Tim found he couldn’t speak with the thing in his mouth, which he guessed was doing his breathing for him. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what was happening. Or what had happened. The original Meridian research facility where he’d worked had been located on a hospital campus, not inside a prison. But when the plague hit, yes, hospitals became ground zero as newly infected stinkers were brought in to be helped. He could imagine how the Meridian crew had made the decision to relocate to a more secure location, and a recently emptied prison probably seemed as good a place as any. Later, most of this would be corroborated.
Before long, someone came in and touched his arm. He opened his eyes and the woman started, stepping back a few feet. At least he thought it was a woman: She was in a full-fledged haz-mat suit with mask and respirator. She touched a button on her wrist and spoke through a tinny contraption.
“It’s OK Mr. Lipton. You’re OK here. We’re trying to help you. Let me get Dr. Besson.”
She left, returning in a moment with another guy in another suit. Dr. Mark Besson was one of Tim’s research partners. Together they’d worked to develop an antiviral agent to combat the plague. But now Tim was a Zee – how did that happen? He tried to communicate the question with his eyes to Mark.
Mark pulled up a chair and sat down, looking at Tim through his mask.
“I know you’ve got a ton of questions, Tim, and I’ve got a lot for you. But here’s the quick story: You remember we worked together?”
Tim nodded.
“And that we were working on the Ho-Ho-Kus Plague?”
Yes, that was the name of it. From the town in New Jersey where it was first identified. Such a funny name for such a serious thing.
“And we had a plan at Meridian, and you volunteered. Infect you with a small amount of a mutated form of the virus, let it incubate long enough for us to get a viable blood sample to create an antivirus, administer it to you, then replicate it for the general population.”
Tim nodded again as the memory came flooding back.
“So we infected you alright, but before we got to the rest, the facility was overrun by infected — zombies, whatever you want to call them. You got separated from us and we didn’t see you again. Until three days ago.”
Mark sat back and placed his hands flat on his thighs. “I can’t believe you’re alive, Tim. How did you avoid getting shot or eaten? You’re like a walking target for both groups out there.”
Tim tried to shrug with his eyes.
“Long story, I know. And we’ll hear it soon. So back to my story: Those survivors from Meridian — me, King, Foster, Singh, Kavari and Jost — were able to gather up enough material to start a new Meridian here in this prison. That’s the simple version, but it was a hellish couple of weeks, make no mistake. This place was also overrun and then abandoned, and we got here about three weeks ago, right after you disappeared.”
Three weeks, that was all?
“We pretty much had the conditions reestablished for the experiment we were doing with you, but without a subject. We were getting ready to, to … I don’t know, Tim. Draw straws? Find some other schmuck? I just don’t know. And then you showed up. It’s amazing, a miracle — there’s no other way to describe it.”
Mark paused and leaned forward.
“But Tim, you’re no good. I mean, the virus took over your system too completely, and even though that mutation allowed your body to fight back to being almost human, well …”
Tim widened his eyes. Well what?
“I don’t know much of this you’ll remember or understand, but basically that 492 protein we identified, we can’t disable it anymore at this stage in the cycle. Most of the other mutation disables we cooked up worked on you, Tim, which is why you got as far as you did, but …”
Tim felt a wave of anguish wash over him as the reality sunk in. Unless Mark could figure out a way to disable the 492 protein, Tim would stay in this netherworld, neither human nor zee, until either his wounds finished him or he was healed well enough to … go home. Go to some kind of zoo might be more like it.
Or be mercy-whacked.
“But listen, Tim: I haven’t given up yet. It’s only been three days since you’ve been back, and most of that time has been spent stabilizing you physically. You are all messed up, buddy, as you know. But Dr. Linda, who was just in here, we saved her and some equipment from the hospital on our way out, and she’s amazing at critical care – one of the best in the country. So you’re getting better, and we started more trials on your blood just this morning. All we need now is some stinker to wander by for some fresh samples. Funny thing is, this area’s been almost cleaned out by the put-down squads, so they’re out now, our guards, ranging a little farther afield. Shouldn’t be long.”
The female doctor came back in, and Mark looked up.
“How are we looking here, Linda?”
She looked down at Tim and recited a litany of things that were wrong with him she’d been working to fix. The ventilator could probably come out of his mouth in the next 24-48 hours, and he should be able to speak before long.
“The infected have extraordinary powers of self-healing, so you could be up and about in just days.”
She turned to Mark, then back to Tim.
“But …” she said.
Mark finished her thought.
“But … you’re still enough of a Ho-Ho-Kus zombie that we can’t trust you, Tim.”
“We have a really nice cell picked out for you, though,” Linda said, with a tiny laugh.
There it was. He was not one of them. Not human.
“There is one other thing,” Linda said.
Mark turned to her; Tim tried to prick up his eyebrows.
“He’s taking goat’s blood. Not rejecting it like the other things we’ve tried to feed him.”
Mark looked at Tim. “That’s good, man. It’s the tube in your nose, runs into your stomach. You’re incredibly malnourished, but the other things Linda tried in the nastrogastric tube caused complications.”
“Fevers, convulsions, extreme agitation, for starters,” Linda said. “But this prison had a goat farm, and a dairy. So I thought it’d be worth a try. Some blood, that is.”
“Tim, we’ve done some experiments with live Ho Ho Kus patients, trying to ascertain whether they can live on anything other than human flesh — or blood, actually. That’s what you’re really after. You were around for some of those, so you may recall the answer is ‘not much.’ Zees can only gain nourishment through human hemoglobin, for reasons we’ve never entirely figured out.”
Note to self, thought Tim: Tell them about Slim Jims.
Mark turned again to Linda.
“Whatever goat and human hemoglobin have in common — that’s something we need to know. That could be huge.”
Now, he put his hand out and gripped Tim’s arm.
“Tim, there’s not much government left, but we are in touch with CDC in Atlanta. We use a ham radio, believe it or not. They’ve got a plan in place that’s in four parts: A) finding a cure; B) distributing a cure; C)managing the remaining zees; and D) reviving and protecting the human population. One of the things they’ve been looking for is something to feed the damn zombies instead of, you know, people. If this goat blood thing works, well …”
Linda said: “We’d need a lot of goats.”
“Yes, a lot of goats. But first, Tim … Ah, he’s asleep.”
He was, mostly. But he was conscious enough to hear them talk gently over him for another few minutes. Despite the pain and the drowsiness, he could feel the nourishment of the goat blood in his body. It wasn’t anything like the huge rush of energy from a gushing human aorta, but it was better than nothing. Already he couldn’t remember the last meal he’d had — the last person he’d killed. If he had to guess, he’d say he was at least 80 percent human and only 20 percent Zee anymore. But they were right not to trust him, to keep him locked up. Dr. Linda might be saving his life, but Tim could offer no gu
arantees that, given the chance, he wouldn’t rip her tits off and eat them in front of her dying eyes.
But how to get to 100 percent? As he went back under, the answer — something about combining proteins and another forced mutation — floated up to him … and was then replaced with the form of Marilyn’s leering, hideous face.
Or was she part of the solution …?
It actually took closer to a week for Dr. Linda to get the ventilator off him. Something about a collapsed lung, pneumonia, some other shit. Tim was so surprised to still be alive that no alarming details of his condition or treatment could faze him. It took another four days before he could form words and sentences, and his first question to Mark was the one that had been consuming him every waking hour — and in his dreams.
“Where’s my family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“But probably dead?”
“I don’t know, Tim. All I know is that Janet and the girls didn’t … they didn’t make it out of Meridian with us.”
“They were there. With me. How?”
“When the compound was breached, it was the middle of the night. We were in the secure lab, the hardest part to get to. Those in the residence area … I don’t know. We never saw them again.”
“You left.”
“We fled. We ran for our lives. We didn’t come back for days, and there was no one.”
“You left me.”
“You couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t carry you. And you were mid-transition: We didn’t know if you were … if you were friend or foe, so to speak. We took off your restraints and ran. I’m sorry, I really am.”
Tim was lying on a gurney in a locked cell, Mark sitting in a chair on the other side of the bars. They’d determined he was no longer contagious enough to warrant the hazmat suits, but still they weren’t taking chances by getting too close to his mouth. Tim’s tubes and pinging machines were down to just a few, and he was drinking goat blood by the tumbler now. It wasn’t bad — reminded Tim of a particularly strong Bloody Mary. In handcuffs, leg irons and what looked like a lacrosse helmet, he was being slowly shuffled up and down the hallways for exercise a couple of times daily by Dr. Linda. A guy with a gun rolled the IV stand behind him. She’d asked him that morning, on their walk, what it was like — the eating people bit.
“Exciting, revolting. A bit like being a rapist, I would imagine.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Well, you know you shouldn’t do it, you know it’s a terribly selfish thing that will harm someone …”
“Harm? You could say that.”
“… but you have to do it. This terrible thing. You can’t stop yourself.”
Dr. Linda suggested that Zees, to some extent, were better than rapists because they had no choice — no more than the cheetah that chases down an antelope.
“It’s not an exact comparison. But the attacking part, once that’s initiated and you have no choice but to follow through … I don’t know.”
“Did they ever beg … like for their lives?”
“No. Mostly they just screamed a bit and then gurgled as you tore into their necks. That’s the sweet spot, you see. I always figured it was about the blood.”
Now Mark was telling him his family was gone. But also that there were refugee camps, soldiers protecting, some who got away. No way to contact anyone, though. No cell phones, Internet, TV. A little bit of radio here and there, but anything that was part of a grid or a network, forget about it.
Dr. Linda cleared her throat and asked what Tim took for a question that she’d been meaning to ask but had to work up the nerve.
“Do you want me?”
“You mean do I want to eat you or fuck you?”
He laughed. “Just kidding. No, I don’t. I’m not hungry, for starters. Goat blood and all. And my mind is cleared up, mostly. I’ve lost that killer instinct.”
She was silent for a bit, and then: “What about the other? Sex, I mean. Zees demonstrate no inclinations in that area, and so far as we’ve observed the males are incapable of erection. But what about you now? Any libido to speak of?”
“No,” he said. “But morning wood has returned. I guess that’s a good sign.”
“It is,” she said. “In the future, though, you might skip the zombie stint in your online dating profile.”
He managed a small laugh.
“But you know, the eating people thing: It’s not devoid of sexual content.”
And then he told her about Marilyn.
Chapter 18. The Plan
Even though Meridian now was technically a prison, it started to feel like a country club to Tim. No more running, killing, wondering what was going to happen. He just had to get better, do his therapy, drink his blood. They’d even found him a few Slim Jims, and Mark was eagerly testing them to assess their zombie nutritional merit. Occasionally Dr. Linda would try to introduce something else: a hamburger, a pork chop, even vegetables. Tim couldn’t gag down any of it. He simply wasn’t done yet. He knew they all knew: None of the others came anywhere near him. It was just Dr. Linda, a guard or two and Mark. And although large chunks of memory still remained missing, much of what Tim knew about viral research was coming back. He spent a great deal of time with Mark, the bars still separating them, going over lab results, chasing theories, looking over all his own blood work. Until one day — about a month after he’d arrived back at Meridian — he looked up at Mark and said “We have to find Marilyn.”
Mark peered at him over his reading glasses.
“Why? She’s just a Zee. They’re a dime a dozen out there.”
“She bit me.”
“Really? I thought you were sorta friends?”
“She couldn’t resist, as I was becoming more human. A smell, a feel … I don’t know. She just sensed I was, um …”
“Tasty?”
“I suppose. But, more to the point: She has my mutated 492 protein in her. Combined with her full-Zee hemoglobin …”
Mark nodded, then slapped his clipboard against his leg.
“Holy shit, Tim! That could be it …”
It was a bit of a long shot. First, whether her blood really held promise as a cure, but mostly whether they could even find her. Tim knew Marilyn liked to wander off, but she also stuck pretty close to him. However unlikely, it was worth going to the last place he saw her: that little house — the place where she’d bitten him. He had no idea where it was other than it was close enough to where he’d first encountered Stacey.
“The guy who brought me here, the wild man, Stacey …”
“What about him?”
“If we can find him, there’s a chance I can find the last place I saw Marilyn. I don’t know for sure, but there’s a chance she’d stick around that house we were in; use it as a base. If not, then, hell if I know. She’s probably dead anyway. It’s been a month.”
“I’m positive she’s dead,” Mark said. “Question is the degree of her deadness.”
Off Tim’s withering look, Mark said “OK” and turned to the guard at the door.
“Craig, I need you and a team to go out and find someone in the wasteland.”
Craig sort of grunted.
“I heard you. The Wild Man, I know him. I can find him. Might take a couple days. Guy roams a lot, whackin’ Zees and hunting for food.”
“Do it,” Mark said.
He turned back to Tim. “Talk about a long shot on top of a long shot. But in this world, it’s the equivalent of a ray of sunshine.”
The next few days were busy, with Mark and Tim working out what, exactly, they would do with Marilyn’s blood. At this point, it seemed clear the Ho Ho Kus virus was a blood-borne virus and nothing else. That seemingly obvious conclusion nonetheless represented months of research to eliminate other possibilities such as genetic abnormalities, neurological mutations and other nervous system disorders they could only guess at.
&n
bsp; With Craig gone, Tim had more one-on-one time with Dr. Linda. He was the guard assigned to her, and with few of them left to cover in his absence, Mark decided Tim was safe enough to be alone with her — provided he still wore the shackles and helmet. (“Please don’t kill her and eat her,” he’d said to Tim, with a nervous laugh.)
Dr. Linda was an early riser, and she’d be in his cell first thing in the morning to check his vitals and do whatever else it was she did. He would lie there, strapped to the bed, as she went about her business chatting merrily. She sure seemed chipper for someone in … this world. Everyone had lost someone — many their entire families. Watching Dr. Linda, though, you’d think she’d just graduated from med school and was optimistic about her future. But this was it, at least for now: one patient, a half-zee, who was mostly healthy despite some obvious issues regarding his state of humanity.
She was curious about his erections, which he reported as a daily occurrence.
“I’ve got one now,” he said matter-of-factly one morning. “A rager.”
Zombie Road Trip Page 11