep breath. “Cure…Egan,” she said slowly. “Or I’m gonna put you outside the fence.”
“Outside?! You can’t expect me to—”
“You cured her?” This time Momma pointed her finger at Larissa accusingly.
“No. I told you I didn’t.”
This bothered Momma. She glared at Troy, then at her big man-servant, Scott, who still carried Larissa in his hulking arms, then back at Wendy. “Well, then. You best learn how it was done real fast. You’ve got two days.”
“Two days?”
“I’m counting on you, Miss Doctor. I don’t want to have to call your boss. I don’t trust him any farther than I can throw his little girl, here.”
“Wait—”
“Everyone,” Momma said, addressing the crowd along the wall. “Miss Doctor here is going to be staying with us a few days.” She paused, looking down her nose at Wendy. “Maybe longer. Make sure she gets what she needs. T, you take her over to the lab and get her started.”
“Yes, Momma,” Troy replied.
“Hang on,” Wendy said, stepping toward Momma. “You can’t cure him. He’s not coming back. Whoever Egan was before…before,” Wendy stammered, waving at the zombie in the pen. “Before this. That’s gone.”
Momma glared at her.
“You do understand that, right?”
There was dead silence in the room. Even the zombie Egan seemed to pause his ineffective attempts to get at Momma.
“And see to it someone’s always watching her,” Momma added evenly.
Twenty-Five
Troy stuffed a key into the deadbolt of a door to another building. They were alone, but Wendy didn’t trust that there wasn’t someone nearby, listening, ready to report back to Momma anything overheard. She looked around, up, and down the pathway trampled in the snow through the overgrown trees and shrubs. The sight reminded her of t
he forest at Midamerica where they found Larissa. Even though the trees there had been sparse, their branches barren like skeletons, the haze made it hard to see any distance, the same way the dense underbrush did around here.
Troy pushed the door open. Rows of stacked, plastic-covered equipment and containers filled the interior. The breeze caused by the opening of the door shook the plastic and it snapped once like a ballooning sail. “After you.”
Inside was a gutted office. The cubicles were filled with plastic-covered boxes stacked eight feet high. Some file boxes marked with the letters X-MAS were right in front of her. Behind those, a tall crate with U.S. Army stenciled on its side leaned against the cubical wall. A two-foot wide wooden spool with thick, coiled wire peeked out from a tarp.
Troy left the door open for light as he came in, abruptly stomping his feet just inside the door.
Wendy stomped her own boots. “What is all this junk?”
“You never know what you’re going to need. Pretty much anything and everything we come across that’s still in good shape we haul back here for dry storage. Not so much anymore. Everything out there is useless junk these days. Ten years will do that to even the best-made stuff.”
Wendy nodded. She pointed at the boxes. “Christmas lights?”
Troy smiled. “Yeah. Momma strings them up in the auditorium, and we cut down a tree and everyone gets presents under it. A new pair of boots or gloves, or maybe a book or something small, but meaningful, you know?” Troy shrugged, looking at the piles around them instead of her.
“So, she’s good to you?” Wendy didn’t really care if Momma was good to Troy. She only cared about what kind of person she was in a general sense.
“I suppose.” Again Troy avoided looking at her. “Why?”
“She’s got Larissa.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried.”
“Well, I am. Where are they taking her?”
“Wherever Momma goes, for now.”
“Where’s that?”
“Nowhere. Just here. Don’t worry.”
“I have to worry. She’s my responsibility.”
“Responsibility?” Troy nearly laughed out loud. “Who put that in your head? The Senator?”
“No. You did.”
Troy seemed caught off guard.
“When you abducted me this morning.”
“Rescued,” he corrected.
“That’s not what it looks like from my side of the table.”
“Alright, fine. Call it what you want, but let me ask you something. Did the Senator actually make Larissa your responsibility? What were your instructions from him?”
Don’t let Tom see her. She remembered his words verbatim. Gary, Tom’s older brother, was put in charge of Larissa. He had one of the three coded RFID chips that would open the recovery room door. She hated working with Gary, but thankfully their time together only overlapped in the afternoon for the three to four hours that Wendy eased the drugs and let Larissa’s eyes open to see the world, to see Gary’s face so he could speak with her and try to get her to recognize him, to implant repetitive cognition during her lucid time. After all, he was going to be the one standing beside her when the cameras started showing up. The good brother. The brother willing to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“He wanted her looking pretty, right? How many hours did you perform cosmetic surgery on her?”
Too many. The whole first day. One nip-tuck after the next to cut out whatever nest of bugs or infection Larissa had contracted. Cleaning the teeth and gums was done by a specialist they flew in. Most of the work around the face by a plastic surgeon. They wanted Larissa looking like the poster child for successful zombie curative research. Never mind it wouldn’t look anything like that in real-world use with “normal” people. Never mind that she still carried Hepatitis-C caused by consuming human flesh. Never mind that she had the mental capacity of a nine-month-old baby. Those are things they wouldn’t tell the media. That was why they hadn’t cleared Wendy to go home. They dangled the threat of a lifetime in prison over her head to keep her in line.
“Not just me,” Wendy admitted. “They flew in specialists.”
“Yeah. They want her looking perfect. A scripted success to show America how great he can make us, if you vote for him, of course.”
“Politics aside—”
“This isn’t about politics.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Wendy snapped.
Troy straightened.
“As much as I hate him, and I can assure you there is no one here who hates him more than I do, I agree with him.”
“What?” Troy looked at her like she was crazy.
“He’s right. We need to cure everyone. We need to stop brokering in fear and let people come back over here and fix things. He’s not wrong in saying it. He’s just not sincere about it.”
“Huh,” Troy said and smiled. “So, you think the ends will justify the means?”
“No.” Wendy shook her head. “I think he’s an ass.”
Troy laughed. “Agreed. But, hey, we need to get you setup.”
“For what?”
“To make the cure.”
The cure. She sneered the words in her head. She couldn’t make the cure. Not what was in Larissa’s blood. She didn’t have that formula. She could try to reproduce what was in the vial in her pocket, or use some of it to cure that poor bastard in the pens, but not much else.
“I…I can’t—”
“What do you need to try?”
Was he seriously dimwitted? She couldn’t try. Not here. “A lab.” She looked around, at a loss for words at seeing such a clutter of unusable junk. “Someplace clean, with power.”
“We’ve got that. The vet’s station next door will be your lab. What else?”
“A heater,” she said.
“Ha. For real. What else?”
“I don’t…I….” She stared at Troy with her mouth open.
“What do you need to get started?”
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
She pointed at the stacks of covered boxes and crates. “From this junk?”
“Lay it on me. We probably have something you can use.”
“Um…okay.” She crossed her arms. “A flow cytomer.” He stared at her blankly. “A blood chemistry analyzer. I mean, I’m dead without that.”
“Okay, it’ll be over there,” he said, pointing toward the far end of the room. He smiled. “We may have to dig.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“What else?”
“Pipettes. Um, flasks…beakers…petri dishes! Glass slides, a good microscope, syringes, gloves, an ultracentrifuge. Ideally, an ion exchange chromatography system like the Metrohm—”
“Whoa!” Troy held up his hands. “Let’s start with flasks and beakers. I doubt we have any iambic pentameters laying around, and honestly, I don’t know what the hell it even is.”
Wendy snorted a laugh. “Right. Like I said, you can’t be serious.”
“Well, let me put it like this, then,” Troy said, walking carefully into the maze of stacks. “You’ve got two days to make a good impression on Momma before she throws you out.”
“Great pep talk,” Wendy said humorlessly. She sighed, which made her cough again. Goddamned cold! “And a CO2 incubator!”
Twenty-Six
The door to the veterinary office jerked open before Wendy could put her hand on the knob. She let out a startled cry and jumped back several steps, running into Troy, who was carrying part of the blood chemistry analyzer. The box she was carrying nearly toppled out of her hands.
“You must be Doctor O’Farrell,” the man behind the door said excitedly. He was a tall, gaunt man with a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard and thick coke-bottle glasses that rested halfway down his nose. His layered clothes appeared two sizes too big over his wrinkled and creased skin. Age spots ran up one side of his neck like deep bruises.
Wendy’s heart race
d. She put a hand across the top of the box to steady it as she took a deep breath and coughed to the side.
“This is Doctor Jacobs,” Troy said between breaths. “Sorry, I forgot to mention he might be showing up.”
“Here, let me help with that,” Doctor Jacobs said as he stepped into the snow and put a hand under the heavy metal casing of the analyzer. With his frail frame, he didn’t offer much help except to guide Troy through the door. “Momma told me you two were coming over. I thought I’d start cleaning up.”
“That’s great, Doc,” Troy grunted.
“Haven’t had much to do in here this winter, you know.”
“That’s a good thing,” Troy said, letting out his breath as he squatted to put the big device on the floor next to a desk. Doctor Jacobs held it at an angle as Troy got his fingers out from under it, and they both eased it to the ground.
“There,” Doctor Jacobs said satisfactorily.
Wendy slid the box she was carrying onto a file cabinet and quickly pushed the door shut to keep the frigid air outside. It was still miserably cold inside, though.
Doctor Jacobs held out a hand to Wendy. “We haven’t had the pleasure,” he said. Wendy yanked her glove off and shook his icy hand, wishing she hadn’t. The cold of his skin made her own fingers feel like icicles. “I’m Doctor Peter Jacobs. I’m the resident quack. How was your trip up? Uneventful, I hope.”
“Well,” Wendy said, not sure whether the man was mad or just overenthusiastic at the prospect of having another doctor to speak with…if he was actually a doctor at all. She shoved her hand back into the glove. “It’s been eventful, actually.”
“Ha. Yes, it has. Yes, it has. Say, I took the liberty of starting to clean out the ancillary emergency room because it has windows and the old medicinal refrigerator in it. I thought you might need something like that for your experiments.
“Oh, and I’ve done a few blood draws on Egan already. I was trying my hand at a little research of my own. Obviously, I’m not as well versed in the subject as you, Doctor O’Farrell. I mean, I read your paper on protein-saturation and its effects on cognitive recognition. Really amazing discoveries. Working with consumption pathogen subjects like that…wow. I mean, you really are in the forefront of things.”
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 10