Weirdly fixated, Ivan continued to stare at a tantalizing bit of my exposed midriff. I yanked the T-shirt fabric down.
Chris stepped in front of me. “You crazy fuck. You’re a dead man.” He raised his gun, as did the French soldiers.
Ivan’s hand gripped the pistol, and made some twitchy, reflexive moves. Gray eyelids lowered over pinpoint pupils. “Promise?”
Chris took aim and shot the gun out of his hand. “On the ground.” The injured zombie lord howled in pain as they yanked him out of the car and pinned him to the asphalt using their boots to hold down his wrists and ankles.
“Hold on.” I gave the time out signal. “Isn’t there a way to restrain him without stepping on him? Could you maybe stand him up?”
Chris motioned to the others and they hauled Ivan onto his feet.
“Ivan—the interferon—did you find it?” I asked extra nicely.
Strung between two French soldiers, his head jerked back. “Got a locked cold box in the trunk of the car.”
The trunk lid on the Mercedes appeared to be slightly elevated. “What do you know about K1?”
There were moments when he seemed almost normal. His eyes sparked to life and he flashed a lopsided flirtatious grin. “What would you like to know, Doc?”
“What’s happened to the base? Have they been infected? What’s the status of the aircraft? Are they evacuating—?”
“That’s a lot of questions.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “You need to start the clinical protocol at once. We’ll up the dosage for the first twenty-four hours, and continue injections if we see any improvement.” I angled my head to meet his elusive gaze. “Let me help you, Ivan.”
The zombie lord squeezed his eyes into slits. I could almost sense his brain synapses misfiring. Any moment now, he would launch into one of those crazy paranoid rants.
I added a bit of honesty and softened my pitch. “Look, there are no guarantees, the interferon is experimental. But you have some kind of natural resistance to the z-virus…we’ve got to try.”
I turned to Chris. “Show him your neck.”
The scowl on his handsome face was easy to read, and amazingly sexy. It promised an argument yet to come, followed by rough, hot make-up sex.
“Go on, he won’t bite—will you?” I squinted a warning at Ivan.
Chris pulled the collar of his shirt down so Ivan could get a look. “Less than twenty-four hours ago that cut was burning hot and red. I’m pretty sure he was infected.”
Ivan eyed the pale pink mark. “What’s the protocol?”
I exhaled. “Here’s the deal, Ivan. You repair the steering pump, and tell us everything you know about K1 and the DMZ—”
“And I get?” His murky gaze narrowed.
“You get the clinical protocol, administered by me, and a ride to K1.”
“What if I told you I’ve been bitten more than once?” The man’s eyes shimmered in their sockets. A strange ghostly effect caused by rapid vacillation and an excited ocular nerve.
“You can fill me in on your bite history later.”
Chris moved in closer. “Do we have a deal, Ivan?”
Ivan’s face froze—completely motionless—with no speech, but his eyes darted up and down, which I read as a yes. “Guess we have a deal.”
“Let him go—laisse le partir.” I eyeballed Ahmed, who nodded to his men.
Jerky and stiff, Ivan placed his hands to each side of his face and massaged his jaw until things loosened up.
“Let’s have a look at that steering pump.” He lurched off, listing sideways, barely maintaining his balance. On the undead spectrum, Ivan’s current status was somewhere between gravity and eternity.
Chris walked up beside me. “You make me feel something for him.”
I turned to Chris. “That’s because you’re a good man.”
His jaw flexed quietly and he made no eye contact.
“You’re angry with me.”
“That’s an affirmative.” He stormed off toward the Humvee.
“Okay, I get it. Ivan’s a loose cannon.” My hands were on my hips, shouting and not caring if anyone overheard our little spat. And I obviously wasn’t feeling contrite over my striptease act, either.
Chris spun around. “That no one here wants to deal with. Sooner or later he’s gonna be trouble.”
I stomped after him. “More than a horde of zombies? Or an IED? Or a hellfire missile?”
“Why, Lizzy?” He stood his ground, but there was something liquid and vulnerable in those beautiful eyes.
I lowered my voice. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have—a hunch. I keep thinking we could learn something from him, something life-saving.”
This time when he turned away, he kept walking.
Chapter Ten
THINGS WERE GOING to be tense between us, maybe even hostile for a while. Chris had quickly become my rock-steady partner. The man I would survive the apocalypse with or die trying. And I missed him already.
I joined the men standing around the military transport while Ivan fiddled with the pump. I glanced over at Chris, who rolled his eyes.
During our scuffle with the zombie lord, the sun had dipped closer to the horizon. We might have thirty or forty minutes of daylight left.
Ivan looked up at me chewing my lip. “You okay, Doc?”
“It’s getting late. We need to get going.”
Ivan wiped his fingers with a rag. “Got any hydraulic fluid around? How ’bout some SW50?”
Nothing but blank looks.
Ivan exhaled loudly. “In a pinch, instead of hydraulic fluid, engine oil will work.” Ivan stared at them. “Get going—drain some oil out of one of the cars.”
Five minutes later, one of Ahmed’s men climbed into the driver’s seat and took it for a test drive. Maneuvering an armor-plated vehicle isn’t easy in the best of circumstances. But beyond some whining and squealing in the tight turns, the steering pump actually appeared to be working. The driver hung a U-turn and signaled thumbs up.
Chris pulled Ahmed aside, while I examined Ivan. I set my kit down on the bed of a burned-out pickup truck. “How’s your hand?”
Ivan held his injured palm up so I could see. “Just a scratch—loverboy’s not a bad shot.” He rotated his arm cooperatively, as I cleaned the chafed skin and applied a bandage. “What do you think your boyfriend and the Arab-Frenchie are plotting?” Ivan’s gaze darted over to the two men.
I snapped on my penlight and did a quick neurological exam. His pupils were unsteady but responsive. “Post apocalypse world domination.”
The zombie lord’s eyes crinkled. “A woman with a sense of humor. I liked you right from the start.”
I got out my stethoscope. “Mind unbuttoning the first couple of…” Despite the tremors in his hands, he managed the zipper on his jacket and shirt buttons.
He exhibited obvious signs of nervous system upheaval, yet his heartbeat was strong and regular. Lungs, not so much. I pulled out his shirt and moved the chestpiece around to his back. That ominous rattle would only grow worse.
“Any fever and chills?” I asked.
“Mild fever in the evening.”
“You have a complication. It’s either TB or walking pneumonia. Most likely walking pneumonia.”
Chris caught my eye and circled a finger. Wrap it up.
I asked a few more cursory questions—appetite, color of urine, bowel movements, and then finished the exam with a few simple reflex tests.
“I think my boyfriend, as you refer to him, is jealous of you.”
“Should he be?” The gleam in the zombie lord’s eyes actually startled me. Another sad hint about this man, living in the shell of his dying body.
“Don’t push your luck, Ivanovich.” I tapped an elbow nerve and nearly got knocked out by an arm that whipped out as if Hitler’s motorcade was passing by.
I could only assume the jerky Parkinson’s-like mannerisms and the lurch in his step were a manife
station of the virus eating away at his neuromotor cognition.
My quickie examination had created more questions than answers, and I admit I was intrigued. “Be right back.”
As I rummaged in one of the backpacks tied to the motorcycle, Chris walked up beside me. I bit my bottom lip and delivered the bad news. “Ivan’s riding with me.”
He took hold of my arm. “Keep it up, Lizzy, and I swear to God I’ll put you over my knee and spank that cute ass in front of all these men.”
“I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t do that. You might spank my bottom but not in front of these guys.” I stepped away. “Sooner or later he’s going to turn, and we need to know what he knows. I can question him on the road. I’m the only one he trusts.”
Chris considered my argument. “Okay, but I’m riding in the back with a gun pointed at his head.”
“What did I just say? He trusts me, sort of. I don’t need you in the back seat harassing him.”
Both Chris and his frown were immovable on the subject. Whether I agreed or not, he was riding with us.
I filled my syringe kit with several ampules of interferon and resealed the cold pack.
“Come with me, you need your shot.” I dragged Chris behind the truck. “Drop ’em, Captain.” I got out two disposable syringes and an ampule of z-interferon. “You too, Ivan.”
“Rotorhead first.” The zombie lord’s eyes shimmered from tremors. “Nice ass.”
Chris squinted over his shoulder. “Suck my dick, Ivan.”
“No interest in dick—nice ass, though.”
“That’s not what I hear about black ops CIA. You guys are all over dick.”
Ivan’s chuckle was more of a high-pitched cackle.
The two men eyeballed each other until I stomped my foot. “Why don’t you two just whip them out and measure?”
“Did you know it’s possible to love two men at once?” Ivan grinned as he loosened his belt.
Chris doubled down on his glare and zipped up.
I rubbed an alcohol swab over pale gray skin covered in purple blotches. Bruised from poor circulation, Ivan’s body teetered on the edge of necrotic. I’d never seen a technically alive, viable human being exhibiting this degree of decomposition.
Ivan grabbed onto the truck bed rails.
“Those nerve cells are really on edge.” I noted quietly. “Your fat cells aren’t protecting you like they used to. Is it painful to sit or lie down for long periods?”
Ivan buckled his belt. “You have no idea.” His gruff voice was softer without the sarcasm.
I smiled at him. “We have a long drive ahead of us. I want hear all about your bite history.”
I admit I was fascinated by Ivan’s arrested state of infection. But I also sensed something else in the tortured man. In his own snarky, semi-treacherous way, he was trying to be helpful.
I reminded myself that his higher brain function was still intact, which meant that he was perfectly capable of concealing his motives.
Pale eyes shifted from me to Chris. “Are you pinching yourself? Hook up with a beautiful doctor in the middle of the fucking purge. I can only imagine what it must be like to get in her pants.”
Chris got right in his face. “Do you have a death wish, Ivanovich? Because I can pop one off right now—make sure you take a good long nap.” He shoved the annoying quasi-zombie toward the BMW.
“Are you two going to keep this up on the road?” I warned. “Because if you are, I’ll take the back seat and a Nembutal. You can wake me up when we get to K1.”
The convoy, according to Chris and Ahmed, would be comprised of three vehicles. We’d take the BMW, the Humvee, and the perfect ride for a scout—the meanest machine on two wheels.
Ivan and I sat in the front seat of the car and listened to a heated argument over who got scout duty. I watched open-mouthed as the French commandos drew straws for it.
“Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.” Ivan muttered softly.
I slanted a glance at him. “Please, not you too.”
“A little Sons of Anarchy wisdom,” he noted dryly.
“Back home, in the ER, we’d get one or two motorcycle accidents a week.” My fingers tapped the steering wheel. “I’ve seen a lot of carnage.”
Mustafa won the draw and the French team finally got going. They siphoned the remaining diesel fuel out of the Mercedes and transferred the medical supplies into the military transport.
Chris unpacked the bike and stowed our gear in the BMW. “Follow the Humvee south.” He climbed into the back seat. “After we cross the border, head east on the Amman-Baghdad road. We’ll make a pit stop in Rutbah and scrounge fuel. From there, we follow the oil pipeline to Kirkuk.”
“How far is the airbase at K1? I asked.
“Four hundred and fifty kilometers, give or take.”
We made eye contact through the rearview mirror. “Over shit dirt roads?”
Chris ripped the Velcro tabs of his body armor. “Pretty much.”
Ivan shifted in his seat. “Why not stay on the highway? Drive straight through to Baghdad and hang a left. We’d get there in half the time.”
“What’s your intel?” Chris rearranged a jumble of supplies and settled in. “Last I heard, Baghdad was swarming with biters.”
Pale, opalescent eyes shifted to me. “Looks like you’re going to have to drive wicked fast on shit dirt roads in the dark. Want me to drive?”
I exhaled a soft sigh. “Maybe we can trade off.” Six hours of sleep in three days was taking its toll. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a Starbucks in northern Iraq.”
Chris leaned forward and hugged the back of my headrest. “I’ll help drive. Get us to Rutbah and I’ll take the wheel. I’m going to try to catch a few. Wake me if he tries anything. I mean it, Lizzy.”
Ivan made a stiff pivot toward the back seat. “How’s your drone radar? Twenty clicks past Rutbah, we’re going to run into the DMZ. No warning signs, just fucking—kaboom!”
Chris leaned back in his seat. “Observation only—we hit the real DMZ a hundred and fifty clicks from K1. They may or may not know we’re coming.”
I swallowed. “May or may not?”
“The base could be one massive zombie clusterfuck by now.”
We made Trebil just as the sun dipped below the horizon. There was even a greeting in English on the arch overhead. “Welcome to Iraq.” The border crossing turned out to be a paved-over patch of desert, dotted here and there with rusty-red bloodstains and picked-over carcasses.
Carrion birds circled overhead.
The inspection station smacked of a z-invasion. Broken down road barriers, abandoned guard stations, doors left wide open. Not a living person in sight.
A shredded black flag flapped in the wind. I could barely make out the calligraphy. A strange reminder of ISIS, and not nearly as terrifying as a zombie shitstorm.
“There is no God but Allah. Mohammad is the messenger of Allah,” Ivan translated out loud.
I turned and stared at him. “Just curious, but how goes the war on terror?”
Ivan shrugged. “As of zero eight-hundred, two days ago, Syria is either undead or emptied out. There’s a sign at the Port of Tartus—last zombie to leave—”
“Please turn the lights out.” I squinted at him. “I’ve heard the joke.”
Ivan’s sigh was more of a wheeze. “As the z-war ramped up, Assad hunkered down in the basement of his palace.”
“Chris was shot down by an RPG—someone’s still fighting.”
Ivan’s lips drew back across gray teeth. “A few die-hards carry on the holy war.”
I was reminded of something my father used to quote, ‘only the dead see the end to war’. But what happens to the undead? I glanced over at the uber-zombie. “So, what’s the plan now?”
He shrugged. “U.S.-led coalition forces are supposed to start bombing the most heavily infested areas—northern Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan—name your favorite failed state.”
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A dry cough wracked his whole body. “In case you were wondering, most of our Middle Eastern allies blame the U.S. military for the z-virus.”
I stole another glance at him. “And are we…responsible for the z-virus?”
“Just because I’m CIA doesn’t mean I know every operation in play.”
Chris piped in from the back seat. “Give us your best guess.”
Ivan stared out the dusty windshield. “Assad would be the prime suspect, but biowarfare on this scale…?” His inhale rasped and his exhale rattled. “It’s either us or the Soviets, possibly the Israelis.”
I must have looked as forlorn as I felt. “Made to look like Assad did it.”
Ivan had this way of scrutinizing things or people. He’d lower his chin and stare up at you as if he were peering over reading glasses. “We’ll find out a lot more if we get into K1.”
The Humvee slowed to make an unscheduled stop. The French team had spotted a broken down tanker, and we waited while they syphoned diesel fuel out of the hauler and into their vehicle.
“Ivan?”
“What?”
“If we get in?”
“If the virus bit them in the ass, they could be desperate to get their hands on the interferon.” His head bobbed around a bit. “If not, they could greet us with a drone strike.”
I sighed. “They must assume everyone is infected. But that’s crazy—zombies don’t drive.”
Ahmed approached the BMW. “We have enough diesel to get to Rutbah, but it will be close. How is your fuel?”
I checked the gas gauge. “Three quarters of a tank.”
Ahmed nodded. “Take turns driving and sleeping—no stopping unless it’s for petrol.”
For once, I sat in the middle of a conversation between the three alpha males that was actually cooperative and nonthreatening. Ivan the Terrible even suggested refueling possibilities along the route.
For some odd reason my mood shifted to giddily happy, most likely caused by battle fatigue and lack of protein.
The convoy blew through the streets of Trebil and turned east onto graded, unpaved roads. The Humvee took the lead, and we were eating their dust. “Get right up on those bastards.” Ivan advised.
EAT, SLAY, LUZT: A sexy wild ride through the dark heart of the zombie apocalypse. Page 9
