by Hamrick, R M
Audra ran straight through the front lobby of the lab, not stopping to admire the outdated panel wood walls. Satomi shut the door behind her as she scooted into the laboratory’s main area. Audra sprinted through and out the back door to round the building. All four were in the lobby, scraping on the interior door.
Audra closed the exterior door and slid down against it. Her hand arrived at her brow to wipe the stinging salt from her eyes, but she found it covered in someone’s blood. Down her arm was just as messy. She didn’t get to clean up or rest. Satomi came around and gave her a hand up. She had tears in her eyes, but that wasn’t surprising. She watched Satomi leave for the medical office to go see Ryder. For Audra, it was time to find out about the kitchen. Was anyone else bitten?
* * *
“Satomi, clear the lab lobby now!” Audra yelled to her as she and Jack ran off to the mess hall. Marcos climbed up to speak with the guards. Peter stood with her, dumbfounded. She felt the same.
Infected in the mess hall? The thought filled her with fear. She had done so much to take precautions. What had happened here?
Satomi nodded but she wasn’t sure that Audra saw. They used to keep infected in the lobby before they established the medical office. The medical office - Satomi’s mind flashed to Ryder, who would be in there, just a building away. She yearned to see her, just a glimpse of her form to make sure she was all right - that she was real. Both her time at Osprey Point and at Jack’s and Jill’s convoy seemed to blur. Which was her life? Satomi shook her head clear. There were higher priority tasks right now. And Peter was one of them.
She ushered Peter through the plaza. He stopped at the fountain.
“Why isn’t it on?”
“Um, we turned it off in preparation for winter,” she said to give him a simple answer.
He looked up to the sky as if he expected snow to fall. She nudged him along and he mumbled as he followed. They walked past the medical office and Satomi tried to steal a glance through the window, but they had been covered for privacy. Her idea.
Behind the medical office was a converted office for sleeping quarters. She opened the door and found no one in the front area. Here, Peter could be safe while she helped the others.
“Peter, please, I need you to go in here for just a moment.”
Peter seemed to finally notice the doorway. He stopped in his tracks and stared in horror.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Peter refused. “I want to go home.”
“Just for a moment,” she pleaded. She needed to clear the lab lobby.
“You can’t make me! I’M NOT A PRISONER!” he shouted. His eyes flew open.
“You’re right. You’re not a prisoner. This is Osprey Point. It’s your new home but I need you to stay here until I come and get you. Is that OK?”
“It’s not OK!” he shouted. He seemed really disturbed. He moved to step away. Satomi wasn’t sure what to do. Burning car tires uselessly came to mind.
“I’m a prisoner!” he yelled.
“Why do you think that?” she asked in a quiet voice, hoping to reason with him.
“Because I did awful things,” he replied, his voice lowering to match hers. Satomi went to put her hand on his arm. He pulled away and shrank into himself.
“No, you didn’t. You’re a good man, Peter,” she cajoled.
“No, I’m not. I experimented!” He looked wildly around, not finding comfort from his strange environment.
“Experimented?” Was he gleaning new vocabulary and delusions from Satomi’s chatter? She’d have to watch what she said around him from now on. She had frightened him. He started crying.
“You’re going to experiment on me!”
“I’m not.” She lied, a little. His treatment would be experimental, but she wasn’t doing that right now. Right now, she just needed him safe.
“You’re going to experiment on me like I did on the others.”
“...the others?” she hesitated.
“Super Soldiers! We were going to make people better. It had to be done, right? The virus didn’t have to be bad.” Peter shook his head. His white hair danced on his head.
Satomi had never heard Peter say anything about the virus before. What did he know?
“I was going to be a hero. Make people better.”
“How?” Satomi dared to ask. The hairs on her arms prickled.
“My serums! I made soldiers. My next round of experiments didn’t go well... made me sick.”
Satomi froze. This wasn’t early-onset dementia or Alzheimer’s disease? This was... self-inflicted? She tried her old test, but this time added another trigger.
“I’m Dr. Satomi Asai. Pleasure to meet you, Doctor...?”
He shook his head to clear it.
“Dr. Peter Bren,” he said as he offered his hand.
That woman in the car wasn’t Dr. Bren. He was.
She had risked her friends’ lives to save the originator of the soldier serum.
And now, he was stopping her from helping. Tears slipped down her cheeks and the top of her head burned. Satomi pushed him into the building a little rougher than she intended. He fell to the ground. He glared at her betrayal. It didn’t matter; she had friends to help. She slammed the door before he could get up.
“I’m sorry!” she said. She wasn’t sure who that was directed towards, but she was.
* * *
Audra knocked on the mess hall door. It opened without ceremony with Jack just inside the entrance.
“Good running,” he told her. Audra nodded and looked around. Twelve people inside. Some sat shaking on chairs, some busied themselves by cleaning up, others helped those who might be in shock.
“Are they OK?” asked a girl.
The zoms were still family.
Audra smiled a small smile. “They’re fine. They’re in the lobby of the laboratory. The scientists will prepare antidotes immediately. But first, I need to know what happened here.”
“It was my girlfriend, Lisa,” said a woman being comforted on a chair. Her shaking slowed as she spoke.
“When did she get bit?” asked Audra, kneeling down beside her. Although she imagined that her battle-torn look was not comforting.
“She... didn’t.”
The woman supporting her tapped her on the shoulder. “You don’t get to say that. Now she got bit somewhere. Did you guys go out? Maybe to get some privacy?”
“No. That’s what I’m telling you. We’ve been inside the fences. We’ve been together. Like hip to hip for the last three days. She wasn’t bit.”
“Then what happened?” Audra asked gently.
“She was just sick. Had a cold or something. I thought it was the season change. I offered to bring her food from the mess hall, but she said it’d help to move around.” She pulled her arms around herself as if she was cold.
“What were her symptoms?”
“Fever. Chills. I’m sorry, I know she shouldn’t have gone into the mess hall. She could have given everyone the flu.”
“It wasn’t the flu,” corrected the woman at her shoulder.
“I know that now,” she said flatly.
“It’s OK. We’ll get to the bottom of it. She was bit somewhere, somehow,” encouraged Audra.
“Maybe she sneaked off,” the standing woman offered.
That made the girl whimper and start shaking again.
The door swung open and Peter raced inside. His face opened with terror as he searched the faces in the room. He found the one he knew. Jack’s.
“It’s OK, Dad. It’s OK,” Jack comforted him.
Peter buried his face in his son’s chest and cried. Jack held him fiercely. Audra felt a weird twinge for this broken family. They still had someone flesh and blood to hug and to hold. Audra would give anything for that. To belong. She understood why they had gone to such great lengths to stay together. Wouldn’t she - hadn’t she - done the same?
As the people in the mess hall quietly dispersed, a head of brown c
urls peeked through the doorway.
Dwyn.
She ran into his arms. They radiated warmth and safety through her body. She deposited her face into his neck and musk.
“What took you so long?” she murmured.
Maybe she did have a family. He felt like home.
“I... I had to carry Ziv’s body back.”
Ziv’s body?
Audra pulled back and saw the tears filling Dwyn’s perfect green eyes. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, staring down at his feet.
“I sent him in there...” said Audra. She felt her tears come on too.
Dwyn met her eyes. “No. He volunteered. Developed the mass cure and died making sure his plan succeeded.”
The mass cure - which Jack said wouldn’t even work. Jack. Jack’s crew had done this. She turned in Dwyn’s arms to reconcile what she knew about Jack. He had driven a half zom army, kidnapped Satomi. He had also stopped his sister, loved his father, and helped her twice today.
“I’m sorry about Ziv,” said Jack. “I understand if you need me to leave, but I’d like to trade for some of Satomi’s expertise if she’s willing.”
“I can’t think about that now,” said Audra in a short tone. “We have an incident to investigate and zoms to treat.” She dismissed it for now.
“Investigate? What is there to investigate?” asked Dwyn.
“I don’t know how she got infected. We need to find her bite and figure out what happened.”
“She was infected before, right?” asked Jack.
“Yes, but that was a long time ago. We cured her.”
“You cured her for a while, yes. She probably reverted.”
Audra remembered what Jack and Satomi had discussed in the woods. Was it true?
“The cure... it doesn’t work all the time,” repeated Jack. “We thought it did at first, but it got slowly bad. People we’ve cured have gotten sick again. We haven’t been able to permanently cure a soldier ever. Dr. Bren told us the virus either mutated or the cure was never perfect to begin with.”
“We’ll see. She probably wandered off,” Audra borrowed from the unhelpful friend. “She’ll have a bite.”
Chapter Eighteen:
Patient Zero
With the infected safely secured inside the front lobby and Audra safe, Satomi made a beeline to the medical office to see Ryder. She’d better be still in the medical ward. No way should she be discharged already. It had only been a week - or more? Satomi couldn’t recall.
She needed to hug her friend and cry on her shoulder. Her failure was sinking in. She hadn’t saved a family torn apart by illness. They had created it. She had tried to do no harm, but she had. The universe was much more complicated than she had given credit. Now she just needed something she knew was solid.
She opened the door to the office and could already hear odd sounds. Was Ryder in pain? She sprinted into the doorway, before staggering back. The soldier Satomi had treated with leg splints had been moved from the laboratory. But no one was here to watch him.
He had been restrained, but one hand was bloodied, broken, and free. His shoulder contorted with dislocation as he had pulled himself off the bed. He had torn down the partition and reached toward the next bed, where a figure shaped like Ryder was snoozing under the covers. Her back turned.
Satomi saw red. This thing was after her love. He would get to her and soon. Satomi raced to the counter across from the beds and ripped open a drawer to find her tool. A yell escaped her lips as she drove her scalpel into his craniocervical junction. He had no idea she was in the room before he was gone. His body crumpled.
Both of them slumped on the ground. Satomi’s chest heaved high and low. She couldn’t get air. The panic of everything hit her. Her home - Osprey Point - had been attacked. She had been kidnapped and forced to work for her captors. She’d slept in a crappy car and feared for her life. Her best friend had been inches from death.
She looked ahead at her medical supplies. They grounded her, reminded her that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. She slowed her breathing and tried to gain control.
First, do no harm.
She had broken her promise. She looked over to Ryder, who still slept. They must still be giving her narcotics. As she gazed on her friend, a sudden calmness overtook her. She was worth a promise broken. Satomi let the scalpel clatter to the ground beside her. Maybe the oath only applied to the world before. She went to her friend and gently hugged her awake.
She’d settle for doing what was right.
* * *
“I know this isn’t the best time, but... this is important,” Satomi heard Audra say as Satomi entered the back way into the lab. The stark white walls, small windows, and messy counters filled her sights and her heart. Oh, how she missed this place. Sure, the equipment was ancient, rusting, and cracked, but at least the building wasn’t on wheels.
“Funny,” Satomi interrupted. “I was going to say the same thing.”
The occupants of the lab, Audra, Dwyn, and Gordon turned to look at her. They were dirty with battle and the blood of their enemies. So was Satomi.
“Oh my God. Is that blood?” Audra rushed over. She pulled Satomi onto a stool and began examining the doctor for wounds.
Satomi shivered. Gordon brought her a heavy blanket as she explained what had happened. He leaned up against the counter near her. Dwyn sat on the counter, kicking and dangling his feet, without much concern for the fragility of the equipment around him.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” asked Audra. Yes, she was sure.
“Why was he moved anyway?” Satomi asked.
“Uh, because Ziv had cured him,” said Gordon with a numbed tone.
A heavy silence filled the room at the mention of Ziv’s name.
“So, all the soldiers?” Dwyn asked. He had stopped kicking.
Audra did not address Dwyn, but instead she turned to Satomi. “I need you to check our patient zero. We need to find out how she got sick again.”
Satomi remembered Dr. Bren’s notes. She nodded slowly, letting the scratchy blanket fall to the floor.
“What do you mean?” asked Gordon.
Audra stumbled, “Just check the body. Find the bite,” she directed him.
Gordon nodded and cleared an area to receive their subject.
“Which one is patient zero?” asked Satomi.
“Lisa.”
Dwyn left to dispose of the body in the medical ward. In just a few minutes, Audra and Gordon had bound Lisa and eased her onto the cleared laminate counter. Lisa writhed, arching and twisting her torso, and Satomi struggled to examine her. Her hands still shook with the adrenaline of before, but felt warmer with a medical duty to perform.
“We don’t waste anesthetic on the dead,” she whispered before she realized she was speaking. No one asked her what she meant, thankfully.
Satomi’s gloved hands and observant eyes looked over all the likely spots, then the less likely spots, then the entirety of the body. Lisa’s body was perfect; none of her skin was broken. A scar prickled at her ankle, a bodily reminder of her first bite, but otherwise Lisa’s skin was flawless.
“There is no bite,” Satomi reported.
“Maybe it healed?” asked Audra hopefully.
“Her first bite has healed. But I don’t see anything else.”
“What does that mean?” asked Gordon.
“Possibly she came in contact with infectious bodily fluids, blood, saliva, sexual fluids,” said Satomi, not wanting to jump to conclusions, just because she had seen it written in a mad doctor’s books.
“Or?” pushed Audra.
Lisa was just one case, Satomi told herself. And the soldier with the broken legs was given the antiviral via an experimental delivery system. He couldn’t be counted.
“When was she cured?” Satomi asked.
“Near our start,” replied Audra, looking down at the woman’s large, foggy eyes and tangled hair.
Satomi looked down and s
aw the same. Of course, Lisa. Satomi wondered why she hadn’t recognized her. Their faces seemed to distort in their sickness.
“It’s possible,” Satomi confessed. “I would think it would have happened a lot sooner, though. The virus could live in small dormant quantities. If something upended the chemistry of the brain or the virus found a way to adapt, then it could take back over.” Dr. Bren had studied it for years and hadn’t figured it out in his part of the country. Would she be able to figure it out?
Satomi continued, “I can test her viral load for any abnormalities. If it’s mutated, we won’t know if it’s because she was exposed to a mutated virus or if it mutated within her – ”
“Not now. It can wait,” Audra interrupted. “We all need rest. You, especially.”
Satomi didn’t continue her ramble and didn’t argue. She could barely keep upright over Lisa. Her body was shutting down. She watched Gordon and Audra move Lisa back to the lobby. Then Gordon escorted Satomi to her bed. Her real bed.
* * *
“Do you really think the cure isn’t working?” asked Gordon quietly as he helped Audra return Lisa to the front room.
“I don’t know,” Audra replied, knowing she was speaking to someone who had been cured. Almost everyone here had been. Were they all at risk for reverting to their mindless, violent, shuffling selves? No, it couldn’t be. The cure was permanent.
It had to be.
Otherwise, what were they fighting for? Audra couldn’t imagine this hell without hope.
“You’ll remain healthy for your girl. Don’t worry,” assured Audra.
Chapter Nineteen:
Memorial
It wasn’t long before Gordon and Satomi had news for Audra. After interviews, an investigation, and further testing, it was concluded that Lisa was only infected now because she had been previously infected. She had reverted somehow. Their first case of the antidote failing.
Audra stared at an empty beaker on the drying rack by the sink, as if it would give her the answers she needed.
