by RM Hamrick
She had gotten all but the hand through when she noticed added pressure on the door. A third zombie had arrived and was adding its weight. Audra gave a glance at the first zombie, who had settled on crawling toward her feet. She could ask for help. Dwyn would come help. But it seemed silly to ask for help for one on the floor and two against the door. That was child’s play. But to Audra’s surprise, it was not Dwyn that pulled himself through the window. With Audra’s smiles of encouragement, Satomi walked behind the infected on the floor and gingerly pulled it away by its ankles. Her job completed, she moved as far away as possible from it, while Audra untangled the doorway of limbs and confirmed the firm click of the door mechanism.
Their subject was a male, mid-thirties when he turned. His face was strong and angular, his glasses skewed but not broken on his face. He was lucky to have them still. There were few places to get prescription lenses currently. No one was making them as far as Audra knew, only collecting them. The township had a glasses library. You would try on pairs until you found one that improved your vision, but it was better to have just kept up with yours.
His hair had continued to grow in his state, but it was apparent it was previously short and neat, even gelled conservatively. It was easy to see he was a strong fellow despite the recent atrophy of his muscles. He had found his feet and was doing a Frankenstein’s monster walk toward them in his mussed lab coat.
Ryder stuck her head through the window to see their progress.
“Oh, he is big! I wonder if the antidote is mass dependent…” she said as she dropped back out to discuss the scenario with Ziv.
Audra pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut to summon patience from the front of her face. Even without a degree in science and having grown up basically in the wild, it still sounded like something they should have figured out before asking her to retrieve someone. She realized she might have created a mass-dependent problem of her own. The exit window was small. Satomi, who had sneaked behind Audra for safety, appeared to be thinking the same thing.
“Erm, maybe we should tie the subject up before we attempt this window.”
Audra nodded in agreement and Satomi poked her head outside to ask Ziv for some rope.
A small smile drew on Audra’s lips as she realized she had come into the building to wrangle a zombie, not even bothering to bring a rope. She was becoming overconfident, cocky even. Ziv’s small hand gripping rope appeared in the room through the window.
For a sheltered scientist, Satomi seemed willing to help out when it came to the infected. Audra saw her approach was respectful, almost religious, like a person preparing someone for sacrifice. Audra pinned the zom’s arms against his body. With the rope in hand, Satomi pulled his wrists together.
“Actually, nobody likes bondage scars. Let’s do this instead,” said Audra.
She directed the rope around his chest, wrapping his arms tight on each side. Satomi nodded and assisted.
“But for the record, there is, or at least was, a select demographic that like bondage scars.”
Satomi’s dry chide surprised Audra. She burst out in laughter as she looked at their scientific zombie. It was possible.
With the arms under control, Satomi managed the upper half of their standing zombie while Audra wrapped the rope around his legs. She tied it off with a surgeon’s knot before she and Satomi switched places. With a warning to Ziv and the others outside the window, Satomi picked up the zombie’s legs as Audra knocked him off balance. They headed with their cargo to the window. By this point, Audra ordinarily would have named the zombie, but this one was different. He would have a name soon. Or not. The thought weighed on Audra more than the body did.
They pushed him through the window until he reached a tipping point. He tilted at an angle and slid. They heard a thump and a crunch as the side of his face hit the ground.
His glasses.
“We’ll just tell him that they were broken when we met him,” Audra whispered to Satomi with a half smile.
Audra could tell that Satomi enjoyed being included on the secret. With the man’s legs still in the window, Audra squeezed out. She pulled him away so Satomi could exit as ungracefully as needed. Her slim body slipped through with no problem, impressing Audra.
Dwyn pulled the zombie up on its bound feet. Audra pulled off the ropes from his legs. He was too heavy to carry around. She tied the rope around his waist as a leash of sorts. He liked her and it took little persuading to have him follow her toward the laboratory. Audra wondered if she should salvage his glasses. One lens was still intact, but he did not look willing to allow Audra to reach for them. Audra did not know if zoms needed vision correction. She left them on, just in case.
The odd procession made its way between two counters. Satomi had shown glimmers of lightheartedness, but back in the lab with her colleagues, it seemed responsibility lay heavy on her again. Audra could not decide if it was because she respected life, or because maybe she doubted their formula. Ziv barely entered the room. He leaned against the wall, looking rather bored. Audra’s side glance accused him of wanting to be closest to the exit, but Ziv did not move closer.
The zombie seemed overstimulated with the surrounding crew, anyway. He gained energy and pulled at his restraints. He turned to Dwyn and teetered dangerously on his feet. Audra, who stood in front of him, gave a giant clap to bring his attention back to her. No one made mention he looked like he was fighting what was to come. Ryder’s hand shook ever so gently as she readied the serum and handed it to Satomi, who approached the subject from behind.
“Subject Three, thank you for your service. It will change the world,” she said with a whisper.
And with that, she leaned over with a syringe and injected him in the shoulder. Subject Three turned his head toward the stimulus. Dwyn used two hands to grab the sides of Subject Three’s face with a firm grip to keep Satomi safe. She did not flinch as she finished injecting the serum. Ryder requested that Subject Three be escorted to the observation room. It was almost anticlimactic, Audra thought. She expected some immediate reaction, like convulsions or at least a yawn of the jaw. Instead, they left Subject Three in the small conference room, no different than before.
“I’ll take first watch,” offered Satomi.
“I’ll stay, too,” added the curious Audra.
Ryder fidgeted and then left to clean up the laboratory. Dwyn helped. Ziv continued his work on aerosolizing formulas with similar molecular weight. There had been an argument as to whether this was the best way to go, but Vesna was set on aerosolizing the antidote and waking up masses.
Audra and Satomi observed Subject Three walk circles around the conference room, which was empty besides the table. Previously, they’d used it as a space to eat meals. They took out the chairs, but the table proved more difficult to remove.
There was no big reaction. Nothing at all yet. Audra was not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She didn’t want to offend by asking. Twenty minutes passed and Audra considered moving onto other things, when Satomi broke the silence.
“What is different about him?” she asked.
Her head gave a slight tilt, indicating a thought process forming inside. Audra looked at Subject Three. He was still walking in circles around the table, like a slow hamster on a wheel. He maintained the same slouched posture as before. His mouth was slack-jawed. Underneath his broken glasses, his eyes looked dead, blinking. Blinking. Audra watched his eyes. He blinked again.
“He is blinking,” her tone pitched upwards, her excitement growing.
“Blinking is a parasympathetic response. Infected humans blink,” Satomi dismissed.
“Yes, but not this often. This is… human often.”
Satomi followed.
“It is unusual. Definitely a change in his behavior. Maybe his nociceptive neurons are firing.”
Audra wasn’t sure what that meant, but she had been observing zombies for years. She spotted them passing through terrain a
s she hid in fields or above in the trees. They all had a certain range of motion and behavior. There was something different about the one in their conference room. Someone was inside, stuck inside that sick body. Audra’s thoughts turned to her sister. Belinda was in there, imprisoned in her body, in her cell, in that wretched corporation. And Audra had put her there. It was her fault. All of it.
That thought in the back of her head came slowly burning to the front. She needed out, away from others, away from herself. Without another word to Satomi or mention of the developments to the others, Audra walked out. Satomi could tell the others. Even if the process was successful, it would be slow. He was just blinking now. If it was unsuccessful, it would be slower. She had time. Without knowing where she was going, Audra walked from the laboratory door to the entrance of the small plaza. She let herself through the gate. Her knees and feet picked up higher as she found speed. She did not bother to tell herself it was a scout run, a supply run, or a perimeter check. It was not any of those things. She was running because she needed to run.
Audra kept all her senses open and alert, but the meditative motion of her cycling legs left her mind churning. She did not find relief. Her emotions bubbled up, unknown sudden emotions not safely tied to specific thoughts. As she wondered if she would burst, the feelings would subside as if she had made distance from them by running faster than they could keep up. Then a new surge of feelings. It came like waves, rolling in and out. Audra did not cling to anything for fear it would consume her. It was not safe to run like this, but it seemed even less safe to be alone, stagnant, and sitting in her thoughts.
From behind a tree, someone walked across her path. Audra almost collided into her. She skidded to a stop and only years of suppressing instinct prevented her yelp of surprise. But it didn’t stop her trembling or falling backward. The infected woman turned to look at her, her blond hair stuck to the sides of her face, her blue eyes huge and hungry. Young, alone, and lost, she reached her arms out and Audra thought for a moment to reach back. The vicious, teeth-filled snarl forced Audra to roll off to the side, tears in her eyes. Emotions she could not handle or name flooded her, her vision, her discernment, and what felt like her identity.
Just run.
It came to the forefront of her mind. Audra could almost see the words in her vision, blurring the zombie approaching her. She picked herself off the damp, leaf-littered ground and obeyed. Audra would run away, just like she had run away all those other times. Just like she had run away by throwing her sister into that corporation.
She had not done enough. Her sister had been trapped for years while she was out here. Why did she deserve to survive over her sister? What made her so special? Her anger pushed her legs to work harder and her chest expanded to keep up. Her arms did not flail in grief or fear but pumped, propelling her forward. She felt that fleeting pleasure of sprinting before her legs slowed. She stayed on that brink, back and forth between fast running and sprints.
She came upon a grassy field mowed short by animals. Audra made it halfway across when she flung herself onto the warm ground. She gasped for air. Her body was exhausted. For a moment, she focused on that. She focused on her breath, her expanding rib cage, the dizziness in her head. It grounded her. Putting her body in that catastrophic state allowed it to sync with her mind. Then placing that writhing body on the firm earth, she hoped to ground the abstract things behind her eyes.
If she could just identify what she was feeling, perhaps she could handle it. Why did she freak out over blasted blinking? Those first signs of life made her feel angry and resentful. Was she angry the virus had taken so much from her, or was she angry that she was about to get some of those things back? Though she was already flat-backed on the ground, that thought knocked her over.
She loved her sister. Her sister deserved life. But Audra had known this life and this purpose for so long. What was next for her? Audra avoided any more thoughts. It did not matter. Her obligation to her sister mattered. She had caught her breath. She pulled herself off the ground. The sun was making its journey to the other side of the earth. She needed to get back to the laboratory and face what was happening there. Audra sucked in her lips at the thought, took a deep breath, and brushed herself off. She was sweaty from her run, the grass and straw stuck to her body and dried, her face covered in dried tears she did not remember spilling. Despite the physical mess, she realized she could return to the laboratory. Countless times she had run straight to a moonshiner. She would get herself trashed and become incapacitated for hours. It provided relief, but here was some relief too. It was not as perfect and absolute as alcohol could achieve, but it had become bearable. Dwyn would be surprised at her same-day return.
Audra began her walk back. Her muscles stiffened from their strain and sudden stop. She worked them as she walked and soon they loosened. Everywhere the grass touched, her wet skin itched. Audra rubbed her hands along her arms until she found her way to the creek. She could follow it to familiar territory and the lab. Before moving on, she took off her clothes and boots and slipped into the cool water to rinse. She imagined all the emotions she had been carrying floating away as debris. It felt good to be clean. She climbed onto a small rock outcropping that was smooth and wonderfully warm from the sun. She lay there, eyes closed, finding peace.
Audra heard a rustle. Having spent years in the isolated wood, her instinct was no longer to cover up in modesty. It was all too often an animal or a nonjudgmental zombie. She felt safe on the outcropping. She looked to her right over the water to her clothes draped over rocks. There was movement in the woods. Audra squinted her eyes adjusting to the sun as the woman emerged.
It was the blond she had run into earlier in her run. Now in a calmer place, she considered tagging the zombie or at least securing it to increase the safety of the woods. No feeling was worse than finding yourself in a precarious situation with a zombie you dismissed earlier. The woman was drawn to the raw scent on the clothes, but could not find Audra. She wandered the bank, searching the ground. Her hair hung and covered her face. Audra could not stop watching. It felt like watching Belinda on those days when she looked lost in the world, confused over where she was and why. Those times, Audra would hold her hand in silence and hope she would come back to her.
Could the antiviral bring her back and then some? Audra imagined a Belinda more self-aware, confident, and steady. Her eyes returned to the lost zom. Either way, that could be home again.
The woman wandered away, having never found motion connected to the scent. Audra slid off the rock and waded to her clothes. She was going to go home. It was a long journey, not to the laboratory, but to finding her sister inside her sister. Belinda would be home. And if Belinda was home, Audra was home.
Audra walked on.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Audra returned to the laboratory and ignored Dwyn’s surprised look. Both Satomi and Ziv were working. Ziv peered up from his work and eyed her wet hair.
“How is Subject Three?” she asked.
Ziv set down the pair of beakers and continued to stare her down.
“Where were you?”
“I had to deal with some things,” she said, shrugging off her misadventure.
He squinted his eyes to analyze her answer.
“Did you tell someone what we were doing?”
“Stop,” she said with tiredness in her voice rather than anger or defense, “I’m not a spy.”
“Then why did Dwyn have to go get you when you were moving the antidote?”
“I ran into trouble. There is trouble out there if you didn’t notice. Now, how is Subject Three?”
Satomi broke in.
“Ryder is watching him. He is continuing to exhibit aberrant behavior, atypical from the classic locomotive traits of those of his condition normalized for size.”
Audra looked around for help.
“He rubbed his face,” Dwyn offered.
Audra glanced around the room. No one had spoken up for he
r when Ziv accused her, but no one looked like they agreed either. She did not worry about him. He did not seem capable of much more than dissenting speeches and weaseling out of his chores. Before Audra decided whether to further address the topic, Ryder stuck her head into the main portion of the laboratory.
“You should come see,” was all she said before her head disappeared again to watch her keep.
Everyone assumed you to be the plural ‘you’ and walked the paces to the observation area. Subject Three had slumped over the table, twitching and threatening to fall off. No one knew if this was part of the process or if he was dying.
“This might get worse,” stated Audra.
She looked around for some bindings. Dwyn was right behind her, preparing to open the conference room door. Satomi stood guard as the two entered the room. They hoisted the man fully onto the table, his face sliding on the slick table. Audra and Dwyn log-rolled him supine. His jaw hung open but wagged at the sight of Audra. Then his eyes faded and the reaching of his chin lessened. Either his innate desire to eat humans had subsided or he was no longer aware of his surroundings. Audra tried to be gentle with the tired body, wrapping the long length of rope around his body, arms, and table, avoiding the spread-eagle look. He would be secure, safe, and accessible to the scientists.
Satomi took advantage of that access immediately. She examined with a comfortableness that Audra found refreshing if not worrisome. She tested his pupils with a flashlight, checking dilation and eye movement. She took his temperature from his armpit, avoiding his mouth, and left the room without giving voice to any of her thoughts.