by Hamrick, R M
“Nothing. Just the name of our last doctor. You all seem to be Chinese.”
Satomi wasn’t Chinese.
“What happened to the last doctor?”
“She stopped helping us,” Jill said simply as she waved her hand and two guards came to Satomi’s sides.
Satomi wasn’t sure if another doctor was a scare tactic. Why would they get rid of a doctor if they didn’t have a replacement yet? Then, the thought occurred to her that maybe they were getting rid of the first “Satomi” now. As if on cue, something made a bump noise. She looked to the car, where smashed to one of the few remaining windows was an infected and burning woman. Her black hair had incorporated into her face. Jack and Jill laughed at both of the women.
Satomi shuddered involuntarily as she was escorted away. It’s just a scare tactic. It’s just a scare tactic. She repeated to herself. Still they killed - or more accurately - didn’t kill that woman to get to her. It was clear that they had not made the same vows she had. It was amazing that she could keep her cool with a scalpel in her hand, but now she trembled with each step away from Jack and Jill.
Her captors.
She was in trouble.
Her escort led Satomi to an old police car being pulled by a truck. She could make out that at one point it had read Wade County. To protect and to serve. She was put in the back, where there were no interior door handles and the seats were made of hard plastic. The windows had been replaced with rebar spikes. The door slammed with a distantly familiar sound.
A car door shutting, heard from the inside. It had been years since she had heard that sound. It was an odd thing to consider in her dangerous situation.
The escort stood over the car, a large, round man. Before she settled, he slipped her a water bottle through the rebar.
“Thank you.”
“It’s all you get today,” he grunted before he stood a distance off and watched her with menacing eyes. Satomi figured she should be thankful that he wasn’t trying to trade favors with her.
Maybe that would come later.
The replaced windows brought some air exchange into the car, but not enough and most of it smelled foully of burning vehicles. Satomi was glad it wasn’t sticky hot, but she might be chilly tonight. Thick plastic separated her from the front of the car. The floor too was made of the hard plastic. Easy cleaning. No comfort. She curled up in one of the bucket-forms of the hard plastic. Waves of shivers came over her as her body suffered in her stress.
Where were the others? Were they trying to get her back? Audra hadn’t wanted her to treat Dennis. She could tell. If she hadn’t, maybe they wouldn’t have been ambushed. Maybe she wouldn’t have been captured. But wasn’t their entire community built around giving the cure freely? Audra might be OK picking and choosing, but Satomi always extended her oath to the entirety of the universe, and that meant treating everyone placed in her path. She hoped she could continue that here.
A wave of tiredness crashed into her. A lot had happened and there was much more to come. She should rest if she could. But every time she closed her eyes she saw that woman, cooking, in that car. She imagined she could smell her, even now, over the burning tires. She hoped that she was dead by now, but in her heart, she knew she wasn’t and at the same time, it felt like she was wishing herself dead.
Chapter Ten:
Aftermath
Dark poisonous smoke filled the air and followed Audra, Ziv, and Dwyn back through the woods. It was all coming together. Jack and Jill were the ones who had set the fire yesterday. What did they care about visibility? They had an army of foot soldiers and cannon fodder to do their bidding. And now they had Satomi.
The march back was painfully slow. Ziv couldn’t keep up with a run. And as much as Audra wanted to dash off to Osprey Point and fix this, she also could not leave the last two of her crew alone. No one else was disappearing under her watch. So instead of a run, they walked. Quietness roared, interrupted only by the crunches of brambles underneath their feet. Ziv, for once, didn’t complain. Audra would’ve lost it if he had. She should have gone alone or at least should have stopped Satomi.
“We shouldn’t have treated that Dennis piece of sh-” she muttered, half to herself. She kicked at a root before stepping over it.
“It’s what we do. It’s what Satomi does,” Dwyn replied.
“Well we shouldn’t. He probably agreed to that bite.”
“Satomi wasn’t wrong to help. No one would agree to being bitten. Pain takes over and you’re trapped. You’re trapped in your own body with no place to go. I’d never let anyone go through that if I could stop it. I can’t tolerate seeing anyone in that state. I can feel it.”
“You can feel it?” she asked, stopping and turning to look him in the eye.
“Well, not really,” he backpedaled.
He hadn’t said it directly, but Audra had heard it. She could hear the pain in his voice. It seeped through his words and imbued them with another layer of meaning. He remembered how it felt.
“You’ve been infected?” and before he could answer, “You knew about the pain.”
Dwyn’s eyes shifted, avoiding her gaze.
“I only knew of my pain. It wasn’t until Gordon that I was able to confirm my experience. I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you barreling into Lysent and getting yourself killed.” He was always trying to protect her. “And then, and then, I just didn’t know how. I didn’t think it mattered.”
Didn’t matter? Belinda had suffered for years because Audra couldn’t let her go. If Dwyn had been a zombie, then someone had cured him.
“Who?! Who did you know in Lysent?” she rounded on him. He had never offered his connection.
“What? I don’t know anyone at Lysent.” Dwyn looked confused.
Ziv awkwardly shifted from one foot to the other.
“Well then you knew someone rich, who was she?” As soon as Audra said it, it was clear to her. It was a she. Vesna? Vesna didn’t have the courage to tell her that she had just spent all her money curing this dimwit?
There was a stale pause in the air.
“Corette. Her name was Corette,” Dwyn offered in a soft voice. “She was my fiancée. We got caught up by a couple biters. Early on. I tried to hold them off. A year or so ago, she cured me.”
Jealousy, pain, and shame swirled in Audra. This Corette had succeeded where she had failed. But if she had cured Dwyn, why weren’t they together?
“Where is she?”
“She’s married to some rich guy. He gifted her a cure. She felt guilty I was infected and she wasn’t. They pulled me out of the car she had left me in and I was cured a few days later.”
“Must be nice.” Audra’s voice dripped with disgust. Cures as gifts.
Ziv pulled on some bark of a tree.
“Yes, it was, eventually... I woke up and thought everything was going to be the same. Nothing was the same. She wanted nothing to do with me. I had all the feelings I had for her then, but she had moved on in the time I had lost.
I was alone and cashless. I needed to find a way to survive quick. Vesna helped me, saved me again really. And then you were the best thing to enter my life, there in the woods.”
There. That push. Over and over.
“Are you serious?!” she reeled on him. “You’re constantly on me to share my feelings and to share my bed, and you don’t bother to tell me you were infected!
You say you want me to lead our group but then you constantly push me out of the way or hold me back. ‘Best things’ require trust.”
Dwyn’s clinging was just the outcome of his sob story. Everyone had one and now she knew his. The front of her head burned with anger, but her eyes stung with tears. She jerked her head back ahead and stomped onward. The two men followed wordlessly.
Chapter Eleven:
Byproducts
A honeyed “Comfy?” invaded the vehicular enclosure. There weren’t many women in the convoy.
Jill.
Sato
mi uncurled and separated her skin from the plastic divots. She refused to stretch in Jill’s sight or comment on her accommodations. Instead, she sat up in one of the bucket seats and looked over to her as if they were passing on the highway. Her terror had transformed to numbness and she’d pass it off for confidence if she could.
Jill worked the handle and the car door creaked open. Satomi climbed out wordlessly but did give a look of curiosity. Was she about to find out what Jack and Jill wanted of a scientist? The sun was just starting to streak brightly at its fresh angle. It highlighted the dew on the reflective markers and the ambitious weeds that sprouted from the asphalt. Jill headed farther up the convoy, meaning for Satomi to follow. Last night’s guard followed the pair. Vehicle after vehicle, until they reached their destination. An eighteen-wheel trailer with large graffitied metal doors. Maybe some ancient gangs. Satomi remembered a different world where people would smudge “Wash me” in the grime.
The guard managed the heavy latch, then Jill took one side and the guard took the other. The large metal doors were pulled open to reveal a mobile, scavenged laboratory. One wall was lined with large machines - refrigerators, freezers, a sterile hood, and digital ovens. The other side contained counters with rows of smaller equipment, microscopes, hot plates, a fancy centrifuge and an array of beakers and flasks on racks and stacked test tubes. Satomi had seen nothing like it as a mobile setup. The back had anchored tables with miscellaneous equipment and stacks of books and notebooks.
They seemed to have everything they needed except for staff. And Satomi guessed she was it. She tried not to show delight in her new prison. She at least stopped herself from climbing in without a word of instruction.
“The soldier serum is given to those infected with the z-virus. From there, their motor control and coordination improve. So does their ability to receive commands.
Dr. Bren developed the serum, but eventually she refused to keep making it for us.”
“The woman in the car?” Satomi interrupted.
Jill gave a stern and satisfying nod. Satomi felt torn. Dr. Bren had created a horrible weapon, but then she’d had a change of heart? She stood her ground and was killed over it.
“So you can’t make any more ‘soldiers’?”
“Not right now. That’s your job.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t know the first thing about the soldier serum.” All the equipment in the world didn’t matter if she didn’t have any foundational knowledge of the serum.
“Dr. Bren’s notes will be available to you. In seven days, we will test your first batch and mark your progress.”
“Human experiments?” Satomi squeaked. She hadn’t even considered being here a week - or beyond. Suddenly life felt both long and sweeping by.
“I encourage you to get up to speed and make progress quickly. I also encourage you to accomplish the goal if you don’t want to be replaced.” Jill crossed her arms and nodded toward the entrance.
Satomi’s guard gave her a hand up before heaving his body up the height as well. Jill laughed as she closed the large doors behind them, leaving Satomi at the laboratory’s edge under the guard’s watchful eye.
Away from Jill’s coarse demeanor, Satomi let out a sigh. She felt her shoulders relax and she could breathe. She looked around the trailer. Large sun windows and strategic flood lights illuminated the space. She’d never imagined a laboratory with all its possibilities would be a prison. It was at least better than the cop car, and the scientific equipment elicited a certain peace. They intended these tools to destroy, but she could use them for good.
Satomi walked along the counter and fingered the small tools at her disposal. She turned to the man with a dark mane and a rare potbelly. It was the first time they were alone and isolated, but he didn’t cast any dark shadows her way. She gave a small smile.
“I’m sorry. What’s your name?” She was tired of her only anchor being nameless.
“Eli,” he said. He stood with legs wide and arms behind his back at the trailer end as if she had anywhere to escape.
“Hi Eli. I’m Satomi. Will you tell me more about this serum I’m supposed to make?” She leaned against the counter, hoping to glean as much information as she could.
“What do you need to know?” His stance did not change, but he seemed willing to answer a few questions.
“Why did Dr. Bren develop it?”
“To protect her people.”
“Why did she stop?”
“She changed.” His voice faltered. He glanced downward.
“What do you mean?”
He straightened up to compose himself. “How is this supposed to help you make the serum?” he asked with his chin up.
“I’m not going to make the serum,” she confessed. “I practice ‘First, do no harm’.”
“I don’t know what that is, but if you don’t make the serum, you’re going to die like she did,” said Eli. He didn’t say it like a threat, just as if it was a matter of fact.
“I guess, I am,” resigned Satomi. She opened the fridge to see what was inside.
Familiarizing herself with the lab, last touched by Dr. Bren, felt like her last rites.
“Where are Dr. Bren’s notes?” she asked, looking around.
She could at least learn as much as she could about the soldier serum and how it interacted with the z-virus. Maybe even how to reverse it.
Eli pointed to the back of the room, where a work table with stacks of papers threatened to fall over. Notebooks of various age scattered the surface with notes hanging from all their edges. A disarray of information.
Of course.
“Why the car?” she asked out of her morbid curiosity as she walked gingerly over to the mess as if it might attack her.
“They burn the cars anyway. It smells awful. But Peter likes it.”
“Who’s Peter?”
“Their dad.”
That was beyond disturbing, but she had learned something else. Jack and Jill were siblings. Next, she’d sort through some of these papers.
* * *
Sleep slipped away against the scraping reverberating through the plastic. It took more than a moment to remember where she was. Not in her soft bed pad, not in Ryder’s room, not even at her desk having drifted off during late-night research. She was in a police car, captured by a group with an army of the sick. She wasn’t allowed to sleep in the laboratory. ‘It’s only for working,’ they said.
Satomi rose softly, trying not to alert Eli. A lantern bobbed, illuminating one man dragging another along the road - the source of the scraping noise. So many men here. The rest of the convoy was dark. Everyone had gone to bed.
“What’s wrong with him?” she wondered under her breath.
“Sick. Has to be disposed of,” said Eli, not missing a beat. He must have heard her stir.
“Can I help?” she said at volume. ‘Sick’ had many meanings here. Which one was this?
The man towing the sick stopped. Both he and Eli peered into her dark vehicle to see if she was serious.
“I’m here because you want more of them, right? Wouldn’t treating this one keep your count high?”
The man on the road dropped his keep. “Get out,” he said as he approached her abode. His blue-black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. As he got closer, Satomi could see he was darkened red by the sun and alcohol. Flecks of spit and other items ran through his beard. Satomi’s stomach dropped. She backed away to the other side of the car.
“No, wait. Why?” she asked.
The door swung and bounced on its hinges. A large hand groped into the darkness of the interior and found her. She clawed at the smooth plastic but found no hold. He ripped her from the car and threw her on the ground at Eli’s still feet. The asphalt felt cold and wet-smooth. Satomi pulled herself half up to look at her abuser.
“You want to help? Let’s go then.” He pulled her to her feet by her shirt collar. It cut into her neck, and the seams made popping noises
but held.
Satomi found her feet, slipping at first, and his arm moved from shirt to arm. Eli fell in line behind them. He grabbed the sick man by the wrists and dragged him along. His body sounded heavy and thick with the ground’s moisture.
Satomi tried not to think about where she might be going or the heavy hand on her arm. Instead, she focused on the reflective white dashes flashing in the light of the man’s lantern. Tears pooled in her eyes and slipped into a stream down her cheeks, but she remained calm. She wished Eli was on her side. She could only hope she hadn’t suggested leaving the safety of the car for... she didn’t know.
Satomi looked up to see the lantern light reflecting oddly off of clouded eyes inside the acrylic cubicles. They remained passive in their captivity, not seeking the edges of their enclosures to reach them. Strong men built wide and no attempt to escape. At Osprey Point, Satomi had restrained the infected prior to recovery, but this was different. This was simply humans in cages. Satomi diverted her eyes. She focused on the highway markers again.
They passed the trailers. When they reached a plain container van, the man let go of her. Satomi smiled through her tears at the ‘WASH ME’ scribbled in the dust of the side panel, despite herself. The man disappeared in front of the van and Satomi dared to exhale since they appeared to have reached their destination, and it hadn’t ended with her being pushed into the van - yet. He returned with a rolling stretcher of dark blue vinyl and metallic chrome, most assuredly taken from an ambulance at some point. Satomi disapproved. He hadn’t bothered to use it for transport earlier, instead choosing to drag the sick by its arms. The two men heaved the sick onto the stretcher.
She heard his labored breathing and something within her clicked into action. She was here to help. While she still feared for herself, whatever happened afterward was not her concern at the moment. She walked assuredly to her patient and immediately saw the problem. His shin swelled and showed a red color that his gray could only sheen over. An infection.
“What happened to his leg?” she asked. She touched his forehead, forgetting she did not know a normal temperature.