Patient Z (29 page)

Cal dropped into the undergrowth and crawled back to the cover of the trees. He grinned at Mitch and Bren.

“See?”

“No,” Mitch said. Still not going for it. “So most of them ignore you. That doesn’t mean for sure they all will. It only takes one.”

“What, to infect me with something I either have an effective vaccine for or am naturally immune to? Yeah, scary.”

“He’s right,” Bren said. “We should let him do it. End this now. No more lives risked.”

“What about Cal’s life?” Mitch demanded.

“I’m the one person here whose life isn’t at risk.”

“You aren’t immune to bullets,” Mitch said. “What if those guys on the tower spot you?”

“So we’ll wait until dusk,” Bren said.

“No,” Mitch said. “No. We come back with the full squad and do it that way.”

“Show of hands,” Bren said. “Who votes yes to finishing this crap today and using Cal’s superpower to facilitate that?”

She’d been learning from Ella’s methods. Cal grinned and put his hand up. Bren followed quickly. Mitch groaned and clenched his jaw.

“You damn idiots,” he gritted out. “Okay, do it, get bitten by zombies. See if I care.” He cared. He wanted to tackle Cal to the ground to stop him from doing this. But it was two hours till dusk at least. He had time to persuade Cal not to be such a damn fool.

He tried. They moved away from the wire, and Bren slept—her army training showing through again—while Mitch and Cal stayed on guard and talked. Mostly Mitch talked, trying to persuade Cal not to do it. But Cal wasn’t swayed. In reply he kept recounting the incidents that had made him believe the zombies would leave him alone and a conversation he’d had with the doctor. He made a good case, but Mitch still wouldn’t stop arguing.

As the light started to fade, Bren woke, stretched, picked up her gun, and said, “We still doing this?”

“Yes,” Cal said firmly. Mitch groaned.

“Please,” he said softly. “Please, Cal. Don’t.”

Cal smiled at him, raised a hand to his face, and leaned in to kiss him. “It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.” Before he could pull away Mitch grabbed him, pulled him close, and kissed him hard. Persuasion to stay? A good-bye, in case?

“You boys need a little longer?” Bren asked. Cal pushed Mitch back gently, a hand on his chest.

“No. We’re ready. Let’s go.”

They found their way back to the wire. The moat still teemed with the undead. The compound had floodlights, but they weren’t on yet. A few people moved around inside. The men on guard on the platform at the end of the bridges were still there.

“I’m going to use that,” Cal said, pointing at a tree near the compound with big branches overhanging the fence. “I can crawl along the branches and drop down the other side.”

“Just be careful you don’t do anything stupid like break your leg,” Bren said. “Or land on your back with this backpack full of grenades.”

“I’ll try to avoid both of those.” Cal put on the pack they had transferred all their grenades into. Cal was going to blow a
big
hole in that inner fence. The zombies would pour into the camp like Black Friday shoppers into a mall.

Mitch’s guts clenched in utter terror, his heart thundering in his ears as Cal climbed the tree he’d pointed out and started to inch along the thick lower branches. Come back, Mitch thought. It’s not too late. Decide this is madness and come back to me. Cal did not. He went as far along the branches as he could, then slid off, dangling over the moat, inside the fence. Zombies were looking at him, some slowing and starting to gather under the tree. Cal let go of the branch, and Mitch let out a groan as he dropped right into a circle of the creatures, vanishing from sight. Bren grabbed Mitch’s hand. Despite her support of Cal’s plan, she’d gone pale and looked as scared as Mitch felt. They clung to each other, not breathing.

And the group of zombies broke up. Cal straightened from the crouch he’d landed in, the zombies already wandering away from him. He stood for a moment as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. Then he began to cross the moat of zombies.

“Well, just look at that,” Bren said, voice breathy and awestruck as Cal dodged zombies and they in turn ignored him entirely. “I never thought I’d see such a thing. He’s king of the zombies. He’s king of the fucking zombies.”

CAL ROSE FROM his crouch, slipping his handgun out. The zombies were all around him, rotten faces close enough to touch. The stench almost overpowered him. A single zombie merely stank. A dozen of them, clustering around him, made his gorge rise and his head spin. He wished there was such a thing as an Off switch for his nose.

Apart from the one that bit him, he hadn’t been so close to a zombie since this all started. If any of them lunged forward, grabbed him, mouth gaping for the bite, he had no chance. There were too many for him to fight or escape from. Some of them were behind him. What if he was wrong?

But even as he straightened up, they were turning away, as if he were no more than a tree or a boulder. Or another zombie. It was working. He turned slowly to see the ones behind him also wandering off. Fuck, this was real. He
was
infected. But he was alive. What the hell did that make him?

No time to consider the finer points right now. There was no outcry from the camp. The guards on the platform hadn’t spotted him. He wanted to run for the inner fence, instinct telling him to move quickly. But running might attract attention from the guards. Instead he moved slowly, the same speed as the zombies, even tossing in a little moan here and there, feeling light-headed and ridiculous with the adrenaline rush and the insanity of this.

Carrying a backpack full of grenades, Cal walked through the mass of zombies, working his way to the inner fence in a somewhat diagonal direction. Zombies bumped into him sometimes, which made him want to throw up in a mix of fear and disgust. But it wasn’t an attack. They bumped him like they bumped each other, or anything that got in the way. It was bizarre to be so close to so many of them. To see glimpses of what they had been when they were still human. Some wore the tattered remains of various uniforms. Soldiers. Nurses. Cops. A few wore sportswear. All their healthy exercise hadn’t done them any good in the end. They were every age, every race, men and women, some in ragged designer suits wandering beside waitresses and mechanics. Zombie-ism was an equal-opportunity employer.

Cal reached the fence with a sigh of relief and crouched down, scoping out the area. A wooden lodge stood close to the wire, and Cal felt sure it blocked him from the view of the guards on the platform, if he stayed crouched down. The lodge’s shutters were closed, but light leaked from the edges of those shutters, and he could hear raised voices, laughter, and music from inside.

As carefully as a man handling eggs, Cal emptied his pack of fragmentation grenades, making a neat little pile of them. They formed a sort of explosive cairn up against the inner fence. He looked at the outer fence, picking his spot to climb back over. Then he pulled the pin of the last grenade in the pack, put it on top of the pile, and ran, up and away like a hundred-meters sprinter going for the world record.

This time he plowed through the zombies, no more slipping and dodging. If they were in his way, he knocked them down. In his head he counted off the seconds.
Four. Three
. He hit the outer fence and started to climb. He heard shouts behind him but didn’t look back.
Two
. Mitch and Bren came crashing out from the undergrowth as Cal went over the top of the fence. Gunshots came from the compound, and Cal yelled and dropped to the ground on the other side of the fence instead of climbing down.

One
. The grenade exploded and took the other ones with it. The blast was bigger than Cal had expected, and though he’d landed on his feet, the shock wave knocked him down. Zombie bodies, or at least body parts, hit the outer fence behind him. Cal scrambled up as Mitch and Bren each grabbed one of his arms and hauled him away, stumbling.

They needed cover. Bullets were flying. The blast would have destroyed the zombies nearest to it, but there were many others, and they began to converge on the hole in the fence and pour through into the compound beyond, walking over the dismembered corpses of their fellow zombies. How they all knew about the hole, Cal had no idea, since they seemed to have no form of communication. Yet within a few minutes the run between the two fences would be empty and the zombies all inside the camp.

He looked at Mitch and Bren, grinning. “I told you it would work.”

“King of the fucking zombies,” Bren said and grabbed him to plant a fierce kiss on his mouth. It left Cal short of breath by the time she let him go and grinned back at him. “Sorry, heat of the moment. Good kisser.”

“You too,” he said. “I think you turned me bi.”

“If I’d given you tongue, I’d have turned you straight.” She slapped his back a couple of times. Cal turned to Mitch. Would he feel the need to one-up the kiss? Had he even seen it? His eyes and his rifle were trained on the camp. He turned to look at Cal. He didn’t smile, but he leaned close. Not to kiss, but to speak in Cal’s ear.

“I love you.”

Oh God, what a time to say it. Cal considered his response. He felt the same. He couldn’t deny that to himself. But he was acutely aware of what saying it meant. The power he’d give up if he did. How vulnerable he made himself.

And none of that mattered. It was Mitch. Cal didn’t want power over Mitch, and Mitch would never take advantage of any vulnerability. With Mitch it was a new kind of relationship. A real one where Cal didn’t calculate every move to make sure it gave him an advantage. In the past he’d treated lovers like rivals, even enemies. But he didn’t have to treat Mitch that way. He leaned close, blew softly on Mitch’s ear, caressing it with his warm breath, before he spoke.

“I love you, Mitch.”

Mitch’s eyes, wide and dark in the failing light, fixed on Cal’s face.

Then
they kissed.

Chapter Thirty

All the shouting and gunshots went away. Bren’s running commentary on what was happening in the camp faded. The fact Bren was there didn’t even cross Mitch’s mind as a reason not to kiss Cal. Maybe he’d lost all shyness about public displays of affection. Maybe nobody save him and Cal existed in the universe. Nothing existed but Cal’s mouth on his, Cal’s lips rather dry and rough, his tongue aggressive in its probing, Mitch’s just as aggressive and eager in its welcome.

Cal had said the words he’d claimed he couldn’t say. He’d said them for Mitch. Mitch clenched his fist, bunching up the back of Cal’s shirt, and pulled Cal closer. If this kiss was a reward, it was not a reward for his king-of-the-zombies stunt, as Bren’s had been. It was a reward for and an acceptance of those words.

Cal’s stubble scraped Mitch’s skin, and Mitch loved it. It spoke of the life bursting out of him. Zombies didn’t grow beards. Even the smell of sweat on Cal, from his fear and exertion, was more wonderful proof of life.

“Guys.” Bren sounded a little regretful about breaking in on them. Mitch realized, with some mortification, that he was on his back on the ground, Cal in his arms, half on top of him. Some self-consciousness came back. He pushed Cal away, not hard, sorry to do so, but trying to refocus himself. Their job here was not done.

“If you could get each other’s faces out of your mouths for a coupla minutes,” Bren said, “they’re coming over the bridges.”

Mitch rolled onto his stomach. If he’d had the first stirring of an erection, it quickly disappeared. He grabbed for his rifle before he registered that the “they” Bren meant were Ethan’s people, not the zombies, who couldn’t climb up to the platform the rope bridges started from.

The floodlights illuminating the compound were on. Men were climbing the tower to the platform. At the bottom of the tower, fights were breaking out over who got to climb the ladders next. Other men were holding off the zombies converging on the tower. Mitch just hoped the people would all get out before the zombies overwhelmed them. They might be the enemy, but he wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

“There are three platforms on this side,” Mitch said. “Split up, wait at the bottom of each one. If you see Ethan, grab him and report in.”

“And the others?” Cal asked. He looked hard-faced and businesslike again, ready to fight. As if he hadn’t had his tongue down Mitch’s throat a moment ago.

“Let them go,” Mitch said. “Don’t give them any reason to regroup and fight. They’ve lost their base and supplies. If they’re smart, they’ll scatter and fend for themselves in small groups.”

“That’s a big if,” Cal said. But he rose to obey Mitch’s order. The three of them split up and took a tree each.

* * * *

Mitch’s back hit a tree close to his target. He stayed hidden, watching the men coming down. They had power up there, and they’d rigged up a light so they could see while on the ladder. And so could Mitch, checking each face as the man reached the ground. Some ran off right away alone. Others waited and ran off in groups. Now and again there was a woman who ran off with one of the men. Mitch had an urge to intervene there, but he didn’t know if a “rescue” attempt would even be welcome. There weren’t many women. Of course not—Ethan could never have kept his guys motivated to continue attacking the rig if they’d had plenty of women around already.

Mitch waited. More and more men came down, several on the ladder at once sometimes. Damn, he’d have trouble if Ethan arrived in a group of guys. Somehow Mitch doubted Ethan would act like a proper commander and be the last man to leave.

Mitch’s radio squawked, and he lifted it to hear Cal’s voice. “Converge back where we started. I’ve got him.”

Mitch ran through woods that felt worryingly crowded. He ran past men, even bumping into some. But it was dark, and nobody recognized or cared that he wasn’t one of theirs. All they wanted was to get out. His run was like a hotter, faster version of Cal’s walk through the zombies. Among the enemy, yet unrecognized.

He found Bren already back at the rendezvous, looking tense. She nodded at Mitch but didn’t speak. A moment later, they heard Ethan’s voice, high-pitched and frantic, and Cal appeared through the trees, dragging the tied-up and protesting Ethan at his side. He dumped Ethan onto his knees in front of Bren.