by Bobby Adair
“What do you mean, everybody else?” I asked.
“Look around.” Paul waved a hand at the empty corridor. “Do you see anybody up here?”
It occurred to me as I looked, I’d seen almost no one since coming onto the floor.
“Nearly everybody volunteered for infection,” he said. “There are only seventeen of us left who are keeping the place secure in case anyone comes out of the experiment with immunity.”
“How many are immune so far?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to go downstairs to watch. You see, there are one hundred and fifty-three people down there, Zed. All infected. And if the first trials are any indicator, half of them are dead already, and we’ll shoot the other half by midnight.”
“You have lost hope,” I observed.
“Hopelessness,” Paul reiterated, “is an emotion with so many ugly faces. You know, I was in the Army before I came here. I was a doctor in Iraq in both wars. I’ve seen my share of things that would make most people weep. I’ve had boys younger than you bleed to death right there on my table. Boys in uniform, who looked me in the eye, sometimes holding my hand, in that moment when they gave their lives for something they believed in.”
Dr. Evans’ eyes looked down the hall at something that wasn’t there. “You do your best, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, they die anyway. When I thought of infecting us all to save a few, intellectually it was the right thing to do, the only logical thing.”
Dr. Evans seemed at a loss for words, so I said, “I think Steph felt the same way about it.”
“Everything about it feels wrong.”
I wrestled with a tactful way to express a harsh thought but went with, “Maybe you’d feel better about it if you’d volunteered to go first.”
“I couldn’t.” Dr. Evans’ wide, sad eyes fell back on me.
“Why?” I asked, expecting to hear some bullshit about how the whole place would fall apart without him at the helm.
“Because I’m immune.”
“What?” That was a surprise.
“I was exposed the Saturday before everything got bad.” Dr. Evans pulled up the sleeve on his left arm.
“How?” I asked.
“I was bitten by a violent patient.” Dr. Evans showed me a bandaged wound on his forearm. “He was infected with the virus. His skin was pale. His temperature was elevated. His pupils were dilated. His behavior was deranged.”
I said, “I got it on that Sunday. Obviously, I wasn’t as lucky you.”
“Or perhaps, I wasn’t as lucky as you,” Dr. Evans suggested. “You can walk among them. You’ll survive if you’re careful. I’m a prey animal now.”
“Is anyone else here immune?” I asked.
“There’s Sergeant Dalhover downstairs. He got bitten early on. Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. He never turned. Like me, he never showed any symptoms. He and I are the only two here who are immune that we know of.”
“So naturally, you assumed there had to be more?” I asked.
Dr. Evans nodded. “It was the logical conclusion.”
“Is Sergeant Dalhover the one in charge of shooting of the infected downstairs?” I asked, trying to mask the urgency I felt at the thought of finally arriving at Steph’s location, only to get there one bullet too late.
Dr. Evans confirmed with a nod. We arrived at the door to the stairwell that would take us down. He looked through the window to confirm there was no movement on the landing. In a new habit of all the living, Dr. Evans very quietly pushed the door open.
I followed him into the stairwell, carefully and without a sound. As much as I wanted to hurry, hurrying led to mistakes, and mistakes were paid for in blood. I stopped when he did. We listened to the sounds from far below. The infected were down there, and they were pissed.
Dr. Evans looked down the center gap between the stairs.
“Anything?” I softly asked, leaning over to look myself. The pungent smell of their unwashed bodies, thick enough to taste, wafted up in the confined space.
“We’re clear for now,” he whispered. “Let’s go. They're trying to get at the soldiers behind the barrier down there. They never give up."
“Can they see the soldiers through the barrier?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” he answered.
“They won't give up as long as they can see your guys,” I said.
Evans stopped halfway down the first flight of stairs and gave me his attention.
“Look,” I said to him, “if they can't see you or hear you, they eventually lose interest and go away.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“I got lucky,” I said. “It worked the first time I tried it.”
Evans started downward and didn't speak again until we were on the next flight of stairs. “I don’t think Sergeant Dalhover would agree with you on that.”
I figured I’d give him another nugget of solid gold advice. “You know every time you shoot a gun all you accomplish is to draw more of them in.”
“It's been discussed,” said Paul.
“It's true,” I reiterated.
Dr. Evans said nothing else on the subject until he swung the door open for us to leave the stairwell. “Why don’t you talk with Sergeant Dalhover about what you know? If we need to alter our tactics, we will.”
We came out at the nurse’s station just like the one two floors up where Dr. Evans had treated my wounds. A skinny man in civilian clothes with a very unmilitary slouch and a droopy, broken man's face eyed us lazily.
A soldier far down the hall, his weapon at the ready, called, “Everything all right, Top?”
In a raspy, smoker's voice, the skinny sergeant replied, “Yeah.” Then with no change in his posture or facial expression, he looked me over and asked Dr. Evans, “What's this?”
“Slow burn,” Evans answered as though all the life had drained out of him. He hadn’t emotionally prepared himself to be down among the volunteers.
“So they’re real?” the sergeant asked.
“So it seems,” he said.
“I'm real,” I confirmed, “and just a normal as you.”
“Yeah.” The sergeant said it in a way that made it clear he didn't agree.
I already didn't like him.
The entire length of the long hall was lined with chairs spaced about five feet apart. In most of those sat a sagging person with a torn bed sheet gag between his or her teeth, arms and feet restrained. Some of them stared at the wall across the hall. Some slept with chins on their chests. A few looked at us with interested eyes. Ten or eleven were obviously transitioning from human to beast. One close to the nurse’s station was bleeding from his mouth while trying desperately to gnaw through his gag. Down from him, the skin of a woman’s wrists and ankles were worn through from her struggles against her bonds.
Many of the chairs were empty and sat below big, bloody stains on the wall. And like red entrance ramps to a highway that nobody wanted to be on, a trail of blood led from each chair to merge with a long bloody smear to the end of the hall. It was immediately clear what was going on. When the volunteers turned symptomatic, they were shot where they sat. I asked Evans, “What are you doing with the bodies?”
In his gruff voice, Dalhover answered for Evans, “Throwin’ ‘em out the window.”
Just listening to his voice made me want to cough the phlegm out of my own lungs. “That's a bad idea.”
Using apathy as a defense, the sergeant said, “Can't keep ‘em here.”
“But the infected are eating them below,” I protested. “You're giving them a reason to keep hanging around.”
“Doesn't matter,” he said. “They'll be eating us all soon enough.”
Dr. Evans cut in. “Zed Zane, this is Sergeant Dalhover.”
Sergeant Dalhover looked at me again, with no change in his droopy eyes. He made no effort to shake my hand.
I was apparently untouchable. Fuck him
.
I said, “Hello.”
No response.
Double fuck him.
Dr. Evans, in a voice that saddened more with each word, asked of Sergeant Dalhover, “How many so far? I see lots of empty chairs.”
“Eighty-three.”
Eighty-three people, all shot in the head and tossed out a window.
Dr. Evans looked at me. “This was my idea. I’m the one who convinced these people to bet their lives on hope.”
Droopy-eyed Dalhover just stared at him.
Dr. Evans was getting hard to look at, so I scanned up and down the hall, searching for a head of red hair. “Is Steph alive or dead?”
“Steph?” Dalhover asked.
“Nurse Leonard,” I clarified.
With the smallest of gestures, he pointed. “She’s down the hall.”
My mood perked up, but I quickly tamped it down. “Fever?”
Dalhover croaked, “No.”
I didn’t ask for any more information, nor did I wait for permission. I stepped out of Dalhover’s sad gaze and hurried down the hall, looking at each face as I passed. I’d only seen Steph with a surgical mask on. Aside from red hair, green eyes, and fair skin, I had little idea what she looked like.
Chapter 8
To look down that long hall had the emotional effect of looking through a neighbor’s window while they beat a crippled dog. Walking down the hall, trying to avoid stepping on the viscous trail of coagulated blood, was viscerally painful.
Some volunteers, seeing only their last hopeless thoughts, let me pass like an invisible man.
One woman stared with tears on her cheeks at a mural of blood above an empty chair directly across the hall from her. Right there, over five or ten or twelve hours she had seen a person, perhaps someone she knew, perhaps a close friend, slowly turn from human into something else. She had watched the face lose hope when the fever came on. She witnessed the deterioration of the mind. She saw the animalistic gnawing at the gag and the scraping of skin until blood flowed. She saw the black, wild eyes where no human intellect lived anymore.
I wondered, when Dalhover’s revolver fired, ringing everyone’s ears, splitting that skull, whether she saw it as a mercy or a horror.
Down that trail of tears, blood, and utter despair, I spotted a redhead with tear-drained, but alert eyes turning to watch me approach. Recognition perked her to life and I couldn’t stop myself from running the last steps. Stopping beside her chair, I immediately started untying the strip of bed sheet that gagged her mouth.
“Hey,” Dalhover rasped from somewhere behind me.
I ignored him and removed the gag.
In a hoarse voice, Steph said, “Wow, you’re still alive.”
I swallowed hard on a lump in my throat as a faint, but real, smile stretched my lips. “Wow, you’re still alive.”
Steph’s smile was real, but it was competing with the pain on the rest of her face.
The guy in the next chair over started to squirm and grunt through his gag.
“Can you take his off too?” Steph asked.
“Okay.” I stepped over and started on the guy.
“God dammit.” Dalhover’s voice echoed up the hall.
I didn’t even look at Dalhover, but I heard his voice drop to background noise as he droned something at Dr. Evans.
To Steph I said, “And I thought I was uptight.”
Steph answered, “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.”
I shrugged as I removed the gag from the guy.
He thanked both Steph and me, then opened and closed his mouth several times to stretch his jaw muscles.
I squatted down beside Steph and started to untie her hands.
“Don’t,” she told me.
“Why?” I asked.
She said, “I might turn.”
I stopped and looked up at her. “But…”
“Leave them.” She was firm.
I stood up and stepped in front of her chair, but suddenly had no words.
The guy in the next chair over had no such problem and spoke very fast, “We were infected last night around seven. It’s like one o’clock now. We’ve got to wait until seven before we know if we’re immune, but we won’t be, though the theory is sound. Some of us, maybe a lot of us, should be immune. But so far, no winners. You know what I mean?”
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Steph said to me. “He gets excited and can’t shut up.”
The guy said, “I think fast. That’s just how I am. But not for long.” Then very softly he whispered to us. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got the fever.”
Steph tried to repress a sob.
The guy looked at Steph, pain in his eyes. Then at a normal talking speed, he said, “I’m sorry, babe.”
Babe?
Steph looked at me. “Put your hand on his forehead, see if he feels hot.”
I stepped over and laid my hand across the guy’s forehead, feeling his temperature on the skin between my bandages.
“I’m Jeff Aubrey,” he smiled weakly.
“Zed Zane,” I answered, looking down at him and shaking my head slightly. He was hot.
“I saw that,” Steph said. “He has the fever, doesn’t he?”
Jeff said, “If I hit one-oh-four before Dalhover checks us again…”
“Jeff, don’t say that,” Steph implored.
I checked Steph’s forehead for a fever. She was cooler than me.
“Babe,” said Jeff, “the odds of both of us being immune are astronomical. With me infected, that makes your odds better. I’m okay with that.” Jeff looked up at me. “Well?”
I told him, “She feels normal.”
Steph sniffled up another sob.
“Why the gags?” I asked.
“They’re to keep us from biting anyone when we turn,” Jeff answered.
Steph asked, “How did you get in here, Zed?”
I took a few minutes to convey an abbreviated version of my story.
“So, all that shooting outside a little while ago,” Jeff asked. “That was you?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“Tell me again, why did you come here?” he asked.
I looked at Steph, again wondering the same thing. I looked up and down the hall as I tried to cull my thoughts on the matter. I looked back at Steph before I spoke, “Hope. I think I was looking for hope.”
Jeff laughed bitterly. “If this is where you came to find hope, I’m glad I’m not out there.”
Without looking back to Jeff, I asked Steph, “Does he ever stop talking?”
“No,” she answered. “Now you know why I needed you to talk to.”
“For what its worth,” I said, “I’m glad you’re still alive. I’m glad that you still have a chance.”
“Hey, Zed.” Jeff demanded my attention like a needy toddler.
“Yes, Jeff?”
“I’m going to be dead in an hour or two,” he said. “I don’t know you, but you look like you like Steph.”
“It’s not like that,” I interrupted.
He asked, “Will you look out for her?”
“Jeff,” Steph implored.
“I’m already doing that,” I told him. “Besides, you might not turn. You might be a slow burn, like me.”
“That’s like hoping I win the lottery.” Jeff’s face show how little he thought of that. “Besides, that’s not what we’re doing here. Dalhover is going to shoot me at one-oh-four.”
“I can stop him,” I said, feeling the confidence of my dustup with the Whites.
“I don’t want to be one of them,” he said.
“You guys don’t need to shoot everybody as soon as they get the fever.” I looked up and down the hall at the men with guns and the evidence of what they’d been doing. It disgusted me. “You’ve got nothing to lose by waiting.”
Jeff said, “It’s been discussed. It’s been decided. I knew what I was getting into when I volunteered for the infection.”
I said, “I gue
ss I did come to wrong place for hope.”
“There might be a speck of hope,” Jeff contradicted me.
I thought about punching him in the face. Not seriously, but the thought did cross my mind. Looking back at Steph again, I asked, “Does he always do this?” To Jeff I said, “Would you pick one side of the issue? Are you hopeless or not?”
“I analyze things,” he said. “I look at all sides. I’m a numbers guy. There is hope in the numbers.”
I looked back at Steph. “What does that mean?”
“This is new to me,” she said.
Jeff squirmed against his bonds, wanting very much to move his hands as he talked. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things while I’ve been here, waiting for the infection to rot my brain.”
“And?” I asked.
“This whole thing is only going to last six to eighteen months,” he told us. “If you can find a way to last that long, then you’re home free.”
Steph asked Jeff, “What does that even mean?”
In his rapid fire speech, Jeff said, “The infection rate was over ninety-nine percent. Some of the infected died outright; most of them turned into white-skinned cannibals. For the Austin area, that meant we had nearly a million infected running around, trying to eat anything that moved.”
“Seems like I’ve heard this before.” It was like listening to Jerome all over again.
Jeff pressed on. “By the time the infection runs through the population, there might be ten thousand people who are either immune or slow burns, maybe less. Not very good odds.”
I looked up and down the hall again. I was already bored. Dalhover and Evans were talking quietly near the nurse’s station. The soldiers at each end of the hall were attentive, but hadn’t moved from their positions. About four chairs down, one of the tied-up volunteers was starting to get very agitated. He’d turned.
“Of those ten thousand,” Jeff continued, “who knows how many are still alive? It might be five thousand. It might be a couple of thousand. But with a million infected on the loose, the odds of an immune person staying alive are pretty bleak.”
Steph said, “And that’s one of the reasons everyone here was so hopeless. How can we to fight a million infected?”
