“Verdict?” Pia’s voice came from behind me, making me tense, if not outright jump.
Martinez checked my ribcage again, drawing a few more pained sounds from me.
“Without an X-ray I can’t say for sure, but you have at least several cracked ribs, likely some fractured ones, too. Rest is just bruises,” he said, talking to me but looking over to her briefly. “Nothing I can do about that except a really tight bandage and some painkillers. Maybe don’t smack into any more buildings until you’re fully healed, okay?”
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything,” I hissed between clenched teeth. Looking down at my discarded clothes, the very idea of wearing a bra that would push down on my ribs inevitably was hell.
As if she’d read my mind, Pia held out one of the tank tops she usually wore instead of underwear to me. Snug on her already, it would be ridiculously tight on me—but it beat the torture instrument currently lying at my feet.
“Patch her up and help her dress,” she told Martinez. To me, she said, “We rigged up OR-3. You can check the progress from the observation lounge above. Once it’s dead, come in and help.”
My tongue was burning with protest, but I quickly swallowed it down. Getting more involved was what I’d wanted, right? So protesting at the first chance I got was likely not the best idea.
“Will do.”
She nodded as if she hadn’t expected anything else—which, considering our track record of disobeying her orders was about zilch, she likely hadn’t—and disappeared in the direction she’d pointed me.
Martinez got out the bandages, and what followed was in no way sexual or pretty. About ten minutes later, I imagined I had a good idea of how a mummy must have felt, and even the thin layer of the tank top was hard to bear and breathe at the same time. Martinez helped me shrug on one of my clean short-sleeved shirts and a zip-up hoodie, leaving everything but my jacket on the floor. I paused for a moment, but then followed him. I could always get new clothes later; some that actually fit and weren’t stained from months of sweating into them.
“I’ll check again tomorrow morning. It would be better without bandages, but I know you. Telling you to just take your pills and lay low for a week won’t happen.”
Shrugging hurt, but so did breathing deeply. “You do know me,” I agreed.
It wasn’t hard to find the right operation room. The presence of no less than three guards gave it away. We passed them by and went up the stairs to the observation lounge, where Burns and Cho had set up camp. Cho was busy cleaning his weapons, while Burns was leafing through what I realized was a stack of women’s magazines, dated last May. At my pained but quickly widening grin, he held up one hand defensively. “Hey, don’t judge. They’re full of sex stories. It’s been a mighty long winter.”
Rolling my eyes, I sagged into the seat beside his, pointedly not leaving a spare in between.
“You’re so pathetic,” I observed.
“Says the girl who got so desperate that she’s making out with concrete walls now?”
That got the glare it deserved, and I plucked the magazine from his fingers, quickly scanning the last opened page.
“Can’t you get any decent porn? I mean, seriously. ‘Ten ways to make him beg for it in under five minutes’? I’d be surprised if even a single one worked.”
His shrug could have meant anything. “You just want me to hunt down some real porn because you want to stare at tits, too,” he accused.
I raised my brows, feigning innocence.
“Can you blame a girl after all she saw for the past ten months is dick? And even more dick? You guys aren’t exactly circumspect when you dress. Or wank.”
Martinez chuckled, while Cho looked vaguely uncomfortable—and rightly so. I pointedly ignored that he was still there.
“You’re seriously complaining about that?” Burns wanted to know. “I thought you liked cock? Don’t you like pretty much everything?”
I flipped a few pages, grinning at the ridiculous poses in the ads. “Unwashed, hairy, dirty anything is not what I get off on,” I let him know.
“See, that wall had a clear and unfair advantage,” Burns scoffed.
Downstairs, Nate and Andrej were about done strapping the seemingly lifeless body of the zombie to the steel table. “You do realize that we can hear everything you say up there?” he remarked, not bothering with looking up.
I glanced at Burns, waiting to see if he looked bashful, but his bright grin easily mirrored my own.
“Why, all that talk about cocks distracting you?” I asked, smiling sweetly on the off-chance that he would glance up after all.
“Depends. Do you want me to start dishing on what I know for a fact turns you on? I’m sure I can scrounge up some anecdotes,” Nate not-quite threatened.
“You’re such an asshole,” I grunted, looking over at Cho. “You done? Then hand me that kit.” Cho dutifully let me borrow his gear to set to work on my shotgun. Burns meanwhile reclaimed the magazine, happily leering at a spread about tankinis and one-piece swimsuits with clever cutouts. I might have snuck a glance or two, but mostly focused on my cleaning.
Now that they had the zombie in place, the three of them—Nate, Andrej, and Pia—took turns pulling it apart. Literally, which also proved the quickest method of letting the tranquilizer wear off. Within minutes, the entire room was soiled with zombie blood, vomit, shit, piss, bile, and a million other things I didn’t want to look at too closely. I would have expected them to be more methodical and slow in their approach, but except for not going for its spinal cord, they weren’t squeamish. While I didn’t feel outright sympathy for the creature getting vivisected down there on that table, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the proceedings—particularly as Pia had already made it clear that they expected me to participate once the high risk of infection was cleared.
Cutting into a zombie? No, that idea didn’t make me uncomfortable.
What made my skin itch was that now that we had it right here, I couldn’t quell the sense of fascination and curiosity that was rearing its ugly head.
Ever since the shit had hit the fan, I hadn’t really felt like needing the details of what was going on beyond where it was pertinent to my survival. How not to get infected, how to find food, shelter, weapons, ammunition. How to make it another hour. Another day. Another week. At first, the very prospect of traversing several states and a good two thousand miles and survive the insane amount of time that undertaking would require had seemed just overwhelming. Within days, it was impossible to remember a time before this new reality had existed without feeling my heart seize each and every time. Within weeks, just remembering what had happened Before was hard. And it wasn’t important, either. Why cry over something that was gone forever?
Sure, part of me had remained curious. That part had gobbled up every little tidbit it could grasp—but those were few and far between. Most of what I knew came from Nate—and that mostly about the serum he and a few others had been inoculated with, rendering them pretty much immune to zombie bites, but not the sugar-laced food that infected all of us—and beside the fact that it was mighty convenient that I knew that if he got bitten, he wouldn’t turn, there was no sense to dissecting that further. Not getting infected was easy—just don’t get chewed on. Maybe under different circumstances, with the right means, things might have been different, but whenever that deeply rooted side of me—the scientist—fought herself to the forefront of my mind, only one thing came of it: bitterness and resentment. I had the knowledge, and probably the skills, to tackle the issue if I had a fully staffed lab and unending resources—but what good would that do me to find out exactly what that virus was and how it worked? I’d just get confirmation for what had led to this event of mass extinction that we called reality now. There was nothing I could do about it, and I wasn’t sure if that useless knowledge would simply lead to one conclusion. Suicide.
Glum as that thought was, it was easy to push away. Because I had survived the
apocalypse, and even if every breath I now took reminded me vehemently of my own mortality and vulnerability, I was still around, still kicking, and I intended to keep it that way. Acquiring useless knowledge would in no way contribute to my continuing survival. But find out how the zombies worked, in a visceral, physical sense? Find out what could hurt them, kill them?
Nate had been right, as much as admitting that made me want to choke on my own arrogance. The more we knew, the better our chance of survival. And so far, doing everything to ensure that survival had been a very good thing to bet my life on. If that meant that I’d have to breach one more moral gap, so be it.
Below, the zombie arched up, threatening to break the restraints as Pia sawed its left leg off in the middle of the femur, a spray of blood, bone, and tissue making the wound disappear for a second. I’d never seen a live amputation, but there was barely anything leaking from the wound—also proving that puncturing the femoral artery wouldn’t even slow the fuckers down. Disgust welled up inside of me, but I did my best to swallow it down as I leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the situation. My own experience today with the knife had proven about the same—anything short of crippling injury didn’t hinder zombies a lot. And while it had howled loud enough to rattle the glass, it hadn’t sounded like pain, just rage at being unable to fight, to hunt, to eat. A sword was likely the better weapon, but considering I’d just be frightened—rightly so—of accidentally chopping off my own limbs, close-range shotgun blasts still sounded damn good. I filed that away for the next time Nate would start nagging me again about why I always chose the shotgun over the assault rifles he kept foisting at me.
It took almost an hour until they’d reduced the zombie to simply so much meat that whatever kept it alive—as alive as it was—gave out. Some more poking and prodding ensued, but no reaction followed. Nate looked up, his hands still dripping… something. “You two can suit up.”
I was surprised at first, but likely shouldn’t have been about Martinez coming to his feet. He popped the lid of the bottle of painkillers that he carried and shook out two pills for me that I swallowed with some water on the way down.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked him as we passed the guards right in front of the operation room. Rather than go through the swing doors, he nodded toward the room to the side that was where the doctors had prepped themselves for surgery.
“Scrubs do have the advantage that they don’t just keep the patient from getting contaminated by the doctor, but the other way round, too. Do I really have to give you a lecture on standard hygiene in medical environments?”
I shrugged, following him. “I’d rather have a hazmat suit, thank you.”
His laugh was a little shaky as he started pulling out blue pants and shirts from the stacks in the anteroom, strangely untouched—but then I could see where they hadn’t been important enough to anyone to pilfer.
“Well, yeah. But lacking those, this is likely the next best thing we can work with,” he said.
I didn’t bother with shedding anything but the hoodie—it would have needlessly bulked me up—and let Martinez help me into the oversized scrub pants that I pulled on right over my boots and pants. To stave off the bout of paranoia I pulled on a second set of latex gloves over the first, making sure they sat as snug on my fingers as possible. With a wry smile I realized that it stemmed less from trepidation of getting infected, but plain old biosafety protocols. It was funny how ingrained things could pop up just like that.
“If you tell me that you’re actually looking forward to this, you lose any moral high ground that you always claim when you rail at his decisions,” Martinez grumbled. Of course he was referring to Nate. And of course he was right.
“No, absolutely not looking forward to this,” I replied, feeling my throat close up. “But I didn’t expect this to feel so fucking familiar.”
That drew a quick grin from our medic, and he held the swing door into the OR for me. “After you.”
“Don’t they say beauty before age?” I teased as I walked by him, knotting up the face mask at the back of my head.
Martinez’s answering smile was hidden by his own mask, but his eyes translated the message well enough. “Bitch.”
“Always,” I acknowledged—and lost all sense for joking as my eyes fell on the gorefest in front of us.
The three had cleaned themselves up somewhat, and there was a bucket of fresh water next to the steel table, with a sponge inside of it. Brownish-black stains on the floor showed where someone had tried—but not very hard—to make it a little less slippery. Calling the effort “cleaning” would have been too much. The moment my eyes snagged to the zombie, it was impossible to look away again. The sight of it—now missing the other three limbs, too, making it just a torso with a head attached—was just too morbid to look away. And maybe it was just me, but it was kind of a well-endowed specimen. I didn’t want to guess at why they’d left that attached—then again, it was probably a fundamentally male thing. I couldn’t fathom that the Ice Queen would have any qualms cutting anyone’s dick off.
“So what exactly is it that you want me to do?” I asked the room at large, crossing my arms over my chest, if very gingerly.
Nate cleared his throat, and it took me a moment to tear my gaze away and regard him. The hint of a smirk was lurking on his face, and I already knew what was coming when he opened his mouth to deliver it. “Stop staring at zombie dicks is a good first step.”
“My, someone’s jealous today,” I remarked—and couldn’t refrain from glancing back to the parts in question.
“Not sure how it should reflect negatively on me that you’re transfixed by dead meat,” he griped.
“Well, it stands to reason that yours is what I’m comparing it to, right?” Blinking innocently, I allowed myself a smile, but it probably looked like the grimace it was. “But all joking aside, did that thing move while you took it apart? Medical curiosity, not sexual.”
Nate snorted. “That you feel the need to clarify that is telling.”
“Of your jackassness, yes,” I affirmed. “So, did he get a hard-on when you sawed off his arms and legs? Or afterward?”
“It’s obvious that the virus has fried their brains, but I doubt that it’s that bad that they get off on dismemberment,” he shot back.
“Bree has a point there,” Martinez interjected, his voice neutral but I could tell that he was fighting a smile.
“You would say that,” Andrej joked.
It was Pia who replied, though. “She does. Death erections aren’t uncommon in deaths by strangulation.”
“That’s why autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing,” Martinez added under his breath.
Nate looked from Pia to Martinez, still shaking his head. “You’re all such a fountain of wisdom. How neither of you hasn’t already found a cure for zombies is beyond me.”
“Just stating facts,” Pia shot back, clearly unperturbed. “And no, it didn’t have an erection, at any point. I haven’t seen any of them give any indication so far that they can still be sexually active, even on a basal reflex level.”
“Thank fuck for small mercies,” I said, likely echoing everyone’s sentiment—and continued staring at that flaccid piece of meat.
“Want me to cut if off so you can rest easy at night?” Pia asked, the humor lacing her words making her accent more pronounced. Looking up, I frowned, but then realized that she was grinning at Nate rather than me.
“Don’t bother with that. I think I’m a little more secure than that.”
“Love how you use the term ‘little’ when referring to your sex organs,” I replied, giving him wide eyes when he glared at me.
“Can we cut the crap now and get down to business?” he asked, not bothering with hiding his annoyance. “We didn’t really find anything new or useful so far. This is likely an exercise in futility, but as we already have that blasted thing here, why not cut it open and see how they look inside? You know how to do a Y inci
sion?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter if I botch it? He’s not complaining, I’m sure.” Nate frowned at my slip, making me roll my eyes at him. “Seriously? You’re going to chew me out over a pronoun slip? It. Happy now?”
“You wouldn’t believe how ecstatic the idea of you dissecting a cadaver makes me,” he replied.
“You’re so damn easy to please,” I offered, but forced myself to get serious. “You’re certain that thing is dead for sure?” Looking at the torso in question, I felt a little stupid for asking, but that was the kind of stupidity that had kept me alive.
Nate nodded. “No pulse, no reaction to any stimulus. All wounds have stopped oozing… whatever it is they were oozing.”
“They actually have a heartbeat?” I asked, not sure whether I should have been surprised or not.
“They have something,” Pia replied. “It’s enough to keep a low blood pressure up. It should be not enough to sustain working muscle, but they only breathe to scream, so what do I know? That’s why they leak rather than spurt. I think.”
Hearing her offer her opinion with a note of hesitation was coming close to anathema. Then again, she usually only spoke up when she was right and had a reason to. It was still somewhat unsettling.
Looking around, I skimmed over the tools set aside on a surgical tray, picking up the only familiar one—a scalpel. My hand shook ever so slightly as I brought it to the left shoulder of the torso, but stopped before actually touching it. “Can somebody wipe that down real quick? I’d like to see approximately what I’m cutting into.” I was also tempted to gripe why I had apparently been elevated to stand-in medical examiner while Martinez was playing nurse, but it was oddly reminiscent of that time when they’d had me cut out the necrotic and inflamed tissue from Nate’s rendezvous with the rebar. There probably was a reason why Martinez had dropped out of med school in the first place.
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