PRIME (7 page)

“I think you might be right about that. Guess that’s why I only feel like a small pile of dog turds now. Before I was feeling like a grizzly-sized pile, full of dung beetles and all that. Now, I remember you, little miss intern, but who’s this prince charming you got yourself now? I didn’t mean to interrupt anything, but I didn’t want it to get too awkward.” Cale strode over to the bed and, ignoring the last comment, introduced himself.

“Benjamin Cale.” Cale held out his hand to Zero. Zero shook it with more force than Cale expected. “They mostly call me Cale, ever since I was little.”

“I guess they told you they call me Zero. Patient Zero, if you want to get into full names.”

“I heard something about that.” Cale grinned. “Seems like you’re the guy I should be thanking for keeping me free of that zombie disease out there.”

“The government’s calling them what they are now, eh?” Zero shifted and winced at the effort.

“Are you alright?” Alice reached for Zero, but he brushed her away.

“Just a bit of nausea and a headache when I try to move. It’ll pass.”

“If you talk to the people in charge around here, they’re still calling them hostiles,” Cale said. “Me, I call them zombies.”

“Well it’s the truth,” Alice muttered as she poured a glass of water for Zero and handed him a pill.

“Oh shit, look at the intern going against her superiors,” Zero teased. He shared a smile with Alice.

The connection between Zero and Alice was obvious to Cale. He was surprised at the pang of jealousy he felt watching them.

“What in God’s green are you feeding me now? I thought the plan was to get me off drugs?” Zero hesitated before taking the pill.

“It’s aspirin,” Alice said. She pushed the pill into his hand. “For the headache.”

“Right.” Zero took a swig of the water and pushed the pill between his lips. He swallowed and drained the rest of the glass. “Been a while since I took one of those for a headache; I found Valium worked well on headaches.”

“Well we have aspirin.” Alice put away the bottle. “I hope it helps.”

“So Alice,” Cale said, vying for her attention. “You want to tell us how an intern ended up one of the few survivors in a military hospital?” He sank into a chair beside Zero.

“You know, I never thought to ask her that,” Zero said. He reclined with only a slight wince of pain. He never took his eyes from Alice.

“I’m surprised you even remember me telling you I was an intern after the state you were in,” Alice teased him. She sat in the chair next to Cale. Both were padded, but so old that you could hardly tell. “I was interning for Senator Johnson in DC. My dad worked at Haven base.”

“Crap.” Cale leaned forward, wiping at his mouth. He didn’t have to say any more, Haven base, where it all started.

“Yeah. We moved there when I was thirteen. I went to school on the base, and stuck around and went to Hoover University, political science major. When I graduated last spring, I applied for this internship.”

“Hoover, huh?” Zero smiled. “Should I be impressed? I don’t remember much about colleges.” Cale wondered if the guy could remember much of anything.

“It was a decent school,” Alice answered with a small smile. “The internship was a dream come true. Senator Johnson was a nice guy; he got scared when everything started. They thought it was germ warfare, you know from the Middle East. He figured DC would be target one and moved us back to Chicago. We were spending a lot of time on Coda base and here at the hospital. Both of us were lucky enough to still be alive when the vaccine came out,” Alice ended with a shrug.

“But where’s Johnson now?” Cale frowned. “I don’t think I met him.”

“The vaccine didn’t take. We shot him after he slipped into his coma,” Alice said. She said it so casually that it took a moment for her words to sink in.

“Wait.” Cale was taken back “You’re telling me this vaccine you gave me doesn’t always take.” Alice shook her head. “Well, what the hell were my odds when you shot me up with it?”

Alice sighed. “It seems to work for roughly nine out of ten people.”

“Jesus.” Cale was wide-eyed. “You couldn’t have told me that before you made me take it?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Alice shook her head sadly. “It’s the only chance of survival now. Inoculation is mandatory.”

Cale wiped a hand across his face, looking sick. “This world is screwed.”

“No,” Alice argued. “No, because you said someone had a way to wipe out the zombies. With them gone, we could start over.”

“If we can find it before these things take over,” Cale said. “Which, what are the odds?”

“Now hold on,” Zero interrupted. “Just us all being here is beating the odds, right? An addict, an intern, and whatever the hell you are, together in this hospital. How many others are there?” Cale found Zero’s optimism obnoxiously catchy.

“Jake, Quigley, and Grace, plus two of the doctors and six other adults. We have ten kids downstairs,” Alice said.

“The others, were they soldiers?” Cale asked.

“Three of them,” Alice said. “The others are civilians.”

“If we can figure out where the broadcast came from, we may be able to salvage this,” Cale said. He nodded slowly, as he came around to the idea. “That is if we can get to the base.”

“What’s all this about a cure? Zero asked, frowning. Cale sighed and began to tell him his story.

*

Jake knew he should have left the observation room when he saw Alice and Cale in the room with Zero. But he hadn’t been able to pull himself away, especially when Cale held her. Zero had woken up, and Cale was filling him in on his story, but Jake wasn’t paying attention to that. All he could see was the way Alice looked at Cale and Zero. She looked at them in a way she never looked at him. When she looked at him, she didn’t see someone who could interest her the way Cale or Zero did.

Jake jerked around when he heard the door open. Quigley looked almost as surprised to see Jake as Jake was to see him. Quigley looked into the other room and gave him a warning look. “What are you doing, Jake?”

“I came to check on Zero,” Jake answered. It was the truth, he had only come into the room planning to check that Zero wasn’t up and moving around or anything. After that, he meant to head down to the cafeteria to find a bite to eat. It had been Alice who distracted him.

“It’s not good for you watching this.” Quigley walked further into the room and sank into the chair beside Jake’s. “You like her don’t you?”

“No.” Jake laughed, but it sounded nervous and tin-filled even to his ears.

“Uh-huh.” Quigley lit a cigarette in total disregard of the no smoking sign. “She’s a fine young woman, Jake. You’d be a fool not to notice that. I’ve noticed. Spent some of my spare time thinking about it too, if you know what I mean.”

Jake knew what he meant. When he got a chance to sleep, it was always Alice he thought of as he lay alone in the dark. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Thought you might. Point is, whatever you feel for her should be kept in your head alone, because that girl isn’t going to have anything to do with you or me. It’s one of those young ones in there who’s going to lay with her one day.”

“Yeah.” Jake nodded. He knew it was true. Even though Cale was ten years older than Alice, he still had a chance. She even seemed interested in Zero, God knew why.

Jake bristled with anger. If Alice could show interest in a drug addict, he certainly still had a chance. Why did Quigley have to be so negative? Some girls liked an older man. Someone to keep them safe, teach them things.

“Go get something to eat, maybe some sleep,” Quigley suggested with a pat on Jake’s arm. “Forget about her.”

“I’ll try,” Jake said. “Probably won’t though.”

“Well don’t let Alice, or Grace, catch you looking at her that way then, got it?” Quigley watched Alice and the others. “And tell someone that Zero’s awake.”

Jake nodded and slipped quietly from the room. He felt like a little boy who had just been caught looking up a girl’s skirt at school. The fact that Quigley felt the same way toward Alice didn’t seem to help him any. He hurried down the hall to the doctors’ quarters and knocked on the door.

“Yeah?” The younger doctor, Markus Smith, answered the door. He looked like he might have been sleeping.

“Zero’s awake and talking,” Jake told him. “Quigley says to get down and look him over.”

Markus nodded and Jake headed for the cafeteria, still thinking about Alice.

*

Zero listened to Cale’s story with an intensity Alice hadn’t expected. He seemed less and less like the drug-addled reject they described when he first arrived, even though she knew it was true enough because she’d watched him suffer through his withdrawals. She found herself watching Zero as he listened to Cale, noticing the way his nose crinkled when he was trying to work out what Cale was saying. God help her, she thought he was cute. When Cale was finished, Zero nodded thoughtfully.

“Should be easy enough to figure where the transmission came from, or at least narrow it down. They got records here of their last contacts right?” Cale directed this part at Alice. She nodded slowly.

“Not here, but at Coda they should.”

“Won’t know till we ask,” Zero said. “Then there’s something I know you government and military types aren’t fans of.”

“What’s that?” Cale asked with a small grin. Against his will, Zero was growing on him.

“Logic.” Zero smiled openly at him. “Figure out which bases may have sent the broadcast. From there figure which one is the most logical.”

“Guess, you mean.” Cale looked dubious.

“No I mean logic it out. There’s got to be something that will make one base more likely to have the cure than others,” Zero insisted. He held Cale’s look for a moment. Cale finally sighed and nodded his agreement.

“You may be right. Of course, it could be difficult to get the others to go along with a plan you came up with. No offense, just stating the facts,” Cale added. He knew it was a dig, but it was also true.

“No need to sugarcoat things anymore is my opinion,” Zero agreed. “I suppose telling them the truth wouldn’t do much good either. No way for them to back it up.”

“The truth?” Alice raised a brow at him. “You don’t even remember your name, what else could you know?”

“Now come on little miss intern, I know you’ve spoken to the kids downstairs enough to know that pieces of the before come through just fine. For instance, I know I used to be stinking rich. How else do you think I could afford to keep myself dosed out all the time?”

“Inherited?” Cale looked interested even as he stood and began to pace the room.

“The first bit,” Zero said. “Can’t remember how much, but I invested in stocks.”

“Not many people get stinking rich from stocks,” Alice said, repeating his phrase. “You sure it wasn’t a dream?”

“Not a dream. I just knew how to buy and sell, knew what was going to be big and what was going to fail. Been good at that stuff since I was a kid. When this all got out of hand, I figured it would only be a matter of time before I was killed off by it so I went on a binge. They collected my body from a homeless shelter, and I woulda been incinerated if I hadn’t woke up on the way to the place.”

“That’s when they brought you here,” Alice said. “It was a huge deal.”

“You don’t say?” Zero asked dryly. “Imagine how it was for me, waking up in that pile of bodies.” They were silent as that idea sank in.