by Ivan Turner
"Are you kidding?" she asked. "Are you trying to argue ownership of the disease? Listen to me, Solomon, you can fucking have it."
"Dr. Luco, please…"
"No, no. I mean you can have it. And when you're strapped to a table and moaning in pain because you know you're dying, I'll be sure to get you a double dose of Head Shot. And maybe a nice warm glass of milk to go with it."
He stopped talking after that but not because she'd managed to put him in his place. He was too controlled for that. Her comments had convinced him that she wasn't worth his time.
"I think this conference is concluded," Solomon said, rising. "Unless you wish to file a formal injunction, Candid will continue to distribute Head Shot. And just so there's no misunderstanding, any public attacks against Head Shot will be considered slanderous or libelous and we will press charges."
"I have an idea," Luco said and paused. They all turned to look in her direction, even Solomon who was more inclined to dismiss her. She waited just a few moments until she was sure that she had their attention. Then she offered, "How would you like to have a tour of the facility?"
"I think not."
"No, really." She addressed Solomon directly. "You and Mr. Juarez should come down into the complex and have a look and what the doctors are doing. You should also see what the patients look like so you can go back to your jobs with a clear conscience."
Solomon puffed out his chest and turned to leave. "That will not be necessary, Dr. Luco."
But Juarez hesitated. "Can we really do that?"
She looked at him and grinned. "Absolutely."
***
SHE led them to the stairway that would take them down into the labs. The staircase was well lit but, for once, Luco wished for dim lighting. Just to set the mood. This ploy was a Hail Mary attempt at appealing to their consciences. Solomon was likely untouchable. The things he would see might rattle him, but once back in the comfort of his own life, his brick wall will be rebuilt at blinding speed. Juarez was something else entirely. A lasting impression left on him would mean something. It meant everything. She needed these people leave there with the impression of impending doom, the understanding that there is no comfort to which they can return. The lighting at the bottom of the stairs suited her purposes much better. As she led them through a second set of security doors, and the dimness enshrouded them, she could feel their apprehension grow. Let it build, she thought. I'll start them off light and give them a finale they'll never forget.
The underground complex was comprised of several main areas, including living and recreation space should circumstances warrant that staff be required to spend an extended period of time down there. Certainly, none of those areas were on the tour. No, the first place she took them was the morgue. Before the zombie plague, this complex had been used to study infectious disease, mostly different strains of the flu. The morgue, a large room with three rows of drawers, had been expanded to accommodate the number of dead. Previously, if there were four occupants in the morgue, it was considered a packed house. Not anymore.
On the outskirts of the morgue proper, they passed a thick steel door with a tiny window. Not by accident, Luco glanced through the window as she went by. The others, following her lead, also glanced in and were horrified by what they saw. This room, known by the staff as the Butcher Shop, had four medical tables, each with a body on it. Though the bodies were covered by drapes, the drapes were stained dark brown. The tables had runoff trenches for fluids that leaked during autopsies. Buckets lined one wall and though it was impossible to see what was in them, there was definitely something in them.
"What's that room?" asked Juarez, his façade replaced completely by an expression of anxious wonderment.
Luco stopped, feigned surprise at his question. "At one time it was an operating theatre. We used it for the occasional autopsy but it largely went unused."
"It looks well used now," Solomon said. He'd brought a handkerchief up to his nose as if to ward off the awful smell. But all they could really smell was disinfectant. Any odor would be contained behind the steel door.
"It is, Mr. Solomon. Well used. You see, we've been conducting research on the dead. The dead that stay dead."
"What kind of research?" Lochschenborgh asked with an edge to his voice.
"We need to determine the extent of the contagion. We take regular samples from the dead and test them for signs of living bacteria."
"Samples?" Juarez glanced back toward the Butcher Shop. Though they were well out of range of the window, he could see the interior in his mind's eye.
Like a mad scientist, Luco continued with a tour guide's affectation. She did not enjoy cutting pieces out of the dead but she felt it was important that she maintain the air of familiarity with what she considered to be a horrible place. "Without a functioning circulatory system, the bacteria tend to collect in different parts of the body. We have to take cuts of the flesh and the organs and even the bone to see if there are still active bacteria." When no one asked, she added, "There are. In our oldest specimen, which is a month old and was…disabled before it could turn into a zombie, there are still active and reproducing bacteria all over the body."
She turned away from them. Then, as an afterthought, she said, "Although we haven't tried giving the patients regular doses of Head Shot."
Without any further delay, she led them into the morgue. There were two doctors in there, a man and a woman, each nondescript in a white coat with a name badge. His hair was short and hers was pulled back into a pony tail. They glanced up as the troupe walked in, but gave them no further attention. The four armed guards didn't regard them at all.
"As you can see…" Luco began before being interrupted by Juarez.
"Why the guards?" He stammered out his question as if he wasn't quite sure that he should ask it. Poor, slick Louis Juarez was probably a crackerjack PR guy, but he was no match for this reality. He was, however, giving her every opportunity to give them information without having to volunteer it.
Luco smiled in spite of herself. "Like your product suggests, you can put down a zombie with severe head trauma. A bullet does the trick nicely. You see, the bacteria actually maintain a symbiotic relationship with the human. Once the organs fail and the undamaged brain dies, they can restart the motor functions and use the host to feed themselves."
Solomon harrumphed. "And the guards?"
She looked at him demurely. "Every once in a while, you think one's brain has been damaged enough to keep it dead only to learn that it hasn't. You need to be very careful opening these drawers. We learned that the hard way."
That sank in as they looked around the room, noticing the security features that wouldn't normally exist in a morgue. There were heavy doors at both ends of the room and lock down switches for just that area. Luco pointed out that each drawer was labeled with a name and date. The bodies were arranged in chronological order according to date of death so that they could keep track of the bacteria's age when they were finally moved into the Butcher Shop. When she was done with her oration, she asked them to gather around one of the drawers.
"You're not going to open that," Solomon insisted.
Luco gave him a hard look. "When you leave here, Mr. Solomon, you will have a very clear idea of what it is you're defending. I promise you that."
He swallowed but did not reply.
As she reached for the drawer, the men, especially Seaver, noticed that two of the guards readied their weapons. She pulled it open without hesitation and revealed a male anywhere from forty five to sixty years old. He was naked but covered with a sheet. Some of his hair had fallen out, literally fallen out. The exposed portions of his scalp were red and blistered. The remaining hair was almost entirely white but was, or had been, thick and soft. A black and white mustache, thick with dried gore, was plastered to his upper lip. Through his forehead, left of the nose, was a bullet hole. Another, almost dead center, looked a bit more recent.
"This is Mr. Radcli
ffe. His drug purchase went bad. Very bad. That hole just above his left eye was given to him by police at the scene. It was an execution shot and should have done the job but the bullet went in at an odd angle and ricocheted off of the eye socket. It damaged the brain enough to stun the zombie for almost twenty four hours. In that time, no less than twelve people had their hands on him. Saturday evening, Dr. Mwabi opened up this drawer to have a look. Despite a shattered pelvis and two broken hips, caused by a fallen shelving unit, and a bullet in the head, the bacteria managed to repair this zombie well enough that it sprang out of the drawer and bit Dr. Mwabi on the cheek. Dr. Mwabi died yesterday afternoon. You'll get to meet her in a little while."
"I think we've seen enough," Solomon declared, wiping his upper lip with his left forefinger.
"Oh, I don't think so," Luco replied.
"You listen here, Dr. Luco. I tell you enough is enough and I demand that you show us out."
This time, Luco prevented the smile from crossing her face. She suddenly felt bad for Joseph Solomon. Even as the sweat on his upper lip spread to the rest of his face and she could detect the odor of his poorly disguised flatulence, she realized that he was way out of his element. This man was a juggernaut in court and around the conference table. She had witnessed it. But this particular arena seemed to strip him of even the most basic level of dignity.
She chose to say nothing to him directly, instead addressing them all. "Let's go meet some of the patients."
***
THERE was a short corridor that took them from the morgue into the laboratory sections. They passed numerous people, each with their minds on their own tasks. There were guards at every junction, each with an automatic rifle. The men wore uniforms but they weren't police uniforms and they weren't army uniforms. Lochschenborgh thought they might be part of a private security force but dearly hoped not. More than likely, they were military, part of some branch he didn't recognize. If they were, that would suggest that the federal government had taken an interest in the situation. He wondered if there were zombies elsewhere in the country and even the world?
Dr. Luco did not stop them in any of the labs. She did comment that her work area was not for them to inspect and the people there were too busy trying to discover a medicine that actually would effectively combat the disease to take any time out of their days. As they passed her lab, she glanced in, remembering that she hadn't seen it since Saturday night when Lance had come and swept her off her feet. She smiled once and then got back to business.
Through the labs and down another bare hallway and they came to a solid white door marked with a hazard sign. This was the Ward. The door in front of which they stood was the outer door. There was an inner door as well. Luco swiped her card and pushed her thumb into the pad for identification. The outer door opened and they all stepped inside. Solomon hesitated, looking into the room tentatively, like an animal that knows it's going into a trap. But, like that very same animal, he was no longer master of his own fate. He was caught in the flow of a rushing river and all he could do was hold on and see where it took him.
As the outer door closed behind them, trapping them in the small space between, Luco addressed them once again. "This is the Ward. This is where we treat the sick. As you walk through this area, I want you to remember something. Every single patient in the Ward is going to die. We don't have a cure. We don't even have effective treatment. Some of them have only hours to live. Others will last a bit longer. But they will all die and become zombies. Some of them will end up in the morgue and, eventually, the Butcher Shop. Others will end up in the Zoo."
"What's the Zoo," Juarez asked.
"You'll see," Luco said with no expression at all. And with that, she swiped her card, placed her thumb, and waited as the inner door opened up.
The Ward was a large area comprised of rooms and cubed off enclosures. Each space had a bed and a table as well as various accoutrements, whatever was needed to care for the patient. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies who had volunteered their time and their safety milled about the rooms, seeing to the needs of the sick. Most of the beds were empty but it was easy to envision the place overflowing with people whose futures included a grisly pallor and a steady diet of, well, each other. The beds that were filled were filled with mostly healthy looking people. They weren't wasting away and they hadn't developed blisters, lesions, or other marks that might be associated with a terrible disease. Of course, the disease ran its course so quickly that there was really barely any time for these symptoms to manifest. Luco noted that most of the beds that had been full when she'd left on Saturday night were empty now. Others had patients in them, patients she hadn't met. Only Mrs. Wilson, poor sweet Mrs. Wilson held on.
"Don't touch anyone or anything," Luco warned. "In the air, the bacterium has a life expectancy of about three seconds but that doesn't mean that a stray drop of spit or blood on your finger won't spawn a swarm of them in your bloodstream. Keep well away from the patients, also. One well aimed sneeze or cough and it's the end of you."
Satisfied that they respected the risks, she led them over to where Mrs. Wilson lay. She was a fighter, Mrs. Wilson. To date, she was the only patient they'd had who had not contracted the disease from another zombie. Her husband, the late Mr. Wilson, had died of the disease during dinner and turned right there. He'd attacked his wife with a face full of mashed potatoes and she had fended him off with a butter knife, escaping out the front door of their house and locking him in.
But it had all been in vain. She had contracted the disease long before he'd died. She had no idea where he'd gotten it and vigorous testing of all of his acquaintances yielded no results. They would never know. So now Mrs. Wilson lived in the Ward. She had an unusually strong immune system and Luco had treated her aggressively with varying courses of antibiotics and other medication. The good news was that the bacteria had slowed its advance. In fact, Luco was sure that Mrs. Wilson could go on indefinitely with the bacteria as long as she kept getting the proper rotation of medicines. Unfortunately, those very same medicines were killing her. On the small table next to the bed was a picture of the family. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson sat in two chairs, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. The photo was maybe three years old. In it, Mrs. Wilson was a plump woman with a deep smile and puffy cheeks and chins. Now she was as thin as a rail. The medication had decimated her digestive system. She could barely eat, and even then it had to be liquids that broke down very easily. She'd gone into kidney failure twice, and coded four times. Under Luco's orders, they kept bringing her back. Most of the staff didn't see why it was so important. What could they learn about the pathogen by making this poor woman suffer? But Dr. Luco noticed things the others did not see. She had a whole notebook filled with just Mrs. Wilson.
The older woman looked up from her magazine as they approached. From the perspective of the visitors, she could have been in for a routine procedure. Her expression was placid, her movements seemingly normal. There was an oxygen tube running under her nose and an IV in her arm. There were monitors everywhere. But she seemed nonplussed.
"I didn't see you yesterday, dear," she said to Dr. Luco.
Luco looked away sheepishly. "I took the day off."
But the woman brightened at the news. "Good for you! I hope you spent the time wisely."
Luco cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. "Well, Mrs. Wilson. How do you feel today?"
"About the same I suppose."
Luco nodded, making a show of checking her chart. "Those are good instincts because it doesn't look like there's any change."
Mrs. Wilson nodded sadly. "I had a little bit of breakfast."
"Really? That's good."
"I don't know which is worse for my appetite. The medicine or watching all of these people die every day." There was a momentary silence while the poor women wallowed in her misery. But then it passed and she put on her face again. "And who are these gentlemen?"
"Well," Luco said. "We have Mr. Lochs
chenborg from the Department of Health here and his associate, Mr. Seaver. These other two gentlemen are here representing Candid Pharmaceuticals. They make Head Shot."
