by Baker, LJ
I did have one thing to be grateful for, though. Donna claimed she was in too much pain to make it to practice because of her injury, so she stayed in her room, and I had an extra day before I had to apologize. I was surprised Janet let her get away with that excuse. My first week I was covered in bruises and had a sprained wrist. Not only did I have to come to training, but Janet didn’t even take it easy on me. I wasn’t happy about it at the time, but really it did make sense. There was no time to sit back and lick your wounds. You had to be able to get up and fight, no matter what. Certainly one punch in the face shouldn’t stop you from training.
"You done with your nap over there, twerp?" Janet dropped her bag down next to me. She gave me a whole five minutes to rest between the group training session and our one-on-one.
I guess lunch is out of the question today.
“No, please, Mom, just five more minutes to relax by the pool?"
Janet rolled her eyes. "Your immaturity is showing again."
"Uh huh." I shook my head and jumped to my feet. “Ok, drill sergeant. Bring it on." I knew better than to give her anymore shit. She'd make me pay for the next three hours for it, and I was already exhausted.
"You ever talk to Bear about Rose?"
"I was going to wait until after training to talk to you about it." She picked her bag up and started walking down the hill toward the weapons building.
"What do you mean? How is she?"
"Bear said it was too late. She was gone."
"Gone?"
"Gone. Dead. Too late." She waved me off and picked up her pace.
I hurried to keep up. "So that's it? She's dead, and no one was going to even tell us? We didn't even get to say goodbye. What did they do with her? "
She stopped short and turned to face me. "I have no idea. They probably threw her in a pit and burned her with the others. What do you think happens in a place like this? There's no time to mourn the dead. If we took the time to grieve for every person we lost, we'd all be dead."
I stood in silence and looked at her. I knew she wasn't that cold and uncaring. Janet did everything she could to get Rose here before the transformation was complete to try to save her. I knew she was just trying to deal with the pain in her own way.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" She was yelling, and for a moment, I thought she was going to hit me.
"Janet, I'm sorry—"
"I'm not in the mood for this, Andi. Training is cancelled." She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked off in the opposite direction.
So Rose was dead. We’d only known her a couple of days, but for some reason, saving her had been so important to Janet. I would never forget the look of desperation on her face when she begged me to help get Rose back there. She knew Will was never going to agree without me, and there was no way she could have gotten the girl there on her own. I actually had no intention of agreeing, until Will explained to me how Janet’s own husband and child were killed in a horde. It shed some light on her illogical need to save a girl who was, for all intents and purposes, already dead. And of course, it made her seem just a little more human.
Since the one-on-one with Janet was cancelled, I had nothing else to do. Will was on shift until later, and it was no secret that I didn't have friends to hang out with. Even Hadley was nowhere to be found, and I was getting sick of reading. The selection in the library on base wasn't bad, but there was only so much time I could spend with a book before I fell asleep reading it.
Before, when I was on my own, I always managed to convince myself I was okay with being alone. I had much less time to even care. I was always looking for food or shelter, or fighting my way through the undead. Keeping alive kept me busy. There in the community, it was different. We were taken care of, and someone was always around, yet there I felt so much more lonely than I ever did on my own.
I found myself standing in front of the infirmary, not even realizing that was where I was headed. I wasn't due in for another three hours, but since I had nowhere else to go, I figured I'd see if I could be of some use.
It was quiet when I walked in. All the patients were sleeping, and Nurse Sue jumped up from her desk and hurried over when she saw me.
"Oh Andi, good. You can sit with them while I go take care of a few things, yes?" She was already slipping into her sweater before I could answer.
"Yeah, of course. Will you be long?" I still wasn't sure what to do with most of them, so I didn't want to be alone too long.
"Shouldn't be. A half hour maybe. Everyone should be good until then."
As soon as she was out the door, Jack propped himself in bed. "I thought that bitch was never gonna leave."
I rolled my eyes as I walked over and sat in the chair next to his bed. I was really starting to like that crazy old man.
“Oh, come on, now, she seems nice enough."
He raised an eyebrow at me. "You really think so?"
"Okay, well, she was nice to me when I was her patient when I first got here. As my boss, maybe not so much."
"Sure, sure, she seems all nice and normal on the outside."
"What's that mean?"
Jack glanced around to make sure the other patients were still asleep. "You seem like a smart girl, Andi, tell me you haven't noticed the people in charge around here all act a little suspicious."
"Not really. I mean, I haven't had much contact with any of them. I've heard rumors about experiments and other weird stuff, but I didn't think too much of them."
"Most rumors usually start with at least a little truth." He rubbed the stump where his left leg ended right above where his knee should be.
I glanced down at his leg. "Jack? What happened to your leg?"
He took a deep breath, as if he were trying to decide whether or not to tell me the story. "You ever see anyone bit by a poisonous snake?"
"No."
"Would you know what to do if you did?"
"No. Did a snake do that to you?" I tried to imagine how a snake could make a man lose half his leg.
"Best thing you can do for a snake bite is cut off the circulation to stop the poison from moving through you."
"Doesn't anti-venom make more sense?"
Jack laughed. “Yes, girl, of course it does, but before you can get that."
"Oh. Right, of course. Is that how you lost your leg?" I was still confused.
"Stay with me for a minute, okay?" I nodded and he continued. "So, if you cut off the circulation and stop the venom from moving up past the bite, you can buy yourself a little time."
I nodded again to show him I was following his story.
"In the early days in this place, things weren't so secure. We didn't have enough people or weapons to patrol all the borders, and flesh eaters found their way in on a daily basis."
I had no idea what that had to do with snakes, but I nodded again and pretended like I got it. He was an old man after all.
"One day, I was out on patrol with one of the young guys, and we came across a group of about ten undead. Between us, all we had was a bat, a machete, and a couple hunting knives. We made it through every last one of those bastards though, or we thought we did."
He rubbed the stump again and closed his eyes for a moment. "The young guy I was with, Luke I think was his name, was real proud of himself. He picked up one of the thing's heads and held it up like a prize. He was laughing and yelling and I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty damn good, too. Which is why neither of us noticed in all our excitement, one of them wasn't quite dead dead."
"Oh no. Did it get Luke?"
"No, no. Luke made it outta there just fine. He kicked the bucket two weeks later. Fell off a roof."
"Oh." I was even more confused.
"Luke tossed the head and bashed the thing's skull in with the bat. Unfortunately, the damn thing took a chunk out of my ankle first."
My eyes went wide and the realization that Jack was saying he survived a bite hit me. “But how?"
"Not two weeks before,
I was out on a supply run with a group of guys, and one of them gets bit by this nasty looking snake. The guy was a doctor and he immediately starts wrapping a belt around it to cut off the circulation and stop the poison from getting through until we could get him back to the base for some anti-venom. He lived."
"So that's what you did? And it … worked?" My brain scrambled, trying to make sense of it.
"Of course not." He pulled the blanket back and pointed at the stump. "I handed Luke the machete and insisted he hack it the hell off. It wasn't like we had anti-zombie back in medical to save me."
"That’s amazing! But why don't people know about it then? I mean, I've never heard anyone say you could stop the virus from spreading like that. Isn't that something everyone should know about? It would save lives."
"You would think so, huh?"
"I don't understand."
Jack took a deep breath. "In all fairness, it was partly my own fault. I swore Luke to secrecy and told them I got injured in the fight. We did manage to take down ten of them, so no one questioned it."
"Why? How could you keep something like that to yourself?"
"You have to understand, Andi. In the early days, things were much different. If you got even so much as a scratch, you were shot dead on the spot. Then they started doing those experiments, and nobody wants to be part of that."
I hadn't even thought about experiments. I wondered what they did to Rose before she died, or after.
"After a couple weeks, when it was clear I wasn't going to turn, I confided in Nurse Sunshine here, and told her the truth. She immediately turned me in, and I was sent down to the lab for nearly a month of poking and prodding. I got off easy though. Sometimes the screaming would get so bad, I thought I'd lose my mind. They would never say what was going on, but I knew it was awful."
"So they did know and they never told people?"
“Oh, they knew. I wasn't the only one to try it. At least they told me that. They also said it didn't always work, that it only worked about twenty percent of the time."
"But twenty percent is better than nothing.” I balled my fists up and thought about the people who might have been saved if that kind of information had gotten around.
"They insisted they would get it out there. Doesn't surprise me they never did. I tried to question it once, but I was threatened to keep quiet until they had medical facts to back it up."
"Wow. I can't believe this. I've got to tell Janet, and Will, and—"
"Listen, Andi, I'm not saying don't tell them, but be careful. I've seen people disappear for causing problems around here."
"What do you mean disappear?"
“Oh, that's a story for another day." He yawned and settled down in the bed. "I better get my beauty rest."
Nurse Sue walked back in and looked over us with narrowed eyes. "Everything okay in here?"
"Yeah, fine."
"Okay, I'll be in my office if you need anything."
She disappeared into the back and left me to absorb everything I had just heard. It was a lot to take in, surviving zombie bites, conspiracy theories, secret human experiments, people disappearing for speaking out. Either there was something strange going on, or I was a magnet for crazy people.
I woke to the morning bell blaring through the building and rolled over onto the floor with a thud.
What a way to start the day.
I opened my eyes in the bright sunlight coming in from the window and right away noticed feet mere inches from my face.
"What the he—"
"Good morning, Andi." Hadley's cheerful voice rang out and snapped me fully awake.
"Hadley, what are you doing in here?" I scrambled to my feet and threw the blanket that fell to the floor with me back onto the bed.
"I noticed your training group gathering on the landing and I thought maybe you could use someone to walk down with."
"So you thought you would just walk in?" I threw on some sweats and a hoodie and ran a brush through my hair.
"Your Will let me in on his way out."
She handed me my sneakers and I slipped them onto my feet. "Of course he did."
I grabbed my toothbrush, tossed my bag over my shoulder, and headed down the hall to the community bathroom to finish getting ready. Hadley followed closely behind, chattering on about teacups the whole time.
"Are you angry with me?" She stared up at me with wide eyes.
"Angry?" I said around my toothbrush, minty suds dripped down my lips. "No, what for?"
"For coming in your room while you were asleep. I promise I will not do it again."
"I'm not mad. You just surprised me, that's all."
"I can imagine that. Strange things can happen around here."
"What do you mean, strange things?" That was the second time in less than twenty-four hours I'd heard something like that.
She opened her mouth to speak but clamped her lips tightly together, not answering.
"Hadley, tell me what you mean by that."
The breakfast bell rang over the speakers. If we didn't hurry, there wouldn't be time to eat before training, and I had a feeling that I was going to need all the energy I could get after what happened the day before.
"We should hurry. There will be time enough later for such conversations." She skipped from the room and bounced down the stairs.
We were late, so the other girls were gone. I would see them soon enough, but for that moment, I was safe. I knew none of them would try a physical confrontation any time soon. Getting me in trouble was attack enough.
I had just enough time to scarf down a dry bran muffin and two sausage links before running off to training. Animal protein at breakfast was a rare occurrence, only allotted for the injured, pregnant, and military, which included those in training. The base bred small animals like pigs and chickens, but with the population growing, the meat needed to be rationed.
Hadley disappeared as soon as we reached the dining hall. After thinking about it, I couldn't actually remember ever seeing her there during a meal. I wasn't sure where she went, but I could ask her that too when I caught up with her later. I had no intention of letting her comment about strange things happening pass.
I made it up the hill to our training spot just as Janet began talking. "It has come to my attention that there has been some discord between several girls in the group, and I want to make it known that further problems will not be tolerated.
Debbie stepped forward and put her hand on her hip. "I just want it to be known that the problem is really only one girl. Everyone here will agree with that, I'm sure."
Janet took a step toward Debbie and glared down at her. "Is that so?"
"I...I only meant... that..." Debbie took a step back and tripped over her bag. She would have hit the ground if Joanne hadn't caught her arm and held her up.
"You girls are a group, a team. You need to work together and have each other's backs. Your lives depend on it. There is no margin for error out there, and there is no tolerance for bullying in here, either physically," Janet looked right at me. "Or verbally." She let her hand sweep across the row of girls, making eye contact with each one in the line.
I stepped in front of the group and took a deep breath, knowing that was as good a time as any. "I agree, and I was wrong. The other day, I let my anger and frustration get in the way of my judgment, and I lashed out against one of my group members. It was wrong, and I'm sorry, both to Donna, and to the whole group. I disrespected you all with my behavior, and I hope that I can, in time, make up for how I acted."
"That was very mature of you, Andi. I hope all of you can accept her apology and demonstrate the same level of maturity going forward. Now grab your shit and break into pairs. Andi, can I have a word before we begin?"
She pulled me away from the group by my arm. "That better not have been sarcasm, I swear to --“
"Chill, Janet. It wasn't. I meant every word." I shot her my best innocent puppy dog look.
She shook her head an
d held back a laugh. "Where on Earth did you come up with that bullshit?"
"You like that? I practiced it like fifty times. I thought about saying it with a proper British accent, but I wasn't sure I could pull it off without laughing."
"You really are the bane of my existence, Andi Sheppard. You know that, don't you?"
"I love you too, Janet."
After dinner, Nurse Sue taught me how to administer injections, start an iv, and do basic wound care. The needles weren't too bad, but green, puss-filled wounds that stunk like rotting flesh, because, well, they were, was a bit more than my stomach could handle. After puking twice, she lost patience with me and had me mop the floors instead.
I had an easier day training-wise, but by the time I finished up at the clinic and made it back to my building, I was exhausted. I barely had the energy to climb the stairs to my room.
I stuck my key into the lock and pushed the door open just enough to find something blocking the way. For a moment, confusion took over. I peered into the small opening to see what was in the way.
My eyes adjusted as my brain fought to catch up. Will stood in the middle of the room, pulling a shirt over his head, his junk on the floor blocking the door.
"Uh, what’s going on?" I used my new found strength from training to push a large duffle bag and oversized crate out of the way, allowing me entrance into our room.
As soon as his head cleared the opening of the shirt and saw me, one corner of his mouth came up into a crooked smile. He took the two steps toward me and pulled me into his arms, lifting me off the ground. "How was your day?”
He tried to kiss me, but I pulled my head back, suspicious. “Are you going somewhere?”
Will loosened his grip and set my feet back down. “I’m sorry babe. I just got orders. It will be quick. I promise.”
“Can’t someone else go? You’ve been gone more than anyone in your squad.”
“That’s because I have more training and experience than most of the guys in my squad.”
I sighed. Long before I met Will, he had been part of a military group similar to the one we were in. Except that they were crazy and tried to turn children into baby assassins.
