A female doctor watched all of this happen through a window. She had blonde hair that she wore slicked back, not a single strand out of place, and sharp, unblinking brown eyes that seemed to take in every detail at the same time. She was in her mid-thirties, making her a year or two younger than Angus, and she probably would have been pretty if there had been anything soft about her at all. But there wasn’t. She was as hard as a statue that had been carved out of stone.
Days went by and she never came in, but everyone who left the room reported to her, and it didn’t take long for Angus to realize that she was the one who held the answers to all his questions. He watched her from his place on the bed, staring at her for days on end while he waited for her to come into his room, the hours seeming to stretch on and on in an endless cycle. The fuzziness of those first few weeks after he had regained consciousness made it difficult to remember a lot of details, but her presence outside his cell was something he would never forget. She seemed to be always there, always watching, like a sentry who would die if she left her post.
Years later when he thought back on it, Angus realized that he had to have been remembering it wrong. She couldn’t have been there every time he looked up. She was human after all, she needed sleep and food, and standing there twenty-four hours a day for weeks on end was impossible. But no matter how hard he tried to remember it another way, the image never changed. And then he didn’t want it to, because he didn’t want her to go away.
By the time the woman finally came into the room, Angus was more with it and rapidly losing patience. It had been a week since they’d unstrapped him from the table and allowed him to start moving around, and although he’d barely been able to stand at first, he was getting better. His legs were still as unsteady as a fawn taking its first steps, but he’d been working on it and his body was finally starting to feel more like its old self. He’d been exercising every day to regain his strength, knowing that he’d need it if he ever wanted to escape. Pushups weren’t something Angus James would have done in his old life, but this was a new world, and he knew he needed to be strong to get through this. Both mentally and physically.
He was in the middle of doing his daily pushups when the door clicked open. He paused halfway to the ground and turned his head, expecting to see more men in white coats with more needles. But it was her.
“You.” He allowed his body to drop to the ground, and then pushed himself up so he was standing. He was stronger than he’d been, but it still took effort, which he hated. He didn’t want to show weakness in front of anyone, but especially not this woman. “It’s ‘bout time you got your ass in here and answered some of my questions.”
Two men with guns walked in behind her, stopping just inside the door. It had only taken one bloody nose for the people running this place to learn that doctors couldn’t go into Angus’s cell alone. Weak or not, he refused to go down without a fight.
The woman stopped four feet away from him and nodded to the chair on the other side of the room. “Sit and we’ll talk.”
He didn’t want to sit. He wanted to charge her and knock her on her ass, then take out the men at her back and beat the shit out of them. From there he would run down the hall and out of this building, pummeling anyone who got in his way. Then he’d find his brother and friends, and together they’d get the hell out of wherever they were and never look back.
But Angus did sit, because he knew he wasn’t strong enough to do any of those things, even if he had known where to run or what to expect once he got out of this damn building, and he also knew that cooperating was the only way to get the answers he needed.
“Talk,” he barked, glaring up at the woman who was so stoic that she once again reminded him of a statue. “I wanna know everything.”
“No, you don’t.”
She lowered herself into a chair on the other side of the room, never once taking her eyes off him. She balanced on the edge, her back straight and her ass barely on the seat as if she was ready to run at the first sign that Angus might become violent. Behind her the guards didn’t move from their spot by the door, but Angus was too busy trying to decide if what the woman had said was true to really register their presence. It probably was. He was a prisoner, after all, and while he had done many horrible things in his life, he couldn’t remember anything recent that was bad enough to land him here. The opposite, actually, because he had been on the way to save the world, something that no one ever could have predicted that Angus James would do. And yet here he was, locked away like a criminal.
“But I will tell you,” the doctor said after a heavy silence. “This is your new home. This room.”
She paused, allowing Angus to drag his gaze away from hers and study his surroundings, and when he did, his gut clenched like she had reached into his stomach and grabbed him by the intestines.
There was nothing for him here. His room was little more than a cell, tiny and sterile. The bathroom was even smaller and cramped with it’s sink, toilet, and shower. A bed that was really just a cot had replaced the hospital bed once they’d removed his restraints. They’d also brought in a small round table and a chair so he had a place to eat the meager meals he was served, and a small couch that was stiff and uncomfortable, reminding him of something you’d find in the waiting room at a doctor’s office. Other than that there was no furniture or books or anything else he might be able to pass the time with. And it seemed that time was all he had now.
“Why.” Angus was surprised by how ragged the word came out, surprised by the emotion that now clogged his throat, threatening to choke him.
“Because you’re immune and we need you,” she said, her voice as detached as her expression.
“I came. You asked me to come and I did. Ain’t that enough?”
“No.”
The doctor shifted in her chair, scooting back just a little so she could cross her legs, and the lack of emotion struck Angus like a punch. She didn’t care at all that he was going to be a prisoner in this building for the rest of his life. That he would stay here, in this room, week after week, year after year, alone and cut off from everyone he loved.
That’s when it hit him that he wasn’t even sure where the people he loved were. If they were alive or dead, if they were being held like he was. For all Angus knew, Axl was in a cell next to him, and Vivian in another. Even worse, they could all be dead. Angus’s memory of their rescue was fuzzy at best. He recalled running, being so close to the wall that they could touch it, but unable to find an entrance. The group had been small by then: Axl, Vivian, Parvarti, Joshua, himself, and the baby. Megan. That’s what Hadley had named the child before she’d died, and that tiny creature was part of the reason Angus had thrown himself at the zombies when the horde closed in on them. He’d taken the bites and the scratches because he knew he could survive, unlike everyone else, and it had hurt like hell. Like he was being ripped apart piece by piece, which he now knew by looking down at his healing skin was almost true. But it hadn’t hurt as much as this moment did.
But they’d been saved. At what had felt like the last possible moment, when Angus was so bloody and damaged that he wasn’t sure if he could go on, a truck had come out of nowhere and saved the day. Men with weapons had plowed the zombies down and dragged him into the truck. He remembered it, remembered how it had felt to not have to support himself on his wobbly legs, what a relief it had been to be spread out on the floor. He could practically feel his body sway back and forth as the truck barreled down the road. But that was it. That was the last memory other than a few shouts from people he didn’t know as hands he didn’t recognize worked on him. Then blackness followed by waking up here.
Of course, Angus now realized that all of that could have been a dream. Maybe they hadn’t been saved, maybe they’d been overtaken and he had somehow survived out there and been found, bloody and damaged and barely clinging to life. It was entirely possible that the zombies could have killed his brother and friends before they’d ever
reached the gate. Or by whoever held him captive here after they were inside and thought they’d found safety.
“Where’s my brother?” Angus asked even though he didn’t want to talk to this woman. He wanted to strangle her. “He alive?”
She nodded once and it was so robotic that it looked like she had been programmed to do it. “He is. He and Vivian and the baby have an apartment, as do all your other friends. Al and Lila made it here shortly before your arrival. They’re all settled in. They have jobs. They’re happy. And, as long as you cooperate and don’t cause trouble, they will stay that way.” She held his gaze as she said the next words, like she wanted to make sure the impact really hit home. “If you do not cooperate, however, we will bring one of them here and put them in the cell right across from you, and then we will inject them with the virus so you can watch as they turn.”
He’d never felt the impact of words the way he did just then. Never understood how people could let words get under their skin the way they did. But at that moment, with the evil blonde doctor sitting in front of him and the image of Vivian or Axl or Rambo in the cell across from him, suffering as the virus slowly killed them, Angus felt like the doctor’s statement had crawled inside him and curled around his lungs, forcing all the air out of him in one violent burst.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah,” Angus said, finding it difficult to get the word out. “I got it.”
“Good.” The doctor cleared her throat. “You are in the CDC, in case you hadn’t already figured that out, and have been here for a little over two months. Your brother and friends have been told that you died from your injuries, so no one is going to come looking for you. As I said, you will live out the remainder of your life here because we need your blood so we can study its immunities. You’re special and we want to know why. You will give us full access to your body whenever and however we want it. You will allow us to take blood when we need it, you will allow us to take your temperature or blood pressure when we deem it necessary. If we want to inject you with something it will happen without violence or bloodshed. Those are the terms you must abide by if you want your family and friends to remain safe. Do you understand?”
Angus couldn’t speak. His whole life he’d never had trouble telling people to go to hell when he wanted to, but at that moment he couldn’t muster a single word. They had him by the balls and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. They knew he wouldn’t risk his family, especially not when he had nowhere to go. He didn’t know a lot about the CDC, but he knew that it had to have better security measures than any bank had ever had, and he knew there were armed guards everywhere. Even if he did somehow manage to break his way out of this room, he wouldn’t make it to freedom.
This was his future. This room. This woman. This hell.
“I expect a response,” the doctor said when he remained quiet.
“Yeah,” Angus muttered, staring at the floor. “I got it.”
Vivian
Vivian popped through the door of the food center, smiling when she saw Lila behind the counter. She couldn’t believe it had been more than two months since they’d arrived in Atlanta, but it had. Slowly they’d gotten into a routine and things had begun to feel almost normal, or as normal as things could feel during a zombie apocalypse, anyway. She was adjusting to being a mom, every day falling more and more in love with the baby her friend had entrusted to her, while the scars all the months leading up to their arrival here slowly began to heal. Axl especially was hurting, but Vivian knew that even though he missed his brother and had regrets about how things had turned out, he too was starting to fall into a routine that almost felt normal.
Life in New Atlanta was oddly repetitive. They worked, they took care of Megan, and they spent time with friends. The system was set up so everyone had what they needed while they also worked toward moving forward, keeping them busy and focused on the future instead of wallowing in memories of what they had lost.
“Quitting time already?” Lila asked when Vivian stopped in front of her.
The girl’s hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she didn’t have an ounce of makeup on her face, something that pre-apocalypse Lila would have never done, but she was smiling and laughing with her coworkers. The job of handing out food rations was an easy one, and it helped her get to know a lot of people in the settlement since everyone ended up here to collect their rations, which suited Lila well since she’d always been a social person. To Vivian, she had never looked so beautiful, and despite everything they’d been through, the teen seemed to exude happiness. She and Al had settled into married life like pros, not like two teenagers who had lost everything, and the change in them was both startling and positive.
“It’s four,” Vivian said. “Time to head home and get dinner ready.”
Lila smiled as she swept a bag up off the counter. She held it out to Vivian, who took it, before grabbing a second one for herself. Lila paused just long enough to say goodbye to her coworkers before joining her on the other side of the counter, and together they left the food center so they could walk home, each holding a bag of rations in their arms.
Their Monday walk home had become routine, Vivian meeting Lila at the food center so she could get the weekly food rations for Axl and herself, and then the two women would walk back to the their apartment together. It helped Vivian feel like things were moving forward. Like they were getting settled in and life could start over. More than anything, it helped her get to know Lila better than she’d been able to out on the road.
Summer was in full swing and even though Vivian had gotten a little more used to the oppressive humidity of Georgia, she’d started to sweat before she and Lila had even reached the end of the street. The bag in her arms was heavy, but the weight was welcome because it meant that she and Axl would eat. The weeks out on the road scrounging for food was something she would never forget, and if nothing else she appreciated the new government’s attempts at keeping everyone fed. She wasn’t alone in that, either.
Lila was silent at first, which was unusual for her, but sensing that the girl had something on her mind, Vivian stayed silent and waited for her to come out with it. After over a year of being with Axl, she was used to long, thoughtful silences. Even if it wasn’t normal for the teenager at her side to slip into them.
“I’m pregnant,” Lila finally said, dropping a bomb that made Vivian freeze in her tracks.
“What?”
She watched as pink spread across the younger woman’s cheeks, and when Lila looked down it reminded Vivian of a teenager confessing to her parents that she had gotten knocked up. She knew how that felt personally, only she wasn’t this girl’s mother and even though Lila was technically still a teenager, she didn’t seem like one anymore. Not after everything they’d been through. People had to grow up fast in this world or it would eat them whole, and Lila had done just that.
“I found out last week but I’m just not sure when to tell everyone,” she said, still staring at the ground like she couldn’t stand the thought of looking Vivian in the eye. “We’re all still recovering and adjusting, and telling people just doesn’t feel right.”
“You must not be very far along.” Vivian asked.
Around them the streets of New Atlanta bustled with activity. Construction crews dragging things into buildings they were in the middle of renovating, hoping to make room for the constant stream of survivors that found their way to the city. Men and women who looked shell-shocked passed, their eyes wide as they hurried down the sidewalk, still unused to the fact that they didn’t have to look over their shoulder every other second. The group had been in the city for only nine weeks, so Vivian knew how they felt. Safety was a hard thing to accept after the months they’d spent on the road.
“I’m six weeks along. The baby will be about ten months younger than Megan.” Lila started walking, keeping her eyes straight ahead as she adjusted the bag on her hip.
“I wanted to let you know so you weren’t surprised when my name popped up on the list of women needing a midwife.”
Lila’s tone said that she was still uncomfortable talking about it, but Vivian wasn’t sure if it was unhappiness or if she was just trying to be conservative with her joy. The last two pregnancies in their group hadn’t gone well. First Sophia, who had been pregnant when the virus was released, and then Ginny. They’d all known Sophia’s baby didn’t stand a very good chance of surviving because the father, her husband, hadn’t been immune to the virus, but then there had been Ginny—Hadley Lucas as she’d once been known. Her baby had lived while she’d died from complications, and that risk was just as much a part of reality these days as the other one was. Bad things happened in this world. Something they knew all too well.
Babies born inside the wall stood a better chance thanks to the doctors at the CDC, but they were still dying fairly regularly. Vivian knew because she was training to be a midwife and saw the deaths on a daily basis. She could understand Lila’s hesitation, but she also wanted the other woman to be happy about this. Not just for her own sake, but for Vivian’s as well, because she wanted to believe that getting pregnant could once again be a good thing. That the light they’d seen at the end of the tunnel when they reached Atlanta had been real and not just a mirage.
“Lila.” Vivian said the girl’s name slowly, hoping to grab her attention, and when Lila looked her way, she smiled. “Congratulations.”
She let out a relieved laugh, and then tossed her hair over her shoulder in a way that reminded Vivian of the teen she’d first met back in the shelter in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It didn’t happen often anymore. Lila had matured in a way that Vivian had never expected. If she had been a betting woman back then, she never would have put money on the girl at her side, but like so many other people since this whole thing started, Lila had surprised her.
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 44
