War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (12 page)

“And the amphotericin?” Lorry asked. “When is that on the table?”

“Not yet,” Thuy said in a whisper. “We have to give them more time.”

Before Lorry could say anything, a scream from down the hall cut their conversation short. It started out high and piercing and then dropped into a raging, curse filled rant. As Thuy stood rooted in place, first Dr. Wilson ran into the room and then the radiologist, Dr. Fenner. There was a crash and more screaming.

As if in a dream, Thuy walked to the patient’s room and stared in at Sally Phelps who was swinging her IV pole like it was a halberd. The woman seemed no bigger than Thuy and the pole and the monitor must have weighed forty pounds, yet she swung it like it was a fly swatter. The first swing hit Dr. Fenner on the arm and knocked her to the ground. The second swing was like a strike from a sledgehammer. With full malice on her small features, Sally raised the pole and swept it downward looking to crush the radiologist.

Dr. Wilson yanked Fenner out of the way by her lab coat as the monitor exploded, sending plastic and surgical steel in every direction. “Help get her out of here!” Wilson bellowed at Thuy.

Dr. Fenner didn’t need the help. She was already scrambling away, her mask turned halfway around her head, her mouth a grimace of fear and pain. Thuy stepped aside to let her get to safety.

“We need help down here!” Thuy yelled as Dr. Wilson started circling to Sally’s right. Sally, who at one time had taught the third grade, didn’t wait to attack. Her IV pole was bent and hung with the remains of the monitor; she swung it like a scythe, looking to decapitate Wilson. He dropped to the ground as the pole whistled overhead and crashed against the wall. Thuy reacted on instinct. She had a clear shot at Sally and darted in, tackling her.

They went down in a heap of flailing arms and legs. Thuy was younger, heavier, and far healthier. Sally was a demon possessed. Despite her sickly looking arms she was viciously strong and was able to pin Thuy to the ground. Thuy kicked and squirmed but there was little she could do against such strength. Sally opened her jaws wide and thrust for Thuy’s throat, stopping just short of it as Dr. Wilson grabbed her by her hospital gown and pulled her back. Sally was tiny next to the large doctor and he was able to yank her off of Thuy, but not before Sally’s nails dug three furrows along Thuy’s arm.

“I need Diazepam, stat!” he ordered in a thundering voice. "Ten milligrams I.M." There was a rush of feet as Lacy Freeman and a second nurse sprinted into the room. Wilson held Sally down as Lacy jabbed a needle into her deltoid muscle.

“It’s like she’s on PCP,” Wilson said, when Sally slumped back, her eyes slowly losing their focus.

“Or bath salts,” Lacy said. “You know, that weird drug some of the kids are using that turns people into cannibals?”

Thuy struggled to her feet and stared down at the onetime schoolteacher. “I’ll have my people check her blood for synthetic cathinone. It’s the ingredient in bath salts that cause this sort of behavior. In the mean time I want every patient sedated.”

Dr. Wilson, who was patting down his short afro stopped and looked at Thuy in disbelief. “Hold on now. We have two cases of bizarre behavior that doesn’t mean we chemically restrain everyone.”

“The two cases just happen to be the two smallest patients,” Thuy said, pointing down at Sally, who had closed her eyes and looked to be unconscious. “Logic suggests that we will have eight more cases in the next half hour—all from the next smallest patients. And if you thought Sally was a handful, it’ll only get worse. Wait until you try to subdue Mr. Allen or the prisoners, especially Von Braun.”

“I’m not really in the subduing business,” Dr. Wilson said. “Maybe you’re right. We can start on a lower dose, intravenously and move up if there are issues.”

From the doorway Dr. Lorry said, “I want to know when we start the amphotericin. This trial is getting out of control.”

“I’ll call Kip,” Thuy said.

“Why bother? You know what he’ll say,” Lorry shot back.

Everyone knew, however she felt she was out of options and called anyway.

“I forbid it!” Kip snarled into the phone. “The symptoms you describe don’t fit Fusarium toxicity so treating for Fusarium toxicity is a waste of time and a waste of my god-damned money. Do you know how many millions I’ve sunk into this project?”

“There are lives in danger,” Thuy said, ignoring his point completely.

“It seems so, but not from Fusarium. Find out what is causing the issues and treat for that. Hell, for all we know it is bath salts. We do have a leak, maybe they turned saboteur as well. If you need help with rowdy patients get Deckard to help.”

“I would but I don’t know where he is.”

Deck stood up from his keyboard and stretched, kneading his knuckles into the small of his back and grimacing as the vertebrae popped and cracked.

“I’m getting old,” he whispered to himself. Beside him the printer was spitting out paper, all the evidence he needed to secure a conviction, or at least a confession from the mole in R &K Pharmaceuticals. Seeing as all the evidence had been come by illegally, it was technically “fruit of the poisonous tree” but that was a legal matter. His first consideration was to the man who signed his paychecks.

He showered and shaved, dressing in black from head to toe, knowing it made him look particularly menacing. He liked having every edge possible when dealing with scum. He dropped the stolen hard drive onto the stack of printed e-mails and then went out into the gloomy day. The clouds were heavy and so low that it looked like he could reach them with a rake. Despite the threat of rain, children played hide-and-go-seek, running all around the thirteen guesthouses on the hospital property. One of these had been repurposed to accommodate Deck’s security team.

A little blonde girl shot around the corner and nearly barreled into him. “You should be more careful, Maddy,” he said.

“Ah’m not Maidy,” the girl said in a molasses-thick accent.

“You sure aren’t,” Deck said. “Either way, you should…”

The girl screeched suddenly and went tearing off after a boy of about twelve. “…be more careful,” Deck said after her. “Never mind.” There were more cries and screams from the seven or eight children running around, and it was hard to tell if someone was being murdered. He assumed they weren’t killing each other and walked the sixty yards to the hospital.

Right away he saw there was a problem. “Where’s Jack?” he asked Earl Johnston, the lone security guard. Deck knew the guard rotation by heart: at all times there were supposed to be two guards on duty at the front desk, two more were stationed at the main gates, one was babysitting the prisoners and the last was supposed to be constantly walking the grounds.

“They needed him up on two. Some issue with the patients.”

“You mean with the prisoners?” Deck demanded.

“No, there was a fight between some of the patients. Some lady got bit. Nothing serious if you ask me." Earl had never been a part of a clinical trial and for him rowdy people were a daily occurrence. He wasn’t concerned in the least. "He said he'd be back down in a few minutes. I'm thinking he's trying to chat up some of them pretty nurses.” 

Deck made a noise in his throat that was part growl—anything that drew a man away from his post was disconcerting. “Get the perimeter guard to cover Jack while he’s away. And find Ray. I want to see him up on four.”

He decided against checking on the patients; if there was more to the fight than just a couple of patients going at it, Ray would fill him in. Deck went to the fourth floor and even before he stepped out of the elevators he knew something was wrong there, as well. There was something in the muted atmosphere and how everyone in the glass-walled labs looked toward him when the doors opened. Tension ran on the air.

Dr. Lee spotted him and came fast-stepping in his direction. He didn’t need any skill in reading people to know the tension was mostly stemming from her. “Where have you been?” she asked, scolding Deck like she was his mother. “Were you sleeping in?”

Since he’d been on the clock for the last thirty hours straight, this was particularly galling. Who the hell was she to question his whereabouts? “I was on a coffee break.”

Surprised by the snarky answer, her dark eyes widened momentarily. She then set her jaw and hissed, “We need help and all you have to offer are flippant remarks? I was right about you; you’re nothing more than a glorified mall cop… a self-glorified moll cop.”

He glared and she matched it, completely unaware that the entire lab was watching them. Neither backed down and twenty seconds passed before the elevator dinged, pleasantly and Ray stepped out.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked

Deck growled, “Give me a sit-rep.”

“Sure…uh…” Before he could start Deck stalked away, heading for the nearest BLS-3 lab. Ray caught up, walking quickly. “The prisoners are all accounted for; locked up tight. It’s the other patients who we’re having trouble with. There is something wrong with them, they’re acting up, screaming and well, going crazy. There’s talk between the medical staff that someone is attempting to sabotage the trial by putting PCP in the cure they were taking.”

“It’s not PCP or synthetic cathinone,” Thuy told them. “We tested their blood. We don’t know what’s causing this.”

“How about we ask the source,” Deck said. “While I was on my coffee break I figured it out.”

“You don’t drink coffee,” Ray remarked.

Deck chuckled. “Then it must have been when I was on a smoke break.”

“You smoke now?” Ray asked. “You take that up when you stopped snorting coke?” He’d been with Deck long enough to know someone was getting their chain yanked. He just didn’t know if it was their perp or if it was this cute lady doctor who was clearly getting worked up. Regardless who it was, Ray had eased his hand up and was resting it on the flat of his belly—his gun was five inches away in his shoulder holster.

“Will you two stop it and just tell me who did it!” Thuy demanded. She was suddenly furious and didn’t notice that both men had assumed completely different attitudes. Ray was stiff, his muscles bunched and ready to spring into action. Deck was relaxed, his right hand holding the lapel of his suit. He worked better when he was relaxed; he was faster, fluid like a snake, and he never cocked up his aim by being overly tense.

Thuy also failed to notice Eng go rigid. He suddenly couldn’t feel his feet, but he could feel his hand as it slowly stretched out to his top desk drawer where a pistol was hidden beneath a stack of papers.

“Stop what?” Deck asked Thuy, his eyes sweeping over the scientists. “This is what mall cops do. We hunt down bad guys when we’re not sucking down an Orange Julius.”

Eng had the drawer open and was fishing around beneath the paperwork as his heart began to whomp in his ears. He’d try for Deckard first and then go for Ray. If nothing else he would shoot Thuy simply out of spite.

“Just tell me who it is,” Thuy demanded.

Deck’s eyes swept to Lieutenant Eng who felt the steel in his hands. He gripped it like his hand was a vice and started to pull it out of the drawer when Deck jutted his chin to Eng’s right.

“It’s Anna,” he said. The lady in question had gone white in the face and now she began to shake her head so that her pretty hair swung gently. Deck snorted out a half-laugh at her timid denial. “We should go talk somewhere private.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she insisted, eyeing the stack of paper in Deck’s left hand. “If someone has gotten into my emails it’s not my fault. Dr. Milner, tell them.”

“I don’t know what to tell them. If you’re the one who did this…you’re fucked.”

Anna walked forward like she was in a dream. Ray met her and ran his rough hands over her soft body, searching for weapons. “She’s clear.” The two men immediately assumed a new demeanor: hard and quiet. They marched her away from the elevators to the relative isolation of the BLS-4 labs. Thuy followed along until they were at the pressurized door.

“We got this,” Deck told her.

“Find out what she put in the Com-cells,” Thuy said. “There are thirty-nine people whose lives are depending on what you find out.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Anna whined.

Deck held up the stack of paper. “I have the emails between you and a certain professor at Cornell.”

Anna opened her mouth but words failed her until she finally said, “You can’t prove anything.”

Brimming with hate, Thuy stared at her and had to fight against the overwhelming desire to punch the girl in the face. “Do what you have to do,” Thuy said to Deckard. “I just don’t want to know the details.”

He tried to hide his look of amazement. Dr. Lee looked like the kind of person who couldn't even bring herself to jaywalk and here she was suggesting he should rough up a suspect. “I can sweat her and threaten her,” Deck whispered to Thuy. “But that’s about it.”

Thuy tried not to let her dismay show. The patients were going downhill so fast it was frightening. “Do what you can,” she practically begged.

Deckard grunted and shrugged—he wasn’t about to commit to torturing anyone, especially not aloud. He and Ray frog-marched Anna to the back labs, while behind them Eng had to practically pry his fingers from around the gun.