All Our Tomorrows (16 page)

Sanity?

She’s the one that’s insane.

I have no idea what she just said and would struggle to repeat that four-letter acronym back to her, but it’s important for me to stay in control of what little I can and not react aggressively. I need to figure out how to get the hell out of here. I desperately want to ask about Steve, but I’m not going to let her know that. I won’t give her any mental leverage over me.

“Are you worried about your companion?”

Companion? He has a name. All you have to do is ask him.

“Steve?” I reply, feigning ignorance. She must know, but she plays along too.

“Yes,” she says, leading me down a long corridor, but she doesn’t offer me anything else by way of explanation. It seems we’re both fishing for answers beyond mere words.

The corridor is old and unkempt. Paint peels from the walls and I’m left wondering if this building looked roughly like this a decade ago when the outbreak first occurred. It seems like a relic from several generations ago. Darkened rooms are set evenly spaced along the length of the corridor. The doors don’t look like they’ve been opened in years. Several of the rooms have been ransacked, if not by Zee, then by looters. Others have been gutted of their contents. Scratched, worn linoleum reveals where desks and chairs once stood.

Lights flicker overhead.

“You have electricity,” I say, shifting the subject away from Steve. I’m sure it will return to him soon enough, but I have a point to make. You’re not in control here. You will get nothing from me except on my terms. It’s a weak point, as a gun to my head could probably elicit just about any answer she wants, but I’m nothing if not a stubborn bitch when I want to be, and everything I’ve been subjected to makes me hate what I’m walking into.

Whoever these people are, they’ve survived for almost a decade with roughly the same level of technology and lifestyle as before the overthrow, and that makes me deeply suspicious of them. If they really are the US Army, why aren’t they out there helping us? Why aren’t they taking the fight to Zee? Why have they hidden away underground?

“Yes,” she replies to my comment about electricity. She glances over her shoulder as she leads me on, wanting to make eye contact. That’s quite telling. I don’t think she intends to be mean or cruel. She’s sincere. Sincerely fucked up, but sincere nonetheless. I can hear two, possibly three sets of boots behind me, so only some of the soldiers have followed us.

We turn down another hallway. The lighting is erratic. Some of the lights work, most don’t, leaving long sections of the corridor shrouded in darkness. Whatever technology they’ve managed to salvage, and regardless of their fancy PQST machine or whatever the hell it’s called, they’re struggling just like us. Perhaps life isn’t as tough in here as it is on the commune, but it’s no bed of roses either.

“Your friend. Steve. He’s received medical care. He’s doing fine.”

And with those words, I feel an emotional power shift. Whoever she is, she felt obliged to tell me about Steve. Living in here might have made these guys soft. I doubt Marge or Ferguson would have conceded information quite that quickly if they’d caught a couple of bandits near the granary.

Judging by what I’ve seen so far, the medical care Steve’s received is probably far better than anything we could offer him at the commune, but still I’m not impressed. These guys weren’t forthcoming in providing that. They left him on that stage for a couple of days.

Again, I don’t respond, trying to appear detached, as though it’s no big deal. It’s a big deal, but I’m not going to let her know that.

I may not be swinging a baseball bat or packing a Glock, but I’m determined to be just as ruthless as I am with Zee. As I haven’t responded, the woman turns to make eye contact again. I guess she wants to make sure I heard her correctly. Outwardly, I smile, but inwardly, I’m as cold as ice. Marge taught me that.

I touch at my ear, which is weeping blood onto my surgical smock.

“We’ll get that looked at,” she says.

“Thanks,” I reply, appearing to concede some ground but, hey, my ear would be fine if someone hadn’t struck me with a rifle butt!

Astronauts, soldiers in biowarfare suits and fire-fighting equipment—I think I have these guys figured out. I don’t think there’s a real soldier among them. I think it’s all a show. At least, that’s my working theory. It’s an interesting idea, and one I want to test.

The woman in uniform opens a metal fire door and we step from one building into another. I think we’re in some kind of basement tunnel as none of the rooms have any natural light, and there’s a drainage ditch running beneath the floor. Water trickles past beneath my feet.

This new building looks as though it was built at an entirely different time. The corridor is wider and lined with linoleum instead of concrete, while the roof is higher. Also, the last corridor had a false ceiling, while this corridor has fire sprinklers set every ten feet, hanging from the unfinished concrete ceiling. A sheet metal ventilation duct runs above the walkway.

I’m learning far more about my captors than they are about me. There’s not that many of them. They’re too spread out. They either don’t or won’t expose themselves to the outside world. Like rats in a sewer, they hide from the sunlight.

The boots behind me echo down the lifeless, empty corridor as we walk on.

“And we’re still in the Marshall Space Flight Center?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“That’s a long way from the mall.”

“Yes, it is.”

She’s evasive, careful with her information. I believe her about being in the Marshall Space Flight Center, as I can’t think of what she’d stand to gain by lying. Maybe these are maintenance tunnels running between the main buildings or something.

We walk up a flight of stairs, through another steel fire door, and down another corridor. All this time, there hasn’t been a single other person in either the hallway or any of the adjacent rooms. Each detail is painting a picture for me of what I’m actually dealing with, and it’s not what I’m being sold.

As my captor goes to open a door leading into a side room, I catch the name on her uniform: Bennet. She has the sleeves of her baggy army fatigues rolled up, but not to the middle of her forearm or up to her elbow, just over her wrists. This isn’t her uniform.

“Elizabeth, is it?” I ask, pointing at her name tag.

“What? No.” she replies somewhat nervously. She works with a key in the lock, trying to open the door. It’s the wrong key, and she tries several more keys as she replies, asking, “Why did you call me Elizabeth?”

Wrong key. Awkward soldier act. This isn’t the norm for her. And she’s rattled by me calling her Elizabeth. It’s as though I said something I ought not to know. Interesting.

“It’s a joke,” I say, trying to appear lighthearted and nonchalant. “You know, Elizabeth Bennet from
Pride and Prejudice
? You must get that all the time.”

“Oh, yeah,” she replies, finally getting the door unlocked. Her eyes drop away from mine. She’s lying. Looking at her, she must be in her mid thirties, which would put her in her twenties when the apocalypse struck. If she was in the commune, she’d have kids by now.

Kids are the antithesis of zombies. They’re the only means we have of increasing our ranks. Zee cheats. Zee steals. Even though children consume time and food, they repudiate the apocalypse. Kids remind us there’s always a tomorrow. I can’t be sure, of course, but I don’t think she’s had any kids. Giving birth changes a woman’s body. Elizabeth doesn’t strike me as someone that’s nurtured a child.

The door opens out into a cafeteria. I’m expecting to see soldiers, but the people inside the cafeteria are wearing jeans and t-shirts along with the occasional lab coat. They look relaxed. A couple of them are sitting on the tables with their feet on the benches, chatting with each other.

Steve is seated at one of the tables facing the door. He sees me and his face lights up.

“Haze!”

That sudden smile melts my heart.

“Steve!” I cry, rushing over to him and hugging him tight. Like me, he’s dressed in a surgical gown. We embrace. I never want to let him go.

As he holds me close, he whispers softly in my ear, saying, “Be ready to grab a gun.”

I love Steve. Those weren’t quite the romantic, tender words I was expecting, but I was about to say the same thing. I give him another squeeze, wanting to assure myself he’s real.

Reluctantly, I push back, taking a good look at him. He’s covered in bandages, including one around his chest just visible beneath his semi-transparent surgical gown, but they’re clean, fresh and new. Actual sterile bandages—I haven’t seen these for years!

“Oh, look at you,” he says, playing his part well. He leans back, still holding my arms just above the elbow. He glances at my gown and suddenly I’m acutely aware I’m not wearing anything beneath the flimsy cotton.

“God, it is good to see you,” he says, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek.

Cheek?

To hell with that!

I make sure he lands one on my lips!

Steve looks fresh and alert, too fresh and alert. He’s sore, I can tell that from how stiff he is when he moves, but when I last saw him, he was at death’s door. I’m left wondering how much time has elapsed between when I was knocked unconscious by the astronaut in the mall and waking in the chamber of illusions, for lack of a better term. PBS? Was that the acronym they used to describe it?

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Elizabeth Bennet says, leading me to the next table.

I’m still not ready to let my guard down, although I feel it dropping somewhat automatically after seeing Steve again. I have to remind myself, I was knocked out by these guys and dragged into that chamber. They then unleashed two zombies on me. Okay, only one of them actually attacked me, but it was hardly a warm, friendly welcome. And the rifle butt to the head. Too heavy-handed. There has to be more to what’s going on here than anyone’s letting on. The veneer of civility has to be an illusion.

Bennet slips on a pair of surgical gloves, pulling them from a fancy first aid kit sitting on the table. There’s more medicine in that plastic carry case than I’ve ever seen in my life. Elizabeth Bennet, or whatever her name really is, daubs at my ear with a cotton ball dipped in alcohol. Yeah, that’s a sting I’d recognize anywhere. I grimace.

“Hold still,” she says, stitching up the cut.

She examines the old bite marks on my arm, looking carefully at the rough stitching I received back at the commune. Gently, she rubs some ointment onto the scab forming on my arm and applies a fresh bandage.

“Bitten by a zombie, all right. I’m going to have to run bloods to figure out why neither of them have turned.”

“Natural immunity?” one of the others asks.

“In both of them?” she replies. “What are the odds of that?”

Steve and I are silent. I catch his eyes darting to one of the distracted soldiers, looking intently at the firearm sitting holstered on the old man’s hip. The soldier with the rifle looks too relaxed, almost as if he can’t wait to put it down. This isn’t the intense, proud look I’d get from a marauder, treating his rifle as more important than his life.

These guys are sloppy. They should have buttoned down their holsters. As it is, we’ll have to wait till they face away from us as holsters are designed for a quick release only in the direction your arm would naturally move. Ferguson taught us that back at the commune, telling us what to do if we were ever snatched by bandits. I remember him telling my class, “You’ll only get one shot at escape—make it count.” I intend to.

Bennet’s sidearm is within easy reach.

I wait for Steve to make his move.

Elizabeth says, “Well, she might not have turned, but she’s picked up a nasty bacterial infection.”

She tips a couple of tablets into her gloved hand and offers them to me along with a bottle of water.

“The pink tablet’s a painkiller. The two green ones are broad spectrum antibiotics.”

I swallow the tablets, trusting they’ll help, and I start having second thoughts about reaching for her gun. Elizabeth is out of her depth. She’s clearly a doctor and far more comfortable treating someone’s wounds than roughing them up as a prisoner. I think she genuinely cares about us, which is confusing. I feel bad, but I know what needs to be done. Feeling bad hasn’t stopped me before.

“You’ve had it pretty rough out there,” she says.

“I’m alive,” I say in reply, trying to stay detached.

“I’d like to fire up the MRI and take some brain scans to look for lesions,” one of the other men says, and I’m pretty sure an MRI has nothing to do with the army. If I remember correctly, it’s a machine used in hospitals. Something like an X-ray.

“Delayed onset?” one of the others asks. “We saw this in the early days.”

“But not from bites,” Elizabeth says. “A bite overwhelms the immune system in hours. A day at most. No, these bite marks are several days old. Something else is going on at a cellular level.

“I want to see if either of them are carriers. Perhaps they’re infected but they’re asymptomatic, or maybe, just maybe, they really are immune.”

“Agreed,” one of the men says.

Elizabeth finishes applying a salve to the blisters on my hands and wraps a bandage around them. She’s careful not to restrict the movement of my fingers, which is quite considerate considering I’m about to grab her gun.

The door to the cafeteria swings open and an older man storms in. He’s military. Just a glimpse of his posture, his physique, and his facial expression tells me this guy would be a leader among the marauders.

“What the hell is going on?” he demands. “They’re supposed to be in restraints!”

All eyes turn to the real soldier, all eyes except ours. Steve and I both grab a sidearm. In a split second, I have the gun up against Elizabeth’s temple. I grab her, pulling her close and using her as a shield.

Steve holds his gun squarely in the middle of the forehead of one of the bewildered faux-soldiers and the poor man drops his rifle in panic.

“Put your guns down,” Steve yells, positioning himself so the fake soldier is between him and the real soldier standing in the doorway. “Now!”