by Snell, D. L.
Smelling trouble, Donovan followed the guard and Jorge out of the tent. “Don’t let him talk to anybody.”
“Ha, I knew it!” Jorge barked. “Chasing me down. But you can’t have any if I’m in isolation.”
“What’re you going to do with them?” a woman asked. She was in her mid-thirties with very long, dark hair and a thick accent. She was stealing glances at Jorge as he was taken away.
“I’m going to quarantine them,” Donovan replied. “For everybody’s safety.”
He looked at the line of people and made a quick estimate of how many survivors would end up in quarantine. A good half, at least once he got Dr. Michaels to fall in line. And then, if he wanted to, he could just... forget about them. If they were in quarantine, isolated from the rest of the survivors, all he had to do was not feed them or give them water, and they would die out on their own. He didn’t even have to waste bullets.
But not yet, he thought. Not until the Dogs are done with their screening. And on my side. Who knows? Maybe that’s how I’ll test their loyalty, by setting them on this rabble.
He frowned. The thought of letting these people die sat all right with him, but actively participating in their deaths gave him pause. He made a fist, trying to feel like somebody who could order violent, messy death.
It’s a new world. I have to become something other than myself if I want to survive. No, if I want to thrive. I have to inure myself to the less-pleasant aspects of the job. Right now I have Kaiser, and he would gladly do it for me, but I won’t always have Kaiser.
And I won’t always need him.
His thoughts were interrupted by Summer Chan. She yelled to him as she ran up, her long, straight blond hair flying behind her. “Dr. Donovan! Sir!”
He looked up at her. “Are you done screening the Dogs, Miss Chan?”
She shook her head. “Sir, you need to come see this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
KEN SAT IN THE STAIRWELL of the North Regional building, completely cloaked in plastic wrap. Underneath, his shirt stuck to the sweat on his chest and back.
The plastic had come from the break room, and Kelly had used it to dress him in a makeshift biohazard suit. He felt as if he were being smothered to death by a giant, hot plastic hand; the distraction was welcomed.
Ken flinched when the head of the axe suddenly chinked into the stairwell floor. It had slowly slipped from his grip. Almost so slowly he hadn’t noticed it. The sound of the head biting into concrete sparked some sort of flash across his eyes. Not a memory, per se, but a glimpse.
An axe chinking into concrete, striking sparks.
He heard footsteps.
“Ken?”
Kelly opened the door before he could decide whether he really wanted to let her in.
“Yeah,” he said.
She peeked in and saw him looking up at her.
Earlier in the break room, when she’d been wrapping him up, Kelly’s hand had paused briefly, tucking a length of plastic into the waist of Ken’s jeans.
Their eyes had met.
She was beautiful in that moment, looking up at him. Under any other circumstances Ken would have kissed her. Instead he just watched Kelly’s tears glisten and spill, and suddenly he was hugging her while she cried about how everyone had lost so much.
It spoke volumes of her that she was now back to being mentally stable enough to come tell him the news.
“Ken, they’re...”
“I know.”
It was written all over her face. He didn’t want her to have to say it too. He could hear them, those people in the other room. The ones who had been bitten.
They had fallen silent for the last three minutes. But now he could hear them because they had started to moan.
They had woken up.
“Kelly!” the pastor yelled from the other room. There were sounds of a minor struggle, shoes scuffling on concrete, people grunting, groans.
She glanced at Ken and then ran out of the stairwell to go help. He couldn’t believe she was that strong.
He couldn’t even get up.
Ever since junior high, Ken had had a tough time taking tests. It was just the anxiety.
The hardest test he’d ever had to take was for his contractor’s license. He knew everything on it, but still, it was a big one, deciding the difference between his status as employee and employer.
Left on his own, Ken might have put it off forever. But then Jorge had told him, “How could you let a little old piece of paper get the better of you? You’re Ken motherfucking Bishop!” and Ken had said hell yeah!
It had also been Jorge’s sage advice to drink a little before taking the test. He’d said, “It’ll help loosen you up for the fight.”
Ken had laughed at the time, and then had proceeded to take one too many shots. But had he passed anyway? Yes. Yes, he had. So what was the problem?
That very day his wife had served him with the papers.
And then the episode, drinking too much.
He had just gotten so angry.
He couldn’t believe it, that things had been allowed to go so well for him, only to be shot down right in front of him, and all at once. He just didn’t understand the reason for it. Any of it.
Even the bar fight.
It was just some local idiot who had run his mouth off playing darts. Something like he’d fuck Ken’s wife.
He and Ken had both ended up in the hospital. But only Ken had ended up in anger management.
Now he flinched when he heard the pastor shout, “Where the hell is Ken?!” and then those people in the other room continued to moan.
It was so hot in the stairwell. Ken felt like he was about to pass out. He was panting. Both sweat and saliva dripped from his chin.
He wished Kelly had wrapped the plastic tighter. He didn’t want to feel his hands. Wanted to pretend it was someone else doing this. Didn’t want to think about how these people had names.
Sparks on concrete—and then suddenly he was jumping up and bursting from the stairwell, crinkling and carrying the axe.
’
Ken burst into the public restroom, and started stripping off the bloodied plastic. He tried not to touch it. Tried not to get any of it on his hands. But he moved fast. He had to get it off.
In the sunlight filtering in, he could see that he was completely coated in strings and dollops of it. The blood had run a little and had streaked, but on some folds of the plastic it was still richly beaded red. Little tributaries of the stuff.
Keeping his plastic-wrap gloves on for last, Ken managed to pull everything off and wad it all into the trashcan, all without making contact with the blood. He had taken a class once on decontamination techniques. It had worked wonders for the asbestos job, but he had never thought it would be useful in real life.
Ken went to the mirror and immediately paled. He felt it happen, the heat in his face draining away as if blood flow had just switched off. The pallor of his cheek made the bright-red drop stand out even brighter.
Ken rushed into one of the stalls and dropped to his knees, splashing his face in a bowl. The toilets were one of the group’s only sources of drinkable water, aside from the hope of falling rain. He hated to ruin any of it, but...
He fished under the stall door and grabbed a sock, which he used to scrub his cheek.
Not too hard, he thought. Can’t rub it raw.
The thought piqued a sudden gag reflex, and Ken hunched over the ceramic pot. His whole torso clenched as he tried not to puke. The reflex was so intense it wrung a squeak from the back of his throat.
Then he was breathing hard and spitting—he hadn’t puked.
He wished he had.
In the silence, it became painfully aware to him that the moans from the other room had been silenced.
After a few seconds, Kelly poked her head in. “Ken?”
His eyelids trembled as he hovered over the water, which he knew was trembling too—he could feel it, everything trembl
ing. Was it coming from him? Was it coming for him? Was a drop on the skin enough? His stomach gave a wrench again as he thought about it.
“Ken, we really need to get going.”
In the echoing acoustics of the bathroom tile, he could hear his people shouting from down by the barricade, and then he could hear the things outside again, pounding to be let in. The commotion earlier, and the sound of the axe striking concrete, must have roused them.
The axe had struck concrete over and over.
Wouldn’t be much longer now.
“Kelly,” Ken said, “did you... cover them up?”
“Ken, please—”
“Did you cover them up?!”
“Yes, of course. We were very respectful. The pastor even said a few words.”
Ken nodded, even though Kelly couldn’t see him. He swallowed one last mouthful of thick, viscous saliva and said, “I’ll be right out.”
He knew he was alone again when the pounding and constant moans quieted back down—the door had swung shut.
Finally Ken opened his eyes.
He could see his own silhouette reflecting in the toilet, staring right back at him.
In the water, he also saw a little diffused ribbon of pink.
The blood spot from his cheek.
Ken met his own eyes in the water, but his reflection’s eyes were different, alien, just gleaming slivers where the incoming sun highlighted the whites. It stared back at him without intelligence, a mocking glimpse of a possible future.
One last time, Ken’s body seized up. The sob was dull yet sharp, and it speared him from neck to gut. But it barely made it out of his mouth.
Ken pushed himself up from the toilet, took one last deep breath, and left the restroom to go help. It was his job, after all. Just another employee.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THREE THETA DOGS paced around the barracks in Alpha McLoughlin’s wake, talking amongst themselves in low voices. McLoughlin had heard news from quarantine. Something had been found during the screening of the Dogs, but he hadn’t heard what it was, or whether it was Kristos or Samson. The six Sigmas milled aimlessly in the middle area. Alpha Mac turned suddenly, and all the Dogs stopped to look at him.
“What? What? I don’t know what’s happening now. Nobody does.” He gritted his teeth. “Why are you still following me?”
The Thetas looked at each other. Hayte and Rose looked to Landis, who sighed. He hated being the spokesperson, especially when Mac was in such a foul mood.
“We heard about the memorial for Dr. Crispin. And we were kind of wondering, you know, if we could do something of our own. For Dunne.”
McLoughlin’s face lost some of its harsh lines.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, of course. When the rest of the pack gets back from the screening, we’ll talk about it.”
His face reddened a bit. Kristos and Samson had yet to return from the screening, and word had gotten back there was something wrong. But they were always finding something wrong. Without fail. The neurotech interns meant well, but they were using prototype equipment on next-generation biosystems. There was no real training program for it. The techs always found something in their scans, and it was never anything. McLoughlin shook his head.
Open jaw, insert paw.
One of the Sigmas straightened and walked over. The man had tattooed the number 37 between his eyebrows. All Sigmas had a number, stenciled on their uniforms in place of their names.
They understood that their value in operations was low. Instead of letting it crush their spirits, they took it as a badge of honor; every war needs its foot soldiers. So one day they had snuck off the island, and the next day they returned with the tattoos: the numbers on their foreheads; and on their backs, MORITURI TE SALUTAMOS.
McLoughlin hadn’t found it in his heart to punish them for it. Dr. Crispin had felt otherwise.
Sigma 37 stopped in front of Alpha McLoughlin and came to attention, standing ramrod straight, thumbs down along the seams of his BDUs, his shoulders thrown back and his feet together. “Respectfully request permission to speak freely, sir.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, McLoughlin noted the Thetas had turned to listen.
“Go ahead, 37.”
“Thank you, sir. We, meaning the Sigmas, have waited for a long time for an opportunity to pull our own weight, sir. We were in training with Theta Dunne. He had ideas on how we should work together, since we’re not as strong or fast as the Thetas. A modified pack attack.”
The Alpha looked over at the Thetas, who were smiling.
“If there is another rescue op, sir, we would like to ride along. We were waiting for Dunne to make the suggestion for us, so we could stage a demonstration, but...”
“I understand,” McLoughlin said.
“Thank you, sir. With Theta Kaiser in the brig and Dunne KIA, we are ready to do our part.”
“When the rest of the Dogs are back, we’ll talk about that too. Dismissed.”
Sigma 37 threw up a crisp salute, which McLoughlin returned. Smiling.
’
“Which one is it?” Donovan asked, walking quickly to keep up with the younger, taller intern. Summer Chan opened the door for him and he breezed through, ignoring her answer. They were already there, he would see for himself.
He stopped short of the doorway into the Dogs’ examination room. There was dark blood everywhere, and he wasn’t sure whose it was. Kristos stood behind Samson with his arm snaked around the Beta’s neck, struggling to lock in a rear naked choke. Samson, streaked with blood, was snarling at Scott and Gary as they cowered behind an instrument cart. Both Dogs were still in human form, straining against each other. Donovan took all this in, then crouched down to get a better look at the red marks on Samson’s leg.
“Is that a bite?”
“We think so,” said Summer Chan, brushing her blond hair out of her face, smearing a bit of the blood across her forehead. “We haven’t been able to get close enough to tell. As soon as we tried to check it—”
“It’s a bite,” Kristos snarled out. “I can smell it.”
“Well,” Donovan said, rubbing his temples with his forefingers, “he’ll have to be quarantined, obviously.”
“Great!” Kristos shouted. “That’s just great. Now how about some tranquilizer over here?”
Gary and Scott both turned and dove for the red plastic cube on the wall, tangling limbs as they reached for the handle. “Let go!” Scott yelled as they both stumbled to the side.
“Boys,” Summer muttered. She skipped over and knocked them both out of the way, then ripped the box open. Inside lay a matte-black pistol. She turned with it, leveling the barrel at the struggling Dogs. With a slight trembling in her hands, she put her thumb on the firing stud on the top of the gun.
“This has to go in the neck,” she said. “Your systems are so good at keeping out—”
“I don’t care!” Kristos yelled.
“Fine. But you’ll have to move your arm.”
“Bullshit,” Kristos said through gritted teeth. “I move my arm and you’re a dead woman.”
“Well, there’s no other way!”
Kristos heaved back on Samson, who was still reaching out, looking to grab anyone foolish enough to come close. Reason was gone from his eyes.
“We better do it before the Change hits him,” Kristos said.
“That is a good idea,” Donovan added.
Summer yelled, “Then move your arm—move it!”
Pulling back on the Beta Dog with all his might, Kristos arched himself backwards, and when he couldn’t go any farther, he counted down.
“Three. Two.”
Samson roared.
“One!”
Kristos let go of the Beta, who lunged forward. The muscles in his arms started to ripple as he began the Change, and Summer Chan dropped to one knee, aiming the gun.
Pock!
A little dart buried itself in Samson’s neck as he plowed forward. Summer curled
into a ball, and the Beta Dog’s knees hit her. He fell, smacking his face on the bloody cement. His breath came in rasps, and the Change reversed, hair and extra cells shedding all over the floor. The bite on his leg festered and bled.
“Now what?” Kristos said.
Donovan snapped his fingers. “Pick him up. I know where we have to go. And someone sterilize this mess!” He turned. “You, Chan.”
“Yes, sir?” the intern said from the floor.
He smiled with warmth. “Good work. Clean yourself up and go get Alpha McLoughlin. Tell him to gather the Dogs and meet me by the sparring cage.”
’
As he waited for the Dogs to show, Donovan paced outside the fenced-in area, tapping his chin and cursing Crispin’s memory. You contrary bastard. If you’d left me the termination codes, I could do this myself.
He stared down at Samson’s form, watching the midsection rise and fall with the Dog’s heavy breathing. The tranquilizer had worked immediately, but no one knew for sure how long it would last, because it had only been used on a Sigma before. Metabolic rates varied with each Dog’s strength level, and sooner or later, the sedative would be out of the Beta’s system.
Plus, there’s the virus.
The sound of running feet turned Donovan around, and he smothered the smile that wanted to sprout on his face. His tools couldn’t know the spirit in which they were being used.
Putting a dour look on his face, he stepped forward to greet Alpha McLoughlin.
“I’m sorry for you to have to find out this way,” he said, extending a hand to the big man. McLoughlin brushed past the new project director and locked his fingers in the fence of the sparring cage.
“How long has he had it?”
Donovan stepped up next to McLoughlin. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that. On your last operation, the Dog Pack pulled back before any engagement with the zombies at North Regional, isn’t that right?”
McLoughlin scowled. “That’s right. But when we got to the marina, Samson cleared the pier. God damn it!” He hit the fence. “Why didn’t you say anything?”