Waking The Zed (12 page)

“Well, her dead body is
cuffed to the cot,” the doctor said. “How far can she go?”

Pamela shrugged. “If it was up to me, I would shoot her in the head. Either that, or hit her with a hammer.” The doctor looked a
t her in horror, and she shrugged. “It’s just a suggestion.”

“I second it,” Paul said. “She will wake up.” He gestured to the light wound on
her neck. “That gash looks minor, and it shouldn’t have been enough to kill her this quickly. It shouldn’t have killed her at all. She was infected. I know it’s difficult for you to believe us, but you have to listen to us.”

“I don’t have en
ough information to confirm anything,” the doctor said. He shook his head and regarded both Pam and Paul with a strained expression. By this time, Pamela had noticed a nametag which told her he was Dr. Lincoln. Pam blinked, thinking he had resembled the famous president. Her mind wandered off for a moment, recalling that the original Lincoln was not believed to have any living descendants, but she wondered if he was some sort of relative. The sixteenth president had always been a sort of personal hero to Pam. In fact her father always claimed descent from Lincoln’s grandfather. Somehow that made her trust the military doctor.

As the doctor caught her staring at his badge, he nodded and said, “Yeah, I hear that
Lincoln thing all the time,” as if he read her mind. “We can discuss my family tree later, but we need to get back on track. This wound could have been infected by something quite explicable, or she could have passed from other natural causes. She is not a young woman. She covered up the wound, and apparently nobody even thought to give her an antibiotic before.”

“I
t wouldn’t have done any good,” Paul said sourly. He sat down hard on a narrow cot. “We keep calling it an infection, but it’s not bacterial. Dr. Klein called it a virus. You know that she helped invent the virus blocking protein. I’d imagine she knew a lot about the subject. Antibiotics won’t help.”

“Would the virus blocker help?” Dr. Lincoln asked.

“That’s a good question,” Pam said. “She never suggested it though. It would be very helpful to go back to Future Faith and examine her papers.” Pam took a deep breath. Despite the rising tide of panic, some part of her educated and conscious mind kept throwing sparks. “In fact it’s even possible it took her longer to succumb because she’d been exposed to the virus blocker.  Also, I really have no idea of how much time elapsed between the time of the initial outbreak and the time I found her in the reception area. There are a lot of possibilities.”

“Were either of you scratched by the things?” Doctor Lincoln asked.

“No, I managed to avoid them,” Pamela said. “It was a near thing, and at the time I didn’t even realize the true nature of the danger. I just wanted to stay away from those things. But I believe I’m clean. I did try to clean George’s wound before he died, so it is possible some fluid got on my skin but I tried to avoid it. I know I already mentioned that I’m working on my doctorate in pathology, and I’ve had a lot of lab experience. I’m not unaware of proper procedures.”

“What about you?” he asked Paul. The young man regarded him for a long moment, frowned, and then shook his head.
From what Pam could see right now Paul did not appear injured either.

“Well, let me get a blood sample anyway,” the doctor said. “And I’ll have you examined to be sure nothing a
bnormal shows up. Neither of you appears ill or feverish. That seems like a good sign.”

Paul settled back on the cot
without bothering to remove his shoes or get under the light blanket. They had been through a trying day, but her body felt electrified with adrenaline again. Beyond that, the presence Dr. Klein’s prone corpse and the restrained creature on the other side of the room, removed any thoughts of trying to rest. She did not know if the zombies got tired, but this one seemed to grow more indolent as time passed with the heavy bag over its head.

She stopped
herself from pacing restlessly down the narrow aisle between the cots, glanced down at Paul, and saw that he actually looked as if he had fallen asleep. Pam still felt as if her nerves were tingling with an electric charge of fear. Her stomach felt sour. She could not understand how Paul could fall asleep under any circumstances.

Just then, a uniformed soldier wheeled in a cart with sandwiches and drinks. Pam thought she should eat something though her very guts rebelled at the thought.
Maybe I’ll calm down and be able to think better if I have a sandwich.

She selected a wrapped turkey sandwich and can of sweet tea from the cart. The drink felt cool and soothing, but the sandwich seemed gluey. After what she had seen
and smelled, the turkey meat repelled her. She spit out the barely chewed remains back into her napkin. She finally ripped it out of the middle and just ate the bread and condiments. It still seemed like paste in her mouth but she managed to swallow. After Pam finished, the food seemed to sit in her gut like an undigested rock.

As the soldier left, Pam noticed that he left the infirmary door slightly ajar. She watched as some men and women in scrubs passed, and then occasionally a uniformed soldier.
The doctor took a phone call, and then spoke to his assistant in urgent tones. He pulled the sheet back from Dr. Klein and shined a light into her eyes. She still appeared, unsurprisingly, quite dead. Her thin cuffed hand lay limply just outside the sheet. Pam wondered what he was looking for. She wished somebody would cart the body into another room, preferably locked and far away. But she knew it was not for her to presume to give orders right now.

The lone armed guard answered a cell phone call and stepped outside the room. No matter,
now the hooded creature showed little more inclination to move than Dr. Klein did. Paul snored, seemed to mumble something, and then grew quiet again. Amazingly, Pam started to grow bored as the anxiety seeped from her body.

Now she
felt hunger pangs again and wished she had taken another sandwich off the cart. She thought about asking for something else to eat but the soldiers looked very stern and the medical personal were all consumed with other tasks.

She had been about to plead with Dr. Lincoln for permissio
n to leave this place and return home when Captain Crawford rushed back into the infirmary room. He glanced around quickly, and then approached the doctor. “We have a new situation,” he said.

“What is it?” Dr. Lincoln said. He looked
alarmed by the expression on the officer’s face. In the few hours that Pam had known him, he had always carefully arranged his features in an expression of calm authority. He had simply appeared stern and professional when Dr. Klein had unexpectedly crashed. Now he looked frightened.

“About a half
dozen of those Zed things must have walked out of Future Faith,” he said. “We got the place sealed off pretty quickly, but they could have even left before we arrived. The side door by the parking garage wasn’t locked and could be opened by leaning into it.”

“Where’d they go?”

“We know that some of them stopped traffic on the road, just wandering aimlessly about. A couple of drivers, and then a couple of state police troopers left their vehicles and got ambushed. There’s holy hell out there, and it happened fast.”

“Is it contained?” the doctor asked. Some alarm tinged his normally mild voice.

“Hell, no,” Captain Crawford said. “An injured trooper managed to pull his dead partner back into their car. We might be able to track them down, but observers told us that a handful of other injured civilians got back into their cars and drove off. Nobody got license plates. I’ve got men trying to track them down, but they could be anywhere.”

Pamela lost her urge to leave
the secure building. This place, at least seemed safe from outside threats. Getting back to her car and just driving back to her apartment to resume already seemed like a distant fantasy now.

The grim soldiers appeared able to contain the threats they had allowed inside
this place at least. She felt lucky now that she had no close friends or family nearby. Her parents and siblings were hundreds of miles away. At this point in her life she did not even have a pet to worry about.

Hopefully, by tomorrow I can call my folks and explain what’s going on. There’s no use bothering them this time of night.
Then Pam froze.
Even if I could call my parents, how am I going to explain this? They’ll think I’ve lost it and Dad will probably hop on the first plane out here. The last thing I want is for them to leave Iowa for this place.

Captain Crawford told an orderly to turn on the small TV mounted
high on one wall. A news flash informed the public about the virus without giving specifics.

If this news goes national, Mom and Dad will find out anyway.

The announcement
said that any injured people should immediately report to the nearest hospital for treatment. Of course, Pamela knew that the only current treatments were either containment or destroying the host’s brains. She wished she could get back to Future Faith and find Dr. Klein’s papers. There had to be clues on her computer or among her papers.

T
hings would only get much worse, very quickly, if the contaminated were allowed to wonder around freely. They could transform into these creatures at any time.

Distracted by the news, nobody noticed Dr. Klein’s eyes pop open. Broken capillaries gave her eyes a reddish tint, and her skin appeared pale and somewhat greenish.
She had always been fairly thin, but dehydration made her appear almost skeletal.

She jerked suddenly, and the cuff slid down her hand.
The soldier must not have tightened the cuff much because he didn’t want to hurt Dr. Klein. Who thought that frail looking woman could be such a threat?
Another jerk freed her hand and she tumbled out of bed. Pam felt frozen with horror as she watched her old boss’s reanimated body land clumsily, but somehow find footing. The small woman rose and then practically fell into Dr. Lincoln. Without thinking, he put up his hands to catch her as if she were a stumbling patient. Before anybody could react, she had her mouth buried in his chest. The doctor screamed shrilly.

Captain Crawford pulled his weapon and ended Dr. Klein’s se
cond life in an instant. The shot still rang in Pam’s ears as she watched blood start to seep through the doctor’s chest as he tried to remain standing. He had clearly been bitten deeply.

Pam
felt only pity as Dr. Lincoln tried to cover the bite wound with his hand and sat heavily on the cot that had just contained Dr. Klein a moment before. Excited by the disturbance, the hooded Zed moaned and jerked on his own cuffs. He had been more carefully fastened, and his restraints held. Captain Crawford still held his weapon. He seemed to be considering using it on Dr. Lincoln, but in the end he shouted for the guard to rush back in and make sure the doctor was securely restrained on the cot.

A nurse hesita
ted, but then approached the doctor to treat his wound. She wore two layers of gloves and a surgical mask. At this time, nobody could be sure how the contamination spread. Dr. Lincoln appeared to be in shock, and he submitted to his treatment without complaint.

Incredibly, Paul slept through the entire scene. Pamela was still rooted in place, in her own sort of shock. She finally moved her head to view the door. This place no longer seemed like a haven of security. These people did not know what
they were doing and neither did anybody else. The threat was entirely new, and it was not likely to end soon.

Each time
it seemed like the Zed things were under control, some new thing happened and the situation turned for the worse.
We have to quit making the same mistakes
. Pamela felt sorry for Dr. Lincoln, but she truly believed that the kindest and wisest thing that Captain Crawford could have done would have been to shoot him in the head right away.
If I got bitten, that’s what I’d want. The animated corpses can’t be anything other than abominations.

Two men in fatigues stepped into the room with a light stretcher. They quickly scooped up Dr. Klein’s lifeless body and exited. A second pair of men entered after them, armed only with a mop and cleaning clothes. Within minutes they cleaned the floor and walls of Dr. Klein’s blood and brain matter. After they left, it seemed to Pamela as if the
incredible doctor had never been in the room at all.

But now the officer turned to Pamela. “Are you sure you weren’t infected?”

Pamela bit her lip and shook her head. “I wasn’t bitten, if that’s what you mean. In some ways I was just lucky. But as I’ve mentioned several times, I’m a pathology doctoral candidate. I took precautions from the beginning. If you want to get somebody to examine me, it’s fine. But I wasn’t even scratched.” The Pam paused and met Captain Crawford’s direct look. She shook her head. “But no, I’m not sure that the virus can’t be transmitted through the air.”

“What about him?” The officer nodded towards Paul, who still slept. Before he had been restless, but now he was still.
Pam could not understand how he could have remained unconscious through the entire disturbance, but perhaps the Taser had affected him somehow.

“I don’t’ think he was infected
either,” Pam said. She shrugged. “I wasn’t with him the whole time.”