Dead, but Not for Long (24 page)

In addition to the twenty or so recovered patients,
there had been almost thirty visitors in the hospital when the outbreak had
happened, and most of them were now also working. Even the children were given
undemanding jobs, such as helping with kitchen cleanup and giving Ernie a hand
with some of the janitorial services. It was rare now that Ernie was seen without
a group of children tagging along behind him as well as three or four adults
that would be supervising once he was done with the training.

“I see you have some new help,” Keith told him.

“My trainees,” Ernie said, giving the younger man a
smile. “I’m almost ready to turn them loose on their own now.”

“You’re a good teacher,” Keith said, remembering his
own first day at work, when he’d been hired to help Ernie after school.

The old man chuckled. “Well, I’ve raised four kids
of my own and I have a dozen grandkids now. I guess I’ve just had a lot of experience.”

“That you do,” Keith said. After the death of Keith’s
mother, Ernie had always been around to keep him steered in the right
direction. More than once, Ernie had had a serious talk with him when he’d been
going through tough times as a teen. When Keith’s grandmother had suggested the
military, Ernie had backed her up on the idea and had helped to convince him to
enlist. Keith was forever grateful for that. Many times over the years, Ernie
had acted as a surrogate father to him and had even gone to his graduation from
college, looking as proud as any father there had looked.

“What about your kids, Ernie?” Keith asked, not sure
if it was a good idea, under the circumstances. “Are they still all up north?”

“Yes, thank God. All in the Traverse City area,” he
said. “I talked to my oldest boy yesterday and he’s been in touch with the rest
of them. I let him know what’s been going on here and told them to get ready in
case it spreads. They wanted to come to get me but I nipped that idea in the bud real fast.”

Keith patted the older man’s shoulder and said, “Maybe
we can get you to them once things settle down here.”

“Maybe,” Ernie said.

Ernie had immigrated to the United States from Scotland
as a young boy, settling in Alma, Michigan with his family. His wife, Annie, had come from
the Marquette area and they had met as children on Mackinac Island, where both
families had been visiting for a vacation. They had become pen pals and had
kept close contact with each other throughout their childhood.
The year they graduated from high school, they both took summer jobs on Mackinac Island, working
at one of the large hotels and staying in the dorms. It was the best summer of Ernie’s life and
he had proposed to Annie on their last day on the island.

Within a couple months, they had married. While Ernie’s wife had moved to be with him in
Lansing, where he was working at the time, she had made him promise that
someday they’d move up north and buy a little cottage on a lake. It had never
happened. Her life had been cut short, several years earlier, by a sudden heart
attack; a shock to everybody, including her doctor. Ernie had been devastated
but he had kept working to keep his mind occupied. His kids had eventually
moved north as their mother had always wanted to do, but Ernie just wasn’t
ready to face a retirement alone. For ten years, he had been telling them that
he wanted to work one more year.

“Guess I’d better get back to work. Can’t let these youngsters see me slacking.”

Keith laughed at that, knowing that as soon as the
kids left to do something else, Ernie would find a place for a nap.

As he watched the old man walk away, Keith began to
think about his own family. Cell phone coverage was sporadic at best, but he’d
finally gotten through to his two sisters. They were both safe for the moment
but they were worried about their little brother being stuck in the city. He had
assured them that he was in a safe place, but he also made sure they both knew
exactly how serious the outbreak was in Lansing. He gave them as much advice as
possible on how to prepare in case it hit their areas.

Shanelle was another story. Keith had finally reached
his estranged wife. She was trapped in her apartment building but some of the
tenants had gotten together and had cleared off a couple floors. They were
pooling their food, though she had told Keith they didn’t have enough to last
long. They planned to try to get to the other floors soon and she had promised
to keep him posted. He had told her that the military was bringing survivors in
to the hospital, and she had agreed to talk to her neighbors about trying to
get to the roof. For the moment, she was safe but Keith wondered how long that
would last.

~*~

Nick Doune had not heard from his wife, nor had he
attempted to reach her. In fact, thoughts of her had scarcely crossed his mind.
He was busy with his lab and was trying to learn as much as possible about the
cause of the plague. Without a microscope, he was unable to examine anything on
a cellular level so he spent a lot of time watching the infected from a second
floor window through binoculars and taking notes. He desperately wanted a
specimen that he could dissect, but the others had been squeamish about
allowing him to bring in a ‘live’ one to study. Instead, samples were taken
from the infected in the parking lot when possible. Nick improvised with the
resources available, but he began to think more and more about making a trip to
his lab to retrieve equipment. He finally approached Snake with the idea one morning.

Snake thought about the doctor’s request for a second.

“My guys said the last trip to the hardware store
got pretty hairy, but if you think that crap may help us to figure this out,
there’s no time like the present. It’s only going to get worse.”

“I’d have to go along,” Doune said, not trusting a
bunch of bikers with his fragile equipment. “We’d need at least two people to
carry the heavier things and then I could box up the fragile items.”

“You’re not going to have much time to pack, Dr.
Doom,” Snake said sarcastically. “If the excursion to the hardware was any
indication, we’ll be doing more shooting than anything. Imagine a wounded fish
swimming in a pool infested with slow moving sharks. We’ll be the fish, maybe
the only fish out there, so we’ll be very popular. Still want to go?”

“Of course,” Doune said, ignoring the barbs. He
looked forward to observing the infected a little closer from the safety of the
vehicles. “The lab should be secure. It’s enclosed by a cinder block wall with
a heavy-duty gate, so once we get inside we should be able to take our time
loading up. A moving van or large rental truck would be perfect.”

“We used a linen truck to haul the cinder block,”
Snake informed him. “It’s about the size of a small moving van. There’s already
a bunch of sheets and blankets in the back that you can use for packing your precious equipment.”

Snake tried to hide his disdain for Dr. Doune, who
reminded him of his CO in Viet Nam. To Snake, Doune seemed like the type of
person that would sacrifice anything and anyone for the mission without
remorse. His CO had caught a ‘stray’ bullet and Snake was hoping history wouldn’t
repeat itself.

Nick sighed. “Worm . . . excuse me, Snake, I am
trying to find a cure for this outbreak. It’s not like I’m asking for help to
get a flat screen TV or, God forbid, a video game console. Without my
equipment, I don’t have a chance of finding a cure or creating a vaccine.”

While the statement was true, Doune knew it was
unlikely he’d ever find a cure. He was no virologist and while he had an
adequate knowledge of viruses, bacteria and bacteriophages, they were not his
specialty. That wouldn’t keep him from trying but his desire to research the
virus stemmed more from his passion to learn than it did from finding a cure to save the world.

Snake grinned, showing the gap where two of his teeth used to be. Looking up, he prayed aloud,
“Lord, forgive me for what is going through my head right now.” He turned to the doctor.

“Well dude, if we’re going to go, let’s do it now,”
he said, walking toward the door.

Autumn approached Dr. Doune with a look of concern.

“If you get bit, can we experiment on you?”

“Of course,” he said. “I agreed to donate my brain
to science but most of the people that would know what to do with it are probably already dead.”

He turned to leave with Snake, who was carrying a
bat along with his gun. Doune noticed an assortment of other odd weapons as
they got ready to leave. One man had a hockey stick while another carried a
crowbar. There was also a sledge hammer and he saw a couple of machetes.
Some of the men even had metal poles that had been fashioned into pikes.

Snake noticed the curious looks that Doune was giving his men, and he said,
“We use these weapons when we have to be quiet. Guns tend to draw crowds.”

Doune nodded and stepped outside. He had expected
fresh air and the acrid stench of smoke hit him hard. There was human flesh
burning; he could smell it. The smoke wasn’t just from the bodies that had been
burned, though. Half the city looked like it was in flames and Doune wondered if it would spread to the hospital.

Shots rang out as someone picked off the undead that were wandering the parking lot.

“We may end up with a bigger problem than the infected if that’s possible,”
Doune said. “I have the feeling that the fire department is no longer on call, and if these fires spread, we could be trapped.”

“Yeah,” Snake agreed, “I don’t think we’ll be
getting any services any time soon. If the fires spread, we’re going to have to
try to fight them as well as possible or we’re going to have to run. We ought
to talk to Jack about it and get a plan in place.”

“I have no idea what sort of equipment we have to
deal with a fire or any other disaster for that matter,” Doune said. “It’s
funny how many things you take for granted.”

“Speaking of that, the fuel in our generator should
last a couple weeks, but when the power grid goes out, we’ll only have a short
time before the city water tank runs out with no pumps to refill it. My guys
grabbed some barrels from the hardware store to catch rain water off the roof,
just in case.”

“Good thinking,” Doune said.

“C’mon boys,” Snake said. “We’re taking another field trip.”

~*^*~

Doune glanced at the wall on his way to the truck.

“How long will it take to finish the wall?” he asked Snake as they climbed into the cab.

Six bikers with rifles climbed on top of the truck.

“Should be done tomorrow. We had a little setback after Eric drove through it the other day,
but it’s almost done now. Now we just need a gate.”

They had to stop several times while four of the men climbed down off the
truck and either pushed a stalled vehicle off the road, or
put it in neutral so Snake could push it with the truck. The other two were
kept busy shooting from their perch atop the truck. It was eerily evident that
theirs was the only moving vehicle on the road.

The devastation of the city shocked Nick, though he
would not show it. He had expected to see battles in the streets, people
fleeing and fighting for their lives, but what they were witnessing was the
aftermath of such a conflict. It was already over and the city had the look and
feel of a post-apocalyptic war zone. The only movement on the streets seemed to
be the infected lumbering about, arms outstretched as they grasped for the
truck as it passed by. He wondered just how many other survivors there were,
holed up in their homes or in places like the hospital. How many of them would
survive the next few weeks? Would the sovereignty of man come to an end or
would the survivors triumph and rebuild their world? Survival in such a place
would not be easy and would not be pleasant, though it would be better than the alternative.

They finally reached the edge of the city and made
their way toward Nick’s lab on the outskirts of town. The number of infected
had dropped as they’d moved into areas of the city that were less densely
populated, but there were still enough to be a problem. Doune watched as the
snipers on the truck took out one after another of the infected. Killing the
brain seemed to be the only way to put them down, he noticed. Until now, he had
refused to even entertain the word “zombie” except in jest, but he had to
wonder if there might be some truth to it. His analytical mind told him that it
was impossible to reanimate the dead, but he was seeing things with his own
eyes that had no other explanation; a man with most of his body eaten away, a
woman with her head twisted around almost backwards. Doune remained silent as
he studied the infected, but he was beginning to accept that the people he was
seeing truly were the reanimated dead.

When they approached the lab, Snake was glad to see
that it was just as the doctor had described it. A large metal gate spanned the
driveway and an eight foot high masonry wall lined the property.

“Like your privacy, don’t you, Doc?” Snake asked sarcastically.

“The tight security is essential in keeping my
research secure as well as safeguarding my equipment. I devote more time to
research than to surgery and I am quite protective of my lab and everything in it.”

“Don’t suppose you have a gate opener with you?”

“Key card,” Nick said, holding up the piece of plastic that was hanging around his neck.

He handed it to Snake as they approached the gate. “Just wave it at the scanner,” he told the biker.

Snake lifted the card and waved it back and forth at the gate post, not sure where the scanner was.

As Nick waited for the gate to open, he looked around. It appeared that the city power was still on but once that failed, the
generator would kick in. Perhaps it would be best to disable it for now and
turn off the computers. His current experiments didn’t require any power and he
was afraid that the sound of the generator would draw attention to the lab once the grid failed.