Nation Undead (Book 2): Collusion

by Ford, Paul Z.

  He parked and quickly entered the kitchen for the second time that morning. The aroma of food made his stomach growl, since he had skipped breakfast in his hurry to deliver the propane and retrieve Captain Louis’ food. No way he was getting anything now.

  He glanced around at the soldiers working the facility. Several were in a line scooping the remains of breakfast into the trays of civilians arriving at the last minute. He saw Lars serving slices of ham and scraping the bottom of a metal tray full of powdered eggs for the final few hungry people in line. Despite the private’s negative feelings about mess hall duty he continued to flash a big smile at each person entering the line. His giant size gave him the opportunity to serve from two stations as the remaining workers started to abandon their areas and clean the used serving utensils at the nearby commercial sink. Kahn glanced again at his clipboard and sighed.

  “Private Lars,” he said. Quentin’s spoon grated against the metal tray to get the smallest bits of egg for the last person in line. Lars smiled big and nodded at his visitor before spinning to look at Kahn.

  “Garcia? You’re back. Were the grits cold?” He slipped the hair net off his head and crumpled it into a nearby trash can with his thin plastic gloves. He wiped the sweat from his face and grinned.

  “Well, the captain said they were but he’s impossible to please. I still appreciate you doing that. I owe you one,” Kahn hesitated. “I’m sorry Q, but you have to come to tonight’s training at twenty-hundred. Sign here, please.” He held out the clipboard as Lars’ face clouded. He snapped the paper out of Kahn’s hands and studied the names on the list before quickly signing it. Kahn could tell the big man was upset. First, chow hall duty and now this. “Hey, I’m sorry man. It’s not my fault. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  “Good luck with Jones. He’s pissed,” Lars said as he thrust the clipboard back into Kahn’s waiting hands. He waddled forward, pushing Kahn back into a collection of dirty trays. The orderly caught them before anything clattered to the ground and composed himself before continuing to search the kitchen for Teddy Jones.

  Kahn found him sitting in the small, cluttered office with his eyes averted down to his end-of-shift paperwork. A light knock signified the orderly’s arrival. Jones looked up and frowned at Kahn’s presence. The supply worker took a step inside the small room and handed Specialist Jones the clipboard with his name neatly typed at the bottom. As Jones read it a dark cloud seemed to pass over his eyes. When he looked up at Kahn, his disappointed expression was full blown anger.

  “You tell that fucking captain that he can shove this list--”

  “Specialist Jones, please,” Kahn interrupted. “I know you’re mad.”

  “Mad don’t begin to tell you how I feel, Garcia. This is some bull shit here.” His southern twang mirrored the voice of Louis with the final word hee-yah punctuating sharply. Jones hesitated a moment, waiting for Kahn’s reply.

  “I know. I know,” Kahn held his hands out defensively. “I understand. I would be mad too. But listen, man, fighting with him is not a good idea. He’s the second highest ranking officer on post after Colonel Johns and he can make life miserable for you. And me. If you don’t sign this sheet and show up tonight it’s going to turn out real bad for you. You know that right?”

  Jones sighed. Tension drained out of his shoulders and he set the clipboard down on the desk. He grabbed a pen and signed the sheet quickly and messily. Kahn retrieved his equipment and nodded at the mess hall boss.

  “Where you from, Garcia?” Jones suddenly asked. Kahn flushed with panic just like any time questions about his false past came up. It was hard to keep his history straight, so he deliberately kept quiet about “Lupe Garcia’s” life. Jones stared at him, waiting for a reply.

  “Um, here. I mean, San Antonio.”

  “Yeah, I’m from the same patch of land Mr. Beauregard Louis is from. The beautiful land of Louisiana.” He seemed to disappear wistfully into his past as he spoke. “I ain’t gonna ever see home again. I ain’t never gonna see my momma, or my brother, or my got-damn dog ever again. I’m stuck here, at the Army’s Lost Cause, just like you and all the rest of us. ‘Cept I’m far from my home and probably don’t have anything to go back to anyways. People like that captain of yours, he don’t last in a war zone like this. People get sick of listening, you get me?” Jones glared at Kahn until the orderly nodded reluctantly in response. Both men waited for the other to speak until Kahn nodded again and turned to go.

  Just before leaving Teddy’s line of sight, Kahn turned. He hesitated to tell the man anything that might contradict stories about his past, but pictured the violence of the outside world. Memories of flames and enemies in plain sight, not even bothering to hide their bigotry, compelled him to say something. “Hey Teddy,” Kahn paused, unsure how to proceed. “I was out there. When it all started. I can tell you there’s been too much violence. Too much killing. Captain Louis is as tough on me as anyone, but he’ll last as long as good people remember he’s not the enemy. Being an asshole isn’t a death sentence.”

  “Nobody’s talking about killing, Garcia,” Jones said vehemently. “Get the hell out of my chow hall.” He waved his hand and Kahn left without saying another word.

  His next visit was going to be unpleasant in a different sort of way. He found the empty propane tanks and secured them in the back of the cart before speeding west to the opposite side of LOSTOP. He headed toward the small set of buildings behind the officer’s quarters that acted as the clinic, pharmacy, and emergency care facility for the entire residency of the post. The next name on the short list was a young researcher named Daisy Patterson, one of the very few with any medical training on post.

  Daisy had been a graduate student researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio and fled when the outbreak hit the campus. She and the dean of neurobiology had been loading equipment into his Range Rover when a group of dead students confronted them. Daisy was able to fight her way into the vehicle and watched as her mentor was devoured by undead former undergrads. She fled south and found her way to LOSTOP, joining the meager medical staff and becoming the young lead of the research team on post.

  Kahn had reluctantly become friends with Daisy mainly because she sought out his company whenever she saw him. Kahn had mostly avoided getting close to anybody since his arrival, in fear they would question his backstory and expel him. But the first time Daisy came to him he couldn’t help but like her. She had found him after dusk one evening and snuck over to where he had parked supply’s golf cart. She jumped into the passenger seat and started a conversation about the nighttime. She coaxed conversation and even laughter out of him, and when she said goodbye and walked away Kahn watched her go with a new feeling in his heart that he hadn’t experienced for a long time. Each time they saw each other they fell deep into conversation, and Kahn quickly found Daisy to be the only comfort he had in the world.

  So he avoided her. His guilt that he liked someone, like a kid with a crush, was overpowering. He loved his wife Aisha, and his little boy Daniel. He lost them both in the most violent and horrible circumstances imaginable, and he wouldn’t allow himself to develop feelings for another woman. Anytime she spotted him she’d smile and wave and he’d make some excuse to leave. He allowed his mourning guilt to crush any semblance of joy brought about by his new friend.

  Now, he was seeking her out because she was on the captain’s list. He parked in front of the building that housed the research projects LOSTOP’s cadre of medically trained personnel conducted. Previously, it was a small library but all the books had been removed and the building was converted to hold some of the equipment Daisy had brought from the university. It was very minimal, so they had little luck on any scientific endeavours the group decided to undertake. The tiny library building made a perfect facility to study the undead since there was an enclosed courtyard in the back that encircled an unused kid’s playground. It made a lot of people uncomfortable to have the dead within the post, so hid
ing them behind the ivy-covered fence amongst the slides and climbing walls gave Daisy the ability to conduct experiments outside of the view of most.

  There was only one other person in the building when Kahn entered and she informed him Daisy was in the back with the subjects. He hesitated to go out there so he spun and tried to distract himself from the task ahead by studying the room. When his eyes landed on a severed arm on a steel table wired to several electrodes, he changed his mind and opened the back door to the courtyard.

  Immediately, the sound of jangling metal increased as the bodies contained in makeshift cages rattled toward their new visitor. There was a container to his right full of adult-sized corpses struggling to reach him. To the left were several miniature versions of the dead kept in a separate cage. The bright children’s colors in their clothing had faded in the sun. Each were in various states of decay and loudly clacked their teeth together chomping toward him. Kahn tried to ignore the noises and find his friend. The courtyard itself was shrouded in the shade from a big oak tree, but the heat within the enclosed area seemed to cook the dead and amplify their stench. Kahn stifled a cough as the smell hit him upon entering the shady section.

  He didn’t see Daisy at first so he descended the small stone staircase and walked toward the playground, leaving the dead in cages behind him. As he stepped onto the railroad tie border of the granulated rubber flooring of the play area, he saw her. Her blonde hair seemed to glow in the summer sunlight as she stood in front of a separate series of cages. Each contained a single specimen as she studied the one in the center. She rested her left hand on a rolling cart with a covered tray on top. As Kahn watched, she turned to the cart and tapped the screen of a tablet a couple of times before turning back to the corpse and removing a large syringe full of thick, black liquid. He was struck by the softness of her skin, the movement of her hips, and the way she pushed her hair over her ear as she worked. He saw the line of freckles across the bridge of her nose as small dots of color in her pale skin. He felt a surge of nervous emotion in his chest and butterflies in his belly before forcing it all away. He stepped through the swing set and cleared his throat.

  “Lupe!” Daisy called joyfully as she turned toward the noise. A radiant smile erupted on her face as she jumped over and embraced Kahn. He found himself returning the hug for a moment before deliberately releasing her and stepping back. “What are you doing here? You’ve never visited me at work before.” Daisy put her hands on her hips and tilted her head playfully at her friend. Over her shoulder, Kahn’s attention drifted to catch the cloudy eyes of one of the dead men in the cage behind her. She flipped her head back and forth when she saw where his attention was focused, shrugging a little.

  “Why aren’t they making any noise?” he asked.

  “What? Oh, because I damage the larynx when we capture them to put them in here. We can’t tell the purpose of their moaning and growling noises. It seems to be instinctual and outside of conscious control. Well, most of what they do seems to lack consciousness. See?” She held her unprotected hand out and pulled the sleeve of her white lab coat back slightly to expose the thin flesh of her arm. The creature in front of her snapped and rattled the cage, pressing its face into the diamond-shaped metal. It flailed and began to tear the gray skin back from bone on its undead face until Daisy pulled her arm slightly farther away.

  “Do you know what happened yet? Can you tell what this infection is?”

  “If by infection you mean that’s it communicable and transmittable, then yes. Other than that, I can’t even tell if it’s a bacteria or virus. It seems to spread from fluid contact. Blood, saliva. It’s hard to even tell where it lives in the body since, you know, the body is dead. It could be a parasite or a fungus or a virus or caused by an alien probe. I have no idea. All I know is that a knife or bullet to the brain makes you stop dead despite the infection.” Kahn nodded along, thinking of the corpses wandering around his former home as it burned to the ground. They walked into the raging inferno without regard for their own safety until the fires burned away enough of their muscle to make them collapse. Gunshots and wounds to the chest or limbs did nothing to stop the walking dead. Daisy turned back to her work and entered a few more notes into the tablet before taking the spent equipment and throwing it in the lower section of the cart.

  “Oh!” she said, “I do know something else. Follow me.”

  She pushed it along to the end of the row and Kahn followed along. She gestured to the last corpse in the corner cage. It was a male and seemed to be the freshest of the bodies contained here. There were no visible wounds and his skin still looked a natural shade of dark brown. Kahn knew in days or weeks the flesh would wither and fade into a bruise-like brownish-gray color like the rest of the corpses Daisy imprisoned. As she stopped in front and peered into the cage, Kahn noticed it was wearing a pair of khaki coveralls. The same standard-issue clothing all the civilians here wore. The same coveralls that Kahn wore with the name Garcia across the chest pocket.

  “This is someone from here? I thought we hadn’t lost anybody to bites in months,” Kahn said, pointing at the corpse. It snapped top and bottom jaw together with a smack and shook the chain link with its fingers. Kahn felt a chill up his spine.

  “We haven’t. This is Mr. Compton. He came here alone from some neighborhood nearby. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and won an Air Medal there. Mr Compton was 67-years old when he died last week. Cancer.” Daisy looked at the dead man in front of her. “He wasn’t bit.”

  Kahn nodded again. He had witnessed a person turn into one of these things without being bit before. The memory of the pair of Neighbors chasing him and shooting at him flashed to life in front of his eyes. Kahn was unconscious so he couldn’t be sure, but when he found the driver of the truck, the Neighbor was reanimated and still caught in the driver’s seat. No dead were around to have bitten him and Kahn had suspected what Daisy was telling him now.

  “We’re all infected,” he stated. She nodded and they both suffered the humidity with only the sounds of the rattling cages to accompany their thoughts.

  “Sorry about all this morbid talk,” she suddenly sprang to cheerful conversation again. “I’m glad you came to visit me. It seemed like lately you’ve been so busy you can never hang out.” She smiled and Kahn felt another twinge of guilt in his gut. She reached down and touched his hand and he felt a flush come to his face. He jumped a little and let the clipboard drift from its place in his armpit to the hand she was touching.

  “I’m sorry too, Daisy. I’m actually not here to hang out. Captain Louis says you failed to sign some requisition request for replacement fence materials. You’re supposed to come to a training tonight because of it.” He held the clipboard forward. “I think it’s supposed to be a deterrent for you to do paperwork correctly from now on, or something.” She stood so close to him that he caught a floral aroma from her hair over the stink of the dead. The mixture of pleasant and awful emotion was making Kahn nauseous, and he suddenly wanted to leave.

  “Oh,” she said cheerfully. “But, you teach the training, right? So we’ll get to hang out anyway. Maybe we can talk, after.” She signed her name and returned the paperwork to Kahn with another grin. His head was swimming so he just nodded silently once again and tucked the clipboard back in its place. She tried to lock eyes before turning back to the cart and gripping a small, silver object from the lower tier of the pushcart. When she rose she was holding a silver .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol. She quickly snapped a magazine into the open gun and pressed the slide release, arming the weapon with a metallic snap.

  “What are you doing?” Kahn asked. She tilted her head at his query and jerked her head toward the newest occupant of her macabre jail for the dead.

  “Mr. Compton here agreed to be my subject. He was deteriorating quickly and I thought if he died and came back I might be able to isolate where this infection was coming from using blood I drew before and after he died. Some marker or level that showed
how it works. I thought if I could figure out the nature of how it’s carried or why the dead try to eat the living or if we could stop it, cure it.” She paused and lowered her head, cradling the gun in her hands. “I was stupid. I don't have any equipment here and I just don’t know enough to figure it out.” She closed her eyes tightly as a tear squeezed out and traveled down her cheek. Without thinking, Kahn reached up and held her shoulder to comfort her.

  “It’s not your fault. I’m sure you’ll keep trying and--” Kahn stopped, unsure how to reassure Daisy. She turned and looked at him as he dropped his hand.

  “Did I tell you I was in neurobiology research before all this happened?” He shook his head, knowing he’d never asked about her past because that would inevitably lead her to ask him about his. “Neurobiology is studying the electrical signaling of the nervous system, motivation and reward, language processing, learning, memory, and stuff like that. These things,” she gestured, “don’t make any sense. They walk and they eat but they have no electrical signal. Their organs don’t pump oxygen to their brain, hell, they don’t even breathe! How they work is impossible according to modern science. And yet, here they are. Here is Mr. Compton, telling me about his grown kids in Seattle one minute and dead the next. Mr. Compton, who only wanted to help and knew he was dying, thought that maybe, maybe I could find some answers. But I couldn’t. I failed him, and-- it’s time to stop him from suffering anymore.”

  “Daisy, I’m sorry.” Kahn knew his apology was vague and inadequate to ease her suffering, but he wasn’t sure what else he could say. “If you want, I-- I can do it.” He held his hand out for the gun. She shook her head and sniffed loudly.

  “No, I need to do it. I owe it to him. Just go, please. Just leave me and I’ll see you tonight.” She reached up and embraced Kahn in a tight squeeze. He hesitated for a moment and then let his hands find the small of her back and pulled her tightly toward him. It felt good to hold her, and he withstood and enjoyed the embrace this time. She whispered thank you to him and let him go. He felt lightheaded and overwhelmingly numb, walking slowly to leave the courtyard without looking back. Only one more visit to go, and it wasn’t likely to be any easier.