Waking The Zed (13 page)

“How do
we know it’s not airborne?” Captain Crawford asked.

“We can’t yet
,” Pam said. “But if it was, both you and I would be infected by now. So would Paul. I really need to get back to Future Faith to look at Dr. Klein’s research papers. She mentioned them briefly but I wasn’t privy to her research. Before we got evacuated from the building, Dr. Klein wanted the officer in charge to know she had her research stored there. She wanted to stop him from just destroying the building.  But like you, I have more questions than answers right now.”

Captain Crawford took a moment to absorb her words. Then he shook his head.
“Well, I have a nasty little surprise for you.” His face had become stern and commanding again, and Pam was not sure if she feared the Zed or this man more. “The blood tests came back, and you and Paul have some of the same new proteins as the confirmed Zed infection. What do you think about that?”

Pam took a step back, trying to absorb this new information. She had certainly not seen Paul being injured, and she knew s
he had not actually been bitten by the malignant things. She forced her mind to quiet as she took stock of her own body.

She
shook her head resolutely, “I’m not sick, Captain. I don’t know what to think. In some cases, an airborne variation might not be as virulent as a contact infection. Maybe the weakened form of the virus gives our bodies time to adopt so we don’t become symptomatic. That is, if it is a virus as Dr. Klein supposed.” Pam shrugged. “She developed it so I guess she would know if anybody would.”

Then she paused and tried to examine the new information from a different angle.
She felt frazzled and found it hard to concentrate.
We don’t have enough information.

“Look,” she said finally, “here
again is what I think. Dr. Klein kept copious notes about her research. What we need to do is get back to Future Faith and find out what she did. She told me that she ran dozens of animal tests. It is likely that we would uncover some clues back there. I could help with that because I worked there. I’m not a doctor, but as I’ve told you before several times, I’m a pathology student
working
on my doctorate. Dr. Klein selected me for an internship because of my specialty.” She glanced at Paul and added, “He could probably help too. He’s a medical student, and there had to be some reason Dr. Klein hired him. One thing you can say about her is she was pretty selective.”

“Why’s he asleep?” Captain Crawford said.
“I’ve known some cool characters in my time with the military, but I’ve never seen any of them sleep through a gunshot ringing a few feet from their heads.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Pam admitted. “I don’t know what his schedule was like before
the incident. He could have been up for hours before this thing started, and then had to fight his own way out. Maybe it was the Taser shot. There could be a reasonable explanation for it.”

“He slept through a
gunshot,” Captain Crawford repeated. “That seems peculiar.”

Pam wanted to protect Paul, but she had no real reason to argue with
the officer. She glanced at Paul again, relieved to see his chest rise and fall in a regular rhythm. He appeared to be simply napping. She took a deep breath, stepped towards the young man, and put a hand on his forehead. He did not feel feverish. George had definitely appeared feverish before he succumbed. As she touched him and softly called out to him, his eyes opened and he looked bewildered. Then he glanced around, saw Pamela standing above him, and frowned. “I had some kind of nightmare.”

“You may have woken up into a worse one,” Pamela said, sparing nothing with her words or expression. She nodded towards Captain Crawford. “He says we’re all infected. We just don’t have symptoms.
The virus must be airborne.”

“Did you get scratched or bitten by the things?” Paul asked, slowly rising into a sitting position. His fair hair was tousled, and Pam thought he looked boyish and uncertain.

“No, I’m sure of it,” Pam said decisively. “But Enrico was spitting some goo out of his mouth. I didn’t feel like I was sprayed by it, but I can’t be sure. I don’t know if the stuff is absorbed by the skin, or if it is airborne. Anyway, our blood tests were positive, but we’re not symptomatic.”

“You mean
that we’re not lurching around trying to eat people?” Paul asked.

Just then
the infirmary door opened again. Three soldiers ushered in a small group of people. Pamela quickly counted off three men and two women. One of the men wore a state trooper’s uniform, and he had heavy bandages wrapped tightly under a tattered sleeve. One woman’s hand was entirely engulfed in some sort of surgical wrapping. The other three just seemed to sport an assortment of cuts and bruises, some covered by small bandages. They all looked tired and bewildered.

“Sir,” the lead soldier said to Captain Crawford. He saluted. The officer nodded back.

“These people all turned themselves in at hospitals, and we ushered them here as ordered,” the soldier said. Another soldier directed them each to take a cot. As they entered, Dr. Lincoln seemed to rouse himself on his own cot, but he only gently pulled at the cuff, and then quieted again. The infected creature, still hooded and cuffed on the other side of the room, remained quiet. The newcomers selected their cots and stared at the creature.

Captain Crawford tried to arrange his grim
and rugged features into some semblance of a welcoming smile. “You folks make yourselves at home. We’ll have nurses here promptly to triage and treat you. This is for your own safety, and the safety of the general population. I appreciate your cooperation.”

“Do you mind giving us some information?” the state trooper asked as he sat on one of the clean cots. “I’d like to know what’s going on, and also
I’d like to find out where my partner is.” He glanced from Captain Crawford to the creature by the opposite wall. “I’m also curious about that guy.”

“I don’t have information about your partner, Officer,” Captain Crawford said. “We’ll be sure to fill you in
with as much as we know. Right now, we just need to take care of your health.”

One of the women looked like a body builder, with developed arms
showcased by a sleeveless shirt. She refused to sit. One large bicep had been covered by white bandages. The other one displayed an intricate tattoo. The white cloth of her bandage was stained pink at the edges. She looked angry, and Pam could visualize her getting out of her vehicle to yell at the creatures that had blocked her car. She might have tried to intimidate it as she, no doubt, intimidated most people. Then she must have found out that the Zed did not get intimidated no matter what anybody did to threaten them.

The woman beside her was lean, like a runner.
She had a spiky haircut, artfully dyed platinum blonde at the tips. The pair stood close, as if personal space was not something they kept between them.

The other two
looked like ordinary business men, probably on their way home from office jobs. They did not appear to know each other, and they silently took their places on cots.

“We need to know what’s happening here,” the body builder said. Her square jaw, cropped haircut, and aggressive stance made Pamela take a step back. She considered herself a
tough farm girl, but nothing like this obviously strong and domineering woman. The woman’s developed arms looked as thick as Captain Crawford’s. For some reason the woman seemed to be addressing Pam, and not the officer.

“I’m like you,” Pam said.
She spread her hands in a gesture she hoped was peaceful. “They brought me here.” She glanced at Captain Crawford sideways. “I might know a little more than you do but not much.”

“We don’t have any information to give you right now,” Captain Crawford said. “You are simply here to be tested and treated. You’re welcome to watch the TV, and we will have some more food delivered right away. Other than that, we’ll give you any information as quickly as we can.
For the time being we need you all to stay here. That’s for your own protection and safety.”

Now the room held eight patients, nine counting th
e Zed still chained on the far side. Four armed soldiers guarded the room, while a handful of men and women in scrubs and surgical masks took blood, gave injections, and checked wounds. None of the new injured people had been cuffed so far, but now one soldier’s job seemed to be to man the door and make sure it was kept closed and locked. At a knock, he glanced through the small, reinforced window, saw the ID of a young man in workman’s clothes, and let him enter. The young man pulled a cart, like the last one, piled with wrapped sandwiches and cans of drinks.

Since Pam had eaten little all day, her stomach almost ached with hunger
now that the cart reminded her of food. She picked up roast beef and forced herself to sit on an empty cot and eat it. Her stomach seemed to have settled, and she had no problem swallowing the food. Though the room had been cleaned, the air still smelled tainted with the combined odors of rot and disinfectant. The food still seemed to drop into her stomach like a weighted lump, but she did not believe she was ill. Every bite just seemed to remind her of the way those things would gnaw into human flesh, and that thought made her wonder if eating animal flesh was so different. After the sandwich had been reduced to crumbs, she opened a small can of orange juice and washed it down.

She had no way to know the time, or how many hours she had been in this room.
Somehow Pam had entirely forgotten that she had slipped her cell phone in her pocket back in the lab. Besides using her phone for checking the time, she had no use for it now. There was nobody she could think to call at the moment anyway. She hardly thought it would be a good idea to concern her parents just now. The only window was the small one on the door, and that only showed a tiny section of the lighted hallway.

Her body had been charged with adrenaline most of the day, but now, against her will, she felt the need to close her eyes for a moment. And yet, she was locked in this room with six new infected people. None of them were restrained.
She started to drift off, but then kept waking herself up with a start. Gruesome images flooded her mind, and she was barely certain if they were memories or fragments of dreams.

Still the presence of the armed guards reassured her. They looked fresh and alert. Each one met her glance with the same suspicion they showered on the other patients.

Incredibly, as Pam allowed herself to sit back on the bed, she noticed that each one of the other patients had sunk back on the cots and seemed to fall asleep. Only Pamela kept fighting the urge. She sank back onto the hard pillow and allowed herself to close her eyes, but she kept her fist clenched hard. This was an old trick she had learned to keep herself from falling asleep when she needed to close her eyes for a moment during her studies. The trick finally failed. Pamela woke with a start to find the room dim and most occupants snoring.

She heard low voices emanating from the small office. That room’s door had been closed, but the small reception window had been left open a crack. Perhaps the office’s occupants wanted to be sure they heard what went on in the ward room, but it also allowed their voices to echo out. As Pam turned her head, she noticed that Dr. Lincoln’s cot had been rolled away. She wanted to sit up so she could see if he was still in the room, but some kept instinct kept her still.

“We need to clean this room out,” Captain Crawford said. “We have enough subjects contained in the brig, and these infected people are just accidents waiting to happen.”

“Dr. Lincoln almost took out a nurse before we got to him.” Pamela heard another male voice. “Sometimes these things wake up suddenly, and then they move faster than we expect.”

Pam barely stopped herself from flying to
her feet. Dr. Lincoln had passed away, reanimated, and then attacked somebody, and she had slept through it? The infected had seemed to sleep a lot or become very indolent before they died. George had not appeared to be asleep so much as in shock. The educated part of her brain tried to sort through the little evidence she had. But no, as soon as she woke up her body tingled with adrenaline. Except for the fear flooding her brain, Pam’s mind felt clear.

She
understood the fact that she and Paul, who still slept, had both been infected with some milder airborne form of the virus. But she had no way to understand what that meant. She knew she had never been treated with a virus blocker. She wished Paul would wake up so she could ask him about it.

She could not be sure exactly how much time had passed but it had seemed to take Dr. Lincoln longer to succumb than it had taken George. Yet the doctor’s wound had seemed worse than George’s. Dr. Klein’s wound had seemed quite minor compared to the other two, and it had taken her the longest to actually expire.
Pam had no way to account for the difference yet.  Somehow it seemed important.

She
knew that she simply did not have enough information to draw conclusions. It was possible that an individual’s natural immune system was also a factor. That could be compromised by age or other diseases, or it may be enhanced by good general health, fortunate genes or some prior opportunity to build up resistance. Had Dr. Klein had some way to immunize herself that was partially effective? She had, after all, invented the virus blocker. So far Pam only knew that the virus carried by a bite had eventually been one hundred percent fatal. If she was any evidence, the airborne virus did not even seem to make people sick, at least it hadn’t yet.