“Well, thank you,” Wendy said, wondering how he managed to get his hands on her research. It was a paper she published in the Journal of Medicine, but she didn’t think they had an internet connection out here, or mail service for that matter.
“Hey, Doc,” Troy interrupted. They both turned to him. “Mind if I leave her here with you while I go get the rest of her things?”
“No, no, not at all,” Doctor Jacobs said. “Go on.”
“I can come help,” Wendy said, hoping he wouldn’t leave her alone with Jacobs.
“No,” Troy told her. “Take a look at the facility and let me know what else you’ll need so I can go scrounge it all up.”
Wendy sighed as Troy went back out into the bone-chilling cold.
“I can’t tell you the last time another doctor was up in this neck of the woods,” Doctor Jacobs said as he walked across the room toward a wall of doors. “Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”
Wendy blew the hair out of her eyes. “So, what exactly is your specialty, Doctor?”
“I’m a Gynecologist. Well, I haven’t been practicing for a few years,” he said and let out an awkward laugh. He stopped in front of a door with his hand on the knob. “That’s a joke,” he said. He turned, grinning.
Wendy smiled, forcing a weak laugh.
“I do have some questions for you, though, having to do with the reproductive capacity of individuals infected with the consumption pathogen. There doesn’t seem to be any sexual interest from what I have been able to observe, but since Egan is actually the first subject we’ve allowed inside the fences…well, Momma won’t let me—”
“I’m a neurobiologist,” Wendy interrupted, afraid of the direction Jacobs might have been going. “My only focus has been on curative research. Brain function.”
“Oh, of course,” Doctor Jacobs said, waving a dismissive hand, his disappointment clear.
“But, I did read a paper written by one of my colleagues on the matter. There’s no damage to the male or female reproductive systems from the virus. We know because, well, um….” How could she explain it? Prostitution using zombies was legal in two states. It sickened her to even think about it, and if she told Doctor Jacobs about it, he might not let the subject drop. “We’ve had a few pregnancies. Let’s put it that way.”
“Really?!” His eyes grew wider than his sockets.
This is going to be a long day.
Twenty-Seven
Troy came and went with equipment as Doctor Jacobs showed her the veterinary emergency rooms. They were designed to manage animals up to about three or four hundred pounds. Anything bigger wouldn’t fit through the door.
The laminate on the countertops was still flat and unbroken, but the sides had peeled away long ago. Dust covered everything except where Doctor Jacobs sprayed cleaner and wiped at it with a rag. The room smelled of disinfectant.
“I set a leg in the room next door about four months ago. Had to do a lot of stitches on Mary Sawyer this last summer, too. She dropped a knife. Landed right in the top of her foot.”
Wendy winced at the thought.
“Twenty stitches on top, six on the bottom.”
Her stomach turned. Even though she was a doctor herself, and had seen much worse, the thought of a knife sticking out of her own foot gave her the heebie-jeebies, and all those stitches and the weeks in bed and the throbbing pain every time an elevation shift poured blood down around the wound…God, it must have been awful.
“I think the worst, though, was poor Harpriya. An Indian girl,” he added sharply, as though a name like that needed explanation. “Lost her husband and son to the horde. She came here about the same time I did. Was with us for two years before she finally just…lost it.”
Doctor Jacobs stared at the countertop a moment, shaking his head. “Hers was a slow and painful death.”
Wendy didn’t move, but glanced at the cabinet across from her, wondering what was in it.
Jacobs squirted the cleaner on the backsplash and started wiping again. “She had this little steak knife and kept stabbing herself with it, but turned it on anyone who tried to help her. I ended up stitching up three fellas who tried to take the knife from her. She got herself in the chest below the heart on her first try. When it didn’t kill her right away she said to everyone it was proof her heart was gone. Larry—God, what was his last name? Madlin? No,” Doctor Jacobs said, snapping his finger in the air. “Madison. Larry was the first to try to take the knife from her and she cut up his hand and forearm, then stabbed him in the leg.
“Larry quit on us a few years back. Took off for St. Mary’s. He was an okay guy, I guess.”
“Sounds like you’ve had your share of emergencies.”
“Oh, sure,” Jacobs said offhandedly. “Mostly we get a lot of cases of influenza, infections, rashes, bug bites, you name it.”
“Hmm,” Wendy said, looking under the large stainless steel table in the center of the room, wondering if it had any drawers.
Jacobs squirted the cleaner on the cabinets above the counters and wiped eagerly at the dirt. “Oh, and of course, we’re constantly having trouble with lice and ticks. Mike Wilkes has arthritis something awful, but about the only thing we can do for it is give him acetaminophen or ibuprofen. We’ve got a pallet full of that next door.”
“Uh huh,” Wendy replied, opening the drawers in a medicine cabinet. It was completely empty.
“I took out all the medicines and put them in the fridge,” Jacobs said, waving his rag toward the small, locked refrigerator in the corner. It looked old, and probably hadn’t run for years. “It’s locked, so it keeps everyone from trying to get high on something just because it has a lot of consonants.” Jacobs chuckled at his attempt at humor. “We can trade for food and clothing pretty regularly, but medicine is kind of hard to get out here.
“I’d say ounce-for-ounce, it’s about the most valuable thing, next to bullets. You’d think bullets would be easy to find, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Before the outbreak, about the only place to buy any was sporting goods stores, gun stores, and Wal-Mart. Once things got out of hand, well, people took whatever they had and ran off with it. Anything left out in this weather has since become rotten, useless junk. Bullets included.”
Doctor Jacobs wiped the length of the cabinets dry and dropped the rag on the counter.
“National Guard armories were all scavenged in the first few months. Same with the stores, police stations. A lot of houses were looted. Same as the hospitals with their medicines, and what they didn’t get isn’t worth anything now. Expired, seals corroded, plastic bags decomposed and leaking. The powdered stuff, if you can find it, now that’s what you need.”
Doctor Jacobs pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and spun through them until he found a blue key that unlocked the padlock on the refrigerator. He dropped the lock on top of the refrigerator and moved the securing arm out of the way. “See, we keep it dry,” he said, opening the door, which peeled open at the seals. There were assorted bags with names scrawled in permanent ink stacked on every shelf.
“Ketamine,” Wendy said, reading one of the labels. “That’s what Chico gave Larissa.” By the size of the bag in relation to the others, it looked like they had a lot of it.
“Like I said, we keep it locked up for a reason.” He let the refrigerator door swing shut. “But don’t worry. None of them made it. I mixed it,” Doctor Jacobs said with a wide, proud grin. “Did it give them four hours like T asked?”
“And then some. Maybe a little too much.”
“Shoot. I was worried about the drug-drug interactions if you had her on other sedatives. I told them. And I didn’t know her exact body weight.”
“It kept her calm for the trip, Doctor,” Wendy told him. “It was good enough to get the job done.”
He seemed relieved. He slapped the top of the refrigerator. “We’ll plug the fridge in tonight to set the seals again. Get all that excess air out and get it nice
and cold for your experiments.”
Wendy nodded.
“So, tell me, what are you planning? I mean, how are you going to, you know”—he shrugged—“cure Egan.”
“I have no idea,” Wendy breathed.
Twenty-Eight
Wendy followed Troy into the dining hall. It was a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side letting in muted, natural light. Long picnic tables with built-in bench seats made four split rows. Over half the seats were taken. A long line of people stood at the far end with trays, waiting to be served by two men behind a food service bar.
Doctor Jacobs stomped the snow off his feet right behind Wendy. She jumped, then rolled her eyes at being so tense. It probably had a lot more to do with the doctor’s motor mouth than her situation.
“Smells like chicken,” Jacobs said, breathing in deeply through his nose. “You know we keep over four hundred birds here. Lots of eggs. Lots of hearty breakfasts. Kind of a shame to eat the poor things, but they do breed like rabbits.”
“Uh huh,” Wendy replied, stomping her own feet.
Most of the heads in the room were turned in her direction. Troy led them straight at the long line of people and dug a tray out of a bin for himself and Wendy. The three people at the end of the line—a woman wearing two coats and two men in ski pants and thick, padded jackets—nodded at Troy. Keith leaned out of the line from where he stood near the front. He grinned and winked at Wendy. She sneered back. He chuckled and leaned back in, talking to a tall man next to him. They chuckled as Keith waved in her direction.
He was probably talking about her peeing in the snow.
“I was thinking, Doctor,” Jacobs said. “If we were to draw blood from Larissa Jefferson and infuse it into Egan, would that convey enough antigens—”
“Doesn’t work,” Wendy interrupted. “We’re not dealing with anemia or liver disease. Egan’s own blood will reinfect the new blood.”
“Even with the cure?”
“It’s not blood-borne. They’ve tried, and all kinds of whacky stuff like liver transplants, dialysis, you name it.”
“Of course,” Jacobs said, turning his head dejectedly. “Of course, Doctor. I…I just thought….”
Damn it. That ‘whacky stuff’ comment bothered Jacobs, like she was calling him nuts, or dumb. “It’s good thinking, though. Better than pulling teeth,” she told him, and regretted saying it. He brightened immediately. Damn it. Even worse. Now he was going to be stuck to her like glue.
“Hey, T,” a familiar voice called. It was Chico. Wendy turned to see him approaching from where he had been sitting at one of the long picnic benches. Troy nodded. Wendy actually appreciated the interruption. “You’re just in time. Television’s coming on in a few minutes. I’ll save you a seat so we can see how many lies they tell about us this time, eh?” He laughed and slapped Troy. “How’s your French, Doc?”
Wendy raised an eyebrow.
“Our signal,” Troy explained. When he spoke, his words felt detached, distant. Every time someone else was around, he changed, like he didn’t care about her. “We get Canadian News. It’s in French, but it has subtitles.”
Chico chuckled. “Come sit by me when you get your grub.”
Wendy wanted to ask if Keith would be sitting with them, but let Chico walk away. She stared past him at the windows and the fading light. The drab gray of late afternoon was turning to twilight, and more and more people were arriving to get in line behind them. Wendy unzipped her jacket, feeling warm for the first time since arriving. Her fingers actually tingled.
Keith eventually reached the front of the line, filled his tray, and went with his group to sit on barstools at a counter alongside the far wall where a big television was mounted on the wall. They sat with their backs to everyone, hunched over their food as they gobbled it up like animals. Wendy glared. She didn’t know why she loathed him so much, but she knew he was going to be nothing but trouble.
Nobody left when they were done eating. They all sat in the room talking amongst themselves, their numbers swelling by the minute. The noise level rose in volume and the light outside grew dimmer. Their conversations thankfully drowned out most of Doctor Jacobs’ constant banter.
Troy leaned forward to talk to the men in front of him. Wendy didn’t know what they were saying. He kept his back to her, and their expressions were all grim. It made her a little nervous.
“I said, I was just telling Micha to put you in my building,” Doctor Jacobs said loudly, leaning over Wendy’s shoulder to speak into her ear. She tensed. Her heart skipped a beat from the scare. “We have three empty rooms, and that way I can make sure you don’t get lost coming and going to the ER, I mean the ‘lab’.” He made air quotes around the word, smiling.
Wendy only nodded, coughing into her elbow to clear her throat—and avoid giving a response. The last thing she wanted was to be bunking in the same building as Doctor Jacobs.
Candles and oil lamps were lit at the tables and the half-windows near the ceiling were opened with a long bar by one of the men. “Keep it down, keep it down,” the man grumbled as he made his way between the tables to reach each window using a pole with a hook at the end.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” everyone replied in good fun. There were smiles and frowns, people silently staring outside, and others locked in animated discussions. An older man sat with his head against the window, his eyes closed, snoring.
“Here,” Troy said in her ear. Her whole body stiffened as he put a hand on her shoulder. He let her go to point out the window. “See there. Watch just above the trees.”
She stared at him, wondering why he was being so aloof around everyone.
“Look,” he insisted. He stepped back and pointed again.
She looked out the window at the tree line. The sky had changed to a radiant purple with dark stretches of high, slate gray clouds. This was the time of day that zombies started to come out. She wondered if he meant for her to look beneath the trees where the trails leading deeper into the zoo could only barely be seen. Were zombies going to start shuffling at them?
Then there was movement. A long, straight arm from some enormous crane or fire truck hidden behind the woods began to rise, angling into the sky as it stretched and turned. A cable dangled from its end, pulling up a wide, slightly rounded contraption that looked a lot like a UFO. It had a dozen or more communications dishes anchored to it, facing every conceivable direction. Some were the typical curved dish style, others wired grids, as well as a pack of shrouded microwave relays that looked like an unruly cluster of mushrooms.
“What in the world?” Wendy asked no one in particular.
Troy tugged her arm, pulling her as the line of people shuffled forward. “It’s our communications platform. Once it’s up, we’ll be able to watch some television. Make a few calls. Download some stuff off the internet.”
“The internet?”
“Oh, yes,” Doctor Jacobs said, leaning between them. “I read your dissertation last night.”
“Huh,” Wendy said. At least that might be an option. She just needed to get online. One email and she’d be free, but Momma must have already thought about that. She didn’t want to ask Doctor Jacobs or Troy about how it worked. Not yet. They would both be suspicious, and rightly so. She needed to come up with a good reason. Something having to do with accessing her research.
They were at the front of the line finally. Troy put her tray out and grabbed plates of food for them. Chicken, vegetables, and rolls. It smelled fabulous. Her mouth watered at the sight. Troy slapped an empty plastic cup on her tray and they slid to the end. She followed Troy to the table, not looking back to see if Doctor Jacobs was following. She was certain he would.
Chico’s table was packed, but everyone made room for Troy and Wendy to sit down across from Chico. They sat so close together that Wendy’s hips were pressed against Troy’s on one side and the woman’s on her other.
“Hi,” Wendy said, offering a hand to the woman. “
I’m Wendy.”
The woman shook Wendy’s hand with a firm, single sweep, and let her go, turning back to the man next to her.
Fun crowd.
Troy filled her cup from a pitcher of water and she gladly drank half of it before tearing her roll open and sinking her teeth into it. She was so hungry and thirsty from such a long and eventful day that she had to stop herself from eating like a pig. She thought of the way Keith and the other men at the barstools had fallen over their plates like a pack of dogs, and wondered if that was the kind of incivility a place like this fostered. She gulped down a large bite of food and slowed her pace, picking up her utensils to cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces.
Doctor Jacobs wedged his way into the seat next to Chico. To avoid looking at him, she looked down at their trays. Chico swam a piece of bread through the last of the cream sauce on his plate. Wendy noticed for the first time tattoos on his fingers. The word PESO was spelled out, one letter on each finger of his fist. The other hand had two letters on each finger that spelled CENTAVO!
“Interesting tattoos,” Wendy said, pointing her fork at Chico’s hands.
“Oh, you like these? I had them inked when I was in Central. I told everyone if you earn a beating, I’ll give you a PESO to start. If you’re still standing, I’ll give you change. No one fucked with me.”
Wendy raised an eyebrow. Before she could say anything, though, a soft clicking echoed through the room. She looked around for its source, noticing she wasn’t the only one who heard it. It seemed that the volume in the room came down considerably as the constant click, click, click, click fell from above. There were speakers in the ceiling. She sighed with relief, thankful it wasn’t the roof caving in under the weight of snow, or the tapping of some zombie’s boney fingers or exposed teeth on a pane of glass.
It had the cadence of a metronome.
Click, click, click.
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 11