Waking The Zed (14 page)

But
more urgently, what did Captain Crawford mean when he said they needed to clean the room? She peered out through squinted eyelids and saw two armed guards pacing the room. She wanted out, and she wanted out now, but there was no way she could race past those guards.

Trying to make her movements look like the actions of somebody simply repositioning themselves in their sleep, she turned her head.

Yes, Paul’s still in his bed.
Pamela had begun to worry he had covered up an injury. But he surely would have died and reanimated by now. It was possible that Paul was simply fatigued, or maybe even ill from some less sinister disease. Pam had no real friends here in the infirmary, but somehow Paul felt like a comrade. She blew out a relieved sigh when she saw him.

“What do you mean by clean the room?” This was
asked by a stern female voice, coming from the office. That was, of course, what Pam wanted to know. She tried to glance around, and as far as she could tell, all the others were sound asleep. All she heard from inside the room was rhythmic breathing and an occasional soft snore. Once, a low moan came from the other end of the room, and she figured the creature must still be hooded and bagged over there
. If they wanted to clean the room, why didn’t they take that thing away?

“I mean that we need to stop pretending that these unfortunate citizens are patients that we can cure,” Captain Crawford said. “We are wasting time, and we need to move on. If the doctors want some specimens, they can be transferred to containment.
Otherwise, I want these people neutralized, so I can move on.”

“What about the young
woman who worked at Future Faith?” the female persisted. “You said she was your most credible witness, a scientist, and she does not appear symptomatic after all of this time. The young medical student may also be useful.”

“They both tested positive,” Captain Crawford said. “But I guess we could transfer them to a more secure room if you’re squeamish about it. Frankly, I don’t think they have any
thing additional to contribute. The guy’s a loose cannon waiting to go off but I might be convinced to keep the young woman around here for a while longer. She’s a graduate student, and I gather she only held a low-level position at Future Faith. But of all the civilians, she has proved the most stable and cooperative. Her suggestion about looking through Dr. Klein’s research is a sensible one but we can surely use our own experienced medical people to do it. Maybe we can even scare up some real experts.”

“As she has mentioned several times, Ms. Stone is a doctoral candidate in pathology,” the woman said. “She also knows her way around Future Faith. She may be as good as it gets, as far as experts go, for quite a while.
Things are not exactly stable.”

“I’ll think about it,” Captain Crawford groused. “I’d dearly like to get a real expert in here. Somebody from the virus blocker team or a higher level scientist would be ideal.
Clearly, the young woman has her virtues, but she’s almost a kid.”

“Higher level scientists at Future Faith could all be walking around like that thing you’ve got chained in the corner by now.
Ms. Stone’s youth probably worked in her favor because she was strong enough to get out of the building. Besides, I’ve seen officers her age lead men into battle. She also has proven herself as resourceful. I imagine that it took some combination of quick thinking, strength, and luck to get out of there.” The woman’s voice sounded flat, but insistent.

Pam felt frozen on the thin infirmary cot, but she certainly
thought she understood what Captain Crawford meant by neutralized. She had to get out of this room quickly before they made escape impossible by putting her in some sort of locked jail cell. But how could she possibly escape even now? Guards watched the room, and two were planted in front of the only exit.

As she lay back with her heart racing, the woman with the body builder physique started to stir. Pamela wondered if she had heard Captain Crawford’s comments too.
The tough looking woman had certainly sounded confrontational, but maybe she could speak with her and try to come up with some sort of plan. Pam risked a glance across the row of beds as the woman sat up slowly.

One of the guards moved to
wards the burly woman. He asked, “Hey, how are you doing there?”

The woman did not reply, but tumbled out of bed. Now Pam did not even try to pretend she was still asleep. The woman moved faster than anybody expected, but not so fast that Pam did not catch her wild expression
and glazed, bloodshot eyes. The woman had clearly turned into one of the creatures. She lunged at the soldier, head first, and used her teeth to rip at his chest. The guard had not prepared himself for an onslaught, and he actually screamed as the woman buried her mouth into his well-developed pectoral muscle.

The other guards raced over to separate them, but now the lean woman rose too. Quicker than Pam could have anticipated, the state trooper stood behind
her. While the soldiers occupied themselves with trying to control the former patients, the second woman veered right towards Pam. She hopped off her cot and tried to slide the bed between them.

She saw Paul, still in his cot, but with his eyes half open.
He rubbed his face with a very human gesture. Pam felt her heart drop in relief. She grabbed his arm and hissed, “Come on!” Slowly, like he was half dazed, the young man rolled off his mattress and managed to get his legs under hm.

In Pam’s opinion, the guards would have been wise to shoot the creatures in the head, instead of trying to wrestle with them. But they obviously still did not understand the threat.
They don’t want to shoot unarmed people.
Now Captain Crawford emerged from the small office. He stood between her and the door, but he was obviously distracted by the growing melee. At lease she saw him reach for his sidearm.

Now one of the other men who had been brought in earlier rose. A second guard
, who had inserted himself between Pam and the lean woman, shouted as the creature sunk her teeth into his thick arm. The second businessman had not turned, but had simply been roused because of the noise. Well, it was too late for him now. The other business man threw himself on the first one’s cot. Pam heard a sickening crunch.

Captain Crawford glanced at Pam, must have decided she had not turned, and brushed past her to try to take control of the situation. She saw him draw his sidearm. Pam grabbed Paul’s hand and pulled him
behind Captain Crawford and towards the exit. Amazingly, the pair made it out of the room unmolested. The hallway was mostly deserted.

A few steps outside of
the infirmary room, a tall soldier in riot gear stopped them. He frowned at the pair. “Are you supposed to be here?” he asked.

“You have to help us,” Pam said quickly. “The things are attacking soldiers in there. I saw two guys get bitten.”

A deep throated cry from inside the ward confirmed Pam’s story, and the soldier rushed past her into the infirmary room. Almost immediately, shots were fired. Pam hoped the shooters were able to separate the living and the dead.

She
took the opportunity to race down the hallway, with Paul in tow. She sped towards the nearest exit. Paul seemed to stumble along behind her, but managed to keep pace. Despite the fact that Paul was a fairly tall and trim looking man, Pam had to tug on his arm every few paces. She felt as if she was almost dragging him. He was slowing her down, but she had no time to figure out why. Perhaps the Taser blast still affected him, she thought to herself. She had no experience with weapons like that and no time to think about it.

Pam had no real way to gauge time
as she had still forgotten about the cell phone snuggled in her pant pocket. The infirmary room had no clocks or outside windows. But she stepped out of the hospital building into a dark and moonless night. Electric lights allowed her to move up the path, but it had obviously been dark for some time.

Outside the hospital barracks, teams of soldiers raced here and there, but nobody gave Pam a glance as she froze just outside the door.
A dozen armed men rushed past her back into the infirmary. Trucks and troop carriers lined up on the road. Men boarded, and then the vehicles rushed out of the open gate.

All of the havoc must not just be here. What’s going on out there?

She kept close to the side of the building, hoping to put some distance between herself and the infirmary room before her absence was noted and an alarm was sounded. She hoped she might figure out how to walk out of the military base though she figured it would be tricky. The general confusion might work in her favor as it had when she managed to slip out of the infirmary a few minutes before.

Paul still followed her passively. She glanced back at him, but could barely make out his features in the shadows cast by the building.

Just as she muttered, “This has got to be my worst day ever,” she saw a large four wheel drive vehicle parked on the road with its motor running. A tall and burly young man in fatigues hopped out of the driver’s side. He had a distracted look and a cell phone pinned to his ear.

“I have had enough of this place,” Pam said, yanking Paul over to the vehicle
from the side away from the driver. He stumbled after her as she dived through the passenger side door and then scooted around to take the driver’s place. Paul still stood by the door, looking undecided. Pam waved him in frantically.

After a moment of
hesitation, he climbed in beside her. Before the driver could turn around, Pam had her foot on the clutch and the car in gear. She swerved across the road to get in line behind the troop vehicles. She saw the former driver try to chase her down, but Pam managed to experience a rare moment of luck on this luckless day. The convoy sped up and she was through the gates and out on the street before he could get close.

While the rest of the
caravan took the first highway entrance, Pam sped past it. Her first thought was just to ditch this car back at Future Faith. She might be able to access Dr. Klein’s research papers if she could still use her badge to sneak into the building. If she could not get inside, she figured she would just go home. In the morning she might be able to contact a professor at the university.

“Where’re we going
?” Paul said. He words seemed slurred and effortful.

“I’m going back to Future Faith
,” Pam said. “I really need to get back inside the building to access Dr. Klein’s research but that may be impossible. Why? Where do you think we should go?”

“Dunno’,” Paul replied, and then he leaned his head back against the seat. In a moment, Pam noticed him slumped down
again, as if unconscious.

“
How can you sleep now? Did they give you a sedative back there at the base?” Pam asked. But Paul did not reply. She persisted. “Are you sick or something?” He remained silent as if he had, incredibly, fallen asleep again in the midst of this chaos.

Pam tried to keep her anxiety in check as she raced down the quiet road. She knew an alternate route back to Future Faith
Cryonics, but she knew she needed to make good time to avoid pursuit. It would not take the driver much time to alert somebody to his stolen vehicle. Heading for her personal car or her own apartment seemed like obvious moves. If Captain Crawford really wanted to find her, assuming he survived the row in the ward room, he would be sure to send people to these places first. As she concentrated on driving as quickly as possible, she honestly could not come up with any sort of plan. She had wanted to cooperate with the authorities, but she wasn’t ready to submit to incarceration and eventual “cleaning”.

In fact, she had not even made it to the next highway exit before she caught the faint sound of sirens through her half open window. Of course, on a night like tonight, anything could prompt police and ambulances.
She had no way to know if her vehicle’s original driver had initiated pursuit, of if the emergency vehicles simply responded to another tragedy. Then the sound of her own cell phone startled her. This was the first time all night that she remembered she even had it.

As she drove, Pam fumbled to remove the phone and stab the answer button. A harsh male voice said, “We have that vehicle on GPS. You are advised to pull over now since there is no way to evade us.”

“Crap,” Pam said into the phone as she stabbed the button to cut off the call. Of course her cell phone probably tracked her too. Obviously these guys could pull up any information about her that they wanted.

She glanced at Paul, and he still slumped down in his seat. She could not hear him breathing so she hoped he was merely resting comfortably, but she had no way check on him as she drove. Her cause seemed hopeless if she
either gave up now or kept trying to run. Still, operating on adrenaline and instinct, she kept driving and hoping for some sort of miracle or inspiration.

She knew that the next exit led
to an old two lane road that would take her to a highway near Future Faith Cryonics. If she could just get back to her own car before the military picked her up, she could ditch her cell phone and be free of tracking devices. She knew she had a twenty minute drive ahead of her under any conditions, and she had no way to know what she would find at any turn. Pam swerved over to take the exit onto the old road.