by Joshua Guess
“Aahhhhh! You fucker!” Kell shrieked, punching the zombie in the face with his other hand. “Get off!”
The pain wasn’t debilitating so much as intolerable. It was the sort of pinching sensation that made you feel like someone twisted the frequency knob of sensation in your body up as far as it would go. It was the tiny pinch a playful girlfriend might use on the back of your arm, but multiplied a thousand times.
The zombie raked at him with its hands, but he was having exactly none of that bullshit. Kell caught one hand and ducked away from the other, and he squeezed the captive fingers until they popped like a stack of kindling. A vicious twist at the end for good measure, and suddenly Kell and the zombie were on more even ground.
Not seeing a better way out of the fight and knowing the shooters wouldn’t risk firing at him with the zombie close enough to have its teeth in him, Kell swallowed hard and jammed his thumb into the thing’s eye socket.
His belly did flips worthy of an Olympic gymnastics routine as he tried hard not to think about what he was doing. The zombie actually helped in its own way by refusing to release its lock-jawed grasp on his arm. Kell used the leverage to push his thumb in farther. He ignored the flailing good hand scrabbling at his jacket, only using his elbow to block it when the zombie tried to claw at his face.
Thoroughly entrenched, he curled his hand into a fist and tried to yank the zombie’s head away. It didn’t work. Breaking into the brain cavity wouldn’t work with just his gloves. He needed another weapon from his belt, having dropped the broken baton.
In a flash of brilliance, Kell ripped his hand free and snatched the zombie’s good arm, forcing it into the hand whose arm was trapped in the zombie’s jaws. He held it as firmly as possible with someone trying to gnaw through his muscles and tendons.
He and the zombie struggled drunkenly together, each trying to maintain balance and gain some measure of advantage over the other. Kell let the thing push him back a few feet as he swept a hand down to his belt.
There, he found a notched handle.
“Got you now,” Kell said as he whipped the screwdriver up and jammed it into the zombie’s eye socket. The thin tip ricocheted off bone, not quite gaining purchase. It was a longer tool, the heavy variety used for industrial work.
He eased it back, angled it up, and shoved as hard as he could. The zombie shuddered as bone cracked, but didn’t fall. The screwdriver remained wedge in place, so Kell took a risk and let go for a second, then whacked the bottom of the handle with the palm of his hand in a bad imitation of the palm-thrust Mason had drilled into him on the training ground.
The zombie went out like a light, its jaws relaxing as it crumpled to the ground. Kell glanced around to see the others all working, some hauling zombie bodies out of the way while others continued moving logs.
He bent at the waist with hands on knees and took a few deep breaths.
From behind him came Emily’s voice.
“What are you planning to do with that?” she asked as she stepped into his field of view. She was pointing at the still-moving but deeply broken carcass of the zombie he’d tried so hard not to kill.
“I want to study it,” Kell said. “This herd was all New Breed, no protective layer of regular zombies. There might be something different about these guys.”
“Maybe,” she said skeptically, “but doesn’t it seem more likely they just ate all the other zombies and this was all that was left? I mean, New Breed do that, don’t they? This is a pretty remote location. Besides, where are you going to put it? We don’t have a lot of room.”
“Well, you see…” he began confidently, then trailed off quickly. “Um. Actually, I think you’re right. Shit.”
Laughter danced in her eyes, but her words were kind. “You’re such a scientist sometimes. You see something out of place and the first place that big old brain of yours goes is to try to figure out why. It’s adorable. But if you think I’m sleeping with that thing anywhere near me, you’re super wrong.”
He yanked the screwdriver free and walked over to the struggling body, ending its misery. He’d been caught up in the moment, stressed by recent events, and looking for anything to keep his interest for longer than a pit stop. It was a trap he’d fallen into several times at college.
As soon as he had a lab, that dangerous lack of focus would no longer be a problem.
Mason
The rest of the trip was routine for everyone but Mason. There were the usual scares you ran across from a group of people whose paranoia had kept them alive against all odds. A zombie herd here, the distant sound of gunfire there. Every instance of something out of the ordinary equaled a shot of adrenaline and hyper-awareness.
Not for Mason. While the others spent long periods of drive time bored with punctuation marks of excitement now and then, his experience went from bad to worse. The shot to his hip grew more painful as time dragged on, a dull ache radiating out and down until it covered the top half of his leg and his whole pelvis.
He told Judith, of course, because he wasn’t a fucking idiot, but that was as far as it went. Everyone else had to focus on getting to Haven, and worrying about him wouldn’t make that any easier. Judith was concerned, but their medicine was limited and without diagnostic capabilities beyond basic observations it was next to impossible to know the exact cause.
Mason was content with this state of affairs right up until he passed out and woke up somewhere new. One second he was sitting semi-reclined on one of the long benches in the RV, the next he was coming to in a room lit brightly by the sun streaming through windows.
A familiar room. In a familiar house.
“I don’t want to scare you,” a voice said, “but you’ve been asleep for one hundred years!”
Mason turned his head slowly and saw a familiar face. “Phil? How did I get here? What happened?”
Phil, who despised being called Doctor Phil and was universally known by that name, grinned. Formerly an oncologist, he’d worked under Haven’s previous medical guru, Evans, before the old man died. “Well, you clearly know you’re in Haven, so that’s good. I was a little worried there for a bit. You spiked a fever high enough that we were concerned it might give you brain damage. That by itself is really interesting, since usually people can only get that hot from an external source. Like being trapped in a small, enclosed space that gets heated up.”
“Car trunk,” Mason said. “I remember a story about some kid getting brain damage from being locked in a car trunk.”
Phil nodded. “Sure, that’d do it. Still rare, though. We think the organism did it when your infection got really bad. You were only that hot for a minute or so, then the fever broke and dropped pretty rapidly. I’ve been a doctor for a long time, man, and this is some weird shit far above my pay grade.”
The last time Mason woke up in a bed being tended to medically was when he’d received his scars. A small part of him didn’t want to ask the next question, didn’t want to think about the horrible possibilities. “So…what happened? How bad is it?”
Phil pulled a chair over and sat near the foot of the bed facing Mason. “First of all, you’re fine. Honestly. You might need a little rehab, but we’ve got access to all kinds of medicine now, so your infection is easy enough to treat. As for what happened? A splinter of bone from the gunshot to your hip wedged itself near a nerve and the whole thing got infected pretty badly. The pain you were feeling was a combination of inflammation and nerve impingement. We fixed all that.”
Relief and mild confusion flooded Mason’s brain. “Why did I pass out?”
Phil’s grin returned, this time crooked. “You were really sick. In a lot of pain. You’re a tough guy, but you’d been running on little sleep for days, virtually starvation rations, and the infection was working its way through you. I think it was mostly your body trying to conserve its energy, though I wouldn’t put it past Chimera playing some part in it.”
The word hung in the air for a few seconds.
> “Chimera,” Mason said. “What’s that?”
Phil laughed. “It’s okay. I’ve known about Kell for a while. I know who he is, all that stuff. The people in charge here wanted me up to speed in case your little village suddenly needed a surgeon.”
That was a relief; Mason didn’t have the energy for pretense. “How long was I out? And when can I leave. I’m starving.”
Phil shrugged. “I’d like to observe you for a day or two. From what Judith told me, the wounds that should have killed you were surprisingly free of infection,” he said, waving at Mason’s scarred face. “Chimera fights infections, from what we’ve seen, so I find it weird and unsettling that it didn’t keep up this time. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be looking for, but I want to look for it anyway just to make sure you don’t have some weird reaction.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Let’s see; you passed out three days ago. You were in and out until your friends got you here, at which point I sedated you. Kept you under.”
Mason belted out a grim laugh. “You were worried I’d die and come back, or lash out in my sleep.”
Phil shrugged. “You know, it’s kind of scary how that sentence doesn’t sound crazy to me anymore. I’ll see what kind of food I can rustle up for you. Since the end of the war, trade has only gotten better. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how things have changed.”
Mason snorted. “Man, I don’t care if it’s a bag of raw potatoes as long as it fills my stomach.”
They didn’t feed him raw potatoes. In fact, the meal Mason wolfed down were among the best since the apocalypse began. Haven had grown large enough and its trade was broad enough that some small luxuries were becoming common. The venison steak he ate not long after his conversation with Phil was seasoned with garlic and onion powders. When Mason asked about it, Phil explained that someone actually made them by hand.
It was the little things that made civilization.
Judith and Hal came to visit later in the evening. Judith looked him over with a clinical eye, forgoing any pretense of confidentiality or privacy as she studied the handwritten chart at the end of his bed. Hal looked more Santa than biker, his eyes as full of laughter as Mason had ever seen them when he leaned in to give him a hug.
“You’re looking better,” Hal said when he straightened. “Haven’t been that worried for you since we found you on that road.”
Mason shrugged. “The infection was pretty bad, Phil said. I guess the old bug isn’t fighting them off for me like it used to.”
Judith dropped the chart back in its plastic cradle and leaned on the foot of the bed. “Doesn’t that worry you? It concerns me. What if it’s mutating? We should have Kell take a look.”
“If you want,” Mason said. “I’d rather not distract him with side work, but if it might help him get a better handle on Chimera…”
The truth was, Mason doubted Kell would be surprised by any sudden changes to the Chimera in his system. Over the months he’d offered tissue sample after tissue sample for study, even allowing himself to be injected with early attempts at a cure. It was risky as hell since no one knew exactly how much of Mason’s physiology relied on the deeply entrenched organism to function, but he thought it was worth it, and Kell was meticulously careful.
He didn’t say any of that out loud, of course. Judith would be furious he’d let himself be a test subject without letting her know, and Hal would be equally upset for risking his health.
“I’ll go down to wherever he’s staying and have him take some blood samples,” Mason said. “If that will make you feel better. Thinking about it, where is he staying? Last I heard this place was almost a mile on a side.”
“Bigger,” Hal said. “And you won’t find him here. We’re set up off site.”
“We?” Mason said. “Everyone from Iowa is together?”
“Not everyone,” Judith said when Hal looked away uncomfortably. “Most of those who came with us moved into Haven. They’re staying permanently. Andrea, her kids, most everyone else. Lee will be staying with Kell and Emily as he heals. Our group is camped there.”
Mason waited for her to fill out the list. It didn’t happen.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Everyone else is living in Haven now?”
“Yes,” Judith said with a tired sigh. “That was the point of coming here, wasn’t it? To get to safety? Most of those children lost their parents. Did you really expect all of them to stay with us when there are so many more options in Haven itself?”
Mason felt his throat constrict with a sudden, powerful sense of loss. He had known their home was gone, of course, but until that moment the depth of what it meant to him was buried deep. Though he hadn’t spent much time doing the day-to-day things many others had, their little walled village was the first place he’d been able to come back to since leaving Haven long before it had been given that name.
Somehow he’d convinced himself they would carve out a place here together. Not overtly; just a set of assumptions in the back of his mind. A way to preserve something of what their community had been.
“Can’t blame them for spreading out,” Mason said. “Have to do what’s best for the kids.”
Phil returned, and Judith walked off to speak with him. Hal crossed his arms and leaned a hip against the bed.
“You okay, kid?”
Mason nodded stiffly. “Yeah. Just…hard to wrap my head around it, you know? When it was about the fight, the reality just didn’t sink in. Everyone who lived there is spread out or dead.”
“You religious at all?” Hal asked.
Mason chuckled. “Change of subject, much? No. I’m not.”
“I wasn’t trying to distract you,” Hal said. “Back when I was young, real young, I was what you might call devout. My mom always talked about signposts. Seemed like everything was a sign about something important. I bought into the idea when I was a kid, not so much later on.”
Mason smiled. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
Hal gave him a mock frown and brandished a fist. “Respect your elders. I don’t really think much of the idea these days, but you have to admit it’s pretty clear what we need to do.” His eyes searched Mason’s for a few seconds. “Me, Judith, our group? We’re built for travel. We do small jobs really well. Some of that is just learning to survive, some is stuff you taught us. I reckon Kell, Emily, and Lee aren’t going to let anything stop them from getting that cure done and handed out. We’re going to help them do it.”
Of course they were. Mason, at least, had always planned for it. He had assumed Hal and the others would go along, but hadn’t yet asked. “So?”
“So,” Hal said, “we don’t have anyone to worry about but ourselves, now. Everyone we helped get here is moving on without us. We’re free to do the damn job. You should be happy about that, son. Those bastards hurt us, but they didn’t stop us.”
Mason had little else to do but think after the others left. The night staff at the clinic didn’t bother him, only checking his vitals once now that he was awake and out of the woods. He stared at the ceiling for a long while, slowly tensing and relaxing muscles as a kind of dry run for getting back on his feet. The aches and pains of age, which his lifestyle had begun bestowing on him in his early thirties, had gradually faded. Chimera’s work, he knew. Fresher discomforts flashed through him as he tested the muscles in his hip and leg. Slowly and carefully, he explored his limits.
How many homes could someone lose in a lifetime before their ability to cope failed them? Mason thought he might be at his limit. Violence had always come easily, but he’d rarely had a thirst for hurting someone. Now all he could do as the muscles tensed and relaxed, joints slowly rotating, was think about the different ways he could rain hell down on Rebound and their agents. He wasn’t angry, which itself was unnerving. The fire behind the urge to make those responsible pay was fueled by that deeper sense of loss.
He wondered for the first time if Kell, who blamed himself for the fall of civilization and
billions of deaths, felt this way. If so, Mason’s respect for the guy increased a thousand times over. He had lost a home, a collection of people in a specific place, and he found himself obsessing over making someone regret it. Kell’s loss was so much more profound, both in depth and scope.
He would have to ask Kell how he coped with the weight of it once he was back on his feet.
Emily
The lab, Emily had to admit, was impressive. When she’d been told their space would be located outside Haven proper, her first instinctive response was a vague anger overlaid on wary resignation. Of course they wouldn’t have the protection of the walls. Of course they’d be stuck on the ass end of nowhere.
In reality, they were right across the street. The building had formerly been part of the local National Guard airfield, meant to hold several helicopters. It was a huge slab of cinder block and prefab aluminum with doors easily capable of keeping out the undead.
The interior was cozy. So cozy, in fact, that she had a hard time waking Kell up.
“Get out of bed,” she said for the third time, with no response. “I’m literally on fire! I’m going to die if you don’t move your ass right this second!”
He mumbled and rolled over, pulling the pillow on top of his head.
“How dare you,” Emily whispered dramatically, then dropped onto him with a well-placed elbow.
“What the shit, man?” Kell shouted as he sat up. “You could have just said something.”
Rather than argue with him, Emily bounced to her feet. “We have a busy day. I have to go get your test subjects. Then bring Mason over here. Then check to make sure our supplies are stocked up. While you get to play with your new toys.”
The interior of the hangar was immense by the standards most people had for living space. What had originally been one open area with a few offices along a wall had been transformed. One bay was enclosed by walls and ceiling added by Will Price’s people. That was the lab. Two offices were converted to utility areas, one holding water tanks fed by rooftop collection, the other car batteries and the power system keeping the lights and lab machinery working.
