“She is,” he confirmed. “Seems to do a good job of it, too.”
Funny how some things work out. I had first learned of the living dead from a clearly annoyed Lattimore; now I would be working for her. It was like the circle of life. Or unlife.
“Is Gloria going to be okay?” Dax asked.
We’d held off on asking about her and Vijay up until now. I thought we showed a surprising amount of restraint.
“I’m sure she is,” Tony said.
“What’s he even want her for?” I asked.
“Information? Scaring people?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s Gloria.”
“And you don’t want to tell me you didn’t get spooked listening to her reports?”
He was right—Gloria’s near-nightly updates had never been particularly heartwarming, but at the same time, I’d recognized how necessary they were. “They were important,” I said. “He must realize that.”
Tony let out a frustrated-sounding sigh. “I don’t know what he’s going to do. Probably just ask her some questions. She’s not going to be of any use to him if she’s incapacitated. Relax, guys. Really.”
We didn’t relax, but we also didn’t start asking more questions.
The Hastings Medical Facility stretched over several acres of blacktop. It looked like a former parking lot backed up to one of the city’s many sports fields, all that land retaken for our use. Dark green Army-issue tents covered all of the lot itself, the right side backing up to a portable building that probably held equipment and medicines that needed to be kept cold. Generators hummed, and the calls of medical staffers bounced around our heads. It was far more militaristic than anything Elderwood had been able to cook up—we’d used the old student health center as our medical facility.
Hastings had a couple of actual hospitals, though. I wondered what had happened to Behrens Memorial.
Tony stopped us in front of what I guessed was the main entryway: a tent with slightly different markings from the others. He motioned for us to hold still, and then went inside. A moment later, he emerged with Lattimore herself. I recognized her dark hair and the spark of intelligence in her eyes, but there was a gauntness to her face that had not been there in her early interviews. I imagined we all had that tension in us now, that careworn look no amount of food or rest seemed to alleviate.
She looked over both of us with the same sort of restrained dislike I typically reserved for the dentist’s office. “So this is your medic,” she said, clearly underwhelmed. She met my gaze and nodded slightly. “You did all right with his leg.”
“Thanks,” I said, forcing my tone to remain even. Supposedly Lattimore had demanded my release; maybe this brusque manner was just her way of making sure I knew my place.
Lattimore sighed, then switched her stare to Dax. I thought she looked particularly disapproving. “What’s this one do?”
Dax, bless his heart, didn’t bristle. He just stood there, though his smile grew slightly strained.
Tony shrugged. “You need orderlies, don’t you? He can lift. Clean. Do stuff. Look, Doc, you wanted a medic, I got you a medic. Dax can do all kinds of shit, too. Just put him to work.”
“I need medical professionals. I don’t need someone I need to train up from—”
“Make it work, Doc,” Tony snapped. She closed her mouth, perhaps used to deferring to the perceived military connection. But her expression blackened considerably as she met his stony gaze, and I detected all manner of dislike in there—dislike for him, for the situation, for our current ruling military party, for some combination of the three.
Dax looked at the ground.
I had a sinking feeling Tony had begged for Dax’s release as a favor. Lattimore might have asked for me and Tony had used my skills as leverage: Request Dax, too, or you don’t get the actual medic at all.
Holy shit. Had he blackmailed her over me?
Tony saluted the two of us. “You guys be good today.”
“Where are you going?” Dax asked, failing somewhat at concealing his unhappiness.
“To do important things. Commander stuff. You wouldn’t understand.” He smiled at us, saluted the good doctor, and limped away.
Lattimore looked between the two of us and shook her head. “I ask for help and this is what they give me,” she muttered. “All right. Dax, you go straight to the back there and meet with Pete, he’ll get you set up. You…medic…you’re with me.”
Dax and I exchanged final nods before he headed off to his fate. I hoped Pete was nicer than the doctor.
Lattimore and I stood outside sizing each other up for another moment. “Well, you’re here,” she said, jerking her head toward the interior. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Clearly she did not think I could do much at all, despite the fact that Tony’s leg had not fallen off yet.
We went inside. The tent had been subdivided by heavy lengths of canvas, and she guided me to the right, directly into a small room full of equipment and scrubs.
“What happened to Behrens Memorial?” I asked. Gloria and Lattimore had done their initial reports from there, and I had delivered several patients to its ER back in college.
Lattimore’s face closed off even further than I thought possible. “It was overrun,” she told me, searching through a shelf of clothing. “We ended up grabbing what we could and bugging out. Every now and then Keller sends a scout team out, but eight floors…all those revenants…”
Right. No hospital for us.
“You did a nice job on McKnight’s leg. Hope it wasn’t a fluke.”
I kept my face frozen as Lattimore selected a gray thermal shirt and shoved it at me. It had MEDIC emblazoned across the front and back in big red letters. “Put this on. I’ll get you some others in your size. You need to wear this whenever you’re out on business. Think of it as a work uniform.” She paused. “It may also help you get around checkpoints faster.”
Checkpoints? No one had said anything about checkpoints.
I slipped behind a screen to change, then re-emerged with what I hoped was my best smile. I’d worked with Dr. Samuels, Elderwood’s very own brand of mad scientist; surely I could handle whatever Lattimore threw at me.
She let out another disappointed-sounding sigh. “I guess you’ll do.”
Just keep smiling. Just keep smiling. “So do you want me to start with patients, or…?”
“A squad saw some action at the edge of the Quarantine Zone. You’ll be treating soldiers from there as they come in.”
“Quarantine Zone?”
“There’s a section where the inhabited part of the city is cut off from the part that has been overrun. The undead break through pretty frequently.”
Oh. I was getting thrown right into the thick of things. Very well.
“Here’s a kit and a clearance pass.” She shoved a blue box and a laminated card at me, not pausing to ask if I could actually do half the shit I’m sure Tony said I could.
“How are things otherwise?” I asked.
She sent me a withering look. I really was not doing too well here.
“I mean medically,” I said. “I’ve been locked up since I got here and Tony hasn’t told me shit.”
Her expression didn’t soften, but she did answer me as she rearranged the shirts she’d upset. “It’s bad. We’ve got revenants coming at us from all directions. Two recent scouting teams sent outside the walls haven’t come back, and Keller’s not inclined to send out a third. Can’t blame him. Poor kid inherited a clusterfuck from Durkee.”
I’d heard the name Durkee flung around a few times now. “What happened to him, anyway?” I asked.
“Dead. Some of those fucking zombies that broke through the Quarantine Zone caught up with him.” She shook her head. “May he rest. Beyond that, we’ve got the usual problems in a war zone…typhoid, some cholera.”
“Typhoid and cholera?” Shit, I always died of those while playing Oregon Trail.
“Sanitation system’
s failing in some parts, although we’re trying to keep it going. We still get power from the dam, and Keller’s protecting the lines, but I think something’s going on at the control station itself. All our scouting parties are looking for generators now.”
I had other questions swirling around in my feverish little brain, but Lattimore’s expression pretty much forbade any more of what she clearly considered small talk. So I nodded, put on my poker face, and followed her back through the makeshift lobby and into the main tent. We passed through this quiet area swiftly, moving directly to the back, out another flap, and into a second, smaller tent.
The stench hit me immediately: the peculiar mixture of earthy and human decay, fresh blood, and oozing wounds that had become standard in any post-apocalyptic medical unit. I counted at least a dozen soldiers and two civilians in varying states of distress, all of them sporting fresh wounds.
Ah. She’d brought me to triage.
A soldier lurched off a cot and latched onto me before I could get two steps inside. “Help,” she said. “I need a tourniquet or something.”
I looked down at her left arm, or what was left of it. She didn’t need a tourniquet—she needed a new hand.
“Christ,” I muttered, gently pushing her back down. “Ah…Doctor…”
Lattimore glanced at the hand and didn’t bother hiding her grimace, which I’m sure didn’t give the patient a particularly good feeling about the situation. “Clean her up and I’ll be by in a minute,” she said.
Clean what up? I stared down at the mangled flesh and bits of bone sticking out. Could this even be repaired? Even if I could staunch the bleeding and set things mostly right, would she be able to use the hand at all?
“Hey,” the soldier said. “Maybe just pretend to do something? Make me feel better.”
Shit. “I’m sorry,” I said, opening my kit and taking stock of its contents. “I’m new, I…here, I’m going to give you…” I spied the painkillers in their own little section. “Has anyone given you anything?”
“The other medic gave me lidocaine. But he didn’t come back.”
That explained why she was talking coherently to me and not passed out from the pain. A bowl of saline and several clean strips of cloth were laid out on a tray next to the bed, which indicated to me that the other medic, whoever he was, had at least been intending to clean her up. I set my kit down next to the tray, dipped one of the cloths into the saline, and studied the wound, trying to come up with an angle of attack. With all the blood and junk clogging her hand, though, I couldn’t begin to figure out where the damage was.
I mentally shrugged and dove right in, first dabbing gingerly with the cloth, then dunking her hand into the bowl entirely.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“About four hours ago.”
Damn. That was plenty of time to cure the average zombie bite, but it looked like she’d taken additional trauma to the hand. Clumps of dried blood eased away, along with what I thought might have been one of her fingernails.
I stomped down my revulsion and instead tried to focus on the specifics. “How many revenants?”
“One.”
I frowned. A ghoul could take a chunk out of a person, but I’d never seen one mangle a hand this way—especially not on a seasoned soldier. I could feel multiple bite marks dotting her hand, of varying size and depth. This seemed like an extended period of munching had gone on, and most people, fearful though they may be, don’t just let a dead man chew on them. I had only seen this sort of wound on those who had been pretty much devoured by a gaggle of the undead.
I glanced at the girl again. She lacked the hardness around her eyes that I’d seen Hammond’s people, and I figured she might be around twenty-two. Maybe not a seasoned soldier, then. “Was there more than one?” I asked.
She shifted slightly, her gaze flicking around the tent, and I knew right away this wasn’t your average zombie bite.
When things first went to hell, Elderwood had adopted a sort of system to get by: Don’t ask questions you don’t need to ask. That often included foregoing important information while working on someone for fear of upsetting them. Gradually, as things grew more dire, the strange etiquette fell by the wayside, and I consciously shoved it away now. “Hey, Private, I need to know what happened in order to treat you. Was it more than one?”
“No,” she said. “There was just the one…the one zombie…he bit my thumb thereabouts.”
She pointed into the bowl. I quite frankly couldn’t tell what she was pointing at through the bloody saline, but nodded anyway. “Were you passed out?” That was the only way I could think of a revenant using a hand as a chew toy.
Zombies don’t go for chew toys.
Every ghoul I’d ever seen chewed when there was nothing in its mouth…but once it got hold of meat, it did the human thing and focused on eating. And people didn’t just sit there and let themselves be eaten alive. They yanked their hands away, fled the premises. The sheer number of bites on her said she’d done neither.
I lifted the soldier’s hand out of the saline and stared down at the torn flesh before blood began welling up again. At least five bite marks, all of the same size. The same ghoul, biting multiple times, probably with great speed. I even pulled a front tooth out and set it down, offering her a queasy smile. “Look, he left you a souvenir.”
She blanched. I blanched. What was I thinking, calling it a souvenir? Get your shit together, Vibby.
The doctor would need to take off her middle and ring fingers; they had been gnawed to the bone. Very un-zombie-like; a typical ghoul would have torn the fingers right off.
Was this some new sort of revenant? I wanted to know about it, so I could more effectively run away.
“Good fucking God.” Lattimore had returned to us, and I could see her rethinking her plan as she took in the extent of the damage. “All right, I’m taking this one to a private room. She doped up?”
“Lidocaine,” I said. “I was about to refresh it.”
“I’ll do it. Private, come with me, we’ll get you checked out. Vibeke, go help the guy in green over there. He’s got a nasty bite and something else on top of it.”
“Right.” If nothing else, I’d gotten pretty good at following orders.
The soldier waved at me with her good hand. “Thanks for your help, Vibeke.”
Maybe it was the painkiller creating a pleasant buzz in her system, or maybe she was just a nice girl. But someone who’d managed to lose half her hand to what looked like a bad fight with a garbage disposal had taken the time to thank me before heading off to near-certain amputation.
For a few seconds I almost let myself feel like I’d done something useful.
CHAPTER FOUR
My first day of work in Hastings ended on a sour note.
Toward the end of the day, a patient coughed up half her lung as I tried to get a sedative into her. Lattimore found me standing there, dripping with blood and bits of her insides, and promptly kicked me out.
I never did find out what happened to that poor woman, but when you’re that sick during the endtimes, it’s a good bet you aren’t recovering anytime soon.
I left my MEDIC shirt in the front room to be laundered or destroyed—I didn’t care which—and took a fresh one to put on the next day. Then I joined Dax outside.
“Hey,” I said.
Dax shook his head.
“Oh. Are we not talking?”
Tony came limping up to the medical facility just as the sky shifted from light gray to dark gray, a sign that the sun had started to set somewhere behind the cloud cover. He started to greet us, and then paused, taking in my scowl and Dax’s baleful expression. “Hey, kids,” he said. “How’d it go?”
“I hate hospitals,” Dax said. “I have always hated hospitals. Don’t make me work here anymore.”
“At least you didn’t have to look at zombie bites all day,” I said. “And your boss seems mellow.”
“Of course he�
�s mellow. He’s high all the time!” Dax slouched down, affecting the posture I’d seen Pete schlepping around with. “‘Yo, Dax, go clean that bedpan while I roll another joint.’ The fucker is stoned out of his mind.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Tony said. He canted his head to the side and started walking away from the medical center, but not toward our home—he seemed to be pointing us to the downtown area. We followed him. “Some good weed might make this all easier to deal with.”
I mostly agreed with him.
Dax clearly did not. “You don’t get high when you have to be around sick people,” he hissed. “Can you imagine Lattimore performing surgery when she’s high as a kite?”
At this point, I could picture pretty much anything, but I wasn’t about to share that with Dax. Apparently he was sensitive about such things.
“Can you get me another posting?” he asked. “Please. I hate being around sick people. I liked being in processing at Elderwood. Just…put me somewhere without all the…all the needles.”
Tony grunted his displeasure. “You know, I’m not a headhunter. I pulled strings to get you out of the brig, and those strings run directly back to the medical facility. I don’t know if I can just go in there and demand a new posting for you. Especially considering your…prior occupation.”
“What does that mean?” Dax asked.
“It means Keller thinks you’re a devil-worshipper.”
Dax stopped walking. “What?”
I stopped walking, too. “You’re joking, right?” There’s some guys that just can’t handle evil, and Dax is one of them. Any self-respecting devil-worshipper would run far, far away from his purity.
Tony let out a sound that was part snort, part laugh. “Apparently Evan Keller is one of a handful of people who heard the debut record of your band, the Blood Nuts, and Dax, he thinks you are a very, very naughty boy.” I still couldn’t quite tell whether he was joking or not—it was exactly the sort of story he might make up, but Keller seemed just off his rocker enough to panic about it. “I told him you needed the money.”
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