Zombie Rules (Book 7): The Fifteens

by Achord, David

  “We don’t want our reports taken out of context or raise any notions,” Doctor Smeltzer said.

  “Okay, Senator Duckworth and I can understand that sentiment, so lay it out in plain talk. I’ll prepare a report that cannot be taken out of context, and we’ll go from there,” I said. “Alright, let me in to see the patients,” I said.

  Doctor Smeltzer virtually gasped. “You can’t go in there.”

  “I can and I will,” I replied.

  The two doctors did not move. I was getting mad. I stepped closer. “I want to make something clear. You doctors,” I waved a finger back and forth, “you two, and those other two, wherever they are, have become increasingly arrogant lately. You’ve repeatedly failed to respond to specific requests in emails or sent back reports that are vague and condescending. So, I am telling you two right now that crap stops. In the meantime, I am going to look over the patients.”

  “May I ask why?” Doctor Kincaid asked.

  “You may ask, but I’m tired of the stalling tactics and it’s starting to piss me off,” I retorted.

  “If I was you, Doctor, I’d use that keycard of yours and open those doors,” Justin said.

  Both Kincaid and Smeltzer were flustered, but Kincaid wasted no time in letting me in.

  “If she bites you, we’ll have to quarantine you,” he warned.

  “I’d expect nothing less,” I replied and walked into the airlock.

  I put on the protective clothing and donned a pair of welder’s gloves. Patient Eve—that was her official name now—remained motionless when I entered and simply stared. I stepped closer and stopped when we were only a couple of feet apart; well within range if she wanted to attack. She gave a single gnash of her teeth. When I did not flinch, she stopped and sniffed the air.

  “The last time we were this close together was back in Ohio,” I said. “You put up a hell of a fight when we captured you.” I motioned toward the windows. “Whenever I’ve visited in the past, you’ve given me a hard stare. I’ve thought about you a lot and I believe that not only do you recognize me, you have a pretty good understanding of what I’m saying.”

  I waited a moment to see if she would respond. She sniffed some more, but she made no effort to move. I then reached for her hand. She jerked back and snarled. I did not react and continued holding my hand out. After a moment, she held out her hand and tentatively placed it in mine.

  “Careful, Zach,” Justin said over the intercom.

  “Don’t mind them,” I said in a low voice. “I’m not here to hurt you and you know that. Now, let’s have a look at you, starting with your arms.”

  Smeltzer’s voice emanated over the intercom. “What are you looking for?”

  I ignored Smeltzer and even though she was shackled, there was enough play where I could examine her arms. She stood without moving, letting me do my examination, not even snarling at me. I then lifted her surgical gown and inspected the rest of her. She was wearing a cloth diaper, making me wonder who was responsible for changing her.

  Her skin had the appearance of scaling, like a reptile that’d been out in the sun too long, and there was a rank odor, but there was no major decomposition that I could see.

  When I let the gown fall back in place, I made eye contact with her. She stared back. I would say it was impassive, but there was something there. It was almost like I could see a sentient conscience behind those discolored eyes.

  “My name is Zach,” I whispered. “I normally kill every zed I come into contact with. But there’s something different about you.”

  Patient Eve gave no verbal or physical response. She merely continued to stare, but when I looked down at her baby, Eve’s breathing became heavier. The intercom came to life again.

  “Careful. She’s very protective of her child,” Kincaid said.

  Interesting. She has a motherly instinct for her child. I glanced over to the window. The four men were watching in a mixture of concern and amusement. I turned back to Patient Eve. She had moved closer to her baby but had never taken her eyes off me. I kept her in my peripheral vision as I walked toward the door. When I heard the mechanical click, I pulled it open and walked into the airlock.

  Once I had changed out of the protective clothing, I walked into the anteroom where the other four men waited.

  “Well, Zach, what do you think?” Bob asked.

  “She certainly looks different from other zeds I’ve seen,” I said. “The fact that she is protective of her child tells me she’s not brain dead. There is a matter we need to discuss though.”

  “What’s that?” Justin asked.

  “What kind of experiments are being conducted on her?”

  Justin glanced over at the doctors who started squirming a little.

  “Let me explain what I’m talking about. There are multiple needle marks all over her. Tell me what you guys are doing.”

  “We’re taking blood samples,” Doctor Smeltzer said.

  “You guys are doing more than that. You need to tell me or else I’ll remove you two from this project.”

  The two doctors exchanged another anxious glance. Smeltzer gave a nod. Kincaid licked his lips and cleared his throat.

  “We have injected her with live cancer cells,” he said.

  “Who has cancer?” Bob asked.

  “Doctor Washington. Pancreatic. Frankly, it is doubtful she’ll live to see Christmas.”

  This was surprising news to me. Doctors Jere Washington and Doug Throneberry were microbiologists at John Hopkins University. They had become trapped in the basement and lived there for a couple of years before one of our scout teams found them.

  “Tell us about it,” Bob said.

  “The short answer, Patient Eve’s blood kills the pathogen within minutes. We can detect no cancer in her system,” Doctor Kincaid said.

  Doctor Smeltzer jumped in. “Think of it, Zach. If we can somehow identify this unique property and make a vaccine out of it, it would eliminate the need for all other immunization vaccines. It would be a super vaccine.”

  “There’s a lot of implications here,” Doctor Kincaid said. “Think about the future of humanity. Childhood diseases could be wiped out with one singular preventative vaccine. Cancer would be eradicated.”

  “Intriguing,” Bob said. “Back before, I served on the Primary Health and Retirement Security Committee. I can say with authority health care costs were soaring out of control before the apocalypse. The creation of a super vaccine would be a major paradigm shift in the future of humanity.”

  “Alright, you will need to complete a detailed report and have it for me before I leave, but for now, no more experiments. You can draw blood, but that’s it. Oh, and her skin is extremely dry.”

  “The decomposition,” Doctor Kincaid said.

  “Perhaps. Why don’t you guys try some lotion and see how her skin reacts?”

  “Certainly,” Doctor Smeltzer replied. “But, Zach, you are hamstringing our research. There is so much we can potentially learn.”

  “But, Zach, there is so much we can learn,” Doctor Smeltzer said.

  I looked through the glass at Patient Eve. She was staring back with, almost like she understood what we were talking about. There was something going on behind that zed mask.

  “Doctors, the answer is no,” I said.

  They didn’t like it, and they were probably tempted to ask on whose authority, but I think they already knew what my answer would be.

  I walked out of the building with conflicted thoughts. A few years back, when I was still in Tennessee, we found a journal written by a deputy who was working at the jail when the plague manifested itself. He and another deputy had a jail full of infected prisoners and they began experimenting on them. I remember how amused I was when I read the journal. They had done everything from boiling, drowning, disemboweling, dismemberment, exposure to toxins, you name it.

  Like I said, it was amusing to me. After all, I thought zeds were a scourge upon humanity and they all
needed to be eradicated, wiped off the face of the planet. But there was something about Patient Eve. Our interaction a few minutes ago affected me. Hell, I don’t even know why I went in the room with her.

  I stopped halfway to the main building, dropped to a knee, and retied a bootlace. Straightening, I stretched and looked around. I saw a couple of people on the far end of the property. They appeared to be hoeing a garden. There was another person walking around picking up trash. There was a man in a nearby guard tower with the windows open and his feet propped up. He alternated between staring out into space and reading something.

  A super vaccine. The health and medical disciplines had been working on it since before I was born. Was Patient Eve, or her child, the missing link? That missing piece of the puzzle which would enable the chemists and microbiologists to create the holy grail of vaccines?

  I didn’t know, but I could understand why the docs were so infatuated with Patient Eve and her child. The implications were monumental. They would be immortalized in history as the doctors who found the cure for everything. Of course, it was entirely dependent on many variables, including the survival of mankind.

  “That’s fifty-fifty,” I muttered.

  Chapter 32 – Team Flash

  Flash frowned. “Del Rio is Spanish. It means of the river. Is that like his real name or something?”

  “I have no idea,” Norma said. “Do you have any more of those food bars?”

  Flash glanced at the other two. “I’m hungry too. I suppose this is a safe enough place. Let’s all grab a bite.” He went to their SUV and came back with a picnic basket.

  The four of them shared a meal of bread and cured ham. They had some other goodies, but Flash wasn’t going to share any with their new acquaintance. When he handed a couple of pieces of ham to Norma, she scrutinized it before taking a bite.

  “How’d you meet these people?” he asked as they ate.

  “There was a group of us living at Fort Eustis,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” Erin said. “Fort Eustis is in shambles. Whatever wasn’t blown up was burnt down years ago.”

  Norma shook her head. “Not all of it. There’s an elementary school on Madison Avenue.”

  “I’ve been by there,” Erin said and waved a hand at her two companions. “All three of us have been there. It’s burnt and collapsed.”

  “True enough,” Sully said.

  Norma shook her head again. “It’s only partially collapsed, and it has a basement. That’s where they live. There’s a parade ground nearby that they use for a garden. Oh, and the commissary still had inventory. They filled up the basement with food and stuff. They move around, but the school is where they keep most of their stuff.”

  “So, how did it all go bad for you?” Flash asked.

  Norma shrugged. “There was one of them who had a thing for me, but he had a girlfriend. I didn’t actually see who jumped me, but I heard her speak. She’s the one who set me up.”

  “So, it was nothing more than a case of jealousy?” Flash asked.

  “I guess so,” Norma answered.

  Flash looked at his two teammates. Sully shrugged. Erin ignored him.

  “You’ll need to show us where they are,” he said.

  Norma shook her head vigorously. “They’ll kill me if they see me,” she exclaimed.

  “They’ll never see you. Simply show us where they are and we’ll do the rest,” Flash said.

  After a moment, Norma slowly nodded her head. “Okay, tomorrow maybe.”

  Chapter 33 – Team Mad Dog the Dead Prepper

  Melvin brought the truck to a stop on I-70 and gazed out the window. “We need to go that way, boys,” he said, pointing ahead.

  Setting the air brake, the four of them exited the truck and walked over to the bridge, or what was left of it. The bridge was intact except for approximately thirty feet. The steel girders were still in place, but a significant chunk or roadway was missing. Melvin looked over the railing and pointed down.

  “It looks like something big hit the concrete pylon down at the water level,” he said.

  “I bet it stayed intact for a while, but a few years of the water constantly pushing against it finally caused it to give way,” Logan surmised. “I’d guess one of those big barges. So, does the map show another bridge anywhere close?”

  True went back to the semi and returned with Melvin’s map, camera, and binoculars. He handed the camera to Melvin

  “May as well take some pictures of it, for those geniuses back home,” he said.

  Melvin agreed. He took photos and then jotted a few notes while Liam and Logan scanned the map. After a minute, Liam pointed out a spot.

  “There’s a lock a little north of here. It might be useable. If it’s not, there’s a town called Louisiana further north with a bridge. That one might be doable.”

  Melvin took a few more photos and then pointed across the bridge. A horde of zeds could be seen in the distance. “How many, do you think?” he asked True, who had been scanning the area with the binocs.

  “Lots. Over a thousand,” he said.

  “That certainly qualifies as lots,” Liam said, using air quotes. “Are we going to deal with them?”

  “No,” Melvin said. “We can’t afford to waste the ammunition on them. So, St. Louis is a no-go. Let’s check out that next bridge.”

  An hour later, they found themselves a few miles north of their previous location parked on the Champ Clark Bridge, scanning west.

  “I wonder why they named their town Louisiana,” Logan asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Liam said. “Napoleon Bonaparte visited here one day and named it after a whore back in Paris.”

  Melvin chuckled. Even True smiled a little bit as he continued scanning.

  “Talk to me,” Melvin said.

  “Besides the zeds, I don’t see much,” True said. “Most of the structures still seem intact, but I don’t see no indicators of human activity.”

  Liam noticed True had stopped scanning and was intently focused on something. “What do you see?”

  “There’s a radio tower over there, up on a hill a little back from the river,” he said.

  “Is that significant?” Liam asked.

  True lowered the binoculars and handed them to Melvin.

  “Zach had a set up in a radio tower back in Tennessee. They were able to reach out to other survivors and even put together a trading rendezvous. It worked out decent enough.”

  “That is an excellent idea,” Melvin said. “I believe we need to check it out.”

  “Why’s that, Sarge?” Logan asked.

  “Men, if the USA is to succeed, we need to grow and reclaim all of this. We’ve been doing this for going on nine years now and we’re just now able to expand beyond the five-hundred-mile radius. This would be an excellent location to put people.”

  “There’ve been a few setbacks,” True muttered.

  “Yep, Ohio was a big setback,” Melvin said. “So, they’re counting on us, big time. Not only do we need to score at that ammunition plant, we need to find friendly survivors who will get on board with us.”

  The men passed around the binoculars and gave it a look.

  “Not a good view of the river from there,” Logan observed.

  “The right people can overcome that,” Melvin said. “Hang on a sec.”

  He walked back to the truck and came back with a notebook full of printouts of satellite photos, courtesy of Grace and Garret, the two twins who were the computer geeks of Mount Weather. He thumbed through them and found one. Pulling it out, he showed it to them.

  “Okay, this is an overview of the area, and as you can see, this location has good potential. You got the railroad bridge right in front of it and a vehicular bridge just up the road. With the bridge going to St. Louis all FUBAR’ed, the strategic value of this spot goes up significantly.”

  “Alright, let’s go check it out,” Liam urged.

  Liam drove while Melvin and True walked
ahead, watching for any spots in the bridge that looked too dangerous to drive across. They stopped once they crossed over to the west bank. Melvin signaled Liam to kill the engine. The men gathered in front of the truck, watching and listening. Louisiana was a quaint Missouri town, back before. There was a low-priced hotel on their right and gas stations on their left. Time and Mother Nature had not been kind to any of the structures.

  “Quiet,” Logan whispered.

  “No sign of zeds,” True whispered back. “I don’t even see any skeletons.”

  “That’s true, True,” Liam deadpanned. True ignored him.

  “Let’s get started,” Melvin said.

  He took the lead and turned left onto North 3rd Street. The brothers took either flank while True provided rear security. After only a block, the area turned residential. The houses were older, maybe thirty years or older. The grass yards were waist-high, the trees overgrown and in bad need of pruning. As they drove, it went from urban to rural in the space of only a couple of blocks, and North 3rd Street was now South 3rd Street. When South 3rd Street changed to Clinton Street, they found the turn and stopped again.

  “Let’s walk from here,” Melvin directed.

  The men spread out and worked their way up to the tower, stopping when they got to within two hundred feet where barb wire fencing crossed the road and took cover behind some trees on the side of the roadway. The four of them stared at the building for a solid five minutes, waiting for any kind of human or zed activity. It was a squat, plain-looking building built out of concrete blocks. There were no windows and it looked like the only entrance was a steel security door.

  “The door is open a little way,” Logan said. “It looks abandoned, or there may be someone lying prone in the shadows with a sniper rifle.” He pointed for emphasis. “The road leads straight to the door. Makes for a good kill zone.”

  “The whole abandoned look may be just a façade,” Liam whispered. His brother arched an eyebrow.

  “You don’t even know what that word means,” Logan whispered back. Liam frowned at him.