Patient Z (16 page)

“Perhaps. You’d have to see if it’s happening elsewhere. I must say when I do venture out, I don’t think I see as many of them as I used to. And some of them almost ignore me. Or at least by the time they’ve roused themselves to approach, I’ve had a chance to shoot them.”

“Would those be the most rotted ones?” Mitch asked. “Our doctor has a theory that the older ones become less interested in biting and may even be less infectious.”

“I wouldn’t like to test out that last surmise,” Gombrich said. “But as for the rest of it, it could well be. It could indeed. I’ll make more observations next time I’m out.”

“Don’t put yourself in any danger for our sake,” Mitch said. “And always be most wary of any fresh ones.”

“Absolutely.” Gombrich patted his rifle. “I always shoot the fresh ones first.”

“What about humans?” Mitch asked. “Are the numbers stable?”

“I think so. I see more of them around as the zombie numbers start to fall.”

It would take a long time for numbers of living humans to increase, Cal thought, generations. But more might come into the area. They might start to concentrate in larger groups again.

They chatted some more about other things Gombrich had seen either from his windows or when out and about. Other humans didn’t seem to bother him. He had nothing much of practical value, and he wasn’t a woman. Most of the other groups of survivors tended to leave him alone. As they took their leave Cal shook his hand and smiled warmly at him.

“Good luck, Professor. Aim true.” He had to like someone who deliberately lured the things in so he could blow them away. Something of a public service. If they were thinning out in the area, he was only being modest not to attribute at least some of it to his efforts.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Richardson. Until next time.”

The women who’d been raiding the gift shop were loading their stash into the truck. “You don’t mind us taking that stuff?” Cal asked, frowning at Mitch. It felt dubious to him, keeping the guy chatting while they robbed his gift shop, even if they had given him a few antibiotics and painkillers.

“Not at all,” Gombrich said. “I’m happy to see you take the books for the children. Education is part of the museum’s remit. And I’m not so desperately off for clothes I have to wear ladies’ T-shirts.”

“We’re taking those for the kids,” Jessica said, tossing a packet of candies to Mitch, who caught it.

“And I don’t eat candy,” Gombrich said with a chuckle. “Very bad for the teeth. I’d hate to have to extract any of my own.”

“Aren’t these expired?” Cal asked when Mitch opened the pack and offered him one. He took one anyway.

“Yes,” Mitch said. “But if there’s one thing this whole situation has taught me, it’s that expiration dates on food are a load of BS.”

“Sugar is a natural preservative,” Gombrich said. “Perhaps before the end we’ll all be reduced to living on Twinkies and chocolate.”

“Dream come true,” Tanya said, coming back in from outside. “We’re loaded and ready to roll, Mitch.”

“Thanks.” Mitch shook Gombrich’s hand one last time, and they moved out. The door closed behind them, and they heard the chains being fastened to the inside.

“Hospital next,” Mitch said. “Get the doc’s shopping list filled.”

Mitch and Cal found themselves alone in the SUV as the women all got into the truck. Cal took shotgun and held his rifle ready at the window. The next part would not be like visiting a nice old chap for tea. Hospitals were ground fucking zero for zombies.

“How come you haven’t asked the professor to come live on the rig?” Cal asked. “He’s a smart old bird. And he can shoot.”

“He doesn’t want to come,” Mitch said. “He’s got his duty. Watch that intersection on the left. I see movement.”

Cal aimed, but it was only a couple of dogs fighting. When the SUV and the truck rumbled by, the dogs set aside their differences for a short chase, barking madly. The vehicles soon left them behind.

“And I know it sounds harsh,” Mitch said. “But as much as I like him, I’m not sure he’s got anything to contribute to our group. He’s smart, but he’s old. He can’t work much. He’s a good shot, but we can’t make him a soldier.”

“He could be a teacher,” Cal suggested.

“Maybe.” Mitch sounded noncommittal.

“And at least he wouldn’t be any trouble, like a young guy would,” Cal went on. “He’s just a sweet old guy.”

“You want to know how many sweet old guys I arrested for child molestation while I was on the force?”

“Oh, come on.” Cal swore there were times Mitch bordered on paranoid. “He didn’t seem like that sort.”

“Dammit, Cal, they don’t have it written on their foreheads. I can’t
know
.”

“But that’s life,” Cal said. “That’s normal. Normal people don’t have access to rap sheets. They just use their judgment.”

“And normal people end up as the victims of perverts, rapists, domestic abusers, and murderers, who all seemed really
nice
when they first met.”

“Wow. You really are a cynic, aren’t you?”

“No,” Mitch said. “I just don’t trust anyone.”

“Do you trust me?” Hell, that was a very silly question to ask. Did he really want the answer? “Forget it. I’m just running off at the mouth.” Cal turned away, concentrating on his job, watching for movement, for trouble. A trap.

Mitch didn’t say anything. Was that an answer?

Chapter Sixteen

Why did Cal have to ask such a stupid question? Mitch asked himself as they arrived at the hospital. And why had Mitch not answered? Of course he trusted Cal. He’d slept with the man. He’d fought beside him. That meant trust. But he didn’t know Cal’s background, and Cal had not told him anything. So the trust could never be 100 percent.

But Mitch hadn’t given Cal 100 percent either. He’d told Cal he was a cop in San Francisco. But he hadn’t told him where he came from before that, and he hadn’t told him about Dex. Maybe it was time.

After they got through this day.

There weren’t too many zombies out front at the hospital—at least, not still-moving ones. Only remains slowly disintegrating. Even after the brain was destroyed, stopping the zombie, the decay process didn’t happen at the usual rate. Whatever the parasites did to slow decay clearly persisted after the parasites themselves were gone.

Mitch wondered again about the doctor’s theory. If nobody destroyed a zombie in the meantime, did the brain parasites die eventually, leaving a rotting body and…what else? Not the person they’d once been, surely? Trapped in a corpse? The idea was horrible, and he shook it away.

“We’re not splitting up,” Mitch said to the group as they cautiously approached the hospital door. “You all know these can be the worst places. I won’t split us up into small groups that are easy to overwhelm.”

“It’s going to take us a lot longer that way,” Cal said.

“I know. But it’s safer.”

They went in through the ambulance bay, into the ER. It was silent, aside from dripping water coming from somewhere. No zombies. They’d either have left via the open doors or would be trapped deeper inside the building. He imagined sick and injured patients helpless in their beds as the zombies roamed the wards, attacking them and moving on. Imagined the medical staff trying to defend the patients before falling victim themselves.

They moved quietly through the hospital, Cal taking point, following signs to the hospital’s labs. Everyone tried to ignore the grisly sights they came across—rotting corpses in the hallways and in the beds. Some of the ones in the beds had been shot. Presumably a last desperate act of mercy for the infected before they turned. Sometimes the sights were too horrible to ignore.

“This place gives me the fucking creeps,” Blanca whispered as they passed a children’s ward full of small corpses. Mitch hustled them through quickly. None of the young women in the group of soldiers had kids back on the rig, but some of them had lost children to the virus. Even those who hadn’t would have had brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. They didn’t need a reminder of the fate of those lost loved ones.

“Just as long as we don’t go to the morgue.” Tanya glanced back at Mitch, who was near the rear of the column. “Like at Sacred Heart.”

Mitch couldn’t recall why they’d gone down there. But he’d never forget the chorus of groans and banging that had started when the zombies in the morgue drawers heard their voices. He shuddered. “No morgue today.”

“Path lab,” Cal said quietly from up ahead, pointing at a sign. Good, that was where they’d find the fluorescence microscope and other things the doctor wanted. They probably wouldn’t find drugs here at the hospital—like he told Cal before, most of the hospitals had been stripped of those—but few people bothered to scavenge lab equipment, most of which needed electricity anyway.

He was watching Cal up ahead when it happened. Cal pushed open one side of a set of double doors. The zombie must have been right behind the other door. It pretty much fell out of the doorway.

“Shit!” Cal jumped about a foot in the air, and the zombie… Mitch wasn’t sure what happened. Did it fall past him? Whatever happened it was suddenly stumbling, still falling, which made it move faster, toward Debbie, who’d been right behind Cal.

Despite the uncharacteristic speed, it never made it to her. Shots laced it from several directions, from Cal, Debbie, and others near the head of the column. Mitch had brought his gun to bear, as had Tanya, but neither dared fire with so many of their comrades in the way. They didn’t need to. The zombie dropped at Debbie’s feet, its head almost gone from the hail of bullets.

Shit, shit, shit
. Mitch ran up the column while Tanya called to everyone else to hold their positions and be on the alert. The noise would bring others. They had to move on. But first… He made himself stop at Debbie before Cal. She looked shaken—nobody liked to be close enough to see the gray of a zombie’s eyes.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“I think I got some of its brain on me.” It was a bit of crumbling goo on her sleeve. She shook it off in disgust. “I’m fine, Mitch.”

Mitch moved on to Cal, who was staring down at the zombie at his feet. Not shocked. Almost puzzled.

“Cal?” Mitch put a hand on his shoulder.

“What? Oh, I’m okay. It never touched me.” He shook his head, repeated himself. “It never
touched
me.”

“Cal? Are you ready to go on? We can’t stay here.”

“What?” Cal said again and looked up. “Right. Of course.”

They both looked down at the wreckage of what had once been a person. A woman. Someone’s mom? Mitch wondered. Someone’s daughter or sister, wife or lover? The hospital gown gaped at the back, the ties long since rotted away, and Mitch couldn’t stand it. A long-abandoned laundry cart stood nearby, and he grabbed a dusty and stale-smelling bedsheet from it. He covered the zombie with the sheet and straightened up. The woman deserved some final dignity that had been stripped from her when the parasites took her brain over and killed her.

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

They’d turned two more corners on their way to the path lab when they found the next horror to fuel their nightmares.

“Shit,” Cal muttered as they entered a corridor with windows into a ward with eight beds. All the beds were occupied.

At the sound of live humans arriving, the zombies in the beds perked up and started to moan and thrash. They thrashed against restraints that held them to the beds.

“Damn,” Mitch said as he caught up to Cal, who’d stopped. “Maybe this was a mental ward.” For two years they’d been restrained like this. IV stands, the bags long dry, stood by the beds.

The soldiers gathered at the door into the ward, and Mitch heard murmurs equally mixed between revulsion and pity. One of the creatures suddenly reached toward the group, making them step back, even though it was a long way off. It had no hand, Mitch realized, and he saw its hand still strapped to the bed. As their bodies disintegrated the zombies would reach a point where they could escape the restraints by tearing off their hands and feet. Then they’d crawl and drag themselves, looking for someone to bite.

“We can’t leave them like this,” he said. “They’ll get free eventually. Also we should put them out of their misery.”

Killing zombies had never been like killing enemies for him. It was like putting down a dog that had gone rabid. The zombies were dangerous, but to Mitch, they were victims. People like Ethan, on the other hand…

“Maybe we should take one each,” Cal said, and Mitch was grateful, because he didn’t want to have to execute the zombies one by one himself. Some of the women looked a bit sickened about the idea, but they nodded. While the rest kept watch, six of them, plus Cal and Mitch, went into the room. They stayed in the middle of the floor, well away from the beds. The gray, dead faces watched them, tracking their movement. The one with a free arm kept on futilely reaching toward them.

They split into pairs, back to back, each facing a bed. Cal’s back pressed up against Mitch’s, and Mitch sought comfort in the warmth of Cal’s body. Warmth meant life. Meant hope. Hope long gone for the man on the bed in front of him. Just a mindless thing now, obeying nothing but the commands of the parasites in his brain.
Make more like yourself. Spread the disease. Bite
. It might have been Cal’s fate. He shuddered to think of it, of Cal dying and reviving on the
Cora
and spending the rest of his unlife in its tiny cabin—the steep stairs to the deck might well defeat a zombie—until the boat was either wrecked in a storm or against rocks.

“Ready,” Mitch said. His voice had a tiny tremor in it. Everyone raised their pistols. The zombies just gawked back, showing no fear of the guns pointed at them. “Sight on the head,” Mitch ordered and did so, trying not to catch the eye of the man—zombie, he reminded himself.
It’s not a man anymore
. And if any part of his real self remained trapped in there, it must be cheering now that its nightmare was about to end.

“Fire.”

The shots, near simultaneous, rang out, and silence fell. Mitch’s ears rang. That had been damn loud. But “his” zombie lay back on the pillow now, the left side of its head a ghastly mess. It was the only way they could have done it, all together. Sharing the burden of guilt. It was one thing to shoot a zombie coming at you or target one bumbling around some distance away and blow its head off at long range. But to shoot them strapped down and no threat to you. It felt…strange. Not in a good way.