by A. M. Geever
6
Miranda sat beside Mario, inspecting the stitches Doug had sewn along his rib cage. The bleeding had been steady but never increased before Doug stitched him up. Mario was not experiencing any shortness of breath, so they were pretty sure that the knife had not nicked or collapsed his lung.
They had retreated to a two-story house a block away from where Mario had caught up with Jeremiah. Between the noise from cutting the trail and then chasing Jeremiah, along with Mario’s bleeding wound, they had attracted so many zombies that it would have been dangerous to keep going. They needed to see how badly Mario had been cut, and the cortisol crash once they recaptured Jeremiah left everyone exhausted.
The patient lay on the canopy bed in a little girl’s room filled with pink and fairies and unicorns and butterflies. And sparkles, lots and lots of sparkles.
Doug entered the bedroom, wiping dry his washed hands.
“Jeremiah’s still locked in the closet?” he asked.
As if she knew what Doug had said, Delilah began to thump her tail against the floor. The caramel-colored pit bull had staked out a spot just outside the closet they had locked Jeremiah in without anyone telling her to.
“He hasn’t gone anywhere while you were taking a leak,” Miranda answered. “You always do such even stitches, Doug. How do you get them so neat?”
“Talent,” Doug said. “At least you got stabbed on the side without the cracked ribs, Mario.”
“They just stopped hurting, and now this,” Mario said.
Doug stretched his arms high over his head, groaning a little.
“Let’s see what’s here that might be useful and get some rest. We can head out in the morning if it’s clear out there. Maybe a good twelve hours tied up and gagged in a closet might do our problem child some good.”
“That’s not very Christian of you, Father,” Miranda said, winking.
“I have zero fucks to give for Christian duty right now,” Doug muttered.
“You know what you need, Doug?” Miranda asked. “A good chat with Sister John Ignatius.”
Doug wrinkled his brow. “Is this one of your inspirational stories, Miranda? Because you suck at them.”
Miranda ignored him. “Sister John was my sixth grade religion teacher, and believe it or not, I loved her. She managed to work forgiveness into every lesson and always said, ‘I’m big on forgiveness because Jesus was, too.’”
Doug looked at Miranda, a mixture of confusion and astonishment on his face. Irritation filling his voice, he said, “If you’re suggesting I forgive Jeremiah for leading us on that merry chase earlier, no way. Besides, you flunked that lesson.”
Frowning, Doug stalked out of the room.
“He’s pissed,” Mario said.
“Oh, he’s just tired.”
Miranda stood but could not stifle a wince.
Mario said, “How’s your knee?”
Miranda arched an eyebrow, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “I know the stab wound hurts, but how’s your shoulder?”
“Touché,” he said. “It hurts. Must have smacked against the ground ten times when I tackled him.”
“My knee hurts, too,” she said, glad that the guy she found it so easy to talk to had returned. Miranda squeezed his hand. “I’ll come snuggle up when we’re done and rest my knee.”
“Okay. But no talking. All this breathing hurts.”
An hour later, they had pretty much finished scouring the house for supplies. Everything was in its place in this house. Miranda adjusted the clothes in the master bedroom closet so that they were straight and neat like she had found them. It seemed wrong to leave them bunched together when everything was so orderly. Apart from the obvious signs of abandonment—ten years of grime, water damage from a leak in the roof, the tree growing through the sagging front porch—it felt like the people who lived here might walk in at any moment.
Maybe they were on vacation, Miranda thought. There were no zombies, no bodies, no cars in the garage. A lot of canned and dried food filled the shelves in a pantry so full and organized it looked like something out of a magazine. It didn’t look like supplies had been removed in haste. Nothing about the house was out of place. Not even a dish in the sink.
The lady of the house had liked to shop. Half the clothes in the closet still had tags attached. Miranda could picture the clothes on the willowy blonde in the pictures around the house. The little girl had her mother’s smile but not her coloring, which favored the dark-haired man in a picture of the three of them. He had been on the homely side, but his face was friendly. All of the things that this family had valued just left to rot. Partly because there were not enough people left in the world to ever use up everything, and partly because strappy sandals and cute summer dresses were pretty much obsolete unless you had a death wish.
Or if you’re like Karen, Miranda thought to herself. Her fashion-obsessed best girlfriend back in San Jose seemed intent on tempting fate with the high-heeled shoes she had started wearing again. Even inside a safe zone, they were a bad idea as far as Miranda was concerned.
Miranda pulled open the top drawer of the last dresser in the room and froze.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
The drawer could have been mistaken for the stockroom in a lingerie shop. Bras in every color nestled against one another. Smooth, sensible bras. Sheer, almost see-through bras. Silky satin and lace third-date bras. Push-up, demi-cup, balconette, strapless. She pulled one out and checked the size—34D.
“No way,” she said, feeling light-headed. She checked another, and another, but the size stayed true. Half of them still had tags attached.
She yanked the next drawer open. A rainbow of matching panties filled it. Bikinis and cheeky shorts, thongs, G-strings. The kind with no crotch and several with elastic straps instead of a back panel of fabric that she could only surmise were meant to leave the back door open. The next drawer held bustiers, corsets, and garters, and unopened packages of thigh-high stockings, both those used with garters and the kind with elastic hidden behind the lace at the top that stayed up on their own. The last drawer held wispy negligees made of filmy fabrics that wouldn’t reveal so much that it ruined the surprise of what lay beneath.
“Holy shit,” Miranda muttered. “This woman has an entire dresser of lingerie in my size.”
She felt like a dragon atop its hoard of gold. And then reality crashed the party, dousing her already-anticipating-getting-warmer tingly body with a vat of ice water. She was in the fucking wilderness. Her legs had not seen a razor in over a month. She had sweat like a pig while bushwhacking, which had also covered her in tiny flecks of wood and mud and leaves, never mind running after Jere-fucking-miah. The chance to get properly clean out here might not happen for a very long time. What was the point of all this if she smelled to high heaven? Or if she was somewhere so insecure that she would not feel safe wearing it?
“Nothing will take up much room,” she said to herself, thinking of her pack that was strained at the seams. She held a pair of satin panties in her hand, the fabric silky soft between her fingers. I don’t have room, she thought, slipping the panties into a pocket.
It was beyond unfair. Even Harold, her forced-intimacy, boundary-pushing lingerie connection in San Jose had never hooked her up like this. She pushed the drawers closed, bitterness filling her mouth, her throat, her heart. She had always loved lingerie. All these pretty, soft, beautiful things dangled in front of her like shiny new toys. She felt like a kid who had been naughty enough that ashes were all she could look forward to in her Christmas stocking.
She opened the bra drawer again and picked one up, a soft lilac satin with a cream lace overlay. It had literally been years since Mario had seen her in anything like this, since she had watched his reaction to seeing her wrapped up in a bow for him to untie. A flush of heat spread through her body as she imagined how his eyes would darken with desire. She could feel his hands settle on her waist. Hands that knew exactly what they were doi
ng and where to do it. His breath hot against her skin and his mouth on her—
“Find anything?”
Miranda jumped at the sound of Doug’s voice from the doorway. She shoved the bra inside her unzipped jacket and pushed the drawer shut so hard that the mirror on the dresser vibrated.
“No,” she said, turning away from the dresser. “Nothing essential.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. His eyes narrowed under scrunched eyebrows. “Are you feeling okay? You look…funny.”
“You just startled me,” she said. She looked down, trying to compose herself. The bra’s strap poked out of her jacket. She walked to the door to join Doug, surreptitiously tucking it out of sight while she fiddled with her jacket zipper.
Fuck it, she thought. She could not take everything, but she would take as much as she could. This lingerie was also about survival—of her spirit. This world’s ruthless practicality was going to have to shove over and make a little room.
7
“I don’t need all that detail, Mario,” Doug said. “What you’re saying is we need to go to the other site.”
Inwardly, Miranda groaned. After a week and a half at the main OHSU Campus, it looked like they would soon be leaving.
Mario nodded. “Yes. There’s a West Campus with another Vaccine Institute site there. The equipment I need isn’t here. I’m guessing it’s there.”
No one said anything as they digested this new information.
Doug said, “I’m not crazy about the water situation here, anyway. It looks like the other site has several creeks nearby. Where’s that map you found, Miri?”
“Next door. I’ll get it.”
Miranda pushed back from the small table and left the office of Mallory Setajjei, Ph.D. She stuck her head into Alexander O’Donnell, Ph.D.’s office next door. The map Doug wanted was brightly colored, with ads for tourist attractions but not as much emphasis on anything besides major roads. After a week of rummaging through the effects of the people who had once worked here, Miranda felt like she knew them a little. O’Donnell had liked chewing gum, to judge from the wrappers in the wastepaper basket. Setajjei had been a WASP-y blonde woman married to a man whose skin was so dark it had an almost purple hue. The background of the picture of them on her desk was filled by the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. And one of the other professors down the hall had kept an emergency bottle of gin, still half-filled, in his desk.
Miranda grabbed the map. The guys had cleared off the small table so she could spread it out.
“About thirteen miles to Beaverton, we think,” Doug said, almost to himself. “D’you think your knee is up to it, Miri?”
“Should be,” she said. She had been doing the exercises assigned to her a few years ago when she broke her leg. “It feels a lot better. Stronger, too.”
Doug said, “That’s great. How’s your shoulder, Mario? Feel any better since you’ve had a break from carrying your pack?”
“It does. A lot. She’s got me stretching and doing strengthening, too.” He grinned at Miranda. “We’re becoming less decrepit by the hour.”
Doug nodded. “Good. We can add more to mine and Jeremiah’s packs if need be and leave tomorrow.”
“More trekking,” Miranda said, grinning. Even after resting up, she felt tired just thinking about it. “What expeditions are made of.”
Miranda cocked her head to the side. “What is that noise?”
The screeches of animals got louder with every step. According to the atlas they had found at the library, they were almost at the Vaccine Institute.
“Some kind of animal,” Doug said.
“I know that,” Miranda said. “What kind?”
“I can see an open space through the trees ahead,” Mario, once again tethered to Jeremiah, said.
Mario gave Jeremiah a nudge to keep moving. Then Delilah streaked away, breaking through the tree line ahead. The screeching detonated like a bomb. A minute later, they stepped into a parking lot. It was the usual kind, with weeds growing in the cracks and small copses of trees where the asphalt had disintegrated entirely.
And monkeys.
Delilah zigged and zagged across the parking lot and through patches of tall grass, chasing brown monkeys.
“What the…” Doug said, his voice trailing.
Miranda looked across the parking lot, jaw slack. Delilah was chasing monkeys.
“Delilah!” she shouted, shaking off her surprise. “Come!”
It took another thirty seconds of shouting to get Delilah to return so that Miranda could put her on a leash. Monkeys that had scampered up trees and into hiding places were beginning to return. The largest were maybe two and a half feet tall, but only when standing on their hind legs. Most had brownish fur, though some were lighter, and they all had close-set eyes that regarded their human cousins with wary curiosity. Some had fur all over their faces, while others had pink skin covering the T of their faces from eyes to upper lip.
They were everywhere: the parking lot, the large brown brick building opposite them, the overgrown grounds, and the roofs of low-slung buildings that stretched into the distance on the parking lot’s west side. The loud screeches had mostly died down, but they still chattered, seemingly from every direction.
“Monkeys,” Doug said slowly. “Huh. I did not see this one coming.”
“There must be thousands of them,” Mario said, sounding thunderstruck. “They’re everywhere.”
Miranda looked over to Jeremiah, who was still tethered to Mario. He too looked shocked and confused.
“Do you think they’ll attack us?” Miranda said.
Mario shrugged.
“Only one way to find out,” Doug said, and began to walk forward.
The new digs were nice, if chilly. After ten days of trekking to get here, Miranda would have set up in a ditch if it was safe. Beaverton was even more bucolic compared to the campus they had left in Portland. Overgrown Bucolic, she thought. It sounded like a school of art, like Impressionist or Cubist.
This Vaccine Institute building on the OHSU West Campus was newer, with better light and windows that didn’t open, which was a plus these days. The lack of zombies wandering inside made Miranda think that whoever had been here when zombies first appeared bugged out fast. So much for diligent scientists working feverishly to save humanity.
They had set up their common area in the atrium, against a wall underneath the wide, curved staircase to the second floor. A section of the atrium roof was glass which meant the light was good. With glass doors at the front and back of the atrium, it wasn’t an ideal setup, but the lab that Mario needed was on the first floor. The lab was off one of the hallways, which had doors at either end, so they had done as good a temporary reinforcement job as possible for now on the main doors. They would sleep upstairs, Doug in the lab adjacent to where they had locked Jeremiah away. Miranda and Mario had set up in a nearby office.
The second floor was open to the atrium, with a balcony that functioned as the main hallway. The building was big, but not too big. Like the porridge from The Three Bears, it was just right.
Miranda sat at the table they had dragged from an office while Doug prepared a cold dinner. She pulled the blanket she had found around herself even tighter. Her hat was pulled down almost to her eyebrows. They had found so much water in the many hot water heaters in the cluster of buildings that they’d decided to bathe. Miranda had scrubbed and primped everything she could—she had even shaved—even though the water was freezing and the air in the building was worse. Now she couldn’t get warm, but for the first time in weeks, she was clean.
She tapped the brochures in front of her. “According to these brochures from the other building, this campus included the Oregon National Primate Research Center. That’s why we have monkeys. Macaques, from India and Japan.”
Doug’s nose wrinkled. “Animal testing…yick.”
Miranda shrugged. “Their keepers set the monkeys free, so they must
have cared about them. You saw those enclosures and cages. They didn’t get out on their own.”
“If you say so,” Doug said, sounding unconvinced.
“Did you know the ones from Japan were those snow monkeys that bathed in hot springs in the winter? That would be so cool to see.”
“Hot springs would be cool,” Doug said. “This food is as good as it’s gonna get until we have something to cook on. Why don’t you go get—”
The door across the atrium clunked open.
“Mario,” Doug finished.
Mario crossed over to them, grinning like a kid at Christmas. He dropped into the seat beside Miranda.
“I still can’t believe there’s a BSL-3 lab here,” he said.
Miranda smiled. It was only the millionth time he had said so since they arrived. It was nice to see him so excited.
Doug set bowls of food in front of them, then picked up a fourth. “I’ll run this up to Jeremiah. Be right back.”
“Do you still think the lab is salvageable?” Miranda asked.
“Oh yeah,” Mario said around a mouthful of food. “There are things that need to be fixed, but I’ve already pulled some equipment from other labs. We need power of course. By rights I need a Biosafety Level Four lab, but my expectations of what we’d find were pretty low. A BSL-3 is way better than I expected.”
Miranda took a bite of the mushy whatever it was. Doug had added dehydrated apricots. It wasn’t horrible, but it was close. The apricots on their own would have been better.
“We’re going to look for solar components tomorrow,” Miranda said, poking at her food. “We should be able to rig up something.”
“Find some heaters,” Mario said, pulling up the zipper on his jacket. “And something to cook with. This mush is dreadful.”
A few hours later while she was killing time before Mario came to bed, Miranda wrote in her journal. She had not kept one since her angst-filled teen years. What she wouldn’t give now for those problems. If their mission was successful, a firsthand account of their journey might be of interest to people. Miranda did not kid herself that this was on par with the journals of Lewis and Clark, but it didn’t hurt to keep a record.