“Afraid,” Dax repeated. “Afraid?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ve used it as punishment…yet…but it’s on everyone’s mind. Do something against the rules, face the undead like Romans faced wild animals in the arena. Pretty effective means of punishment, don’t you think? You spill the city’s blood and then the city spills your own.”
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
I could manage weird gladiatorial games. If people wanted to do them, so be it. I could, maybe, just maybe, even see fighting a zombie for sport—it wasn’t my preference for Saturday night entertainment, but at least everyone knew what they were and hated them, and…
What the fuck are you thinking, Vibeke?
Hastings was about to topple headfirst into Crazyville if it wasn’t already there.
What people do when they think their God isn’t watching.
Alyssa had known. Everyone seemed to know. So why had no one said anything to us?
They don’t tell outsiders.
These current seating arrangement might hold a few thousand, max, and it most definitely was not at capacity. If there were at least thirty thousand left in Hastings, that meant most of the citizenry wasn’t coming here to cheer on acts of violence. And it probably wasn’t because the bulk of them wouldn’t fit.
They likely found it as horrific as I might once have. They just didn’t talk about it, because who the hell wants to talk about this kind of thing?
“Ready to go?” Tony asked. “They’re just going to kick the head around until it cracks open.”
Dax was already halfway out from under the bleachers, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Tony began limping after him, and I brought up the rear, trying not to look horrified.
What the hell am I feeling? Horrified, yes, but more the sort of horror associated with a cockroach in my kitchen as opposed to the steady decline of humanity. If it was all voluntary, who cared? All my initial horror centered around using the park as an execution method. But maybe this is just what happens at the end of the world. Things go to shit and so do people.
We walked home in silence. I didn’t expect much conversation from Dax, but even Tony seemed unusually quiet; no quiet jabs, no snarky one-liners reassuring us that he was in fact the dominant force here.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”
“Oh, that would’ve been a fun conversation,” he said. “‘Hey guys, they fight zombies to the death. Wanna go see who makes it out alive tonight?’ You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
He was right. It sounded like something he’d make up to upset me.
We marched quietly down our street. I could see now why we hadn’t brought Evie; the ghouls would have set her off immediately, and beyond that, she probably would have run right into the arena to help the living guys out.
Hell. She might become a post-apocalyptic pet superstar.
“How long have you known?” I asked.
Tony sighed. “I found out almost right after I got here,” he said. “Keller brought me to a game as soon as I was taped up. Watched me the whole time…so I shrugged and said it was probably good for them to blow off steam. Seemed to convince him I was okay with it. Haven’t gone back since, though.”
I guessed that meant he found the whole thing sketchy, too.
More and more, I was wishing we’d stayed in Elderwood and seen out whatever calamity had befallen it. At least Hammond would be in charge.
Not if he’s dead, my subconscious reminded me.
Then maybe we’d be dead with him, and not trapped in a walled city with a man-child who forced people to fight zombies for sport and possibly for punishment.
Punishment.
“We have to get Gloria and Vijay away from Keller. We have to get out of here,” I said, because apparently no one else was willing to say it.
Dax snorted.
Tony nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “We do.”
I stopped walking and gawked at him. “I am? We do?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how, exactly, you expect us to break through the guard he surely has them under, or better yet, what we’re going to do once we get them and realize we’re surrounded by Keller’s entire platoon, but dammit, Vibeke, we’re rescuing those people and escaping this shit show.”
He’s mocking me. He has to be.
“Just hold off on doing anything stupid until we think up a plan. And quit talking.” He stopped us in front of our house and glanced next door. “People are listening.”
I glanced up at the neighbor’s window. One face looked back at me. I couldn’t see much of it in the darkness, but I imagined disapproval; it wasn’t like Hastings had a hopping nightlife anymore, so there was really only one place we could be coming back from.
They assumed we had been at the arena, and they didn’t like it.
At least someone in the city didn’t.
CHAPTER TEN
Work was blessedly free of ghoul bites the next day, though I did have to tend a couple of scratches right off the bat. Lattimore waited for me to finish taping up a housewife who’d gotten into a rather violent argument with a maltipoo (I didn’t ask for more details) and then sent me out to The Domicile Formerly Known as the Mystery Tent.
The fresh piece of paper taped to the front flap now read Plague Tent.
“Oh, fuck,” I said. I stepped inside and was promptly greeted by a number of familiar faces—namely the blue-tagged folks I’d sent over the day before, Alyssa included.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered, staring at the dozens of cots that filled the room. Each hosted moaning, coughing people. Most of them hadn’t looked this bad yesterday.
A white lab coat bustled past me. I reached out and snatched at it, twirling a very surprised doctor around. “Renati,” I said in response to the bushy eyebrows that shot up. “Plague? When did this happen?”
His hands fluttered about briefly before coming to rest on his lapels. He tugged at the fabric, shifting the coat back and forth. “Not really a plague,” he said. “At least, I don’t think it’s a plague. But we don’t know what it is, and we needed a label. People love labels.”
“Do I need a mask?”
He shrugged. “I’m not using one. It’ll scare them more. Don’t know if this is airborne or not. But either way, you’ve already been exposed. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“What are the symptoms?” I asked before he could rush off.
“They’re sick,” he said. “General aches and pains. Frankly, it looks like a nasty flu.”
He hustled away before I could question him further. He paused next to one patient, took vitals, and then scurried out the back of the tent.
I stood there for a few precious seconds, weighing my options. Mask? No mask?
Well, it hasn’t killed me yet. I steeled myself and stepped further into the tent.
At least today there was another medic present; I figured the downgraded condition of the folks in here merited some sort of extra help. I caught up with her as she tended to one man in particularly sorry shape. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Vibeke. Lattimore assigned me here.”
“Experience?” she asked.
Well, she got right down to business. “Two years as an EMT in college, and I was a medic over at Camp Elderwood. Bites, aches and pains, bandaging, suturing, some meds. Lattimore had me working triage and the Zombie Ward.”
She looked me over, and her mouth pressed into a firm line. “I guess it’d be too much to ask for a real medical professional.”
I kept smiling. Beggars can’t be choosers, bitch.
“Since you’re here, though, you might as well get your shit together. We’re not dealing with head colds.”
There was my opening: “What the hell is this?”
“Got me,” she said. “Every few weeks we get an influx of weird shit. This doesn’t seem to be the Meteor Sickness, or what we accepted as Meteor Sickness. It gets bad with fever
and vomiting, most of these folks have swollen lymph nodes…”
What the hell? This had all happened overnight?
She cast her gaze over the occupants of the tent, and her shoulders slumped ever so slightly.
I tried to keep my tone businesslike. “What are you giving them?”
“All we’ve got left right now is streptomycin, and we’re low on that, too.”
“That’s it?”
She coughed into her hand, then wiped it against her scrubs. “Lattimore commandeered the penicillin and gentamicin to treat the bites and the soldiers. People who can be saved, I guess. Renati has some experimental stuff he hasn’t been allowed to try yet, but he might also have some strepto back in his lab. Go ask when it’s time to re-dose. I begged a favor from one of the food truck guys and some of them are going to make a run into the bad side of town to check the drugstores, but—”
“The food truck guys?” I imagined Logan and his friends running around in the Quarantine Zone, scooping up supplies to sell off on some kind of makeshift black market.
“Yeah. Keller won’t spare many to go looking for drugs for the dying. Logically, I guess I can’t blame him anymore.” The nurse sat down heavily on the edge of a cot, rubbing at her temples.
“Where is Renati?” I asked. “I never seem to see him for more than ten seconds at a time.”
“Because he’s never outside his fucking lab for more than ten seconds at a time. I’m sure that’s where he is now. Look, I gotta check out and get some shuteye. We can’t do much for these people besides push the drugs and the painkillers. Just try to keep them comfortable and give them water if they ask for it. Renati ordered antibiotics, for all the good it’ll do.” She pointed at the clock hanging on the wall. It wasn’t ticking, but I figured the thing worked. “Next dose is at noon.”
It’s only after seven? My God, it was going to be a long day.
She left without saying another word, and I realized I hadn’t even gotten her name.
Since all this endtimes merriment had begun, I’d dealt with zombie bites and fractures and the occasional aches and pains, not creepy illnesses that were apparently not responsive to antibiotics. Doctor Samuels had given me a primer on suturing and pushing drugs, but I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t qualified to deal with a budding plague.
Welcome to the Dark Ages. I looked around, trying to figure out what the hell I was expected to do. The medic had told me to keep them comfortable, but everyone seemed fairly quiet. I prowled up and down the rows of beds, dimly aware that despite the medic’s nonchalance, I might very well be breathing in superbugs lurking in the lungs of the sick and the dying.
A hand caught mine. “Heya,” someone whispered.
I crouched down beside the bed, and my heart sank. Alyssa hadn’t been in great shape when I left her, but now she seemed to be in the middle of some sort of full-blown infection, drained of all vitality and barely able to move her hands. “Hi, hon,” I said, trying to sound warm and pleasant. “How are you doing?”
She licked chapped lips with a dry tongue. “Hurts,” she said.
Her hand felt hot against mine. I touched her forehead: feverish as all get-out. The streptomycin clearly wasn’t doing anything for her. “Where does it hurt?” I asked.
“Everywhere…”
Well, that didn’t help me. Her pulse was steady, if elevated, and she lifted her arms only with great effort. I probed along her abdomen and frowned, detecting some swelling around her liver. I looked around for Renati, but only found that sea of staring faces.
Make them comfortable.
If it was all I could do, well, I’d do it.
“I’m going to see if I can find you something for the pain, okay?” I asked.
She nodded.
A quick scan of our supply station indicated that the other medic hadn’t lied: we were about out of the old antibiotic, and painkillers were nowhere to be seen. I assumed the doctor had the drugs, so I headed for the back of the tent. If I had the layout memorized correctly, it would lead to some kind of courtyard and Renati’s lab. The courtyard had probably been a playground at one point, as a jungle gym and a slide were still off to the left, abandoned and forgotten. There was a portable building set up to my right, and a generator hummed outside it. That must have been the lab.
Two soldiers were loitering around, sharing a cigarette. As I got closer, I realized one of them was Logan.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked instead of actually greeting them.
“Can’t serve food with a bite,” he said. “Might infect everyone else.”
So they’d posted him on guard duty. Maybe that was a better use of his purported sniping skills.
He held out the cigarette to me. I shook my head and pushed it away. What was with all the smoking lately? I hadn’t seen much of it in Elderwood, but Hastings felt like one big cigar lounge.
“Do you guys know where Renati is?” I asked. “I need painkillers.”
“Don’t we all,” Logan said. He pointed at the portable building. “Probably in there.”
He handed the cigarette to his comrade and stepped closer to me. “How’s Alyssa?”
He must have asked for this posting. It was probably the only way he could check on her with any level of frequency.
I didn’t immediately answer him, and that in itself was answer enough. His face just fell, and he nodded, turning away from me. “Gotcha,” he said.
“We’re working on it,” I said.
Lies. All fucking lies. We couldn’t effectively treat it if we didn’t know what it was.
I left the two soldiers standing around and walked myself up to Renati’s lab. He didn’t immediately respond to a knock on the door, so I tried the handle.
The door swung open. “Doctor?” I called out to the dimly lit room within. I could see some computer screens and a flash of white moving around. The white thing snapped to attention and moved rapidly toward me.
I took a step back, fervently hoping it wasn’t a ghoul.
Renati stopped a couple feet away from me. “Yes?” he asked. “What is it?”
At least he’d changed into a cleaner lab coat.
“Where are the painkillers?” I asked. “I need to dose people…we’re out…”
He blinked at me. “Painkillers,” he said.
“Painkillers,” I repeated. I talked a little slower. “For the people in the tent…you know…the one you’re in charge of?”
He brightened as his frenzied little brain made the connection. “Of course. I’m sorry; I’ve been buried in my work…wait here.”
He scuttled away, his shoes squishing softly against the floor. Squish-squish-squish. Must’ve been soft-soled. He gathered up a couple of boxes, came back, and shoved them at me. “Here. Painkillers top. Sedatives bottom.”
“We’re low on antibiotics, too.”
He frowned, his face screwing up slightly as if he didn’t remember what the term antibiotic meant. “Strepto,” he finally said. “Strepto?”
“Yeah—”
“By medicine, life may be prolonged.”
Lovely. He quoted Shakespeare on the fly. I nodded. “Yes. So if you’ve got medicine, maybe hand it over, so we can prolong their lives?”
He shook his head at me, but a slight smile tugged at his lips. “I’ll go in the back and see if there’s any more stored. But there likely isn’t. I have some other stuff we can give them if necessary. Not FDA-approved yet, but what can you do?”
Not FDA-approved? Why would he have non-FDA-approved medications lying around?
Wait. Alyssa said Renati had been in R&D. Of course he had random drugs on offer. He probably had all kinds of fun crap in his closet.
“I think just the strepto for now,” I said.
“Of course, of course.” He turned around, paused, and then turned back to me. “Vibeke, about the undead that you saw outside…”
Oh, shit. We were back to this.
“Yes?” I asked, if only
because there seemed to be no escape.
He cleared his throat. “Did you…when you were out there. On The Outside. Did you ever…when someone dies, how fast do they come back?”
His voice quivered ever so slightly. I couldn’t decide whether he was on the verge of tears or was maybe about to faint from low blood sugar.
I had to think for a few seconds, trying to imagine the ghouls I had seen while running around in Elderwood and Muldoon. “I haven’t really seen any wake up,” I said. “I mean, back at camp I saw one dude get up, but that was under controlled circumstances. Usually they’re already undead and chasing me by the time I see them.”
He nodded, and pushed his shaggy mane back behind his ears.
“Why?” I asked, dreading his answer.
Renati swayed back and forth ever so slightly. Low blood sugar looked more and more likely. “I’ve run a few tests when I can,” he said. “Not many. Lattimore doesn’t like it. But occasionally…it seems they are coming back faster and faster. And I’m concerned.”
As one should be.
“I’ll see what I can find, drug-wise,” he said.
He hustled back into the depths of his lab before I could question him further, or even really process what he’d just told me. I clutched the boxes and hurried out the door, back into the bleak outdoors and the tent setup. Logan and the other soldier had migrated away from the tent, toward the edge of the hastily constructed courtyard. Maybe someone had yelled at them about the cigarette.
I took a deep breath and stepped back inside the tent.
I fell into a sort of rhythm after a while, mechanically taking vitals and dosing people while my brain dwelled on the fate of our cohorts.
The night before, the decision to free our intrepid reporter and her cameraman had seemed like an easy one. But as I moved from patient to patient, trying to figure out a plan that didn’t end up with all of us dead or undead or worse, Operation: Rescue Gloria and Vijay swiftly ballooned into a logistical nightmare.
Some wild, obviously deranged part of me thought it would be easy. We’d get our guns, break into the prison compound or wherever Keller kept them, free them, and then shoot our way out. It was what Bruce Willis would do, after all.
Grave New World (Book 3): Dead Men Don't Skip Page 9