There were a few smiles around the room, some annoyed, some condescending. Colonel Hamilton spoke first and to his credit, his tone was business-like and genuinely interested.
“How do you propose to cure this soldier? Has something new been discovered that I should know about?”
“Malaria. It is possible to cure the early-stage virus with a malaria inoculation. It’s been done.”
“Young woman, I don’t know where you got this idea but do you have any proof? Do we even have the means to try something like this?”
David spoke up. “Sir, scientists in D.C. attempted this cure with a degree of success. It is not guaranteed in any event and we lack the means to try it here. I’m sure Beatrice means well but-”
She interrupted, “We do have the means to try it here. The CDC sent malaria samples that should still be in storage but it has to be done now. As soon as possible.”
“Why was I not told?” the colonel asked.
Ian said, “I think I can speak for all of us, sir. We didn’t know the samples existed until now.”
The colonel said, “We still have to make a decision. This soldier represents a chance to take out the last ship. I can wait a few hours more but not much longer. Ian, you are responsible for overseeing this ‘cure’ attempt. Report back to me as soon as there is something to report. That will be all today, gentlemen.”
Ian took Bea’s arm, frowned at her and began to walk out of the room then paused as the colonel motioned him over. Bea waited.
The colonel lowered his voice but Bea still heard him. “Find that young woman some clothes. Tell Fitz that I expect better than this from him. We ought to be able to clothe our refugees decently.”
“I will, sir.”
Bea opened her mouth to say her outfit had nothing to do with Fitz but Ian pulled her along, still frowning. Once they were outside he spoke.
“Where are the samples?”
“Barry stored them in the spring house.”
“I never heard anything about them.”
“Well, we were shelled while we were opening them. I didn’t even think about them until a few minutes ago. They sent two different strains. Do you remember which strain they used on Virginia?”
Ian said nothing, just kept walking. He looked off into the distance and his mouth was compressed in a thin line. Finally he said, “I’ve never told anyone else about Virginia getting infected. You and your brother know. So does David, of course, but it’s not general knowledge. I don’t want my wife to be experimented on or dissected. If I had known we had the samples I certainly would have spoken up. I don’t want anyone to die if we can save them but I don’t want Virginia’s name brought into this. Do you understand?”
Bea was somewhat taken aback. His tone was just short of threatening. “I understand completely, Ian. I would never do anything that would hurt Virginia. I’m disappointed that you think I would.”
His shoulders fell and he seemed to relax a little. “I didn’t think you would do it on purpose. It’s just that some things are dangerous to talk about in desperate times. People are often considered expendable. And no, I don’t know which strain they used on Virginia.”
They found Barry in the infirmary and they had a quiet talk in the hallway with both him and Mei.
“Do not under any circumstances tell him what we are using to treat him. We don’t hold a lot of cards in this poker game so we have to play the few we do have very close to our chests.”
They agreed but had one condition of their own. Neither of the nurses would inject the prisoner unless he agreed to the treatment. After a brief question and answer session with Mei, he consented.
“One more thing, Bea,” Ian said.
“What?”
“Get dressed. You’ve upset Colonel Hamilton.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and walked away, smiling. She hoped she had just saved a life. Then she had another thought. She might have just taken away the only effective weapon they had against the hostile ship. A ship that could easily destroy them all.
~
Bea leaned against the wall and slowly slid to a sitting position on the cool tile. It was sometime in the early hours of the morning and she was exhausted. She knew she wasn’t helping anyone by being here but she felt responsible for what the prisoner was going through now, for better or for worse.
The family living in a large supply closet had been sent elsewhere and the prisoner moved in. He had been injected and within hours developed a high fever that left him alternately sweating and chilling. Mei barely left his side and a worried frown creased her brow. When the prisoner’s temperature reached 104 degrees she started to unwrap some of the blankets but Ian, also hovering closely, stopped her.
“We need to maintain a high temperature for as long as we can. It’s best if it spikes at around 105.”
Mei raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had a medical background.”
“I don’t but I do know a little about the process. Malaria therapy has been tried before, most notably with syphilis.”
“Where did you get that information?” Mei asked.
Ian grinned. “Wikipedia. I had to learn something about the treatment since this is my assignment. But really, if we can keep the temperature at around 105, that’s best.”
Mei sighed, “Brain damage can occur after 103. We have zero medical history with this patient. I can’t even type his blood! I’m not comfortable with this at all.”
“Just picture the fever burning away all those nasty little bugs. Take a break, Mei. I’ll wake Barry for his shift in a few minutes and I’ll stay here as well.”
Mei nodded and, stretching her back until she heard a crack, wandered out into the hallway and saw Bea, slumped to one side, eyes closed.
She poked her and Bea jumped. “Mei! How is he?”
Mei sat down beside her. “Stable. The fever is higher than I like but scorching this s.o.b. virus to death is what it’s all about. I hate experimental medicine and I wish the CDC had sent more information with the malaria samples. I’ve been trying to email the World Health Organization but keep getting server error messages. If this works it could be a huge bonus for our side. Ian is pretty sanguine about it. I feel like he knows something that I don’t.”
Bea shrugged, “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an optimist.”
“I don’t know. I love what I do because it almost always ends positively. Human beings are incredibly resilient but I wonder if we can overcome this. I wanted to have children someday but now? What a horrible world to bring a child into. Scratching out a place to hide, foraging for food, inadequate medical care. I can’t see a path forward at the moment. Maybe I’m just tired. I miss my family.”
Bea asked, “Did they make it? I mean, are they still alive?”
Mei said, “I don’t know. I was called in to work when this all started and you probably know what the hospitals were like. Lines for the E.R. stretched around the block. The infected outside died and reanimated of course. We were completely mobbed. Once we realized what was going on it was way too late. I was trundling an expired patient to cold storage in the morgue when she sat up then rolled off into the floor. I thought I was losing my mind, you know? Just crazy tired. I tried to get her back up on the stretcher and that’s when I knew something else was going on. That mouth fastened down on my shoe like a bear trap. I had to stomp her with my other foot before she would let go.
Finally I shoved the stretcher up against her and ran to the morgue for help. Bodies were up and moving there, too. The ones in body bags writhed and twisted along the floor. Others, naked with that blue mottled flesh turned as soon as I opened the door and lurched over, mouths wide. I shut the door and left. My dead patient was gone who knows where. I looked for security but there were too many for security to deal with and security didn’t know how to deal with them anyway.
Eventually all we could do was try to escape. A few of us did get out but this was as far as I got. I got a text from m
y dad telling me how much he loved me but that was the last time I heard anything. I’ve been trying to call but I get nothing.” Tears ran down her face and she wiped her eyes before continuing. “My parents were incredibly controlling to the point that at times I almost hated them. I hesitate to call them racists. I prefer to think of them as traditionalists. They didn’t want me to marry anyone not Asian. My mother told me she didn’t want ‘blue-eyed mongrel’ grandchildren.”
“Ouch.”
“I know. I was dating someone ‘not Asian’ at the time she said that and I think that’s one reason we eventually grew apart, although I never told him what my parents felt. Who knows, maybe he sensed it.”
“So I’m free to do what I want but I never wanted it this way. It seems so silly, doesn’t it? Each and every life is precious and should be cherished. If I ever get another chance to love someone and pledge my life to theirs, I’m doing it. I like blue eyes.”
Bea said nothing but felt a quiet despair. She told herself she had no right to feel this way but it didn’t help.
Mei said, “I think I’m going to get that chance. Sometimes the most unexpected things occur, don’t they? The end of the world as we know it and love is still possible.”
Her face glowed softly as if lit from within and Bea felt that sharp twist of jealousy. Mei was so lovely. No wonder David looked at her like he did.
Harsh words rang out in the storage room. Words Bea didn’t understand. “What did he say?”
Mei shushed her and listened then smiled wanly. “He wants his mother. It’s amazing how often that happens.”
Muffled voices erupted inside the storage room and they heard metal clank against metal. Mei left and didn’t come back. The sounds ceased and the nighttime hush again descended.
Bea thought about what she missed the most. Her mom and dad had been gone for so long that missing them seemed like a normal part of life. She missed showers and clean clothes and her lumpy old futon mattress. She missed the musical clink of ice cubes in a glass and chicken sandwiches from Wendy’s .99 cent menu. She missed Evan more than she thought she would and hoped he had somehow survived.
What would she do in the new world? Be an art historian again? That was laughable. What luxuries the old world had offered that someone could actually be paid for that kind of work. She had no particular skills needed now. If she were an engineer she could build something. A computer systems expert could try to repair the failing internet. A cobbler could make shoes. A gardener could grow crops. She, however, was just as useless as a life coach, professional organizer, or a color consultant.
A breeze blew in through the windows bringing a trace of salt and dead things with it. It also brought the sound of the dead, stumbling around the moonlit beach, endlessly hungry and endlessly searching.
Chapter Thirteen
A full moon shone coldly down on the creatures thronging the beach. Waterlogged, mutilated bodies slogged across the sandy surf, stepping on other undead bodies, spiky nails thrusting up from shattered wooden planks, broken glass, all with indifference. A mob of the creatures would be a threat but not if there were room to run. These ghouls were winding down, subject to decay in the moist heat and the sucking tides that pulled them out into shark-filled, watery hunting grounds. A group of dogs, almost but not quite feral, trotted along on the firm, wet sand. They were hunting as a pack tonight and didn’t hesitate to attack the slow dead and strip away chunks of stinking flesh to drag away and devour.
A hundred miles to the east the same moon lighted a different scene. Moving across a rolling landscape, herds of pronghorn antelope followed an ancient route their ancestors have traveled for millennia. Leaving their winter valleys and heading for springtime meadows on the coast, the nimble Antilocapra americana make an incredible journey that is epic in its length and difficulty. The female antelope are pregnant and within weeks of giving birth. Despite this they are able to ford rivers and outrun any predator on the continent. Even the fawns, just a few days after birth, are able to outpace that tireless predator, the coyote.
Hundreds of thousands of dead pursued them now and though the antelope were in no immediate danger themselves, they unwittingly led the dead along a path the infected would have been unlikely to find alone. Fumbling and lurching across the countryside, they had ‘survived’ the nukes detonated over the southwest and were now a different and hardier version of the living dead. The bacteria that should have been rapidly eating their dead flesh had been eradicated by the sterilizing effects of the radiation. Their bodies were sinewy and tough, their movements more controlled and quick.
Some were washed away when they plunged into the fast-flowing, spring-melt swollen rivers, tumbling helplessly among the rocks and currents. Others, distracted by unwary fauna, wandered into the greening woods and valleys. Despite this, the seething core of dead remained vast, a dark, moving cancer on the landscape, a surging, tireless threat that drew ever closer to the western coast.
~
Private Tsou, hollow-eyed and pale, accepted a sip of water and leaned back, keeping a wary eye on the door. Tremors still shook his thin frame and Mei continued to monitor his temperature. Convulsions had racked his body throughout the night, leaving him sore and exhausted.
They had no way to culture the virus from his blood to see if it was still there, no way to check for a possible antibody response. Mei continued to grind her teeth in frustration and mutter about “medieval” medical treatments and “stone age” facilities.
Despite this, by late afternoon the prisoner managed to keep down a thin broth with crackers and take a few shuffling steps, constrained by shackles and watched by armed guards. He showed no Z-virus symptoms and even had the beginnings of a scab covering the bite mark on his shoulder. Mei and Barry declared him ambulatory and prepared to remove his restraints before they were overruled by Ian.
“Sorry, guys. No way are we letting a member of a hostile, attacking force roam our facility. We’ll release him when it is appropriate and not a moment before.”
Ian was running on fumes. He kept a near-constant watch on the prisoner while doing his best to sell the brass on an idea that he and David had hatched, with Virginia’s help, in low-voiced meetings throughout the night.
Now that they knew no ships would be showing up to evacuate them, the work on the barrier wall commenced again at a frantic pace. With electricity still flowing they rigged lights and worked throughout the night, repairing the damage from the shelling and moving more of the concrete and steel forms into place. The wall rose slowly but solidly. No one knew exactly when the dead would arrive or how many there would be but pilots had seen enough over the last few days to know that if they didn’t have a strong wall soon, their little encampment would be overwhelmed. No matter how spirited their defense, how noble their sacrifice there would be no one to write their story if they didn’t survive.
Even if they did survive, they were still nothing more than a beleaguered outpost of a dying civilization. They needed to find a way to escape. The lush agricultural valley that was California was entirely dependent on a complex dam system that diverted water from other states. Unless that system was maintained, California would soon revert to a semi-desert environment, no longer suitable for growing crops.
Ian and David’s plan involved returning the cured prisoner to his ship and having him present the advantages of an alliance. With Mei’s help they questioned him at length and they now knew the one remaining ship was vastly undermanned and in desperate need of medical supplies. An early outbreak of the virus had been ruthlessly contained with the infected soldiers either executed or allowed to commit suicide. More had been killed in the onboard fire that injured the captain and several others. There was plenty of room on board for the refugees.
They planned to send a personal appeal in a letter dictated by Colonel Hamilton and written by Mei. A letter offering food and medical care and supplies in exchange for evacuation. The plan then was for the ship to take the
m up the coast in an attempt to find an area free of the dead. If such a place existed.
If they could get the go ahead. The colonel had yet to agree but in truth, now that the prisoner was (possibly) cured he was no longer a weapon. Ian had taken a lot of flak over that in private but held on doggedly to his proposal. The strain was visible on his face and now, having been awake for nearly 24 hours, he prepared to meet with the colonel. It didn’t begin well.
“We’ve just gotten word that the East Coast Command Center is gone. After several days of communications blackout Midwest Command did a flyover and found the facility on fire. No survivors were visible from the air. Gentlemen, our world is going dark. Now, to our present business. I understand we have lost our weapon.” The colonel looked at Ian.
“No, sir. I believe that we still have our weapon and by curing him we’ve given that weapon even more reason to want to make our case. According to Private Tsou, ship’s command lost contact with Beijing days ago. Before that there were indications that their government employed tactical nukes in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces and possibly others. They probably don’t even have a country to sail back to if they could. If he is able to persuade his command to help us evacuate, we may live to fight another day. We have a cure, sir. Somewhat limited to early-stage at this point but as far as we know, no one else has achieved this. Dangling something like that out there could win us a lot of friends. And we need friends.
If we had sent him back to infect his people, we would have had to clear every nook and cranny of that ship before we could use it and who knows how many of our own people we would have lost in the process.
The virus has destroyed our world. We have to build it again. I propose that we start off the right way, with mercy and kindness.” He stopped, mouth suddenly dry, and took a drink of water.
The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast Page 18
