by Zoë Archer
For one thing, there was his…affliction, for lack of a better word. He had been changed by the attack on a cellular level. Nobody could tell him for certain what that would mean for him in the long term. For another, there was his job. Although he was no longer at Uncle Sam’s beck and call, he was still employed in the same line of work. He had to pick up and go when he got the call. Nowadays he could either accept or pass on jobs, at his discretion. That was different, but if he wanted to get paid, he had to work. It was that simple.
Still, he knew he couldn’t do mercenary work forever. At some point he would be too slow to be good in the field and that day grew nearer with every passing moment. Younger, faster guys would take his place in the field, and he would either have to find a new line of work, or find a way to utilize his hard won skills as a training officer or operations manager of some kind. He’d been thinking a lot about it since the attack that had left him in the hospital for weeks. He still hadn’t arrived at any conclusive decisions.
Crossing paths with Mariana had started those thoughts of retirement up again in his mind. If he found a less dangerous way to earn a living, could he somehow convince her to share his future? However long that lasted? Would it be fair to her? He still didn’t have an answer.
He approached her vehicle, careful to look everywhere before signaling her to pop the locks. He slid into the passenger seat and dreaded giving her the news. She was strong and had been a real trooper up to this point. He hated to lay even more on her, but she needed to know what they were up against, so she would be wary.
“It was a postal vehicle. The driver is gone, probably dead. The claw marks on the sides of the Jeep look like they were made by our target. Probably in the last few hours. It’s dark under the trees and the clouds have been hiding the sun off and on.”
“Jeff Humbolt is the postman on this route. He lives alone out on Webster Road. You think he’s turned into one of them?”
He nodded, thinking through the possibilities. He knew where Webster Road was. It wasn’t too far from here, in fact, out near the edge of the woods and very isolated. Up to this point, the zombies hadn’t strayed far from this patch of woods, bordering the base. But if the postman retained some affinity for his home area, he might try to make it back home tonight, after the contagion ran its course and he rose from the dead.
“Let’s go back to your place. I need to report in and get some sleep. Tonight is soon enough to go after the wayward mailman. The contagion takes awhile to take over its host.”
“Poor Jeff. He was a sweet old coot. A widower. He used to flirt with me for fun, not in a serious way.” He saw Mariana try to hide a tear as she surreptitiously wiped her cheek.
Simon was touched by the sadness on her face and in her voice as she put the SUV in gear and started off toward her house once more. She had lost people she knew to this horrific contagion and had been attacked and threatened herself. Most women would be a blubbering mess right about now, but not his Mari. No, she was soldiering on, even though he knew she was having a hard time dealing with all of this.
Hell, he had a hard time dealing with it, too. Of course, he’d had a lot longer to get used to the idea of the walking dead. Of zombies running around trying to eat their victims’ faces.
“I’m sorry, Mariana.”
“It’s not your fault, Simon. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the scientists and doctors who unleashed this thing on an unsuspecting world. My profession has a lot to answer for this time. I hope they came down hard on the person or persons responsible for this tragedy.”
“I heard the entire science team was being held incommunicado pending the resolution of my mission. They were allowed to develop the toxin to stop the zombies, but they’ve been effectively put into custody awaiting judgment. Someone else is gathering the data on where and when I tracked and killed the creatures. Hopefully a new, more ethical group of doctors will be appointed to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it from ever happening again.”
“I suppose the fact that the original team came up with an effective way to stop their creations will count in their favor.” Mari’s tone was grudging and he knew she was angry, thinking about her defenseless neighbors and the postman who had been murdered in such a heinous way.
“You could probably testify as to what you saw. It might make a difference when their fates are decided. The proceedings will be top secret, of course. Sykes could get you an interview with counsel, I suppose, if you want to go that far.”
“I’ll have to think about it. It’s not a bad idea. At the very least, I could submit an affidavit of some kind so the judge will know the true extent of the civilian consequences. Someone should speak up for Becky Sue, her grandmother, and Mr. Humbolt, the postman. They didn’t deserve to die that way. The people responsible should be made aware of the human consequences of their actions, as should those who will decide their punishment and whether or not they get to practice medicine or conduct experiments in the future.”
“It couldn’t hurt.” Simon admired her desire to see justice done on behalf of her neighbors.
“Can I ask you a question about the zombies’ condition? You may not know the answer, but I’ve been wondering why they have claws. They didn’t die that way. Most human beings keep their nails trimmed and they’re not that thick.”
“Yeah, that surprised me at first too. The geeks tell me it has to do with the contagion’s effect on dead tissue. It reanimates it, and with older tissue, it seems to have slight regenerative properties. It makes the nails on both hands and feet thicker and longer. They seem to keep getting longer up to the point where the dead body rises. Once that happens, the contagion has run its course in the host and it doesn’t reactivate until it finds a new body to kill, then bring back.”
“That’s really sinister, when you stop to think about it.” She looked appalled, as well she should.
“You can say that again.” They pulled into the driveway leading to her cabin. “Those claws threw us all for a loop the first time we saw them. It took the scientists about a week to figure out why that happened to their original test subjects. I’ve been reporting my observations through Sykes. Even though this experiment is a total bust, at least someone is learning something from it. For one thing, the toxin to destroy the creatures is a brand-new and useful discovery.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention yet again, I suppose.” Mariana sighed and he knew she was upset by the horrific deaths her unknown colleagues had caused.
They pulled up in front of her house and Simon turned to her.
“Stay put for a minute while I check the perimeter, okay?” He waited for her nod of agreement before he set off. He couldn’t be too careful with her safety. She had already been stalked by these creatures twice. That was twice too many times as far as he was concerned. He shuddered to think how he would have felt if she’d been infected and he’d had the grim task of ending her.
He frankly didn’t know if he could survive it.
When he was satisfied the perimeter around the cabin was clear, he motioned for her to leave her vehicle. She joined him by the front entry and he continued to scan the area as she unlocked the door.
He went in first, just to be certain the house remained undisturbed since their departure. Everything was as it should be and he ushered her inside, locking the door tight behind them. He breathed easy for the first time that morning.
“I have to call Sykes.”
“I’ll make a bite for us to eat. I don’t know about you, but I need fuel and then sleep.”
“Sounds like the perfect plan.” He pulled her close for a quick hug and kissed the top of her head before letting her go. He needed to touch her, to be sure she was really there and really all right. It was a need in his blood that grew stronger with every passing minute.
He went into the living room to make his call while she headed for the kitchen.
Chapter Seven
Mariana could hear Simon’s deep m
urmuring voice coming from the living room, though she couldn’t tell what he was saying. She liked having him in her house. He made her feel safe, even in this horrific situation.
She put together a few sandwiches for them, unwilling and unable to spend a lot of energy on cooking anything more complex at the moment. They needed something to eat and they needed sleep. Both of them had been up all night, and while Mariana had gotten used to pulling all-nighters and double shifts as a young intern, it had been a while since she’d been called upon to stretch her endurance to the limit. She had been running on adrenaline for the past few hours and desperately needed some real, deep, healing sleep.
She figured Simon was only a little better off than she was. While he’d trained himself to run on little to no sleep, at some point the human body needed to crash and recharge. They’d spent all day yesterday sleeping in short snatches between furious bouts of lovemaking. While she felt more relaxed than she had in years, neither of them had really gotten any deep, restorative sleep. They both had to be running on fumes today.
“Sykes is up to date. He’s going to send the cleanup team to the neighbors’ house first, then they’ll fix up your yard.” Simon came into the kitchen and snagged one of the sandwiches she was about to place on a serving platter. He ate half of it before she could even blink an eye.
He took the platter out of her hands and ushered her to the table, setting the plate of sandwiches between them as they both sat. She grabbed a sandwich and ate mechanically, knowing she needed the nutrition but not really tasting the food at all. She was just too tired. She was aware of Simon watching her as the silence dragged. Looking at him, she had to catch her breath at the glitter of emotion in his eyes. There was a mixture of longing, care, and a hint of possession that made her feel oddly cherished.
“Eat up, Mari.” He tipped the platter toward her and urged her to take another of the sandwich halves she had prepared. After she took another, he got up and fished two tall glasses out of a cupboard and filled them both with ice cold milk from her refrigerator.
“How did your talk go with the commander?” she asked as he placed one of the glasses in front of her and sat back down.
“He wasn’t thrilled that you’d been stalked twice. There will be some top secret paperwork added to your file, and the op file, that will cover you with the brass should they get wind of this operation at some point in the future. For now, everything is being kept need-to-know and will likely remain so for many years to come. Nobody wants a repeat of this. What really concerns me is that if the limited success in my case was known, some moron somewhere would try this again. Only five people know what really happened to me and all the written and electronic records of my treatment have been wiped. It was one of the conditions I put on taking this mission. I didn’t want to become a lab rat they would poke at until they figured out how I survived. This thing is just too dangerous.”
“Smart thinking.” Simon had always been brilliant. He was right to realize that the scientists wouldn’t leave him alone if they knew about his survival and his new healing abilities. He was in a dangerous situation, even without the creatures he was hunting. If the wrong kind of person knew what his body could do, he might just be in a world of trouble. “Who are the five people that know about you?”
“Matt Sykes, the civilian doctor, and two nurses that treated me when I was sick, and now you.”
“Are you sure you can trust them all?”
“I trust you without question.” She liked the way he put her at the head of the list. His trust was something she knew wasn’t easily given. “Matt Sykes and I go way back. He’s one of my oldest and best friends. He won’t betray me. The civilian doctor was an older fellow. After I was bitten, I didn’t report it. The op was over and I went to my apartment off base to crash. I don’t remember anything until two days later when I dragged myself to a local clinic. I felt too sick to make it to the base hospital, but as it turned out, that was probably the best move for me. The man who runs the clinic, Doctor Shepard, is like an old-fashioned country doctor. He was trained by the best, and moved to the small town outside the base when his oldest boy was killed in action a few years back. He said I reminded him of his son. Doc Shepard was the first to point out what a problem I’d have if that science team learned what happened to me. He gave me the original records that would’ve betrayed anything about my rapid healing, and destroyed the rest. He thought I might need them down the road if something went wrong, but felt nobody else should know unless I wanted them to.”
“Sounds like a smart man.” Mariana began to think maybe Simon was in the clear—as much as possible—from being turned into a human guinea pig. “Who were the nurses?”
“One was Doctor Shepard’s wife, Matilda. The other was Jenny Shepard, the doctor’s daughter-in-law. It was her husband who’d been killed in action. I don’t think either of those ladies would betray me. They watched over me for weeks in their clinic. After I dragged myself to his office, I pretty much collapsed. He took me in and those women nursed me while I was out of it. I owe them my life.”
“You got really lucky, Simon.”
“I know. Things could have gone a lot worse for me, especially early on, if the military science team had known what happened. Doctor Shepard helped me clear things with the military doctors. He told them I had pneumonia and I used up all my accumulated leave. I went back, finished the few weeks on my tour, and retired as planned. I contacted Matt Sykes and told him what had happened because I knew he still had a big problem on his hands, and I was the only one who could safely go in and solve it.”
“So you volunteered for this duty?” It didn’t really surprise her. Simon wasn’t the type to sit idle when he knew there was something he could do to help.
“I knew if they sent others, they’d most likely die and become zombies, exacerbating the problem. I knew the score about the creatures and I’d already figured out a little about hunting them from that first op.” He shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I knew I could do this without risking too much and save other guys’ lives in the bargain. What choice did I have?”
It went without saying that he could have chosen to stay out of it. He wasn’t in the military anymore. He didn’t have to follow orders unless he chose to.
“So you were going to retire even before you got bitten?”
He nodded. “It was all arranged. A job was all lined up for me with the mercs. That came in handy when Sykes wanted to hire me. Everything’s being run through the merc company in the swamp. In reality, I’m an independent contractor for both the merc group and Sykes. Having the mercs as middle man helps keep the paperwork muddled enough so nobody will ever figure out what exactly Uncle Sam hired me to do or where I’m doing it.”
“Convenient.” She finished her sandwich and reached for her glass of milk, finishing that, too. There was a holder with paper napkins on the table and she took one to rid herself of crumbs.
“That’s a specialty of theirs. When a job is too distasteful to run through official channels, the independent contractors ride to the rescue. Or so their recruiters say. Personally, I wasn’t convinced until it happened to me.”
“Do you plan to stay with the mercenary group after this mission is over?” She tried not to show how much that worried her.
“Frankly, with what they’re paying me, I could retire tomorrow and be well off for the rest of my life. It pays well to be the only person in the world who can safely hunt zombies.” He winked at her comically and even through her exhaustion, she had to laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll no doubt take some time off. Preferably on some tropical island with an umbrella drink in my hand and warm waves lapping at my toes.” He ate silently for a moment, polishing off the last of the sandwiches. “What about you, Mari? You’re retiring in a few weeks. What plans have you made? Nobody on base seems to know where you’ll go next.”
“You’ve been asking around about me?” She was just sleepy enough to tease him with
more candor than she would’ve otherwise used.
“A good soldier always does detailed recon.” His smug expression prompted her to throw her balled-up napkin at him. He ducked with a grin. “So what are your plans? Got a job waiting?”
She pretended to fume for a moment more before relenting. “Actually, I was going to take some time off myself. I’ve had a few offers, from private practice to a big city hospital, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. I thought I deserved a long vacation before I jump back in with both feet. In fact, your tropical paradise sounds like just the ticket.”
“Great minds think alike.” He saluted her with his glass and drained it. “Now what are your feelings about bed? I need to crash and all I can think about is your nice soft sheets, that comfortable mattress, and you tucked close in my arms. My own personal hot water bottle.”
If she’d had another napkin in her hand, she would’ve thrown that, too, as he got up and put their dishes in the sink. She loved his teasing. When he teased, he was truly comfortable. It was when he was tense that he became the serious soldier she had known for the first few weeks of their courtship. When he relaxed was when he was at his most charming, and most desirable. At least to her.
“I don’t like being called a hot water bottle, Simon. That’s not exactly a compliment.” She pretended to be annoyed by his unflattering comparison.
“To me it is.” He grabbed her around the waist as she stood, drawing her back against his chest, nuzzling her neck playfully. “I dream about hot water bottles when I’m stuck on the cold ground in a bivouac. I’ve even fantasized about hot water bottles a time or two when I was doing cold weather training in Alaska. Mariana-shaped hot water bottles, who called my name as I made them come.”
“You have a very kinky imagination.” Mock outrage filled her breathless words as he cupped her breasts through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.
