The not-so lucid part of my brain helpfully supplied that of course I’d be using a bigger knife—and likely not me, but Nate—and that thought sobered me up. I didn’t try to simulate a reaction again when she went back to testing—not when it took zapping my knuckle for that finger, and the middle part of the next to get any positive results. I kept very still while they did what had to be done, same as when she continued with my right hand. I was actually surprised when I could feel something in my ring finger before she hit the knuckle. The pinkie, no change there, but that had been obvious.
Raynor got chatty again while she finished up. “You’ll likely lose several of your remaining nails, but the growth zones are mostly intact so they will regrow. Just as if you’d slammed your hand in a door.” Yeah, that was exactly what it felt like. I was starting to think they’d locked her in here just to keep the already apocalypse-ravaged world safe from her sense of humor.
She appeared above where my wide-opened eyes were staring unmoving up at the bright lights, donning a fresh pair of gloves. She checked my eyes twice again before she pulled some contraption of a machine closer; between the ultra-bright lights and whatever she’d dropped into my eyes, everything was too blurry to make out. “This will only take a few seconds.” It did, and it hurt like shit. And then I was blind.
Temporarily so, I figured, or else she would have just scooped out my eyeballs, I was sure. It was still hard not to panic as I felt more liquid hit my eyes before they were taped shut once more, only this time with soft, cotton pads that reached well onto my cheeks and forehead.
“You might need corrective laser surgery later, should it turn out that your corneas were still more damaged, but this will be an improvement,” she promised—and squeezed my upper arm, as if that would lend any comfort. “We’ll sit you up next and see if you can stand on your own. You’re still too weak to support your weight fully, but we should get a reading on whether your balance is good. We made sure to size the femur implant perfectly, but there’s always a chance of the leg not ending up the same length as it was before. Ready?”
I so wasn’t, but it turned out to be a rhetorical question. Getting moved hurt like a bitch. Sitting, too. More moving, getting worse. By the time they got me into an upright position, what felt like ten people were holding on to me. The moment my feet touched the ground and there was pressure on my toes—or what remained of them—the agony tripled. When my left leg had to take my weight, that increased exponentially—but somehow I remained lucid through all of that, because apparently, whatever was in that serum kept my brain from shorting out. That reminded me awfully of the night when Martinez had woken me up to help him get the putrefied goo out of the wound where the rebar had speared Nate, right at the very beginning. I thought I’d remembered him being unconscious through most of that, or at least the latter half of it. Now I knew that hadn’t been the case. Whatever Martinez had doped him up with to keep him still, I didn’t know but could guess now, but it certainly hadn’t knocked him out. So many fond memories.
I really couldn’t say, blind, disoriented, and half-crazy with pain, but Raynor seemed satisfied. “We’re done here,” she proclaimed. “Let’s hope you’ll make it through the night, or all these hours of hard work are wasted.”
Gee, how I hated being such a potential nuisance. But just as she sounded rather positive, I knew deep inside that I would make it. I’d had my chance to die—way back in that damn motel in the middle of nowhere. I’d gotten back up from that deathbed, and I’d be damned if I didn’t pull that stunt a second time.
Chapter 25
The two soldiers who carried me back to that cozy glass cell were somewhat more gentle with me than those that had hauled me out, kicking and, if not screaming, croaking. Raynor came along, the soft whisper of her surgical booties barely audible over the stomp of the soldiers’ boots. I didn’t really pay attention. Every single cell of my body hurt, but they somehow managed to make it worse wherever they touched me. What remained of the paralytic was wearing off quickly now, but that just meant that the muscles I involuntarily contracted because of the agony I was in hurt even more.
On the way out, I’d been rather apprehensive of the moment of my return, and not just because of all the pain I knew was in store for me. I felt none of that trepidation now. Physically, I was in so much pain that it wiped my mental slate perfectly clean. I didn’t give a flying fuck anymore about what had happened—and even less so how Nate might react to me, or I toward him.
The moment that I heard the glass pane retract to open the cell, boots stomped on the tiled floor as several soldiers must have barreled inside. Ten agonizing, shuffling steps later, and they set me down onto the mattress, the softness of the material feeling as hard as concrete where it touched my body. I lay there, limp, panting as I tried to catch my breath as my body adjusted to the different yet equally agonizing position as before. I was starting to suspect that just existing was the part that made it worse, not actual muscle tension or contact. Too many nerves all through my body were misfiring, turning it all into an endless torrent of pain—
“What the fuck did you do to her eyes!” I heard Nate shout, the anger in his voice such a relief that I would have smiled if my face hadn’t been swollen like a balloon. No question, that was all him, as he was supposed to be. One less thing to worry about.
Raynor made that clucking sound again that I’d heard way too many times today for it not to give me nightmares. “Only what was necessary. She has massive retinal scarring, likely caused from the primary infection with the virus. There’s nothing we can do anything about. But what we could do was smooth the surface of her corneas. She will never regain perfect eyesight, but that should help with the hypersensitivity. Do you want a full scientific explanation? I’d rather not waste time better spent otherwise. We still have to analyze her blood and see how her body is reacting to the serum. We’ve had subjects before that got a primary viral infection before inoculation, but no one with such extensive decay yet. So if you will excuse me now, I’m still not done making sure your wife survives. I hope you understand.” Anyone else would have delivered that speech with biting sarcasm, but her level tone made it just… surreal. My favorite part was the mention of decay.
No verbal answer came from Nate, but judging from the sounds of bodies moving, they must have had him pinned to the wall before and only let go after Raynor had exited the cell. The glass pane locked back into place, and silence fell, except for maybe a minute later when I heard a body hit the floor—Nate sitting down somewhat forcefully well away from me, I guessed.
Eventually, I managed to roll myself into a ball, lying on my side, not that it helped much—but at least it kept the part of my back free and elevated that felt like one huge, open wound. I wondered if I still had anything left in there. Maybe they’d stuffed me with straw to keep my few remaining organs from bouncing around. Why I found that funny, I couldn’t say, but trying to laugh was not a good idea. It sounded more like a groan, anyway. I heard Nate move, but only for a second, not enough for him to get up. He was keeping his distance, and suddenly, that was worse than all the physical pain anyone could ever inflict on me, all taken together.
Exhaling slowly to steel myself, I unfurled my right hand from where it had ended up somewhere in front of my stomach, blindly reaching for him. The mental image of how that must have looked—with only three fingers peeking out from the bandages, and so obviously not much left underneath—made my skin crawl, but there was nothing I could do about that now. Fact was, I needed him, and I needed him now.
He was up and hunkering down next to me in a second, the warmth of his body like a brightly shining sun after spending eternity in the dark, dank cold of winter. I did my best not to tense and hiss as he tentatively touched my shoulder, but thankfully he intuitively understood that it was impossible to actually keep from hurting me. He was quick to gather me up in his arms and pull me close, wrapping himself around me like the best security blanket in t
he world. They’d dressed me in scrubs again before carrying me out of the OR, but I could feel the bandages and scrubs already soaking through with blood again—or, more likely, pus and lymph. He didn’t seem to care.
Neither of us said a word, not that we needed to. Feeling him so close was all the comfort he could give me—and all that I really needed. And I could tell that the sentiment was mutual. So we stayed like that, both wide awake, incapable of truly getting any rest.
Time passed. Lots and lots of time I had no way of measuring. They’d started taking me apart late afternoon, and I was sure that it had been well past morning again when they’d brought me back. It was likely night once more when I felt it, a strange sensation spreading through my body, alien—but at the same time, not. It had been there when the fever waned that should have killed me, back when my body had kicked the infection that billions had succumbed to. I’d lost it somewhere along the way since then, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly when. The only actual, physical sensation of the serum, I figured. I tried to rack my brain to remember if Nate had tried giving me a blood transfusion back then, but came up blank. Antibodies might have been strong enough to keep the virus in check, but not cause something like this. His blood might have transferred some of it to me—but no, I hadn’t felt a similar effect a few days ago when he’d done just that and gotten me moving just long enough to get there. But there was one other component that I knew for a fact had entered my blood, and with quite the punch—the booster shots that we’d gotten from the guys at the Silo. The very same—or only marginally modified—booster shots that we’d had with us when we’d started the assault on the base in Colorado. Huh.
My brain really didn’t have the capacity left to go through this in an orderly fashion, but I was rational enough that I could cross out the most paranoid option—that, in fact, something in that booster had caused the secondary infection that had led to my body pretty much starting to decompose. That would have happened much faster had that been the case. But what about the alternative? Was it possible that the booster had contained at least some components of the serum itself? Just enough to give me an edge to stop the zombie virus infection halfway, and again delay the onsetting later stages of that for a few more months? Dosage could vary, of course, but if it had been about the same, the booster altogether had been about a tenth of the amount of liquid that had entered my bloodstream compared to what they’d shot me up with here.
Who had developed that booster? Sunny? Or had he just been the one to hand it over to Nate? He’d been awfully quick to join Dom and my effort to find out what was wrong with me as we’d gotten to the Silo last time. And he’d been all up in my business about the miscarriage. Did I know anything about him, really? What he’d been up to before the shit had hit the fan? How he’d ended up at the Silo? Was it possible that he was a mole—or, like so many of the former military personnel who had ended up on our side as well, knowing what lurked in the underground bunkers but desperate not to end up there? Had he somehow learned about the trap—or anticipated it—and handed Nate the key to keep me alive through it, come what may?
Or was I just grasping at random straws in my attempt not to think about the more immediate ramifications?
There was no way to get an answer for those questions now, and eventually, all those thoughts fragmented and got swept up in the red haze of agony infusing every cell of my body.
It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I was still alive.
Chapter 26
I knew someone was coming before I heard their steps outside. Nate didn’t move, but he tensed. He hadn’t done that all night, although he must have gotten cramps in his legs and back from staying immobile for so long. I tried to do a quick assessment of my current state, but nothing much had changed. Everything hurt. What didn’t hurt was stiff, and made me paranoid that they hadn’t gotten everything out and parts of me were still rotting away, like an apple that looked all red and shiny from the outside, until you cut it in half and found the entire core full of decay. I’d known this had been going on with me for weeks if I was honest with myself, but somehow I’d managed to ignore the ramifications. Only now that I was—hopefully—no longer a slowly degrading mind in a flesh suit that had overstayed its welcome, I was freaking out.
Of course Nate felt my rising agitation, which only caused more tension in him. I could tell that he was gearing up for a fight, reading the cause for my anxiety wrong. Part of me was vaguely satisfied that he would blindly hurl himself at what he must know to be an overwhelming force just to make me feel… what, exactly, I didn’t know. Safe? Protected? The far overwhelming majority of me wanted to slap some sense into him instead. Grand gestures aside, it wasn’t worth it, and we had to play our cards right to come out ahead—and to have even anything left to play with. Only how to communicate that to him with my jaws feeling like granite, and my mind still struggling to form coherent thoughts?
The glass panel slid aside, the signal that my time was up. Nate slowly eased me off him, gentle but with underlying urgency. I did the only thing I could think of and grabbed for the first part of him I could blindly reach—his arm—and squeezed. Pain exploded across my right hand—should have used the left—making me wince. He relaxed, his fingers briefly brushing across my knee as if to tell me that he’d understood. I hoped that was the case, or things would get ugly soon. Not that they were quite rosy to begin with.
I forced myself to remain as relaxed as possible as I heard the different people come in. Most left heavy thuds in boots, but I could hear that soft whisper of the surgical booties again. My guess was that Raynor hadn’t bothered with getting any sleep—or changing clothes, although I sincerely hoped that she wasn’t still in anything that was covered in my blood and all the ghastly things she’d removed from my body. No, she’d never contaminate her workplace like that, even if I got the feeling that they’d mass-inoculated their entire staff, just to be sure.
Made me wonder for a moment how many incidents with sudden conversion they’d had.
I felt Nate move away from me, making me guess that Raynor had made a shooing motion in his direction, as no one had barked any threats yet. Someone in the back cleared his throat, and there was some rustling of clothes going on, but overall it sounded like a somber procession. I figured I would soon know when I felt deft, small hands grab my head to peel away the soaked cotton pads.
The light was blinding through my closed lids, but nothing new there. I felt her wipe at the liquid that had leaked from my eyes before she slowly peeled first one, then the other lid back to check what lay underneath. The light was still harsh and stung, but nothing like before. Actually, the entire room had a different tint than I remembered from when we’d gotten here, the quality of the light warmer, the hues slightly changed. Everything was quite hazy, even Raynor’s face right in front of me, making it hard to recognize.
“Looking good,” she observed, already coming at me with that damn eyedropper again. “Give it a few minutes, and you’ll actually be able to see. I will check on your bandages in the meantime.” Considering that I felt like a mummy, I hoped she meant literal minutes, because she could have easily spent hours if she wanted to do a thorough examination. Before she started, she fixed me up with an infusion, the murky liquid not very reassuring as it started disappearing into my vein.
I expected her to make me strip again—that woman seemed to have no sense whatsoever for privacy where her victims were concerned—but she just had me hunch over so that she could pull the back of my shirt up to check there. I tried very hard not to groan as she started prodding me, hitting the worst spots every time. At least I only had the corner to glare at that slowly took on sharper edges as my eyesight normalized.
“Antiseptic and scalpel,” Raynor barked, making someone scurry forward, likely one of the nurses. When she swabbed the area she was going to cut first, I felt like she could have just doused me from head to toes as well. The burn of the scalpel
parting my freshly healed skin I might have managed to endure in silence, but when she started prodding and squeezing, there was no way around giving voice to the intensely sharp pain that caused. Raynor ignored me, instead talking to Nate. “Do you know how to do sutures?”
There was a significant pause before he replied from somewhere close behind me, roughly next to her. I was surprised no one had dragged him further away. “If I need to, yes.”
“You will,” Raynor stated, matter-of-fact. He must have given her the incredulous look that I felt appear on my face because she snorted. “I’m sure that you will be the only one who she’ll let touch her, so either you do it, or she’ll have to deal with prolonged complications from recurring sepsis for a while. Her body is healing well, her immune system obviously working at maximum capacity, but it was impossible for us to remove every single cell that needed to go. It was unnecessary as well, as her body can do a much better job than us, but that means that for the time being, someone will have to reopen the wounds that keep oozing pus. Just make sure to disinfect the scalpel and surrounding skin, drain the wound, clean it—like this.” I hissed loudly when the part she’d been working on, the previous pain finally dulling, flared up anew. “And then you stitch it back up and slap on a bandage. Everything that’s been closed up for over twenty-four hours and doesn’t require additional attention you can leave as it is.”
That went on for the better part of twenty minutes—could have been twenty hours for all I knew, but the former sounded more realistic—until she had me roll over so she could work on my abdomen, and, after that, ditch my pants to get to my thigh. I tried very hard not to look at anything but the very interesting walls.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 34
