Afterbirth (21 page)

Strandville passed by at sixty miles per hour, but it felt much faster. Reid leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes until the fleeting dizziness passed. He swallowed the dread of threatened infection and considered himself fortunate.

Nate, the guard, had turned almost immediately, and though he’d seen others take longer, it had never been more than a few hours.

He had made it through the night.

He jammed his ice-cold feet under the dash in hopes of soaking in at least a meager amount of heat through his steel toe boots. Brett’s old pick-up truck hadn’t started getting warm until twenty miles out and it was too early for the morning sun to have any effect. Reid’s stomach itched and he twisted his hands in the too-tight cuffs to scratch the raised, pink welts covering it.

Brett glanced over at him, setting his right hand on the pistol in his lap. “Something the matter?”

Reid kept him in his periphery. “I’m allergic to eggs.”

“Ain’t that some shit?” Brett snickered. “You’d tell me if something
else
was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

Reid sighed. “Like if I was turning into a flesh-eating zombie, you mean? I think you might notice.”

He had determined in the short time he’d been with Brett that he must’ve gotten by before The Collapse on his looks. He kept his hair gelled into symmetrical spikes, even now when so many had shaved their heads or let their hair go unruly. His hands showed no signs of manual labor, but he was toned and bulked. Gym-fit, if Reid had to guess, and his skin had the slightly orange tint of a man who had once indulged in habitual tanning.

“You worried?” Brett asked.

Reid smirked. “I’d be more worried if I were
you
.” He refused to tip his hand. Aside from the reaction to the eggs, the swelling in his hands, which made the cuffs tighter and the thick feeling to his tongue, the nausea and distortion in his vision could have been either the allergy or the slow beginning of a very long end.

“What I mean, is that kid who you say?”

Reid would take the lie to his grave if it came to that. “Did you get a good look at him? He’s not human. Who else’s would he be?” Brett had barely said a word all the way down the mountain. He didn’t have to say he didn’t believe his story. It was obvious. “Since we’re old friends now, that makes it my turn. How’d you end up with Nixon?”

“My brother-in-law,
Nate
. Doc helped fix him up after the last attack on the clinic. We lost everyone else in our group and I figure we owed him. Been tracking you ever since.”

Reid recalled the red ridge of healed stitches behind the ear of the man he shot. “A little ironic, don’t you think? Helping the man who caused the disaster that took everything from you?”

“That’s not the way I hear it.” Brett parked in the Nixon Center lot, tucked his pistol in his waistband, and opened Reid’s door.

Reid turned sideways in the seat and put his hands out for Brett to unlock the cuffs.

Brett grabbed the links connecting them and tugged Reid out onto the pavement.

Reid stumbled and recovered. “You don’t honestly expect me to go in there unarmed and handcuffed, do you?”

“You think I’d give you a gun after that shit you pulled last time?”

“At least uncuff me.” Reid opened his swollen hands, palms facing up. “These cut into me any deeper and I bleed, you’re gonna have a whole other problem.” Reid took his chances on what may or may not have been a lie. “Nixon didn’t tell you about that, did he? Take them off,” he said. “Or take your chances.”

Brett paused for a minute and then fished the keys out of his pocket. “No bullshit.” He unlocked the cuffs and held him at gunpoint. “Way I see it, I already owe you a bullet for Nate. Let’s get this done and over with. Where are we going?”

“Follow me,” Reid said, heading into the lobby and assessing the changes.

Fresh footprints circled the atrium and the ladder extended down the elevator shaft. Reid scratched his stomach and rubbed his irritated eyes, which burned so badly it was hard to see anything in the distance.

“This way.”

Brett stayed close enough behind him to have stepped on his heels twice. Reid worried one of the slips was going to land a bullet in his back. He led him upstairs to the third floor Intensive Care Unit and pulled the door open, mindful of the fact that the area was closed off for a reason. His eyes were nearly swollen shut by the time he reached the head nurse’s office. Two chairs sat in front of a small desk and blood spattered the walls. He tiptoed through the crushed glass from the broken computer monitor and rummaged the cabinets in search of antihistamine.

Brett looked around the small room and tapped the muzzle of the gun against the metal door jamb. “Where’s the body?”

Shhh.

Something crashed in a room down the hallway and Reid searched more quickly, squinting to read labels. He held up a bottle, showing Brett the reason for the delay, and dry-swallowed several pink pills. He pointed in the noise’s direction and whispered, “It’s that way.”

Brett’s hands shook and his complexion went pale, but he didn’t back down.

“You sure Nixon’s worth all this?” Reid asked.

Brett shrugged. “I’m sure what you did to Nate’s worth letting him have a shot at you.”

Reid nodded, already feeling some relief, and headed toward the most densely infested area, where he hoped knowing the danger gave him the advantage and would help him elude Brett. The infected quarantined within the I.C.U. had been there the full seven months and Reid wasn’t sure what to expect. They were either decomposed or very hungry.

Brett reluctantly followed. “How much farther?”

“Last room on the right,” Reid whispered. He blinked and noted a decrease in his lid swelling. 

The I.C.U. rooms were surrounded with isolation glass. Several had signs that warned of “droplet precautions” which meant a disease that could be spread by breathing in contaminated air. The virus, as far as he knew, had never gone airborne.

Brett tripped and slammed his palm into the window in an attempt at catching himself. An infected female attacked the glass and he jumped back with a holler. Crimson bloodstains dotted the woman’s hospital gown and her tattered robe slipped from her bony shoulder. Dusky skin clung to her bones like tissue paper and her lips shrank away from her teeth. Brett fired into the glass and the shot resonated. The glass splintered, but didn’t shatter and the bullet lodged, suspended in the resistant material.

“What are you doing?” Reid shouted.

A chorus of moans erupted from the waiting room near the exit.

Six infected researchers stumbled into the hallway wearing hazardous materials suits and full masks.

Reid tried to see their faces through the tiny windows and found nothing but darkness and rot.

“Shit!” Brett turned to run back the way they came. Several construction workers pushed through the plastic sheeting where the last of the ICU renovations remained incomplete.

“Dammit!” Reid had meant to draw the infected down on Brett and now stood between two starving packs.

“What the hell did you do?” Brett asked.

Reid kicked over a tool chest and searched through the rubble for anything he could use as a weapon.

Brett fired at the closest construction workers to him. His shaking hands landed the rounds in their arms, legs, and chests.

“For Christ’s sake, the head!” Reid shouted. “
This
is what happens when you don’t let me have a gun.”

Brett wasted an entire clip on the construction crew and the repeated shots drew patients and staff Reid hadn’t even realized were up there.

“Have you ever even seen one of these things?” Reid picked up a hammer and charged, sinking the claw into the skull of an emaciated, infected elderly male. “Hurry up!”

Brett scrambled to reload and spilled more shells than he got into the clip.

Reid ran in the direction of the researchers, figuring their hoods made it impossible for them to bite. He pushed the right side of the double door exit and ricocheted backward. “Shit!” The doors weren’t supposed to be locked.

Brett fired three more rounds and ran back in the direction they had come from.

“Where the hell are you going?” Reid shouted. “Don’t leave me here!” 

The sound of Brett’s footsteps faded and disappeared altogether. The door slammed and Reid held his breath, waiting for the horde’s attack.

“Brett, let me out of here!” Reid kicked the locked doors, pounded them with his fists and the hammer. Karma had caught up with him, and if there was a way out, he couldn’t see it.

The generator hummed and the converted shed, which was the closest thing Nixon had to a lab, smelled faintly of gasoline. A single-bulb work lamp hung from a nail on the wall and bathed the room in bright yellow-white light. A block heater warmed the room.

Nixon approached the workbench and peeled back the blanket covering the infant who looked sick and laid still. “You fed him?”

Paul stood in the corner, smoothing his hand over his slicked back hair. “Corey said you wanted me to.”

Nixon taped over the boy’s mouth as a precaution and wondered what had gone wrong. He lifted the boy’s tiny hand and examined his clubbed, fused fingers. There were no fingernails, only two smooth flippers with short, stumpy thumbs. Heat radiated from his small core, indicating fever. Nixon pulled down the boy’s shirt collar, tucked a thermometer into his armpit, and held his arm at his side, waiting for the temperature to stop rising.

104 degrees and climbing.

“Does he look different to you?” Nixon asked. “Aside from the fact that he isn’t moving?” He wished he’d gotten a better look at the boy when Reid first brought him in, that he’d been able to make notes on his condition.

Paul leaned forward, but kept his distance. “Paler, maybe?”

Nixon lifted the bottom of the cotton sack gown and exposed the boy’s narrow torso. His tiny chest rose and fell harshly, rattling with each labored breath. Bluish-black lesions discolored his ivory skin. Nixon pulled the hair at the sides of his head and let out a frustrated growl. Unlike the undead he’d fed medical waste to at the center, the human part of the boy was susceptible to disease. Feeding him Allison’s diseased toes had quieted him, but now gangrene coursed through his system.

Nixon pulled a supply cart over, one of several he’d taken during the evacuation from the center, and went through the drawers for I.V. supplies. He hadn’t necessarily planned on treating an infant, but was thankful to find the cart well-stocked.

“Come here and hold his arm.” Nixon couldn’t blame Paul for his hesitation. “This isn’t your fault. I know that.”

“What do you want me to do?” Paul brushed his hair back from in front of his eyes.

“Just hold him like this.” Nixon held the boy’s arm out at a ninety degree angle and tied a tourniquet around his arm. The boy didn’t even whimper. Nixon swabbed the back of the boy’s deformed hand and after finding a suitable vein, inserted the I.V. He taped the boy’s hand to a small, plastic block to keep him from pulling the line, and hung a bag of saline with a piggyback of antibiotics on a nail on the wall. There wasn’t enough to treat him for even a week, and he was ill-prepared for diagnostics. Even with all of what he’d taken during the evacuation, supplies were running low. He looked down at his watch and scowled. “Reid and Brett should’ve been back by now.” He’d sent Brett with a list of things he needed, but had come up with ten more since they left. He checked and re-checked the infant’s symptoms, knowing there would not be an immediate change, but needing the distraction. His thoughts kept coming back to the same drastic solution. He took the pediatric backboard from the corner and adjusted the straps to work for the infant’s small size. “Lift him up,” he said to Paul. He wished he’d had a spinal immobilizer to keep the boy’s head from turning, but he’d make do. The infant was too lethargic to be a real danger at this point.

Paul picked the boy up and held him away from his body. Nixon slid the board underneath him and adjusted the straps so that his head, arms, torso, and feet were secured. “We’re going back, aren’t we?” he asked.

“Get the others ready. Pack up as much of what we have as you can fit in the helicopter. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“What do I tell them?”

“Tell them to get ready to take back what’s mine.”

Michael parked in the Nixon Center’s ancillary lot. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t been followed. Amelie slept peacefully in a cardboard box on the passenger’s seat. Adam rested quietly in the trunk, the frantic thumping having stopped a good ten miles back. Michael pocketed the sedative he’d administered to both of them to keep them quiet and pulled the hood of his heavy winter jacket over his nearly bald head.

He loaded the footlocker onto a hand truck and secured it with a bungee cord. A muffled groan came from inside and a cloud of worsening decomposition leaked from between the lid’s seams. Adam had responded to being warmed up, but it had cost his body precious time. Michael grabbed Miranda’s file, the container with the umbilical cord and placenta, and did a brief mental inventory to make sure that he had all the things he immediately needed.

“It’s going to be all right, son.”

He needed to believe that.

He tied a sling made from a piece of bed sheet around his neck and tested its strength to make sure it would support Amelie’s weight. He opened her door, keeping her out of the wind the best he could, and nestled her against his chest. He zippered the oversized coat around both of them and loaded his pistol. There were at least two survivors inside, Reid and Frank, who they’d left behind. He had no idea how many infected.

Snot dripped from his nose as he crossed the parking lot to the main entrance, dragging the cart behind him. He’d given five years of his life to this place and beneath the chaos, the damage, and the grim bodies swaying in warning, the place hadn’t changed. He doubted that Nixon had, either.

“Keep out.” He read the warning aloud.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.

He dragged the cart over the threshold and the wheels stuck in the track of the open automatic doors. He gave a sharp tug and felt Amelie move inside his coat. The wind kicked up a cloud of ash and he coughed, shuddering when the sound echoed loudly against the high ceiling. He turned on a battery-operated lantern and uncoiled a thick skein of rope, which he used to gently lower the hand truck to the basement floor, figuring the lab level was best-equipped for the work he needed to do.

Amelie started to come around and he administered another extremely weak dose of sedative. He held her close and used only one hand to steady himself as he made his way toward the lantern’s artificial light. Each footstep rang out, his heavy boots clanging against the flimsy metal which rattled under the strain of his weight.  Amelie breathed slow and deep and he felt the rise and fall of her against him.

“I promise I won’t hurt you.” He held her tighter as his foot dangled toward the floor. He missed the last rung of the ladder and stumbled backward into the trunk. The light wobbled and created disorienting shadows in the narrow space. He grabbed the cart handle and headed toward the nearest lab. The doors no longer required security clearance to access.

He lined one of several bassinettes with his coat and laid Amelie inside where she continued her drug-induced slumber. Several of the cabinets hung open, as did a few of the drawers. Michael prayed the antivirus hadn’t been discovered. Nixon kept a stash in each of the labs in the event of emergency or panic. This was both. He pulled out the furthest drawer to the right, emptied its contents onto the stainless steel countertop, and flipped it over. While there were public storage spaces, Nixon and the few other physicians knew where the secret doses were kept. A single piece of packing tape held four syringes to the drawer’s underside, and while Michael had hoped for more, he had enough to get him started. He lined the syringes next to one another on the tray near where Amelie lay sleeping.

He meant what he had said. He would avoid hurting her at all costs, and started first with blood from the umbilical cord and placenta. He prepped several syringes and aspirated as much as he could from the cord. The stem cells, if all went well, would prevent replication of the infection. Nixon’s antivirus, alone, had been ineffective as a cure because the virus spread faster than it was killed. Combining the two, he expected results.

Adam desperately needed them.

He opened the trunk lid and expected the worst. Adam’s white eyes shimmered, luminescent in the dim lantern light. His pale complexion had deep undertones of blue. A round sore had formed on his cheek and blood painted his tiny lips. He’d gotten one of his arms free and had gnawed his right thumb to a bony nub. Michael injected another dose of the sedative into his bicep and lifted his lifeless body onto the examination table.

Part of him knew the effects of the virus, at this late stage and with no life with which to generate new cells, were irreversible. The father in him refused to believe it. The alternative of ending his son’s short life and living alone was too dismal a thought to bear. Adam was all he had left, and knew if Ashley were still alive she would’ve never let him give up, not until every option had been tried and then some. He turned Adam’s head to the side, his heart pounding with anticipation, and injected the combination of stem cells and antivirus into his carotid artery. All he could do, now, was wait.