by John Holmes
The doctor stood to greet us, offering his hand. “My name is Alexander Brundage,” he said, politely.
We clustered in the center of the room. “We need to take blood samples from all of you.” She told us. “It’s just our policy. Doctor Brundage did the same to the refugees we recovered last night, before we sent them to stay with families throughout the island. It won’t take long.”
The others glanced at me but I shrugged. What would a blood sample hurt, and it wasn’t as if they’d actually see anything. The doc pulled a sterile lancet from a sealed package for each of us and pricked our fingertips. He squeezed a drop onto a slide, labeled each one carefully, then sat down before the microscope. I walked over to Doc and looked him over. After a moment, Cassandra joined me at his side. “He was beaten pretty badly,” she said, including the others who had taken seats after giving the doctor their blood samples. “The fingernails on his right hand were pulled out, probably with pliers. They may or may not grow back, so he will have to be very careful for a while. No broken bones, although he’s got a couple of cracked ribs. We aren’t sure if his eye orbit is broken, but it will be a few days before the swelling goes down and he can see out of that eye again. He’s not going to be able to eat solid food for about a week, just to save his jaw the trouble. One molar might be cracked. There’s a dentist on North Hero we’ll try to bring over to check the rest of his mouth. I’m hoping he won’t need that tooth pulled.” Doc woke up as she described his injuries, and gave me a thumbs-up.
She nodded at Ziv. “This one was luckier. His elbow is fractured but we put a smaller cast on it so he can use the arm. That shouldn’t keep you guys here more than a couple of weeks. He won’t say, but I think they beat him with a metal pipe. No lacerated organs or internal bleeding, but his spleen is enlarged and there may be some damage to his liver. No vodka for you, Soldat.”
Ziv scowled at her. “Vojnik. I am Serbian, not Russian.”
The Sergeant Major’s expression did not change, but I sensed some disdain in her tone when she replied. “Perhaps I should have guessed. I knew that accent reeked from someplace familiar.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Woman?” Ziv started up from his bed, reaching for the big knife strapped to his pack.
Before it broke out into violence, Brundage leaned back and smiled at us. “None of you are infected,” he said. “Although I’m sure you knew that. I can say that you all could use a few good meals and some rest.” I nodded. MREs did not a fat man make, and we were all on the edge of malnutrition. I was secretly hoping some of the vegetables in her garden would be ripe enough to eat, because I was sick of MRE #11, the Sammich. Man cannot live on Spam alone.
The Sergeant Major tapped my arm. “Hamilton and the other one can rest here for a while. I doubt they’re up for dancing. But if you would like, I can show you the rest of Isle La Motte.”
Chapter 103
Sure enough, we got a tour of the island, although from horseback. The only one of us who could ride competently was Ahmed, and even he was intimidated by the horses when the two young men from last night brought them out. “They’re Shire horses,” she told us as she easily swung up into the saddle. “About the same size as Clydesdales, those big horses you used to see in the beer commercials. They eat everything they can reach, but they don’t balk at the sight of zombies and I’ve trained them to fight. Their height means the rider is more protected from attack, although a horde would bring horse and rider down easily enough.”
Uncomfortable though it turned out to be, I did bask in the luxury of riding instead of walking. My prosthesis wouldn’t fit in the stirrup, but I found I could ride a half-assed sort of sidesaddle when the jolting got too rough, and I didn’t mind Brit’s teasing too much after she fell off twice. “You could sell these to the Army,” I pointed out when we stopped for lunch at the home of another farmer on the north side of the island. “It would be the difference between life and death for scouts.”
The farmer, a big bear of a man with the proverbial farmer’s tan, guffawed loudly as he left the table for his plowing. The farmer’s wife, a lady who looked older than she probably was, shook her head and followed her husband out. “These horses are bred for war, that’s true,” the Sergeant Major explained. “They might do you good when it comes to scout work, but they aren’t easy to care for. You’d spend half your time just searching for grazing, and frankly we don’t have enough to lose. If it wasn’t for the fact that Burlington was mostly empty when the infection reached it, we wouldn’t have enough gas to run our tractors. Eventually we’ll run out, even if we can resupply from South Hero, which I doubt. In two years, we’ll be out of fuel. These horses don’t breed every year, and we need them for the plow and for clearing fields. We won’t sell them, and we’ll fight to keep them.”
I shrugged. “Oh well. It was worth asking.”
She grinned. “It was sheer luck that we have them. If my husband hadn’t retired before me, we wouldn’t have had time to build up the farm and bring in the horses before the plague hit. He spent the last five years of my career up here.”
“Is he that man, Pierre?”
She shook her head, her smile fading. “He died of cancer three years ago. He was halfway through chemo when the plague hit.”
“I’m sorry.” Brit spoke up, the first words she’d said all morning. Her sympathy was real enough, but it was so rare for her to express genuine emotion that even I glanced at her askance.
The Sergeant Major shrugged. “The last months were easier without the drugs and radiation. He said there wasn’t too much pain, but he was tired all the time. I do miss him, but I’m glad he didn’t live long enough to realize how bad things would get.”
“What were the first couple of years like here?” Hart asked as we remounted and carefully turned the horses back south.
“We didn’t starve, I can tell you.” She was at ease on the back of the big gelding, a red roan whose size dwarfed her as a rider on his back. She swayed with the horse’s gait, comfortable on what was essentially a half-ton of solid muscle. “Most of the island had been farmland in the past, and once the community realized what was happening, and what would happen if we got overrun by refugees, it was easy to organize everyone. Bryan – my husband – we didn’t have much trouble with that. It was lean, the first winter, but between foraging expeditions in what was left of Burlington and Champlain in New York, we made it through. Eating badly for six months convinced everyone else to clear their own land, get together to clear marginal land and acreage that belonged to people off-island. The next fall, we had a surplus, and no one has starved. Even with that third handed over to General Asshole, we’ve done fine.”
She wasn’t kidding. What had struck me from the first person I saw that morning was that everyone here was healthy. It wasn’t the stick-thin-barely-surviving that my team and I looked like on a diet of MREs, and it wasn’t the almost-obesity you saw among cannibals surviving on an exclusively meat diet. Everyone here had real muscle, the strength that came from eating well and working hard. As we trotted past well-tended fields and over the one bridge, spanning a wide creek whose sides were carefully brick-lined, I was impressed again at the strength of will it took to organize an entire community in the face of overwhelming odds and succeed, especially in a world where the normal rules had gone out the window when the Undead started hunting the living. I suspected, looking at her upright back, it cost her more than she would admit to keep six hundred people working together, particularly with zombies not more than two or three miles offshore, the last military presence gone. Whatever her feelings about the General, I knew in my gut that he had still supplied them with security, even if it cost more food than they had wanted to give.
But she wasn’t a dictator either. Anyone could see that. The men and women working in the fields waved and called out when they saw her astride the horse, and she waved back. More than once she enlisted us to help a farmer pull a stuck machine out of the mud. Kids chase
d after us as we trotted down the road, and when she checked on the guards along the wall in the late afternoon, they spoke to her with real respect. Everywhere you looked, her hand was on the community, and it was a hand they evidently welcomed. Brit pushed her horse up next to mine as we waited while the Sergeant Major spoke with those guards, perched on the wood scaffolding that placed them just high enough they could sprawl out in the prone, their bodies protected by the wall, and snipe anything they could see with minimal danger. “We should stay here,” she said softly, her knee touching mine. “We could live here, Nick. No more fighting, no more starving, no more nothing. This place is paradise compared to what we’ve been through.”
“What about the Army? What about all the Soldiers we’ve supported for the last four years? Major Flynn down in Fort Orange is still waiting for our report.”
She gritted her teeth. “We did our part, Nick. And she’s right, she needs more people. Six hundred isn’t enough, this place has to be at least thirty square miles to farm, fortify, and patrol. Six more who can train dozens is a godsend to her, you can see that.”
“Let me think about it.” I cut her off as she opened her mouth to argue. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying we may not be able to ride off into the sunset just yet.” She grimaced but shifted her horse away as the older woman trotted back to us.
Later that evening, I saw what the woman had meant by surplus. She led us back to the main house to check again on Doc and Ziv but also to gather up supper, and Brit damn near swooned when she went into the pantry and saw floor-to-ceiling shelves of canned food. Our resident vegetarian started crying as she looked over the long lines of every vegetable and fruit you can imagine, all pickled or canned or piled in baskets. We all stood there in stunned silence for a while, I don’t mind telling you, because it was more food than any of us had seen since before the plague. “You weren’t kidding,” I said softly. Brit had already snagged a bag of dried apple slices and was alternating them with a huge potato that she simply bit right into, making grunting noises of appreciation.
The Sergeant Major shook her head, her expression a mixture of amusement and exasperation at Brit’s antics. Red was busy destroying a can of what looked like sliced peppers, and the only one who seemed determined to keep his hands to himself was Ahmed, his arms folded as he stared in mute fascination at a jar of diced tomatoes. His favorite, I knew; his wife, long ago, would make him a dish of stewed tomatoes on his birthday, or he had once told us on a long-range patrol. I hadn’t eaten a fresh tomato in three years.
Our host just shook her head. “Grab whatever you want, within reason, and I’ll start on dinner.” We needed no encouragement, and presented her with twelve different vegetables and six bags of various dried fruit. We followed her like ducklings back to the barn, and to our absolute delight found Pierre grilling steaks on the second-story deck. She had Red spear the vegetables onto sticks for grilling, and after a whispered word from me, cooked a dish of stewed tomatoes with curry sauce for Ahmed. He did not say a word when she set the bowl in front of him, but the hidden expression in his eyes told me his undying loyalty had switched to her. Traitor.
Doc was carried upstairs on a litter and was able to join us at the table, although an IV bag was hooked over a nail on the wall and Brundage gave him some sort of broth to sip, so he could at least feel like he was part of the celebration. Ziv’s arm was in a sling but he took to the steak with uncivilized gusto. There was nothing said for at least an hour, but we all ate as we never had before, not even in Seattle. Everything was fresh, except the meat, which had been frozen immediately after slaughter and tasted like the cow was still mooing downstairs. Nothing I ever ate before that night, not even before, tasted like that food. The Sergeant Major ate sparingly, although her companion went through his steak with the same enthusiasm we did. Brit had commandeered the largest bowl in the kitchen and was rapidly destroying the biggest salad I’ve ever seen. When we finally sat back, full, the table was almost empty, the sink was full of empty jars, and I had had to remove my belt. Red let out a long, loud, appreciative belch, apologizing sheepishly when the Sergeant Major gave him a dirty look.
An awkward silence fell. Pierre stood, and Brundage excused himself after adjusting Doc’s IV. Pierre said something in French that we didn’t understand, but it seemed to be friendly. We all gave him a short wave before he went inside to clean up. I saw Brit and then Ahmed glance my way, and I gave in to their stares. “You said last night that you know how the plague hit.”
Three empty wine bottles cluttered the center of the table; her collection in the main house was impressive, and even though I had preferred Jack Daniels back in the old world, it wasn’t bad. She lifted her glass and swirled the red liquid around before draining it. “I did say that,” she admitted as she carefully set the glass back on the table. “Perhaps a better question would be: Do you want to know what I know? You won’t forget it, and I may not be doing you any favors by telling you.”
Chapter 104
It was Brit who broke the silence, and in her haunted expression I saw the girl Doc and I had rescued from the remains of Syracuse years before. “I was going to the stars, Lady. I was the top of my class in Physics, I was a week out from an internship at NASA when the zombies showed up. I want to know what stole my future.”
The two women shared a long, considering glance. I thought that perhaps the Sergeant Major, a woman who had somehow retained the vestiges of real elegance despite the dirt under her fingernails and the world-weary expression that creased her forehead, was the kind of woman Brit would have admired, if the world were sane and God paying attention. Finally the older woman nodded.
“If you insist. My last assignment, as I told you last night, Sergeant Agostine, was at Fort Detrick. By then I was twenty-six years into the Army, and I’d gone as far as I could, even among Sergeant Majors. I had no intention of continuing, and the only logical assignment left for me would be at Division level. But I had dropped my retirement packet after Bryan was diagnosed with brain cancer, our dreams of building a farm here to putter around gone along with his health. For the last nine months, ticking down to the day I’d leave, they asked me to run the Inspector General’s Office. Hardly a glamorous assignment, and not the one I should have gotten, but by then the only thing a bad NCOER could do was give me a paper cut.” Doc and I chuckled, Doc’s ending with a wince as he curled one arm around his ribs.
“Detrick was the home of the Army’s bioweapons program, despite all denials of it, and at my level I knew the basics of what was going on. There was an entire complex beneath the fort, something like six or seven stories below the surface. Supposedly it was capable of containing any virus that might have been accidentally released. Containment levels and eradication protocols so complex I don’t think any one person could have understood them all. I think that’s why what happened is so horrifying to contemplate: the release of the ‘reanimation’ plague was intentional.”
We sat in stunned silence for a long moment. “No. Fucking. Way.” Red finally whispered hoarsely. “How could someone do that – on purpose? Who would even think of that?”
“This woman should never have been employed by the U.S. military. She should have been killed at birth.” The Sergeant Major said softly, with venom.
I knew the name, I spoke it at the same time she did. “Doctor Morano.”
I felt her glance pierce me. “You know her?”
“She did this.” Brit lifted the damned pirate eye patch I had never been able to break her of using, and the Sergeant Major leaned forward to examine the white eyeball, the iris so clouded it was almost invisible.
“That looks like her work.” She settled back into her chair. “You know, a question a lot of people asked after World War II was how Mengele could get away with his work. Everyone wanted to know if the times made the man, or if the man took advantage of the times. You could ask the same question about her. Her reputation on post was such that everyone
referred to her as ‘Doctor Moreau.’ I suspect she took it as a complement.”
“She’s a fucking psycho,” I said, hoarsely. My wife’s face flashed in my mind. Our daughter’s arm in her hands, the splash of blood across her torso, the red eyes. I had married her with so much love and hope for the future, our daughter’s birth had been the best day of our lives, and thanks to one mass murderer all that was gone. I loved Brit, but there was nothing I wouldn’t trade, not even her, to have my family back. My old life and the old world back.
“She’s a sociopath for certain. I never understood why no one suspected her after the parasite was released, but I suppose in the general chaos no one got around to asking questions, and if she’s popped back up on the government’s radar, as she seems to have done, they may not care so long as she appears to be making progress towards a cure.”
“She’s based out of Seattle now, but she hops around the country. She’s got two Delta goons for bodyguards.” I told her.
Our host nodded slowly. “That’s enough to keep her in funding, and to give her whatever guinea pigs she wants.”
Ahmed leaned forward. “Tell us about the beginning, please.”
The wind had died, and just as she opened her mouth, the faint zombie howl echoed across the water. We all jerked upright, reacting on instinct to the sound, but our host only turned her head slightly, as if to hear better. She raised one hand to keep us in our seats. “What you’re hearing is Chazy, New York. The wind drops in early evening and you can sometimes hear it across the water. We’re safe here.” Pierre stepped back out on the porch to listen himself, his shotgun strapped across his back. “The wall is fully guarded in the evening, and there is no way across the water. You’re safe.” The sun was almost fully down, the sky a pale lavender in the west, fading to deep indigo. The moon was still new, and the stars blazed. Above our heads the Milky Way splashed rich and bright, and Brit sighed softly as she looked at it. The Sergeant Major continued her story, and slowly we all felt the chill of her words take hold.