Patient Z (17 page)

The silence stretched. Mitch gave his people a moment; then he spoke in a soft voice. “We have to move on, before the noise attracts others.”

They trooped out of the ward and reformed their line.

“I’ll take point,” Cal said. He’d been point man all day. Mitch frowned at him, thinking about overruling him. But he shrugged and nodded.

“Go ahead.” Cal moved up front and began to lead the group onward, heading for the hospital’s labs.

It took several hours to gather everything they needed from the hospital. By the time they were back outside and loading it onto the truck, they’d taken out several more zombies that had been shuffling around the hospital’s corridors and wards. Some in hospital gowns, some in nurses’ uniforms or doctors’ coats.

Most of the doctors and nurses in the country must have ended up that way, Mitch thought as he tossed another box up to the girls on the truck. Staying at their posts, desperately trying to save the patients. Seeing them die and then apparently perform a miracle, come back to life—and bite the first person within reach.

“We can’t make it back to the boats before the sun goes down,” Mitch said, looking up from consulting his map. “Which means we have to find somewhere safe to hole up for the night.”

“Have anywhere in mind?” Cal asked.

“Yes,” Mitch said with a grin. “A five-star hotel.”

Chapter Seventeen

Mitch suspected the hotel’s rating would be severely reduced now as they trooped through the debris-strewn lobby. The vehicles were outside, locked up, their alarms set.

“We’ll take the second floor,” he said. “Secure a section; make sure we have a fire escape. Then we eat and get some rest. Tanya, organize watches.”

They made their way upstairs. The place appeared utterly deserted. No zombies and nothing to draw them, no humans. While a hotel might sound like an attractive place to hole up in, there were too many doors for Mitch’s tastes. Staying a night was one thing, but stay here long enough and one day you’d open the door of your room to a shambling figure.

They searched a section of the second floor that had ready access to a fire escape, checking behind every door in every room. It had windows that looked down at where their truck and SUV were parked, so they could keep an eye on those. They blocked the fire doors that led from the secured section to the rest of the building, and a collective sigh of relief came from the group. A few precious hours when they could relax and feel relatively safe.

The group gathered in the room Mitch had taken for himself and Cal. Big, like all of them, with an enormous bed. They could have dragged in chairs and tables from the other rooms, but by common consensus they settled on picnicking, sitting on the floor on some stale-smelling blankets they’d found in an airing closet. After distributing the food they’d brought up from the trucks, Tanya and Blanca, looking conspiratorial, dragged a couple of clinking boxes into the middle of the picnic area.

“Wine,” Tanya said. “From the minibars.” She took out a half-sized bottle with a screw cap. “I don’t suppose they’re the type of wine you lay down for years, but I’ll bet it’s still good. Just don’t get drunk. You’ve all got a turn at watch, and you need to be alert.” She handed the wine bottles around. Mitch considered refraining, but hell, why not? A half bottle wouldn’t do him any harm. He was looking around for a cup to pour it into when he saw Cal—and several of the women—drink from the bottle.

“That’s very uncouth,” he said to Cal, sitting at his left side. Cal winked at him.

“Never claimed to be couth. Anyway, this stuff tastes like vinegar mixed with cough medicine, so screw couth.” He swigged again, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down and making heat stir in Mitch’s groin. He glanced behind himself at the king-size bed. They’d talked about how it would be good to share such a huge bed instead of their strapped-together cots and two mattresses.

Could they, though? Here? With others on watch listening out for any moaning? He grinned to himself. He hoped he didn’t sound like a zombie during sex. He supposed they could just be very quiet. And if the bed didn’t squeak or the headboard bang on the wall… He put the picture out of his mind. Time to decide that later. For now, time to chat and laugh with his people and enjoy the rare chance to relax.

They lay about for a while after eating, drinking the last of their wine, until Tanya levered herself up off the floor and stretched.

“Come on, girls, time to leave the boys alone. They look like they’re ready for bed.” Cal grinned, and Mitch blushed. “Tired, I mean,” Tanya went on. “What did you think I was talking about? You two are on the last but one watch. I’ve put everyone who’s sharing a room on the same watch to minimize disturbance. That okay?” Though there were enough rooms to go around, nobody wanted to sleep alone in a strange place, even one they’d secured well.

“Okay, that’s great,” Mitch said, trying not to catch Cal’s eye. He hoped he’d be able to stay focused sharing a watch with Cal. The women gathered up their gear, took some of the blankets, and left. Their chatter died away, and Mitch closed the door behind them. Cal was at the bed, placing their electric lantern on the nightstand. He stripped the sheets and blankets off the neatly made bed, raising a cloud of dust. Something white and furry had taken up residence in the pillow, probably the complimentary chocolate. But the mattress looked okay. Cal sat on it, and Mitch joined him.

“The housekeeping at this hotel has gone seriously downhill,” Cal said as Mitch moved close to him, lay down, and pulled Cal into his arms. Not demanding anything but closeness and warmth yet. Cal relaxed and wrapped one leg around him. It occurred to Mitch that they had no shower to use in the morning, so maybe they shouldn’t get all sweaty and sticky after all.

“Why don’t we have room service send up a bottle of champagne and a couple of handsome masseurs?” Cal said, smiling.

“If you want a massage, I’m right here.”

Cal kissed him. “Maybe later. Right now, this is nice.”

It was. And they should just get some sleep anyway, since they’d be woken later for a watch. Mitch’s fantasy about making love on this bed seemed absurd suddenly. This was not a fantasy getaway weekend at a luxury hotel. They were holed up in a deserted building, the doors barricaded against the monsters outside. How could he even think about sex at such a time?

Because sex was life. It was heat and passion and sweat, all the things that went with still being alive and not being one of those monsters outside. Not yet. Mitch shivered at the thought. He dreaded nothing more than becoming one of those things. Long ago he’d sworn if he was ever bitten, he’d kill himself immediately. He wouldn’t put himself or anyone else through the ordeal of watching him die and revive. Even if the doc offered her vaccine. They didn’t know for sure that worked yet. Cal could be a fluke.

“Mitch,” Cal said softly. “You asleep?”

Mitch shook his head, opened his eyes. “No. But I think we should sleep soon. We have that watch.” Cal looked a little disappointed, but then he nodded.

“Of course.” He dragged a blanket across them. Both still had their boots and clothes on. Neither made a move to undress. They had to be ready at a moment’s notice to fight or flee. Cal turned off the lantern and pulled Mitch close to him for a lingering kiss, before letting him go to lie on his back. They lay in silence for a while. Through the walls they sometimes heard a voice, raised in fun, not fear.

“Tanya’s impressive,” Cal said “Got, what do they call it, natural leadership qualities?”

“Bren’s taught her a lot,” Mitch said. “But she’s had it in her, waiting for the chance to come out. Same with all the soldiers.”

“Yeah. They’re tough. And then when I talk to them, they’re just, well, girls.”

“Everyone in the group was just an ordinary person until this happened.”

“I guess your take on it is that once out from under the thumb of men, they came into their own,” Cal said.

“That might be part of it,” Mitch said. “They get to reach their potential and do things, be things they were never allowed to be before. And yet…”

“What?”

“They’re still fragile. We all are. You, me, Bren, Tanya. As individuals, I mean, when we’re alone. But when we came together and stood together, we all got this extra strength.”

There was no answer from Cal for a while, and Mitch wondered if he’d gone to sleep, but he spoke up eventually. Mitch felt a hand on his arm, a squeeze of the tight muscle there. “You don’t feel very fragile.” There was a smile in his voice.

“I’m as fragile as any of them. Believe me.” The doc thought so. She kept asking him to go to the group therapy sessions she ran to help people overcome the trauma of what they’d been through. Mitch could never go. He had to at least appear to be strong, for the sake of the group. But the doc had seen him on those nights he came to ask her for sleeping pills, because they stopped the dreams, and she knew how fragile he was. And he knew the same about her.

“I worry about the doctor.” He said it quietly, confessing his fear to the darkness, and to Cal. “She’s…old. She’s literally fragile. Her arthritis is spreading, including into her hands. She’s teaching her nurses everything she can. But that’s not like going through med school. If anything happens to her…”

Cal squeezed his arm, reassurance this time. “You all take good care of her. Believe me, I know. You made sure I couldn’t harm a hair on her head back when I’d just arrived.”

The restraints. Mitch grimaced to think about them now. “Sorry about that. Especially the gag.”

“Forget it. I understand. She’s the most important person on the rig, isn’t she?”

“Yes. If she was killed in one of Ethan’s raids…”

“It will never happen,” Cal said. “You’ll never let it happen. Neither will Bren. Neither will I.” His voice went quiet at the last. He sounded almost embarrassed to admit that if it came to it, he’d stand between the doctor and a bullet. “I owe her.”

* * * *

Cal woke to the sound of someone crying out. He jerked up on the bed and realized it was Mitch, beside him. In the moonlight he could see Mitch was asleep—but not peaceful—twisting and thrashing, pulling the blanket from Cal and tangling himself in it. Cal shook his shoulder, hoping to wake him before he yelled loud enough to disturb the others or bring the girls on watch barging in.

“Wake up, Mitch. You’re safe. Wake up.” He kept his voice steady, reassuring, and Mitch gasped and opened his eyes. He got the nightmares every few nights. Cal had learned to cope with them. He took Mitch’s hand. “You’re safe. You’re with me. We’re in that deserted hotel. Do you remember?”

Mitch gulped a couple of times and wiped his hand across his face. “Yes,” he said shakily. “I remember.” He looked into Cal’s face and raised a hand to touch it. “You’re okay?” he asked.

Cal frowned. Had Mitch been dreaming of something bad happening to him? “Yes. I’m okay. Tell me about the dream.” It was a bold question. It made the assumption Cal had a right to ask for that information. Well, didn’t he? Hadn’t he been there when Mitch woke crying out from those dreams for weeks now? Held him until the shaking stopped? He rubbed Mitch’s chest in a soothing stroking motion—comfort, not foreplay.

“Dex,” Mitch said after a long pause. “I dreamed about Dex.”

“I’ve heard you call out that name in your sleep. Who was he?” It must be “was,” not “is.” Nearly everyone had become a “was.”

“We lived together. Back in ’Frisco. He was a cop too. That’s how we met, on the job. When it all started, of course we were out there, doing our jobs. You know how fast things went to hell. Nobody understood what was going on.”

Cal remembered it well. He’d been in a small town in Oklahoma when he saw his first zombie attack. For several days there’d been some strange stories on the news—bizarre attacks, especially in the cities, and hospitals put under quarantine. People had started getting nervous and begun walking around with weapons quite openly. Then one morning a weird-looking man Cal assumed was drunk or stoned shambled along a quiet street and randomly attacked a child. When the child’s mother blasted a hole in the man’s chest with both barrels of a shotgun and Cal saw this only momentarily slow the man down, he’d decided to get the hell away from people. He’d spent three months hiding in the countryside before speaking to another human being. He felt sure Mitch had done the exact opposite. Had been in the thick of trying to stop civilization from crashing down around their ears.

“Dex got bitten,” Mitch said. “Came back to the precinct talking about how a crazy woman bit him. We didn’t realize exactly what that meant then. But he started getting sick, and I took him home. I couldn’t get a doctor to come see him. And I saw reports on the news about mayhem at the hospitals. I tried to take care of him myself. I should have been doing my job, but I chose to stay with him.”

“That was your job too,” Cal said. “And I don’t think there was much you could have achieved elsewhere, aside from being bitten yourself.”

“He got weaker and weaker, and from what we were seeing on the news, we knew what it meant. He was dying. And we started to understand what would happen afterward. I should have ended it then. He begged me to finish him or to give him his gun and then step out of the room. But I wouldn’t, because it seemed so unreal. How could it be real? It was insane.”

Cal had only had to see one zombie shot in the chest and keep walking to accept it was real. He hadn’t looked back once.

“What happened?” Cal asked.

“You know what happened.” Mitch’s voice went tight and choked. “He died. And an hour later, he got up off the bed and came after me. I had to…finish him off.”

Cal pressed close, wrapping himself around Mitch, trying to offer him some comfort with his warmth and life.
I’m not dead. I’m here for you
. He remembered how Mitch had watched over him when he arrived on the rig, waiting to see if Cal would grow sicker and weaker—just as he’d watched over Dex. No wonder he’d been on a hair trigger the whole time. “Go on,” Cal said softly.

“Before he died, while the phones were still on, I’d heard from a couple of friends at the station about what was going on. They’d told me you had to aim at the head. So I did. I shot my lover in the head.” His voice had gone flat.