The first thing Dom did was check the incubator—and rather than curse, he ended up just staring at the plates inside, stupefied. This time I was quick enough to get there before he started throwing them out, rescuing one from the bottom shelf while he started emptying the top one. The petri dish was filled with beige-colored solidified agar and wrapped with tape—and the entire surface of the growth medium was dotted with white, gray, green, yellow, and red cultures, some with fuzzy lines, others perfect circles. Checking what exactly the medium contained, I blew out my breath as I skipped over the no less than six antibiotics that should have kept the plate pretty much empty of everything as a negative control. Anything growing on there wasn’t just immune to one, but all of the antibiotics at once. “Yum,” was all I said when Dom held the waste bag open for me to drop it in.
Rather than throw it all away and start anew, Dom took two of the plates back to the hood and started transferring single cultures to new plates before junking the old ones with the rest. A quick check revealed that none of the other plates—containing all the control samples—had anything growing on them yet.
After seeing that plate, sleep wasn’t really on the menu for me anymore.
By morning, most of what I’d been working on was done. The results were, at best, inconclusive. I’d tried to clean up the samples as best as possible with the basic equipment provided, but the bacteria in my blood not only wreaked havoc on the blood drawn, but also did a great job contaminating everything else. The only reliable result was that Nate’s immunological status wasn’t as clear as it had been before—and we were talking about results there that already looked like a toddler had thrown up all over them. My guess was that close contact with me had resulted in him getting a healthy dose of my resident bacterial playground as well, but because his immune system had had years to turn into a maximum security prison, he didn’t show any symptoms as the little critters could do barely more than exist for a short time before his serum-empowered immune system killed them all off. Burns’s results were clear, as were the others’.
Half a day later, Dom declared that he’d found about the same on his plates—Nate’s blood looked clear but there was some growth under unrestricted conditions after twenty-four hours, yet nothing compared to what was going on with me. Sunny went up that evening to get another sample from Nate to run them again, with both of them agreeing that if it was clear, Nate was likely an innate, closed-off system for that matter. That analysis cracked me up on so many levels.
I tried to stay awake but after Blake brought in our dinner that second evening, I had to catch some shut-eye, and next thing I knew it was eight in the morning. Dom was sleeping on the floor next to the cot, bundled up in blankets, while Sunny inhaled an entire cup of coffee over by the microscope while I watched. I personally wouldn’t have touched any food or drink in that very same room as the bacterial cultures were grown, but I knew all too well that lack of sleep could impair common sense judgment quickly. Ignoring him for now, I got up and stretched before I slogged over to the incubator to check Dom’s plates. All of those that held my name were overgrown, resembling cheese or something that you’d forgotten in the fridge for months. Next to that, I found a smaller stack holding two plates that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe Dom had brought them in overnight. I couldn’t make sense of the abbreviations on them, but the different dates written were from a little over two months on one side, and half a year ago on the other.
They looked exactly like mine.
The sound of rustling clothes behind me prompted me to look over my shoulder, finding Dom lurking there. His eyes were bloodshot, making me guess that he’d been working through the night and had barely caught any sleep. His gaze briefly landed on those last two plates before returning to my face. “That first one’s from the samples you and your group brought us on the first visit,” he explained. “From the hacked-up zombies, remember? That other one’s from the incident that killed Stanton. I had one of the other scientists get the samples from cold storage and plate them in one of the other labs to make sure that I didn’t cross-contaminate them. Growth times are pretty much the same.”
That really didn’t need a more in-depth explanation. I took the news with a nod and turned to Sunny. “Any luck identifying anything?”
Sunny was visibly frustrated, which killed what little filters he normally had—few and far between as they were. “It’s less of a question what’s multiplying in your bloodstream, and more what isn’t? Because that list is a lot shorter.” He reached for a notepad that he’d kept next to his microscope, either ignoring or just plain not seeing the zip-it gesture Dom was making at him. “Let’s start with the big, interesting ones, shall we? At least four different strains of Streptococcus, my favorite of them being Streptococcus pyogenes. Listeria and Clostridium, of course. Haemophilus influenzae surprised me, but probably shouldn’t. Oh, and my personal favorite, Staphylococcus aureus. My guess is that’s the one responsible for your blood coagulation being off the charts. Never seen a live infection of that one outside of a textbook. Really, how you’re still alive is a medical marvel.”
Dom winced at the last remark, doing his best to appear positive. “On the upside, we didn’t find any E. coli in your blood. That’s something.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Gee, and there I was so afraid of that because, sometimes, I can’t wash my hands out there after taking a shit. But hey, now I have it black on white: I’m special.” Exhaling slowly, I forced myself to swallow the mix of emotions that tried to rise in my chest and turn into full-blown panic. “Well, guess that’s it. Thanks, guys. You did me a solid. Wish I could repay the favor somehow, but I think satisfying your curiosity will have to suffice.”
I turned around and practically ran from the room, barely stopping by the exit to grab my jacket. I was out of the door before Dom could do more than call something after me that I didn’t get. Blake startled out of the chair he’d been dozing in opposite the lab, looking for once not quite like an angry badger. “I’m ready to leave now, Sgt. Blake. If you will please escort me outside now?”
I’d seldom seen anyone this happy to leave a sedentary position. I certainly didn’t mind the brisk clip he set, moving fast enough that I had to scramble to get into my jacket before we made it to the elevator. We had to wait for a few seconds for the doors to open, just long enough for me to dread someone running after me—but the corridor remained empty. Thank fuck for small mercies.
I counted the seconds the trip up to the shack took, my entire body starting to vibrate with the need to move. Breathe in, breathe out—it was that simple. No need to hold my breath, or to start hyperventilating. Only ten, maybe fifteen seconds. I’d seldom needed to see the sky above me this strongly, or take a deep breath of cold, crisp air.
The elevator ground to a halt and I was ready to bolt forward, yet Blake held me back, his arm shooting out in front of me, barring my way. I was ready to try barreling through him, but instead forced myself to hold on to my semblance of calm. “Yes?”
“I’m sure the scientists caught you up on what happened?” He waited until I jerked my chin in an approximation of a nod. “Stanton was a good woman, as were the six scientists that died that morning. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The laugh that wanted to bubble up inside of me was only shy of hysterical, so I quickly swallowed it. Holding Blake’s gaze, I took my time to formulate my reply. When I opened my mouth, my voice was void of even the slightest tremor, strong and confident as it should be. Damn, when had I gotten so good at bullshitting people? “It wasn’t my fault that you idiots forgot absolutely everything about securing your base and keeping your noncombatants safe. I get why Wilkes chose to use me as the scapegoat—I made myself a target, willingly, and because he wasn’t strong enough to remain independent, he struck his own bargain. But you and I, we both know that even if I’d tried, I could never have pulled off a stunt like that. And what cause would I have had? I have friends here, too.�
�� Pausing, I amended, “Had. I’ve missed seeing a good three people that I was sure I could count on, so I presume they are among the casualties. That I am sorry for. And you are right. Stanton was one of our best. I’m not. And just if you’re wondering—I’ve never regretted killing anyone for even a second. Now move out of my way, or you’ll become the latest body on that increasingly lengthening list.”
My gamble paid off—rather than continue that hulking gig of his, Blake showed his teeth in the approximation of a smile… and stepped aside. “Wilkes wants to talk to you before you leave.”
Part of me should have been glad that I hadn’t misjudged the Silo’s commander completely, but right now, I had bigger fish to fry, and none of them had anything to do with diplomacy.
“I highly doubt that. Tell him I don’t give a fuck. We’ll be gone within the hour, and this will be the last he’ll ever see of me.” And nobody around to accuse me of being melodramatic. Just thinking about the conversation I was going to have a few minutes from now made my stomach heave. So much for holding on to that semblance of calm.
Blake inclined his head and told me where to go, not even bothering with stepping out of the elevator. The door to the shack was unlocked, letting me escape onto the tarmac outside. The air was cold enough to make me gasp as it hit my face, but that came with welcome clarity of mind. It was bright enough outside that the hazy sun shining overhead made me blink, the reflection from the snow making my eyes burn even through my heavily tinted shades. Within seconds I managed to reorient myself and find the building at the very edge of the growing town that Blake had indicated. It would take me about five minutes to walk over there. Five minutes to make up my mind. Shit, but this had been so much easier last time, flipping from being high like a kite to exhausted right out of my mind. I was tired all right, and feeling rather loopy with sleep deprivation and lack of proper nutrition, but nothing comparable to that very first dose of the booster wearing off.
I arrived at the building without a single coherent thought aligning in my mind. So much for preparation.
Nate and Burns were outside, Nate splitting wood while Burns seemed to be keeping him entertained with what looked like a rather one-sided conversation. Nate dropped the ax as soon as Burns nodded at him, alerting him to my presence. I forced my shoulders back and my spine to go ramrod straight, but all my body was capable of was maintaining a slouch. The roiling in my stomach got worse until I was afraid I was going to puke. Then I leaned over and actually expelled part of the protein bar I’d eaten what felt like days ago, the food barely digested although my body had rested a good portion of the night. Symptoms number 10,021 and 10,022. Why was I even still counting? It was all the same, anyway.
I straightened, trying to put on a brave face, but it took Nate exactly one second to read everything I could have said right off my expression. To someone only knowing him passingly, he would have still looked relaxed, but I could see the sudden surge of tension in his shoulders, around his eyes. While I felt ready to fold, he was gearing up for a fight as he held my gaze.
“That bad, huh?” he called across the slowly shrinking distance between us as I kept slogging on. Burns frowned, the fact that he kept his trap shut more than a little alarming.
“I have good news and bad news,” I offered. “Bad news is, I can’t drag you down with me. My cooties do rub off on you, but your body is clearing them out before they can take hold.”
“And yours?”
I shrugged, trying for levity but feeling like even that motion was about to unbalance me to the point where I’d end up on my ass, just from taking the next step. “I’m a textbook-only experience, as Sunny put it. Trust me, I’m feeling so very special right now.” That, and like I really shouldn’t be among people, whatever the control results had shown. I looked around briefly before my gaze returned to Nate’s. “Let’s just pack our things and go. I’ll fill you in on the details later.”
“Tell us what?” Jason called from where he was just rounding the corner of the building, a snow shovel in his hands. Tanner and Gita were hot on his heels, and as soon as they heard him holler, Charlie and the idiot brigade stepped out to join in as well. The rest of the Chargers and Harris and his people followed. Wouldn’t want for anyone to miss this, har har.
I opened my mouth to respond—with what, I still wasn’t sure—but the sounds of someone approaching through the snow behind me made me pause. It was Dom, doing his best to run through the powdery whiteness, a bunch of printouts in his hand. He was winded by the time he stopped beside me, ignoring the rest as he tried to form coherent sentences while gasping for air. “It could still be cross-contamination. And we didn’t have enough of your old samples left to plate them. It’s possible that you already had it all when you were here last.” It must have been obvious that I wasn’t buying it, judging from how he was squinting at me, pleading. “And you don’t show any of the symptoms—“
“Symptoms like what?” Nate cut in, clearly expecting to get a quicker answer from Dom than me.
“She’s still alive, for one thing,” Dom offered, then looked at me sideways as if to check if that was still the case. “With that number of big hitters, you should be nothing but a slab of rotting meat. What you told me about the signs of exhaustion, that could be anything, but it doesn’t necessarily point at a bacterial infection at all, let alone a full-blown contamination like that.”
I kind of expected the others to take a collective step away from me now, but they seemed highly engrossed in following the conversation—and very confused. I couldn’t hold that against them. It was hard for my brain to make sense of anything, and I knew what Dom was talking about. Mostly.
“It’s more than that,” I insisted. “And the bruise on my leg is getting worse.”
Dom made a helpless gesture. “So that’s one bruise—“
I didn’t let him go on. “My fingers have been acting up for months. I didn’t lose a good tooth just for the fun of it. I’m also having trouble digesting food. Hell, I don’t quite remember the last time I had to take a dump, and I’m not bloated like a whale. There are signs. You just don’t want to see them.” Turning to the others but mostly focusing on Nate, I voiced what was quickly becoming my living nightmare. “I’m rotting from the inside out. It’s as simple as that.”
The answering silence wasn’t exactly comfortable. Even Burns seemed at a loss for words. Sadly, that didn’t count for Dom, who, now that he’d regained his breath, was ready to prattle on.
“You haven’t yet tried to take any antibiotics, right?” He held out a small, brown paper bag to me that I only just noticed. “In here’s what we have that I think will at the very least make a dent. It will likely also screw with your gut and skin microbiome, but a week of diarrhea and some rash is still a preferable nuisance if it makes a difference. Your body’s in moderately good condition so you should be able to tough that out.”
That sounded a lot like wishful thinking to me, but I still accepted the bag, yet without checking the contents. Dom held out the papers in his other hand to me as well, and after a second’s hesitation I took them. He’d photocopied a few of the overgrown plates. The rest was a far too extensive list of bacterial species, and the results from what they’d managed to do of the blood panel. Looked like I didn’t have to worry about getting diabetes any day now.
When I didn’t do more than stare at that last paper, Nate took it from me, briefly scanning the numbers. His frown deepened into a scowl the farther down the page he got. Why did they have to print the acceptable ranges on it, too?
“So what this says is that her liver’s not doing too well, and her kidneys are pretty much shot?” he summed up the worst of the damage.
Dom gave a helpless shrug. “Not my expertise, sorry. But it makes sense.” When Nate’s glare switched from the paper to him, he downright cringed. “Her metabolism is working in overdrive to keep going at the moment. Her immune system’s running on full where it’s not failing, and the h
uman body has only so many ways to try to clear itself. The liver and kidneys are the main parts responsible for that. Kill the infection, and they’ll likely recover. It’s also possible that some of what you think are symptoms are merely by-products of your body trying to slow you down so it can work and recover.”
It all sounded so logical, coming from someone with a PhD. So easy to accept. So easy to let hope take over. But while most of the others relaxed—except for Burns, who was likely playing off my reaction, just like Nate—I couldn’t delude myself like that.
“Either that, or my body has pretty much burned through its entire resources, and the candle’s just about to snuff itself out once all the wax is gone.” Maybe a stupid analogy, but it fit to how I was feeling right now. Not quite feverish, but bone-deep weary.
Whatever Dom had been ready to offer up in his protest—that I was sure he’d keep going until I dropped dead right in front of him—went unsaid when the door to the shed opened once more, spilling out Blake, Wilkes, and a few more guards, all of them looking like they meant business. Without much thought I folded the papers and dropped them into the bag so I’d have one hand free to draw my so-far undiscovered backup gun should I need to. Nate didn’t try to disband the scowl on his face, but then why should any of us have tried to de-escalate things when they’d likely come up to kick us out for good?
Nobody spoke until the procession halted a few feet away from us. Wilkes himself stepped forward to extend an envelope to me. “I was told to hand this over to you next time you stopped here,” he said, the flatness of his tone making me guess that whoever had given him that task hadn’t exactly asked for his cooperation. As soon as my fingers closed around the manila paper, he stepped back, but his group lingered.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 22
