Pavlov's Dogs (20 page)

“No,” Donovan said. “Absolutely not. Put him in quarantine.”

“But I’m already in quarantine,” Greene said.

“You shut up,” Donovan snapped. To Michaels, he said, “Put him in quarantine until he gets over his chest cold. If that’s what it is. Are you sure he hasn’t been bitten?”

“Would you like to see the pictures?” Michaels asked. “We took pictures of everyone the first time through, and we thought, what the hell? Let’s take pictures this time, too.”

“I just want to make sure you’ve been thorough.”

Michaels stood. “This man has been examined thoroughly, Doctor, as has everyone else who’s been through this tent. Unless you intend to relieve me and carry out the examinations yourself, I suggest you stop questioning everything I do.”

Donovan’s nostrils flared. “Quarantine him. And anyone else with an illness, however slight.
Or
however serious. I don’t care what you
think
it is.”

Frowning, Dr. Michaels turned and nodded to the security man. To his patient, he said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Greene. You heard the project director.”

“This is a travesty,” Greene called out as the security man led him away.

“That it is,” Michaels said under his breath. “Alison, who’s next?”

The nurse waved the next patient in. A walking skeleton entered the tent, pulling a baseball cap off to reveal a smooth, bald pate, white as a cloud. His red coveralls hung on him as if he were a coat rack instead of a human being.

“Ah, Mr. Evans. I’m so sorry for this inconvenience.”

Donovan made a face. “Jesus, Doctor. Why isn’t this man in isolation?”

Evans turned to Donovan. “Don’t worry about me, brah. What I have isn’t going to spread anywhere.” He shrugged. “Least ways, it won’t be spreading from me.” He laughed, a broken sound that terminated in a coughing jag.

Michaels pushed a clipboard at a pale-faced Donovan, who snatched it away and read the top sheet.

“Oh,” he said, relaxing slightly. “Thank God.”

“Whatever,” Evans said, looking around the tent. “I was in chemo, but then...” he put his hands out in front of him and moaned, crossing his eyes. “I almost let them have me. Walking dead, meet walking dead.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t give up,” Michaels replied.

Evans looked at him. “
I’m
not. What I really want is a smoke.”

“Quarantine him,” Donovan said, tossing the clipboard away. “I don’t want his bad attitude or his death wish infecting the others.”

The nurses’ jaws dropped.

“Are you serious?” Joshua asked.

Donovan exploded. “Of course I’m serious! Attitudes are infectious. They will leap from person to person like a fire across roads and rooftops.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you. Have you ever heard of
morale
? This man clearly no longer wishes to live—”

“You got that right,” Evans said.

“—and I don’t want that to get around. Can you imagine, a group of survivors who have given in to despair? And who’s to say it would stop at the fence? No. Quarantine this man.”

The guard returned from taking Greene away, and Evans walked over to him. “Looks like I’m off to quarantine. You better take me away before I break my fist on this asshole’s face.”

Michaels pinched the bridge of his nose as the guard escorted yet another survivor out of the tent. “This day will never end. Who’s next, Alison?”

The nurse stepped outside and waved the next patient forward. Jorge limped into the tent, favoring his leg. “I think my erection has lasted for more than four hours, Doc.”

“What is this, now?” Donovan asked.

“Ah, I’m just giving you a hard time. I was in a car wreck,” Jorge said, smoothing down his bristly mustache. “I told these guys before, I was in this chick’s lovebug and—”

“Quarantine,” Donovan said.

Jorge crossed his arms. “You said what? Quarantine? We’re
in
quarantine,
pendejo
.”

“It looks like a bite to me,” Donovan said to Michaels. “What’s your professional diagnosis,
Doctor
?”

Joshua lifted his face from the laptop. “According to the pics we took on the initial screening, the shape and depth of the wound is consistent with the story he told about the car wreck.”

“Nobody asked you, Nurse Joshua,” Donovan said. He raised his eyebrows at Michaels.

“Let’s see it,” the doctor said with a sigh, gesturing for Jorge to drop his jeans.

“Oh, what
ever
.
Cabrones
. You just couldn’t wait to see me naked again. This whole screening thing, it seems elaborate for little old me.” He winked at Alison as he fumbled with his belt buckle. “You, blue eyes, it’s okay. Understandable; I’m a sexy beast. But these guys? I know the guy-to-girl ratio is a little skewed, but come on. I don’t want to make any judgments, it being the end of the world and everything—”

Donovan snapped his fingers at the security man, who had just returned.

“Just strip, already,” the guard said. “Zip it.”

“I got nothing to hide,” Jorge said, dropping his pants. “Hey, Doc, while I got these down, you want to help me weigh my junk? I got a bet on the side.”

Ignoring Jorge’s banter, Michaels crouched down to get a better look at his wound. He shined a flashlight at the puckered skin. “It’s not healing up very well. It’s obvious your leg is stiff from your limp. We’ll take your temperature and—”

“Quarantine him. Isolation,” Donovan said.

“Hold up, of course it isn’t healing right.” Jorge took a tottering step forward, hobbled by his jeans. “You got me eating rice cakes and mushrooms, for Christ’s sake. You give me a goddamn steak and a couple of beers, and this will clear right up.”

“Isolation,” Donovan said to the guard, who stepped forward with a hand on his sidearm. While he had been laconic about the old man and the cancer patient, a potential bite was just the thing to wake him up to his full duties.

“All right, all right,” Jorge said, turning and walking out of the tent, taking short steps with his jeans still around his ankles. He glanced back over his shoulder. “You still looking, perverts? I know you are. My ass is getting hot.”

Smelling trouble, Donovan followed the guard and Jorge out of the tent. “Don’t let him talk to anybody.”

“Ha, I knew it!” Jorge barked. “Chasing me down. But you can’t
have
any if I’m in isolation.”

“What’re you going to do with them?” a woman asked. She was in her mid-thirties with very long, dark hair and a thick accent. She was stealing glances at Jorge as he was taken away.

“I’m going to quarantine them,” Donovan replied. “For everybody’s safety.”

He looked at the line of people and made a quick estimate of how many survivors would end up in quarantine. A good half, at least once he got Dr. Michaels to fall in line. And then, if he wanted to, he could just... forget about them. If they were in quarantine, isolated from the rest of the survivors, all he had to do was not feed them or give them water, and they would die out on their own. He didn’t even have to waste bullets.

But not yet
, he thought.
Not until the Dogs are done with their screening. And on my side. Who knows? Maybe that’s how I’ll test their loyalty, by setting them on this rabble.

He frowned. The thought of letting these people die sat all right with him, but actively participating in their deaths gave him pause. He made a fist, trying to feel like somebody who could order violent, messy death.

It’s a new world. I have to become something other than myself if I want to survive. No, if I want to
thrive.
I have to inure myself to the less-pleasant aspects of the job. Right now I have Kaiser, and he would gladly do it for me, but I won’t always have Kaiser.

And I won’t always need him.

His thoughts were interrupted by Summer Chan. She yelled to him as she ran up, her long, straight blond hair flying behind her. “Dr. Donovan! Sir!”

He looked up at her. “Are you done screening the Dogs, Miss Chan?”

She shook her head. “Sir, you need to come see this.”

KEN SAT IN THE STAIRWELL of the North Regional building, completely cloaked in plastic wrap. Underneath, his shirt stuck to the sweat on his chest and back.

The plastic had come from the break room, and Kelly had used it to dress him in a makeshift biohazard suit. He felt as if he were being smothered to death by a giant, hot plastic hand; the distraction was welcomed.

Ken flinched when the head of the axe suddenly chinked into the stairwell floor. It had slowly slipped from his grip. Almost so slowly he hadn’t noticed it. The sound of the head biting into concrete sparked some sort of flash across his eyes. Not a memory, per se, but a glimpse.

An axe chinking into concrete, striking sparks.

He heard footsteps.

“Ken?”

Kelly opened the door before he could decide whether he really wanted to let her in.

“Yeah,” he said.

She peeked in and saw him looking up at her.

Earlier in the break room, when she’d been wrapping him up, Kelly’s hand had paused briefly, tucking a length of plastic into the waist of Ken’s jeans.

Their eyes had met.

She was beautiful in that moment, looking up at him. Under any other circumstances Ken would have kissed her. Instead he just watched Kelly’s tears glisten and spill, and suddenly he was hugging her while she cried about how everyone had lost so much.

It spoke volumes of her that she was now back to being mentally stable enough to come tell him the news.

“Ken, they’re...”

“I know.”

It was written all over her face. He didn’t want her to have to
say
it too. He could hear them,
those people
in the other room. The ones who had been bitten.

They had fallen silent for the last three minutes. But now he could hear them because they had started to moan.

They had woken up.

“Kelly!” the pastor yelled from the other room. There were sounds of a minor struggle, shoes scuffling on concrete, people grunting, groans.

She glanced at Ken and then ran out of the stairwell to go help. He couldn’t believe she was that strong.

He
couldn’t even get up.

Ever since junior high, Ken had had a tough time taking tests. It was just the anxiety.

The hardest test he’d ever had to take was for his contractor’s license. He
knew
everything on it, but still, it was a big one, deciding the difference between his status as
employee
and
employer
.

Left on his own, Ken might have put it off forever. But then Jorge had told him, “How could you let a little old piece of paper get the better of you? You’re Ken motherfucking Bishop!” and Ken had said
hell yeah!

It had also been Jorge’s sage advice to drink a little before taking the test. He’d said, “It’ll help loosen you up for the fight.”

Ken had laughed at the time, and then had proceeded to take one too many shots. But had he passed anyway? Yes. Yes, he had. So what was the
problem
?

That very day his wife had served him with the papers.

And then
the episode
, drinking too much.

He had just gotten so angry.

He couldn’t believe it, that things had been allowed to go so well for him, only to be shot down right in front of him, and all at once. He just didn’t understand the reason for it. Any of it.

Even the bar fight.

It was just some local idiot who had run his mouth off playing darts. Something like
he’d
fuck Ken’s wife.

He and Ken had both ended up in the hospital. But only Ken had ended up in anger management.

Now he flinched when he heard the pastor shout, “Where the hell is Ken?!” and then
those people
in the other room continued to moan.

It was so hot in the stairwell. Ken felt like he was about to pass out. He was
panting
. Both sweat and saliva dripped from his chin.

He wished Kelly had wrapped the plastic tighter. He didn’t want to feel his hands. Wanted to pretend it was someone else doing this. Didn’t want to think about how these people had names.

Sparks on concrete
—and then suddenly he was jumping up and bursting from the stairwell, crinkling and carrying the axe.

’

Ken burst into the public restroom, and started stripping off the bloodied plastic. He tried not to touch it. Tried not to get any of it on his hands. But he moved fast. He had to get it
off
.

In the sunlight filtering in, he could see that he was completely coated in strings and dollops of it. The blood had run a little and had streaked, but on some folds of the plastic it was still richly beaded red. Little tributaries of the stuff.