Deliverance of the Damned

by Jean Marie Bauhaus

  She scanned the ground for something, anything, that would serve as a weapon, and spotted an automatic rifle lying on the ground. She retrieved it and checked the chamber. Empty. So was the cartridge. Blood and brain matter coated one end of the stock. Chris must have resorted to using it as a club. It would have to do.

  Hannah slung the strap over her shoulder. “Hold on, Boo. Sissy has to run fast.”

  It didn’t take her long to catch up to Alek, encumbered as he was. They had already reached Main Street, which was thankfully devoid of shamblers. They made it to the building with no difficulty. Inside, Alek carried Chris into the clinic and laid him on the floor long enough to right an exam table that had been turned over. “I need tubing,” he said as he picked Chris up and placed him on the table. “And catheters and syringes. Two of each.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “He needs a blood transfusion.”

  Hannah eyed Chris’s ravaged body. He looked too far gone for a transfusion to be any use. Her gaze shifted to the refrigeration unit where the base’s supply of blood had been kept. That was, until that stupid redneck traitor Eddie and his cronies had broken in and destroyed it. “But there’s no blood.”

  Ignoring her, Alek removed gloves and alcohol wipes from one of the few cabinets that didn’t get knocked over or ransacked. “Not that blood.” He pulled on the gloves and tore open the wipes. As he cleaned the inside of his own elbow, she understood.

  “Do you think this will work?”

  “I don’t know. But it can’t hurt to try. We have to hurry though. He doesn’t have much time.”

  She considered Noah a moment, then carried him to a large file cabinet with deep drawers. Eddie and company had already emptied it, the files scattered all over the floor. Hannah pulled open the bottom drawer and placed Noah inside. “Sit tight, Boo.” He began to fuss, but there was no helping it. She found the medical supply cabinet lying on its side with its contents spilled onto the floor. After a bit of rummaging, she found what they needed and brought it over to Alek.

  “What about his blood type?” she asked while they removed the equipment from its sterile wrapping. “Are you a match?”

  “I’m not sure that matters in this case.” Alek inserted a catheter in Chris’s vein. “But it so happens that his type is AB.” He glanced at her as he positioned the second catheter over his own vein. “Do you know what that means, Nurse Jordan?”

  Hannah had only completed three and a half semesters of nursing school, but she knew the answer. “He’s a universal receiver.”

  “Very good.” He inserted the catheter in his arm with a wince and then nodded for Hannah to attach the tubing. But as she reached for Chris’s catheter, his breathing, already shallow, grew ragged and then stopped.

  “He’s not breathing.” She felt for a pulse and shook her head. “I’m not getting anything.”

  Alek reached over and checked Chris’s pulse for himself. His mouth drew into a grim line. Grim, but determined. “Keep going.”

  “But Alek—”

  “Attach the tubing, nurse.”

  Hannah knew from his tone it was useless to argue. She affixed one end of the tubing to each catheter, then used the syringe on Alek’s end to start the flow of blood. Standing back to watch the blood travel through the tube from Alek’s veins into Chris’s, she glanced over at Noah, whose fussing had graduated to full-fledged crying.

  She went to get him, and also the rifle she’d brought. Maybe the transfusion couldn’t hurt, but with Chris already gone, she didn’t see how it could help. If he got up again, and he wasn’t himself...

  But I was already gone. What if Alek had given up then?

  “Shh, it’s okay,” she said as she picked up her brother. At least she could be ready to move him to safety while Alek dealt with Chris if it came to that. He settled down as she bounced him in her arms. She carried him back over to Alek. “How much will it take?”

  “Not much, I expect. Here, I’ll take the baby. You tie off my arm.” When she hesitated, he assured her, “It’s okay. There’s still time.”

  Against her reservations, she handed Noah to him before rummaging through the wreckage for a rubber tourniquet. Finding one, she came back and wrapped it around Alek’s bicep. As the flow of blood slowed, she found a syringe of saline, which she used to flush Alek’s catheter before pulling it out of his arm. Then she repeated the process on Chris’s arm.

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “Here?”

  “No. Let’s take him upstairs.” He gave the baby back to her and got to his feet. Buthe lost his balance and almost toppled over.

  “Easy.” Hannah grabbed his arm to steady him. “You’re not as strong as you used to be.”

  “So I’ve noticed.” He waited a moment to let the dizziness pass. Then he picked Chris up gently from the table and carried him out of the

  clinic, toward the stairs.

  THREE

  NOW

  They had left him lying on the sofa. Hannah had insisted on leaving a note for him, in case he woke up before they returned. In case what woke up was actually him. Despite all her doubts, she had wanted to share Alek’s optimism. She’d hoped the transfusion would work, that Chris could be saved.

  The mindless banging on the other side of the door dashed all her hopes.

  Holding her gun, finger on the trigger, Hannah gripped the door handle and pulled. But another hand shot passed her and shoved it closed.

  She spun and aimed her gun at the newcomer’s face, then lowered it as she recognized Alek. He was holding Noah. “Damn it, Alek. I could‘ve killed you both!”

  “Just wait.” He handed her the baby, went to the door and placed an ear against it.

  “It’s not him. It didn’t work.”

  Alek looked back at her. “You examined him?”

  “No, but—”

  He opened the door. Hannah swore and raised her gun, ready to shoot whatever came out.

  But nothing did.

  Alek reached over and gently pushed the gun toward the floor. “Wait here.” He entered the apartment.

  “Like hell.” Hannah raised the gun again, holding it ready as she followed him inside. Chris stood in the middle of the living room. He didn’t move as Alek approached.

  “Christopher, it’s Doc Konstantin. I need to see how you’re doing. Can you hold still for me?”

  Chris didn’t respond. He gave no sign he even knew of their presence. Alek gently took hold of his arm. The wounds there had already begun to heal. Alek pressed two fingers to the inside of Chris’s wrist, then he grinned and looked at Hannah. “He has a pulse.”

  Relaxing, she returned her gun to its holster. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I’m not sure.” He moved in front of Chris, checking his wounds and looking into his eyes. Hannah stood behind Alek, where she could see that Chris’s eyes had changed, just as hers had.

  “I need my medical bag.” Alek glanced at her. “It’s in the bedroom.”

  She found the bag sitting on the dresser and brought it to him. He took out a stethoscope, put it on and pressed the diaphragm to Chris’s chest. “His breathing’s a bit labored.” He moved it to the spot above Chris’s heart and listened, frowning. Then he pressed it to his own chest. After a moment, he motioned to Hannah. “C’mere.” After listening to her heartbeat for about ten seconds, he removed the stethoscope. “Well, I can’t say his heartbeat is normal, but it’s consistent with both of ours.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Our hearts are beating more slowly than that of a normal human.”

  “By how much?”

  “A normal resting heart rate for an adult human is about sixty to a hundred beats per minute. Ours is about half that.” He seemed to mull this over. Hannah waited, biting back the half-dozen or so questions that sprang to mind. “A vampire has a heart beat, but it’s so slow it’s virtually undetectable. Our—their metabolisms are extr
emely slowed, which is why the aging process appears halted.”

  “So... you’re saying we’ll age more slowly than normal people?”

  “No. I’m only saying our heartbeats are slower. Anything else at this point would be pure speculation.” He put away the stethoscope and rummaged in his bag for a funduscope. He flicked on its little light and shined it in Chris’s eyes. “Pupil response seems normal, but...” He turned it off and held a finger up in its place. “Christopher, can you follow my finger with your eyes?”

  He moved his finger left and right, up and down. Chris didn’t respond.

  “Can I see you in the kitchen?” Hannah asked.

  “In a moment.”

  “Now, please.”

  She turned and marched into the kitchen, not bothering to hold the swinging door open. A moment later, Alek joined her. “What is it?”

  “What have we done?”

  “We saved that young man’s life.”

  Shifting Noah to her hip, she pointed toward the living room with her free hand. “You call that life? He might not be a shambler, but I don’t need a medical degree to see that there’s extensive brain damage.”

  “Maybe. Without a CT scan—”

  “Alek, let’s be real.” He gave her a look that suggested she should leave diagnostics to the actual doctor. She took a deep breath. “Zach told me it would be impossible to cure a shambler. That once they turned, there would be so much brain damage it would be impossible to bring them back.”

  “That may be. But Chris hadn’t turned.”

  “But he died.”

  “So did you.”

  She didn’t have a response. If Alek hadn’t done what he’d done—attempting to turn her into a vampire even as the zombie virus claimed her—she’d be a walking corpse right now. The only reason his gambit even worked was that she’d injected herself with an untested vaccine. Somehow the formula, the virus and Alek’s vampire blood had all reacted together to not only save her but to alter both her and Alek.

  And now Chris, who had Alek’s altered blood in his veins. But at what cost?

  “Look,” Alek said. “He’s alive, and he’s healing. You saw his wounds. They’re already halfway healed. There’s no reason to believe that any damage done to his neural pathways won’t also heal. We need to give him time.”

  “And if his brain doesn’t heal? What then?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But if this works, think about what that means. Think of all the lives we could save. Not to mention stripping the vampires of their leverage.”

  Hannah closed her eyes and tried to rub away the weariness. As if picking up on her mood, Noah whimpered. “Shh.” She bounced him in her arms. “It’s okay, Boo. Sissy’s just tired.”

  Alek came closer and rubbed her arms. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “A little. Not much.”

  Only then did he notice the bite mark on her shoulder. “What’s this?”

  Hannah glanced at the bite. She’d already forgotten about it. It no longer hurt and it already looked much better. “I had an encounter on the way over here.”

  Alek grimaced. “I suppose this confirms that you’re immune to the zombie virus. Come downstairs and let me clean it. Your immunity probably doesn’t extend to bacteria.”

  “It’s fine. It’s already mostly healed.”

  “Even so.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he cut her off. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “Fine. But what do we do about Chris?”

  “He should be fine for now. When we finish downstairs you can come back up and stay with him. I’ll go back to the house and pack up some supplies. We’ll be safer here, anyway.”

  “Chris could use a change of clothes.”

  Alek nodded. “I also need to go by the old jail and retrieve a few things from the lab Zach set up there.” At the mention of his late assistant, he winced. “And I need to take care of Zach.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here alone. But that didn’t stop you, did it?”

  Hannah sighed. “Here.” She unclipped her holster from her belt. “At least take this. You don’t have built-in weapons anymore.”

  He accepted the gun and hooked it onto his own waistband. “Now come on. Let’s go look at that bite.”

  He led her out of the kitchen and to his front door. As she followed, she watched Chris, who hadn’t moved from the spot where they’d left him. She wanted to go to him. She wanted to hug him and tell him how sorry she was. But she kept walking, praying as she went that Alek was right.

  IT HAD BEEN A LITTLE over twenty-four hours since he’d last been inside the old jail, but with all that had happened since, it felt like days. Alek had every reason to expect the makeshift lab to be intact. It had sheltered Zach from the tornado, but not from his own folly. His body still lay where Alek had left it in the old jail cell. The second cell still held Bob, the shambler Zach had kept imprisoned for their research. The third and final cell held all the equipment needed for their vaccine research.

  Or at least, it did. Alek found the tiny space trashed, the equipment destroyed. The rat cage had been knocked over, all of its inhabitants escaped. That had surely been an accident. He doubted the perpetrator had freed them out of the kindness of her heart.

  Esme’s heart held no kindness. She would have only wanted to destroy any chance of Alek producing a serum from his and Hannah’s blood. Her scent was all over the place, so strong Alek wondered if she was still hiding somewhere nearby.

  He drew the gun Hannah had given him. It felt strange to hold it in his hand, to have need of such a human weapon. Until recent events had required it, he hadn’t held a gun since the war, and only then when he’d been forced to. He was a healer, not a fighter.

  But he was also a protector. And if that meant he had to kill Esme, so be it. He went to cell number two and opened the door.

  Only Bob remained inside, still chained to the wall. Alek fired a shot and ended the shambler. He’d served his purpose, and they had no more need of him.

  He returned to the lab to do one last check. Only then did he notice the little pile beneath the rat cage. They hadn’t escaped after all. Alek crouched to inspect the tiny bodies. Each had been drained of blood. He grimaced. Esme must’ve been desperate. But the rats wouldn’t hold her. She would need human blood to keep from going feral. If she was still somewhere on the base, she’d be more dangerous than ever.

  She could only be hiding in one other place. Reluctantly, Alek approached the third cell and opened the thick wooden door.

  Zach lay on the lone cot, unmoving, his face and torso still covered with the lab coat Alek had draped over him. He was alone in the cell. Alek returned the gun to its holster and squeezed his eyes shut against the sharp prick that stung them.

  He had already dug a hole in the yard next to the old jail. The other corpses that littered the grounds would be collected and burned once they had time to deal with them. But Zach deserved better.

  Alek gathered his old friend in his arms and carried him up the narrow stairs and out into the yard where he lowered him gently into the grave. He allowed himself to weep as he filled it in.

  After they rescued their people and restored the camp, he would come back and establish some kind of monument. But he wouldn’t need a grave marker to remember where he’d buried his friend.

  With his grim task complete, he tossed the shovel into the back of the truck he’d salvaged and returned to those who were still counting on him.

  FOUR

  WEATHERED AND WORN by the eons, the Wichita Mountains were ancient, which meant they weren’t so tall. But one promontory overlooking the eastern valley was high enough to see for miles. With a good set of high-powered binoculars, Eddie had himself a front-row seat to watch the show unfold down at the army base.

  A tight cave in the rocks had sheltered him during the storm. Once the worst of it had passed, he’d hiked up to this bluff
to survey the damage below. At first it had been too dark to see anything, but as the storm passed and the sky cleared, he’d watched as scores of walking corpses filed through a mangled section of fencing.

  And then he’d heard the helicopters.

  An army of blood suckers made quick work of the walkers before rounding up the human refugees and carrying them off to God knew where. Eddie couldn’t help feeling a certain satisfaction. There was some fancy German word for that he couldn‘t recall. Anyway, it served them right for putting their trust in a goddamn vampire. It was only a matter of time before he sold them out.

  Eddie had tried to tell Hannah. Hell, when she didn’t listen he’d taken matters into his own hands and gotten rid of the blood suckers. Then at least the people down there could control their own fate.

  But there they went anyway, rounded up like the sheep they were.

  His group fared no better. As much as he liked to think he’d have been able to keep Hannah and her brother safe, he hadn’t even been able to keep his own people alive. It was the heads that did it. If he hadn’t insisted on keeping trophies of his kills, the vampire scouting party that found them might have only captured them instead of killing them. Eddie alone escaped by crawling under the bus and holding onto the undercarriage while the vamps searched for survivors.

  Finally, they’d gone, leaving bodies, bloodshed and abandoned vehicles behind. It had taken Eddie more than an hour to unload the bodies from the bus. It might have taken longer, but most of them were women and children, not that difficult to move. It helped that they were all emptied of blood.

  The bus had enough fuel to reach the mountains where it would be hidden from the choppers and where Eddie would be sure to find plenty of fresh water and small game.

  And where he could keep an eye on the base. Not that anything was left to see. After the helicopters had gone, he’d sat and watched the sunrise. By the light of day he spotted a few stragglers moving around the camp, but it was impossible to tell whether they were human or walker.