It felt like a stone rolled off my heart. It was one thing to put myself in danger, but the P’s, they were off limits. “Remind me to thank the director.”
Sharon stood up. “Ride’s here.”
“I hope they don’t keep us at the hospital forever. There’s only so much a guy can do when he’s trapped in a room by himself for too long.”
“Gross, Max.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who took it there.” Sharon frowned over at me, and the comm in my ear beeped. I held up a finger to let her know I had a call, and then hit the button to accept it.
“Go for Max.”
“Max,” Doctor Bowmont’s voice floated through the line. “How long before you make it back to the hospital?”
I looked at the driver and thought about how long it took Sharon and me to get from the hospital to the house. “Fifteen minutes, maybe less.”
“Make it less.”
“Doc, you’re kind of freaking me out right now, what’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. Just hurry.”
I clicked off the comm and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Floor it.”
Sharon gritted her teeth but didn’t ask if it meant something happened to Garfield. I knew how she felt. On top of everything else, the last thing I wanted was for my partner to die. It would be like the cherry on top of a shit sundae, and no one liked shit sundaes.
Chapter Ten
Max Meridious
“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” Holly said, meeting us at the door to the St. Luke’s Hospital.
“Well, you made it sound pretty damn important.” The words came out kind of growly. I still didn’t know why she needed us here so quickly, and I was on edge.
She motioned for us to follow her inside. We went through the double doors, passing four guards armed with assault rifles. Holly didn’t even seem to notice them, but I never liked being surrounded by a bunch of men with bigger guns than mine. She stopped at the elevator and hit the up button before looking back at us.
“Let me catch you up with what we know so far. Your partner suffered a bite to the forearm. The infection spread from the wound and up his arm. We tried to cut the infection off at the elbow.” She shook her head as if trying to banish a bad memory. “It didn’t work. Thankfully, we managed to stop it before it went past his shoulder.”
The doors to the elevator opened and Holly stepped in. “At least, I think we stopped it.”
“So he’s going to be ok?” Sharon asked a tinge of hope coloring her voice.
“I didn’t say that,” Holly frowned. “I’m just not very comfortable delivering patient information. Everything I do now is more research oriented. More labwork and less time at the surgical table. At least no one can die when I’m only doing research, and I find I rather like it that way. The worst part of the job for me was always breaking bad news to the families. I hated dealing with the emotional stuff.”
“Gordon’s dying?” Sharon looked like she was about to break.
“I can’t exactly answer that yet. This virus, it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s possible for Gordon to die anymore, at least not in the traditional sense,” Holly said matter-of-factly.
What did that even mean? “Holly, you’re not making a whole lot of sense here,” I said trying to stay calm. Panic almost claimed me back at the house, but I wouldn’t let it do the same thing to me now.
Holly looked down at her hands and then back at me. Her eyes spoke volumes about what she was feeling. There was something that she didn’t want to tell us, or she just didn’t know how.
Holly offered me a weak smile. “I’m not sure how to explain it to you, but you’ll understand when you see him. My whole point in meeting you was to try and prepare you for what you’re about to see. I hate to say I’m doing a rather poor job of that.”
Sharon gulped. “And what exactly are we about to see?”
“The future, if we can’t find a way to stop this thing,” Holly replied flatly.
Tears fell from the corners of Sharon’s eyes, but she didn’t blubber or say a word. She must have been terrified for him, and for what we might see. Holly was right, she didn’t have much of a bedside manner, but who was I to judge. I bit the head off of a lady after splattering her home with zombie brains.
Shit, I had to stop calling them that. If you went up to people and said zombies, they were going to think you were crazy. We needed a code word, like in Aliens when they call the any potential extraterrestrial creature an xenomorph. Plus there was no way to know if they were actual zombies. Shooting things in the head tended to kill just about everything on this planet, so we could just be dealing with a rabies-like virus, but if it moaned like a zombie, and death obviously wasn’t a hindrance when it came to ripping other people apart, then they must be zombies, right?
Garfield’s training told me not to rely on what I thought I knew, only to use what I was sure of. Headshots worked, and bites were bad. If this were a Hollywood set and not the city I loved, it would have been the best day of my life. Instead, I knew what an infection like this could mean for the city. If this thing slipped out of The Hilltop’s control, the government would take drastic measures to stop the spread of the infection. If you thought Phoenix was hot now, you didn’t want to see it after a nuclear strike.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. Anything we could do to avoid killing five million people had to be done. Damn the risks, you couldn’t nuke one of your biggest cities with the rest of the world watching. I wanted Garfield to be ok, but I also wanted to stop this thing. So whatever his condition was, I needed to keep it together. It might not just be my city on the line. If this thing got out, it would spread unchecked.
The doors to the elevator opened, and Holly started leading us down the hall. I could hear someone screaming, but it wasn’t words, just guttural shrieks followed by slamming noises. None of the infected we’d run into had acted like that. What in the fuck was going on? Holly said she was taking us to Garfield, was that him making the noises?
“So we’re labeling the infection as some kind of necrosis, but it doesn’t act like normal dying cells would. They don’t die, well, I guess they do die, but they still function afterward. It’s more like this infection isn’t trying to kill us, but to change us into something else. Just what that is, I don’t know yet.”
“Well, that’s horrifying,” I replied, frowning over at Holly. Sharon didn’t need to hear this, and based off the sounds coming from down the hallway, she really didn’t need to be here to see Garfield either.
“And fascinating.” She almost smiled. “It’s not often we get to discover something completely undocumented in science anymore. All of us want to discover something new, but it almost never happens.”
“I’m so happy Gordon can be your special experiment.” Sharon got right in both our faces, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And fuck you, Max, for going along with this bullshit.” She turned and stormed off down the hallway.
Holly looked shocked and on the verge of tears herself. I was angry, but not with Holly. Sharon was right, I was an asshole for letting her come this far. Once Holly started rattling off how bad it was, I should have stopped Sharon from getting off the elevator. She didn’t deserve to see this, and to hear Holly talking about it must have been torture.
“She’ll be ok, Holly. It’s just that the two of them were together, and now this.” I shrugged my shoulders. Both of us were feeling uncomfortable now, but we had to move on. If Garfield couldn’t be saved, then we had to use whatever was happening to him to save as many others as possible.
“I wasn’t even thinking about her. I was in full-on scientist mode and totally fucked up.” Holly turned and looked at me, concern still etched across her features. “How are you taking all of this?”
“I’ve had better days.” That was the understatement of the century. Satan had a better day when God tossed him from the heavens, and t
hat was a real shitty day.
“If you’re up for it, you can still see your friend.”
“There’s zero chance that I’m not going to see him.” Holly looked at me like she wasn’t sure I was up to the task. “Listen, I saw a guy with his ribs cracked open, guts and legs gone, pulling himself across the floor today. I can handle it.”
“And how’d you deal with that situation?” Holly asked looking fascinated.
“I blew its head off.”
“Try not to do that here. There’s always a chance we can find a cure.”
I hissed in frustration. “I’m getting really tired of people telling me not to shoot these things. They’re not alive anymore. You can’t feel guilty, they’re not people.” And yet I felt guilty. Guilty that I just talked about my mentor and friend like he didn’t matter. If Garfield could be saved, then I’d save him. If he couldn’t, I had to hope that I wasn’t the one who had to pull the trigger.
“Gordon’s still alive, at least he was when we took our last readings. Since we had to lock him in isolation, we haven’t been able to take any more.” Holly started walking again.
We rounded one more corner and stopped at the door. Holly scanned a security badge over it, and we stepped inside. There was a large plastic cube in the center of the room and inside of it was my partner. His knuckles were bleeding on his remaining hand, and spittle dripped from his mouth.
The stump of his arm threw me off, even though I already knew that Holly had removed it. You just can’t prepare yourself for that kind of change. A few hours ago, he had both arms and wasn’t sick. Now he was an incoherent mass of snarling rage.
Holly motioned me forward. “Don’t worry.” She touched the hard plastic. “It’d take a tank to break through this thing. Best damn portable containment unit on the planet.”
I walked slowly forward, stopping about five feet away from the clear cube. My partner turned, sniffing the air, almost like he was one of those things, and then launched himself at the Plexiglas wall. I took a step back as what remained of his shoulder slammed into the four-inch thick wall with a dull thunk. The way my day was going, I fully expected him to break out and charge me.
I let my hand rest on the grip of my gun, but I didn’t draw it. “This is bad, Holly.”
“I know, and we don’t have an answer for it.”
It took everything I had to release the Desert Eagle and to step forward. I placed a hand on the wall, and Garfield clawed at it as drool dripped from his mouth. He snarled when I moved my hand. I wasn’t sure if it was in frustration or anger, but the man I knew for the last five years was clearly gone. It was like the light behind his eyes that made him who he was had been snuffed out.
“This is worse than the dead ones. They’re slow and uncoordinated, but if something like this got out in the open it could spread the infection exponentially, we’d never be able to stop it.”
“The Hilltop agrees with your assessment. Garfield’s too dangerous to keep alive. I just wanted you, and Sharon if she was up to it, to have the chance to see him first.”
I turned away from the snarling beast in the plastic cage and looked at Holly. “I want to be there when it happens.”
“Max, I don’t think that’s a good idea. When it’s over they’re going to want to study his body immediately. You don’t want to see that.”
“Are you going to be there?” I asked, not liking the raw edge I heard in my voice.
“I’ll be leading the team,” Holly replied, sounding proud but also a little ashamed.
“Good. I’ll feel a hell of a lot better knowing you’re there. Make sure to treat him with the respect that he deserves.”
Holly took my arm and turned me away from the cage and back the way we came. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure his sacrifice isn’t made in vain.”
The determined look in her eyes told me the Hilltop picked the right woman for the job. If there was anything Holly could do to help us fight this thing, she would do it. Me, I was on board because this was my town. No one fucked with Phoenix. We live in the desert, bitches. This is where normal humans would die, but we thrived here. We’re strong in the desert, and we wouldn’t go down without one hell of a fight.
“You should try and get some rest while you can. I have a feeling the Hilltop will be calling on your services before you know it.”
“I think you’re right,” I said, looking at the door leading to the hallway. Things were only going to get worse from here. At least that was the feeling rolling around inside of my gut, and despite its faulty zombie detector, I still trusted it.
Holly moved down the hallway and back toward the elevator. “Everyone else is staying on six. Sam should have your badge waiting when you get off the elevator.”
I was about to drop a witty line like, stay in touch, when the hospital's alarms went off. Holly pulled out her phone and glanced at it before looking up at me in confusion. “The alarms are coming from level five. That doesn’t make sense. The only person we have down there is Ramirez. He made it out of surgery just fine, he’s been in recovery there for the last hour.”
“Just like Garfield,” I said, stepping into the elevator and hitting the button for the fifth floor.
“But Ramirez wasn’t bitten.”
Holly tried to climb in the elevator, but I stopped her. “Just stay safe, and make sure my partner doesn’t become our next alarm.” There would be time for me to burn in hell later. as for today, I was going to try and save as many people as I could.
“Holly, there might have been blood on the floor where Ramirez fell.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied as the doors closed between us.
I didn’t know what was happening on the fifth floor, but it couldn’t be good. If Ramirez was infected and could make more of those things, then we were in trouble. If anyone told the Hilltop what was happening, they might just try and take out the building. Maybe I could stop that before it happened.
The elevator slowed, and the bell dinged. The doors seem to open in slow motion as my hand went back to the grip of my gun. It didn’t matter what was waiting for me when the doors opened, I was ready for it.
Chapter Eleven
Max Meridious
When the doors opened, I expected to be swarmed by people trying to escape, or maybe even a horde of hungry zombies, but the lobby was completely deserted and oddly silent. The fact people weren’t running for the elevators in panic had me confused. At the very least you would have thought that the patients would have been poking their heads out of their rooms to find out what was happening. Not a lot went on in the patient wing of hospitals at night, so the flashing lights would have been some added excitement.
Then it finally hit me why I wasn’t being mobbed, there wasn’t any sound. The alarms Holly and I heard on the other floor were silent here. Either someone had cut the sound, hoping not to wake the patients, or the sound on this floor flat out didn’t work. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were the latter, but with the way my night was going so far, it had to be option one. If someone on this floor was thinking clearly enough to do that, I was going to need some backup. Nandy would know if security cut the sound.
“Operations, this is Max. I’m in the fifth-floor lobby now, it’s completely deserted. How many people were left on this floor?”
“Ramirez, four nurses, two doctors, and a security team were in the surgical area and recovery room. The hospital insisted on leaving two duty nurses behind to watch over the six patients they deemed too critical to move.” There was a slight pause as Nandy took a breath. “When we lost communication with the security team, the alarm was sounded, and on-site security started shutting off access to the other floors.”
“I heard the alarm with Holly, but it’s not working up here. Did security shut it off?”
“Negative, Max. My feed shows the alarm as functional.”
Shit. “So what in the hell is going on?”
“The reports I’m s
eeing aren’t exactly coherent, but what I can tell you for certain is Ramirez woke up and started attacking a nurse. When the security team intervened, the situation escalated quickly. In less than thirty seconds we lost radio contact with our entire security team.”
“What’s the operating theory?” I didn’t like this one bit. I was starting to feel like a hog trapped in the slaughtering pen. If a fully armed security team couldn’t handle Ramirez what was I going to do with one little hand cannon?
“The operating theory is everyone on the floor is either dead or infected. Director Chen has authorized the use of lethal force. This is the big time, Max. No room for mistakes,” Nandy said in a very curt tone.
“Ok, mom.”
“I’m serious, Max. You’re up there with no backup, and no one is coming for you if something goes wrong. Don’t take any chances.”
“Not the best pep-talk Nandy,” I snarked back, “and next time make sure they get me a bigger gun.”
“From what I’ve heard, your gun’s plenty big.” The line went dead.
At least Nandy was feeling back to normal, or at the very least she was willing to make a joke to loosen me up. The nervous laugh breaking through my dry lips sounded a little off kilter to my ears, but it did help break the tension. Nandy always knew just the right things to say to make me laugh, and nothing tickled me quite like a good dick joke. Although, I preferred when the joke wasn’t about my personal unit.
And while I might have been embarrassed or caught off guard if Holly said the same thing, with Nandy I felt right at home firing back. That’s probably why she cut the line, didn’t want to listen to me toot my own horn, so to speak. Plus, it wasn’t like Nandy was into packages like mine. In fact, if she liked Holly, we’d find ourselves in direct competition, which oddly enough made her talking about my gun less awkward.
Still, it was a shame for men everywhere that Nandy was off the market for half the planet. She was super-hot, like drop dead hot in the way that no one ever argued about it. It helped that she had exotic features, making her look a lot like Tina Desai, but her looks didn’t win the day. That honor went to her personality, and the fact she was the best operation rep the Hilltop had. Nandy could run three searches at once, all while providing operational details. I was pretty sure there would never be another person just like her.
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